Radical YCE: suggestions

[JawRippa]

Current list of suggestions for YCE. Old list is hidden in spoilers now.

Spoiler: Old discussion

I wanted to share changes of core rules that our group has been testing for a number of campaigns. Perhaps these could be used as a base for YCE?

Spoiler: Shooting

1). Shooting into heavy cover always fails on unmodified 1 and 2 instead of just 1. (This change makes BS2+ less oppressive and motivates fighters to move around the board to get into heavy cover.)

2). Making a Move twice in a row, Charge or Consolidation provides a fighter with "Fast target" condition. (Additional restriction for shooting to make BS models less oppressive, without making BS4+ shooting useless. It provides defence for fighters running for scenario's objectives. This does not affect melee attacks, so it motivates fighters to counter charge. The fighter can do this while standing still, from narrative point of view, he spends his entire turn, preparing to duck into cover if shot)

• "Fast target" allows fighter to count its cover as being 1 higher against shooting attacks, but it can't become better than heavy cover. If fighter with this condition had no cover, shooter suffers a -1 to hit penalty instead. This condition is lost on fighter's next activation, or when they stop being Active (they became Pinned, Engaged or Seriously Injured).

3). Fighters can no longer Blind Fire(Double) (Shooting while prone causes too many arguments between players on how LOS is drawn from pinned fighters and is rarely used for anything but abuse of blast templates.)

4). Obscuring fighters always provide light cover, but do not block LOS entirely; temporarily remove them if they are obsctructing line of sight. (Removes disparity between differently posed models, also prone and injured fighters cannot be used for cover anymore)

5). Target priority is now done with Willpower instead of Cool and has a -2 base penalty (Gives shooters another stat to level up, unless they want to be forced shooting closest meatshields all the time instead of dangerous targets in the back.)

6). Blasts are reworked entirely. (A lot of changes here were inspired by NCE)

• Blasts can only target fighters. After targeting a fighter and measuring distance, you may nudge Blast template so it clips other fighters, however the template has to clip original target and the center of the blast template should still be visible to shooter, abiding for all rules and penalties when shooting original target, such as target priority or cover penalties. (Shooting at the ground allows blasts to ignore all shooting restrictions. Proposed change still allows targeting stacked groups of fighters, while removing general blast abuse)
• Scattering blasts move freely through walls and terrain. Resolving hits from blasts is no longer affected by cover, which means no additional bonus to armour saves. (Scattering into terrain allows blasts to hit even on misses and can lead to situations where it is impossible to miss entirely. Removal of bonus armour is to compensate for that nerf and to make it even closer to how it worked in NCE)
• Weapons with "Grenade" trait still explode when scattering into walls and terrain unlike regular blasts. Also they ignore up to -1 penalty when shooting at target, essentially reducing target's cover (Grenades run out quickly and have short range, so making them easier to hit with is justified)

7). An unmodified 6 for a hit roll when Shooting triggers an ammo check. However, unlike usual ammo checks, this ammo check can be ignored if shooter passes an Intelligence test, with a -2 penalty when using Special, Heavy or Combi weapons. (Ammo checks do not occur often enough. This hits 2 birds with 1 stone: makes Intelligence another important stat for shooters to level up and makes bad ammo check an actual downside. Currently you can expect your AM6+ gun to last for 3 rounds of shooting in 80% of games, which means that it'll probably earn back its cost by the time it runs out)

8). Unwieldy weapons can do a Shoot(Basic) action instead of Shoot(Double) , however they suffer a -1 to hit penalty when doing so (Suspensors become less of a nessesity)

9). Rapid fire(2) weapons may add +1 to hit, however they have to roll all Firepower dice, resolve all ammo checks and discard 1 firepower dice with the most ammount of hits.

10). Standard Pistols can shoot up to 8-16".

11). Stray shots only happen on unmodified 1's and can only hit friendly fighters. (Current stray shots allow hitting enemies on 4+ even if they are in heavy cover: to do that, pass a target priority test, shoot someone behind your intended target and miss. This change makes stray shots more rare and they can't ever be abused for making impossible shots or increasing your chance to hit enemies, since stray shots are always detrimental to you, which was a thing in NCE)

Alternative take for #11:
If the 'target' of a stray shot is in the open they're hit on a 1-3, light cover means that they're hit on 1-2, and heavy cover or no LoS, a 1.

12). Target priority tests have to be taken accounting for enemies that are outside your Vision arc, but which you have LOS to. When failing target priority, you have to pivot your fighter so the closest enemy is within their vision arc and shoot that enemy. (This change is so you can't game the system and ignore target priority by manipulating fighter's vision arc. If you can't see a juve behind you who is about to backstab you, it does not mean that you have the nerve to ignore him entirely!)

13). When shooting at engaged targets ignore any models engaged with your target for the purpose of line of sight, their obscurement of target incures no penalties for to hit rolls. Combatants swing and circle around each other, allowing for a possibility to take a shot at intended target. However, due to chaotic nature of close combat, if the shot hits successfully, randomly choose one of the engaged fighters, friend or foe, that attack is resolved against them. In case of blast or template, same fighter cannot be hit more than once when randomly determining who got hit. (A measly -1 to hit penalty is too small for a proper penalty, very often I've seen even melee fighters getting shot on 2+. Risk of shooting of your own fighter is a better determination to avoid shooting into close combat)

---

Spoiler: Getting into Close Combat

1). Charge (Double) can be done by Pinned fighters. It allows fighter to Stand up(Free), move up to M" to engage and Fight(Free) afterwards. However fighters do not gain an additional attack during Fight(Free) when doing so. (It is too easy to neuter a melee fighter by pinning them over and over again, unless its owner has some form of counter to it like tactical cards that grant extra action, Spring up or Nerves of Steel skill)

2). Charge is Mx2" instead of M+D3". (It is an extremely radical change, that would easily break the game, so it is balanced out by other changes below)

3). Fighters movement can never go higher than M6", even with temporary buffs such as Stimms or tactical cards. However if fighter has M6" movement and were to gain any temporary buffs to movement, they can ignore 1 obstacle or 1" of difficult terrain when moving during their next activation for each +1M" effect. (M7" allows for 14" charges, 16-17" charges with versatile weapons, which would be extremely oppressive to shooting, so movement is hard capped at M6")

4). Charging can be done even if the target is not visible. However, when doing so, fighter has to pass an initiative test before doing following Fight(Free) action, or they do not gain a bonus attack. (This makes a double move charge slightly less overbearing and makes initiative more important)

5). When Charging, you have to follow the shortest route towards target, however you may change your route if it lies through dangerous terrain, or it would force you to jump down or over pits, or put you at risk in some other way. The changed route still has to be as short as possible. (In other words, no need of jumping down if you can take the stairs )

6). You may get into base to base with any kind of movement. However, unless that movement was Charge, Consolidation or Intercept, a non-injured opponent can pass an initiative test and immediately Fall Back or initiate Fight(Free) without reactionary attacks. (Basically, this removes impassable 1" barriers around fighters, to remove any possible hick-ups during movement, but discourages engaging with anything but dedicated actions for tying up enemy in melee)

7). Intercept (Basic) can be done by an Active fighter by picking an enemy and moving up to M" into base-to-base contact with an enemy using same rules for movement as Charging. An Active fighter can Intercept(Free) during enemy turn, but only if an enemy comes within 1" of them, by temporarily interrupting enemy turn, moving into base to base contact with that enemy and ending current enemy movement. This does not require spending or having a Ready token and cannot be used against Retreating enemy fighters. (Intercept is inspired by Mordeheim to allow denying area with your melee fighters. Also it allows fighters to engage nearby enemies even if they've lost 1 action point due of some effect, such as scenario trying to simulate getting ambushed or debuffing psy-power)

8). If you are trying to engage an enemy, but there is no space left for your fighter to position their model in base-to-base (and they have enough movement left to occupy enemy space), enemy has to move just enough so your fighter can take their place while being in base-to-base. Both players may turn their fighters afterwards (This is to disallow turning ladders into the ultimate anti-charge protection by standing on top of it).

9). Consolidation is 3" and grants "Fast target" condition. (This allows fighters to engage multiple fighters who were ready for a group activation when charging and taking out one of them. 2" consolidation is too short for that. Fast target makes Coup-de-grace and Consolidation a choice - do I finish the target off, or do I need extra protection against retaliation shooting?)

10). Retreat works differently: retreating fighter rolls an initiative and on success gets to disengage D6" and on fail enemy fighter gets to do all of their reactionary attacks. (Currently, initiative of whoever you are retreating from is a lot more important than initiative of who you are retreating with. A retreating escher with initiative 2+ gets stomped by initiative 4+ goliath champion 50% of the time, which is silly. Initiative stat is still important for attacker, because you need it to keep bonus attack when charging at someone outside LOS)

---

Spoiler: Fighting in melee

1). After initiating a Fight action, fighters compare number of their attack dice with all modifiers such as for Charging or Dual weapons. After that, starting with whoever initiated the fight, fighters roll 1 attack dice at a time, until all of their attacks are spent. Whoever had a higher number of attacks at the start of a Fight may roll 2 attack dice instead of 1 once per fight, these attacks are resolved simultaneously. If one of fighters spent all of their attacks or became seriously injured, their opponent rolls all of remaining attack dice simultaneously. (Because of extreme lethality, charging a melee champion by a melee champion is a guaranteed kill. Now, it simply gives an edge, but does not guarantee a kill with no retaliation. Back-and-forth melee is tense, engaging for both players and allows for a lot of design space regarding combat skills. Also this makes "bad" defensive traits such as disarm, parry or entangle actually do something. However Knockback trait has to be reworked, since interrupting fighting sequence is too powerful)

Spoiler: An example fight

Bob charges Alice. Both have 2 attacks in their profile and both are armed with 2 knives. After comparing attack dice, Bob has 4 and Alice has 3. Bob initiated the fight, so rolls attack dice first, and because he had more attack dice at the start of this fight, he can roll 2 dice simultaneously once per fight, so he does just that. If Alice is not seriously injured, she retaliates with 1 attack. The sequence looks like this:

1. Bob: 2 attacks (2 left)
2. Alice: 1 attack (2 left)
3. Bob: 1 attack (1 left)
4. Alice: 1 attack (1 left)
5. Bob: 1 attack (no attack dice left)
6. Alice: 1 attack (no attack dice left)

2). Because of previous change, fighting 1v2 and splitting attack dice between 2 targets is resolved as 2 separate fight sequences, resolved 1 by 1.

3). Double weapons (any combination of 2 melee and sidearm weapons) give +1A only if their wielder has no other weapons equipped but Pistols and Melee. (This is to make weapon loadout a choice - if you want to be the best at melee combat, you have to sacrifice your ranged capabilities. Melee fighters with no access to pistols can still use grenades without hindering themselves.)

Alternative take: Double weapons give +1A to their wielder only on charge. However if their wielder has no other weapons equipped but Pistols and Melee, they always provide +1A, regardless if their owner has charged or not (This is to avoid ruining conversions armed with 2 melee weapons and a gun).

4). When using double weapons, your first two attack dice have to be resolved using different weapons, after that you may split attacks in any way you want. (This is to avoid weird situations lik a knife+powersword loadout being worse than having a stubpistol + powersword, because pistol does not cut your powersword's attacks in half)

5). Paired is removed from the game. (+1A from double weapons in enough of a reward, doubling profile's attacks easily takes melee over the top.)

6). Unarmed attacks have AP+1. (A laspistol should not be directly worse than attacking with your bare hands)

---

Spoiler: General Changes

Here are other changes that do not really fall into previous categories, but are important to mention nonetheless:

1). Bottle is completely reworked.

• At the end of a Round, calculate a total number of OOA fighters or fighters who fled. If this number is 25% or more of a total number of fighters on the battlefield (no matter their condition), then your gang may bottle during this round. If you only have 1 fighter left, your gang bottles automatically.
• To avoid bottling, pass successful Leadership test by any friendly model on the battlefield, with a penalty equal to all friendly fighters who became OOA during this round. Same model can not be used for this test two rounds in a row.
• If your gang bottles, test Cool for all fighters on the battlefield, fleeing on fail.
• After resolving this, your gang no longer counts as bottling (this means that during the same game a gang may bottle multiple times).

(This change is to change bottling, so a single unlucky roll becoes less of a gamebreaking moment that inevitably spirals into a loss. Also to make it so reinforcements affect bottle and give Leadership a purpose. Having multiple high Leadership models is beneficial, since a single hiding high Leadership model can prevent bottling only every other round.)

2). Fighters who arrive via Reinforcements, Infiltration or in similar ways can't activate unless all other friendly fighters have no Ready tokens left.
(This allows opponents to react when enemy reinforcements and infiltrated fighters deploy)

3). Jumping over gaps and pits has to be done in a straight line and can never exceed movement characteristic in length (otherwise fighter will automatically fall after moving for maximum distance). If the jump was less than half of their movement characteristic, then it is done automatically. If the jump needs to cover distance longer than that, but is equal or less than their movement characteristic, they successfuly move to the other side and have to test initiative or become pinned (which will trigger another initiative test to avoid falling).
(This means that high initiative fighters are less prone to falling when traversing battlefield.)

4). Terminology:

• Round is a sequence which includes Priority, Action and End phase. Turn is a time frame, when a player is planning and doing actions with their fighters during an Action phase. (GW mixes these 2 very often)
• All fighters count as battle-ready; All action and rules are done by or refer to battle-ready fighter, unless stated otherwise. Some conditions can make a fighter lose battle-ready. For example, a fighter on fire can not help his injured teammate, or a broken leader cannot incluide others into their group activation.
• Active = Standing and active fighters; Engaged = Standing and engaged; Pinned = Prone and Pinned; Seriously injured = Prone and Seriously injured

5). Tactic cards rules:

• Decks are limited in size (18 or 36 cards); Cards with same name or very similar effects cannot be included more than once.
• A player can always discard a tactical card during priority phase to allow themselves rerolling their priority dice. This decision has to be made before the priority roll.
• When the scenario or rules state that you may select X cards, this means that you randomly draw X+1 cards instead and discard 1 card of your choice.

Discussion below is outdated up to this post.

 

[Jayward]

Overall a mixed bag for me. I've always viewed the YCE as a way to reduce the unnecessarily complicated bloat and get down to streamlined core rules. From that point of view I think there's good ideas in here, but also ones that make things more complicated.

For example, giving ammo checks an additional way to trigger whilst also giving that check a completely different test mechanism with specific modifiers. A bunch of extra dice and things to remember for what amounts to 'make an extra ammo check'.

But some of them I really like. Removal of the 1" rule streamlines a lot of things and changes the dynamics in interesting ways.

The fight action is an enormous change with potentially massive ramifications. My gut reaction is that it would really slow things down, but I'd definitely need to see it in action before I made up my mind on it.

With your intercept and retreat actions, you could probably streamline it: removing the 'actions' part and simply saying 'whenever you move out of engagement range with an enemy fighter make an initiative test, etc.' and have it be your proposed retreat rules. It would make intercept stronger (as it would grant attacks).

 

[JawRippa]

Overall a mixed bag for me. I've always viewed the YCE as a way to reduce the unnecessarily complicated bloat and get down to streamlined core rules. From that point of view I think there's good ideas in here, but also ones that make things more complicated.

Without additional rules, stats like Leadership, Intelligence and Willpower will remain the "dump" stats that are only useful when a very specific rule calls for it, so making things more complicated is inevitable to fix that; However I would not be opposed to simplifying or cutting suggestions that are not necessary. Which ones do you find excessive?

The fight action is an enormous change with potentially massive ramifications. My gut reaction is that it would really slow things down, but I'd definitely need to see it in action before I made up my mind on it.

I'd say that the experience of a duel where one of the fighters manages to down an opponent after few nail-biting back-and-forths is very memorable and worth the increased time of resolution. I've played a few "high stress" scenarios where melee hordes were fighting each other. Alternating attacks do slow things down, but not too much; a lot of the times one of the combatants dies mid-fight and most mooks do not have enough attacks to make it last that long.

 

[Jayward]

Without additional rules, stats like Leadership, Intelligence and Willpower will remain the "dump" stats that are only useful when a very specific rule calls for it, so making things more complicated is inevitable to fix that; However I would not be opposed to simplifying or cutting suggestions that are not necessary. Which ones do you find excessive?

Not necessarily; your proposed changes to Bottle Checks and Target Priority increase the relevance of Ld and Wp without adding extra rules; they're substitutions. All in favour of that.

But ones I'm not keen on specifically:

- I like the idea of cover having an effect that isn't ignored by a Van Saar with a Plasma Gun. But this is an entirely new effect, only applies to one type of cover, and presumably stacks with the existing cover rules. So I like the intent but think this could be streamlined.

- Fast Target. I get what you're trying to do, but in a lot of cases upgrading cover is simply a -1 to hit. I don't think all the stipulations are necessary, and in some cases they're self-defeating. (If you charge you gain Fast Target until you are engaged, which is what you want to happen from a charge.)

- Don't get why blasts can scatter through walls, but I still play ZM where it makes no sense so maybe that's colouring my judgement.

- Ammo tests I mentioned.

- Unwieldy weapons getting Shoot (basic) removes the entire point of them being Unwieldy, to my mind. Especially when you have weapons with +1 and +2 to hit, or blasts. It makes the ones that are already good so much better.

- The Rapid Fire one makes you more accurate at the expense of hitting less. If you run the numbers you have a 75% chance to only do one hit, which makes it seem like a lot of words for a terrible choice.

- Hard capping movement at 6 makes a sort of sense, but all the caveats are clunky. It's also only necessary because of you doubling M for charges rather than +D3".

- Init test to gain an extra attack when charging an enemy out of LoS just feels like an extra roll.

- Whilst I like the removal of the 1" rule, the free disengage or fight for engaging move actions seems to act against the intent. If you don't want move actions tying people up, all of this could just be reduced to allowing consolidate moves to engage people. The intercept rule is interesting, but I could see it leading to a lot of headaches as people have to pause mid-move to argue about whether they're within 1".

- The double weapon limitations feel arbitrary. It's just an extra limitation for a minor effect.

Just so I don't come off as a complete downer, there are a lot of things I like, too! Charging from pinned, both the Target Priority changes, Bottling feels like a move in the right direction, changes to retreat, blind fire and stray shots are good without adding complexity. I like other ones too, but those ones feel really good in particular.

 

[JawRippa]

I've picked points that I feel need an extra explanation.

1). Fast Target. I get what you're trying to do, but in a lot of cases upgrading cover is simply a -1 to hit. I don't think all the stipulations are necessary, and in some cases they're self-defeating. (If you charge you gain Fast Target until you are engaged, which is what you want to happen from a charge.)

2). Don't get why blasts can scatter through walls, but I still play ZM where it makes no sense so maybe that's colouring my judgement.

3). Ammo tests I mentioned.

4). Unwieldy weapons getting Shoot (basic) removes the entire point of them being Unwieldy, to my mind. Especially when you have weapons with +1 and +2 to hit, or blasts. It makes the ones that are already good so much better.

5). Hard capping movement at 6 makes a sort of sense, but all the caveats are clunky. It's also only necessary because of you doubling M for charges rather than +D3".

6). Whilst I like the removal of the 1" rule, the free disengage or fight for engaging move actions seems to act against the intent. If you don't want move actions tying people up, all of this could just be reduced to allowing consolidate moves to engage people. The intercept rule is interesting, but I could see it leading to a lot of headaches as people have to pause mid-move to argue about whether they're within 1".

1. We've tested "Fast Target" as a flat -1 to hit and it made basic BS4+ gangers pretty useless, so we've concluded that it should not stack with heavy cover. Suprisingly, it speeds up the game, since if the fighter is obscured and running, they are in heavy cover, no need for LOS check. I'm not really sure how to streamline this one even further. The purpose of charge granting a "fast target" is to at least some defence if you didn't reach melee for whatever reason, which is a fair trade for wasting 2 actions (also someone charging should be harder to hit than a stationary target)
2. Lore-wise projectile just punches through a wall. It is an important step to nerf blast weapons, otherwise it is easy to get into situation where failing to hit ith a blast weapon is almost impossible even on a miss, because scatter hits nearby terrain most of the time.
3. Regarding extra ammo checks trigger chance I think they are needed; I guess Intelligence test could be cut, but at the same time it'd remove the only possible application of this underused stat. Perhaps a successful Intelligence check is required to gain +1 to hit from Aim?
4. Not beeing able to benefit from Aim is a huge deal, so suspensors are still a nice thing to get.
5. Double M charge is absolutely needed in order to make melee an important part of the gameplay. The problem is that the base movement is 5", not 4" and there are too many +M" buffs. Perhaps bonuses from getting movement buffs when already capped on movement could be removed to simplify it, but I feel that there should be at least some kind of reward for doing that.
6. Yeah, the problem with removing 1" rule is that fighters can engage with things like Sprint, so I've tried to discourage that through rules. Perhaps this could be simplified by allowing engaged fighters to move 1" away after an enemy ends their activation in base to base with them without making charge/consolidate? Less rolls and somewhat easy to remember. Alternative take is that we simply get back to 1" rule. As for Intercept

 

[Jayward]

Hmm, based on your answer there I'm not sure I conveyed my point very well. I guess the best way I can describe it is that I want to fix problems and reduce complexity, but I think your solutions here fix problems by increasing complexity.

Your approach will have better granularity than mine, and will cover specific situations more accurately. But I'll always prefer a single consistent rule over two situational ones.

Take all this stuff about engagement, for example. You want melee to be more relevant, but don't want people sprinting into B2B and nullifying shooting.
1) You increase charge distances, but find that this creates problems with excessive engagement ranges
2) To counter this you introduce a rule to limit high movement, but this is unfair to high move characters
3) You introduce a conditional bonus for high movement.

And

1) You remove the 1" rule, which allows for consolidation and advances to engage. But this creates the run to engage problem.
2) You add in the caveat that if they advance into B2B the target gets a free attempt to fight or retreat
3) You also introduce an Intercept rule which allows for engagement in a manner that can only happen because of the removal of the 1" rule.

(Apologies if I've misrepresented your thought processes for the sake of an example, there)

In both of these cases there's a fix for a problem, then a new rule to fix an issue with the fix, and then an extra stuck on top. In both cases I would have dialled back to step 1 and looked for a simpler fix.

For example, charge distances need increasing, but doubling is too much? Try +D6" instead of +D3". Faster characters will still generally be faster, but they can't guarantee mega threat ranges.

Want to increase engagement options whilst stopping run to engage? Look at your engagement options:
1) Charge, as now
2) Consolidate
3) Advance, which you don't want
4) Intercept, which only functions without the 1" rule.

So the simplest solution is to keep the 1" rule but allow Consolidate moves to Engage, which removes 3) and 4).

Other changes you're very to-the-point: Blind Fire is a problem? Remove it. Paired? Gone. Cool does too much? Priority checks are Wp, Bottle Checks are Ld. (Admittedly the last two do have some needless caveats). That's definitely more my style.

With Fast Target it's not that I dislike the intent, but I'll always prefer a tweak/removal of an existing rule than the addition of more.

 

[Jakkarra]

Personally I'm all for these changes, though I might suggest some tweaks (And possibly further changes/iteration, but that's beyond the scope of my post)

Suggestions:

1: Rather than capping movement, why not merely cap charge distance, if the reasoning behind a cap to movespeed is that it being uncapped causes absurd charge ranges? Cap charge distance at 12" (or maybe 10"?) regardless of the actual potential movement characteristic of a model, with no further modifiers allowed.

2: Rather than disallowing Blasts from firing at points on the ground, perhaps instead doing so causes the attack to be resolved at -2 (Or possibly even lower than that/autoscattering)? Being able to target a point to hit a fighter you cannot see (But often would still "know" is there) is one of the main benefits of Blast weaponry, with many blast weapons otherwise being fairly weak against singular targets (A frag GL, for example, is effectively an autogun that's a little more likely to hit at long range against a singular target. Other than the potential of knocking someone into a pit, I'm considering Knockback to actually be a bit worse than Rapid Fire in terms of the average damage it can cause. )

3: Does charging particularly warrant the caveat that you must "always take the shortest path... unless X and Y would occur"? I'm assuming this is to prevent people avoiding snaking around opposing gangers, but I'm not sure it's worth the added complexity.

4: Charging from pinned: Rather than preventing extra attacks on a charge, I'd maybe suggest a reduction in charge distance.

I'm sure there are some other things I could suggest, but I'll look at this a little more closely tomorrow. To reiterate though; I'm rather a fan of most of this, the charge changes specifically are close to what I'd been mulling around for a bit

 

[JawRippa]

(Apologies if I've misrepresented your thought processes for the sake of an example, there)

In both of these cases there's a fix for a problem, then a new rule to fix an issue with the fix, and then an extra stuck on top. In both cases I would have dialled back to step 1 and looked for a simpler fix.

You've interpreted my experience and thought process 100% correctly. I do agree that "less rules approach" is overall better where it can be helped. So let's try to cut some bloat:

1. The 1" rule probably has to stay, since its removal creates problems that require extra rules to be solved.
   • #6 and #7 from "Getting into close combat" are removed. Consolidation can be used to engage.
2. Extreme reach of double move charge becomes a thing only when movement buffs are present, as these are too effective and suprisingly abundant. So reducing effectiveness of movement bonuses could become a solution.
   • #3 from "Getting into close combat" is removed. Halving effects of movement buffs would be enough, it should be done in an easy-to-remember way though.
3. Intelligence is an underused stat, however tying it to a situational ammo check occurance (6's to hit) and having a different modifier on top of that (-2 to test for special,heavy or combi) is very clunky and hard to remember.
   • Intelligence test has to be passed when Aiming for a fighter to gain +1 to hit for next Shooting action. Lorewise they are accounting for target speed, shot trajectory and environmental conditions.

For example, charge distances need increasing, but doubling is too much? Try +D6" instead of +D3". Faster characters will still generally be faster, but they can't guarantee mega threat ranges.

I'm not a fan of random charge distances in general, since it is unfair when compared to static range of guns. A player is always sure that the threat range of a lasgun ganger is 24", imagine how annoying it'd be if that flactuated before every shot. Also it introduces an unnessesary dice roll, which cannot be affected by stats. Double move charges were a thing in old Necromunda and even there shooting was prefered to melee.

 

[JawRippa]

1: Rather than capping movement, why not merely cap charge distance, if the reasoning behind a cap to movespeed is that it being uncapped causes absurd charge ranges? Cap charge distance at 12" (or maybe 10"?) regardless of the actual potential movement characteristic of a model, with no further modifiers allowed.

2: Rather than disallowing Blasts from firing at points on the ground, perhaps instead doing so causes the attack to be resolved at -2 (Or possibly even lower than that/autoscattering)? Being able to target a point to hit a fighter you cannot see (But often would still "know" is there) is one of the main benefits of Blast weaponry, with many blast weapons otherwise being fairly weak against singular targets (A frag GL, for example, is effectively an autogun that's a little more likely to hit at long range against a singular target. Other than the potential of knocking someone into a pit, I'm considering Knockback to actually be a bit worse than Rapid Fire in terms of the average damage it can cause.

3: Does charging particularly warrant the caveat that you must "always take the shortest path... unless X and Y would occur"? I'm assuming this is to prevent people avoiding snaking around opposing gangers, but I'm not sure it's worth the added complexity.

4: Charging from pinned: Rather than preventing extra attacks on a charge, I'd maybe suggest a reduction in charge distance.

1. This would bring back the problem of it being unfair for high movement fighters. Someone with 7" can move twice for 14", but charging is suddenly much shorter.
2. Problem with blasts is that it is a nightmare to describe how to select a valid ground target properly. Can I shoot at tips of hub's pipe? Can I shoot at windowsill? Also even with penalty to hit, it'd still allow to circumvent pitch black and other LOS restricting rules.
3. Charging already is supposed to be taking shortest paths. It is only mentioned once on page 61 in 2018 rulebook, so people often overlook this rule.
4. Charging for M" instead of Mx2" (or M+D3" if we go by vanilla charge) is enough of a penalty I think.

 

[almic85]

Can I suggest that you might be able to remove the 1” rule but still retain the need to charge or consolidate into close combat.

I would keep the 2xM charge range personally as I think getting into combat is already pretty difficult, but I would caveat that any temporary rules that effect a statistic happen in line with the general mathematical rule of MDAS. In short you double your base charge movement before adding the 2” for your stimm slug stash.

I’d also add an action for charging from prone with the caveat that it only allows 1xM for charge distance.

I think if you do that you don’t need to allow fighters to simply move into combat and it prevents being able to shoot then move into combat.

I will also add for Blast weapons that for how they are currently costed they should not be able to target the ground and should have to be centred on a target fighter. I do appreciate that blast weapons should be able to be placed to hit multiple fighters or hit around corners, but IMO the two options to balance blast are either remove the ability to target the floor or reprice every single blast weapon. The first option is much simpler than the second option.

 

[JawRippa]

I would keep the 2xM charge range personally as I think getting into combat is already pretty difficult, but I would caveat that any temporary rules that effect a statistic happen in line with the general mathematical rule of MDAS. In short you double your base charge movement before adding the 2” for your stimm slug stash.

This is a very elegant solution. Perhaps, in addtion to MDAS, any movement buffs should only affect fighter's first move during their activation, so it becomes impossible to Move+Move to double the benefit of a buff? Basically if your movement is increased by +3", you will move an additional +3" during your activation, no matter what combination of actions you choose to take.

I’d also add an action for charging from prone with the caveat that it only allows 1xM for charge distance.

Alternatively, an active fighter could have an "Intercept" action that costs 1 action point and allows to engage by moving up to M" and Fight for free afterwards? It'd solve 2 problems:

• There would be no need to specify that Fighting after Charge from pinned state gets no additional attacks. If you've Intercepted, thats a separate action and only Charge gives bonus attacks for following Fight action (would also affect skills that need a successful Charge to work).
• It allows fighters to engage and fight nearby enemies (albeit without bonuses) even if there are some effects that forces them to do only 1 action (such as some scenarios or Delaque phy-abilities).

I will also add for Blast weapons that for how they are currently costed they should not be able to target the ground and should have to be centred on a target fighter. I do appreciate that blast weapons should be able to be placed to hit multiple fighters or hit around corners, but IMO the two options to balance blast are either remove the ability to target the floor or reprice every single blast weapon. The first option is much simpler than the second option.

We've tried doing that, this makes small blast weapons very weak. Blast radius is 1.5" and fighters can be spread with 3" between themselves and still benefit from group activation. Note that in #6 for Shooting the center of the blast template should still be visible to shooter after nudging it, so you can't shoot at someone around corners, unless there is visible target near them.

 

[almic85]

Alternatively, an active fighter could have an "Intercept" action that costs 1 action point and allows to engage by moving up to M" and Fight for free afterwards? It'd solve 2 problems:

• There would be no need to specify that Fighting after Charge from pinned state gets no additional attacks. If you've Intercepted, thats a separate action and only Charge gives bonus attacks for following Fight action (would also affect skills that need a successful Charge to work).
• It allows fighters to engage and fight nearby enemies (albeit without bonuses) even if there are some effects that forces them to do only 1 action (such as some scenarios or Delaque phy-abilities).

The issue with making a Intercept (basic) action (which is really just a charge by another name) is that it allows you to do any other single action and then charge into combat, not just stand up from prone and then charge into combat.

My biggest concern would be allowing a fighter to shoot a target with a Shoot (basic) action and seriously injure them, then rhey can just mini-charge and coup de grace them with the Intercept (basic) action.

It’s really just a matter of what you are trying to get the alternative way of entering combat to do. my main concern is that you can eternally pin a close combat fighter in place with no chance of ever getting into combat. I am less concerned with a niche psychic power that removes an activation.

If someone wants to spend 30 credits to give their Delaque champion the ability to cast a psychic power that removes an activation from my fighter instead of just spending 5 credits on an autopistol that is statistically better at it then they deserve to prevent a charge.

 

[JawRippa]

My biggest concern would be allowing a fighter to shoot a target with a Shoot (basic) action and seriously injure them, then rhey can just mini-charge and coup de grace them with the Intercept (basic) action.

Yeah, I didn't think about combining 1 action Intercept with Shooting, thanks for pointing that out. I wonder if it'd be wonky to have Intercept worded this way:

• Intercept (Basic): This action can only be done if this is your only action during fighter's activation or if your previous action was spent Standing up. Select an enemy fighter as a target, activated fighter makes a single Move towards target using shortest route possible. Once the fighter reaches base to base contact with a target, they stop and may (but do not have to) immediately make a free Fight action.

The game has a few sources of "make 1 action instead of 2" here and there, for example failing a cool check during ambush as defender, so it'd be nice to account for those. So you are still able to pose a threat to someone standing nearby.

 

[almic85]

At that point you may as well just make a Charge from Prone (Double) action that does the same thing instead of having to put that many caveats on your Intercept (single) action.

 

[JawRippa]

At that point you may as well just make a Charge from Prone (Double) action that does the same thing instead of having to put that many caveats on your Intercept (single) action.

That could work, yes. However , there'd still be a problem with inability to engage when you are down to 1 action from some effect that I've mentioned earlier. I think that the ability to at least have some way of engaging with enemies is needed. How would you solve that problem while trying to keep it simple?

 

[almic85]

Honestly I don’t think it’s a big enough issue to care about.

How many things are there that really cause someone to lose a single action?

 

[JawRippa]

Honestly I don’t think it’s a big enough issue to care about.

How many things are there that really cause someone to lose a single action?

Skimming through Topsy's bookromunda: mostly it comes from scenarios. Suprise attack special rule which is used in many "Ambush" reskins (pass a Cool or do 1 action), monster in "Forgotten riches" (one of results from random D6 when activated more than 8" from any fighters), giant-killer downside in "Something to prove" goliath scenario, one of illegal artifacts, one tactic card, chronomancy and delaque psy-power... Definitely a bit on the rare side, but it shows that GW occasionally uses it, so it might become more common at some point and cause problems (like a weapon trait that forces target to do 1 action instead of 2).

 

[JawRippa]

I think I got it.

• Intercept (Basic): This action can only be done as a first action during activation. As soon this action is resolved, fighter's activation ends. Select an enemy fighter as a target, activated fighter makes a single Move towards target using shortest route possible. Once the fighter reaches base to base contact with a target, they stop and may (but do not have to) immediately make a free Fight action as a part of this action. (Disclaimer: this action is needed in rare situation when your fighter starts an activation with a single action point and wants to engage an enemy)
• Charge from prone (Double): Select an enemy fighter as a target of a this action. Activated fighter makes a free Stand up action and follows it up with one move using shortest route towards target. Once the fighter reaches base to base contact with a target, they stop and may (but do not have to) immediately make a free Fight action as a part of this action. Note, that unlike regular Charge, this action does not provide bonus attacks, or any other benefits assosiated with charging.
  

 

[JawRippa]

I was wondering how to fix a situation like this:

Enemy fighters №1 and №2 are within 3", ready for group activation. Your green fighter charges and kills №2 enemy. Now you can't consolidate into №1 enemy even if your consolidation was 3".
A simple fix I came up with was allowing to consolidate and engage any enemy within 3" of the Fight target (using shortest route possible).

 

[almic85]

It’s not just greater than 3”, it’s usually going to be greater than 4”.

At that stage I would be saying it’s just time to suck up that they can’t get into close combat with the other fighter and that they have outmanoeuvred you.

I do feel that a 3” consolidation is probably too far to allow though. I get why you have done it, but just don’t really agree. Maybe it would be better off being half of your Movement value instead of a flat 3” to reward fast moving fighters.