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Page 65: Other Covens, Dark Technomancers (All-Consuming) - Change this ability to:
  • Models with this Obsession do not suffer the penalty to hit rolls incurred for firing Heavy weapons in the same turn that their unit has moved.
  • Each time you select a target for a ranged weapon that a model with this Obsession is equipped with, you can choose to enhance that ranged weapon until its shooting is resolved. Each time a model makes an attack with an enhanced weapon, re-roll a wound roll of 1, and add 1 to the Damage characteristic of that attack.
  • If you re-rolled any wound rolls for an attack made with an enhanced weapon, the bearer's unit suffers D3 mortal wounds after its shooting is resolved.

  • ------------
    Dark Technomancers was utterly castrated in the last errata, and rightly so; it was blisteringly powerful. It also had other design flaws; most Wrack ranged weapons (and a bunch of Talos ranged weapons) are Poisoned, and so didn't really benefit from the +1 to wound bonus. The only Wrack/Grotesque weapon that did benefit, the Liquifier, was also already their most effective ranged weapon, and was also completely immune to the Obsession's downside. The downside was also pretty toothless; though the benefit was clearly patterned after plasma "super charge" effects, most "plasma" weapons will destroy whatever INFANTRY is holding them. Dark Technomancers just dealt 1 mortal wound, and with Insensible to Pain that meant 0.66 mortal wounds.

    This rewrite:
  • Nerfs the wound bonus to "re-roll wound rolls of 1". This is weaker for Liquifier Guns, but actually useful on the Ossefactor, Hexrifle, Stinger Pistol, Haywire Blaster, Splinter Cannon, and Splinter Rifles.
  • Increases the downside to D3 mortal wounds. This is the same on VEHICLES and MONSTERS, but means Wracks and Grotesques are eating 1.33 mortal wounds (after Insensible to Pain) per trigger, which is roughly proportionate with other plasma-type weapons.
  • Changes the trigger for the downside to "re-roll a wound roll", i.e. you make an unmodified wound roll of 1, before re-rolling it. This is something that can actually happen on Liquifier Guns, and has the fun side-effect of ensuring you get benefits equal to the costs.
  • Adds the ability to ignore Heavy penalties. The only weapon this affects is the Hexrifle, which could use a lot of help.
  • This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/07/27 12:59:04


     
       
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    As worded, it seems like rerolling the to-wound roll is mandatory, and you take d3 mortals per die rerolled. If that's the intent, this seems way too dangerous for me to ever be comfortable actually using it. I don't want to wipe out my wrack squad because 2 of my 2d6 liquifier to-wound came up 1s. Similarly, I don't want to make a flubbed round of shooting with some talos or a venom that much more punishing by killing off my own unit.

    If that was 1d3 mortal wounds if ANY to-wound dice got rerolled (instead of 1d3 per reroll), I'd probably be okay with the other changes.

    I'd be tempted to drop the Heavy weapons part. I can't think of any coven weapon other than hexrifles that would actually benefit from this rule, and that makes me feel like a better solution is to just buff hexrifles rather than tying their fix to a rider on a single subfaction trait.


    ATTENTION
    . Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
     
       
    Made in gb
    Dakka Veteran




    Wyldhunt wrote:
    As worded, it seems like rerolling the to-wound roll is mandatory, and you take d3 mortals per die rerolled. If that's the intent, this seems way too dangerous for me to ever be comfortable actually using it. I don't want to wipe out my wrack squad because 2 of my 2d6 liquifier to-wound came up 1s. Similarly, I don't want to make a flubbed round of shooting with some talos or a venom that much more punishing by killing off my own unit.

    If that was 1d3 mortal wounds if ANY to-wound dice got rerolled (instead of 1d3 per reroll), I'd probably be okay with the other changes.
    Whoops! That was, er, actually the intent. Fixed.

    The idea is that a normal "Gets Hot" weapon will kill your infantry plasma gunner on 1-in-6 shots (equivalent to 1 mortal wound, or 2 on marines). An "enhanced" Liquifier Gun will instead deal D3 mortal wounds to its unit – that's an average of 2 mortal wounds, which is worse, but goes down to 1.33 mortal wounds, after Insensible To Pain – still worse, BUT you can spread those mortal wounds around, so you don't have to lose the gunner until the last. So it evens out (except on VEHICLES). It's also better on non-Liquifiers, where you're going from 1-in-6 shots to 1-in-9 shots – since misses can't trigger it.

    Wyldhunt wrote:
    I'd be tempted to drop the Heavy weapons part. I can't think of any coven weapon other than hexrifles that would actually benefit from this rule, and that makes me feel like a better solution is to just buff hexrifles rather than tying their fix to a rider on a single subfaction trait.
    Honestly, I'd quite like Hexrifles and Stinger Pistols to be available to regular Wracks, alongside Ossefactors and Liquifiers. The sprue allows it, after all. The problem with Hexrifles isn't their statline – on paper, they're a good gun, hitting as hard or almost as hard as the Ossefactor with +33% range and ignoring Look Out Sir. The problem is that they run so counter to what the entire rest of the unit is doing. Ossefactors and Liquifiers work just fine when you're trying to get up close, but Hexrifles "want" you to hang back and shoot without moving at a great distance... with a grand total of one model in the whole unit that can actually do so.
       
    Made in us
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    RevlidRas wrote:
    Wyldhunt wrote:
    As worded, it seems like rerolling the to-wound roll is mandatory, and you take d3 mortals per die rerolled. If that's the intent, this seems way too dangerous for me to ever be comfortable actually using it. I don't want to wipe out my wrack squad because 2 of my 2d6 liquifier to-wound came up 1s. Similarly, I don't want to make a flubbed round of shooting with some talos or a venom that much more punishing by killing off my own unit.

    If that was 1d3 mortal wounds if ANY to-wound dice got rerolled (instead of 1d3 per reroll), I'd probably be okay with the other changes.
    Whoops! That was, er, actually the intent. Fixed.

    The idea is that a normal "Gets Hot" weapon will kill your infantry plasma gunner on 1-in-6 shots (equivalent to 1 mortal wound, or 2 on marines). An "enhanced" Liquifier Gun will instead deal D3 mortal wounds to its unit – that's an average of 2 mortal wounds, which is worse, but goes down to 1.33 mortal wounds, after Insensible To Pain – still worse, BUT you can spread those mortal wounds around, so you don't have to lose the gunner until the last. So it evens out (except on VEHICLES). It's also better on non-Liquifiers, where you're going from 1-in-6 shots to 1-in-9 shots – since misses can't trigger it.

    Much more reasonable.


    Wyldhunt wrote:
    I'd be tempted to drop the Heavy weapons part. I can't think of any coven weapon other than hexrifles that would actually benefit from this rule, and that makes me feel like a better solution is to just buff hexrifles rather than tying their fix to a rider on a single subfaction trait.
    Honestly, I'd quite like Hexrifles and Stinger Pistols to be available to regular Wracks, alongside Ossefactors and Liquifiers. The sprue allows it, after all. The problem with Hexrifles isn't their statline – on paper, they're a good gun, hitting as hard or almost as hard as the Ossefactor with +33% range and ignoring Look Out Sir. The problem is that they run so counter to what the entire rest of the unit is doing. Ossefactors and Liquifiers work just fine when you're trying to get up close, but Hexrifles "want" you to hang back and shoot without moving at a great distance... with a grand total of one model in the whole unit that can actually do so.


    Sure. I'd be all for simply opening the armory up some more. I feel like hexrifles haven't quite felt right since they stopped being able to one-shot things like carnifexes. They used to be a sort of gambler's weapon. Now they just have an awkward sort of anti-synergy. Maybe they could be changed to do Mortal Wounds as a persistent DoT. So they wouldn't be very good at insta-gibbing things, but that character you took a wound off of turn 1 might slowly fade away to nothing by turn 4 as the "hex" (whatever plague or toxin you loaded into the rifle) slowly did its work. It would make them feel unique and potentially more powerful than a standard sniper weapon without having the same burst damage as a vindicaire, kellermorph, etc.


    ATTENTION
    . Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
     
       
    Made in ro
    Dakka Veteran




    Wyldhunt wrote:
    Sure. I'd be all for simply opening the armory up some more. I feel like hexrifles haven't quite felt right since they stopped being able to one-shot things like carnifexes. They used to be a sort of gambler's weapon. Now they just have an awkward sort of anti-synergy. Maybe they could be changed to do Mortal Wounds as a persistent DoT. So they wouldn't be very good at insta-gibbing things, but that character you took a wound off of turn 1 might slowly fade away to nothing by turn 4 as the "hex" (whatever plague or toxin you loaded into the rifle) slowly did its work. It would make them feel unique and potentially more powerful than a standard sniper weapon without having the same burst damage as a vindicaire, kellermorph, etc.
    That could be interesting.

    I appreciate it's very churlish to complain, given how powerful the faction currently is, but in general I feel like Wych/Wrack weapons have been mishandled this time around. Wyches are basically fine, each weapon has its own use-case, but the daft "only what's in the box" mentality means you can't specialize squads or put those weapon in smaller units.

    Wracks, meanwhile, are a purely melee unit that only has ranged special weapons. So you're left with the solid Ossefactor, which you can at least fire while you Advance, and the wonderful Liquifier Gun, which does everything you'd want for this unit, but neither really have much to do with the Wrack's actual purpose. Then you have nine additional special weapon options, seven of them melee/pistol, two of them ranged, all of which are limited to one-per-unit, most of which aren't especially significant, some of which don't dovetail with anything the unit wants to do... and which include the Electrocorrosive Whip, which is ridiculously overpowered compared to its peers.

    I feel like either the Tools of Torture should have been expanded to the whole unit - and why not, the box set has the bits to allow it - in the style of Wych weapons, or they should be more significant as wargear, so the way you equip your Acothyst changes the "role" of that unit. Maybe the mindphase gauntlet shuts down Objective Secured, or the scissorhand allows you to assign melee wounds caused by the unit instead of your opponent. Weird stuff like that.

    Your hexrifle example slots neatly into the latter; make the hexrifle significant enough that this becomes A Hexrifle Unit, rather than just a unit of Wracks who happen to be awkwardly carting around a sniper rifle.
       
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    I'd love for the coven weapons to regain some of their juicy flavor. Most of them were introduced in the 5th edition codex where they complicated but really unique. Now, they're watered down, flavorless, and compete with each other so directly that half of them are never taken. I'd be all for giving them more impactful special rules. Something like...

    *Models equipped with mindphase gauntlets can reduce the Attacks characteristic of an enemy model within 1" by 2 (to a minimum of 1) at the start of the Fight phase. Basically the banshees' Disarming Strike exarch power, but via fuzzy brain glove.

    * Flesh Gauntlets become damage 0. However, for each unsaved wound, the enemy unit suffers a mortal wound at the end of the Fight phase as the tumors reach harmful sizes. Probably have to remove the flesh gauntlets as a weapon on the grotesques, but that's not a big loss at the moment. Alternatively, just make flesh Gauntlets S User AP0 Dd6 representing their lack of a power field but their potential to devastate a target with a single attack. (With a special rule limiting them to just D1 vs vehicles.)

    Not sure what I"d do with the rest exactly, but I'd love a return of some of the more whacky coven weapons like the interdimensional attacks, the daemonic genie bottle, etc. You could probably turn a crucible of malediction into some sort of weapon or other piece of wargear and power it up a bit too.

    Covens used to be the subfaction faction with the most creatively messed up weapons. Now they're mostly just a set of AP/Damage/Poison sliders with half the weapons being clearly outclassed by the other half.


    ATTENTION
    . Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
     
       
    Made in gb
    Dakka Veteran




    Wyldhunt wrote:
    I'd love for the coven weapons to regain some of their juicy flavor. Most of them were introduced in the 5th edition codex where they complicated but really unique. Now, they're watered down, flavorless, and compete with each other so directly that half of them are never taken. I'd be all for giving them more impactful special rules. Something like...
    The Aspect Warrior powers are a great model to work off, you're right. You could even add them back to Grotesques, as a one-per-unit choice to customise those. They might not even need to be weapons, unless it's easier to model them as such.

    Yeah, I'm increasingly convinced that the way to go is shoving all ranged weapons into a single ranged weapons category available to all models (Ossefactor, Liquifier, Hexrifle, Stinger), for a total of 1-per-5 (or 1, +1-per-5, if you want to maintain current compositions), and then letting the Acothyst take a single significant "ability" weapon. Maybe give it an ability which also does something interesting with the Agoniser/Venom Blade, or just leave them as cheap/vanilla options.
       
     
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