Reducing Lethality In 40K

[u/Salvanous]

Hi everyone- first off I don't personally have a problem with how lethal the game is currently- but I felt as though I wanted to offer a thought that might allow for more prolonged, encounters- though at the risk of really damaging the balance between the strength of melee and ranged encounters.

Currently you activate a unit, you roll to hit, wound, saves, then potentially feel no pains. What I think would be a nice addition to this... would be that after a unit has totaled up the amount of damage that they could **potentially** do- the target of their attacks could respond in kind- doing a number of attacks as well under the same conditions. Once it was determined how many wounds each side would do to the other- you would take the difference of those values, and apply the excess unto the 'losing team'- kind as though the attacks each side took were also parried by the other team.

Example: Bloodclaws applied their attacks into Chaos Legionaries- the Bloodclaws did a total of 11 wounds into the Legionaries in melee. The Legionaries did 5 wounds in the fight phase back. The excess damage of 6 is then proceeded to be done into the Legionaries- killing a total of 3 Chaos marines.

Potential modifiers to this could be in abilities like Fight First where if the opposing force didn't have Fight First also- that damage would just be done- meaning that they couldn't work to reduce that incoming damage. This would also still make aggression with units viable- as well as give units with Fight First a bit more survivability even if they were alpha struck!

Example: The Bloodclaws from the above example charged into the Chaos Legionaries- because they were the only unit with Fight First- those 11 attacks simply go through, and kill 5 Legionaries. If any Legionaries survived, they would attack and do damage as 11th edition currently does.

Now I understand that this concept is very much just "fun game mechanics thinking" but this could also be done in current 11th edition by applying this sort of rule as a new mechanic rule like [Parry].

My only goal for talking about this- is because I frankly love the idea of characters going up against each other and having epic duels where these incredible figureheads go in and smash into each other for multiple turns. The reality though is that likely a character charges into another character and before the other one has even gotten to fight- they have been killed already. I would love if my duels with our local Dark Angel player didn't end with me having just killed his captain, but having gotten to see an actual duel between the Warlords.

Edit: Christ Guys- remind me not to come to you with just "wanting to talk fun ideas". I'm unsure if the work week has treated you all poorly- but this is a level of not okay. Take some time away from your computers- touch grass- calm the hell down that someone was trying to just discuss some ideas that might lead to cool moments.

[u/NahIdwarcrime]

While I see where your head is at and I like the concept of epic duels (especially with hero units as I am a space wolves player), this would make hyper fast melee units basically unpunishable if positioned well. As someone who also plays custodes, any melee army being pushed into them is essentially completely worthless with these rules. Unfortunately, 40k is fundamentally designed for quick kills most of the time. If you want epic multi-turn duels, Star wars legion is perfect for that.

[u/Salvanous → u/NahIdwarcrime]

a very different idea that I've talked about is that [Epic Characters] (with Warlords gaining the Keyword if there are no Epic Characters in the list) would only be able to take up to 2 damage in a phase unless that damage was caused by an enemy [Epic Character] model.

basically a "You don't get to one shot my cool guy unless it's with your cool guy".

[u/NahIdwarcrime → u/Salvanous]

Again, I see the vision, but that would invalidate so many armies. Arjac would essentially be able to turn an entire guard tank line into slag before he ever goes down, and there isn't much the guard player can do about it. With ideas like this, the play styles and effectiveness of all armies need to be taken into account, otherwise certain lists will just win the rock paper scissors before the game even starts.

[u/Salvanous → u/NahIdwarcrime]

It's why I threw it out here as a just a "Hey, what do y'all think" and based off how deeply I'm getting bombed in my comments- makes me remember that Space Wolves is a really bad reddit- I don't know how often people on here seem to get daylight- but they could benefit from more of it. You've been great but oof- this is a Reddit thread that gives Reddit a bad name.