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a_typical_hero wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
So... wounds and a high toughness? The only remaining gap is "make S less than double T unable to wound" boom, sorted.

Before we get "but shooting guns off!!!!" etc comes up, that's not the armour values, that's the vehicle damage chart and isn't intrinsically tied to it. You could have "roll a d6 every X wounds taken and consult the chart" with results such as "lose Y weapons, lose Z " of move to minimum of 0" etc.

I wasn't arguing for that in my post, but high toughness alone is not enough to reproduce the feeling of vehicles in older editions. Armor values had to be hit exactly or over. A strength 7 auto cannon was not allowed to roll on the damage chart with just a 5 to wound against a Predator (AV 13, let's assume toughness 13). And if you only hit the value exactly instead of exceeding it, you had less of a chance to do lasting damage.

Sort of, that glancing hit would still remove a hull point however, so you could glancing hit things to death which lead to hydra platforms becoming great antivehicle, and rifleman dreads. The only real differences there is you needed S7/8 and high rate of fire because there were no armour saves involved and you stripped hull points (wounds) off the tank to kill it, possibly with minimal loss in efficiency for the vehicle as a result of these efforts.

The biggest downside of it is rendering a lot of weapons largely irrelevant, although maybe less so in this day and age. It used to be the difference in firing a heavy bolter or an autocannon at a marine was basically none existent if you recall, whereas now there are more stats in play to mean there are different uses for both. But you still end up with "average vehicles armour is X, as long as I take lots of Strength Y I can simply maths vehicles to death" and suddenly you have an optimal spammable value every weapon is measured by.

Dudeface wrote:
Sort of, that glancing hit would still remove a hull point however, so you could glancing hit things to death which lead to hydra platforms becoming great antivehicle, and rifleman dreads. The only real differences there is you needed S7/8 and high rate of fire because there were no armour saves involved and you stripped hull points (wounds) off the tank to kill it, possibly with minimal loss in efficiency for the vehicle as a result of these efforts.

The biggest downside of it is rendering a lot of weapons largely irrelevant, although maybe less so in this day and age. It used to be the difference in firing a heavy bolter or an autocannon at a marine was basically none existent if you recall, whereas now there are more stats in play to mean there are different uses for both. But you still end up with "average vehicles armour is X, as long as I take lots of Strength Y I can simply maths vehicles to death" and suddenly you have an optimal spammable value every weapon is measured by.

Glancing vehicles to death by automatically removing a hull point in addition to the damage roll was something a lot of people (myself included) were not really fond of. For exactly the reasons you described. And I wouldn't propose to add that back into the game.

I'm not sure having a best anti-tank weapon in the game (and then measuring others by it) is in itself a problem.

Melta was the best to deal with vehicles of all sorts and - if you wanted to have reliable odds - necessary against AV14 like Monoliths, Land Raiders and Leman Russes. But melta had a really low range, so your melta units had to get close and expose themselves in turn. Lascannons have a solid profile for most vehicles and are safe to use from a long distance, but would struggle to penetrate AV14 reliably. Missile launchers do triple duty as an anti-horde weapon, anti-MEQ weapon (with just the right profile values to kill a Marine, not inflating cost with unused values) and are still good against lighter vehicles. Auto cannons are there for suppression (through glances) and reliability (through two shots).

So melta was best, simply speaking from a damage POV, but other weapons have uses where some were more or less workable with your army.

Give vehicles hull points that are not automatically lost when they take damage but instead can be spent to neutralise a damaging hit, with more devastating results (immobilised, destroyed, explodes, annihilated) requiring progressively more hull points to be spent to cancel.

Or maybe they can be spent to shift a result down by 1 for each point spent.

Dudeface wrote:
Sort of, that glancing hit would still remove a hull point however, so you could glancing hit things to death which lead to hydra platforms becoming great antivehicle, and rifleman dreads.

Which was a bad thing.

The point of the old AV system was to
1. Establish a minimum threshold to damage a given vehicle, something the current SvT system cannot do, and
2. Model vehicle damage by effects, with them being incapacitated by losses in mission capability or outright destruction instead of bleeding to death

Giving vehicles wounds in the form of hull points circumvented point #2. I would have preferred a system where each penetrating hit causes a cumulative +1 to all future rolls on the damage table, with the damage effects scaled back slightly (eg shift all the results 'down' one). You'd get vehicles that are less likely to blow up on the first hit, but also less likely to survive a half dozen penetrating hits in a row, without being able to knock out a tank by just glancing it until it gives up.

 catbarf wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Sort of, that glancing hit would still remove a hull point however, so you could glancing hit things to death which lead to hydra platforms becoming great antivehicle, and rifleman dreads.

Which was a bad thing.

The point of the old AV system was to
1. Establish a minimum threshold to damage a given vehicle, something the current SvT system cannot do, and
2. Model vehicle damage by effects, with them being incapacitated by losses in mission capability or outright destruction instead of bleeding to death

Giving vehicles wounds in the form of hull points circumvented point #2. I would have preferred a system where each penetrating hit causes a cumulative +1 to all future rolls on the damage table, with the damage effects scaled back slightly (eg shift all the results 'down' one). You'd get vehicles that are less likely to blow up on the first hit, but also less likely to survive a half dozen penetrating hits in a row, without being able to knock out a tank by just glancing it until it gives up.

I can only imagine in todays rapid response tourney-centric game balance that pointing vehicles that have a chance to survive a dozen hits or die from a single one would break the writers though. I'm happy enough sticking with SvT and wounds but admittedly there is more that can be done regards degradation and protection against small arms, although personally I can count on one hand in the last 6 years or so how many times a bolter firing at a tank has made any impact anecdotally.

I'm unsure if it could be possible to implement an AV system without radically modifying the current S/T.

We also would need to figure out how AP and Damage would interact with AV and Vehicle Damage and how the many different USRs would impact vehicles.

To be blunt it so not worth it because you cannot slap an AV system onto something that isn't designed for it.

Mechanically wise a vehicle with a 2+ save is pretty much immune to small arm fire. Sure it is possible to fish for 6s, but it in practice it would just be wasting dice.

Eh, I think the current system is working pretty well. Vehicles in 10th feel like they hold up against small arms fire and demand more dedicated weaponry to deal with. Honestly, I think they're in a really good place.

My one gripe with the current system is just that all the minor T variances make 4+ pretty rare when it's one of the few really usable sides. I'd have to map out the whole chart to see if there's a better breakdown, but only wounding on 5+ or 3+ with no in between feels like an oversight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

I can only imagine in todays rapid response tourney-centric game balance that pointing vehicles that have a chance to survive a dozen hits or die from a single one would break the writers though. I'm happy enough sticking with SvT and wounds but admittedly there is more that can be done regards degradation and protection against small arms, although personally I can count on one hand in the last 6 years or so how many times a bolter firing at a tank has made any impact anecdotally.

The issue isn't breaking the writers; the issue is that players don't take unreliable models. When we had the old system and monsters that use the new system, people took monsters but left vehicles in the garage. People might like the concept of that system, but in practice it was the source of constant complaints.

 LunarSol wrote:
Eh, I think the current system is working pretty well. Vehicles in 10th feel like they hold up against small arms fire and demand more dedicated weaponry to deal with. Honestly, I think they're in a really good place.

I think the system is okay functioning but just weird as a concept, but I don't think any alternative exist that can make consistent good results in the same way this one. So I guess my Falcon will just have to wear band-aid on his boo-boos.

Now we need only to fix this "single Guardsman locks giant MBT in close combat with punching the hull" and we have good system.

 LunarSol wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

I can only imagine in todays rapid response tourney-centric game balance that pointing vehicles that have a chance to survive a dozen hits or die from a single one would break the writers though. I'm happy enough sticking with SvT and wounds but admittedly there is more that can be done regards degradation and protection against small arms, although personally I can count on one hand in the last 6 years or so how many times a bolter firing at a tank has made any impact anecdotally.

The issue isn't breaking the writers; the issue is that players don't take unreliable models. When we had the old system and monsters that use the new system, people took monsters but left vehicles in the garage. People might like the concept of that system, but in practice it was the source of constant complaints.

Yep, gotta agree there, you'd need to create some variation to apply to monsters, but when you're then tracking multi-wound stuff all over the place the game sizes are too large to make that reasonable imo.

catbarf wrote:
Giving vehicles wounds in the form of hull points circumvented point #2. I would have preferred a system where each penetrating hit causes a cumulative +1 to all future rolls on the damage table, with the damage effects scaled back slightly (eg shift all the results 'down' one). You'd get vehicles that are less likely to blow up on the first hit, but also less likely to survive a half dozen penetrating hits in a row, without being able to knock out a tank by just glancing it until it gives up.

While I'm always opposed to bringing back AV because of what it does to skew lists, this would have been a pretty solid way to do things. One of the complaints about 5th was that vehicles often just spent the whole game being stunlocked instead of dying if you flubbed your vehicle damage rolls. This would encourage people to take at least some proper anti-tank weapons to get that first penetrating hit or two on an enemy vehicle, but then mid-strength weapons would still be able to finish them off as subsequent glancing hits, modified by the number of previous penetrating hits, would be able to wreck vehicles more efficiently.

Turnip Monster wrote:
Now we need only to fix this "single Guardsman locks giant MBT in close combat with punching the hull" and we have good system.

Honestly, I'm not sure there would be much harm in just letting vehicles shoot (and charge?) after falling back at this point. I used to be opposed to the idea because charging the artillery pieces to silence the enemy guns was an interesting form of counterplay. But now tanks are shooting the guys crawling on their hulls while still tossing shots downrange at other targets. It's not particularly fluffy for a grot to be able to pin a tank in place. If we're not going to use the limitations to create interesting counterplay, we may as well be fluffy.

 LunarSol wrote:
The issue isn't breaking the writers; the issue is that players don't take unreliable models. When we had the old system and monsters that use the new system, people took monsters but left vehicles in the garage. People might like the concept of that system, but in practice it was the source of constant complaints.

When I look at tournament data and the prevalence of netlists, people just take whatever is undercosted this month.

Also which vehicle damage table? Pretty much every edition from 3rd to 7th had a different damage table.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Honestly, I'm not sure there would be much harm in just letting vehicles shoot (and charge?) after falling back at this point. I used to be opposed to the idea because charging the artillery pieces to silence the enemy guns was an interesting form of counterplay. But now tanks are shooting the guys crawling on their hulls while still tossing shots downrange at other targets. It's not particularly fluffy for a grot to be able to pin a tank in place. If we're not going to use the limitations to create interesting counterplay, we may as well be fluffy.

I don't even think it's matter for fluff; counterplay enriches a game system & to have "Artillery" as separate model type like it used to be would allow for such thing, but having some basic dudes trap some big monster or big tank is just silly. I saw batrep of a guy who did some casual GT with a Titanicus army (that is, single Warhound & 900pts of dudes) & he said he had to be careful of CC with the Titan in case it got locked down & slowly killed or just not able to fully affect the game. I understand that Titan units is maybe not some kind of "average army" that game system could or should build around, but this wider point extrapolates to all vehicles & monsters. Someone earlier said that "players don't take unreliable units" & I think this rules makes a problem of reliability for vehicles & monsters.

I have to qualify all these by saying I didn't play too much 10th Edition so I can't be an authority - but the things I said in this thread & some of the things I read here, and my perception of this game now, are some reason WHY I didn't play it & stick to Kill Team. If someone who played more explains why it has to be this way or why it make sense then I maybe can change my mind.

Dudeface wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I can only imagine in todays rapid response tourney-centric game balance that pointing vehicles that have a chance to survive a dozen hits or die from a single one would break the writers though. I'm happy enough sticking with SvT and wounds but admittedly there is more that can be done regards degradation and protection against small arms, although personally I can count on one hand in the last 6 years or so how many times a bolter firing at a tank has made any impact anecdotally.

The issue isn't breaking the writers; the issue is that players don't take unreliable models. When we had the old system and monsters that use the new system, people took monsters but left vehicles in the garage. People might like the concept of that system, but in practice it was the source of constant complaints.

Yep, gotta agree there, you'd need to create some variation to apply to monsters, but when you're then tracking multi-wound stuff all over the place the game sizes are too large to make that reasonable imo.

For me, the degrading profile approach works reasonably well for MONSTER units over n starting wounds - I just think you want more than a single step in how their profile degrades. 50% wounds lost and 75% wounds lost, probably, rather than 33% and 66%.

PenitentJake wrote:

 ShatteredBlade wrote:
I just miss the vehicle penetration rules.

The thing I always hated about the old rules was the effectiveness of single penetrating hits.

Sure, stuff had to pen your armour to hurt you, so no bolter damage or small arms fire.

But as soon as something did pen your armour, it had a 17% to be a one shot kill. And even if it didn't kill, it could render your vehicle ineffective with a single shot.

Well, the trick was getting that penetrating hit in the first place.

Lascannon (S9 AP2) vs Predator (AV13) back in 5th. BS4 hits on 3s. S9 pens on 5s, glances on 4s. So 4/6×2/6×2/6= 16/216 or 7.4% chance that the predator is knocked out (3.7% wrecked, 3.7% exploded). If that Predator was "obscured " then those odds would be cut in half by a 4+ cover save.

Melta was preferred because AP1 added 1 to the damage roll in addition to rolling 2d6 for pen at half range making the whole sequence more reliable.

Vehicles were resilient enough in 5th that it led to hull points in 6th which completely inverted the meta. Suddenly Razorbacks that were tanking shots in 5th were dead after three glancing hits in 6th. So melta became less preferred and things like autocannons found favor. Hull points mutated into wounds in 8th, but it sounds like massed medium strength weapons are still preferred over dedicated AT weapons today.

On the points about vehicles-

The hull point system was literally punishing players for bringing vehicles by adding in 2 damage systems to the game. AT became meaningless for the damage results table because you could literally just tickle a vehicle to death as they had absurdly low numbers of hull points that were stripped on both penetrating and glancing hits. on top of that they made the damage table more lethal to begin with in the same edition.

The idea of a wound system isn't bad if it were done correctly, but as always GW doesn't. DUST 1947 has the system implemented the way it should be-

facings for vehicle mounted weapons is still there, but the armor is a class not a facing and when you go heavy enough on the armor class scale (medium, heavy and super heavy ) small arms stop being effective all together and AT weapons lose number of shots/resulting damage wounds as the armor scale goes up. but the vehicles also track wounds, with a reasonable number to make them viable. there is no performance degradation system unless you and your opponent wish to use the optional critical hit system.

As for damage charts 5th is still the best with the right level of survivability and lethality especially when the AP1 modifier is thrown in. It also makes intuitive sense to a human player. vehicles could suffer outright death or be systematically degraded through weapon/mobility destruction.

We also addressed the issues of stun lock/turn participation by adding a couple house rules fixes to our 5th ed games-namely snap fire for non-template weapons from 6th/7th so a vehicle that is stunned can still do something to contribute the turn it is stunned as well as reverting the defensive weapon strength to 5 from 4th ed.

In our 5th ed game group have all sorts of army lists and factions and dealing with vehicles is never a problem for any of us, without also making them not useful.

@Turnip Monster. we use the old 3rd ed rules for titans as they were actually designed for normal 40K games, with player permissions. my warhoud titan with plasma blast gun and vulcan mega bolter clocks in at a heavy 810 points and is mostly there to be a centerpiece model that draws fire. at most it can attack 2 units a turn so not exactly game breaking. also in the old rules superheavy walkers cannot be locked in close combat by anything that is not also a superheavy walker or gargantuan creature. they can literally just stride away from anything else.

 Dysartes wrote:

For me, the degrading profile approach works reasonably well for MONSTER units over n starting wounds - I just think you want more than a single step in how their profile degrades. 50% wounds lost and 75% wounds lost, probably, rather than 33% and 66%.

The problem with the way these are always done is they tend to be a global debuff that has a lot more impact than it needs to. The idea is you're creating value in attacking something you can't kill (good!) similar to what happens when you attack infantry (also good!) but the way its done often does nothing meaningful (bad!) or catastrophic (very bad!).

What they effectively need to do, particularly now that vehicles get their support weapons for free, is have specific weapons break as damage is taken. 3 wounds off a Redemptor? No more rocket pod. Chip away so that when you've finally blown off its main gun, that last wound is charging in to make do with the fist.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

For me, the degrading profile approach works reasonably well for MONSTER units over n starting wounds - I just think you want more than a single step in how their profile degrades. 50% wounds lost and 75% wounds lost, probably, rather than 33% and 66%.

The problem with the way these are always done is they tend to be a global debuff that has a lot more impact than it needs to. The idea is you're creating value in attacking something you can't kill (good!) similar to what happens when you attack infantry (also good!) but the way its done often does nothing meaningful (bad!) or catastrophic (very bad!).

What they effectively need to do, particularly now that vehicles get their support weapons for free, is have specific weapons break as damage is taken. 3 wounds off a Redemptor? No more rocket pod. Chip away so that when you've finally blown off its main gun, that last wound is charging in to make do with the fist.

In theory I like that idea, but in practice I wonder if 40K hasn't become a little too big in model scope at 2K points for that kind of thing to really work beyond super-heavies. Super heavies it could certainly work because you might only have 1 or 2 in a whole army. But for regular heavy units that could get a little annoying/slowing down the gameplay and introduce a lot of book-keeping. Esp for armies that take a lot of vehicles/monsters in them.


It might also be that it would work in a very streamlined game that ran smoothly and simply and then had it as a layer of complexity.

 Overread wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

For me, the degrading profile approach works reasonably well for MONSTER units over n starting wounds - I just think you want more than a single step in how their profile degrades. 50% wounds lost and 75% wounds lost, probably, rather than 33% and 66%.

The problem with the way these are always done is they tend to be a global debuff that has a lot more impact than it needs to. The idea is you're creating value in attacking something you can't kill (good!) similar to what happens when you attack infantry (also good!) but the way its done often does nothing meaningful (bad!) or catastrophic (very bad!).

What they effectively need to do, particularly now that vehicles get their support weapons for free, is have specific weapons break as damage is taken. 3 wounds off a Redemptor? No more rocket pod. Chip away so that when you've finally blown off its main gun, that last wound is charging in to make do with the fist.

In theory I like that idea, but in practice I wonder if 40K hasn't become a little too big in model scope at 2K points for that kind of thing to really work beyond super-heavies. Super heavies it could certainly work because you might only have 1 or 2 in a whole army. But for regular heavy units that could get a little annoying/slowing down the gameplay and introduce a lot of book-keeping. Esp for armies that take a lot of vehicles/monsters in them.


It might also be that it would work in a very streamlined game that ran smoothly and simply and then had it as a layer of complexity.

It's all in how you present it I'd think. Like if you do it the way you have it now with the Damaged chart, I agree, total disaster. If on the ranged weapon list it just says things like Heavy Flamer (Damaged: 8 wounds) or something you would see when you're running through the list I think it could work.

Of course, if they made an app with damage tracking or just.... one with a play option in general that filtered to your actual loadout, the things you could do are pretty endless.

I think tracking lots of damage during a game could work if GW made a game-mat/board product which could hold an expandable number of game cards.

A simple metal sheet for the game board and then each card atop. A magnet game counter could then be placed upon the card to mark damage and so forth.

Warmachine did pretty well with their damage tracking on warmachines and Hordes beasts that way.

The big issue is that you either have to use an app or have a constantly updated game card system for reference and GW just don't do either of those well. Apps are too bare bones and game cards GW just doesn't keep in stock for it to work.


In-game information tracking has to be scaled to the game and the tools provided and if the tools are user made or really simple then tracking has to be simple too.

 Arschbombe wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

 ShatteredBlade wrote:
I just miss the vehicle penetration rules.

The thing I always hated about the old rules was the effectiveness of single penetrating hits.

Sure, stuff had to pen your armour to hurt you, so no bolter damage or small arms fire.

But as soon as something did pen your armour, it had a 17% to be a one shot kill. And even if it didn't kill, it could render your vehicle ineffective with a single shot.

Well, the trick was getting that penetrating hit in the first place.

Lascannon (S9 AP2) vs Predator (AV13) back in 5th. BS4 hits on 3s. S9 pens on 5s, glances on 4s. So 4/6×2/6×2/6= 16/216 or 7.4% chance that the predator is knocked out (3.7% wrecked, 3.7% exploded). If that Predator was "obscured " then those odds would be cut in half by a 4+ cover save.

Melta was preferred because AP1 added 1 to the damage roll in addition to rolling 2d6 for pen at half range making the whole sequence more reliable.

Vehicles were resilient enough in 5th that it led to hull points in 6th which completely inverted the meta. Suddenly Razorbacks that were tanking shots in 5th were dead after three glancing hits in 6th. So melta became less preferred and things like autocannons found favor. Hull points mutated into wounds in 8th, but it sounds like massed medium strength weapons are still preferred over dedicated AT weapons today.

The ability to do it at all is a problematic rule to balance though and it's why people preferred monster profiles, because at T6 you were immune to instant death, until later editions added special exceptions to that.The gameplay is much harder to balance when units interact with the rules in fundamentally different ways like this.


What irks me the most about people preferring the AV system is that a lot of it was just descriptive words rather than rules. The mechanic of rolling a d6 to get X+ was the same as toughness. A S7 weapon needed a 3+ to affect an AV10 tank, just as a S7 weapon would a T10 monster, the words used are irrelevant to the mechanical outcome.

There were really only two key features of the AV system that separated them from normal Toughness, two wound results and variable wound outcomes.

IF you wanted you could apply special exceptions to units while still retaining the current system, but having something like: GLANCING: If a vehicle or monster is wounded that rolled the minimum value needed to wound (S8 vs T8 = 4+), then the hit is reduced to 1 wound.

You can also have the damage table as a crit table - a critical wound roll requires a roll on the crit table to see what effect the target has.


The fact that monsters couldn't lose their legs and be immobile, or lose their guns and not be able to shoot, was also a problem of the AV era. There is nothing intrinsically different between a monster's legs and a vehicle's tracks (or robot legs) that mean damaging them would immobilise one and not the other.

I would point out that those damage effects on vehicles were extremely critical, tactically speaking. The fact that you could suppress a Leman Russ without destroying it, allowing for A: Other units to spend their shooting efforts elsewhere, and B: Maneuver against it while it couldn't shoot back at you, was such great gameplay.

Other features I liked under that system? Using vehicle wrecks as obstacles and cover. It really meant something when an armored column got stuck on itself behind damaged vehicles, or your troops could take cover behind your own strategically placed vehicles that later turned to wrecks. It made for a more dynamic experience overall.

Certainly better than magically evaporating vehicle wrecks.

Of course, if vehicles left wrecks behind, the holy sanctity of the symmetrical board of L-shaped ruins might be sullied!

They were randomised though, so you couldn't guarantee anything. People were shooting to do as much as they could and had to settle for whatever they rolled.

The game allowed unit stunning in general, with pinning and morale tests. That game play concept was a good one but it was always designed in a way that made it hard to plan to do. When you shoot something, you expect to see some casualties. But when you glanced or shot with pinning weapons, you were hoping for that outcome rather than expecting it.

It was only desperation shots like bolters up the rear that you hoped for something minimal rather than nothing at all.


40k should definitely have suppression rules so it's not a game of who can murder the fastest, but IMO they never implemented it very well as a legit tactic you planned for.

It was always a fortuitous consequence you attempted to take advantage of after the fact.

I woukdn't say Stunning/Morale/Pinning wasn't something you planned for, because it still effected target choices and things like firing order. It couldn't be relied upon, just like one can't rely on rolling a 6 to Pen AV 14, but you could set yourself up to take advantage if it happened. And when it did? Good times indeed!

Like any game (or life) really, you set yourself up to take advantage of those lucky breaks, and that's part of the skillset.

My argument is that something that unreliable is not something that can be tactically critical.

it's opportunistic reactionary. Which is fine, but I don't think it had the tactical importance you ascribe in the game.

You accepted stunning a vehicle over killing it because that's what you got, not because that's what you were trying to get.

There's no advantage stunning a vehicle provides that destroying it didn't, except in 3rd glancing tables where you already knew you weren't going to be able to kill it, so you were hoping for the next best thing.

Being able to pivot when your desired result doesn't materialise is a great skill, but I don't think it reflects the likelyhood of vehicle stunning into the game.

 Hellebore wrote:
My argument is that something that unreliable is not something that can be tactically critical.

it's opportunistic reactionary. Which is fine, but I don't think it had the tactical importance you ascribe in the game.

You accepted stunning a vehicle over killing it because that's what you got, not because that's what you were trying to get.

There's no advantage stunning a vehicle provides that destroying it didn't, except in 3rd glancing tables where you already knew you weren't going to be able to kill it, so you were hoping for the next best thing.

Being able to pivot when your desired result doesn't materialise is a great skill, but I don't think it reflects the likelyhood of vehicle stunning into the game.

I think the issue you're alluding to is that the odds of Stunning (1/6 on any Pen) are actually equal or WORSE than the odds of destroying it (1/6 if you roll 1d6, but for each point of bonus it increases the odds by a further 1/6).
If you rolled 2d6 on the damage chart and had it like so:

2-4: Shaken
5-9: Stunned
10-11: Immobilized or Weapon Destroyed
12-13: Wrecked
14+: Explodes

That's a 60-70% chance of any given damage roll Stunning, while not even a 3% chance of wrecking it with no bonuses.
GIve it +2 to have a chance of exploding, and the odds change-but it's still majority Stunned.

There were no non-results on the chart, so...

 Hellebore wrote:
What irks me the most about people preferring the AV system is that a lot of it was just descriptive words rather than rules. The mechanic of rolling a d6 to get X+ was the same as toughness. A S7 weapon needed a 3+ to affect an AV10 tank, just as a S7 weapon would a T10 monster, the words used are irrelevant to the mechanical outcome.

There were really only two key features of the AV system that separated them from normal Toughness, two wound results and variable wound outcomes.

IF you wanted you could apply special exceptions to units while still retaining the current system, but having something like: GLANCING: If a vehicle or monster is wounded that rolled the minimum value needed to wound (S8 vs T8 = 4+), then the hit is reduced to 1 wound.

You can also have the damage table as a crit table - a critical wound roll requires a roll on the crit table to see what effect the target has.


The fact that monsters couldn't lose their legs and be immobile, or lose their guns and not be able to shoot, was also a problem of the AV era. There is nothing intrinsically different between a monster's legs and a vehicle's tracks (or robot legs) that mean damaging them would immobilise one and not the other.

"There are no differences if you ignore them"

A non-vehicle model used a completely different to wound chart. S7 against AV10 is not the same as S7 against T10. For AV10 you have to roll a 3 to glance or 4+ to penetrate. Which results in different damage tables (or likelyhood for a given result). S7 against T10 is not a 3+ and never was. I can't recall the chart off the top of my head, but you had to roll a 5+ or even a 6+ to wound.

If the unit had an AV value, it means facings mattered for it. For each AV value and for the firing arc of their own weapons. A tank could not shoot people in its back, unless it was a turret mounted weapon. Some tanks couldn't even shoot at something straight in front of them if the target was too close.

Having AV meant the unit did not care about leadership tests and it could potentially do a tank shock maneuver. And it meant the unit did not have an armor save and thus did not care about AP values. It had its own set of rules what weapons it could or could not fire depending on how far it moved. Very few had an invul save.

You can implement most of these things without an AV system, but don't say that a lot of it was just descreptive. Vehicles were treated differently from other models.

I think it's safe to say that the vehicle damage chart was indeed a part of "the soul of 40k" despite its flaws, and has been sucked out of the game.
Maybe Nuhammer has sold its soul to shed its flawed yet storied past to ascend and become a card game.

To me the nail in the coffin of 10th edition is that grenades are now strategems. That is just completely bone headed for Throne's sake.