Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So stackable to-hit modifiers were extremely annoying in 8th edition. This was mainly an eldar issue as there were multiple units with baked-in to-hit penalties as well as a subfaction trait, psychic power, stratagem, and vehicle wargear option that all granted to-hit penalties. Plus, our flyers were pretty solid at the time and brought their own to-hit penalty for being airborne. It was an infamous problem, and I understand why GW changed things to cap out at +/- 1 to-hit.

That said... What would things look like if we brought back stackable to-hit mods now? The eldar subfaction trait for to-hit penalties doesn't exactly do that any more, and many eldar units no longer have their baked-in to-hit penalties. Plus, flyers seem to be less popular in general at the moment. So it seems like you'd generally be looking at a -1 or occassionally -2 to hit eldar (with the -2 requiring either dense terrain or some other resource like CP or a psychic power). And I feel like most other factions would be worse at stacking penalties than eldar.

PROS
* Stacking to-hit penalties intentionally seems like an interesting choice given that it would generally require positioning or psykers to pull off.
* There would be a reason *not* to shoot your heavy bolter from the hip after moving when targeting an enemy that already has a -1 to-hit penalty.
* Personal thing: it feels "right" that to-hit penalties should stack.

CONS
* If I'm overlooking some combos, you could end up with a frustratingly hard to kill unit again.
* Maybe stackable +1s to hit would make some army too strong? Doesn't seem like it would be a problem for most marine armies, but maybe for something like Tau that would generally be going from 4+ to-hit to 2+?

There just need to be some more ways to naturally stack positive hits, as well as more ways to negatively/positively affect melee.

As well, it's the fault if GW for not giving out higher values. Why can't Loyalist Scum and Chaos Terminators have BS2+ and WS2+? Why can't Custodes Captains and Phoenix Lords have BS0/1+ and WS0/1+ to show they need a lot more happening defensively to thwart their hits?

There also needs to be safety measures taken against less accurate armies.

A mere -1 cuts Ork shooting effectiveness by almost 50% codex wide. -2 means a majority of their units are literally unable to hit their targets.

 morganfreeman wrote:
There also needs to be safety measures taken against less accurate armies.

A mere -1 cuts Ork shooting effectiveness by almost 50% codex wide. -2 means a majority of their units are literally unable to hit their targets.

There is a safety measure, it's called "all 6s hit"

Given that sixes already always hit in 9th and people should be allowed to shoot themselves in the foot by moving with their Heavy weapons while firing at someone already in cover, I've been advocating a little house rule in our circles:

"Instead of a maximum +-1, you can get one penalty from enemy actions (flyer, psychic power etc.), one from terrain (Dense and such) and one from yourself (moving with Heavy weapons and similar things)."

Mainly this means that basic actions have consequences and stacking -10 to hit things, if there were to be any, wouldn't get silly. This has been fun in practice.