Friendly fire in GW´s sci-fi games

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Should there be friendly fire in GW´s sci-fi games?

[Brother Anderson]

It's a bit niche but there's a guard strategem that lets you fire into combat, with every wound caused on the enemy causing one to your own on a 4+ if I remember correctly. I think given how callous a lot of the forces are in 40k it'd make sense for that to be a rule across the board I think.

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

Humm it's quite complicated in my opinion. With some armies is something you can expect,because they are treacherous even between them, or they are famous for their contempt for life, whether their own or that of others, or they simply don't care who's in the middle because they just want to shoot.

Dark Eldar,Orks,Chaos...but in other armies like Eldar,Space Marines,Tau,Votaan,...I find it more difficult to justify, except in very specific cases.

 

And allow some factions and not others...

Very complicated.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

53 minutes ago, Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf said:

Humm it's quite complicated in my opinion. With some armies is something you can expect,because they are treacherous even between them, or they are famous for their contempt for life, whether their own or that of others, or they simply don't care who's in the middle because they just want to shoot.

Dark Eldar,Orks,Chaos...but in other armies like Eldar,Space Marines,Tau,Votaan,...I find it more difficult to justify, except in very specific cases.

 

And allow some factions and not others...

Very complicated.

Friendly fire does not mean you shoot your own troops on purpose. Circumstances like very loud noise, poor visibility, close enemies, bullets flying everywhere and fear lead to confusion which makes precision fire and choosing appropriate targets very difficult. Indirect fire via artillery and airstrikes often also lead to friendly fire as either the ground troops or the artillery crew get the coords wrong or the pilot of an airplane thought friendlies were the hostiles.

Edited August 22 by Deus_Ex_Machina

[Dark Shepherd]

Technically there kinda is with vehicles exploding

 

I like it as an apropriate strat or even character ability for chaos

 

Am not reigniting the templates debate!! :)

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

1 hour ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Friendly fire does not mean you shoot your own troops on purpose. Circumstances like very loud noise, poor visibility, close enemies, bullets flying everywhere and fear lead to confusion which makes precision fire and choosing appropriate targets very difficult. Indirect fire via artillery and airstrikes often also lead to friendly fire as either the ground troops or the artillery crew get the coords wrong or the pilot of an airplane thought friendlies were the hostiles.

Yes, indeed but this is now in game: blast templates misfired,vehicles exploding near friend troops, and so. I'm talking more about mote intentional friendly fire...you know, the kind one of,for example, a commander who wants to kill certain enemy and doesn't care in there are his own troops in the middle or engaged. Just orders to open fire to that target,with all the weapons. Or, for example, when in Istvaan Iron Warriors opened fire against loyalist,killing Word Bearers in the process ("Have faith,Word Bearer. We bleed all today") 

 

The matter is how can we represent this universally for everyone. Accidental friendly fire is more than represented nowadays.

[Brother Anderson]

4 hours ago, Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf said:

Humm it's quite complicated in my opinion. With some armies is something you can expect,because they are treacherous even between them, or they are famous for their contempt for life, whether their own or that of others, or they simply don't care who's in the middle because they just want to shoot.

Dark Eldar,Orks,Chaos...but in other armies like Eldar,Space Marines,Tau,Votaan,...I find it more difficult to justify, except in very specific cases.

 

And allow some factions and not others...

Very complicated.

 

Definitely agree with Eldar and Votaan, but I can see some of the more brutal SM chapters sacrificing their own to bring down an enemy champion for example. The Tau I can imagine caring about Tau casualties in friendly fire but they may gun down some auxiliaries for the greater good if you'll pardon the expression 

[Brother Tyler]

4 hours ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Friendly fire does not mean you shoot your own troops on purpose. Circumstances like very loud noise, poor visibility, close enemies, bullets flying everywhere and fear lead to confusion which makes precision fire and choosing appropriate targets very difficult. Indirect fire via artillery and airstrikes often also lead to friendly fire as either the ground troops or the artillery crew get the coords wrong or the pilot of an airplane thought friendlies were the hostiles.

 

So you're suggesting friendly fire as a result of some sort of fog of war mechanism, is that correct?

 

There are many wargames that incorporate fog of war in a variety of ways. In general, most represent fog of war effects as unintended consequences. These include things such as failing to activate a unit, units acting on incorrect orders (generally in games where orders have to be issued to units - often Napoleonics and the like), etc. For this to work in Warhammer 40,000, Kill Team, Necromunda, etc., you would have to build in some changes to the overall mechanics to allow for fog of war. Do you have any ideas on how to do this?

 

The Astra Militarum stratagem that @Brother Anderson described sounds more like a "danger close" thing - a deliberate choice to fire at the enemy despite the proximity of and danger to friendlies* - rather than a fog of war thing. That kind of rule is easier to incorporate into Warhammer 40,000 than a fog of war friendly fire effect.

 

 

 

* Admittedly, "danger close" generally refers to indirect fire and the like rather than direct fire with small arms. It's the closest thing I could think of, though.

[Evil Eye]

The loss of templates definitely made friendly fire harder to represent IMO. However I did think of a possible mechanic you could add to make friendly fire work thematically, and also put a bit of a blunt on mass gunblobs. (Bear in mind I have 4th in my mind here; I'm not hugely familiar with 10th so this system may need adapting...)

 

First, there are three tiers of factions: "Honourbound", "Disciplined" and "Callous". Honourbound units may never make shooting attacks if there is a risk of friendly fire. Disciplined units may, but must take a morale check first or may not shoot that turn. Callous units may always do so. If there is determined to be a risk of friendly fire (shooting at an enemy with friendly models within a certain proximity etc) then failed "to hit" rolls are put to one side and rolled again; for each roll of a 1 for Disciplined or 1 or 2 for Callous, the shot has struck a friendly model! Resolve hits as normal.

 

Note that certain friendly fire risks are more dangerous than others, and as such they incur a -1 to hit penalty. For example, shooting into a melee- generally only Callous units can do this at all, though some Disciplined units may be able to if forced by a particularly nasty Commissar.

 

What happens after friendly fire incidents depends on the tier. Disciplined units must take a morale check with a -1 penalty for each casualty caused by friendly fire, and if failed will fall back. If passed they may not shoot next turn. Callous units, meanwhile, are not penalized for friendly fire.

 

Snipers, even in Honourbound factions, can always attempt shots even at risk of friendly fire, but otherwise follow the usual rules, and if Honourbound are treated as Disciplined for the purposes of penalties in the case of hits on friendly models.

 

Honourbound factions include:
>Space Marines (of all flavours)

>Eldar
>Tau

>Sisters of Battle

 

Disciplined factions include:

>Imperial Guard

>Adeptus Mechanicus

>Votann(?)

>Necrons (whilst obviously not exactly compassionate for their fellow robot skeleton, they are still directed to avoid destroying their own troops when possible).

 

Callous factions include:
>Dark Eldar

>Chaos (of any kind)
>Tyranids

>Orks

>Genestealer Cults

 

Note that some factions that normally fall under one tier may have a subfaction rule that changes this; for example, the Marines Malevolent would definitely not be Honourbound!

[Emperor Ming]

We dont need even more lethality 

[grailkeeper]

I've been playing thr game ISONZO recently. It's relatively realistic as a shooter.  I've lost track of the amount of times I've shot someone who turned out to be on my side. That's in a game where the uniforms are somewhat similar but there's still some identifiers over players heads. In real life in that kind of battle with mud and confusion the amount of friendly fire must be astronomical.

 

 

40k doesn't try to simulate real battles. For example you know where all your enemies units are at all times. There was an attempt online around 3rd ed to produce rules for that kind of battles. Fog of War where units can get orders wrong type stuff, or you as commander don't see what is happening due to smoke.

[Magos Takatus]

4 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

The loss of templates definitely made friendly fire harder to represent IMO. However I did think of a possible mechanic you could add to make friendly fire work thematically, and also put a bit of a blunt on mass gunblobs. (Bear in mind I have 4th in my mind here; I'm not hugely familiar with 10th so this system may need adapting...)

 

First, there are three tiers of factions: "Honourbound", "Disciplined" and "Callous". Honourbound units may never make shooting attacks if there is a risk of friendly fire. Disciplined units may, but must take a morale check first or may not shoot that turn. Callous units may always do so. If there is determined to be a risk of friendly fire (shooting at an enemy with friendly models within a certain proximity etc) then failed "to hit" rolls are put to one side and rolled again; for each roll of a 1 for Disciplined or 1 or 2 for Callous, the shot has struck a friendly model! Resolve hits as normal.

 

Note that certain friendly fire risks are more dangerous than others, and as such they incur a -1 to hit penalty. For example, shooting into a melee- generally only Callous units can do this at all, though some Disciplined units may be able to if forced by a particularly nasty Commissar.

 

What happens after friendly fire incidents depends on the tier. Disciplined units must take a morale check with a -1 penalty for each casualty caused by friendly fire, and if failed will fall back. If passed they may not shoot next turn. Callous units, meanwhile, are not penalized for friendly fire.

 

Snipers, even in Honourbound factions, can always attempt shots even at risk of friendly fire, but otherwise follow the usual rules, and if Honourbound are treated as Disciplined for the purposes of penalties in the case of hits on friendly models.

 

Honourbound factions include:
>Space Marines (of all flavours)

>Eldar
>Tau

>Sisters of Battle

 

Disciplined factions include:

>Imperial Guard

>Adeptus Mechanicus

>Votann(?)

>Necrons (whilst obviously not exactly compassionate for their fellow robot skeleton, they are still directed to avoid destroying their own troops when possible).

 

Callous factions include:
>Dark Eldar

>Chaos (of any kind)
>Tyranids

>Orks

>Genestealer Cults

 

Note that some factions that normally fall under one tier may have a subfaction rule that changes this; for example, the Marines Malevolent would definitely not be Honourbound!

I think Admech would be an interesting case. I imagine they would be Disciplined by default since they would respect the tools of the Omnissiah and not wish to damage them unnecessarily, but I imagine that the Tech Priests could issue a Doctrina Imperative to override this behaviour and shift them into the Callous category, as it's often shown that a tech priest will disregard the safety of their own pawns to make sure their goals are met.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

5 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

I've been playing thr game ISONZO recently. It's relatively realistic as a shooter.  I've lost track of the amount of times I've shot someone who turned out to be on my side. That's in a game where the uniforms are somewhat similar but there's still some identifiers over players heads. In real life in that kind of battle with mud and confusion the amount of friendly fire must be astronomical.

 

 

40k doesn't try to simulate real battles. For example you know where all your enemies units are at all times. There was an attempt online around 3rd ed to produce rules for that kind of battles. Fog of War where units can get orders wrong type stuff, or you as commander don't see what is happening due to smoke.

I am currently reading "The Vietnam War" by Ward and Burns. Great book. The director of Platoon, Oliver Stone who is also a vet from the Vietnam war, estimates that from all American casualties during the war 15-20% stem from friendly fire. This is not exclusively from indirect fire. Imagine this: You are stuck in a manhole during monsoon season and the Vietcong storm your position at night while you are tired, cold and utterly miserable. Visibility is poor at night and even worse due to the rain which falls to the earth in unimaginable volumes as if the elements themselves have declared war upon you. You notice some movement to your left, turn around and press the trigger of your rifle only to riddle a guy from another squad with bullets. The fighting had been fierce and unit cohesion has been long lost so it is no surprise that soldiers end up in positions where they shouldn´t be. 

 

There was also the following incident from either "To the Limit" by Johnson or "Chickenhawk" by Mason. I can´t remember which one. Both were choppa pilots in Vietnam who flew grunts into battle. On one mission one of the above guys got shot down and survived due to a miracle the crash. He needed to traverse for hours through difficult terrain  to reach the next American outpost. When you think he was safe now then you don´t understand war. He hid near the bushes at the edge of the outpost and yelled curses at the guards at the top of his lungs not to shoot him as he showed himself. To his own accounts this was the true miracle that he wasn´t shot as grunts in the field were ambushed routinely and would be as trigger-happy due to nervousness as a redneck with a shotgun protecting his lawn.

[No Foes Remain]

Way back in 4th/5th ed we used to enable blast weapons to do not-so friendly fire. One instance was a planet strike game with the Imperials (IG and SM) + Eldar holding out against necrons, my devestator plasma cannon and missile fired towards the necrons only for the shot to go 180 behind them and strike the two command squads for the IG player, survived the missile due to cover (just) but died to the plasma all on turn one. Made the game more... interesting though for some reason everyone stayed away from my devestator squad, not sure why...

[roryokane]

Back when we had AVs, I always thought it should be perfectly reasonable to allow your Tactical Squad to hose down your Land Raider with bolter fire to get rid of the pesky tankbustas trying to blow it up, given that S4 bolters couldn’t even glance an AV 14 Land Raider.

[Gillyfish]

This basically comes back to how simulationist you want the game to be; as Brother Tyler indicated, currently the game has no 'fog of war' mechanic, nor is there any rule for, say, firing through units into another unit and inadvertently hitting a few individuals on the way through (that I can recall, anyway), partly because it might be hideously open to abuse (although the idea of screening Ork boyz with disposable grots seems entirely fitting) and partly die to rules complexity. Given all the unit special rules, this might add a fair bit to the core rules with exceptions (no, you can't fire through the tank, apart from when you can...) and so on.

 

That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, just that it might be suited to a different style of ruleset than  the one we currently have implemented.

[StratoKhan]

These are the kind of cool ideas that nonetheless would add a lot of admin to the game. 
 

As 40k and other GW are currently designed, with multiple units of anywhere from 5-20 or even more models, potentially armed with ranged weapons needing to make dice rolls to hit, working out friendly fire on top of that would struggle to offer a return on investment imo (as in, time invested vs. fun outcome)

 

I think at this point developing new game system that incorporates friendly fire into its mechanics would probably be easier than retrofitting a GW game.

[Grotsmasha]

Many, MANY, moons ago, (2nd/3rd Ed.) the games I played were generally 2v2, OR 4P free-for-all. We had a rule for "Friendly" Fire into melee. You rolled to hit as normal BUT if your models are in the combat, every Miss hit your own troops, if your models weren't in the combat (either 2v2 ally, or 4P FFA) every Miss hit who you weren't aiming at.

[Gillyfish]

It's probably worth noting that friendly fire rules often feature in RPGs, but they often have a level of granularity that simply would not work in a massed battle game (even though they share a common ancestry).

[Brother Anderson]

Would something fairly simple like "for every hit roll of 1, if a friendly model is within 6" assign that hit to the friendly unit instead" work? Could be exclusive to blast weapons for example, or units firing over half the maximum range of their weapon.

[Cactus]

It already exists as a rule in Necromunda. From memory, if you roll a 1 to hit and a friendly model is within 1/2" of the line of fire roll another d6, on a 1 the friendly is hit.