The stat line and special rules

[apologist]

A model's stat line – M, WS, BS etc. – is the information the game uses to simulate what happens in particular circumstances. In earlier editions, the stat line was mainly used for modifiable opposed results – you measured your S against your opponent's T; modified your BS to see whether you hit a unit in cover; or reduced your movement proportionately for moving through cover. 

 

3rd edition swapped a lot of these for fixed tests, in the name of speed. BS3 always meant hitting on a particular result, and other dice rolls or mechanics were used to modify them. These were often reactive rolls – that is, the other player rolled a die to make a cover save, rather than the cover being folded into your initial To Hit roll.

 

A suite of special rules came in to modify these fixed tests or provide ways to resolve exceptional things that couldn't be resolved with the stat lines. Counter-attack, as an example, made you count as charging, even if you were charged.

 

8th and onwards have continued this trend, with a still smaller stat line. Modifiable opposed rolls have largely gone, and every unit now has special rules – often ones that could be represented through the stat line.

 

+++

 

As a very small example of what I'd like to highlight, in Rogue Trader a model's resilience would likely be represented by increasing the T value or giving them more W. In 10th, that is just as likely to come from a special rule that negates or reduces incoming damage.

 

While I don't think either system is inherently better than the other, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on which you prefer, and why?

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Some rolls are still comparative e.g. strength vs toughness. However since 8th an extra point of toughness is significantly more important than an extra point of strength, as to significantly increase your ability to wound you need to double your strength whereas in the past +2S would be enough to wound on a 2+. I think the current system works fine because of the increased strength of big guns and increased vehicle toughness.

Despite the stat changing to a 2+/3+ etc., BS is fine - it works much the same way as it has always done and there are still some factors that affect this, such as units with stealth. Changing the stat line just removes the need to consult a “to hit” table. The way cover works is fine as a +1 save. You could argue that it is more logical as a -1 to hit (and I’d probably prefer it if I was writing the book) but the end result is the same. I just want it to stay the same cos I keep forgetting about it!

 

What I did prefer was the old system of comparing WS in a fight, and also the use of initiative for attack order. Removing this has made close combat less interesting and removed some of the nuance between different units and races IMO. For example, an eldar’s skill was reflected in a high weapon skill and initiative, which gave them an edge over stronger but slower models like orks. It would be harder for the ork to fight back due to the WS comparison, giving the eldar a chance at survival. These days if a model that is fast but not so tough fails to straight up kill the opponent, they are very vulnerable as that ork can hit back at full weapon skill and bring all its strength to bear. However, one side effect of the modern close combat system is that it is more brutal and you tend to see more models dying, which potentially resolves combats faster and more decisively.
 

The abundance of re-rolls is a bit of a nightmare to keep track of and it’s rare that any shooting phase is resolved without something being re-rolled or modified. This does my head in a bit during games as I feel like these should be a more rare occurrence than they currently are. I don’t mind a few specific special rules; they are great for key characters and elite units. But what we now have is a “special” rule for pretty much every single unit. I can’t help wondering if this makes the special units inherently less special …

 

 

Edited April 3 by TheArtilleryman

[Karhedron]

3 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

However, one side effect of the modern close combat system is that it is more brutal and you tend to see more models dying, which potentially resolves combats faster and more decisively.

 

I think that melee has become more deadly and partly I think that is to reflect the effort of getting your melee units across the table and into contact with the enemy. Compared to previous editions though, I still feel that 10th edition tends to favour shooting over melee.

  

3 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

The abundance of re-rolls is a bit of a nightmare to keep track of and it’s rare that any shooting phase is resolved without something being re-rolled or modified.

 

Strangely, 10th was touted as getting rid of the majority of rerolls in order to streamline gameplay. The article on Warcom was broadly well received until it was followed a week later by the one that revealed Marines' faction trait was Oath of Moment which allowed them to apply (you guessed it) rerolls to a new target every turn.

[Valkyrion]

The straight-jacketed nature of a D6 is part of the issue, exacerbated by having natural successes and failures (1's and 6's), leaving only 4 points of granularity on any given dice roll; numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5. 

That in and of itself isn't necessarily bad, because there are multiple dice rolls required to carry out most interactions (hit, wound, save), but once you factor in rerolls and quantity of dice, the whole thing begins to become absurdly redundant and the highly skilled units lose their advantages.  Like, 10 shots on 3+ with a reroll will average 8 hits instead of 7, but 10 shots on 4+ with rerolls will average 7.5 hits instead of 5 - 10% vs 50% increase in efficacy, so just because both sides have the same advantage doesn't mean the advantage is the same to both sides. 

 

I had a 9th edition game where something like a 60 point squad rolled 30 shots, with rerolls, 20 wounds with rerolls, and my saves; so around 60 dice. I played 2nd edition games where I wouldn't roll 60 dice all game! Hyperbole, of course, but that volume of dice may as well be mathed out instead of rolled for and it becomes more like a tabletop computer game than a wargame.

 

[Noserenda]

I think special rules are often a failure of rules design myself, in that, they are exceptions to the core rules right? So if every single thing in the game is an exception, it feels like your core is not doing its job. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

17 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Some rolls are still comparative e.g. strength vs toughness. However since 8th an extra point of toughness is significantly more important than an extra point of strength, as to significantly increase your ability to wound you need to double your strength whereas in the past +2S would be enough to wound on a 2+. I think the current system works fine because of the increased strength of big guns and increased vehicle toughness.

Despite the stat changing to a 2+/3+ etc., BS is fine - it works much the same way as it has always done and there are still some factors that affect this, such as units with stealth. Changing the stat line just removes the need to consult a “to hit” table. The way cover works is fine as a +1 save. You could argue that it is more logical as a -1 to hit (and I’d probably prefer it if I was writing the book) but the end result is the same. I just want it to stay the same cos I keep forgetting about it!

 

What I did prefer was the old system of comparing WS in a fight, and also the use of initiative for attack order. Removing this has made close combat less interesting and removed some of the nuance between different units and races IMO. For example, an eldar’s skill was reflected in a high weapon skill and initiative, which gave them an edge over stronger but slower models like orks. It would be harder for the ork to fight back due to the WS comparison, giving the eldar a chance at survival. These days if a model that is fast but not so tough fails to straight up kill the opponent, they are very vulnerable as that ork can hit back at full weapon skill and bring all its strength to bear. However, one side effect of the modern close combat system is that it is more brutal and you tend to see more models dying, which potentially resolves combats faster and more decisively.
 

The abundance of re-rolls is a bit of a nightmare to keep track of and it’s rare that any shooting phase is resolved without something being re-rolled or modified. This does my head in a bit during games as I feel like these should be a more rare occurrence than they currently are. I don’t mind a few specific special rules; they are great for key characters and elite units. But what we now have is a “special” rule for pretty much every single unit. I can’t help wondering if this makes the special units inherently less special …

 

 

Personally i would like it if we had terrain that was concealment for a -1 to hit and terrain that was cover for +1 to save.

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

I think special rules are often a failure of rules design myself, in that, they are exceptions to the core rules right? So if every single thing in the game is an exception, it feels like your core is not doing its job. 

…weird take.

guess every army should be basically the same.

[TheArtilleryman]

3 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

weird take.

guess every army should be basically the same.

No, just that not everything should have a special rule. A couple of army rules and special rules for key units, but not every single datasheet.

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, TheArtilleryman said:

No, just that not everything should have a special rule. A couple of army rules and special rules for key units, but not every single datasheet.

 

Seeing every single unit get a special rule in 10th was kinda wierd but I have grown to like it. It helps particularly with factions that have more bloat (looking at you, Space Marines) to give distinct roles to units that otherwise have very similar profiles. E.g. both Intercessors and Tactical Squads are Battleline and have very similar stats. But the special rules mean that Intercessors are best on the move, hopping from one Objective to the next and tagging them while Tacs are the cheapest way to get 5 PA bodies on an Objective via their Combat-squadding rule.

 

It is a different mindset but I am coming around to it. It also means you can find interesting uses for squads that superficially have weak stat lines.

[Xenith]

I'm an adherent that the units combat abilities should largely be represented by the stats. Is it tough? Then high toughness. Is it relatively weak, but regenerates or is very hard to kill? More wounds, You don't need additional rules to represent what you can on the statline. 

 

The invulnerable save is needed in the Yes/No previous version of AP, however in a modfier situation, it can be represented by additional points of save, and you don't need save creep. A terminator with a 2+ save. If you want them to always have at least a 5+ save in general, they will always get that vs ap-3 weapons, so the actual invulnerable is a redundant rule, and dsigners just have to be more disciplined in not handing out stuff with massive ap. Likewise, they then don't need to make special rules to ignore invulnerable saves (railgund, mortal wounds) or more rules that ifnore the ignoring of invulns. 

 

A captain with 2+/4++ in this could simply get a 1+ save, and still be on a 4+ vs an ap-3 lascannon. 

[The Unseen]

19 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

I think that melee has become more deadly and partly I think that is to reflect the effort of getting your melee units across the table and into contact with the enemy. Compared to previous editions though, I still feel that 10th edition tends to favour shooting over melee.

  

It's more lethal, but less beneficial.

Which has made it much harder to compete successfully against shooting, because now they both basically just tend to kill whatever they aim at.

 

Melee takes a little longer to get there, but has basically no advantage over just pointing guns over there, except in the case of LoS blocking terrain. You don't need LoS to charge. Changing it so you can shoot whatever kind of weapon before assaulting doesn't help either, as it makes melee units that historically gave up powerful ranged attacks for extra cc punch just do less damage than a unit packing a lot of firepower and then charging afterward with their fists.

 

But in the old days melee had several benefits that have been stripped; extra movement, both from charging and from the pile in and consolidation which have all been heavily restricted, enemy units can freely fall back out of combat, losing a combat means nothing for any morale purposes, compared to when losing a combat and failing morale meant you were pretty likely to just get swept and die. 

 

I miss the old WS chart, and am super glad it got even better in HH 2.0, but BS I'm glad got simplified tbh, 99% of the time it was just an extra thing to memorize compared to now. BS6+ being rare enough that losing it doesn't feel that bad.

 

Not every unit needs a special rule, and more could definitely be USR styled, but it does make units more than just the sum of their stats in some cases, which is good, especially in the previously mentioned bloated army lists.

[Valkyrion]

I agree that BSX+ is fine, and I think WSX+ is also fine. It speeds up one part of the close combat whole, and gives a reasonable average of what is expected of a unit, and we are talking about futuristic soldiers - most things should be hitting most other things, it's whether they can hurt it effectively is the important issue. 

 

Where I'm not sure is on 6's wounding everything, but also tying 6's to other benefits. So you might have a T12 Land Raider and have a S6 weapon being outperformed by a S3 weapon because the S3 weapon has exploding 6's or whatever rule triggers on a 6 these days.  +1 To Wound rules also makes higher Toughness irrelevant, which defeats the object of giving tough units more toughness. 

Making units have T12 or S24 is all well and good until you realise the T12 unit is still wounded 16% of the time by everything, and the S24 still fails 16% of the time against everything.

Because all vehicle armies exist, a way needs to be found for small arms fire to damage heavy stuff, and I don't know what the answer is. Well, I do know what the answer is, but it's to delete two factions that never should have been entered into the basic tabletop theatre, but you can't un-ring that bell now. 

 

A system similar to CAF could work in theory whilst allowing ever increasing characteristics, but also mitigating 1 in 6 chances of success or failure

e.g attacker rolls 2D6 + the weapons Strength, defender rolls 2D6 + their Toughness. If the attacker wins, defender makes X saves using the AP and Damage of the weapon.

But how do you do that with 10 or 20 models firing 3 shots each? It'd take an age. 

 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

Honestly it sees to me that most of the time special rules are superfluous. They could just modify the stat line. Maybe the special rules are a gimmick. Maybe the design team genuinely think they add something or are a better way to represent flavour. Personally I would like to see them just make proper use of the stat line and make it more relevant and cut down on special rules and abilities. 

Edited April 4 by The Praetorian of Inwit

[Redcomet]

The changes to hth has made that part of the game incredibly dull.

 

The fixed BS is fine, having that be a table you had to look up was weird.

 

I do think there has crept too many special rules into the game. Not every unit needs McGuffin rule to make it work. I do think many of these rules could be removed, if GW would embrace more dice types than the d6. 

 

I know from a game perspective that having vehicles and large monsters be immune to small arms would be difficult. As long as armies can field more than a couple of those, in order for the game to work, it has be as it is.

Edited April 4 by Redcomet

[Marshal Rohr]

I think the best system takes a mortal human and gives them a single statline and everything else in the game is crafted around that statline. This would be the baseline. Movement as its own characteristic is fine, I like the granularity it gives units. Heavy armor makes you slightly slower, a jump pack makes you substantially faster. 
 

Special Rules should be used to provide battlefield roles, and should be universal. A unit has the X, Y, and Z rule because it is a recon unit. B Unit has M, T, V because it is a unit of combat engineers. Each faction has some flavor of unit filling those roles. 
 

Faction Rules should modify how well or poorly someone does something, like you pass morale checks in certain situations easier. Shooting is worse against you in certain situations. This can be asymmetrical. Chaos cultists run more often than imperial guard, but can redeploy chaff units that are destroyed or something of that nature. 
 

Unit Sub-Types are an awesome new layer of granularity HH2.0 added and I think they’re just super cool. 

[Emperor Ming]

18 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

Not every unit needs McGuffin rule to make it work. I do think many of these rules could be removed, if GW would embrace more dice types than the d6. 

Absolutely, far to many mcguffin rules on datasheets

[Nephaston]

6 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

Where I'm not sure is on 6's wounding everything, but also tying 6's to other benefits. So you might have a T12 Land Raider and have a S6 weapon being outperformed by a S3 weapon because the S3 weapon has exploding 6's or whatever rule triggers on a 6 these days.  +1 To Wound rules also makes higher Toughness irrelevant, which defeats the object of giving tough units more toughness. 

Making units have T12 or S24 is all well and good until you realise the T12 unit is still wounded 16% of the time by everything, and the S24 still fails 16% of the time against everything.

Because all vehicle armies exist, a way needs to be found for small arms fire to damage heavy stuff, and I don't know what the answer is. Well, I do know what the answer is, but it's to delete two factions that never should have been entered into the basic tabletop theatre, but you can't un-ring that bell now. 

If 40k was a skirmish game I would agree that knights would be a mistake, but at since it is played at bigger than squad level since, what, 3rd edition(?) it is definitely entirely plausible for a lance of knights to encounter a demi-company of marines, or a regiment of guard, or any other infantry formation.

 

But you are 100 percent correct that everything wounding on 6s is kinda scuffed but that is imo both down to sticking to six sided dice when twelve sided are available and roll better, and the rules writing team somehow never asking themselves what a unit of infantry can do against vehicles besides shooting and fighting on a mechanical level.

For instance why can't an infantry try and climb a tank and chuck a nade down a hatch? Where is the mechanic for, say, a jump unit hopping on a knights carapace and wedging their melee weapons into the joints or the cockpit door? Or small creatures like rippers or grots infiltrating said vehicles and either engaging the crew or sabotaging the vehicle? Or the capability for the crew of destroyed vehicles to exit and still participate?

 

There's a lot of design space ignored for sticking to what is known and safe because the rules teams are both risk averse and play second fiddle to the modelling team. Not to mention the rules writers trying to have marines be both the baseline army and an elite army.

[Dr. Clock]

24 minutes ago, Emperor Ming said:

far too many mcguffin rules on datasheets

For me this is a have the cake and eat it too problem. Basically either every unit gets its own rule, or none do, because it's really difficult to balance things that live and die on abilities vs those that are pure stat check.  

 

Without those little rules greebles I'd worry we'd just be back to a big gun arms race, though I appreciate that this new texture adds to overall mental load, especially if you take lots of different units. I like that it makes efficiency more fuzzy because you can't always rely on just looking at the gun and T/W/Sv stats to know something's value.

 

It could be an interesting experiment to try and play the game without any datasheet abilities outside the unit and weapon stats, but I'd suspect it'd get stale quickly at 2000 points but get interesting closer to something like 3000. 

 

It's abundantly clear that alot of those datasheet abilities are templated out though... I would not be averse to formalizing those and turning them into keywords. There are certainly some that are just duds that should or hopefully will be revisited. And no more of this 'Helbrutes in different armies do different things' or whatever. Make them have different army/detachment rules, but try and make the unit sound and consistent when it's migrating across multiple books maybe

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

 

[CL_Mission]

I'm in a similar boat to @Dr. Clock when it comes to special rules. I like having special rules and generally like the current system of those rules being rules being split between universal rules and some unique rules for different units but it's a system that needs some tweaking. There is clearly some overlap between "unique" rules, things like sticky objectives or damage reduction and these could probably mostly folded into a USR. I don't think doing so would take much away from the units that have them, they'd still have a special rule it just wouldn't be unique.

My concern here though is more of a formatting one. In the past when playing with friends the USR pages of the rule book were some of the most visited and re-visited pages as it was harder to keep track of every rule especially if they were changed or tweaked between editions. If more special rules are folded into USRs I'd hope some of them are still printed in full on the datasheets to avoiding having to do this, remembering a few rules like FNP is easy but it doesn't hurt to have the lesser used ones right in front of you.

[tychobi]

There are too many snowflake rules in the game right now. Not just special rules but bespoke weapons. How many bolters and bolt pistols are there? All just different enough that you have to check but not different enough to effect the game.  Difference without distinction is bloat and weighs down 40k terribly in my opinion. 

[Nephaston]

5 hours ago, tychobi said:

How many bolters and bolt pistols are there?

From a rough count I get 25 bolters/bolt pistols exluding the ones of named characters. For heavy bolters i get 6 or 7 though here I am unsure about special chapter variants. Loyalist chapers that is, I'm not gonna bother with Sister or Chaos variations.

[TheArtilleryman]

2 hours ago, Nephaston said:

From a rough count I get 25 bolters/bolt pistols exluding the ones of named characters. For heavy bolters i get 6 or 7 though here I am unsure about special chapter variants. Loyalist chapers that is, I'm not gonna bother with Sister or Chaos variations.

Hadn’t thought of this before. That’s bonkers. 

[apologist]

Lots of interesting discussion and ideas; thanks for the feedback. For my part, I'm quite happy with adding on special rules to the core, but at the moment I think the balance of each is out, with the core rules and statline too streamlined, and special rule exceptions too dominant. 

 

• I'd like to see the return of certain opposed rolls. Moving WS to fixed rolls means that there's currently no good way of representing more defensive combat (as @TheArtillerymanpoints out in his eldar/ork example above).
• I'd prefer troops/battleline units for all factions to rely purely on the core rules (if the basic troops can't be sufficiently differentiated, then the core rules need to be tweaked). With all armies then operating on the same underlying mechanics, it's easier for both players to understand how Army Rules and in-game effects (bonuses from commanders, psychic powers, wargear etc.) stack on top.
• I'm very happy for Elite units to have unique special rules – but with the proviso that if they can reasonably be represented by altering the stat line, that should be the first port of call.

[jaxom]

4 hours ago, apologist said:

I'd like to see the return of certain opposed rolls. Moving WS to fixed rolls means that there's currently no good way of representing more defensive combat (as @TheArtillerymanpoints out in his eldar/ork example above).

This is something I’m working on for a game I’m working on. The current idea is keep WS a fixed role, for ease, but have a the other player also roll 1d6 per engaged model vs their own WS. Successes cancel out successes. Elite melee units (something like Custodes or Howling Banshees) can roll more. It’s kind of like 2e, but more straight forward. Overall, more rolls but being made by both players against static values so faster to resolve.

[Kallas]

17 hours ago, Nephaston said:

For instance why can't an infantry try and climb a tank and chuck a nade down a hatch?

We used to have this in the form of Armour Values - attacking vehicles in melee let you attack the rear armour, typically the lowest AV, which meant things like Krak Grenades (usually only one model could attack with them, but they were S6) could damage them and with the vehicle damage table could potentially destroy them: that was a representation of infantry clambering over a tank, leveraging open a hatch and chucking said grenade in.

 

While the move to Toughness on vehicles I initially thought was good, I've cooled on it significantly over time, because of this kind of missing interaction, as well as the whole issue with S/T differences and automatic successes on 6s enabling spam (where in previous editions this was a faction defining trait for Necrons, whose Gauss weapons actually could strip down vehicles and monsters by mass-firing guns into them - because that was one of the special things about them specifically).

 

Personally I find the en masse handouts of special rules is making the game less interesting. Termagants don't need a special rule: they are the chaffiest chaff unit of the Tyranids, they're not special, their purpose and identity is in being a churning mass of bodies that overwhelms by numbers, not because they can move around a bit extra when enemies move closer. As others have mentioned, units can be defined by their stats and USRs which can more than adequately represent the basic, common elements of various 40k entities and more unique special rules should be relatively rare to really show that something is actually special. But this isn't going to change for 10th, and I wouldn't hold my breath for 11th to change this paradigm either.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

I am a fan of simulation games. Therefore besides stats & special rules other unit designations are also welcome. Imo the video game Age of Wonders (AoW) with four fantasy versions and one sci-fi version so far does it best. Each unit has seven stats (Tier, Upkeep, Health, Armour, Shield, Move and Morale). Here is an example of a grunt:

 

AoW Planetfall Vanguard Trooper:

Active Abilities:

1. Assault Rifle

2. Grenade

3. Defense Mode

4. Overwatch

 

Upon activation this unit has four choices of what it wants to accomplish during a turn. This is not much unlike 2nd 40K of what a Tactical marine could pull off:

 

2nd 40K Tactical:

1. Bolter

2. Bolt Pistol

3. Frag grenade

4. Krak grenade

5. Charge (into melee)

6. Overwatch

 

What comes next for the Trooper are unit designations & passive abilities which on itself only state obvious things but are important keywords when interacting with Tactical & Strategic Operations (damage channels, beneficial or detrimental status effects) as well as Unit Mods:

1. Steady Aim (Passive Ability)

2. Biological

3. Core

4. Infantry

5. Land Movement

6. Light Unit

7. Vanguard

 

Again 40K does most of the things too and that´s why I still play it today. Again the example of the Tactical marine from 2nd 40K:

1. Break Tests (Special Rule)

2. Combat Squads (Special Rule)

3. Rapid Fire (Special Rule)

4. Squad (Designation)

5. Infantry (Designation)

6. Space Marine (Designation)

7. Chapter (Affiliation)

8. Imperium (Affiliation)

 

 

 

What did I want to say in my post? The more info you have about a unit in the game the more it enriches the game experience and thus allows room for more unique units in the future. As a result special rules and unit designations should be encouraged.

 

 

Edited April 5 by Deus_Ex_Machina