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Is there a reason for meltas to be less effective against monsters than machines? I know that the melta rule back in the day only worked against vehicles, but I thought that was one of the quirky points of frustration that eventually lead to monsters and vehicles being treated in a standardized fashion.

Why not give Meltas anti-vehicle 3+ but only when within half range?

Blasters/Dark lances could get a straight anti-vehicle 4+, as a callback to the old Lance rule (only a little less arse ).

Slipspace wrote:
For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.

The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me. What does that mean? It's great at penetrating armor, it's extremely damaging when it does, but more often than not even when it connects it just... doesn't do anything? Why not bump it up to high enough S to wound most vehicles on 3+, but reduce damage as appropriate? Or if it's a specialized anti-vehicle weapon, why doesn't it have the Anti-Vehicle keyword?

Maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' at this point, but I really feel that the shift towards arbitrary stats with no tangible connection to the universe or internal logic to how they're modeled leads to poor outcomes like this.

 vipoid wrote:
Why not give Meltas anti-vehicle 3+ but only when within half range?

Blasters/Dark lances could get a straight anti-vehicle 4+, as a callback to the old Lance rule (only a little less arse ).

or just make the melta rule give +x damage AND strength

 catbarf wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.

The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me. What does that mean? It's great at penetrating armor, it's extremely damaging when it does, but more often than not even when it connects it just... doesn't do anything? Why not bump it up to high enough S to wound most vehicles on 3+, but reduce damage as appropriate? Or if it's a specialized anti-vehicle weapon, why doesn't it have the Anti-Vehicle keyword?

Maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' at this point, but I really feel that the shift towards arbitrary stats with no tangible connection to the universe or internal logic to how they're modeled leads to poor outcomes like this.

Personally, low-damage melta would feel a bit weird too. Melta is described as consistently damaging vehicles when it hits them (which the current rules fail to represent), but it's not described as doing small amount of damage. Like, the description is usually that you shoot a tank with a melta weapon, and then you either slag the treads or else hit something critical that makes the vehicle go boom. You don't read about a guy spending five full minutes shooting blast after melta blast before something on the tank finally breaks.

I feel like one of the proposed rules above (wounding consistently and doing solid damage while within melta range) would represent the fluff well without breaking the game.

 catbarf wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.

The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me. What does that mean? It's great at penetrating armor, it's extremely damaging when it does, but more often than not even when it connects it just... doesn't do anything? Why not bump it up to high enough S to wound most vehicles on 3+, but reduce damage as appropriate? Or if it's a specialized anti-vehicle weapon, why doesn't it have the Anti-Vehicle keyword?

Maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' at this point, but I really feel that the shift towards arbitrary stats with no tangible connection to the universe or internal logic to how they're modeled leads to poor outcomes like this.

Before GW canned it, WHFB had a somewhat interesting mechanic wherein every point of strength above 4 also gave a point of AP. So a S7 weapon would have AP-3 from its strength alone. Obviously 40k has far too many high-strength weapons for this to be practical (Autocannons would turn into Plasma Cannons!), but I think it was an interesting solution for that system.

Regardless, I think issues like this highlight the weirdness of disconnecting toughness from armour save. Both represent how difficult it is to wound a model, so you'd really expect them to be represented by the same stat. You could maybe argue that toughness is about how much damage a model can take sans armour, but then you're just treading on the toes of Wounds.

Not really, I'd change how the [Melta x] keyword works so instead of extra damage they get extra strength at half range and less

Toughness and save pretty much represent the same thing. They are different for the gameplay fiction of giving the defender something to roll during the attack sequence and to get around the limitations of a D6 by making it a 2D6 roll.

 catbarf wrote:
I really don't like the idea of making more weapons dual-profile. The changes to how damage and AP work post-7th have already made weapons feel more 'samey' than they used to; giving classically specialized weapons multiple profiles so they can be anti-everything would be a further step in the wrong direction.

The main reason to have multiple profiles is when you have a weapon that isn't supposed to be cripplingly specialized, and needs a way to deal with multiple target profiles. Characters and monsters having both anti-horde and anti-tank profiles is fine.

But melta and powerfists are specialized weapons. I don't see what was wrong with just having them be effective low-volume anti-tank/anti-monster.

Because Monsters/Vehicles/Super Heavy Infantry aren't as overlapping as they used to be. The Powerfist/Thunderhammer type stuff used to be aimed at everything from Terminators to Land Raiders (and their parallels). I don't think one profile can still cover that range anymore - at least not in a good way - the profile that can wound Monsters and Tanks on 3's and 4's will wound Termies and Gravis on 2's, and the profile that can keep up with the model count of a unit of Termies/Gravis will bounce off the Monsters and Tanks or be death by a thousand papercuts if you roll well. There is some room to improve the Power Sword(weapons) vs the Heavy Infantry and close some of that gap too though.


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 catbarf wrote:


The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me.

They should be rare, but I can see a spot for them. I'd enjoy seeing Haywaire/EMP style weapons work like this... they have low S because the chances of them getting through whatever shielding and defenses of a vehicle are slim, but if they do, it just cascades into massive damage.


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 Tyran wrote:
Toughness and save pretty much represent the same thing. They are different for the gameplay fiction of giving the defender something to roll during the attack sequence and to get around the limitations of a D6 by making it a 2D6 roll.

Not really, they often overlap but they're not the same thing when you're writing the "story". Say the Incredible Hulk time travels to the yeah 41997. He's going to be a MONSTER, and like most other Greenskins he's going to have high S, Hight T, low Armor Save - and in his case probably a pretty hefty FNP - at one level it doesn't matter if it comes from T, Armor, Invulnerable or FNP, but at most levels it does matter for making things "feel" different creating a selling point deviation between Chess and 40K.

It is an illusion though. The Hulk is bullet proof, in fact his skin is tougher than tank armor.

I guess it is true that is the distinction matters for storytelling reasons, but it is nothing more than storytelling reasons and it will create discrepancies and weirdness.

Breton wrote:Because Monsters/Vehicles/Super Heavy Infantry aren't as overlapping as they used to be. The Powerfist/Thunderhammer type stuff used to be aimed at everything from Terminators to Land Raiders (and their parallels). I don't think one profile can still cover that range anymore - at least not in a good way - the profile that can wound Monsters and Tanks on 3's and 4's will wound Termies and Gravis on 2's, and the profile that can keep up with the model count of a unit of Termies/Gravis will bounce off the Monsters and Tanks or be death by a thousand papercuts if you roll well. There is some room to improve the Power Sword(weapons) vs the Heavy Infantry and close some of that gap too though.

Under the old to-wound table power fists did splat Terminators on a 2+. What's the problem with them being a melee equivalent of a lascannon, a single big swing that will probably kill if it connects? Why do power fists now need to be able to deal with whole units on their own?

Breton wrote:at one level it doesn't matter if it comes from T, Armor, Invulnerable or FNP, but at most levels it does matter for making things "feel" different creating a selling point deviation between Chess and 40K.

I don't follow. If you can't coherently articulate what sets those characteristics apart- why the Hulk should have a very high T, versus a very high W or a good FNP- then it doesn't feel any different because it's all interchangeable and meaningless. The guy's just tough.

I think you can make a solid case for 'how hard is it to hurt this thing' versus 'how much damage can this thing take'. That's a sensible distinction. Further splitting that first category into armor and biological toughness is a stretch, but maybe justifiable, until you start giving vehicles moderate stats in the former and very high stats in the latter. And dividing up damage-soaking ability into wounds and FNPs (ie wounds but less consistent) is just weird.

Again, the meltagun- what's it supposed to feel like when it only wounds a third of the time but goes right through armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? How are the chosen stats contributing to the narrative of the game?

 Tyran wrote:
It is an illusion though. The Hulk is bullet proof, in fact his skin is tougher than tank armor.

I guess it is true that is the distinction matters for storytelling reasons, but it is nothing more than storytelling reasons and it will create discrepancies and weirdness.

The "story-telling" is one of the bigger selling points. I don't mean the DIY Scenarios that try too hard from RTT or 2E Red Dwarf articles - but the appearance of diversity you get from Orks vs Marines, vs Guard etc. I mean I've made the point before that a 500 point bucket of Orks and a 500 Point Bucket of Imperial Knights are or should be of roughly equivalent value which is why I say the appearance of diversity. A "bucket" 20 small bases with 1W trading toughness for Mutli-wound immunity, vs a "bucket" of 20 wounds on one base trading more toughness for vulnerability to multi-damage attacks are fairly similar in the abstract. Its the story-telling or fluff or whatever you want to call the flavor text explaining the slight differences that get people invested in their armies.


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 catbarf wrote:

Under the old to-wound table power fists did splat Terminators on a 2+. What's the problem with them being a melee equivalent of a lascannon, a single big swing that will probably kill if it connects? Why do power fists now need to be able to deal with whole units on their own?

and now they don't. Terminators are T5, and Gravis are T6. That's probably a good change, wounding on 2's should be inefficient overkill. But the Hive Tyrant went from wounding on 4's to wounding on 5's AND as has been pointed out frequently with fewer attacks per. I think Powerfists (and so on) should be able to splat Terminators etc on 3's, and when en masse (in a Terminator Squad for example) splat Land Raider and Hive Tyrants - and what I'm saying is I think the difference between a T6 Gravis target or a T12 (which crosses the 2+/3+ break point) Land Raider target would make just a base profile upgrade to the Fists to threaten the Land Raiders would make them too efficient at splatting the Terminator - so giving them a profile to splat the multi-base Super Heavy Infantry and a second profile to splat the tanks and monsters that would be inefficient vs the Super Heavy Infantry is healthier for the game.

High strength has to do a lot of gymnastics to not have an AP value. Force is pretty directly related to penetrative power. Hence the old S and ASM table.

On the other hand, you can still have low strength high AP - a tissue with a phase field that goes straight through things will ignore armour even if it doesn't have much force behind it.

I think a case can be made for high strength and low AP weapon. To me a large shockwave would fall into this category. Will it knock your power armoured ass down, yes. Does it go through your armour, no.

 Gibblets wrote:
I think a case can be made for high strength and low AP weapon. To me a large shockwave would fall into this category. Will it knock your power armoured ass down, yes. Does it go through your armour, no.

That would be a pinning effect, not a casualty causing one. For it to wound you, it kind of has to go through your armour first, whether impact transfer, or literally burning a hole through the armour.

For you to be killed, the force of the attack has to have gone through the armour first.

I don't follow. If you can't coherently articulate what sets those characteristics apart- why the Hulk should have a very high T, versus a very high W or a good FNP- then it doesn't feel any different because it's all interchangeable and meaningless. The guy's just tough.

I think you can make a solid case for 'how hard is it to hurt this thing' versus 'how much damage can this thing take'. That's a sensible distinction. Further splitting that first category into armor and biological toughness is a stretch, but maybe justifiable, until you start giving vehicles moderate stats in the former and very high stats in the latter. And dividing up damage-soaking ability into wounds and FNPs (ie wounds but less consistent) is just weird.

Obviously this would be too big a change to be introduced in anything short of an edition change, but I've been wondering about combining the to-wound and save rolls and just cranking up Wounds and Damage as needed. I'd probably introduce an Armored(X) keyword that modifies this new Defense roll and gets countered by AP(X), but the overall result would be less splitting of hairs over armor vs raw meaty toughness.

(Among other benefits.)

Again, the meltagun- what's it supposed to feel like when it only wounds a third of the time but goes right through armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? How are the chosen stats contributing to the narrative of the game?

Yeah. This pretty much sums up the lore side of the issue for me. In past editions, meltaguns felt very powerful but also very reliable at their job. So it made sense to dedicate a transport to rushing a squad of them up the field. Said squad would pop out danger close to the enemy and probably only get to fire their weapons once before being targeted, but that single volley of shots could be counted on to stop the rampaging daemon engine or battle wagon or what have you.

The current meltagun rules suggest that you have to like... pull the trigger and wait a while before it suddenly switches from doing nothing at all to doing more damage than a lascannon. Except when you're lucky enough to roll a 5+, in which case it starts at full power instead.

As much as i get frustrated by 10th edition handling of meltas, I do think flamers with their adjusted range and ignores cover, and blast weapons work pretty well. They have been pretty lame for the last 2 editions.

It would be nice to be actualy do something to targets that are something else then t3 or 4. I have 3 dreadnoughts with lascanon or MM mounted weapons. But in general anything with more ap then 1, would be a gigantic improvment for my dudes.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

So it made sense to dedicate a transport to rushing a squad of them up the field. Said squad would pop out danger close to the enemy and probably only get to fire their weapons once before being targeted, but that single volley of shots could be counted on to stop the rampaging daemon engine or battle wagon or what have you.

TBH that also felt gamey in the other way. It was hard to imagine how daemon engines and dreadnoughts could be viable war engines if every squad with a handful of meltas could reliably blow them up.

Similalry, I don't think I recall rushing transports with meltas as a common tactic in the lore.

I wasn't even aware of this shift but it certainly makes me happy even more that I haven't touched 10th at all. Melta is supposed to be more or less the perfect anti tank weapon cause it's a meltagun. Outside of D weapons/vortex stuff used by the Eldar it's supposed to be as "anti" anti tank you can get short of maybe a Tau tank mounted railgun. Historically the more mediocre anti tank weapon would be krak anyway, in that it's supposed to be more middle of the road. Meltaguns should always shred tanks, it's why they exist.

 Tyran wrote:


Similalry, I don't think I recall rushing transports with meltas as a common tactic in the lore.

SoB, Salamanders and Minotaurs do it. And w40k the game is not very lore accurate anyway. If it was lore accurate, then demons should be taking damage just by being able to draw LoS to a unit of GK, and stuff like GK demon hammers (not existing in the game at the moment), or GK heavy weapons just ravage demon engines and everything chaos. In the game they don't even scratch the paint on chaos stuff.

cant BT take rhinos with meltas?

chaos0xomega wrote:
cant BT take rhinos with meltas?

Wouldn't that be a MM Razorback?

Anyways, Rhino wise. I don't think so. At least I see no options for that in the BT index....

But I suppose you could put two 5 man Crusader squads, each armed with a MM, in a Rhino - then drive around firing both MMs via the firing deck.
Or do 1 man squad with a MM & Melta instead.
So better than a Razorback!

I like what they did with the Leviathan instruction booklet rules, where the combi-weapons weren't just one amalgamated profile but instead had distinct roles without having different profiles.

They were all the same, but the Combi-Flamer had "Anti-Infantry", the Combi-Melta had "Anti-Vehicle", and the Combi-Plasma had "Anti-Monster".

Gave each type of weapon a preferred target. I do wonder what would have happened if that had carried into the greater game, with Melta weapons getting Anti-Vehicle, and all plasma weapons getting Anti-Monster.

And no, I have no idea what Combi-Grav would have been. Grav has always sat outside the main special weapons because it was shoe-horned into the game as a new hat for Malibu Stacy, and has sat awkwardly in the Marine roster ever since. New Sternguard don't even have Combi-Grav bits in the kit.

Grav was specifically made to confront the supremacy of MCs in a paradigm where Lascannons could only do a single wound. In 6th and 7th it was the go-to. In 8th and 9th it remained very strong from a numbers perspective, and was the most lethal choice against most many targets barring the few that Melta did better at.

 Gitdakka wrote:
As much as i get frustrated by 10th edition handling of meltas, I do think flamers with their adjusted range and ignores cover, and blast weapons work pretty well. They have been pretty lame for the last 2 editions.

The blast weapons are getting closer, but I'm still not a fan of flamers. They're continuing to be on the hind teat if they get one at all. The short range is good, but their output compared to longer range non-torrent is not. 24 inch range, the flamer gets 3.5 shots and 3.5 hits or so on the second turn, meanwhile the bolter(-equivalents) get 4 shots, 2 and a half "better" shots as they usually include some AP. Comparing the flamer to the Plasma or Melta gun, leaves the flamer feeling not-very-special. The Infernus Squad is a pretty good example of how lackluster the flamer is - you don't see a whole lot of people taking them - of course the squad itself is bad. They should have Close Assault or Battle Line (not Heavy Support) shoulderpads (which is I admit just a fluff issue) they should have OC2 per model and probably have the Battle Line keyword for more than 3 (i.e. they should basically be Intercessors with flamers) to make them a viable "Tactical Squad" slot in. Unless they overtune Flamers to be a special/elite choice for an entire squad to have them. Personally I'd make them stronger so they splat Guard/Gaunts/Grots pretty hard but peter out very quickly vs MEQ+ including Warriors, MANZ and such.


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Gave each type of weapon a preferred target. I do wonder what would have happened if that had carried into the greater game, with Melta weapons getting Anti-Vehicle, and all plasma weapons getting Anti-Monster.

The problem with Anti-Monster is what it would do to Nids as an army, and assorted Chaos and Loyalist Marines. I think they should have created a new Keyword like Brute for Monstrous Characters - Nid HQ's, Daemon Princes, Primarchs and the like. Those models can rarely join units to get Look Out Sir type of protection. Making them BRUTE, adding BRUTE to the various Big Guns etc rules allows the monstrous CHARACTERS to be monstrous without opening them up to a crippling weakness like ANTI-MONSTER X that would be entirely too easy to Suicide Squad into position.

Otherwise yeah, absolutely Keywords and a specialized Anti-X for the "elements" of 40K (Flame, Melt, Plas, Grav) would have made the game much better. Until you get to extremes, the more choices we have to make the better.


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 Tyran wrote:

Similalry, I don't think I recall rushing transports with meltas as a common tactic in the lore.

I think they're talking about Breacher Squads - Melta Gun, Stormshield, ship to ship boarding type stuff.

Breton wrote:
The problem with Anti-Monster is what it would do to Nids as an army, and assorted Chaos and Loyalist Marines.

Why is that a problem? Right now every Tyranid out there laughs at anti-vehicle weapons which doesn't make any sense. Is that fair to vehicle heavy armies? Anti-Monster on the other hand is incredibly rare.

Yeah. The only real difference I see between monsters and vehicles is that one is organic. So haywire shouldn't work on a carnifex, but poison should. Of course, drukhari poison currently doesn't work on monsters so...

And does work on Kastelans.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Breton wrote:
The problem with Anti-Monster is what it would do to Nids as an army, and assorted Chaos and Loyalist Marines.

Why is that a problem? Right now every Tyranid out there laughs at anti-vehicle weapons which doesn't make any sense. Is that fair to vehicle heavy armies? Anti-Monster on the other hand is incredibly rare.

Again you ask something I just painstakingly explained. Because their characters, the Primarchs, and the Daemon Princes are MONSTER and CHARACTER AND generally can't join a bodyguard unit - and should be something else and CHARACTER so that a suicide squad doesn't hit them with a vulnerability normal characters don't have. Also as I explicitly mentioned (After that change to balance the MONSTER CHARACTERS) it would absolutely be good for the game to add ANTI-MONSTER X to plasma as part of an Elemental - ANTI grouping.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:
Yeah. The only real difference I see between monsters and vehicles is that one is organic. So haywire shouldn't work on a carnifex, but poison should. Of course, drukhari poison currently doesn't work on monsters so...

Aside from Old One Eye most Carnifex are not characters. My point is split out the characters to be effectively MONSTERs except when it comes to ANTI-MONSTER, then add ANTI-MONSTER.