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.

At the moment characters are mostly useless with most having just 1 wound and the only protection they get is a -1 to hit besides armour saves which can be almost nonexistent for some factions. Thematically you want your characters to be meaningful and have some lasting impact on the battle especially as far as named characters are concerned, in a real battle the enemy most likely would not know the exact location of command assets and would not be able to target them so easily obviously some exceptions like a Primarch for instance, so I had a couple of ideas to that end, one or more of the following house rules could be implemented to help rectify the situation.

1) First up simply double the amount of wounds of character models.
2) Make it that characters always save on a d12 regardless of blast size.
3) Implement a rule like in standard 40k where you can only target a character if it is the closest unit or with snipers, this might be a bit op considering how many units you may have to churn through to get to them, I think it might make them near on invincible but maybe that doesn’t matter in Apocalypse.

Any Thoughts or ideas?

Personally I like that characters have very little protection in apocalypse. When entire tank battalions or titan maniples are on the field everyone should be at risk. Individual heroics have a limit in the face of masses firepower.

If you had to pick one of these though, I’d say go for the first one (minus vehicle characters). Saving on a d12 always would be obnoxious. Especially for units that have a good save. Not being able to target characters would be rough considering that in apocalypse there’s much less difference between a normal character and a demon Primarch.

Yes I can understand that point of view but characters are mostly pointless in their current form because they are priority targets, command units would not be easily located and targeted in a real battle and for fluff junkies it’s just cool and fits the setting to have your named characters leading you to victory or otherwise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It also makes their eventual demise more of an event than the anti climatic auto remove we have currently.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Personally I like that characters have very little protection in apocalypse. When entire tank battalions or titan maniples are on the field everyone should be at risk. Individual heroics have a limit in the face of masses firepower.

If you had to pick one of these though, I’d say go for the first one (minus vehicle characters). Saving on a d12 always would be obnoxious. Especially for units that have a good save. Not being able to target characters would be rough considering that in apocalypse there’s much less difference between a normal character and a demon Primarch.

Well the problem isn’t that there’s a limit so how much as how hilariously low it is.
And I think it’s silly there’s not much difference in how many lascannons it takes to kill a SM captain and a dude like Magnus described as the strongest champion period of his god, who showed up on Fenris, and pulled a large imperial fleet to the ground.

With the drastically lower amount of shots in the game single wound characters are less of a priority then units that are dealing all the real damage. It doesn't matter if that one guy is still kicking if I wiped out your unit thats rolling all the actual dice.

Right now if people are targetting your characters with enough shots to ensure they die (getting at least 4 wounds on them) then good. Capitalize on their crap prioritization and cripple or eliminate their heavy hitters.

I quite like the fact that characters aren't super tough to kill, it helps prevent people spamming cheap detachments with cheap commanders just to gain extra cards.

That said I wouldn't mind a small increase in survivability as long as it makes sense.

I'd like a rule that protects the characters whilst they are surrounded by there troops but the fact that damage is only dealt at the end of the round makes this problematic as it gives the opponent no option to remove the protection.

Perhaps something like this?

When resolving damage for an INFANTRY CHARACTER, for each blast marker you may roll a d6, on a 3+ you may resolve that blast marker against a friendly INFANTRY unit within 1" that has already its blast markers resolved this turn and as long as that friendly unit is not itself a CHARACTER.

Its a little wordy and could likely be written better but I think makes sense.

The intention is to allow you to play characters close to an infantry unit and use it as a bodyguard unit, as you have to resolve any markers on the unit first the opponent has the option of killing them to prevent the character passing the blasts off.

I'm reasonably okay with the way characters work, since they mostly don't do much besides generating cards and occasionally buffing somebody a bit. My target priority has pretty much always pointed towards their units first, as that seems to actually have an impact on board control and weight of fire. Fancy that. One exception might be picking off psykers or Guard's leadership bubbles, because then they'll melt under morale problems.

We did however agree that it would be nice to have Light characters own Obscured stack with terrain, so it's -2 to hit an entrenched commander. Next step, if it feels necessary at some point, would be to say you can't shoot them with out of LoS Barrage weapons.