So, what ever happened to Tank Hunting, as an occupation of guys? I ask this because I was flipping through Rites of Battle, and I found the Land Raider. Based on a cursory look, it's a game-ender, more a piece of the map with guns, than anything you are likely to defeat, and the weapons available don't seem to change that to me. Whichever side has one would seem to win by default, without even having to climb out.

Your group of Marines is in a full-scale field battle, aiding the Achilus Crusade forces against the forces of Nurgle Plague Marines. Their leader, a powerful Chaos Terminator Lord, has most of the necessary stuff to call up a GUO, and really screw over the Crusade's day, and you get the task of stopping him, either by keeping him from the distant altar, or taking his relic object away. Problem #1 stems from the fact that he's in a C. Land Raider, really the only land vehicle able to transport a Termie, such as himself. If we're nice, and say it blew a tread, and you have to rush in before it gets fixed, that's still AP 50, with 90+ SP. Why does that vehicle have SO MUCH armor? How could you defeat it? At that, I'd be comfortable using similar points for a Necron Monolith, which would truly be invincible, then, and I'd hate to see a Baneblade on the far side of a bridge, waiting for the enemy to attempt a crossing. If you had a multi-melta, you would have to be rather close, and still roll great for damage (37+ just to ping it, with 4 or 5d10+6), and that's with a weapon DESIGNED to incinerate tanks. The be-all gun seems to be the legendary lascannon, but even that needs a 40 out of 6d10+10, and either is going to need numerous shots to overcome that insane Structure strength, or I'm missing something.

So, am I missing something? Is there a "Tank Buster" equivalent to all the stuff that Marines can take to obliterate Hordes; I've seen stuff where a squad of DW Marines easily obliterates Mag 40 Hordes, without even taking long enough to get hit back. Without saying "I want a Table Top-like solution" (a spendy Land Raider downed in one turn), what is the likely means by which that vehicle, and its corrupted occupant, can be bested by a group of Marines? Figure he's shooting back, with lascannons, too, against guys who aren't Land Raiders. I know I picked the biggest tank, but even many of the others are similarly tough (if you can plan for the biggest, you can handle whatever you find), and without a Brightlance (which I haven't seen, but can hope will have a "decrease target's AP by 5 or 10 for each DoS scored", none of the guns seem up to the task, except for the Tau Rail Cannon, mounted on the Hammerhead. Even a mighty Dreadnought cannot can opener a LR, nor likely a Carnifex, or even the Dagon Overlord; they're just not going to hit hard enough against that armor (though I can still put my money on my Nid o' choice, the Zoanthrope, with Warp Lance). Am I just underestimating Righteous Fury, assuming big Nids would get it, but I know the Marines would? Are we hoping that, out of the lascannon's 6 dice, one or more get a 10, so we can roll the attack again, and maybe take out a weapon?

So, please give me a scenario, preferably detailed, whereby the CLR can be decimated, forcing the Chaos Lord to come out, and face the party? Being it's a big field battle, go ahead and add some extra things in, beyond a group of the kill Team. It almost seems like a full Devastator Squad would be needed, or an orbital strike. Thanks very much for any aide.

venkelos said:

New melta doesn't get +1d10 at short range it gets 2xPen, just mentioning it. That said, it's not enough to model the effects of weapons that have 2d6+S Pen in 40K. A suggested house rule is that melta halfs the enemy AP instead of doubling Pen.

That way 2d10+16 Pen 12 versus 45/2=23 gives you 2d10+15 penetrating. Sounds better to your ear? So does it to mine. Apply the halving AP to everything that would roll 2d6 against armour in 40K, in particular Monstrous Creatures. Tbh, I expect such a rule change to be made official in the next errata because melta weapons still don't scale right against high AP.

Other than that, it's a Land Raider - what do you expect? Unless the enemy brings enough melta or super heavy mech, he's dead as a dodo. The venerable Land Raider doesn't care how tough he is otherwise and will maim it under its blessed tracks, praise the Emperor.

Alex

What I would do is...

• Tank Buster Squad Mode to increase BS
• Other BS enhancements, i.e. signum/signum link, laser sight, etc.
• Full-action Aim
• Make the weapon Accurate; to do so you need the Master of Arms Distinction from Rites of Battle or a Forge-Master

Weapon best choices (these are non-errata stats if it matters):

• Lascannon: 6d10+10 E, Pen 10
• Multi-melta: 4d10+6 E, Pen 13 - Pen increases to 26 at Short Range or closer
• Firestorm multi-melta: 5d10+5 E, Pen 15, semiauto fire (so add a motion-tracker) - Pen increases to 30 at Short Range or closer
• Conversion beamer: 6d10+12 E, Pen 14 (must be outside of Short Range to get this damage amount)

Adding Accurate to any of those and handing it to a Devastator is going to result in +2 Damage (Mighty Shot) and virtually guaranteed +2d10 damage from Accurate given bonuses and Devs' high BS. So the Firestorm is looking at two shots of 7d10+7 at Pen 30 - not too bad, but it's not likely to kill the Land Raider in one turn without Righteous Fury. Maximum damage in each hit without any RF is 70 Pen 30, so 50 after armor, and...well, that would kill it but just barely, but that's rolling all 9s for damage and having a way to make the weapon Accurate. I don't think it's possible with anything other than the Firestorm, since negating 30 out of 50 AP is the big deal.

Also, the Land Raider has 45 SI in the Errata, so that's kind of a big deal.

Kshatriya said:

Righteous Fury against vehicles does not add extra damage. If you roll a 0 for damage against a vehicle, AND your attack has dealt at least 1 point of damage to the vehicles structural integrity, instead of rolling an additional 1d10 damage you roll 1d5 on the vehicle critical hit chart.

Possible results include:

Possibility to stun the crew
penalties to shooting
destroy a weapon
cause extra damage to the vehicle
kill or maim crew inside the vehicle
slow or immobilize the vehicle

The Land Raider, to me, is a master class enemy or at least an elite; it would create a set piece battle. This means, as Kshatriya says, a handful of heavy weapons are your best bet- this also means as a GM you should probably inform your Kill Team before the mission that the enemy is likely in posession of very heavy armor so they think to buy these types of weapons before they're in the field.

The optional Lascannon is doing 5d10+10 pen 10, or 37 pen 10, or nothing, to a Landraider. Though with 5 dice you have a 41% chance of RF, and you just have to do 4 above average to hurt the LR. The Maxima Multi-Melta optional damage chart will do 27 pen 12 (nothing) at standard range or 27 pen 24 (1 damage) at half range. The team just has to figure out how to do that regularly, and leverage things like lascannons, multi-meltas, and melta bombs to take one out.

In tabletop, you can take one out if you're lucky with a single shot, but the same is true in the RPg, you just have to be more lucky, and get things like RFs.

As for a game breaker *for* the Land Raider, see "Machine Curse" on page 195 of the main book, where at 20m xPR you can stop it dead in its tracks: "if a single vehicle is targeted then it may not move or fire any of its weapons for a number of Rounds equal to the Librarian's PR as it shorts and sparks alarmingly." Mean GMs (like me, alternatley those simply sick of Machine Cuse) could ward or otherwise impose a penalty to activate due to the awesomeness of the LR, but based on everything I've read one simple activation would mean your LR can't do anything (including open the back door to let the Chaos troopers out) while the Kill Team shoots at it. As the immobilization nears an end, the Librarian 're-casts' the power and starts the clock again. This means you have a dead land raider- maybe 20 turns from now, but it will die without support.

There is also the fact that PCs are bound to try 'unconventional' means to take the tank out; such as jumping on top of it and trying to melta just the hatch in order to get in and kill the crew. There is no location damage on the vehicles, so what does happen when that melta bomb (or 3) goes off on the top hatch? And based on art and the models, there are open viewports- I can't say I've ever thrown a vehicle at players that hasn't resulted in the players trying to shoot into the vehicle through exposed ports- so what does that potentially do?

As a GM, the answers to the above can be the quick end to the LR that you may be looking for, but at the same time if you're looking to make the Landraider a big deal those same situations may be just what the encounter calls for to ensure you can't end it simply by shooting at it from 200m while it's paralized.

Kshatriya said:

All of those are heavy weapons I think, with the possible exception of the conversion beamer, and consequently cant benefit from damage bonus from accurate, would have to be a basic weapon.

So, where is the errata? I've heard mention of every weapon getting retooled before.

I don't particularly see a whole lot of point in upping BS score, unless DoS increases Damage. Hitting a Land Raider should never be hard; making it care, especially now that it knows where you are, that's what seemed hard to me. Getting them Accurate seems very nice, but some of the good guns aren't Basic, so I don't know if the effect would get in. Either the Mode would have to say "can work with Heavy Weapons", or something else would need to be done. Also still weird to think that all of the stuff I would normally plan to best a LR with (a Dreadnought, an Avatar, a Carnifex) has no prayer, unless it is sporting a heavy weapon.

Very nice to know its SI went down.

I see various points here. Thanks very much. I guess it could work to bumrush the tank, if the players can survive the lascannon/heavy bolter fire. As for firing through the window, I'd be a ****** about it, more or less. The occupants would get a field effect (45), and if it was moving, the field would increase (60-70). I don't care if they are Space Marines; those windows have been there for millennia, and someone likely designed them so that they weren't a glaring weakness.

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1 errata

If you want to find it yourself its on the support page

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However given the size of vehicles, one could argue that a similar effect would apply (targeting for vulnerable locations). Also one could argue that throwing a melta bomb at a hatch has the normal effect based on the same argument we had in the called shots thread: one could assume as GM that characters always aim at vulnerable spots anyway and that therefore attacking by using the default rules model a hit at such a location.

I am no fan of aiming at special locations and getting extra damage or affecting vehicles/beings in a special manner (unless you are fighting a cyclops perhaps; or a vehicle with a big design flaw). It tends to degenerate a combat system. If they aim at a hatch and do critical damage, they can have an appropriate hatch related critical - otherwise it's a normal attack with me. Same with aiming at ports. If you do critical damage while aiming at a port, I'll translate the resulting critical into something viewport based.

If stopping a Land Raider was as easy as aiming at viewports, all the enemy would need was sniper rifles. But hat is not sufficient in 40K TT either.

tl; dr = the LR is a juggernaut which is hard to stop. Melta should be able to with a close range shot, Lascannons should be able to with a (few) lucky shot(s), everything else can do a 1d5 vehicle critical if they are lucky.

(It's a little easier for me because I use the multiple RF dice rule. Lascannon do some really good damage to a LR with a good roll this way: 10,5,7,4,8,10 + 10,3 + 2 = 59 + 10 = 69 Pen 10. Not bad.)

Alex

ak-73 said:

For the most part I agree here, though if it were a set-piece and the Kill Team was under-armed for the task as a GM you'd need to figure something out. But 90% of the time I agree that called shots and special circumstances tend to slow things down quickly, and lend themselves to a lot of headaches.

Charmander said:

Worse, it lends itslef to: "Another tank again? Yeah, I 'll throw a krak grenade through its ports, as we did with the Land Raider." It becomes a one-strategy set-up.

Alex

Narkasis Broon said:

I reread the rule and am a little appalled, just because the distinction is pure BS to me. So the Stalker Boltgun being Accurate means it can deliver a much more lethal snipe-shot...but the stalker bolt-pistol having the same quality only means it gets bonus BS to Aim and can't be heard...when the shooter is likely to be well-concealed anyway and thus the target is probably Surprised and can't dodge? I'm underwhelmed.

I'm not really advocating for every weapon to have Accurate or even more weapons, but the Forgemaster/Distinction of being able to turn on Accurate seems to be a big enough deal that it should grant bonus damage even on non-Basic weapons. After all, most weapons aren't Accurate and most groups will never have a way to turn it on. I just like to see the things that are Accurate and non-Basic get more than a relatively worthless BS bonus.

Captain Ventris said:

Thanks for pointing this out, I missed it and it is kind of a big deal!

herichimo said:

Thanks for the correction =) I'm glad they ported the TT effects over to the RPG. I like the drama of those a lot more than simple +damage. And I agree that one-shotting a tank should be either really hard or impossible. Fighting a Land Raider should be the boss fight of a tough mission, and it shouldn't go down in one hit; it should require a lot of thought and tactical planning.

ak-73 said:

One can see how this argument makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately its not that easy. Shooting at a tank's vulnerable spots, from the shooter's perspective, is generally an inefficient method of taking out tanks.

This is of course, going off the assumption we are talking about a directed weapon. Such as a lascannon, meltagun, autocannon, or similar line of sight weapon. Excepting special situations, the vulnerable areas the shooter sees when shooting these types of weapons are not the type of shots that would cause a mobility-kill (M-kill), function-kill (F-kill), or catastrophic-kill (K-kill). M-kill being imobilizing the vehicle, F-kill is taking away its ability to do its job on the battlefield (destroying weapons on a tank), and K-kill is blowing it the heck up. The reaason for this is the vital areas you want to hit when shooting at a tank are all well protected from the typical shooting perspective. While the tanks periscopes and hatches may be visible on the top of the tank from the side, shooting them will do very little at stopping the tank. Perhaps if you're very lucky shooting a periscope or hatch may cause some spalling which might cause injury to the crew. When firing at a tank you want to aim at locations such as the track, drive wheel or return roller, the engine, ammo storage, or crew stations. These locations are all heavily armoured against most line of sight weaponry, but if hit are almost guaranteed to take out a tank, or at least take it out of a fight.

Situations you might see where firing at weaker areas like hatches are a good idea include firing down from above onto the top of a tank. Such that your rounds will penetrate the hatch and kill the crew located beneath them. Or hitting the exhaust ports above the engine, again requiring an elevated vantage point above the tank for a line of sight weapon. These situations rely on the weaker points, hatches in this case, to be in direct line of sight between the shooter and the desired target. I would deffinately give my players an advantage when taking on tanks if they take the time to get in a position above it, or force it into a tank trap to expose its top or underside.

On the other hand, weapons like RPGs, rockets, and missiles can't really "aim" at weak points. These weapons have an inherit innacuracy to them. You can aim at the tank and reliably hit it, but the projectile is just not capable of homing on to the specific point you were hoping to hit. Even with guided missiles. They will "lock on" to the tank but then simply try their best to simply hit it, without any fancy weak point exploitation. The Javelin is a good example. Once you lock on to the tank the missile will fly to it, then a couple hundred feet from the tank it will fly into the air then dive down onto the weaker top armour of the tank. Designed to bypass the thicker armour designed to resist line of sight attacks, the missile is still only trying to just hit the tank. Counting on the cramped nature of the interrior of nearly every tank to guarantee a hit at a critical system.

Finally, shooting at specific points on a tank, such as periscopes or sensor systems, does have some advantages. If you can take out all of the crew's methods of seeing out of the tank, the crew will be forced to pop the hatch to see out, making it easier to kill them. Additionally, in support of the called shot, I can see if players successfully hit a spot with a called shot, weapon for instance, the only critical effects the vehicle suffers are directly related to that location. A hit on tires or treads would be an immobilized result, a direct hit on a weapon could only destroy that particular weapon, etc.

Kshatriya said:

I think it's a balance issue, primarily aimed (no pun intended) at giving snipers a valid combat track; without it sniper weapons are terrible in comparison to the other weapons offered. If you offer accurate to everything, you start back down the track you were on before and everyone is petitioning the GM (thus the Forgemaster) to give that benefit to their heavy weapons.

But don't be too quick to dismiss DoS/bonus to BS, as page 245 indicates you can bump one of your damage dice up to be equal to your DoS to hit when you roll bad.

Of course you could always houserule that forgemaster PCs could voilate this rule if you want people to get extra dice to damage (if your players aren't already doing enough )

That a Forge-Master can only unlock or suppress a single quality in the absence of a GM-fiat Distinction is IMO balance enough, since most of the time (my group at least) would rather remove Overheat or Recharge from a multimelta than make something Accurate. Everything being Accurate is not a thing to be worried about in the end. At best you're going to have 1-2 things that might be Accurate with 2 Forge-Masters, even assuming they don't enhance their own Omnissiah axes to Razor Sharp or their own mechadendrite-mounted plasma guns to remove Recharge instead of helping their teammates.

Not sure how denying damage to the Stalker bolt pistol or the like somehow screws more dedicated snipers. Wolf Scouts to me are hit-and-run, snipe when they can with their pistol. What's their incentive to use it over Req'ing a "real" Stalker bolter where they almost assuredly will get the +2d10 damage? I could see it being a great choice for Signature Wargear, especially if they went the Bolter Mastery route...which is the optimal idea for a Wolf Scout anyway.

Not sure what you mean by the p. 245 thing - I couldn't really find what you were referring to, sorry.

God, my PCs. I'm pretty sure the Forge Master-to-be is going to be the selfish type though.

Kshatriya said:

I'm not saying it should be feared, I'm saying my conjecture on the motivation on creating the rule in the first place was that it was specifically aimed at sniper rifles. The additional damage was added to the Accurate trait back in the Dark Heresy errata. Accurate was originally only adding to hit. At the time, sniper style weapons were totally underpowered, and you were better off sniping with an autogun on full auto than a long las with a hotshot, which felt wrong if nothing else. With the addition of the bonus damage dice, sniper rifles became a viable option.

I'm not sure they really thought much about specialist pistols for wolf scouts or the like. The other weapons tend to have special benefits already- pistols can be used in hand to hand, heavy weapons are well, heavy. Basic, non-autofire weapons, got the short end.

And if you're not worried about the balance implications of adding Accurate + 2d10 potential damage to the other classes simply HR it out of your way.

Kshatriya said:

On page 245 it talks about calculating your attack- you record the degrees of success on any attack, and the number of degrees can be used to up the damage on a single die. So if you get 9 DoS to hit on a weapon that does 1d10+9, the minimum that d10 can be is now 9. If you have a weapon that does 5d10+10 and rolled a 2, 5, 7, 9, and a 9, you could take the 9 DoS and apply it to a single die and turn your 2 into a 9.

Yeah, I can agree with the sentiment that it appears they didn't think about it much, and that sniper-specialized weapons really should be really nasty if shot well as a default (even though the best weapons, the Toxic ones, have crap for Pen, but I suppose that's another balance consideration), though I think other things that require the kind of buy-in that Forge-Father requires should be able to unlock that kind of power for other stuff...I'd be uninclined to have an NPC Forge-Father unlock or suppress stuff for the PCs, personally, if you were indicating that might be an issue.

Re: Stalker pistol - if nothing else they could've said "this weapon benefits from bonus damage from the Accurate Quality in the same manner as an Accurate Basic weapon." I know a couple freelancers from other game systems, and from talking to them I know how this kind of thing can slip through the cracks, though. And admittedly, FFG is pretty good about errata compared to some other systems.

Oh, I see your p. 245 reference now. Kinda like Proven I guess? Cool. Thanks for pointing that out!

Kshatriya said:

The needle rifle is one often debated on the forum here, for its general suckyness. Great against soft targets, but that's not usually who a KT gets deployed to hit. Not sure how the sniper rifle got ported to DW with such low stats, but maybe it was to show off the stalker? Toxic is a nice trait, but I can honestly say I don't think a player of mine has ever failed a roll to resist it, and most of the enemies are tough as nails as well.

Kshatriya said:

NP, it's often overlooked, and even once you spot it, it is hard to remember it. My group tends to only remember it when they make a critical roll that's just awful

Never failed a resist roll? At -5 per point of inflicted damage? Even with the Oolitic Kidney and Resistance, the couple of times I've used Toxic, I've put a PC to very low Wounds or crits (heh heh). Your players must have all the dice gods' favor. I see Toxic as having the most overall potential, but I'd take a Stalker anyday, for the baseline Pen if nothing else. Pen 5 is over half of a CSM's or battlesuit's armor, after all. Toxic + Accurate seems like it can hit higher highs in damage, but it's also riskier since you might not penetrate very much and they might do great on the resist roll.

Well I admit I've not opted to apply toxic to some of the bigger baddies during the balancing act of trying to provide challenge without accidentally blowing up the team. The little enemies were only doing a couple at a time, and the +10 from UT and + reroll from the kidney allowed the team to get 2 rolls at least to resist; 3 if they spent fate because they were scared of going into critical for whatever reason.

My group has split luck, some of them can't seem to fail a roll lower than 40%, but I have others that jam their guns at least once a night.

I will say now that they've higher level (and have higher wounds and toughness and things like force dome) I may start to use it more often just to make getting hurt all that much scarier.

Personally, I feel that the Astartes vehicle armour values in Rites of Battle are too high anyway - compare the Rhino in RoB to the Rhino in ItS, and the Astartes one has +5 armour (roughly) all round. Which would be fine, IMO, if the enemy vehicles in RoB weren't scaled to match the ones in ItS.

I'm fully in support of personal equipment for Astartes having an edge over mortal equivalents due to size and a few other factors, but the higher vehicle armour values throw everything relating to them out, and come without any justification.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Personally I think the spread is too high. I actually think Rhino's do have fair armour values but bikes could have a bit more and Land Raiders a bit less. If one modifies AP like this: new AP = original AP + (30 - original AP) x 0.2 it becomes somewhat better. Not a practical solution but good as a rule of thumb.

I don't think it solves the problem of tanks sufficiently though, I still maintain 40K RP has forgot to model the effects of 2d6+S attacks in 40K TT. My suggested hot fix remains to let those weapons half armour AP before applying Pen. It's better than what melta does now, that is to double weapon Pen.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Do you think that your fix makes it a little too easy to one-shot a tank in the RPG, especially given the way Righteous Fury works on vehicles? I mean, I've had Land Raiders explode from completely unexpectedly nasty hits in the TT, but it's also a different context than in the RPG. Facing an enemy Land Raider as a small squad of SMs should be a pretty harrowing and dangerous experience for players, not just "*pew* got it." I'm not sure a close porting of the TT rules is an elegant solution, since the end goals of a TT game and an RPG mission are pretty different.