Damage Lethality:

[Kaldoth]

Oh, I totally get what you're saying! Wasn't trying to be confrontational if that's how you took it ^_^ I just don't see how a simple toughness increase is going to solve the issue either. Example, moving a land raider up to toughness 10. Yeah, it'll stop heavy bolters from wounding on fives, but you've still got a million other weapons that are obviously meant to be anti infantry that aren't affected. Assault cannons, for example. You'd have to go beyond 10 for a lot of vehicles for those toughness increases to be impactful, but by doing so lascannons and other anti tank weapons begin to suffer. Heck, even at S10 they suffer. I get a heavy bolter not wounding a land raider on a five. Makes total sense. But lascannons and meltas now wounding on 5s against one? Doesn't make sense. Some vehicles definitely need a toughness increase, but a blanket increase isn't gonna solve the issue IMO :/

[Schlitzaf]

But that is exactly how AV worked. Honestly best solution is “Tanks” (Predators, Fire Prisms, Leman Russes, Excorcist Hammerheads, etc) get the tank keyword which gives a -1 to wound to max of 6. Or more specifically a reverse of “Fly”/Aircraft keyword. And have those units ignore penalty hit to big guns never tire.

[smileyjim]

With the prevalence of anti tank in the game it will be interesting how they deal with knights when they do their codex.

[MegaVolt87]

With the prevalence of anti tank in the game it will be interesting how they deal with knights when they do their codex.

 

If the design studio has any competence, all the xenos codexes would be released first, hordes buffed so you need to start taking less AT, more anti infantry weapons to deal with them, thus correcting the problem naturally. Or just buff knights to doom guy levels of damage + overkill with no survivability increase, which would actually be balanced in the long run as well that way. 

Edited April 21, 2021 by MegaVolt87

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

With the prevalence of anti tank in the game it will be interesting how they deal with knights when they do their codex.

Knights have ion shields so is not as big a deal for them IMO.

[chapter master 454]

Yea, Knights are likely one of the only Vehicle that hasn't been done badly and even then, likely to be done dirty next codex for the sin of the Castellan.

However that does show the importance of needing an invulnerable save or you are just going to be nuked off the board...which knights are also an example of against other armour...Longstrike didn't get a chance.

 

However an issue with it is just how easily anti-tank wounds tanks. Anti-Infantry is nominally high Rate of Fire with ether respectable strength (or above) or some minor AP, however these weapons general do tend to be ether lacking in AP and damage stats, normally meaning they should be good against multiple small targets.

 

So what qualities should an anti-tank weapon extol? AP is certain, few should be AP2 or higher really (lower than that and we could consider them light armour answers). Strength however I feel should be somewhat scaled to the platform. A man portable lascannon can likely remain strength 9 however tank born patterns on main guns should be maybe strength 10 and even likely higher AP and damage. Make infantry answer to tanks not so effective as to basically make tanks just an expensive version of a devastator squad. They should be an issue but not on the level of "handle it or die", more like it will most certainly weaken and make the tank vulnerable but won't by itself be the sole reason it died. I mean, come on...why are land raider lascannons who apparently need entire generators for the same as the ones the guardsmen haul about with a car battery? Would think "Godhammer" pattern would mean they hit fairly hard...no just a second shot bro (and that's only been in 8th onwards...)

 

Again, the primary thing here though is we raise toughness of vehicles and actually adjust armour saves accordingly. Ork Buggies and trukks would not be tough not good for armour saves but this is where we can play with lore specific stuff. Yea, you can blast them and they just come apart but who knows what you just show off...could of been a refrigerated Beveridge holder for all you know. Ramshackle to me for Ork Vehicles should relate to how damaged they are, possibly ether a check against how many wounds they have already taken in the turn (so each time they take damage, roll a die. If the number is less than the wounds it would/will take (whichever is higher) then reduce the damage to 1) or make it an improving save as it degrades, starting at 6 then at worst levels becomes 4+ to reduce damage to 1.

Similarly Eldar could have an inverse rule where the more damaged they become the easier it is to smack them around. Hard to get damage in at first but once damaged, it ruins the defence.

 

Naturally the idea here is to try and bring some sense of unique elements to each faction's line up of tanks, and this would also be something to expand to monsters as needed. Otherwise what difference is there between tanks other than being various stat-sticks. It isn't that being a stat-stick is wrong but when that is EVERYONE that is when it becomes a problem. A Leman Russ being a stat-stick would make sense, it ain't clever but it has a bunch of armour, built rugged as all get out and can run on any fuel you pour in the tank. So if such a tank was just naturally tough, we could all agree: "makes sense". But how does that differ it from the Fire Prism? Who really is just the eldar version of a leman russ and is so similar the only difference is one goes faster.

 

Mechanics and Lore don't need to be one to one but there needs to be elements of lore reflected in mechanics and mechanics reflected in lore. But neither do and it hurts the game.   

[Waking Dreamer]

But that is exactly how AV worked. Honestly best solution is “Tanks” (Predators, Fire Prisms, Leman Russes, Excorcist Hammerheads, etc) get the tank keyword which gives a -1 to wound to max of 6. Or more specifically a reverse of “Fly”/Aircraft keyword. And have those units ignore penalty hit to big guns never tire.

Are you saying S6 weapons and below suffer a -1 to wound on units with the "TANK" keyword? Or do S7/8/9+ weapons also suffer the -1 to wound?

[Waking Dreamer]

I'm assuming as others have already pointed out such a keyword rule would be applicable to SOME non-vehicle units, such as Tyranid Monsters, T7+ Battlesuits, T7 Daemons (such as Bloodthristers who are iconic units but die to chip and anti-tank damage too easily as well) etc. Edited April 22, 2021 by Waking Dreamer

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Tbh I don’t think monsters in general need it as they should be easier to kill and often have an invulnerable save to boot.

[chapter master 454]

Tbh I don’t think monsters in general need it as they should be easier to kill and often have an invulnerable save to boot.

 

Well monsters did get a bad deal going into 8th, tanks got harder to kill and monsters got easier to kill. However that doesn't mean much really.

 

By all accounts monsters should normally ether be a grouping of large boys (think carnifexes) or a singular powerful entity like a HQ or elite unit. Outliers can occur like with Tyranids whose gimmick is being all organic. However normally we would see these things are beasts of burden who ether haul into war massive weapons or are just living battering rams deployed en mass, similar to how in lore Marine sometimes deploy squads of dreadnoughts to spearhead assaults. Their main thing should be "not as tough as a tank but a heck lot more numerous" as in for every leman russ there is at least 3 carnifex sort of thing.

 

It will circle to Toughness and I don't think we can get further than that really. If it were me, monsters would be toughness 7 at most with 4+ saves at best (except for more elite or unique cases) with tanks being able to achieve levels of toughness that go to 12. Most normal tanks would likely start at 8 for low end medium, 9 is standard medium then from there we can get into various levels of what toughness the tank should have.

Again, AP should be a big game changer for anti-armour because it alters the maths so hard. I mean if you could get +3 to hit rolls or +3 to wound rolls it would be insane, that is what AP is like. It can singularly make a weapon have a massive impact despite maybe not always getting to use it.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

The monsters that typically see play are hard to kill... Mortarion, Magnus, Guilliman, Swarmlord, daemon princes, Ctan, etc. They don’t need any more buffs IMO.

[War Angel]

Originally didn’t think this was an issue, but that was before I learned that no tank is T9 anymore, and I think the biggest and toughest tanks should be T9. This would have lascannons effective half the time, which seems right from a fluff point of view. The bigger anti tank tank mounted weapons would still be on 3’s, also seems fair. Meltas would now be on 5’s, but if they get through they pack a big punch, and I can see that being a thing in fluff, as your superheating the outside of the tank, spacecraft have the ability to withstand re entry, so it’s basically slapping the same concept onto your tank armor.

 

Maybe also giving tanks (or vehicles, they’re all armored to some extent) a “reduces AP of attacks by half” ability. Not on the unit entry, but in the big rule book. All vehicles. Monsters don’t need it, because blasting off a piece of a monsters armor with a laser still hurts like hell. And a number of monsters have other abilities to make them harder to kill. Or represent smaller things that aren’t really monsters.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

The monsters that typically see play are hard to kill... Mortarion, Magnus, Guilliman, Swarmlord, daemon princes, Ctan, etc. They don’t need any more buffs IMO.

Between looking at that list and the vehicles that see play it's fairly obvious that an invulnerable save and/or damage reduction is probably more important than boosting toughness past 8.

 

Makes me wonder if a 5++ for most tanks would be enough. I'd probably suggest all the vehicles that already have an in built invulnerable save gain the ability to re-roll ones.

[chapter master 454]

The monsters that typically see play are hard to kill... Mortarion, Magnus, Guilliman, Swarmlord, daemon princes, Ctan, etc. They don’t need any more buffs IMO.

 

And all of those are the special cases because they are HQs. Only outlier there is C'Tans but they brought an Invulnerable along with damage reduction I believe which...-checks notes- the others also bring at least a 4+ invulnerable. Which I will point out that over the course of any game, that is a damage reduction by itself of 50% on top of trying to get through other elements. In fact, by having an Invulnerable they defeat the AP of the weapon in lieu of the "anti-tank" weapon being able to wound them regularly on 3s or 4s.

 

Meanwhile, other monsters are getting dunked on like tanks for similar reasons to tanks and thus all we see are ether the usual suspects as presented here by BBF with a horde of infantry or we don't see them and a horde of infantry lead by some other buff banner boy who can wreck house.

 

Invulnerables used to be rare. In fact for a non-HQ unit to have one was kind of special. Now? Heck, half of a lot of elite sections ether get one by default or can get one (and is often their best option) and even Fast Attacks and Heavy Supports seem to be starting to find their own means of getting them. Maybe weapons have become too lethal considering how important having an Invulnerable is.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I think that invulnerable saves have became more important due more to the mission structure, and mobility increases than the weapons being more lethal.

 

In my experience it's really hard to win a game if your down by more than 10 points in the primary. This makes it difficult to screen for vehicles, and also means that you may have to put the vehicle in a less than optimal position for it.

 

I'm a big fan of the gameplay but it does make fixing vehicles more difficult. If you make them too durable and they're fairly costed you might not have enough infantry to win the primary objective.

[Stofficus]

The weirdness of vehicles is the one constant in all of 40k's lifecycle. GW more or less figured out how to make a fun, engaging infantry combat tabletop game in the 80s, but vehicles have waffled hard in effectiveness and core mechanical function almost every edition. 8th felt "alright" with vehicles, if overly simplified for my tastes, but their effectiveness to cost was reasonably on point with a few strong outliers (Knights, plagueburst crawlers, etc) and some underperformers (almost everything FW less the Leviathan). The one real mechanical "bug" was slapping a land raider with a grot made it combat ineffective. 

 

The question of invulns is nothing new - but the fact it is increasingly the focus is telling that the lethality problem is becoming more apparent. When 8th first dropped, tanks getting some kind of save all the time was viewed as a game changer, but now that everyone is dropping deep-striking melta squads or has new units with Ap-12 D 6d6 +10 weapons that fire 32 shots for 110 points, vehicle armour saves never really factor in. 

 

Ergo, units which are good either have absurd durability rules (high invuln, T, damage reduction rules, and a lot of wounds, like Knights and Primarchs) or are dirt cheap and include some of those elements (glory to the box 'naught). The "in-between" don't have much of a space when everyone has decided to rip the Nova Cannons of Imperial Navy battleships and are handing them out as rifles. 

 

I do agree the current lack of nuance in the S vs T wounding mechanic makes creating durability challenging. It's one of the few things changed from 7th to 8th I don't understand nor agree with, as I don't think anyone ever had a problem with the fact lasguns couldn't chip baneblades. Reverting back to the old wound chart, and commensurately adjusting some of the wound and toughness values as needed on larger units would help control some of the runaway lethality against everything. 

 

If you had a world where "medium" armour like Predators and Hammerheads are T8, Heavies like the Leman Russ are T9, and super-heavies are T10, they would all need appropriate weapons to hurt them. To use my example, you would need, at a minimum, a Heavy Bolter, assault cannon or autocannon for a chance to do any damage, and would need krak missiles, lascannons and demolisher cannons to wound with 50% consistency, which seems both logical and also easier to balance around. 

 

Add in a few clever uses of key words like "Tank" with damage reduction, as suggested elsewhere, with some weapons getting bonuses against the same keyword (like melta or haywire getting a bonus to wound) and you'd have a reasonable middle-ground between the days of yore and today, with divorced infantry and vehicle weapons.