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I played an affliction Warlock in WOW for about 5 years and DOTS were my bread and butter, especially as SL/SL in BC. I had multiple dot-timer addons and proc alert mods, it was wild. I was thinking about whether or not they could be implemented in 40K. Maybe they could be added to the psychic phase? It might make for much more interesting tactical choices. Apothecaries could get dispell abilities. Psychic units would have to choose if they cast an immediate damage smite, a buff, or a DOT effect. You could have standard dots, which only tick up wound per round or whatever and ended when the caster died, or have special rules for characters/certain models that meant the DOT effects persisted through death.

I dunno, just putting it out there.

Probably not something to be common but it's at least an idea.

Not sure DoT effects would be good for the game.
Most targets have small wound pools. DOTs are only really relevant when you have enemies with health pools larger than 1.

Besides, GW already tried a DOT like effect. Soul fire, I think it was? It dealt damage over subsequent rounds. It didn't last long, they dropped the concept when 8th ed hit.

Not to mention the book keeping. You're going to have to manually track multiple DoT effects on several units. You're also going to have to roll for those units. The game already has enough rolling as is.

To be fair, Soul Blaze had two main issues:
- too many rolls (roll to see if the effect activates, roll the number of hits, roll damage, then roll saves; and
- it had little pay off, largely due to all said rolls leading to it being unlikely to deal even a single wound.

If it was tied to something that couldn't be spammed (like a relic, psychic power or once-per-game stratagem) and thus was fairly easy to keep track of & didn't require 1 million rolls, DoT could feasibly work fairly fine.

The closest thing to a DOT effect we've ever had in Warhammer was Soul Blaze back in 7e (chance of taking extra bolter hits at the end of the phase). It was singularly pointless, it didn't do anything, took extra time to track, and nobody ever bothered to remember it. Adding extra bookkeeping to the game doesn't help.

It's a fine mechanic for an RPG (where you're tracking a very small number of units) or a video game (where the computer remembers the effect exists for you) but Warhammer is really the wrong place for it.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
To be fair, Soul Blaze had two main issues:
- too many rolls (roll to see if the effect activates, roll the number of hits, roll damage, then roll saves; and
- it had little pay off, largely due to all said rolls leading to it being unlikely to deal even a single wound.

If it was tied to something that couldn't be spammed (like a relic, psychic power or once-per-game stratagem) and thus was fairly easy to keep track of & didn't require 1 million rolls, DoT could feasibly work fairly fine.

Maybe like an orbital bombardment or something. Once per battle.

In 7th (and I think 6th) there was a universal special rule (ability shared by several factions) that covered all the damage over time effects in the game it was called Soul Blaze and almost never did anything and was just a waste to keep track of. It could be something GW added to their list of ways to inflict mortal wounds, psychic powers are extremely limited in how they deal damage in this edition, in previous editions, some powers were anti-armour, some were anti-infantry and so on, now there's much less of that. Damage over time is probably what I think is missing the least, psykers universally dealing mortal wounds makes that a part of the game and ensures any tactics revolving around amazing saves and/or negative to hit and to wound modifiers don't get too much out of control at least.

What I think is missing the most for Thousand Sons is Spawn buffs, they're the legion of Sorcerers, they should have a lot of Spawn, they can even make more with psychic powers and Magnus' blade, but they have zero buffs for them. Cult of Mutation having a terrain/movement power instead of the Spawn/Obliterator/Possessed improvement power from the Master of Possession Malefic discipline or something similar is sad. Their WL trait dealing mortal wounds is fine, but why doesn't it turn CHARACTERS into Spawn if they kill them? It would have been great for flavour. You might think it would be useless because it costs reinforcement pts, but you could make it work maybe if it was a 12" summoning more than 1" from enemy units which you could use to grab an objective really far away after Warp Timing a Daemon Prince up the table and suddenly there's a Spawn 40" away from where your DP started the turn. Lastly, the relic giving a flat buff to only the character is boring, where is the random number of bonus attacks or the Spawn random combat bonus? Where is the Spawn buff aura?

The game does have several abilities that weaken targets, making them slow or vulnerable, while they don't inflict damage over time by themselves they can increase the damage of other friendly units done until the start of your next psychic phase, admittedly you're often just using them to increase the power of your shooting phase. Are you thinking something that pays off after 1 turn or on even longer time schedules? Technically Soul Blaze could keep going and going all game if you were lucky, I could imagine something where you roll 1d6 at the end of each turn for each unit with 1+ Soul Blaze tokens, on a 4+ it does a mortal wound, on a roll of 1-5 you remove 1 Soul Blaze token, you could have a psychic discipline centering entirely around Soul Blaze, giving multiple ones or spreading them unto several targets, Tzeentch Daemons (especially Horrors) do kind of need more powers to be playable as a mono-faction. Some people don't like having tokens flood the field and I totally get that, it's not a huge loss DOT is gone.

The DAEMON faction keyword should be replaced with the NEVERBORN faction keyword and they should all get the DAEMON unit keyword. All NEVERBORN TZEENTCH PSYKERS may know up to one power from the Soul Blaze discipline in addition to any other psychic powers they know.

Soul Blaze/Rainbow Discipline
Red Fire assumed to be Smite.

Orange Fire of Transition (Warp Charge 5+)
If manifested apply 1 Soul Blaze token to each enemy unit within 1" of the psyker. Until the start of your next Psychic phase re-roll up to one hit roll, wound roll and/or damage roll each time the psyker's unit attacks.

Yellow Fire of Transformation (Warp Charge 5+)
If manifested, pick a friendly TZEENTCH DAEMON unit within 18" of the psyker. Until the start of your next Psychic phase, the target has a 5+ invulnerable save and each time it passes a saving throw against a melee attack apply one Soul Blaze token to the attacking unit.

Green Fire of Mutation (Warp Charge 6+)
If manifested, pick an enemy unit within 24" of the psyker. Roll a D6 for each model in the unit, apply 1 Soul Blaze token to the target for each roll 6+.

Blue Fire of Metamorphosis (Warp Charge 4+)
If manifested, pick an enemy unit within 24" and visible to the caster, apply 1 Soul Blaze token to the target. You cannot pick an enemy CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 unless no enemy units other than CHARACTERS with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 is closer to the psyker.

Indigo Fire of Change (Warp Charge 5+)
If manifested, the psyker can immediately attempt to summon a unit of Horrors to the battlefield using the Daemonic Ritual ability as if it were the Movement phase. The psyker will not suffer any mortal wounds as a result of doubles or triples being rolled for this Daemonic Ritual. If you roll a triple for this Daemonic Ritual apply D3 Soul Blaze tokens to the closest visible enemy unit within 18" of the summoned Horrors.

Violet Fire of Tzeentch (Warp Charge 6+)
If manifested, pick an enemy unit within 18", apply D3 Soul Blaze tokens to the target.

DoTs could probably be implemented in 40k without too much difficulty. Soul Blaze was just a really bad implementation due to all the rolling involved. If you made it easier to track/resolve, it could be done without too much fuss. For the sake of discussion, let's imagine that all flamer weapons got the "Burning" special rule that looked like this:

Burning (X+):
When a unit without a Burning Token suffers one or more unsaved wounds, put a Burning Token on it. At the start of each Movement phase, roll a d6 for each unit with a Burning Token on it. On a roll of X+, the unit suffers a single Damage 1 AP -1 wound. On a lower result, the Burning Token is removed.

So flamers might be Burning (4+), Heavy Flamers might be Burning (3+), etc. Optionally, add a sentence to let the attacker swap out a weaker Burning Token with a stronger one. So you aren't penalized for spraying someone with a flamer before a heavy flamer.

Other DoTs could have different but similarly simple-to-resolve effects. A liquifier gun might inflict wounds with stronger AP. A gauss weapon might inflict wounds that do more than 1 point of damage but only when used on vehicles. An Animus Vitae might do mortal wounds.

It does add a bit more rolling to the game (1d6 per unit with a token, and then possibly a save and FNP roll), but I wouldn't think it would add *that* much rolling.

Could be fluffy. Would give a little more design space to work with (weapons with high average total damage but not as much instantaneous damage). I'd be willing to play against it.

The important thing would be to limit the number of DoTs available to a given army, or at least the number of DoTs that could be placed on a given unit. 1d6 and maybe a save per unit isn't so bad. 3d6 for 3 different DoTs would be.

If I was going to do a DOT, I'd make it something like:

Bane: Some weapons or abilities cause lingering damage that eats away at a unit, such as corrosive Tyranid acids or deadly Skitarii rad-weapons. These effects add one or more Bane tokens to a target unit. At the start of your Morale phase, each of your units that has one or more Bane tokens suffers 1 mortal wound. Then, remove one Bane token from each of your units that has any Bane tokens. There is no limit to the number of Bane tokens a single unit can possess, but if a unit has more Bane tokens than the highest Toughness value of any model in that unit, the unit is immediately destroyed.

As has been pointing out Soul Blaze was a pointless roll some dice to see if you roll some dice idea

Given 40k current lethal nature no one is going to give up dakka today for maybe slightly more dakka tomorrow, and as you mentioned WoW dots are hard to balance even for maths savvy coders let alone GW's "do it like Jervis" chemical engineers

I could see DOT being instead an effect which triggers every combat phase, for example.

So Typhus' rot cloud would be D3 mortal wounds on any unit within 3" of Typhus, every combat round. So the effect happens in both players turns, which makes it more frequent than normal.

I like the idea of a nurgle psycer having a "Gaze of Death" power which would target an enemy character, and inflict 1 mortal wound every psychic phase as long as the psyker maintains LOS - meaning they don't have to keep casting it every turn, they just glare at them and they start to cough up black stuff. Maybe 1MW on the first turn, 2MW on the second, 3MW from then on.

It would be a cool thing to have, but as people have said, it needs to be rare. And not "only one or 2 per army" rare, like "one per army, if it makes sense for them to have it".

Another would be a scarabs relic for necrons, which can infest a vehicle and slowly turn it to dust - no saves, no escape, but one use only. Use your last 2 turns wisely.


Actually, if the bookkeeping can be made easier, then yeah, it could add a lot to the game. Tankbusta bomms which go off a turn later. Ork Burnas slowly cutting through a vehicle (gaining damage for each turn).

It could be made more common if it can be gotten rid of easily. EG:

"Rippers in the Ranks - A unit takes D6 S3 AP0 hits every combat phase. If the unit forgoes moving, shooting and fighting, it can get rid of this effect."

So they can ignore the rippers to fight on, but they might get their knackers bitten off. not a worry for a dreadnaught, but definitely troubling for a gretchin!

 some bloke wrote:
I could see DOT being instead an effect which triggers every combat phase, for example.

So Typhus' rot cloud would be D3 mortal wounds on any unit within 3" of Typhus, every combat round. So the effect happens in both players turns, which makes it more frequent than normal.

I like the idea of a nurgle psycer having a "Gaze of Death" power which would target an enemy character, and inflict 1 mortal wound every psychic phase as long as the psyker maintains LOS - meaning they don't have to keep casting it every turn, they just glare at them and they start to cough up black stuff. Maybe 1MW on the first turn, 2MW on the second, 3MW from then on.

It would be a cool thing to have, but as people have said, it needs to be rare. And not "only one or 2 per army" rare, like "one per army, if it makes sense for them to have it".

Another would be a scarabs relic for necrons, which can infest a vehicle and slowly turn it to dust - no saves, no escape, but one use only. Use your last 2 turns wisely.


Actually, if the bookkeeping can be made easier, then yeah, it could add a lot to the game. Tankbusta bomms which go off a turn later. Ork Burnas slowly cutting through a vehicle (gaining damage for each turn).

It could be made more common if it can be gotten rid of easily. EG:

"Rippers in the Ranks - A unit takes D6 S3 AP0 hits every combat phase. If the unit forgoes moving, shooting and fighting, it can get rid of this effect."

So they can ignore the rippers to fight on, but they might get their knackers bitten off. not a worry for a dreadnaught, but definitely troubling for a gretchin!

Some of those effects can be had by having an effect that turns off when a unit is charged or charges, so +1/D6 A/S per unit/model if the unit did not charge, perform or heroic intervention or got charged this turn.

Edit: sorry wrong thread