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Blast weapons are a bit odd to me, having played the older editions where you actually had a template, and if you huddled together like penguins, a well placed explosion punished you. good times.

I've been pondering a redesign, because it seems that some blast weapons should have more impact than others, particularly on big, single models, but the current implementation makes them just more powerful vs infantry.

My suggestion is to re-introduce the "Ordnance" profile for big weapons, and rewrite it thus:

Ordnance - a weapon with Ordnance has 2 profiles, both of which are fired each time the weapon attacks, and must be fired at the same target.

The profile would then have a "Direct Hit" and a "Blast" profile.

EG: a battlecannon would have a direct hit of 1 shot at S8 AP-4 D6 damage, and a "Blast" profile of D6 shots at S6 AP-3

This means that the explosion becomes more tuned towards anti infantry, and these weapons (which have always been for blowing up infantry, hence the blast) become more situational on tanks - blowing up the tree next to a landraider will not send bits of shrapnel into the tank at the same strength as if you hit it directly!

This basically separates the direct damage from the collateral damage, and I think would give a lot more variation in blast weaponry. It also allows for blast weapons to be anti-tank, but without making them vastly overpowered (such as a D6 shot weapon with D6 damage, for example).

You can even throw in special rules for some weapons, like rerolling to hit with the blast profile if the direct hit profile hits.

I just feel that this would bring back the "scatter" element that blast weapons used to have - they were powerful, but not always perfect.

Thoughts? any weapons which this wouldn't work with? I know Particle Whip used to be AP1 in the original necron codex if the model was under the hole in the template, so this can work well with that.

I think it'll needlessly complicate and possibly confuse players. If you have a single Battle Cannon fair enough, but when you're packing 5x Battle Cannons, 3x Basilisks and various Mortars you're looking at around 15 attacks to deal with in this weird two-step manner, I can see players losing track of it quite easily.

Blasts could be improved, but I'm not sure what the way forward is. The most simple example I can think of is perhaps make a single hit roll, and if it hits you do D6 automatic hits on the target, if it misses you only get D3 automatic hits. This example almost certainly has its flaws too, but to fully rewrite blasts you'd have to start creating USRs, which is the exact opposite of what 8th Edition was all about.

Personally I don't see the appeal of having a direct hit do more. These weapons were meant to be shot at multi model units, the more the better.

I would like random shot profiles to die a horrible death, and instead be replaced with static shot profiles that improve when shooting at the correct targets (like Demolisher cannons do).

Flamers, for example; Assault 2, becomes Assault 5 when shooting at a unit with 5+ models. Bigger weapons get more shots by default, but need more models to benefit from the improved profile.

I would prefer that big blast weapons (so, not Plasma Cannons or Flamers, or things that had small blasts or templates), have a special ability that if you roll poorly, you "miss" your intended target, and your opponent chooses another unit within 3" of the intended target to become the new target. Reroll the number of shots against that target instead, ignoring targeting restrictions. This helps get rid of "feel bad you got 1 shot" moments, and either causes the shot to just miss on a 1 (no other units in 3"), or gives a reroll when that's not the case.

Bring templates back. Preferably with scatter. Or without, but rolling to hit a number of times equal to the models under the template + number of base shots.

You may believe it or not, but I had the same idea a few days ago.

It’s really weird to find just a post like this

Blastaar wrote:
Bring templates back. Preferably with scatter. Or without, but rolling to hit a number of times equal to the models under the template + number of base shots.

This, so much fun was lost from the game when they got rid of templates and blast markers.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
Bring templates back. Preferably with scatter. Or without, but rolling to hit a number of times equal to the models under the template + number of base shots.

This, so much fun was lost from the game when they got rid of templates and blast markers.

Eh. There was a certain satisfaction to catching a big clump of enemy models under a template. There was also a bunch of time wasted fidgeting with models to get them exactly 2" apart so that the guy with all the blast templates wasn't doing bonus damage to you because you failed to space out enough. Plus, scatter dice lead to a certain amount of (usually polite) disagreement about exactly which way the arrow was pointing and whether one player was rolling close enough to the actual blast marker and so forth.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Zelse wrote:
Personally I don't see the appeal of having a direct hit do more. These weapons were meant to be shot at multi model units, the more the better.

I would like random shot profiles to die a horrible death, and instead be replaced with static shot profiles that improve when shooting at the correct targets (like Demolisher cannons do).

Flamers, for example; Assault 2, becomes Assault 5 when shooting at a unit with 5+ models. Bigger weapons get more shots by default, but need more models to benefit from the improved profile.

This is what I want to see. It allows some weapons to genuinely be better against hordes than against elite squads, gives weapons a niche, and should feel good to use when your humble flamer is doing a ton of hits to a mob of orkz. Though to nitpick, I'd probably scale up the number of hits at squad sizes of 6, 11, etc. instead of 5, 10, etc. Many units start at a minimum of 5 bodies. It's weird to give a weapon anti-horde bonuses when they're shooting at literally the smallest squad size of an elite marine unit or what have you.

All Blast Markers did was make the game last 5x as long because you are forced to space out your models.

How about giving those weapons 2 profiles and apply one depending on whether the weapon hits or misses?

Trollbert wrote:
How about giving those weapons 2 profiles and apply one depending on whether the weapon hits or misses?

The weird thing there is that it implies all "blast" weapons the ability to auto-hit a target. So that flyer doing a barrel roll while camouflaged and those invisible stealth suits are all guaranteed to take at least one hit from weapons that, in past editions, generally had at least some chance to miss entirely.

You could make it work, but it changes up the nature of weapons with such a rule quite a bit.

 Valkyrie wrote:
I think it'll needlessly complicate and possibly confuse players. If you have a single Battle Cannon fair enough, but when you're packing 5x Battle Cannons, 3x Basilisks and various Mortars you're looking at around 15 attacks to deal with in this weird two-step manner, I can see players losing track of it quite easily.

Blasts could be improved, but I'm not sure what the way forward is. The most simple example I can think of is perhaps make a single hit roll, and if it hits you do D6 automatic hits on the target, if it misses you only get D3 automatic hits. This example almost certainly has its flaws too, but to fully rewrite blasts you'd have to start creating USRs, which is the exact opposite of what 8th Edition was all about.

I don't think that this would be overly confusing, if you don't make the "blast" profile reliant on the "direct hit" profile. It's the same as firing a kombi-skorcha, you shoot the shoota and the skorcha. it's no different from having 2 guns, one blast and one direct shot, firing from the same model.

to put it in perspective for the russes, strength and AP aside, it is the same system of rolling as if you fired the battlecannon and a hunter killer missile at the same target, I don't think it will confuse people.

Zelse wrote:
Personally I don't see the appeal of having a direct hit do more. These weapons were meant to be shot at multi model units, the more the better.

I would like random shot profiles to die a horrible death, and instead be replaced with static shot profiles that improve when shooting at the correct targets (like Demolisher cannons do).

Flamers, for example; Assault 2, becomes Assault 5 when shooting at a unit with 5+ models. Bigger weapons get more shots by default, but need more models to benefit from the improved profile.

I just kinda imagine that being hit by the actual shell of a battlecannon is going to do more damage than having it blow up near you. needing a direct hit from a battlecannon to do big damage to a single model sounds cool to me, I suppose.

Increasing the amount of hits as a unit increases is kind of a way to go, I suppose. I would have D3 hits for 5 or less models, D6 for 6 or more, and reroll the D6 if there's 11 or more models. there should always be a cap on how many you can hit - the explosion isn't getting any bigger!

Blastaar wrote:
Bring templates back. Preferably with scatter. Or without, but rolling to hit a number of times equal to the models under the template + number of base shots.

I have a very nostalgic view on this but I agree with BCB; having templates did slow the game down, a lot. I enjoyed it, and if we could somehow remove the problem of spacing, it could come back - for example, if a unit is hit by a blast marker, it takes the D3 or D6 hits (depending on it's profile) and if the central hole is on a model (to streamline / remove arguments, if a "hit" is rolled) the unit also takes a hit from the "direct hit" profile, if the weapon has one. Then add that blast weapons can reroll the number of hits against units of 11+ and it's done, and not over complicated.

Come to think of this, I like it a lot more than my original plan - it still incorporates direct hits, and brings back blast templates & scatter in a way which removes the spacing issue. the biggest benefit of blast will be in targeting multiple units, if you hit 2 or more with the template. you would just need a table for scatter reduction, as BS isn't around any more.

This will promote keeping your units apart, not the individual models.

Just give them a base ammount of shots, and add to that one additional shot generated per 5 models in the squad :

A greanade launcher with frag, would be against a IG squad: d6 +2 shots s3.

Against a horde of 40 cultists it would be d6+8.
Which leads to the next problem, stopping the scalling at some point?

Not Online!!! wrote:
Just give them a base ammount of shots, and add to that one additional shot generated per 5 models in the squad :

A greanade launcher with frag, would be against a IG squad: d6 +2 shots s3.

Against a horde of 40 cultists it would be d6+8.
Which leads to the next problem, stopping the scalling at some point?

I think that would work if you dropped the initial number of shots.

EG a grenade would be 1+1 for each 5 (rounding up)
vs 1 model: 2 shots
vs 5 models: 2 shots
vs 28 models: 7 shots

my main points were:

Blasts should be for hordes, not for tanks
some weapons are anti-tank and also have a blast - hence the "direct hit" approach.

if you think about it: a grenade landing at your feet is a lot worse than it landing 3 feet away, particularly for people with good armour (3 feet away = survivable, at your feet, less so)

how to kill a monster - shoot your laser pointer, or throw a grenade? grenade, of course!

but not in 40k, because the shrapnel is all that happens, not the actual explosion which throws it out.

doesn't it make sense that a grenade, or any explosion, can hurt one model a lot and others around it a bit?

if you think about it: a grenade landing at your feet is a lot worse than it landing 3 feet away, particularly for people with good armour (3 feet away = survivable, at your feet, less so)

No, as someone that had to deal with various types of nades, that wholly depends on the type of nade used.

how to kill a monster - shoot your laser pointer, or throw a grenade? grenade, of course!

that only makes sense against slow moving behemoths, like tanks, and even there that is often way to risky for Infantry.

but not in 40k, because the shrapnel is all that happens, not the actual explosion which throws it out.

A HG 85, one of the most commonly used Handgrenades has an explosive mass of 155 g. TNT This is a Frag grenade.

This is what 200g TNT look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja1xqzBnpas

The best suggestion I have seen recently (in my opinion) is to up the base number of shots for every weapon (say add an addition D6), but cap the maximum number of shots to the number of models in the target unit, unless they have the VEHICLE or MONSTER keyword. That way you potentially get the "direct hit" effect of big targets eating a shell or an entire flamer burst, but the blasts otherwise scale with enemy squad size.

Perhaps it should be capped at squad size +1 or 2 to stop blasts being useless against characters and nearly dead squads.

Not Online!!! wrote:

if you think about it: a grenade landing at your feet is a lot worse than it landing 3 feet away, particularly for people with good armour (3 feet away = survivable, at your feet, less so)

No, as someone that had to deal with various types of nades, that wholly depends on the type of nade used.

how to kill a monster - shoot your laser pointer, or throw a grenade? grenade, of course!

that only makes sense against slow moving behemoths, like tanks, and even there that is often way to risky for Infantry.

but not in 40k, because the shrapnel is all that happens, not the actual explosion which throws it out.

A HG 85, one of the most commonly used Handgrenades has an explosive mass of 155 g. TNT This is a Frag grenade.

This is what 200g TNT look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja1xqzBnpas

If you have personal experience with grenades then I will bow to your superior knowledge on the subject, but can you explain to me which grenades there are which are not safer the further you are from the explosion? surely they must all have at least 3 "bands" of damage, IE if you are on the grenade, you will almost certainly die, if you are near the grenade, you could easily get hurt, and if you are far from the grenade, you would have to be very unlucky to get hurt?

Regarding your statement that the grenade is generally not going to work except against large, slow targets - that's represented by the fact that you get to roll to see if you get a direct hit as well as the explosion.

To flip it on it's head, which might make it clearer - you roll the explosion as normal. You also roll to see if you got the grenade in a sweet spot - right under a charging marines foot, lodged in a crevice on a tank, swallowed by a ravenous gaunt - none of which will make the explosion less effective, but which will cause a single model a great deal more pain.

Doesn't this make sense?

Of course you are unlucky if a nade lands directly infront of your feet, but the reason why you die, in the case of a frag grenade is not, because the thing detonated but rather because you get turned into swiss cheese by the shrapnell, which generally as an radious is only really usefull against "protected" targets if landing within 5 m. (you could run paralles with flak armor.)

And there's the issue, a Frag grenade is significantly more usefull against "light armored units" not against masses.

If you would say Krak grenades that would then be a whole other issue since they supposedly only have half the area covered. I seriously have no idea how GW thinks AT grenades function.....

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Krak_grenade

 some bloke wrote:


but not in 40k, because the shrapnel is all that happens, not the actual explosion which throws it out.

doesn't it make sense that a grenade, or any explosion, can hurt one model a lot and others around it a bit?

I'd argue that the rules for grenades in a game like 40k should not be about simulating realistic grenade physics but about serving the gameplay. A frag grenade theoretically exists to give a marine squad a weapon with a high volume of shots (compared to a bolter) that is effective against lightly-armored, low-toughness enemies. A krak grenade theoretically exists to give marines a weapon that is less generally useful against numerous foes but better at hurting more heavily armored targets. In the past, this was modeled by letting the krak grenade hurt vehicles more efficiently in the assault (fight) phase. Now, it's modeled by letting the grenade wound some vehicles more easily than a bolter, get through their armor more reliably than a bolter, and do more damage than a bolter.

So I don't really care about having rules that represent exploding the first model extra hard and this exploding nearby models less hard. I want frags that feel good when used against hordes and krak grenades that make me feel like I can meaningfully tackle a tank. This is probably better modeled by making the krak a decent anti-tank weapon and the frag a decent anti-horde weapon than by fiddling with primary and secondary profiles on weapons.

If you really want to represent a given gun's superior or inferior abilities against specific types of targets, then give it two profiles. You choose one profile to use when you shoot, and a special rule restricts what can be targeted. So my crowd-clearing artillery with crummy armor penetration might look like:

PROFILE 1
Range: 48", Strength 3, AP0, D1, Heavy d6; this weapon may not target Vehicles, Monsters, or Titanic units. This weapon fires an addition d6 shots when targeting units containing 10 or more models.

PROFILE 2
Range 48", Strength 6, AP0, D1, Heavy d3; this weapon may only target Vehicles, Monsters, and Titanic units.

You could even slap on a, "This weapon automatically hits targets that cannot Fly" to the second profile if you want to represent its splash damage being good at tickling large targets at least a little if you want.

The intended end result here being that the weapon is good against hordes thanks to having lots of shots but less good against vehicles because it gets far fewer shots against those.

My goal for the end result was to increase the strength and damage of the direct hit and decrease that of the blast.

EG a demolisher is something like S10 AP-3 D3 damage D6 shots, I believe. I would propose that the direct damage be 1 shot at S10 AP-4 D6 damage (or even D3 mortal wounds), and the blast be D6 shots at S7 AP-2 D3 damage (it is a big, powerful gun after all).

I just think that it will make blast weapons less one dimensional - some weapons would warrant a weaker blast and a stronger direct hit, and wouldn't lose their anti-tank/monster power, but would become less "take all comers" than they are now.

 some bloke wrote:
My goal for the end result was to increase the strength and damage of the direct hit and decrease that of the blast.

EG a demolisher is something like S10 AP-3 D3 damage D6 shots, I believe. I would propose that the direct damage be 1 shot at S10 AP-4 D6 damage (or even D3 mortal wounds), and the blast be D6 shots at S7 AP-2 D3 damage (it is a big, powerful gun after all).

I just think that it will make blast weapons less one dimensional - some weapons would warrant a weaker blast and a stronger direct hit, and wouldn't lose their anti-tank/monster power, but would become less "take all comers" than they are now.

Except that I'll admit my knowledge of actual explosive warheads is limited, a HE anti infantry/shrapnel blast pattern vrs a HEAT warhead have vastly different blast characteristics.
40k has this slightly out of touch idea that large explosives work on everything, but as I understand it they don't due to the interactions of the blast and the armour requiring a different league of focusing of the energy to penetrate vrs just shockwaves and shrapnel wounds of anti infantry light armour weapons.

Additionally for a game perspective the lost of templates, ordnance and other weapon classifications results in a HE shell being no diffrent in game from a HMG which is just wierd.

Bring back templates, and sell/make movement trays for magnetized bases with "chalk outlines" (or subtle divots) for where models in a coherent squad should go. Optionally, reduce coherency to 1" instead of 2", or enforce chess clocks.

As far as blasts, either do a d6 instead of a scatter die, or make it "roll to hit each model in the blast" or something.

Large blast & small blast just needs better translation, particularly in the point cost.

In the old days:
1. choose a model in a unit
2. place appropriate blast marker
3. hold the said blast marker in one hand, and roll 3 dice with the other
4. using the hand used to roll the dice, hold a tape measure and approximate the direction & distance of the scatter
5. count how many models are under the marker

If we try to understand the rationale for the translation:
1. theoretically, a small blast cannot hit more than 3 models, given that everyone spaced the models out at max coherency
2. theoretically, a large blast cannot hit more than 7 models, given that everyone spaced the models out at max coherency

So given that, the translation from templates where small blasts do 1d3 and large blasts typically 1d6 (although I'd like to see multiples of d3's) more or less makes sense.

One issue here was that the small blast marker RELIED on scatter (must scatter 2" in the right direction to score 3 hits at above scenario), whereas large blast relies on direct hit rolls.

I think it's a welcomed change that positioning doesn't make a vindicator into garbage or godlike depending on the situation, but I think the current point cost assumes that blast/large blast weapons are always godlike weapons and are priced as such which I think needs a revision.

Several scenarios in previous editions also resulted in units bunching up.
-Losing a transport was the big one. Moreso in 5th instead of 6th or 7th, due to emergency disembark being 2 instead of 6 inches, but certain vehicles had far less access rampspace than others. The Chimera, with its tiny rear ramp, meant any surviving Guardsmen had to huddle up really close. And this was all if the vehicle didn't explode and place the surviors in a tiny wreck marker.
-Deep Strike was another notable one, if you could not movr&shoot after.
-Assault had mandatory movement of chargers, as well as mandatory pile-in. It only took one bad Consolidate roll to leave you vulnerable. Versus vehicles (or versus Alpha Legion with a Mindveil), you didn't even get to Consolidate.
-Tank Shock was a less common occurrence in 6th and 7th, but still could find occasional use.

And of course, edgecase powers (Lash, Death is Not Enough, Stomp, etc) all existed to manipulate/fiddle with AOE effects.

Wouldn't a simpler and more elegant solution be a +1 to hit for blast weapons for every 10 models in a target unit? You'd get better returns vs hordes and not have as many extra rules as previous posts. And yes I realise this will interact weirdly with plasma and Tesla like abilities but frankly that should be unmodified rolls.

 Absolute_Maniac wrote:
Wouldn't a simpler and more elegant solution be a +1 to hit for blast weapons for every 10 models in a target unit? You'd get better returns vs hordes and not have as many extra rules as previous posts. And yes I realise this will interact weirdly with plasma and Tesla like abilities but frankly that should be unmodified rolls.

That's a very good idea, it makes it more likely to cause damage to bigger groups without making the explosions get bigger and bigger for more models.

it is a nice and elegant solution.

All multi hit weapons just need price reduction.

 skchsan wrote:
All multi hit weapons just need price reduction.

Really? A battle cannon needs a point reduction? A dissy cannon needs a point reduction?

 some bloke wrote:

 Absolute_Maniac wrote:
Wouldn't a simpler and more elegant solution be a +1 to hit for blast weapons for every 10 models in a target unit? You'd get better returns vs hordes and not have as many extra rules as previous posts. And yes I realise this will interact weirdly with plasma and Tesla like abilities but frankly that should be unmodified rolls.

That's a very good idea, it makes it more likely to cause damage to bigger groups without making the explosions get bigger and bigger for more models.

it is a nice and elegant solution.

The weird thing there is that this benefits different armies disproportionately. An ork shooting a blast weapon with BS5+ (hits with 2 of the 6 sides of the die) that gets a +1 to hit (hits on 3 of the 6 sides of the dice) just increased his hits-per-shot by 50%. An army with BS 3+ (4 of the 6 sides) that gets a +1 to hit (5 of the 6 sides) only gets an extra 25% hits-per-shot. And if you consider that many armies that hit on 3+ to begin with tend to build around to-hit rerolls or other buffs, they're actually not even getting 25% better because they would have been hitting more often in the first place.

Just giving blasts more shots based on the enemy unit size means that your hits-per-shot doesn't change, but the raw multiplier (the number of shots) does. So, and feel free to correct me here, getting extra shots based on enemy unit size scales more evenly between various units/armies than to-hit modifiers do.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

 Absolute_Maniac wrote:
Wouldn't a simpler and more elegant solution be a +1 to hit for blast weapons for every 10 models in a target unit? You'd get better returns vs hordes and not have as many extra rules as previous posts. And yes I realise this will interact weirdly with plasma and Tesla like abilities but frankly that should be unmodified rolls.

That's a very good idea, it makes it more likely to cause damage to bigger groups without making the explosions get bigger and bigger for more models.

it is a nice and elegant solution.

The weird thing there is that this benefits different armies disproportionately. An ork shooting a blast weapon with BS5+ (hits with 2 of the 6 sides of the die) that gets a +1 to hit (hits on 3 of the 6 sides of the dice) just increased his hits-per-shot by 50%. An army with BS 3+ (4 of the 6 sides) that gets a +1 to hit (5 of the 6 sides) only gets an extra 25% hits-per-shot. And if you consider that many armies that hit on 3+ to begin with tend to build around to-hit rerolls or other buffs, they're actually not even getting 25% better because they would have been hitting more often in the first place.

Just giving blasts more shots based on the enemy unit size means that your hits-per-shot doesn't change, but the raw multiplier (the number of shots) does. So, and feel free to correct me here, getting extra shots based on enemy unit size scales more evenly between various units/armies than to-hit modifiers do.

Yet, orks are one of the few armies to be able to to field units of not just 10+, but 20+ etc.... So whilst they may be more potent with blast weapons, they are one of the armies that will also take more losses because of it. It's not a complete solution, as I think you should get more hits for larger squads also, but it does work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think I'd change it to you get +1 hit per 5 models in a unit on top of their dice roll attempt, so for a flamer it would 2+ D6 wound rolls vs a 10 man unit etc. For a non auto hit weapon, they get the same but also the +1 to hit bonus that is above.

So a Basilisk would get 3 plus D6 (still rolling two and picking the highest) at +1 to hit against a unit of 15 boys or gaunts etc.

I think it's fluffy and works well personally. In the case of an earth shaker, yes it does get more killy, but it is against chaff units, it probably wouldn't improve its points efficiency over choosing more heavily armored targets.