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.

Well, this is a slightly modified rules proposal I sent in to GW after playtesting it and running a few trillion calculations.

Essentially it attempts to keep using a D6 system, but make vehicles viable in 40K again without being overpowered gits.

Instead of a damage table per se as we have now, you have a damage system.

It's a bit of a complete overhaul while still keeping all of the current effects and rule names intact.

The summary nature of these rules is based on you (the player) understanding the current rules.

The reason I'm posting this is I do see the problems and I figured trying to solve it wouldn't hurt.

Comments explaining things are in Italics.

==================================================================

Obscured targets:
1) Remains in effect, however do not roll to see if the target will suffer a penetrating or glancing hit.
2) Instead, always treat obscured shots as glancing hits.
3) Ignore terrain for purposes of this rule if the firer and target are within the same piece of terrain.

Note: I think is simpler.

Damage Results:

Glancing hits: Equal to armor value.
1) Vehicle automatically counts as Shaken.
2) Roll D6 once per glancing hit. On a 5+ a primary weapon is destroyed.
3) If there are no remaining primary weapons, the vehicle is immobilized.
Clarification: You still need to roll 5+ to immobilize the vehicle.
4) If there are no primary weapons and the vehicle is immobilized, destroy the vehicle instead replacing it with Size 3 terrain the same height as the vehicle destroyed, counting it as hard cover (4+ save).

Note: I think it's best to leave the vehicle there, and have it 'count as' the terrain. Most players do this anyway.

Penetrating hits: Over armor value, or AP1 equal to vehicle armor.
1) Vehicle automatically counts as Stunned.
2) Roll D6 once per penetrating hit. On a 3+ a primary weapon is destroyed.
3) If there are no remaining primary weapons, the vehicle is immobilized instead.
Clarification: You still need to roll 3+ to immobilize the vehicle.
4) If there are no primary weapons and the vehicle is immobilized, the vehicle is annihilated instead and wounds all models within D6" on a 4+ (regular armor saves allowed). Remove the model from play, no terrain is created.

Shooting Effects:

Shaken:

1) Shaken vehicles suffer the following effects:
2) Shaken vehicles can shoot, but are reduced by 1 BS in their next shooting phase. Ordnance weapons can only be fired if the vehicle does not move, and will scatter double as if the vehicle had moved.
Clarification: Multiple shaken results do not result in multiple BS reductions. Reduce once no matter how many glancing hits are suffered.
3) Shaken vehicles can move normally but cannot tank shock.
4) Passengers must take a unmodified leadership test at the END of the current shooting or assault phase to remain aboard their vehicle.
Exception: Units aboard Land Raiders are immune to this effect.

Note: I changed it so tank shock isn't allowed but moving forward is.

Stunned:

1) Stunned vehicles can shoot, but are reduced by 1 BS in their next shooting phase and may only fire 1 weapon (primary or secondary, it doesn't matter--you can only shoot ONE weapon system.) Exception: Any Land Raider may fire an additional weapon due to the Power of the Machine Spirit. This shooting is not subject to reduced BS.
Clarification: Multiple stunned results do not result in multiple BS reductions. Reduce once no matter how many penetrating hits are suffered. Do not add the reduction for glancing and penetrating hits, you lose the BS once only for any combination of penetrating and/or glancing hits.
2) They may not fire Ordnance weapons. Exception: Necron Monoliths may fire their Ordnance weapon, even if stunned.
3) Stunned vehicles cannot move.
4) Passengers must disembark immediately, and take a unmodified leadership check to avoid becoming entangled.
Exception: Units aboard Land Raiders are immune to this effect.

Additional Rules:

1) Extra armor and Spirit stones: Passengers must still bail out of stunned vehicles, however all other stunned effects are ignored--use the Shaken rules instead.
Clarification: As the passengers must disembark they can not test to see if they remain onboard their transport.

Lance Special Rule Change:
1) Lance weapons instead reduce armor values by 1 point, to a minimum of 10.
Exception: Monoliths are still immune to the Lance special rule.

Note: I think making Lance weapons capable of autoglancing armor 10 by reducing them to 9 would be detrimental to game play. Lascannons are, by design, better able to tackle light vehicles than Lance weapons are.

Definitions:
1) Primary weapons are S7 and above.
2) Secondary weapons are S6 and below.
3) All transports that do not come with a primary weapon, may count 1 secondary weapon as the primary. This must be the highest strength weapon possible, if there is a tie your opponent may choose which it is and must choose to destroy it when a successful roll to destroy is made.

Clarification: Vehicles that are not transports and do not have any primary weapons may not use the transports rule. You must actually be capable of transporting units, even if you are not actually transporting any.

================================================

That's it. Made tanks harder to kill, harder to just neutralize then ignore, puts land raiders where they should be, and makes skimmers less powerful.

Thoughts/comments/criticism/suggestions? GW? lol

How are skimmers less powerful? I see nothing mentioned that makes them weaker. Are you saying that all skimmer rules should be ignored? Did you intend them not to benefit from Hull Down?

Anyways, I like how the rules sound. I'd be more tempted to take tanks. I'd be foolish not to take a Falcon, assuming I get to roll 2 dice per glancing/penetrating hits and take the lower.

Write exceptions to the rules seperate from the main rules. Include clarification on Fast, Skimmers, Land Raiders (as you have deemed they need exceptions).

First off: Very good job! Still would need some finetuning, but solid and by far better than anything developed by GW.

Stelek wrote:
Comments explaining things are in Italics.

I'm curious, where are those italics hiding?
Maybe it's just me - I was never good at playing peek-a-boo...

Stelek wrote:
3) Shaken vehicles can move normally, but may not move closer to the enemy and cannot tank shock.

Reducing Stunned to Shaken (Extra armor, spirit stones, etc):

1) Passengers must still bail out, all other stunned effects are ignored--use the Shaken rules instead. As the passengers must disembark they can not test to see if they remain onboard their transport.

Now, that's the part needing to be tuned: You would totally reduce Rhinos to BYT and autopop drop pods. There are armies who need those transports to be even close to effective.
It also makes spirit stones and extra armour pretty crappy. No one would buy it, because you can't transport your troops anymore (as long as you don't play DE).
There should be special rules for transport-only tanks. Maybe reducing the 'primary weapon rule' to S4 and cap it to one primary weapon? (So buying additional boltguns wouldn't be abusive.)

Transports would be:
Chimeras, Fish, Sepents, Rhinos, Razorbacks, Drop Pods and Raiders (Wich actually would be OT anyway and don't need that speacial rule...).

Keldrin wrote:
How are skimmers less powerful? I see nothing mentioned that makes them weaker.

Look at the 'primary weapon' part and the 'shaken' result. That part is very well done.

Keldrin wrote:How are skimmers less powerful? I see nothing mentioned that makes them weaker.

1) Skimmers carrying troops, when glanced; now have a chance to disembark their troops. This makes them vulnerable to being trapped and unable to disembark, and makes them vulnerable to assault. This is on every glancing hit. Weakness: You cannot wander around with impunity anymore. You can have your troops shot out.

2) Most Skimmers have only 1 Primary weapon. Falcons can bring 2, but generally do not. Some Skimmers choose not to have primary weapons (Wave Serpent, Piranha, Land Speeders) while others never do (Devilfish). This means when you roll a 5+, they are immobilized. Tau get re-rolls, Eldar make you roll two dice. They are still survivable, as I believe GW intended. However, please see 3.

3) Once glanced, while you can still move and shoot...you can't go closer to the enemy. So if I'm on the objectives, and I glance your skimmer, it has to stay away. Now if I'm a cunning player and I've surrounded your skimmer, you essentially cannot move. Now see 4.

4) You cannot tank shock. So you cannot get out of being surrounded. You can of course still shoot, just a little bit worse than before you were glanced.

Do they seem less powerful?

Keldrin wrote:Are you saying that all skimmer rules should be ignored? Did you intend them not to benefit from Hull Down?

Not at all. Skimmer rules stand as is. Skimmers won't benefit from hull down unless: They are Tau, and land. They are Eldar, had Vectored Engines, and were immobilized in terrain.

Keldrin wrote:Anyways, I like how the rules sound. I'd be more tempted to take tanks. I'd be foolish not to take a Falcon, assuming I get to roll 2 dice per glancing/penetrating hits and take the lower.

Yes, although it is of course the other player rolling the dice against you.

Keldrin wrote:Write exceptions to the rules seperate from the main rules. Include clarification on Fast, Skimmers, Land Raiders (as you have deemed they need exceptions).

I will do so.

Thank you for your input.

vogelfrei:

You are correct. I left out the Transport rule by accident.

I will add it above. Not sure where my Italics went...Dakka ate them? lol

Hungry hungry dakka.

Don't forget about chimeras and rhinos when you update the stunned rules.

I might give it a try in January...won't play any 40k this year anyway.

Hull down:
1) Trace a line from any point of firing unit (infantry, dreads) or vehicle (weapon mount) to middle of target units hull (or as close to middle as you can get within LOS).
2) If the line of fire crosses size 3 terrain count all penetrating hits as glancing hits instead.
Exception: Do not include the firing units own terrain feature to determine if terrain is being traced through.
(Even if target is within the same terrain feature.)

Some people are saying that skimmers don't benefit from hull down? I don't see anything there that would keep skimmers from benefiting from hull down. Am I reading something incorrectly or did the post get edited?

The qualifications for hull down are also confusing me somewhat. You are supposed to draw a line between the shooter and the center of the vehicle or as close to the center as you can get in line of sight. Then if that line crosses level 3 terrain, the vehicle is hull down. Now it would seem that this limits hull down to only be useable by tanks sitting in forests or other similar pieces of area terrain. If the same tank were sticking out just a little bit from behind the forest (but not inside of it), you would have to draw the line to the tank around the forest to whatever little bit was sticking out due to the requirement to draw the line within the limit of line of sight. This would then not cross any terrain and keep the tank from getting hull down. Was that what you intended? In addition, did you intend to leave normal terrain out of the picture completely? While area terrain seems to be rather popular at tournaments, normal terrain is still used in a fair amount of other games. Normal terrain does not have a size level and is thus completely inconsequential when applying your rules. Thus a tank sitting behind a wall (non-area terrain) that blocks sight of everything but its turret from the vantage point of someone shooting at it would not count as hull down since the line from shooter to target would not cross any level 3 terrain.

Lance Special Rule Change:
1) Lance weapons instead reduce armor above armor value 12 by 1 point.
Exception: Monoliths are still immune to the Lance special rule.

While I understand that you are trying to make land raiders better (an endeavor I whole heartedly support) I don't think nerfing lance weapons is a good idea. As things stand, lance weapons are in 98% of situations, worse than similar weapons in other armies (primarily the las cannon). The fact that they have less range and lower strength makes them worse at killing lighter vehicles and monstrous creatures. The only targets in the entire game that are truly good for lances to fire on are land raiders, russes, and the as of yet unreleased battle wagons. Against all other targets, they are inferior. This change will simply make them 100% inferior. Now that wouldn't be quite so bad if it were not for a couple of other things. First off, bright lances were increased in points up to the level where they are not that viable of an option anymore. Tank busting is mostly left to shorter ranged units that are both more effective and less costly. The other issue is that with the inclusion of the "no moving closer to the enemy" rule, you have introduced a rather sever nerf to transports that will prevent these close ranged units from getting where they need to be. These changes in conjunction would cripple the ability of eldar armies to included effective anti tank power. Dark eldar have access to cheaper lance weapons, all of which are BS 4, so they might not suffer quite so much but it would still be fairly large blow.

A possible alternative would be to have lance weapons reduce all armor values by 1. The loss of top end tank busting power would be off set by increased light vehicle busting power. That or the price of lance weapons (particularly the bright lance) could be reduced significantly.



Some things to think about.

Stelek wrote:Thoughts/comments/criticism/suggestions? GW? lol

Unified Damage Table
1 = Shaken
2 = Stunned
3 = Weapon Destroyed
4 = Immobile
5 = Vehicle Destroyed
6 = Vehicle Explodes

-1 if Glancing
+1 if Ordnance
+1 if Open-Topped

SMF is automatic Glancing.
Hull Down is Glancing 4+.

Tanks are now Destroyed 2/6, same as Skimmers Moving Fast. Hull Down Tanks are Destroyed 1/4, which is better than SMF.

Don't want a damage table. I know GW doesn't want a unified one.

Phoenix I'll incorporate your suggestions. Let me know what you think.

One quick clarification....ok 2 actually.

1: On the shaken and stunned results, are the BS reductions cumulative? If you get shaken 3 times in one turn, are you -1 BS or are you -3?

2: Again on the shaken and stunned results, if you have already lost all your primary weapons and you take an additional hit that gets through your armor (glancing or penetrating) are you immediately immobilized or are you only immobilized if your opponent rolls a 5+/3+? I believe your intent was that you should roll and if you no longer have weapons to lose then its the next result, but the wording (or perhaps just the formatting) is a bit ambiguous

1: Not cumulative. I'll add that.

2: You aren't automatically immobilized. I'll clarify that.

So you have to hit a predator destructor with 4 separate lascannon hits to take out each of its guns, immobilize it then kill it?

Why are people so obsessed with giving tanks extra lives? When a tank is hit with dedicated AT weapons there is supposed to be a chance they’ll explode, even if it’s the first shot.


That said, I like your mods to stunned and shaken. Some really good ideas in that section, taken alone they’d probably be a significant improvement over the current rules.

Indeed.

It would take 5...if you rolled successfully each time.

This is something I'm still not too sure about myself, some tanks being more survivable because of a rule than any inherent survivability.

That said....Tanks currently are pretty much the sucky part of 40K.

I want to fix that part. Slow assault units are the other part. Can't bring back the Rhino rush though.

Perhaps add in a "lucky hit" style rule. When rolling to see if a weapon is taken off, if the roll is a 6, the tank is destroyed. It will reduce the survivability of the tank somewhat but not to a huge degree.

I do have to agree with sebster though, under these rules, preadators are 3 times more durrable than hammerheads due to the amount of weapons on them an nothing else. I think we might need to come up with a way to even things out a bit more.

If we are agreed that the glancing table is mostly fine as is, perhaps the following change could be made to the penetrating table:

Make the roll to remove a primary weapons system 4+
Make a roll for ALL primary weapon systems for each penetrating hit
That makes it slightly harder to hurt individual systems but allows for a lucky shot to render the tank defenseless

Eh. The way I see it, a 28mm minis game for aescetic and practical reasons usually won't be played on an area large enough to allow much manoeuver with the armour. That cuts out half of a tank game right there. Weapon ranges in 40k are in general too short as well, and infantry moves too fast. My sense is that come 6th edition GW might move at integrating it into a better mass combat system for "eye of the needle" type scenarios - how else would they be able to justify it to stockholders who want to see better and better sales, sales reached in no short ammount to getting people more and more figures. Notice how support for skirmish games and games at more affordable scales has traditionally fallen by the wayside. But I digress.

Best call for vehicles in 40k is to accept that you're not playing a game based on anything besides sales numbers and roll with it. Frankly as a sometime historicals player and armour novice, I think tanks should die in one hit except on rare occasions. The best kinds of tank revisions for 40k are those that reduce the number of dice rolled and the ammount of bookkeeping for broken weapons, faulty tracks etc. Because it's not based on anything and is typically the first wargame encountered by novices, 40k should be even faster and even simpler. This will also tie in with the focus in Apocalypse on huger forces, allowing bigger games to be played more quickly and potentially boosting sales so you've got an actual chance of being taken seriously (damn back on abotu GW in a thread about their rules...sorry) and possibly improving the hobby.

Stelek wrote:I want to fix that part. Slow assault units are the other part. Can't bring back the Rhino rush though.

Maybe one should be allowed to assault the turn you disembark with a to hit penality.
Like reducing your WS by 1 if you use this option.

vogelfrei wrote:
Maybe one should be allowed to assault the turn you disembark with a to hit penality.
Like reducing your WS by 1 if you use this option.

Reducing your weapon skill by 1 doesn't result in a to hit penality for ~80% of the hand to hand that happens in 40k. What it is more likely to do is make it easier for your opponent to hit you.

Ok...maybe call it 'hth penality' then or just modify your to hit roll by -1.

PS: Is that Jesus 3+ an invul save? At least history already prooved, that it doesn't prevent (instant) death.

vogelfrei wrote:
PS: Is that Jesus 3+ an invul save? At least history already prooved, that it doesn't prevent (instant) death.

True enough, but if all the mythology is to be believed, he apparently had "we'll be back" too.

Lol guys truly lol.

wight_widow wrote:Frankly as a sometime historicals player and armour novice, I think tanks should die in one hit except on rare occasions.

Amen to that.

From a historicals / RL perspective Tanks should be all-or-nothing - either Nothing Happens or Vehicle Explodes! 40k already makes Tanks pretty durable by adding Glancing and intermediate results.

@Stelek like the new rule it's heading in the right direction

Just my IMO with tanks the weakest part is the tracks, wheels etc. and this is what Ive seen so you could make it easier to Immobile them but they could still shoot (like the idea of -1BS ).
as i side note Ive seen a tank take 2 "glancing " hits and still fire the main gun couldn't move but could still shoot, and the crew served machine guns.

but all in all like your rule so far