I think the ideas on Hand Flamers in the last few posts are very tangent-esque and can be cleaned with one of the original points I had made, but it may take me a second to get around to that. Here's what I have in regards to
@Anthony's response
above:
In regards to Massive Weapons, I think the issue had been that they only cause one wound per hit, and so were likely to perform with stagnation during close combat against multi-wound characters. However, I think this idea was pitched alongside a suggested buffer to number of hits, so without that there is still a good chance a character wielding a Massive Weapon can land multiple hits and gain the chance for multiple wounds. Not a good start, but I assure you there was some goodness in my last post
Making close combat less lethal by the simple change of defeated characters going Down instead of OOA is potentially huge. As it stands, shooting causes bottle tests, and bottle tests win games. Close combat however causes serious injury rolls, and serious injury rolls win campaigns. Since the campaign is so integral to Necromunda, this creates a de facto gameplay situation where the risk/ reward of close combat is a bit too steep early game, and so tactics are dominated by outside shooting. Level up, gain some credits, and the push for new equipment predominantly favours getting more powerful guns rather than more powerful combat weapons. Again, more outside shooting. By the time gangs can justifiably waltz in and provoke some fistacuffs, it is usually late campaign (and
12 rounds followed by a decision isn't as engaging as all the career fights a character could have leading up to that). What the Down vs. OOA situation does is promote a more diverse set of tactical options throughout the entirety of a campaign, because players can justify risking sending some of their mashers into the brawl more often. Since the game is accepted as favouring shooting throughout, this would be a functional way of balancing that scale - it gives the players the chance to outplay each other in a campaign the whole way through rather than trying to risk getting some rare chance to hurt an opponent's campaign longevity critically. Defeated close combat characters going Down instead of OOA promotes not only diversity in play, which balances the differing gang styles, it also allows a gaming group to have all of its members stay in the campaign longer, rather than just have one player succeed in the risk/ reward of causing a detrimental serious injury and take off in the league (while lil' spafey has to pack up his gang and start fresh in the LAGGNOG). This change has impacts within the social aspects of gaming groups far beyond its apparent minor changing of the rules.
Charging targets being fleeting is just piling on more modifiers. The better way of working the desired fleeting chargers against overwatch approach is by making the To Hit Modifier for Charging -2, and then remove any extra wording involved in saying that they also count as fleeting. However, while I think it is great that
@ineptmule has been able to get some playtesting on this to prove that a -3 To Hit Modifier isn't too heavy, the real reason why the change should be instead to making "no wound, no pin" is for the Hand Flamer spam. The reason they can be so devastating when spammed is because they instant pin, not because of dealing out some hefty wounds or what not. Making new smaller templates is addressed by the required 6+ to hit for partially covered targets. Making Hand Flamers basic weapons is... bizarre to say the least. Great spitballing, but not a viable solution. Where the rule on overwatching chargers and the "no wound, no pin" succeeds is that it again promotes diving into close combat. Whereas an additional modifier just creates the tactic of sending a higher BS ganger up with the juves and putting them on overwatch to deal with the -3 To Hit penalty, what the "no wound, no pin" does is lets a player decide they want to risk making that drive to combat even if there is a Hand Flamer around. The only reason I feel compelled to keep pushing this idea is that it cleans up two problems at the same time, and takes Hand Flamers being an issue off the table completely. That means the 2-4-6 partial hits idea isn't clogged by juve-spamming Hand Flamers anymore, and there doesn't need to be some bizarre rules for making Hand Flamers harder to come by (which is about as appealing as paying $10 to watch a boxing match in a bar that smells like Axe and dry farts surrounded by obnoxious bro-douches). It's new and different compared to the standard Hit Modifier train of thought, but it takes broken mechanics and fixes them cleanly.
