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While Toughness 8 is (I believe) the max that can be found in any codex, some FW models go as high as 16 (Imperator-class titan). I really think it shouldn't go any higher than 8.

From a gaming perspective, Toughness 16 means that the Strength value of the overwhelming majority of weapons has little or no importance. Weapons such as meltaguns only wound T16 on a 6; the same odds as a lasgun (before saves). That's kind of absurd! What good is even a Strength value at this point? Yes, I realize models such as Imperators are not really meant for conventional games, but still.

From a "meta" standpoint, just because something is huge does not make it immune to damage. Toughness does not represent how much damage a unit can take before it goes down; Wounds do that. Toughness only represents how much damage the unit can shrug off with no ill effects. Some models such as Leman Russes and Land Raiders have T8 because they have several-inch-thick adamantium armor, but even that armor has its limits. If hit head-on by a missile or a lascannon, metal will melt or dent, wires will be exposed, and that gun turret may not be able to pivot quite as smoothly.

Once you get to T8, "hugeness" should translate solely into additional Wounds, not additional Toughness. Because I'm pretty sure there is no substance in the 40k universe that a meltagun has only 1/6 chance of damaging. Or if there is, they don't make vehicles out of it.

.

The Titans are already terrible, and you want to nerf them?

- There is no such thing as an Imperator Titan in the game. The Warlord Titan is what you are referring to.

- Tell me exactly when this actually did affect you? Titans are models which cost at least one Army pointswise. Warlord Titans cost SIX THOUSAND POINTS. They dont stand a chance against anything but other superheavies. Actually all Titans suck from a "meta" standpoint.

- From the "meta" standpoint again: There are NO toughness 9+ vehicles in the game which actually are any good. Take the Fellblade for example which has toughness 9 but is so much worse than a Baneblade that nobody ever fields it.

- Toughness 9+ is actually so rare that i'm genuinely confused anyone is offended by this.

- Yes toughness 16 is absolutely ridiculous. But then there is only two models which have that none of which you are likely to ever see in person and even less so on the field. Why on earth does this offend you?

- Why cap at 8 and not at … 10? Is that some bias against forgeworld again?

Edit: Btw there are weapons up to strength 20. Strength 16 actually is not that uncommon. I mean: You are complaining that a Handheld device that pokes hot holes isnt likely to wound a mecha which is tall as a multi storage building.

To sum it up: I disagree.

Actually, the floor need to be lowered to make room for more T2 units. There are no T1 units to my knowledge in this game, and units like rippers and nurglings (most SWARM units) needs to be bumped down to T1 so units like guardsmen can be T2 to be more appropriate for their cost.

 skchsan wrote:
Actually, the floor need to be lowered to make room for more T2 units. There are no T1 units to my knowledge in this game, and units like rippers and nurglings (most SWARM units) needs to be bumped down to T1 so units like guardsmen can be T2 to be more appropriate for their cost.

The problem with this approach is that Toughness isn't linear. Toughness 1 gives an 83% wounding chance to any non-Strength 1 weapon – i.e. almost every weapon in the game. Even just a single extra point, up to Toughness 2, kicks down the (very common) Strength 3 weaponry to 66%. Another pip, up to Toughness 3, kicks the (very common) Strength 3 down to 50%, and the (even more common) Strength 4/5 down to 66%. Toughness 4 then kicks Strength 3 and 4 down to 33% and 50%, respectively, and boots Strength 6 down to 66%. The higher you go, the less significant the returns tend to be. Lower Guard to Toughness 2, and they're wounded on 2+ by most basic weapons.

The removal of Toughness tables was a good decision that streamlined the game's processes a lot, but it also produced some perverse mathematics, especially when legacy statlines are taken into account. If you want to fix Toughness, you'd be better off outright restructuring the whole "to wound" system. One option would be to make it more linear – turn Toughness into a flat modifier against Strength, with the attacker rolling for a pre-set target number, for example. Another would be to make it more abstract – take a cue from Apocalypse, and reduce units to Light/Medium/Heavy/Superheavy, with modifiers for being Infantry/Bikers/Monsters/Vehicles.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The Titans are already terrible, and you want to nerf them?

Well, then, if they're terrible, their points cost should go down accordingly.

Morkphoiz wrote:
- From the "meta" standpoint again: There are NO toughness 9+ vehicles in the game which actually are any good. Take the Fellblade for example which has toughness 9 but is so much worse than a Baneblade that nobody ever fields it.

This strikes me as more of a problem with its points cost than insufficient Toughness.

I realize that huge gunfire-magnets such as Titans are not very advantageous. But I think adjusting their points cost downwards (as opposed to adjusting their stats upwards) is very good for players and GW. It means players have more incentive to buy the big stuff, since they can now field it in normal-sized games. Nobody's gonna shell out a week's pay for a 1,500-pt model that they'll use maybe once or twice a year.

- Toughness 9+ is actually so rare that i'm genuinely confused anyone is offended by this.

I am not "offended"; sorry if my post somehow gave you the impression that I was clutching my pearls in red-faced outrage. I'm just pointing out how: 1. overly high Toughness values end up "equalizing" weapons with a significant Strength difference such as lasguns and heavy bolters, which is dumb af, and 2. when you get to T8+, Wounds are a better way to represent the vastness of a Titan (which you can damage, but still won't go down) than Toughness.

.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The Titans are already terrible, and you want to nerf them?

Well, then, if they're terrible, their points cost should go down accordingly.

Morkphoiz wrote:
- From the "meta" standpoint again: There are NO toughness 9+ vehicles in the game which actually are any good. Take the Fellblade for example which has toughness 9 but is so much worse than a Baneblade that nobody ever fields it.

This strikes me as more of a problem with its points cost than insufficient Toughness.

I realize that huge gunfire-magnets such as Titans are not very advantageous. But I think adjusting their points cost downwards (as opposed to adjusting their stats upwards) is very good for players and GW. It means players have more incentive to buy the big stuff, since they can now field it in normal-sized games. Nobody's gonna shell out a week's pay for a 1,500-pt model that they'll use maybe once or twice a year.

- Toughness 9+ is actually so rare that i'm genuinely confused anyone is offended by this.

I am not "offended"; sorry if my post somehow gave you the impression that I was clutching my pearls in red-faced outrage. I'm just pointing out how: 1. overly high Toughness values end up "equalizing" weapons with a significant Strength difference such as lasguns and heavy bolters, which is dumb af, and 2. when you get to T8+, Wounds are a better way to represent the vastness of a Titan (which you can damage, but still won't go down) than Toughness.

.

Well, I still disagree. Antitank weapons are not only defined by their ability to wound stuff but also by the damage they do. A single melta for example does d6 damage, a lasgun only 1. Heavy Bolters and Lasguns also do not have the armor Penetration value of a melta.
I actually am really fond of t9+ vehicles because they are just so rare compared to weapons with ridiculous Strength values. Titan level superheavies *should* be astonishingly hard to kill. Your main point was melta vs toughness 16 but as I said: A handheld assault weapon which is portable even by astra militarum grunts should NOT be able to reliably hurt the largest and most sophisticated warmachines of mankind. Toughness 16 also only applies to the largest Titan around which is supposedly worth not one but a few armies in Points.
Other Titans are a lot less durable and I dont see why you wouldn't need anti-Titan weapons to reliably put hurt on a Titan.
It is also the one thing that makes the large Titans special. Nothing else has that kind of toughness value. Why is it a concern to you anyways? Did you ever even encounter an opponent with a model like this?

RevlidRas wrote:
Lower Guard to Toughness 2, and they're wounded on 2+ by most basic weapons.

Exactly.

I feel the exact opposite-Guardsmen should be S/T4, Marines S/T6, and everything else adjusted accordingly. They unbound the stat range, and then didn't use it.

Fwiw a Chaos Knight of Infernal House can be T9. So, naturally I disagree.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I feel the exact opposite-Guardsmen should be S/T4, Marines S/T6, and everything else adjusted accordingly. They unbound the stat range, and then didn't use it.

I agree. GW kept everything essentially the same, even though they completely changed the wounding chart.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I feel the exact opposite-Guardsmen should be S/T4, Marines S/T6, and everything else adjusted accordingly. They unbound the stat range, and then didn't use it.

Like how they implemented keyword system and only use them for interacting with ruins and list building.

Morkphoiz wrote:
Well, I still disagree. Antitank weapons are not only defined by their ability to wound stuff but also by the damage they do. A single melta for example does d6 damage, a lasgun only 1. Heavy Bolters and Lasguns also do not have the armor Penetration value of a melta.
I actually am really fond of t9+ vehicles because they are just so rare compared to weapons with ridiculous Strength values. Titan level superheavies *should* be astonishingly hard to kill. Your main point was melta vs toughness 16 but as I said: A handheld assault weapon which is portable even by astra militarum grunts should NOT be able to reliably hurt the largest and most sophisticated warmachines of mankind. Toughness 16 also only applies to the largest Titan around which is supposedly worth not one but a few armies in Points.
Other Titans are a lot less durable and I dont see why you wouldn't need anti-Titan weapons to reliably put hurt on a Titan.
It is also the one thing that makes the large Titans special. Nothing else has that kind of toughness value. Why is it a concern to you anyways? Did you ever even encounter an opponent with a model like this?

The core question is how many lasguns should it take to equal one meltagun? Against a Rhino that number is 21, Land Raider 26, Leman Russ 16, full wound Warlord Titan 3,5. You might think it perfectly acceptable that meltaguns do almost nothing to a Warlord Titan, but why should lasguns do so relatively much? Doubling the Warlord Titan's Wounds characteristic at the cost of halving its toughness would make it survivable against lasguns which shouldn't be able to hurt it, but are actually surprisingly effective. 840 shots to kill one might sound like a lot, but that's about 1500 pts of Infantry Squads/Commanders killing a Warlord Titan in one turn.

The whole point of a warlord Titan is to be insanely hard to kill.

If you flick an infinite number of rubber bands at someone it won’t kill them, it just doesn’t have the strength.

A lasgun isn’t going to damage something that’s made of ship grade material.

Even a Melta lacks the strength to damage such things.

This is why other titans and anti Titan weaponry exists.

Complaining that basic guns do nothing is pointless, it’s the wrong tool for the job quite simply.

Jackal90 wrote:
The whole point of a warlord Titan is to be insanely hard to kill.

If you flick an infinite number of rubber bands at someone it won’t kill them, it just doesn’t have the strength.

A lasgun isn’t going to damage something that’s made of ship grade material.

Even a Melta lacks the strength to damage such things.

This is why other titans and anti Titan weaponry exists.

Complaining that basic guns do nothing is pointless, it’s the wrong tool for the job quite simply.

The problem is that lasguns are too effective.

If they want to keep their current S vs T system (which is not the same as the old one), then they need to lean into the wider possible spread.

They need higher strength and toughness, not lower.

But they also need to extend the comparison chart:

S=T 4+
S>T 3+
S=2xT 2+
S=3xT auto wound
T=3xS auto fail to wound

But this only works if you re stat everything with this in mind and push stats out really far.

It conveniently creates a rather soft gap between infantry and vehicle toughness vs strength.

T3 will be auto wounded by S9+, T4 12+ etc.

It also means that t9 can't be hurt by S3 or less, t12 S4 or less etc.

If you can rewrite them all with this in mind you can separate vehicles and anti infantry vs anti tank weapons.

One serious consideration is to remove the multiple range on SvT.

So no more "strength double toughness" or "Toughness double strength".
S 3 or more less than T, cannot hurt
S 2 less than T, 6+
S 1 less than T, 5+
S=T, 4+
S 1 more than T, 3+
S 2 more than T, 2+
S 3 or more more than T, auto-wound

Doubles and halves all stretch when you get to big numbers. With the current SvT, what happens if a S1 gun fires at a T2 model - is it one less, or half?

so matched weapons (S~T) well be unaffected by the change, but potshots (fire all the lasguns, this titan surely will succumb!) will become useless.

It would drive the meta in that armies would need the right answer for things rather than taking whatever. And you might have to drop wound pools a little, but most anti-tank still does D6 damage, so still effective.

I remember going through my army lists noting "AT", "AI" and "AH" (for anti tank, anti infantry and anti horde) to make sure I had the right stuff. Now, buckets of dice are the answer to anything.

I think they should have gone with toughness above 8.

At the very least, standard vehicles should have been 8 and heavy vehicles 9.

The issue as I see it is that with vehicles being predominantly T7 and heavy vehicles being T8, basically all tanks and AT weapons are reduced into having one profile, and there's no benefit to actually having high strength [like the Railcannon]. basically, all vehicles are effectively the same and all weapons are effectively the same. The difference between a S9 Lascannon, S10 Railcannon, S8 Missile Launcher, and S8 Meltagun is effectively negligible now, when it used to be a serious difference between all of those [A missile launcher, for example, was outright ineffective against heavy vehicles, while a Meltagun or Railcannon was specialized for killing them]. Even if you come from the angle of wounds and damage being another metric... basically all tanks have 10-12 wounds, and all AT weapons do 1d6 damage, so they're still basically universally the same.

The vulnerability of a Heavy Tank versus a Light Tank to infantry small arms is not a defining, differentiating, or usefully descriptive feature to base the benchmark for vehicle damage upon.


T8-T9 vehicle would have given us a range of vehicle resilience pretty much in the range of anti-tank weapon strengths, allowing for a meaningful differentiation between light, medium, and heavy vehicles and light, medium, and heavy AT weapons.

Seems reasonable to me that a melta would need to be lucky to do any real damage to a titan. Titans should mostly only be damageable by specialist, titan killing weaponry, as it is in the background.

 Da Boss wrote:
Seems reasonable to me that a melta would need to be lucky to do any real damage to a titan. Titans should mostly only be damageable by specialist, titan killing weaponry, as it is in the background.

Wouldn't it make more sense they'd have a negative to wound modifier then? So lasguns/heavy bolters couldn't hurt them?

T should be at range of 1-10 with S greater or equal to 3 times T being autowound and S less than or equal to 3 times T unwoundable.

This 'everything can hurt anything' approach is giving too much power to quantity.

I still think losing multiples from the equation entirely is what's needed. we currently have a very skewed system:

to need a 6+ to wound:

S1, T2
S2, T4
S3, T6
S4, T8
S5, T10
S6, T12
S7, T14
S8, T16
S9, T18
S10, T20

So, if we consider (as we generally always have) that S8+ is anti-tank, S5-7 is anti-elite and S1-4 is anti-chaff, then for tanks to have meaningful toughness, they need to be T14, so S7 struggles against them.

Or, you remove multiples, and have a 2-higher system - T=2 higher than S, 6+ to wound.

Then all the mid-range weapons become less effective at killing vehicles. S6 goes back to being overkill vs chaff but underkill vs vehicles, but good at anti-transport as they are usually weaker (AV11 in old money).

 skchsan wrote:
T should be at range of 1-10 with S greater or equal to 3 times T being autowound and S less than or equal to 3 times T unwoundable.

This 'everything can hurt anything' approach is giving too much power to quantity.

Partly agree. Partly disagree. Despite the doomsaying at the dawn of 8th, lasguns never ended up being the ultimate in knight-killing technology. Currently, small arms can contribute against tanks and knights, but they're not an efficient answer to those targets on their own.

Unless I'm mistaken, people aren't generally dealing with tanks using lasguns; they're dealing with them using a mid-strength-mid-damage weapon like a disintegrator or imperial fist heavy bolters or various plasma weapons or autocannon variants. So making it impossible for small arms like lasguns or shootas to hurt heavy vehicles doesn't actually nerf the go-to anti-tank options, but it does make it easier to (intentionally or unintentionally) bring a hard skew list to the table that is literally impossible for huge chunks of the enemy army to interact with. I don't want to go back to 7th edition knights or 5th edition parking lots that killed anti tank units first and then spent the rest of the game all but untouchable.

That said, I do like the idea of auto-wounding if your strength is sufficiently high compared to the target's toughness, and I wouldn't mind making 6's to wound happen on T = 3x Strength IF we bumped up toughness values here and there a bit.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
T should be at range of 1-10 with S greater or equal to 3 times T being autowound and S less than or equal to 3 times T unwoundable.

This 'everything can hurt anything' approach is giving too much power to quantity.

Partly agree. Partly disagree. Despite the doomsaying at the dawn of 8th, lasguns never ended up being the ultimate in knight-killing technology. Currently, small arms can contribute against tanks and knights, but they're not an efficient answer to those targets on their own.

Unless I'm mistaken, people aren't generally dealing with tanks using lasguns; they're dealing with them using a mid-strength-mid-damage weapon like a disintegrator or imperial fist heavy bolters or various plasma weapons or autocannon variants. So making it impossible for small arms like lasguns or shootas to hurt heavy vehicles doesn't actually nerf the go-to anti-tank options, but it does make it easier to (intentionally or unintentionally) bring a hard skew list to the table that is literally impossible for huge chunks of the enemy army to interact with. I don't want to go back to 7th edition knights or 5th edition parking lots that killed anti tank units first and then spent the rest of the game all but untouchable.

That said, I do like the idea of auto-wounding if your strength is sufficiently high compared to the target's toughness, and I wouldn't mind making 6's to wound happen on T = 3x Strength IF we bumped up toughness values here and there a bit.

Lasguns were nerfed, Tank Commanders buffed. 360 3-pt fearless Conscripts wouldn't have flinched at the full power Castellan.

The game needs more stat variety, not less.

Martel732 wrote:
The game needs more stat variety, not less.

Agreed.

For the current system (with it's "double toughness" skew) needs toughnesses of 12 for light vehicles, 14 for medium and 16 for heavy vehicles.
Then the anti-tank weapons need to be brought up to match.

Essentially you need a gap - S&T of 1 to 6 is infantry/anti-infantry, and S7+ and T12+ is tank/anti-tank. Some wiggle room in the middle for weaker monsters and ultra-light vehicles.

 vict0988 wrote:

Lasguns were nerfed, Tank Commanders buffed. 360 3-pt fearless Conscripts wouldn't have flinched at the full power Castellan.

Sorry. I'm not following what you're trying to say. How does that relate to the topic at hand?

Bring back the old wound chart. increase toughness of some things and decrease of others. Low grde small arms just should not be able to do anything against some war machines period. This is lunacy...

Also, wraithknights should be at least T9.

Alas as things are I honestly have never encountered anything with toughness higher than 8 out in the wild of pick up 40k games. If it did exists at least I could justify D-cannons.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Lasguns were nerfed, Tank Commanders buffed. 360 3-pt fearless Conscripts wouldn't have flinched at the full power Castellan.

Sorry. I'm not following what you're trying to say. How does that relate to the topic at hand?

Lasguns did become OP, Cultist autoguns as well.

You can go back to the original system and make it even more restrictive, thereby keeping stats smaller.

Ie the table used to allow one extra step S4 wounded t7 on a 6 rather than -.

Drop that extra one off entirely and cap stats at 10 again.

Start at 1 for things, ie grots are s/T1 guard are 2, Orks 3 marine 4 etc.

1-6 is infantry, 7-10 monsters and vehicles (6/7 can be light vehicles and super heavy infantry).


For the issues of units being completely immune to attack, you can make a mass attack bonus where if something can't wound, add up all the attacks from one round.

Roll to wound and count 6s. The first 6 counts as a potential wound. Each 6 after that counts as a strength bonus to determine if it actually wounds.

Ie S3 vs t6. Can't wound. 10 attacks rolls 3 6s. First 6 is a potential wound. Add the 2nd to the strength (to 4) now allows it to wound. If you had rolled 4 6s, you could inflict 2 wounds.
If the target was t7, then you'd need 3 6s to inflict wound and so on.

This only works with multiple attacks.

The wound table would look like this

[Code]
T1 2 3 . 4. 5 . 6. 7. 8. 9. 10
S3 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6+ 6+(2) 6+(3) 6+(4) 6+(5) 6+(6)
[/Code]


The number in brackets being the number of 6s you'd have to roll in a single to wound roll to inflict one successful wound.

If you rolled multiple of these you'd inflict multiple wounds.


EDIT
Nothing can be stronger than 10 or tougher than 10. Wounds aren't capped though.

By starting at 1 for stuff, you also get a wider range of infantryman stats.

Power fists et Al should just be a strength mod rather than a multiplier.

If we go with the previous list:
Grot 1
Human 2
Ork 3
Marine 4
Nid warrior 5
Warboss 6

A power fist adding +2 is gong to be big. A thunder hammer adding 4 is even bigger.

Vehicles
Attack bike 5
Sentinel 6
Rhino 7
Predator 8
Land raider 9
Warlord titan 10

Now you are working within a much more constrained system and don't need to blow out the stats of weapons.

As strength can only go to 10, it means that anti Titan weapons can still only wound them on 4+. Suddenly they are super tough