RE: [Epic] "FIREPOWER" and Blast Markers

From: Andy Skinner <askinner_at_...>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 13:38:12 -0400

Josh said:
> Think of it this way: In a combined arms group (armor and infantry), which
> comes under fire, who's gonna duck first? The tank jockeys or the grunts
> slogging it on foot? Who's gonna be more disrupted by the
> incoming shells?
> And people wonder why there is such arguments over BMs and morale in E40K.

This just argues that tanks shouldn't be penalized by BMs. I don't think
that it says anything about whether you can subtract BMs from out of range
firepower. I still don't think you can, or that that would be a good
change.

I think there are sorta parallel examples that show weird effects with
either rule.

Don't let out of range FP be "reduced" by BMs:
Some devastators with some tactical marines in a detachment with BMs are
shooting at targets at 40 cm range. The BMs make them ineffective. Then
enemies wander into 30 cm, and suddenly the tactical marines can shoot, but
ineffectively, and the devastators are effective at the same target.

Let the out of range FP be reduced by BMs:
Some devastators with BMs alone shooting at targets 40cm away are
ineffective. But if we changed the detachment and added some tacticals, or
even 15cm range assault marines, the same devastators would be effective.

I think it might have been interesting to allow all weapons to degrade
gradually. For instance, say BMs were designed to fit into a scale of 1-6
(or 0-6). (How BMs are placed would have to be different, of course.)
Don't subtract BMs from FP or SHWs. Otherwise, figure out number of dice in
the same way. For FP, roll all the dice once, and keep however many are >
number of BMs (6 always counts). Then roll the remaining dice and apply in
the same way we do now. SHWs could be done separately, with a die per
weapon (or "shot", as the term seems to be evolving here). It is one more
roll, but a simple one, using the same target for a handful of dice.

This makes weapons degrade proportionally, unaffected by other weapons.

The procedure for placing BMs might be more complicated, to make it fairly
easy to get 1 or 2 BMs, but hard to get more. Detachment size might have to
enter into it.

It might work better with my suggestion for removing blast markers, removing
the lower of 2 d6, rather than d6-1 (always removing at least 1).

Really, I'm content with the current system. But something like the above
does seem interesting to me.

andy
Received on Thu Sep 10 1998 - 17:38:12 UTC