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Back in the 90s, AOL would filter out the word Scunthorpe (a town in Lincolnshire) because if you removed the S, and horpe, you got a dirty word. Similarly, I once got a temp ban on GameFaqs over a discussion about Sega: I mentioned that Sega would not re-enter the console wars because they were primarily interested in Pachinko machines, and I was warned about using a certain racial slur.

In 8th, several Stratagems have come out, such as Bolter Drill or Flamecraft, which are structured as: "this bonus applies to any Bolter, Storm Bolter, Boltstorm Gauntlet, or any other weapon with 'Bolt' in its name." "This bonus applies to any Flamer, Heavy Flamer, or any other word with 'Flame' in it."

By itself, this shouldn't be "too" much of an issue. But it does make future-proofing, forgeworld, etc. that much more potentially prone to oddities. The most immediate one (an inverse) I can think of is "Is Burning Wrath a flame weapon", but don't give an Imperial Fist the ability to throw thunderbolts.

Personally, my view is weapons should also have Keywords, but I would like to hear your thoughts too.

Thought this was going to be something about Gav Thorpe, lol.

I mean, they could add weapon keywords. but, much like the Squig Hound's current uncanny ability to scarf down D3 Grot Tanks if he's nearby and they fail a morale test, and the Runtherd's ability to whip a Grot Mega Tank to grant it better hit rolls, the addition of keywords are in no way a way to proof things against Forgeworld mucking them up.

In fact, I'm in favor of giving Forgeworld the least rules levers possible. It's like the difference between giving a small child a dull, gray, simple hammer or a complicated high voltage electrical panel with lots of colorful wires. He can hurt himself with both, but the more complicated one he's more likely to be curious and start fiddling with.

We had this problem before. Remember the infamous Plasma Siphon and the utter shenanigandry that resulted?

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
We had this problem before. Remember the infamous Plasma Siphon and the utter shenanigandry that resulted?

I remember, as well as the Haemotrope. However, the Promethium relay was not an issue since assorted flamer weapons (Burnas, Flamespurts, Gauntlets of Fire, etc) were Flamers "as defined in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook." Plasma didn't have that, which led to idiosyncracies regarding "Can Pulse Rifles use a Haemotrope Reactor?"

Adding keywords to weapons really isn't a stretch. "Biel-Tan reroll 1s to hit with weapons with the Shuriken keyword", and there is no longer a need for a "The Bow of Kuronous is affected by this."

The last edition sort of solved it by classifying things under one section. Like all Shuriken Weapons were listed in the same section in the Armoury, just like all Gauss weapons and so forth. Still though, that was a messy way of doing this as it wasn't futureproof and any new additions could completely mess up how it functioned.

There was also Flamer Weapons with the Avatar's Molten Body rule. It only got more complex when the Baleflamer was apparently NOT a flame weapon.

There really needs to be keywords for these weapons. The most evident ones are "Flamer", "Melta", "Plasma" and "Laser", since these weapons fire fundimentally different ammunition than the more kinetic based weapons everything else is. Then there would be faction specific ones like Gauss, Tesla, Shuriken, Bolter, Bio-Ammunition, and so forth.

I completely agree. Also, what was wrong with having a name for the Melta rule, the Shuriken rule (bladestorm) and so on? They still have shared rules, people still call those d6 damage weapons that deal 2d6 minus the lowest at half or less range "melta weapons". Why not give them a "melta" keyword?

Because we want simple rules.

Apparently...

zerosignal wrote:
Because we want simple rules.

Apparently...

Oversimplifying by searching simply for character sequences is a clbuttic mistake. 40k would not have the same gravitas with Vindicare Buttbuttins or Warhound Breastans, or Buttault Cannons. Likewise, ambiguity over whether certain items are applicable (such as the aforementioned "A Baleflamer is not a Flamer," which meant Salamanders did not get Feel No Pain against it) means the game is no longer simple, not because the rules are dense, but because the rules have multiple conflicting "reasonable" interpretations, and you now need a Talmudic scholar.