Stolen from Exalted:

If a hit bypasses armor but not TB, target loses 1 wound

what do you think about it?

I think a minimum of 1 damage if armour is negated is a pretty good idea; I've been considering implementing that as a House Rule on my next (hypothetical) campaign.

Think it gets pretty dangerous.

I think it makes hordes much more dangerous but it is doable. Maybe you should rule that it does not cause Critical Damage though?

It's a thought that should be entertained anyway.

Alex

Think it gets pretty dangerous.

AWESOME, ISN'T IT?

I think it makes hordes much more dangerous but it is doable. Maybe you should rule that it does not cause Critical Damage though?

It's a thought that should be entertained anyway.

Alex

Uhm yes, but what then? Stay invulnerable but with 0 Wounds?

Think it gets pretty dangerous.

AWESOME, ISN'T IT?

Meh. I think the system is plenty lethal.

This actually doesn't affect (dangerous) hordes as much as it does solos. Though it does make whittled-down hordes still somewhat threatening and not just a thing to waste ammo on til it stops annoying you.

Uhm yes, but what then? Stay invulnerable but with 0 Wounds?

Until a real wound gets through? Yeah.

Alex

This would imply that, if you are wearing no armour, every hit will injure you.

This is IMHO a bad idea both mechanically and conceptually.

Good point. It would mean that every hit would injure you enough to have an effect. There would be no scratches and grazing shots.

Alex

...or "flesh wounds" Alex .

Slight alteration of your idea but consider the way that BC/OW now handle righteous fury and consider applying it here which is allowing low damaging characters and NPCs to finally harm someone who is usually too armoured/tough to be beaten which is that a confirmed Righteous fury either does a roll on the crit table if it would have hurt them or one wound guaranteed if it wouldnt. This allows you that fluky hit...although it does mean you need to consider giving hoards and some NPCs the benefit of RF and that's a point of contention for some.

I implemented the OW RF rules. My players and I liked them a lot and got a lot more out of status effects than big numbers.

I implemented the OW RF rules. My players and I liked them a lot and got a lot more out of status effects than big numbers.

Problem I have with the OW RF rules is when you use it on really big things like daemons, master level Nids etc. I can't really see a greater daemon of Khorne being forced to suffer a 1D5 roll on the crit table when he's got a good hundred odd wounds left and is full of unholy rage. I mean impact critical to the head, suffering stunning and staggering, when you are a 15ft high engine of destruction...or a rending crit to the arm where they have to suffer blood loss and lose the use of a limb. Having them suffer that sort of wound to me seems a bit unfair to the boss.

The Stuff Of Nightmares trait, CG. Still, no fan of it.

Alex

With that, the effect of the crit becomes nullified thus making that natural 10 almost worthless. However for sake of OP it makes for a better resolution to the problem and better IMO than the one point of damage if it ignores armour. Every combat would be much more dangerous if all you need to do is exceed 8 AP.

well it could solve the problem of marines stage diving their way through hordes

Big enough hoards will do enough extra damage to easily rip through the armour and toughness of a marine. Besides the hoards might only serve as a barrier for the big nasty thing behind it who will usually be armed with something more painful.

well it could solve the problem of marines stage diving their way through hordes

Hordes are, at best, supposed to be a thing that provides some danger due to its mass and slows the KT from achieving its real objectives. it is not supposed to be the be-all end-all threat on the level of a hive tyrant.

If marines aren't stage-diving their way through hordes I think some rebalancing is needed. Especially as horde fights are usually the ones that get boring the fastest.

If marines aren't stage-diving their way through hordes I think some rebalancing is needed. Especially as horde fights are usually the ones that get boring the fastest.

If hordes could have the power to drain Wounds slowly and steadly, kill-teams would at least put some effort to wipe them.

Why spend Req in metal storm bullets if they serve almost solely to kill threatless uncountables?

This House Rule wouldn't apply to effective hordes, capable to deal real damage to Marines - like heavy weapon teams or high penetration clawed monstruosities.

A bunch of dudes with autoguns is threatening until they drop below about 20 Magnitude. Above that, +2d10 damage and undodgeable attacks can still make somewhat of a threat. If not a major one for higher armor/TB PCs like Techmarines.

I think this is a question of personal preferences (how superheroic do you like your protagonists?) rather than mechanical issues. But hypothetically speaking ... if I were to implement this suggested houserule, rather than rebalancing the excessive resilience of the player characters together with other aspects of the game, I would probably have it apply only to combat between "solo" characters, not Hordes - simply because (iirc) attacks by a Horde cannot be dodged or parried, thus turning a merely potentially dangerous encounter into one with a much higher chance of leaving you severely weakened, if not actually killing you as a result of continuous Wounds-deduction coupled with the occasional burst damage.

I think if it were just the series of pin-pricks or the damage spike, it'd be okay. The combination, however, might be too much.

That being said, an alternative might be to use this suggestion to re-work the game's Horde rules, by replacing the controversial and dangerous, even anti-immersive damage spike of the bonus dice with a minimum Wounds damage that is probably a lot more reflective of a barrage of shots hitting weak spots than fourty lasguns suddenly morphing into a single multi-melta.

You can even have Magnitude factor into this: a Magnitude bonus of +1d10 could become a minimum damage of 1 Wound, and +2d10 would become 2 Wounds. If this sounds like a lot, you could also couple this minimum Wounds damage to a minimum damage roll: a Horde must roll 6+ on their damage die to trigger this effect?

... that is, if you think Hordes are too weak for the gameplay experience you are aiming for, of course.

Better reason to reconsider this then:

Go with your idea and it means the Imperial Guard laser pointer with twin linked torch Las gun can now damage a Space Marine rather than slightly tickle them and having it laughed off like what it should be. It would allow a group of guardsmen to somehow fell a Tyranid Carnifex solely by getting through its however many armour points and somehow felling it with ease rather than relying on heavy stuff like what they are supposed to...

Maybe true, but what you described is an NPC vs NPC interaction, which shouldn't come down to dice, imo.

Go with your idea and it means the Imperial Guard laser pointer with twin linked torch Las gun can now damage a Space Marine rather than slightly tickle them and having it laughed off like what it should be. It would allow a group of guardsmen to somehow fell a Tyranid Carnifex solely by getting through its however many armour points and somehow felling it with ease rather than relying on heavy stuff like what they are supposed to...

"Supposed" according to ... what? As far as I can tell, this suggestion would still be way below the damage these "laser pointers" do in GW's games. Whilst simultaneously preventing the ridiculous +2d10 damage spike that can only be classified as magic . I mean, Hordes can already kill Carnifexes just by rolling high, can't they?

But that's why I've mentioned personal preferences! Obviously, someone who likes Hordes and/or Marine resilience as they are now will have little incentive to change anything about it.

I like the horde damage rules as-is. I don't fully understand your complaint, Lynata - horde rules provide a mechanism of higher abstraction... which of course leads to greater inaccuracies. The point of higher abstraction is exactly sacrificing precision for speed. It's what the rules do pretty well.

In my DW, which is fairly close to FFG's, a single lasgun is a remote threat to a marine in power armour. (Here is where RAW falls short, as it is no threat at all; I rectify that by granting troop-tier enemies, who don't get extra damage dice, RF.) However, 20 lasguns firing at you means that probably one or two of them might do some actual amage. It increases the odds (just as in TT) in favour of the Guards. This gets represented in DW by the extra damage dice mechanics. You are basically rolling twenty attacks with a remote chance of doing damage each into one attack roll with extra damage, averaging it out , so-to-speak.

I fail to see what the problem is other than FFG not granting RF to troop-tiers without extra damage dice. Unless the problem is the good old "marines are too powerful in DW". I'll grant you that it might be controversial (obviously, since you disagree with it) but I don't see why it's anti-immersive and you'd have to justify the attribute dangerous(!), Lyn.

Alex

I consider it anti-immersive because I have trouble seeing how 40 lasguns which each have that little "oomph" behind them (compared to RAW DW Marines) suddenly turn into a single multi-melta just because they're being wielded by a group instead of 40 individuals. It's the usual "FFG 40k magic handwave" that discards logic and physics for some fancy effect for the sake of gameplay, instead of seeking a balance between realism and mechanics. I understand that the latter might be more difficult to achieve, but that doesn't make these "band-aid" rules feel any less weird for me. It's the exact same silliness as with the "Felling" weapons which are awesome for putting down elephants, but once you point them at a kid they do normal damage.

I don't know if you've already been around on the first Dark Heresy forums before the license went to FFG, but the Horde rules actually originated in a fan suggestion that came as a response to people realising that the Marine NPC in the PtU adventure was 100% unkillable by the Dark Eldar that attacked him. Alright, so I'm not entirely sure if the FFG team may not have developed their Horde rules independently, but there's an eery similarity to what was posted back then.

Obviously, I'd have preferred if the root of the problem would be tackled, rather than these wobbly workarounds. I dunno, maybe I'm just asking for too much if I am expecting more consistency/transparency from the rules of RPGs I play.

And I consider it dangerous because 3d10+3 means an extremely large span of anything between 4 ("I'm not feeling anything") and 33 ("wtf just happened!") damage. You could say that the Guaranteed Wounds approach normalises these two extremes by making Hordes annoying, but at least also preventing them from putting you into Crits with their very first attack.

This doesn't even have anything to do with how powerful you want your Marines. Obviously, the designers wanted Hordes to pose a threat, else there wouldn't be the bonus damage. The thing is, while I agree that Marine powerlevel is a controversy, I have trouble understanding how anyone could say that "3d10" was a great idea.

[edit] Re-reading the above, I realise it may sound a bit too hostile and unfair to the game designers. I just really wish they'd be "more daring" when trying to fix these issues - it's why I had such high hopes for DH2, and am disappointed at the 2nd Edition not being different enough and sticking to what I consider to be "legacy flaws", or "Altlasten" to use a German term.