<![CDATA[Latest posts for the thread "Powered Power Armor fixes other armies"]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/16.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net Powered Power Armor fixes other armies The main part of the armour is the massive powered torso which encloses the chest and arms. Beneath the armoured chest plate coiled energy cables transmit power into the arms, effectively multiplying the wearer's fighting abilities three or four times over. During this period most fighting consisted of close combat, warriors preferring to grapple with each other rather than use long range weapons - the power of a warrior's chest and arms was therefore of paramount importance.
Space Marine Armour by Rick Priestley (White Dwarf 129)

Power Armor has bad rules. It has a good save, but that means units that wear it have to pay a lot and get too little out of it.

Power armor sort of has implied rules for strength – Sisters and PA marines can carry vehicle grade weapons the way people carry rifles.
  • Other infantry cannot carry anything as heavy as a multi-melta. Guard use teams of two, Orks use less powerful weapons like rokkits, and even the dark lance is not a tank gun, since if the dark eldar had tanks they would use something more like a pulse laser or prism cannon.
  • Even marines without armor do not carry these heaviest weapons, so the ability comes from the reinforcement of wearing armor.

    • Power armor does not have any rules for being better at using smaller weapons or fighting hand to hand.

    Power armor originally had exactly the same save as carapace armor, except that carapace was so heavy it forced a movement penalty, and power armor did not.

    The only actual rule power armor has is for a 3+ armor save.

    This is bad, for gaming reasons.
  • Models with power armor are usually supposed to be very lethal. However, so many of their points go into their very good save that lethality in shooting is a miniscule part of their identities. Tactical squads are, point for point, less lethal at shooting than shoota boys.
  • Some models, like veteran marines and Death Guard, are meant to be very good at using small arms. However, since basic PA models already spend so many points on armor, leadership, and close combat, the more elite versions have the same shooting ability but vastly better everything else, and so their ability to use a bolter is even more eclipsed.
  • Sternguard are veterans, but the only reasons their shooting attacks are good is their equipment, not their abilities.


    • This is bad, for background reasons.
  • Autocannons are used for shooting materiel like airplane armor and light vehicles. This is exactly the weight of wearable armor that makes PA. When the predator first came out, its autocannon destroyed marines, because it is a tank gun.
  • Plasma missiles are missiles plasma, but do not penetrate power armor.
  • Power armor should not resist Heavy Bolters:
    Normal armor is supposed to resist small arms and shrapnel, but not machine guns. That’s why flak armor resists lasfire, shoota rounds, eldar lasfire, and frag grenades. That is also why flak armor does not resist machineguns: big shootas, shuriken cannons, and heavy stubbers.
    Heavy Bolters are not the human machine guns, heavy stubbers are. Heavy Bolters are the machine guns for power-armor wearing warriors, so they should penetrate power armor.
  • Ork rokkits are anti-tank rockets, for pete’s sake.

    • The overall point is this. The dominant feature of space marines and sisters is their 3+ save, and that is not an ability that the player can actively deploy.

    Marines and Sisters would be better if power armor were weaker. Examine:
    Power armor affords it wearer a 4+ save. Due its comprehensive coverage, models wearing power armor may add one to the result of all armor save rolls. Models wearing power armor may fire weapons of strength five or below one more time than usual, so a bolt pistol would roll two dice to hit, and a bolter would roll a maximum of three dice to hit, three to wound, etcetera. This does not apply to template or blast weapons.

    (so against bolters, shootas, lasguns, etc. it is still a 3+ save)

    This would mean: predators are good. Basic Marines and Sisters are good at killing things, instead of lame. They also have to put themselves in close range, where they can immediately destroy heavy weapon crews, instead of far away, where they can be themselves destroyed by heavy weapons. Guardsmen may not pack so much plasma, since they do not need it to fight marines. Gryphon Mortars are better, so Earthshaker Cannons may be less common, so Terminators are safer. Veteran marines do not have to rely so much on extra wargear to be useful. Storm Shields can be less silly, since they can be changed to a 4+ invulnerable and still be useful.

    Storm Bolters can be less silly. At the moment, they are assault two, which means that even though they are twice as large and heavy as a bolter, a guardsmen can wave one around more easily than a bolter. The reason they are assault two is that third edition TDA had no version of relentless. If TDA has the same rules for shooting bolters as power armor, then storm bolters can switch to just combi bolters, and the two effects combined mathematically double the shooting power of a Terminator with a storm bolter. Examine:

    Terminator or Tactical Dreadnought Armor affords its wearer a 2+ save and makes the model relentless. When firing weapons of strength four or less, it follows the same rules as power armor. Models wearing TDA may treat bolters, storm bolters, and combi-weapons as though they were close combat weapons. They also may take a 5+ invulnerable save.

    Storm Shields afford their bearers invulnerable saves of 4+

    Storm bolters are twin linked bolters / combi bolters.


    This is not meant to "fix" space marines. It improves the gameplay for most factions playing against power armored models, and it makes list construction a lot more interesting. This is not a fix to space marines, it is a fix to their predator tanks, to gryphon mortars, to grenade launchers, to eldar warwalkers (missile launchers). If you were going to fix space marines, you would want to change their other options and possibly add fnp or something on top of the power armor. It would still fundamentally improve most armies' interactions with marines, and marines' interactions with most armies. Just changing power armor this way, however, would involve very little points adjustment to marines.

    You now have models that can erase any moderately armored infantry they get within 12" of, and that are hard to kill with small arms or close combat attacks, and are not any more expensive, and perhaps less expensive, than ones with regular 3+ power armor. They also have to get close to the enemy, where they are more efficient at killing than the enemy is at killing them, which is the entire point of shock infantry.

    The dominant feature of space marines and sisters is their 3+ save, and that is boring because it is not an ability that the player can actively deploy.
    ]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6016677.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6016677.page GMT     Re:Powered Power Armor fixes warhammer Sisters have never been able to carry actual vehicle grade weapons like plasma cannons, heavy bolters, or autocannons.
    Also Lore wise most of the power goes to the recycling and life support systems, and killing the burden and weight on the wearer the armor would normally have. It doesn't actually increase strength like you think it does.
    ]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6016704.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6016704.page GMT     Powered Power Armor fixes warhammer
    The arms race in warhammer is allready terrible lopsided towards weapons as it is, up to the point where an entire game can be decided purely by the alpha strike.
    What marines need atm is something to make them MORE durable, not less.]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6017683.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6017683.page GMT     Re:Powered Power Armor fixes warhammer
     TheSaintofKilllers wrote:
    Marines don't need the armor to carry vehicle weapons due to being 8 feet tall, with like 4 hearts.
    Sisters have never been able to carry actual vehicle grade weapons like plasma cannons, heavy bolters, or autocannons.
    Also Lore wise most of the power goes to the recycling and life support systems, and killing the burden and weight on the wearer the armor would normally have. It doesn't actually increase strength like you think it does.


    http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat660016a&prodId=prod1300031a

    Power Armour most certainly increases your strength; that's always been the case. It's represented in the FFG RPGs, it's mentioned in fluff and it's what allows Sisters of Battle to haul around (let alone fire while standing!) Heavy Bolters.]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6017767.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6017767.page GMT     Powered Power Armor fixes warhammer
    Models with power armor are usually supposed to be very lethal. However, so many of their points go into their very good save that lethality in shooting is a miniscule part of their identities. Tactical squads are, point for point, less lethal at shooting than shoota boys.


    Is this really a problem though? They should be both more powerful individually and more powerful en masse than a similar number of cheap shooty troops?

    I think that elite dudes like Space Marines should always lose point for point with more hordy stuff.

    Agree with the other points though, but this *is* 40k after all - if you wanted this sort of depth, your about 4 editions too late]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6017841.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6017841.page GMT     Powered Power Armor fixes warhammer
    DrunkPhilisoph wrote:Unneccessary roling for stormshields, you could get the same result by just halving their save (making them pretty much useless).

    The arms race in warhammer is allready terrible lopsided towards weapons as it is, up to the point where an entire game can be decided purely by the alpha strike.
    What marines need atm is something to make them MORE durable, not less.

    Storm shields were a bad choice of words. They are just supposed to be 4+, with the idea that power armor is desperate for any kind of inv. save, and that a new meta makes terminator armor less dependent on that 3++.

    I don't think durability is really something to worry about. For one thing, any unit of PA can be depleted very well by good application of multilasers and FRF,SRF. Real win-at-all-cost players are not that impressed by power armor in the first place. This is not much of a loss for marines. The main effect that this has is to make heavy bolters better, and since they are fairly worthless at the moment, that is not so bad.

    However, it is giving up something, and that is the point. Space marines are not good at killing things, and they should be actually very good at it. The problem is not that they do not have the ability to be good, the problem is that they have too many other abilities. They do not need a change in overall abilities, just a change in the ratio of their abilities. 3+ save is sort of over valued for what it does.


    Dakkamite wrote:
    Models with power armor are usually supposed to be very lethal. However, so many of their points go into their very good save that lethality in shooting is a miniscule part of their identities. Tactical squads are, point for point, less lethal at shooting than shoota boys.


    Is this really a problem though? They should be both more powerful individually and more powerful en masse than a similar number of cheap shooty troops?

    I think that elite dudes like Space Marines should always lose point for point with more hordy stuff.

    Agree with the other points though, but this *is* 40k after all - if you wanted this sort of depth, your about 4 editions too late


    The comparison with shoota boys? I do not think it is a problem, it is just a striking comparison.

    You said depth though. I actually want less depth, although instead of "depth" I should say clutter. I think that it is easy for models to have too many rules, and in the case of space marines, the power armor would displace combat tactics/chapter tactics/red thirst. At the moment, marines' primary characteristic is a 3+ save, which is so passive it mostly happens in opponents' turns and cannot be deliberately used. The chapter special rules are there address that dissatisfaction, but they are really placeholders, since they themselves are fairly passive.]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019360.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019360.page GMT     Powered Power Armor fixes other armies http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019499.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019499.page GMT Powered Power Armor fixes other armies
    That'd include mega-armor orks, Battlesuit tau, pretty much all Craftworld Eldar infantry, Terminators and so on. ]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019506.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019506.page GMT     Re:Powered Power Armor fixes other armies SS?]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019802.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6019802.page GMT Re:Powered Power Armor fixes other armies
    (Edit: misread, you don't want to fix marines, you want to fix the meta, revised the whole post)

    40k is cluttered, adding special rules to things is not ideal. I get that. But unfortunately, that's the game. Short of a HUGE overhaul, 40k will continue to creak along under its own weight.

    That said, Space Marines are supposed to be pretty badass, not just in terms of lethality but in terms of durability. I get you that they need more killing power right now. And yes, making power armor even weaker would give you plenty of room to increase their killiness while keeping points static.

    But it also makes marines die in droves to a lot of already common, often high rate of fire weapons. These weapons are already out there, all over the place. It means dying to mid-strength heavy weapons and pulse rifles. And it very much blurs some of the distinctions between marines and other armies, like Eldar or Tau. You start trending towards being a glass cannon, whereas right now marines really ARE pretty durable compared to other troops in many situations.

    It also means adding a bunch of new rules to power armor, which you kind of said you wanted to avoid. Weirdness about +1 to saving throws and extra bolter shots. GW has been trending towards universal special rules. If you really want to unclutter the game, some of this could be achieved through USRs instead.

    Fixing the heavy bolter is fairly easy if that's what you want - just change its stats. Making marines more deadly point-for-point could be achieved more simply and logically as well - if power armor is truly overvalued now, you can just make the marines or their weapons more deadly without a price increase, like the new codex pretty much does. If you just want marines to be forced to get up close and personal with the enemy, surprise - they're already encouraged to! They have predominately rapid fire weapons. They're better in melee than at least some factions. Sitting around babysitting a single heavy weapon is usually a waste of a combat squad, unless you're camping an objective, in which case you'd be sitting there anyway.

    Changing the way space marines play without screwing up the faction is a big task. Changing the whole meta is a bigger task. We differ fundamentally on our approach here. Nothing is probably going to change that. But responding to the proliferation of AP2 and AP3 weapons by making marines die pathetically to AP4 weapons, which are and always will be FAR more common? I think you're kind of missing the point of the whole army.]]>     http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6023188.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/550164/6023188.page GMT