[Epic] more thoughts on Epic40K

From: Andy Skinner <askinner_at_...>
Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 08:30:08 -0500

I found the note in the appendix that players may want to make up
some rules about how hits are applied when using barrages--i.e.
treating models under a barrage as being on the "front". You'd
have to take into account the ratio of barrage FP to normal FP,
but you could guess at this easily.

Looks to me like there are 4 columns of difficulty to hit, with
the 3 columns of the FP table plus using 1 die per FP for immobile
war engines in the open. These columns seem to multiply the FP
by some factor. The factors are (I think) 1, .75, .5, .4. If
you wanted to fool around with this (I'm not recommending it, since
it would take longer), you could do some interesting variations.
Instead of having the table scale your FP, you could roll one die
per FP, and then another die (a d8 easily gives you .75 (3+), .5 (5+),
and approximates .4 as .375 (6+), to apply the appropriate column.
For example, to use the vehicle/infantry in the open column (factor
is .5), roll 1 die per FP (you need a lot of dice :-), and for each
hit, roll for 5+ on d8. Obviously, the maximum number of hits you
can get goes up a lot, but the average should be around the same.

This method lets you apply the correct effect of each column to
each figure, for detachments partially in cover, or one immobilised
Scorpion in a detachment of 3.

You could either roll hits, apply the appropriate target die (or
cover die or situation die or whatever you want to call it), and
then assign hits to units normally; or you could roll hits, apply
them to units, and then roll for which ones were actually hit.

Although this gives some interesting features, like applying cover
to each unit according to its own situation, and giving more variation
in how many could be hit, and feeling like all the guns you are
shooting at a detachment has some chance of having an effect, it
adds a bunch more dice, and (more importantly) adds rolls that have
to be made once per figure. I think the optional rule of being
able to hit units under a barrage is more useable. Still, fun to
think of such things! I suppose you could also scale the armor
values to apply the above factors. You wouldn't do it on a d6,
since there isn't enough precision. But you could multiply each
armor save by 2 and subtracting 1 (for rolling on a d12), and use
that for the immobilized war engine column, and then figure out
what each armor value would be multiplied by .75, .5, and .4.
Then you'd roll all your hits on the larger die. You'd have to
have a chart for those, but it is another way to apply the factor
applied in the FP chart while still keeping 1 die per FP.

Just me being silly.

andy
askinner_at_...
Received on Wed May 21 1997 - 13:30:08 UTC