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The implications of this proposal would basically require an edition change, so I'm not pitching this as an instantly usable rule so much as a general game design concept to be politely discussed among those who enjoy contemplating mechanics.

The general idea is this:
* Many (most) units in the game gain wounds based on what their save currently looks like. So a guardsman might stay at 1 wound, a marine might have 3, and a tank might have dozens.
* Armor saves and most invulnerable saves are no longer a thing.
* AP becomes a modifier to the target's Toughness stat when calculating to-wound rolls. So an AP - 1 weapon treats a Toughness 6 unit as Toughness 5.
* Cover saves make a return based on the type of terrain. So a twisted copse might give you a 6+ save, ruins a 4+, and barricades/bunkers a 3+. Cover probably also sometimes grants to-hit penalties, but that's a whole other discussion.
* Rules that previously granted Invulnerable saves would now have various rules to reflect the nature of the ability that previously granted the save. So for instance...
--Daemon saves might become FNP to reflect the daemon ignoring the laws of physics but having more difficulty maintaining the metaphor that is its body in the face of a lascannon shot than a lasgun shot.
--Forcefields might change to, "Ignore the first X Damage inflicted on a model with this rule each phase."
--Saves that reflect speed, dodging, etc. (I'm thinking harlequins and wyches) might become a flat to-hit penalty.

Why go to so much trouble? Well, my thinking is this:
* It would actually cut down on the amount of dice rolling in the game by removing saves from the equation.
* Every succesful to-wound roll accomplishes something. Instead of rolling a ton of dice to plink away at that T8 vehicle only to have it make an armor save, your succesful to-wound rolls will be mostly guaranteed to be doing some damage. However, the sheer number of wounds that tank has means that lasguns are still worse at killing it than a lascannon.
* No more lucky guardsman one-shotting things like space marines. Instead of relying on statistical averages to usually (but by definition not always) make your "durable" model feel durable, we guarantee that they do. That space marine will never drop to fewer than 3 lasgun shots, and usually it will be a lot more. But conversely, those lasgun shots will feel like they're chipping away at the marine's armor rather than being completely defeated by it.


What do you think? Too crazy of an idea? And if so, why? Remember, this isn't me saying that this rule is how things ought to be done. It's just a chance to enjoy a discussion about game mechanics.

Im getting a sudden warmachine vibe from this.

But this might be interesting as a concept. Although armour saves might not be the only factor in determining toughness and wounds, it probably should play a role in trying to determine these stats.

For example. A land raider in this edition is T8 16 wounds with a 2+ armour save, but say the armour save and the fact it is a vehicle gives it set bonuses (+ 3 to toughness and +4 to wounds, vehicle doubles wounds gained by bonuses)

So now it would be in this scenario T 11 24 wounds with no saves, accounting for AP modifiers and such, that would mean a lascannon at it's current profile would (Str 9 AP -3) would be wounding the vehicle on a 3+ (as the lascannon would be str 9 against T 8)

This would sound reasonable.

This would proliferate across units with the same saves (Terminators would be T 7, 6 wounds. Pretty good for a tough as nails unit)

It could even work like so:

1+ armour = + 4 Toughness and +8 wounds
2+ armour = + 3 Toughness and +4 wounds
3+ Armour = + 2 Toughness and +2 Wounds
4+ Armour = + 1 toughness and +1 Wound
5+ Armour = +1 Toughness
6+ Armour = +1 wound

Modifiers for the following, note that only character keyword can stack with others:

Monster - The Armour of the monster counts as one higher for modifiers
Vehicle - Double the wounds gained by bonuses, the Armour of the vehicle counts as one higher for modifiers if it has the titanic keyword instead
Character - The Armour of the character counts as one higher for modifiers
Titanic - Double the bonuses gained by any profile

Putting a few units on the table that would be influenced by these statlines, these are what it would look like:

Leman russ T10 W 16
Baneblade T14 W 34
Land Raider T 11 W 24
Dreadnought T 9 W 11
Terminator Squad T 7 W 6
Tactical Marines T 6 W 3
Daemon Prince T 9 W 11
Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury T 11 W 24
Hive Tyrant T 11 W 20
Carnifex T 10 W 12
Knight castellan T 14 W 34


Weapons would have to be slightly changed for some(Melta being a main one), while others would be ok as they are.

I can see a few problems, but that could be fixed along the road (daemons in general, cause of the 6+ armour but 5++)

Also, Nurgle Daemons need something if the Daemon save becomes a FNP. You can't double dip on FNP.

This is interesting.

I think for some units they'd need a rule where their toughness can't be lowered to a certain level. Almost like an invuln save I guess

GW LotR does something similar by making "armour" add to your "toughness" and going through two rolls to kill rather than having a separate stat and three rolls; it also makes the table more granular by making it take +2S to get +1 to wound (ex. a Strength 3 attack wounds Defense 1 on 3+, Defense 2 and 3 on 4+, Defense 4 and 5 on 5+, Defense 6 and 7 on 6+, Defense 8 on 6+/4+, Defense 9 on 6+/5+, and Defense 10 on 6+/6+).

I've got a set of test documents trying to convert Warhammer over to the Gates of Antares dice mechanics (WS/BS-based to-hit roll-> Armour - Penetration roll), and the major thing I find trying to simplify down to two rolls is that the sheer variety of weapons in 40k become sort of irrelevant. Generally in two-rolls you need way fewer shots to actually do anything, which cuts down on rate-of-fire distinctions; that combined with cutting down on S/AP distinctions means things like grav-guns/plasma-guns in their current incarnation overlap so much you might as well not make two different guns.

So you could, but it takes a lot more work to convert stats over to the new system than just writing a conversion formula where you put 8e stats in one end and it spits out other-version stats from the other. As we all found out when we were playing games with the Indexes at the start of 8e, in point of fact.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Also, Nurgle Daemons need something if the Daemon save becomes a FNP. You can't double dip on FNP.

"Daemon" is 5+ FNP, "Nurgle Daemon" is 4+ FNP. Boom. Solved. (Disclaimer: Actual numbers may vary. Tzeentch may resent you lifting his "but better Daemon saves are my thing..." gimmick. Usage of this suggestion may lead to Daemon Princes of one god just being better than the others. If you choose to deal with daemons your mind and your bodily integrity may be at risk. We do not acknowledge responsibility for spawndom that occurs as a result of following any of our advice.)

mchammadad wrote:


1+ armour = + 4 Toughness and +8 wounds
2+ armour = + 3 Toughness and +4 wounds
3+ Armour = + 2 Toughness and +2 Wounds
4+ Armour = + 1 toughness and +1 Wound
5+ Armour = +1 Toughness
6+ Armour = +1 wound

...

Putting a few units on the table that would be influenced by these statlines, these are what it would look like:

Leman russ T10 W 16
Baneblade T14 W 34
Land Raider T 11 W 24
Dreadnought T 9 W 11
Terminator Squad T 7 W 6
Tactical Marines T 6 W 3
Daemon Prince T 9 W 11
Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury T 11 W 24
Hive Tyrant T 11 W 20
Carnifex T 10 W 12
Knight castellan T 14 W 34

Exactly. Something along those lines. Although I think you could probably play the tweaks to some units by ear. Use the formula as a guideline rather than a law. The game would change a lot if such a change were to be implemented, so you might want to adjust certain units to compensate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 fraser1191 wrote:
This is interesting.

I think for some units they'd need a rule where their toughness can't be lowered to a certain level. Almost like an invuln save I guess

Could you give an example? It seems like a meltagun should be pretty darn good at wounding anything it shoots at. Are you picturing, like, serpent shields or something?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


I've got a set of test documents trying to convert Warhammer over to the Gates of Antares dice mechanics (WS/BS-based to-hit roll-> Armour - Penetration roll), and the major thing I find trying to simplify down to two rolls is that the sheer variety of weapons in 40k become sort of irrelevant. Generally in two-rolls you need way fewer shots to actually do anything, which cuts down on rate-of-fire distinctions; that combined with cutting down on S/AP distinctions means things like grav-guns/plasma-guns in their current incarnation overlap so much you might as well not make two different guns.

So you could, but it takes a lot more work to convert stats over to the new system than just writing a conversion formula where you put 8e stats in one end and it spits out other-version stats from the other. As we all found out when we were playing games with the Indexes at the start of 8e, in point of fact.

Good insight. Personally, I feel like there's too much overlap between weapons in current 40k anyway though. Grav cannons are already seldom taken because they lose out against other imperial weapons. Maybe they need some sort of debuff mechanic to make them stand out rather than just being another color in the "Strength/AP/Damage" spectrum. But that may be going to far into specifics for the scope of this thread. But you're right. There are weapons that overlap in utility and would do so even more if you take saves out of the equation. I think we'd have to look at consolidating profiles and/or giving out more special abilities to fill a niche.

As for daemons, well, not to go into too many specifics again, but Tzeentch is a very flexible god. You could give him all sorts of neat stuff to better define his niche. You could makes his guys more magical and/or fiery. You could let them be one of the only factions to retain what is basically an invulnerable save. You could apply to-wound penalties against ranged attacks because the metaphor of shooting a monster isn't as resonant as the metaphor of using a melee weapon. All sorts of things. I'm sure we could find a way to make Tzeentch feel special.

And having more wounds on more models means that Nurgley healing abilities could be more flexible. If you were, hypothetically, to make even the humble plaguebearer a multi-wound model, then you might be able to get away with just restoring lost wounds to Nurgle units every turn to represent his gross healing factor.

I think that this is an interesting proposal, though a few points to make:

1: What is the difference between having a high AP and a high strength, if AP becomes a toughness modifier? At this point, you could simply give weapons a strength and targets a toughness. So a lascannon would be, say, S14.

2: Removing saves would make the game faster but you would have nothing to do during your opponents turn, making it less immersive than the current system where both players get involved in both turns.

3: the more you simplify a game, the more one dimensional it becomes. You will have no way of differentiating between blunt weapons and sharp weapons - so a weak unit with high AP (such as crusaders) will have the same attack strength as an ogryn, but they are for different things - crusaders are to cut down heavy armoured infantry, and ogryns are for battering apart tough opponents with low saves. As soon as you remove this diversity, it could well strip the game of something, like when they removed armour facings, true line of sight, and the ability to blow up a tank with a tank blowing up weapon. It's been going downhill for variety since they brought in hull points.

I think it'll be down to how it affects tactical decisions for me. I disliked when tanks became less durable, I hate how I now have no advantage to getting around a tank to shoot its rear or side armour, and use the correct weapon for the job. The fact that I can kill a landraider with enough grot blasters is ludicrous to me.

 some bloke wrote:

2: Removing saves would make the game faster but you would have nothing to do during your opponents turn, making it less immersive than the current system where both players get involved in both turns.

Yeah this kinda makes it a bit of an issue for me too. That's a lot of time doing nothing but making sure your opponents not fudging his rolls.

I'd rather do away with the 'to wound' roll somehow. Still roll to hit, somehow have the 'STR vs T' calculation create an AP mod (with additional +/- mods from the weapon stats) and then roll to save and allocate damage as appropriate.

 Kcalehc wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

2: Removing saves would make the game faster but you would have nothing to do during your opponents turn, making it less immersive than the current system where both players get involved in both turns.

Yeah this kinda makes it a bit of an issue for me too. That's a lot of time doing nothing but making sure your opponents not fudging his rolls.
*snip*

Honestly, this suggested rule (which I really like) would call for a drastic rewrite of the core rules and every army. So while we're at it, combine it with something like alternating activations.

 DV8 wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

2: Removing saves would make the game faster but you would have nothing to do during your opponents turn, making it less immersive than the current system where both players get involved in both turns.

Yeah this kinda makes it a bit of an issue for me too. That's a lot of time doing nothing but making sure your opponents not fudging his rolls.
*snip*

Honestly, this suggested rule (which I really like) would call for a drastic rewrite of the core rules and every army. So while we're at it, combine it with something like alternating activations.

That was kind of my first thought too, but Kcalehc and some bloke aren't wrong. If we're remove saving throws (which despite giving you something to do are basically still a form of passive rather than active defense), then we'd want to be sure to fill the void so that your opponent isn't just rolling dice by himself for 30 minutes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
I think that this is an interesting proposal, though a few points to make:

1: What is the difference between having a high AP and a high strength, if AP becomes a toughness modifier? At this point, you could simply give weapons a strength and targets a toughness. So a lascannon would be, say, S14.

...

3: the more you simplify a game, the more one dimensional it becomes. You will have no way of differentiating between blunt weapons and sharp weapons - so a weak unit with high AP (such as crusaders) will have the same attack strength as an ogryn, but they are for different things - crusaders are to cut down heavy armoured infantry, and ogryns are for battering apart tough opponents with low saves. As soon as you remove this diversity, it could well strip the game of something, like when they removed armour facings, true line of sight, and the ability to blow up a tank with a tank blowing up weapon. It's been going downhill for variety since they brought in hull points.

I think it'll be down to how it affects tactical decisions for me. I disliked when tanks became less durable, I hate how I now have no advantage to getting around a tank to shoot its rear or side armour, and use the correct weapon for the job. The fact that I can kill a landraider with enough grot blasters is ludicrous to me.

You make some great points. I can't believe I didn't realize the AP/Strength issue immediately as I wrote it. Honestly, if we remove armor saves from the game, I'm not sure representing AP as anything except Strength is actually all that important. 8th edition already sort of shrugs its shoulders and acknowledges that there's crossover between high strength and AP sometimes. The titanic feet of an imperial knight have the AP of a power maul (power axe?), but they don't look especially sharp, and I doubt they have a built-in power field of any type. They're just so huge that it's kind of assumed carapace armor and chitin won't be doing a whole lot to stop the feet from crushing you to death. And armor piercing should probably count for something even against relatively unarmored targets. Sure, that ork boy doesn't have much "armor" for you to pierce, but your magical inferno bolts or armor piercing rounds will still probably get through his tough hide a bit more reliably.

The niche currently occupied by AP and armor would be partially subsumed by Wounds versus Damage. So Inferno Bolts might not be much stronger than a normal bolter in this system (they might even be the same strength), but they might do multiple points of Damage instead of just 1. This would make them better against "heavily armored" targets that have lots of wounds without making them better against single wound models. Those inferno bolts are nothing special against hormagaunts, but they'll have the 3 wound space marines and 2 wound dire avengers cussing.

So you can still technically take out a land raider with a million lasgun shots, but a meltagun will be way better at the job, and weapons with mid/high strength and moderate damage will be somewhere inbetween. To bring it back to your crusaders versus ogryn example, the power swords of the crusaders might do something like 3 damage apiece but wound less often due to being Strength 3. The ogryn will wound various things more easily, but might only do 1 or 2 damage. One would be better at killing a 3 wound marine, but the other would get through 1 wound guardsmen faster.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 DV8 wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

2: Removing saves would make the game faster but you would have nothing to do during your opponents turn, making it less immersive than the current system where both players get involved in both turns.

Yeah this kinda makes it a bit of an issue for me too. That's a lot of time doing nothing but making sure your opponents not fudging his rolls.
*snip*

Honestly, this suggested rule (which I really like) would call for a drastic rewrite of the core rules and every army. So while we're at it, combine it with something like alternating activations.

That was kind of my first thought too, but Kcalehc and some bloke aren't wrong. If we're remove saving throws (which despite giving you something to do are basically still a form of passive rather than active defense), then we'd want to be sure to fill the void so that your opponent isn't just rolling dice by himself for 30 minutes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
I think that this is an interesting proposal, though a few points to make:

1: What is the difference between having a high AP and a high strength, if AP becomes a toughness modifier? At this point, you could simply give weapons a strength and targets a toughness. So a lascannon would be, say, S14.

...

3: the more you simplify a game, the more one dimensional it becomes. You will have no way of differentiating between blunt weapons and sharp weapons - so a weak unit with high AP (such as crusaders) will have the same attack strength as an ogryn, but they are for different things - crusaders are to cut down heavy armoured infantry, and ogryns are for battering apart tough opponents with low saves. As soon as you remove this diversity, it could well strip the game of something, like when they removed armour facings, true line of sight, and the ability to blow up a tank with a tank blowing up weapon. It's been going downhill for variety since they brought in hull points.

I think it'll be down to how it affects tactical decisions for me. I disliked when tanks became less durable, I hate how I now have no advantage to getting around a tank to shoot its rear or side armour, and use the correct weapon for the job. The fact that I can kill a landraider with enough grot blasters is ludicrous to me.

You make some great points. I can't believe I didn't realize the AP/Strength issue immediately as I wrote it. Honestly, if we remove armor saves from the game, I'm not sure representing AP as anything except Strength is actually all that important. 8th edition already sort of shrugs its shoulders and acknowledges that there's crossover between high strength and AP sometimes. The titanic feet of an imperial knight have the AP of a power maul (power axe?), but they don't look especially sharp, and I doubt they have a built-in power field of any type. They're just so huge that it's kind of assumed carapace armor and chitin won't be doing a whole lot to stop the feet from crushing you to death. And armor piercing should probably count for something even against relatively unarmored targets. Sure, that ork boy doesn't have much "armor" for you to pierce, but your magical inferno bolts or armor piercing rounds will still probably get through his tough hide a bit more reliably.

The niche currently occupied by AP and armor would be partially subsumed by Wounds versus Damage. So Inferno Bolts might not be much stronger than a normal bolter in this system (they might even be the same strength), but they might do multiple points of Damage instead of just 1. This would make them better against "heavily armored" targets that have lots of wounds without making them better against single wound models. Those inferno bolts are nothing special against hormagaunts, but they'll have the 3 wound space marines and 2 wound dire avengers cussing.

So you can still technically take out a land raider with a million lasgun shots, but a meltagun will be way better at the job, and weapons with mid/high strength and moderate damage will be somewhere inbetween. To bring it back to your crusaders versus ogryn example, the power swords of the crusaders might do something like 3 damage apiece but wound less often due to being Strength 3. The ogryn will wound various things more easily, but might only do 1 or 2 damage. One would be better at killing a 3 wound marine, but the other would get through 1 wound guardsmen faster.

I like the idea of AP going over to damage, it would keep the difference between a light weapon with good AP and a heavy weapon with bad AP.

I prefer, however, the idea which was mentioned which was that saves stay and the "to wound" roll goes, with strength vs toughness modifying the armour without a roll. It might take a little getting used to, but it's no different to when we compare WS in a fight.

So you could have it that:
Strength doubles toughness: AP-2
Strength > Toughness: AP-1
Strength = Toughness: AP0
Strength < Toughness: AP+1
Strength half of toughness: AP+2

With the weapons AP being a solid statistic to also modify it. If you add the two modifiers together, you get the AP to use. So a S4 AP-1 vs T3 4+sv would offer an AP of -2 (-1 + -1), so a 6+ save.

This would need a fairly large overhaul of saves, toughness and AP to work, with models with higher toughness being more resilient to having their saves modified. So vehicles generally get +2 to saves against infantry weapons, usually meaning a 2+, but less so against strong weapons.

It also means that if you make a bolter AP-1 and a missile launcher AP-1, the missile launcher is universally better at getting through armour. for example:
Bolter, S4 AP-1
Missile launcher, S8 AP-1
vs:
guardsman (T3 5+) both ignore saves
Marine (T4 3+) 3+ save vs bolter, 6+ vs missile
Bullgryn (T5 3+) 2+ save vs bolter, 5+ vs missile
Battlewagon (T8 3+) 2+ save vs bolter, 4+ vs missile

This would mean that you simply roll to hit and then roll saves, cutting out a dice roll but keeping both parties immersed.

Cover could either add another solid save modifier, or a toughness modifier. A toughness modifier would have a much greater effect on infantry than vehicles, so I like it.
Example: cover gives +2T
guardsman goes from no save vs bolter to 5+
bullgryn goes from 5+ vs missile to... ...5+
battlewagon goes from 4+ vs missile to 3+.

So perhaps the missile launcher would need AP-2.

This allows for putting more emphasis on anti-tank weapons being suitably powerful - for example, if the majority of general weapons are AP0, -1 or -2 then having a meltagun with AP-4 is going to be rightly powerful. The majority of anti-tank weapons can focus on using their strength, but a meltagun (Or old-fashioned AP1 equivalent) would basically ignore every save, unless something's T8 2+ or T9 3+.

I don't even think we would need a particularly big overhaul, even. We could probably try it with the current system, with existing values. High strength high AP weapons will annihilate infantry - what usually happens if you shoot a dude with a missile launcher?

Things this could fix:
Marine survival vs guardsmen (making marines worth more)
tank survival vs massed teeny tiny guns - generally getting a 2+ save
speed of the game

Things this could cause problems with:
balance of the game (could be addressed with blanket changes to weapon AP's)
weapons/units who pay for special rules for wound rolls (can be amended to work with the new system, but it's a bit more tricky. rerolls would move to the "to hit" section, wounds on a "X" = + 1 to hit, perhaps. needs work.)

Thoughts?

First thought is that I like it. Seems like it could work fairly well with some changes to units.

My only worry is that it will really hurt High Strength weapons against units with low saves.

Heavy Bolter sitting at S5 -1 AP against a T4 6+ save becomes less effective in this system, (Heavy Bolters vs Ork Boyz.)

Yeah that's essentially what I was thinking of (I just didn't have time to type it all out at the time!).

There may need to be a bit of adjusting S and T values to make some interactions work more as expected in a possible future edition, but it certainly cuts down on a whole set of rolling, while keeping both players engaged. You're right about all the 'to wound' rerolls and special rules things though, there's a lot of them that would have to either be lost, or accounted for some other way, so units weren't too much all the same. Perhaps a flat +1 bonus hit per Y successful hits for some, or +X wounds per enemy save roll of 1 (snipers maybe doing a MW on a hit of 6 instead of normal damage); or something to that effect - have to be re-written on a case by case basis.

Though as points seem to be headed downwards, and models per game upwards, a streamlining of the shooting phase may be a useful time saver to keep overall game times within reasonable limits. I'm also a big fan of alternate activations that I think was mentioned as well further up.

 Sir Heckington wrote:

Spoiler:

 some bloke wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 DV8 wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

2: Removing saves would make the game faster but you would have nothing to do during your opponents turn, making it less immersive than the current system where both players get involved in both turns.

Yeah this kinda makes it a bit of an issue for me too. That's a lot of time doing nothing but making sure your opponents not fudging his rolls.
*snip*

Honestly, this suggested rule (which I really like) would call for a drastic rewrite of the core rules and every army. So while we're at it, combine it with something like alternating activations.

That was kind of my first thought too, but Kcalehc and some bloke aren't wrong. If we're remove saving throws (which despite giving you something to do are basically still a form of passive rather than active defense), then we'd want to be sure to fill the void so that your opponent isn't just rolling dice by himself for 30 minutes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
I think that this is an interesting proposal, though a few points to make:

1: What is the difference between having a high AP and a high strength, if AP becomes a toughness modifier? At this point, you could simply give weapons a strength and targets a toughness. So a lascannon would be, say, S14.

...

3: the more you simplify a game, the more one dimensional it becomes. You will have no way of differentiating between blunt weapons and sharp weapons - so a weak unit with high AP (such as crusaders) will have the same attack strength as an ogryn, but they are for different things - crusaders are to cut down heavy armoured infantry, and ogryns are for battering apart tough opponents with low saves. As soon as you remove this diversity, it could well strip the game of something, like when they removed armour facings, true line of sight, and the ability to blow up a tank with a tank blowing up weapon. It's been going downhill for variety since they brought in hull points.

I think it'll be down to how it affects tactical decisions for me. I disliked when tanks became less durable, I hate how I now have no advantage to getting around a tank to shoot its rear or side armour, and use the correct weapon for the job. The fact that I can kill a landraider with enough grot blasters is ludicrous to me.

You make some great points. I can't believe I didn't realize the AP/Strength issue immediately as I wrote it. Honestly, if we remove armor saves from the game, I'm not sure representing AP as anything except Strength is actually all that important. 8th edition already sort of shrugs its shoulders and acknowledges that there's crossover between high strength and AP sometimes. The titanic feet of an imperial knight have the AP of a power maul (power axe?), but they don't look especially sharp, and I doubt they have a built-in power field of any type. They're just so huge that it's kind of assumed carapace armor and chitin won't be doing a whole lot to stop the feet from crushing you to death. And armor piercing should probably count for something even against relatively unarmored targets. Sure, that ork boy doesn't have much "armor" for you to pierce, but your magical inferno bolts or armor piercing rounds will still probably get through his tough hide a bit more reliably.

The niche currently occupied by AP and armor would be partially subsumed by Wounds versus Damage. So Inferno Bolts might not be much stronger than a normal bolter in this system (they might even be the same strength), but they might do multiple points of Damage instead of just 1. This would make them better against "heavily armored" targets that have lots of wounds without making them better against single wound models. Those inferno bolts are nothing special against hormagaunts, but they'll have the 3 wound space marines and 2 wound dire avengers cussing.

So you can still technically take out a land raider with a million lasgun shots, but a meltagun will be way better at the job, and weapons with mid/high strength and moderate damage will be somewhere inbetween. To bring it back to your crusaders versus ogryn example, the power swords of the crusaders might do something like 3 damage apiece but wound less often due to being Strength 3. The ogryn will wound various things more easily, but might only do 1 or 2 damage. One would be better at killing a 3 wound marine, but the other would get through 1 wound guardsmen faster.

I like the idea of AP going over to damage, it would keep the difference between a light weapon with good AP and a heavy weapon with bad AP.

I prefer, however, the idea which was mentioned which was that saves stay and the "to wound" roll goes, with strength vs toughness modifying the armour without a roll. It might take a little getting used to, but it's no different to when we compare WS in a fight.

So you could have it that:
Strength doubles toughness: AP-2
Strength > Toughness: AP-1
Strength = Toughness: AP0
Strength < Toughness: AP+1
Strength half of toughness: AP+2

With the weapons AP being a solid statistic to also modify it. If you add the two modifiers together, you get the AP to use. So a S4 AP-1 vs T3 4+sv would offer an AP of -2 (-1 + -1), so a 6+ save.

This would need a fairly large overhaul of saves, toughness and AP to work, with models with higher toughness being more resilient to having their saves modified. So vehicles generally get +2 to saves against infantry weapons, usually meaning a 2+, but less so against strong weapons.

It also means that if you make a bolter AP-1 and a missile launcher AP-1, the missile launcher is universally better at getting through armour. for example:
Bolter, S4 AP-1
Missile launcher, S8 AP-1
vs:
guardsman (T3 5+) both ignore saves
Marine (T4 3+) 3+ save vs bolter, 6+ vs missile
Bullgryn (T5 3+) 2+ save vs bolter, 5+ vs missile
Battlewagon (T8 3+) 2+ save vs bolter, 4+ vs missile

This would mean that you simply roll to hit and then roll saves, cutting out a dice roll but keeping both parties immersed.

Cover could either add another solid save modifier, or a toughness modifier. A toughness modifier would have a much greater effect on infantry than vehicles, so I like it.
Example: cover gives +2T
guardsman goes from no save vs bolter to 5+
bullgryn goes from 5+ vs missile to... ...5+
battlewagon goes from 4+ vs missile to 3+.

So perhaps the missile launcher would need AP-2.

This allows for putting more emphasis on anti-tank weapons being suitably powerful - for example, if the majority of general weapons are AP0, -1 or -2 then having a meltagun with AP-4 is going to be rightly powerful. The majority of anti-tank weapons can focus on using their strength, but a meltagun (Or old-fashioned AP1 equivalent) would basically ignore every save, unless something's T8 2+ or T9 3+.

I don't even think we would need a particularly big overhaul, even. We could probably try it with the current system, with existing values. High strength high AP weapons will annihilate infantry - what usually happens if you shoot a dude with a missile launcher?

Things this could fix:
Marine survival vs guardsmen (making marines worth more)
tank survival vs massed teeny tiny guns - generally getting a 2+ save
speed of the game

Things this could cause problems with:
balance of the game (could be addressed with blanket changes to weapon AP's)
weapons/units who pay for special rules for wound rolls (can be amended to work with the new system, but it's a bit more tricky. rerolls would move to the "to hit" section, wounds on a "X" = + 1 to hit, perhaps. needs work.)

Thoughts?

First thought is that I like it. Seems like it could work fairly well with some changes to units.

My only worry is that it will really hurt High Strength weapons against units with low saves.

Heavy Bolter sitting at S5 -1 AP against a T4 6+ save becomes less effective in this system, (Heavy Bolters vs Ork Boyz.)

I feel that, in this system, it wouldn't be unreasonable to overhaul the rapid-fire weapons like heavy bolters and assault cannons etc to give them an extra shot or two - with the time saved in not rolling to wound, having extra dice wouldn't slow things down. it would need the points balancing though.

Also, considering what a heavy bolter is - a rapid-fire rocket-propelled grenade launcher that fires shells the size of a fist - it being slightly redundant against mostly naked fungus apes isn't too unrealistic. The benefit is the extra shots and range compared to the swapped-out bolter or two lasguns.

If this system were implemented, I would like to see an overhaul of toughness to put more of a gap between guardsmen and things like orks and space marines. leave guard at 3, but boost most things above it by 1, then overhaul the anti-tank weapons to compensate for the tougher tanks. that way heavy bolters have a bit more of a role to play, as an abundance of T8 would mean S5+ would be a real boost compared to S4, the general baseline of 40k.

I hope someone will have the time to do the maths, but I think the wounds characteristic of larger models will need increasing too, as, by cutting out the "to wound" roll, you are faced with models that hit on a 3+ or better being significantly better than others, regardless of the target. 10 boltguns vs T8 3+, for example:

Current: hits on 3+ so 13.3 hits, 2.2 wounds and 0.74 failed 3+ saves.
New: same hits, 2.2 failed saves of 2+.

I've no problem with bigger models having more wounds, and infantry becoming cheaper to compensate for the general loss of survivability. Alternatively, I would suggest that saves become inherently worse, and models (as above) become a bit tougher.

example:
current system, heavy bolter, hitting on a 3+ (S5 AP-1)
vs marine (T4 3+): 2 hits, 1.3 wounds, 0.67 failed saves.
vs ork boy (T4 6+): 2 hits, 1.3 wounds, 1.3 failed saves.

New system, heavy bolter, hitting on a 3+ (S5 AP-1)
Vs Marine (T4 3+) 2 hits, 1.3 failed saves
Vs ork boy (T4 6+) 2 hits, 2 failed saves

New system, tougher and less armour, heavy bolter, hitting on a 3+ (S5 AP-1)
Vs Marine (T5 4+) 2 hits, 1.3 failed saves
Vs ork boy (T5 6+) 2 hits, 2 failed saves

but the same units shot with a lasgun (S3 AP-), assuming 2 hits for comparison:
current system Vs marine (T4 3+) 2 hits, 0.67 wounds, 0.22 failed saves
new system Vs Marine (T4 3+) 2 hits, 0.33 failed saves
new system vs marines (T5 4+) 2 hits, 0.67 failed saves

Looking at this, I'd say the closest is actually to not change anything...

I think I'm slowly persuading myself against this change... it looks to make everything die a lot easier, which was always going to happen when cutting corners on rolling, as you can cut the amount of successes by 6 with each roll. if you only roll twice, the lowest chance of success is 1/36 (6 to hit vs 2+ save) whereas with 3 rolls it's 1/216 (6 to hit, 6 to wound, 2+ save).

That said, if the system were balanced to cope with it, it could work. you just need to reduce the amount of damage things cause and overhaul toughness, points & wounds.