Hello fellow Battle-Brothers,

I understand somehow the abstract ruling of a horde, e.g. for not using hit locations. But what I wonder is, if a horde can somehow take cover. The problem now is that in Deathwatch the cover rulings are related to hit locations.

I mean it is one thing if you have a horde of orks attacking the space marines by simply charging them or a big unit of Tau warriors using every piece of enviroment as cover.

Maybe as a horde trait. "This kind of a horde is used to tactical advances. In any round this horde can choose to give up two points of Base Movement or 1d10 extra damage from their magnitude (to simulate the horde's carful approach). Until the next round every opponent attacking the horde suffers a -10 (-20?!) to BS."

What do you think?

Cheers,

TechVoid.

If the majority of the horde is in cover of some sort then I would do one of two things: (A) impose a penalty of -10 to -20 to hit the horde, but with a big horde such a penalty may not offset the size modifier too much. (B) you could give the horde some extra armor to represent having to shoot through the cover to get to the horde. Many hordes have weak enough armor and toughness that Astartes Bolters have little chance of not inflicting injury but if a horde gets a +10 Armor value due to the rocky terrain they are occupying, it makes the damage roll more important. Righteous Fury could become critical if you want to inflict wound damage to a well entrenched enemy horde.

Ah,

the idea to increase the AP is a nice.

I also thought about reducing the Degree of Success, which cover apparently does. If a marine has a high Degree of Success but according to the hit locations some bullets are set into the cover the (I call it) effective DoS is reduced.

Cheers,

TechVoid.

Edsel62 said:

I find the first method to be faster though. I think keeping the damage roll unimportant for hordes is a good thing as it allows me as a GM to go "Alright, you'll wound anyway".

But I'll agree it's a matter of taste.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Yes, that is a good point of view to keep the damage roll unimportant. I will think about a mixture of giving a BS penalty and reducing the DoS.It is true that a BS penalty is no hindrance for large hords.

Again I think reducing the DoS has more in common with the rule of cover: It negates hits. So their might be a horde used to take cover with reduces the DoS by 1 or a well trained horde which reduces it by 3. Something like that.

Cheers,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

Reducing BS can negate hits too.

The way I use it, I go by gut feeling. Say we have a large horde that gives +40 to hit in the open. If the horde is holed up over a street facade across a huge plaza from the PCs, I might only give +20 to hit (discounting range) because it's only partially visible.

If the same horde was in a Bunker with a small slit, I might only give +0 to hit or maybe even a negative modifier, depending on slit size. That is likely to cause some loss of DoS, unless the player rolls well.

But that's a matter of preference, as I have said. My thought is: these are expert marksmen. Hordes should be easy to hit. I just don't want the to-hit roll to become totally irrelevant. It should make a difference whether you roll 20 or 60/70 in a number of cases.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Yes, it can . That is the difference. You might say, per penalty -10 to BS you reduce the chance for additional hits and what you can say for certain that the maximum DoS is decreased by 1.

But therefor reducing the DoS is worse. Because no matter how well you rolled your BS Test. Yor DoS is always reduced.

I mean it is the same with taking cover. Guess you just need your head to look around the corner and your right arm to shoot. Then the bigest percentil chance is to hit your cover (if you roll every hit location). So the DoS of hitting you will be pretty much reduced since many bullets hit your cover.

Cheers,

TechVoid.