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Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

Templates should be brought back. But the scatter die can burn in hell, because it brings up far, FAR too many arguments.

So, borrowing from Maelstrom's Edge (and probably other games, but that's where I know this from) here's what I propose:

Template weapons have their number of shots expressed as X+Template. X is a number (can be a die roll, generally should not be) and Template is either Small Blast, Large Blast, or Flamer. (Flamers would still auto-hit.) What you then do is place the appropriate template so the center is somewhere over a model in the unit. You then roll to hit for each model at least partially under the template, as well as rolling X number of attacks against the main target.

As an example, a Battlecannon could be 2+Large Blast. So let's say we shoot a Daemon Prince on the front lines, surrounded by Plaguebearers. The Large Blast Template is centered somewhere over the Prince, but only covers the Prince once, obviously. It also covers six Plaguebearers. You would then roll three shots against the Prince (two plus it was covered once) and six shots against the Plaguebearers. If it's a Rapid Fire Battlecannon or on a Leman Russ that's double tapping, you then repeat the process. (The Rapid Fire Battlecannon would be 4+2(Large Blast) or something like that.)

This DOES allow character "sniping", since you can target someone near a character and clip them, but it'd be a max of one hit per template shot, so it wouldn't be THAT terrible.

Some potential rules that could be included:

Spoiler:
For Overwatch, you could say that Template weapons only are allowed to shoot the first portion of their shots. So a Battlecannon of 2+Large Blast gets just two shots, not however many are covered by the template. A Flamer (which could be 1d3+Flamer or something) just gets 1d3 auto-hits, not however many the template covers.

For character sniping, you could add back "Look Out Sir!", which would work as follows:

After the HIT on the character, but before any wound rolls are made, the player who's controlling the target can roll a d6 for each hit. Each result of 4+ causes a friendly unit of their choice within 3" to take the hit instead, and then continue the wound process from there. The exact number can be modified, but 4+ seems reasonable.


Overall, I think would let us bring templates back without a million and one arguments, and without making them unusable against single models. Because you never have to move the template, there will be pretty much no arguments outside TFG about how many are covered, and because they get extra shots against their primary target, a Battlecannon (while still best against blobs) can do good work against single targets.

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in gb
Fresh-Faced New User




Nope not at all, I like the way they are now, no arguments and forced spacing allowing hordes to be effective and not having to do ridiculous spacing for models to keep them from getting shot.


I am glad they are now gone.
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






I dont mind this 90%. But i think blasts should not be able to be used for overwatch at all. Flamers yes. Fine. But small and large blast guns no. With a template, while a charging unit is trying to pack in their models as close as possible, its too much.


Also, the end effect of templates in general means that good tactical movement involves micromanagment of model positioning in every movement phase. Which slows the game down. A small blast will be nigh worthless again. Because the chance of catching more that 2 models under the template will be slim to none when players start moving to negate them. Even large blast templates will get mostly negated.


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

 Lance845 wrote:
I dont mind this 90%. But i think blasts should not be able to be used for overwatch at all. Flamers yes. Fine. But small and large blast guns no. With a template, while a charging unit is trying to pack in their models as close as possible, its too much.


Also, the end effect of templates in general means that good tactical movement involves micromanagment of model positioning in every movement phase. Which slows the game down. A small blast will be nigh worthless again. Because the chance of catching more that 2 models under the template will be slim to none when players start moving to negate them. Even large blast templates will get mostly negated.


The bit of Overwatch is fair.

As for making small blasts useless, perhaps drop coherency to 1" too?

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






So let's say you do that. That increases the general lethality of blasts, yes. But you still don't stop people from micromanaging the movement at all. I could fit 7+ 25mm base models in a tight pack under a small blast (Termagants/hormagaunts are long and pack in very well very tightly). But I won't. And ensuring that they have maximum spread is time consuming.

At that point your making rules to make sure rules you made up work instead of the rule you made up just working. If blasts were REALLY a good idea they wouldn't need additional layers of rules to function well. They just wouldn't create problems to begin with.

I think this boils down to one of those "kill your darlings" moments. Even if it's something you personally REALLY love. If it doesn't serve the game to actually make it better it needs to go. I get the appeal of blasts and templates. I do. But they have inherent effects on the way the game is played by their nature that just isn't good.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/07/21 23:09:59



These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

 Lance845 wrote:
So let's say you do that. That increases the general lethality of blasts, yes. But you still don't stop people from micromanaging the movement at all. I could fit 7+ 25mm base models in a tight pack under a small blast (Termagants/hormagaunts are long and pack in very well very tightly). But I won't. And ensuring that they have maximum spread is time consuming.

At that point your making rules to make sure rules you made up work instead of the rule you made up just working. If blasts were REALLY a good idea they wouldn't need additional layers of rules to function well. They just wouldn't create problems to begin with.


Changing coherency isn't adding rules-it's literally changing one number in an existing rule.

And people already have a reason to micromanage movement, to block deepstrikes and whatnot.

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Current blast rules suck thats widely acknowledged.
However bringing back actual templates will slow down the game and quite frankly 8th edition mechanics are already starting to show bloat creep along with power creep.

A much better solution IMHO is just tag it blast X

Blast X
make one to hit rule for every X number of models in the target unit. It's simple and scales with unit size and doesn't result in micromanagement of spacing.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/07/21 23:24:26


 
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






Ehhh... It's not really the same thing. Making sure that the distance between this unit and that unit is roughly 18" is very different from making sure the distance between every model within every unit is the maximum it can be.

And I get that changing coherency range is not adding on more rules. The point I was making is you change this, so to balance it you have to change that, which in turn has effects and impact on other systems in the game.

The individual mechanics don't exist in a vacuum. You have to try to consider how each little change potentially impacts everything else in the game directly or indirectly. Effects can be cascading.

Again, 90% I think the blast rules are fine. If you and your friends don't mind a longer movement phase due to the micromanagement then by all means you and your friends have fun with it. But it IS going to happen, and the size the currnt blasts WILL be impacted by coherency. The fact that most things are moving onto even bigger bases only makes the blasts even less valuable.


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in ca
Junior Officer with Laspistol





London, Ontario

I'd prefer if a "Blast" weapon made a single to hit roll, and if successful, would be resolved as "x" hits against the target unit.

Functionally, small blast = 3 hits, large blast = 5 hits, template weapons = 6 hits.

In previous editions, if a person wasn't maximizing coherency, that would be reasonable expectation for numbers of hits on a given unit. The template number assumes good positioning by the firer.

Like previous editions, this would make blast weapons more all-or-nothing, rather than averaged results. Having used plenty of large blasts in my day, most results were 5, 0, or 2, and 2 was a rare "good scatter".

Currently, small squads are more likely to be wiped out than before. If you have 3 dudes left, and I shoot 6 shots at them, 3 will likely hit and they will usually kill those 3 dudes.

Whereas before, bad scatter would result in no hits a substantial amount of the time. Overall, the unit was more likely to survive due to total misses.

I think that would be the best approach for 8.5. Instead of a random number of shots, take one shot and multiply the number of hits by the blast value.
   
Made in gb
Blood Angel Terminator with Lightning Claws





Cloud City, Bespin

Large like the Armageddon dinner plate?


 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Straight out if the pot, bang it on. What else is there to know?
 DV8 wrote:
Blood Angels Furioso Dreadnought should also be double-fisted.
 
   
Made in gb
Tunneling Trygon






Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland

My issue with 8th's random shots is that it greatly influences target priority, in that it nearly removes it. More shots is always more potential damage, while previously the number of models in a unit influenced how effective a Blast would be. A flamer has identical effectiveness against a single model with 10 Wounds as it does against a unit of 10 single-Wound models. I still prefer the old method, even though it was still very flawed. But also I miss collateral damage from scatter.

Sieg Zeon!

Selling TGG2! 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Ice_can wrote:
Current blast rules suck thats widely acknowledged.
However bringing back actual templates will slow down the game and quite frankly 8th edition mechanics are already starting to show bloat creep along with power creep.

A much better solution IMHO is just tag it blast X

Blast X
make one to hit rule for every X number of models in the target unit. It's simple and scales with unit size and doesn't result in micromanagement of spacing.


Pretty much this. Spacing models exactly 2" apart was always a huge time waster. Letting a flamer generate X hits per 5 models in the target unit (rounding up) makes the flamer more effective the larger the unit being targeted. Ditto any blast weapons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Frozen Ocean wrote:
My issue with 8th's random shots is that it greatly influences target priority, in that it nearly removes it. More shots is always more potential damage, while previously the number of models in a unit influenced how effective a Blast would be. A flamer has identical effectiveness against a single model with 10 Wounds as it does against a unit of 10 single-Wound models.


Eh. I mean, there isn't a lot of Toughness/Save overlap between units that can have up to 10 models and units that consist of a single model. Your flamer will probably do more wounds to a squad of guardsmen than it will to their chimera.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/07/27 02:32:25



ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






Much better way to handle it, eliminating all the tedious 2" spacing and arguments over whether or not a particular model is under the template: make blast weapons auto-hit, up to a maximum of the number of models in the target unit. So a LRBT's gun would be Heavy 1 with the Blast (1D6) rule. A rapid-fire blast weapon might be Heavy 2 with Blast (D3), in that case you would do the process twice with separate D3 rolls. This represents the fact that an AoE weapon will never miss entirely (even the worst gunner can't be that far off) but how many targets are caught in the blast is random. And it avoids the problem of stacking up multiple hits on single-model targets, so you can be more aggressive in pushing the shot count on anti-horde weapons without worrying about making it too effective against smaller targets.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

Ice_can wrote:
Current blast rules suck thats widely acknowledged.
However bringing back actual templates will slow down the game and quite frankly 8th edition mechanics are already starting to show bloat creep along with power creep.

A much better solution IMHO is just tag it blast X

Blast X
make one to hit rule for every X number of models in the target unit. It's simple and scales with unit size and doesn't result in micromanagement of spacing.


Yeah, that's actually a hella good adjustment. Mind if I add this quote to the OP, so people can see it?

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





Dallas area, TX

Yeah, I am not in favor of templates. The main issue they present is who is actually hit by them but hovering over the unit to see.
I like the way 8E handles it as there is a definite value of hits (variable, yes, but definite)

This issue is that there aren't enough hits often, or the hits are too variable.
Flamers and Blasts could be expressed more as 2D3 hits ot D3+X hits. There is no reason to be limited to just D3 or D6
You should also allow for additional hits on units with 5+ models.

A simple alternative for Flamers is to get a number of hits equal to the enemy models of the target unit in range. Easy
This also brings back the consequence of bunching up, as well as being a great counter to the Horde meta

Blasts would still get random hits, but I would bump currently D3/D6 shot weapons that were previously Blasts to add an additional D3/D6 if the unit has 5+ models in range.
So units that have 5+ models in range make the weapon 2D3 or 2D6 to represent the additional hits the explosion would create.

-

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/07/27 20:04:54


   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice_can wrote:
Current blast rules suck thats widely acknowledged.
However bringing back actual templates will slow down the game and quite frankly 8th edition mechanics are already starting to show bloat creep along with power creep.

A much better solution IMHO is just tag it blast X

Blast X
make one to hit roll for every X number of models in the target unit. It's simple and scales with unit size and doesn't result in micromanagement of spacing.


Yeah, that's actually a hella good adjustment. Mind if I add this quote to the OP, so people can see it?

Yeah dude go for it.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





The one drawback seems to be that you'd only have integers for Blast X (typically). So now that grenade rolls 10 times against that Marine squad?

I do agree that the solution should probably be based directly on number of models in the target unit. I've always liked "X or number of models" style rules instead (flamer would be "D6 or number", for instance). I'm sure people can come up with a better idea, though.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Bharring wrote:
The one drawback seems to be that you'd only have integers for Blast X (typically). So now that grenade rolls 10 times against that Marine squad?

I do agree that the solution should probably be based directly on number of models in the target unit. I've always liked "X or number of models" style rules instead (flamer would be "D6 or number", for instance). I'm sure people can come up with a better idea, though.


Blast X 
make one to hit roll for every X number of models or part of in the target unit. E.g. when shooting a blast 3 weapon against a 10 man unit of guardsmen this weapon would produce 4 hits 10÷3=3.33
A blast 4 weapon would produce 3 hits against the same unit 10/4=2.5 which is rounded up to 3.

It's simple and scales with unit size and doesn't result in micromanagement of spacing.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Since 8th is in love with Bubbles, bubble this, bubble that. Just make blasts bubbles.

As far as spacing micro. Well, hordes should have a cost and blasts should be able to Friendly Fire and to hit multiple units.

The problem with the scatter dice was the need to roll them far from the position of the template. The "older" templates had clocks on them. A D12 would solve "gaming" (and the slowness of trying to suss out the actual direction of scatter) the scatter dice.

Random is GOOD, it acts as a limiter on min-maxing and WAAC.

I mean, how did people play tournaments and win and have fun back when Following Fire random number of shots and jam-dice/ammo-dice existed. I mean, heaven forbid those uber heavy weapons come with a dangerous price! Assault Cannons were mostly jam cannons. So much so it was in the fluff! The only really reliable thin was the standard weapons and soldiers, everything else was balanced against that with jam/random/explody self destruct.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/07/28 15:18:31


Consummate 8th Edition Hater.  
   
Made in gb
Legendary Dogfighter




england

I'll take anything as long as it's not this pathetic D6/3 garbage
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





ValentineGames wrote:
I'll take anything as long as it's not this pathetic D6/3 garbage


Pathetic and nonsensical. Non-explosion explosions.

Don't get me started on "mortal wounds". You get mortal wounds, they get mortal wounds, everyone gets mortal wounds!!!!! (insert Oprah Meme here).

Consummate 8th Edition Hater.  
   
 
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