Mortal Wounds are a Problem

[Redtoof]

I also don't think mortal wounds are a problem. The problem is in points cost. Units that have access to lots of mortal wounds are often a little undercosted, while the elite units that are at most risk from them are often overcosted.

[Withershadow]

Is this whole discussion really based on an outlier where you were facing Tyranids and FW/psyker-heavy Chaos?  Even at the most cut-throat of tournaments, you won't find Tyranids allied with Chaos. This isn't 7th edition.

[Lord_Caerolion]

More that facing both at once served to highlight an issue that's bad enough when it's just one of them. Smite-spam is being looked at, we know that, but it leaves units that are cheap, reliable sources of Mortal Wounds drastically undercosted for what they can bring, while tougher units like Terminators are costed seemingly without taking those into account. It's not entirely great to play as an elite, small model count army, only to face opponents that can bypass your survivability entirely.

[Gentlemanloser]

Exactly. There's no points adjustments in the march balance update we've been told.

 

So while smite gets changed, biovorse etc won't be increased in points.

 

And the whole point is that changing smite is tackling a symptom of the problem. Not the problem itself.

 

Which is simply for the current ease they be generated globally, mortal wounds are far too good.

[Ficinus]

A secondary problem to mortal wounds is that a lot of invulnerable saves on units with good armour saves are nearly useless. My Sisters all get a 6++, which is barely ever taken/needed, and terminators get a 5++, which is useful against melta and heavier weapons. A 5++ on a 2+ model or a 6++ on a 3+ model has become a fringe benefit. It is better than nothing, but only barely.

 

And then when these poor invuln saves get negated by mortal wounds, it just compounds how useless they feel.

[Beams]

A secondary problem to mortal wounds is that a lot of invulnerable saves on units with good armour saves are nearly useless. My Sisters all get a 6++, which is barely ever taken/needed, and terminators get a 5++, which is useful against melta and heavier weapons. A 5++ on a 2+ model or a 6++ on a 3+ model has become a fringe benefit. It is better than nothing, but only barely.

 

And then when these poor invuln saves get negated by mortal wounds, it just compounds how useless they feel.

In 7th I used my Sheild of Faith save constantly, and it made me surprisingly resilient. Now I forget I even have it.

[Jukkiz]

I wonder why mortal wounds are even in the game really. To kill models? To put fear of it in enemy? Super easy shooting?

Invul saves were, in my mind, always the little safety net against that mortal DMG.

[chapter master 454]

I wonder why mortal wounds are even in the game really. To kill models? To put fear of it in enemy? Super easy shooting?

 

Invul saves were, in my mind, always the little safety net against that mortal DMG.

 

Once upon a time it was. Now invulnerable saves are just another form of saves a lot of units have access to. To be fair, the removal of cover saves (and turning them into modifiers) has helped a lot as now spam lists don't get absurd defense. Now however there needs to be a method of bypassing the save because it is common.

 

However it isn't ideal because some elements imo are somewhat lost. I believe there should of been a retaining of select special Sub-types of weapons with current evaluation now available (so something not possible at launch but now is). One aspect of mortal wounds is their wrapping allowance where mortal wounds never get wasted unless the target unit is fully killed (so if you deal 50 mortal wounds to 50 guardsman, one doesn't take all 50, the 50 are split as needed) however is not great because it is fringe since mortal wounds are only dealt in sets of at max 3-6.

 

Possibly a different modifier could of been added, similar to cover but different. Make Invulnerables more of a AP sponge than another save, as in how they normally work so possibly have a keyword for rules called "Invulnerable X" Where you replace X with a number range from 1-3 or something. That number would then have to be ticked down before the armour save is actually affected (so a space marine captain with an invulnerable of 2 would still have a 4+ save vs. Lascannons). This could lead to having AP become a game of cat and mouse rather than a game of "Well save 5++ on a 3+ armour save isn't bad, not great but better than nothing" and more of an actual benefit as now lower calibre weapons lose effectiness against proper hard targets but High AP weapons can still get some power through.

[Brother Christopher]

I don't like the implementation of the mortal wound mechanic, to be honest. Considering how strong they are, I feel that mortal wounds should be something really special, reserved to the toughest of weapons, and not easily spammable by psychers. But spam doesn't affect me since I rarely play the game. What bothers me more is the source of many mortal wounds which are anti-thematic. Is an exploding vehicle or frag assault launcher really that more powerful than a lascannon or magna melta not to warrant some kind of save? Considering the two examples are basically "just shrapnel" (in a setting of deadly futuristic weapons, this doesn't seem like much), a force field should protect against this kind of damage, right?

 

Apparently not.

[Khornate individual]

Latest victim of enough spam to make the canned product itself proud.  Couple of weekends ago I went down to a friends house to play.  Don't ask me why but my friends have only wanted to do power levels and not points, which kinda annoys me.  We were doing 125 pl points and I took my khorne army.  Wanted to try out some smaller units with berzerkers (5 man units instead of 10 or 15).  I had a pretty good army wrote up and thought it should be a good game.  Well my friend completely ruined the good times and a good game by bringing an army that was nothing but psykers.  He had 12 to 15 psykers, don't remember how many exactly, but every psyker had 5 to 7 acolytes with plasma guns around them.  He tells me before the game starts that any wounds the psyker takes, on a 2+ the acolyte takes the saving throw for the wound (3+ save 5+ invuln and 3 wounds each to make it even more fun).  The best save I had that whole game was a 6 except for my blood letters with a 5+.  Every turn I was taking models off the table from every psyker he had casting smite everywhere.  Daemon Prince gone in 1 turn before he could do anything and to top it all off, I wanted to try the 30 blood letters deep striking in rolling 3 dice for the charge which didn't go well at all.  Lost a few to overwatch lost some more in hand to hand and then......morale!  The 30 blood letters dropped in charged did a few wounds then gone.  1 turn and 30 of them gone, I rolled a 6 for morale and that took out the rest of the unit.

I wasn't able to steal the initiative so the psyker army went first and half way through his turn 3 I quit because I only had 2 berzerkers and Zufor left on the table.  Over half of my army was taken out by the mortal wounds of smite the other half was taken out by morale.

I swear between mortal wounds, smite and morale, I'm about to quit this game all together!

[Commander Dawnstar]

For what it's worth, Acolytes only have one Wound. That was FAQ'd a while back.

[The Unseen]

Well, sounds like your opponent was a dick, who abused not only power level open play, but also didn't follow the beta rule smite nerf, and was using illegal units.

I'd say your opponent was a bigger problem than the mortal wounds.

[chapter master 454]

...wow...that's like asking if you want to play some casual modern magic then they turn up with mono-blue tron or Lantern control (long short: you ether have your turn taken by the opponent until you deck out or they decide what you draw til you deck out).

 

That aside, I think we can discuss something simple to begin with because we have all had our piece on mortal wound annoyance so lets start by taking this discussion somewhere healthy.

 

What are mortal wounds?

I would agree, being a psychic power thing doesn't really rub me right because it limits the imagery of the power. To me, in design you must make sure there are not just balanced elements but something visual pleasing. We can agree that lascannons are visual pleasing to imagine, until we talk Damage rolls but otherwise they feel good. When you point a lascannon at a tank, you KNOW you are going to do damage! (again, damage rolls are not being considered here as that's another issue entirely so please chill on that one so we don't de-rail). In the case of psychic powers, it's the adage we all know and love/hate: "Once everyone is super, no-one is". Psychic powers have had a wonderful leveling off of their power scale but now have a massive issue with this "they are mortal wounds". I certainly do not have the length nor breadth of design history that GW has but within all elements, they seem to be slap dash at best.

Psychic should not mean mortal wound.

Mortal wound should mean serious damage! Mortal Wound should mean it's over. Done. Finished. Game. Over.

 

One way it could be tested is the concept of it being a finisher or "Execution" mechanic that helps push people to finish units off or even counteract units that every wound is a miniature battle. If you would deal damage equal to or double the wounds of the target, the damage becomes mortal. This allow a character to maybe tank a lascannon to the face ONCE but after that...well they need to get some cover. We can visualise it, the lascannons shot burning through even the forcefield of the commander or only just grazing them but the intense heat has put them down, out of breath. The next one WILL finish them.

 

Mortal Wounds need to be a END product, not a beginning one. There would need to be rules implements for this ofcourse, not saying keep everything the same but Mortal Wounds need to be a finisher. 

 

Just a rough idea...a thought anyway.

[Claws and Effect]

@Khornate Individual:

 

Your opponent lied to you.

 

Yes, Acolytes can intercept wounds for an Inquisitor within 3", but they don't get a save because they take a MORTAL wound instead.

 

He played that list illegally.

 

Also, any unit of Acolytes that is more than 5 is illegal. 5 is the max unit size on them.

[kombatwombat]

Possibly a different modifier could of been added, similar to cover but different. Make Invulnerables more of a AP sponge than another save, as in how they normally work so possibly have a keyword for rules called "Invulnerable X" Where you replace X with a number range from 1-3 or something. That number would then have to be ticked down before the armour save is actually affected (so a space marine captain with an invulnerable of 2 would still have a 4+ save vs. Lascannons). This could lead to having AP become a game of cat and mouse rather than a game of "Well save 5++ on a 3+ armour save isn't bad, not great but better than nothing" and more of an actual benefit as now lower calibre weapons lose effectiness against proper hard targets but High AP weapons can still get some power through.

When GW teased AP modifiers during the lead up to 8th this is where I hoped they were going with Invulnerable Saves. Effectively they’d be counter-modifiers to AP; so, if you have a 3+ Armour Save and an Invul of +1, against an AP-2 weapon you’d end up with a 4+ save (3 + (-2 + 1)), a 5+ against an AP-3 weapon and your full 3+ save against AP-1 and AP0 weaponry.

 

What Invulnerable value to give would be similar to how AP transitioned from 7th to 8th Ed: 5+ Invul becomes Inv +1, 4+ becomes +2 and 3+ or better becomes +3. There are a couple of Daemon and Harlequin units that might need a bit of a rethink of their Save strategy but overall I think this would have been a nice mechanic.

[ShinyRhino]

The mortal wounds problem is that they're simply too plentiful and too easy to produce.

When the edition dropped, they were fine. Smite, sniper weapons, wound rolls of 6 are all fine. It's the stuff that automatically creates them for every hit, or tacks them on as bonus damage for easily made wound rolls that's the issue. I've not seen soul burner weapons locally, but if they generate mortal wounds on the to hit roll, that's a broken weapon profile.

 

I don't feel we need another layer of complex wound and save rolls for mortals, we need mortals to go back to being rare and special.

[Khornate individual]

I don't really mind some things dealing out mortal wounds, but like shiny rhino says "rare and special".  The real back breaker for me is morale on top of losses from the MW.  Off topic - thanks for everyone letting me know about the inquisitors and acolytes.  FAQ's will be printed out in a few minutes here for my "friend".