Armour Save house rule idea

[Baaltor]

Hello, fellow warseers!

I've seen many people lamenting the change of armour save modifiers to AP values (in fact: I've never seen someone praising for AP values, or even against save mods other than for playing devil's advocate). I have a tendency to think about mechanics in my spare time, and I've got an idea that I think sounds solid. My main two gripes about the current save system are that it's too binary, you get it or you don't, there is no middle ground, and if you brought a heavy bolter to a power armour fight, you might as well have brought a big shoota. The second problem is that it's too aggressive when it works, and too passive when it doesn't, which in theory should be fine, but due to the uneven nature of armies being all space marines, this removes almost all meaning from the words 'AP 5' (no offence eldar players, we still love you).

A year or two ago I saw a thread wishlisting changes for AP, one of which was to instead have AP cause rolls within certain ranges to count as failed

Example 1: AP 6 causes rolls of '6' to be nullified and count as failed on armour saves

Example 2: AP 3 causes rolls of '3','4','5', and '6' to be nullified and count as failed on armour saves

I thought this was very solid in it's goal, it made AP relevant, but it also is still far too aggressive for my tastes. I had an epiphany the other day:

What about instead of causing the nullification of rolls, instead forcing rerolls on all affected numbers?

Example 3: AP 6 causes rolls of '6' to be rerolled, with '6's on the second roll succeeding

Example 4: AP 3 causes rolls of '3','4','5', and '6' to be rerolled, with '3','4','5', and '6' on the second roll succeeding

This gets rid of the overly quick nullification of armour, and also means EVERYONE has to worry about cover. It's better for non-power armour armies as it means they get some saves, even when in the open.

I've done some additional thinking about this, and have these additions:

If an AP value exceeds an armour's number of possible saving numbers, it begins to completely negate the saves

Example 6: A melta ray hits Lugft Huron in TDA with an Iron Halo, since the melta has an AP value one more powerful than the armour, saving throws of '2' on the armour are completely negated, and count as having failed. He must also reroll rolls of '3'. It's worth noting that with this rule it may be worth while to remove the 5++ save that terminators get, but I'm not sure.

Cover and invulnerability saves reinforce the saves, instead of being an alternative roll that may be taken when armour cannot, starting from the back

Example 6: A bolter hits a space marine captain in power armour with an Iron Halo, however despite the bolt round causing rerolls of '5', and '6', his Iron Halo enforces rolls of 4+, thus he suffers no penalty!

Okay, questions? Comments? Ideas? First born children?

[Spell_of_Destruction]

It's an interesting idea but I think it mostly provides an advantage to MEQs which I think it the opposite you were going for.

So a GEQs chance of saving an AP5 wound goes from 0 to 1/9. Not much to write home about.

An MEQs chance of surviving AP3 on the other hand increases from 0 to 4/9. That's almost 50/50!

MEQs survivability against AP5 is reduced from 2/3 to 5/9 (so reduced by 1/9). They only need 5+ cover to negate AP5 entirely. So the cover goes from having no benefit against AP5 to improving their survivability against AP5 whereas their survivability also goes up against AP3 (traditionally a counter to MEQ).

[big squig]

I like AP more than save mods.

[Chapters Unwritten]

Especially with an idea like this, which could double the amount of rolling you do in a game. Re-rolling huge swaths of your dice is too much extra rolling for most tastes. It'd be far simpler to add a modifier.

[Bubble Ghost]

To be honest, all the rerolling would be a time sink, and it would feel weird and unintuitive to be aiming for an optimum number in the middle of a die, not too high and not too low. That's the sort of 'clever' mechanic (and it is clever) that's a bit more at home in a more involved game like an RPG - I don't think it's simple or evocative enough for a central mechanic in a game that's about rolling a ton of d6s like 40K. It would just feel fiddly and weird.

I like AP more than save mods.

Ditto.

[Hendarion]

A year or two ago I saw a thread wishlisting changes for AP, one of which was to instead have AP cause rolls within certain ranges to count as failed

Example 1: AP 6 causes rolls of '6' to be nullified and count as failed on armour saves

Example 2: AP 3 causes rolls of '3','4','5', and '6' to be nullified and count as failed on armour saves

Isn't that exactly the same as armour-save-modifiers?
AP6 = 6 is a fail, same as all 3+ armour is 4+ (4+ is the same as "roll 3 or 4 or 5"), all 4+ armour is 5+ (5+ is the same as "roll a 4 or 5"), all 6+ armour is dead (no armour is same as "roll 6+, but no 6")
AP5 = 5+6 is a fail, same as all 3+ armour is 5+, all 4+ armour is 6+, all 5+/6+ armour is dead.

[Zabousta]

My group tried thinking up a system along the same lines for a pnp rpg that we play. What it comes down to is reality vs common sense. Rolling that many dice is going to take too long and create a long and tedious game. As with the above posts, people or going to theory craft out the best possible ways to roll the dice regardless. There are also balance issues that come into play. If you are diluting the aggressiveness of the system, then whoever roles the most dice wins. You have a way higher chance to hit those magic numbers that you need. Warhammer is kept to a certain simplistic level for a reason.

I think its great that you have taken the time to try and improve the existing system, after all no system is perfect, however after trying myself to create a better system than DnD has led me to the conclusion that it is a serious amount of work and not easily created.

Best of luck. I hope it makes the game more enjoyable.

[t-tauri]

Moved to rules development. Please post in the appropriate area.

[RBLFunk]

Invert the unit's armour save to determine its revised armour AR stat, 3+ becomes 4, 4+ becomes 3, 5+ becomes 2, etc.
Deduct the weapon's AP from 9 to determine its revised AP stat, 6 becomes 3, 5 becomes 4, 4 becomes 5, etc. '-' arbitrarily becomes 3.
Roll to pierce unit's armour by comparing AP to AR in the same way rolling to wound as attack's strength versus target's toughness. AP4 vs AR4 = 4+ to pierce, AP5 vs AP4 = 3+, etc.

Space marine with a bolt gun shoots a space marine and hits. Revised AP 4 bolter pierces his armour on 4+, strength 4 wounds him on 4+.
Space marine hit by autocannon. Revised AP5 pierces his armour on 3+, strength 7 wounds him on 2+.
Krak missile hits space marine. Revised AP 6 pierces his armour on 2+.

Just a thought.

[yabbadabba]

Your solution is to change the game to reflect the people you are playing against rather than to reflect the reality of the game mechanics. In addition, you miss the evolution of the rules and the reasons for the introduction of AP.

If you don't like AP then you need to come up with reasons that doesn't reflect the playing environment you find yourself in, and rather focus on the benefits it beign to the game; your comment on it being Binary is an example of this.

[lanrak]

I prefer to get the effects of armour modifiers without using seperate armour modifiers.

EG Change ALL units to have an AV value .(1 to 14)
All weapons have an Armour penetration (AP)value.(Str +2)

If the AV +D6 roll is greater than the AP value of the weapon that hit , the model passes thier armour save.

EG Bolter has an AP value of 6.

An ork AV 1 needs to roll a 6 to save.(6 +1 =7 )
An Sm AV 4 needs to roll a 3+ to save(3 +4 +7)

An auto cannon AP 9
Auto penetrates the orks armour, but the SM need 6 to save!

This allows all units to roll saves.(Vehicles too.)

But this would be more in the realms of a re write.(40k game play in about 40 pages of well defined intuitive rules.)

[Hellebore]

The reason i originally came up with this concept was to show that you don't need maths to use the mechanic of armour save modifiers. It was one of the arguments against their use. It was also a way to use the current AP system to generate the rules for ASM, thereby not requring whole reprinting of books etc - one of the other reasons given against their use. Thus, this particular concept negates two of the most important limitations against reincorporating the concept into the game.

By having AP negate that value on the die, it does the same thing as a save mod without requiring you subtract anything - so Ap4 ignores 4, 5, 6 on the die so on only svs of 2+ and 3+ would work.

It wasn't necessarily a suggestion for use, only a proof that the concept of ASMs could be used successfully without requring modifiers and changed rolls, or removing AP. It would change the value of armour of course, back to 2nd ed values. On the other hand, the all or nothing AP system is impossible to balance because it is either 100% useful against a target or 0% useful. An AP4 heavy bolter is infinitely more useful against the tau than against space marines.

Hellebore