Shooting into Close Combat

[Eidre]

The new wound allocation rules (i.e. closest model) open up a wonderful and easy to implement method to shoot your own troops!

Proposed rule-thing...

SHOOTING INTO CLOSE COMBAT
Some particularly soulless generals may wish to shoot into close combat, taking advantage a hopeless melee to hold a particularly nasty enemy in place while they bring in the heavy artillery.

Shooting into a close combat is conducted the same way as any other shooting; however, just before rolling to hit, the firing unit must make a special Leadership test called a Fratricide Test to determine if they have the proper motivation to actually fire on their own compatriots. If the test is passed, the unit may fire into the close combat as desired. If it is failed, the unit does not shoot, and may not shoot at a different target this shooting phase.

In all cases, if friendly models outnumber enemy models in the close combat being fired at, the test is taken at -1.

This test will depend to a certain extent on the codex involved:

Particularly Soulless: armies composed of units that hate and despise each other and are constantly looking for opportunities to advance by taking out the opposition; alternately, armies that place zero value on individual lives. Units from these armies always test against Ld10 for Fratricide Tests, regardless of their statline value, and do not take the -1 penalty for having friends outnumber enemies.
- Necrons
- Dark Eldar
- Chaos Space Marines
- Daemons of Chaos (NOTE: against a unit with the same patron god, they are instead considered "Humane")
- Tyranids

Pragmatic: these armies may have strong bonds of brotherhood, but are trained and psi-conditioned to understand tactical sacrifice and pursuit of victory over false mercy (or see an occasional salvo of fire at a friendly unit just a bit of good fun). Units from these armies test against their normal Ld for Fratricide Tests.
- Tau
- Space Marines
- Orks
- Grey Knights
- Dark Angels
- Blood Angels
- Black Templars

Humane: these armies have significant reluctance to firing on their compatriots even for tactically sound reasons, due to normal human emotions, being part of a dying race, or having a sense of superiority that denies the need to resort to such extreme tactics to ensure victory. Such units roll 3d6 and add the highest two for Fratricide Tests.
- Space Wolves
- Imperial Guard
- Eldar

If any friendly units in the unit fired upon suffer any unsaved wounds as a result of Fratricide, they must take a Leadership Test at the end of the Shooting Phase. If they pass, they continue to function normally. If they fail, they are overwhelmed by the betrayal of their comrades. Place an appropriate marker by the unit; at the end of the subsequent Assault Phase, this unit will automatically lose combat and attempt to Fall Back (even if Fearless or otherwise immune to failing Morale Tests, and subject normally to the possibility of Sweeping Advance). If the unit successfully escapes from close combat, it will continue to Fall Back until it leaves the board and cannot Rally.

[Bubble Ghost]

I'm not sure how to be reading this. Is there a particular problem you're trying to solve, or is it more just a fun add-on?

[Lord Inquisitor]

These seem like a good start, although I'd simplify them somewhat. You could also add modifiers for firing at allies (should be easier to fire at desperate allies rather than friends.)

How do you resolve the actual shots into combat? That's always the tricky part with any "fire into combat" rules.

[Eidre]

@Bubble: just for fun. It seems odd that a game set in a galaxy ruled by Grimdark would specifically prohibit shooting into close combat; after seeing "Braveheart" one too many times, and looking back over the wound allocation system for shooting, it only seemed fitting to question that particular paragraph in the rules and propose an alternative that wasn't too complicated.

@Inquisitor: resolving the actual shots would go just like it does with normal shooting...find the closest model to the firing unit and start allocating wounds. If by some chance all the models in the close combat have the same armor save, roll saves for everything and start allocating wounds starting with the closest (and with Look Out Sir! as appropriate, of course not being able to allocate to the enemy models). If the entire close combat has a mixture of saves, use the normal rules and allocate pre-saved wounds one at a time to the nearest target model until it fails enough saves to die.

As to the first point (shooting at allies), that would make sense as well. Perhaps a Ld bonus or shift up or down the Soulless <-> Humane continuum depending on the quality of the ally.

[theunwantedbeing]

Battle brothers - may not shoot into combat
Allies of Convenience - may shoot into combat but may only snapfire
Desperate allies - may shoot into combat

That simplifies things massively of course, but for allied troops.

[Bubble Ghost]

OK, got you.

That last bit about falling back seems a bit excessive - I assume it's there to prevent metagaming nonsense with people 'rescuing' their guys from combat by shooting them, but it's kind of awkward and artificial.

Also, a unit only rarely has multiple Toughness values, and when it does they will usually be close together. But a combat is going to veer all over the shop. So does this not open up some majority Toughness shenanigans? Those Plague Marines will be unrealistically reluctant to charge you if they know they're going to be Toughness 3 when you put mortar rounds on their heads next turn. That would feel a bit cheap, even if it's not going to be a significant problem that often.

[Eidre]

The falling back for the betrayed unit was to institute consequences for behaving in a way that the rules as written are not intended to work (and thus to offset some of the advantages that would accrue to armies that could do it better than others).

From a more cinematic perspective, it seems like being fired on by your own army would be about the most demoralizing thing that could happen to someone, so there should be some morale consequences.

As to the majority Toughness, this is a problem with the execution of the rules, since it gives the shooting army the power to affect the protective stats of the defensive army. Perhaps a caveat that effective Toughness used to determine roll To Wound for shooting into a close combat is always the highest majority Toughness among the Engaged units.

[mughi3]

These seem like a good start, although I'd simplify them somewhat. You could also add modifiers for firing at allies (should be easier to fire at desperate allies rather than friends.)

How do you resolve the actual shots into combat? That's always the tricky part with any "fire into combat" rules.

Do like infinity, or kharns rules- all shots that hit hit the enemy models, all shots that miss hit friendly models

[Bubble Ghost]

The falling back for the betrayed unit was to institute consequences for behaving in a way that the rules as written are not intended to work (and thus to offset some of the advantages that would accrue to armies that could do it better than others).

From a more cinematic perspective, it seems like being fired on by your own army would be about the most demoralizing thing that could happen to someone, so there should be some morale consequences.

Yeah, I understand that. That's what I was assuming. It just doesn't seem to gel with the rest of the game. Being unable to rally is a strangely huge punishment in a game that's incredibly lenient with stuff like that, so it's a bit incongruous and I can see it feeling quite unsatisfying during play; and on the occasions when I use this, I'd be thinking "oh, that unit's dead anyway, won't hurt to shoot them." It's already a very 'gamey' kind of measure, rather than the desperation move it feels like it ought to be. And how does it interact with units led by independent characters? Are they automatically gone as well? Seems too harsh on the character if so, but too cheap a way of dodging the penalty and thus an incentive to exploit it if not.

I'm just guessing here, obviously.

Would it be worth saying that your own side never even takes morale tests from friendly fire..? It seems counter-intuitive, but the effect would be that you can't use it to hope to bail a unit out of a losing fight with the morale rules - and so you don't need to add an extra, awkward disincentive to do that. Maybe say instead that if you shot into a combat at all (independently of casualties), your side is too shaken to do a sweeping advance. So you need to think carefully about whether you need to do it, rather than taking pot shots into a combat in complete saftey because the five nearest guys are enemies. Something like that anyway.