40k Multiset Ruleset

[cryptoco]

Hey Paul,

Love the ruleset, really appericate the work you put into it. 1 quick question (may or may not be any issue), regarding Cover. Something odd seems to happen when I use the mechanic as per the youtube video/guidance. I have a thug with armour 1, Cover 4 and toughness 3. I set cover properly (COVERM for body, setting cover value on the CT, clicking cover on the weapon being used). When a bolt pistol with PEN 4 hits the body(As per COVERM), it ignores the 4 cover and the final DR is 4, which is correct, and the COVER value gets reduced by 1 (as it should for DH2). Subsequent shots show the cover as 0 in the log, but still count the DR as 4, when it should *just* be 3 (TB). The hits still reduce cover bonus, but it seems like the attack is only treating the cover as armor, and treating the armor as TB. This only happens when I have Cover checked under the weapon. Am I doing something wrong? I've attached a screen snip to demonstrate. Cover.png

[Paul Pratt]

@cryptoco,
The PEN 4 from the Bolt Pistol negates the Cover 4. Armour 1 and TB 3 = DR 4. The Report text Damage [11] [Cover: 0] [DR: 4] --> to Thug is correct. It is stating 11 Damage points were assigned to Thug. 0 Cover was applied to the damage calculation, and 4 DR was applied to the damage calculation. Base damage rolled was 15. Pen from Bolt Pistol was 4, which defeats cover 4. This leaves 15 damage versus 4 DR for a final of 11 points of damage.

The report is how much cover was applied, not the original or modified cover amounts.

Set that up again using cover 8. You will see the report state a different amount. In your test/example the Bolt Pistol's PEN is high enough to defeat the cover amount straight away. The way the ruleset handles the damage calc when using cover is this: X Damage X Pen compared to: 1. Cover 2. TB + Armour. Pen is applied once..`

[Goldeneale]

Hey, Paul, just a feature suggestion for you. Would it be possible to make it so we can set whether NPCs are capable of rolling Righteous Fury or not? It'd be really convenient so I can keep Troops from automatically decapitating my players!

[cryptoco]

@cryptoco,
The PEN 4 from the Bolt Pistol negates the Cover 4. Armour 1 and TB 3 = DR 4. The Report text Damage [11] [Cover: 0] [DR: 4] --> to Thug is correct. It is stating 11 Damage points were assigned to Thug. 0 Cover was applied to the damage calculation, and 4 DR was applied to the damage calculation. Base damage rolled was 15. Pen from Bolt Pistol was 4, which defeats cover 4. This leaves 15 damage versus 4 DR for a final of 11 points of damage.

The report is how much cover was applied, not the original or modified cover amounts.

Set that up again using cover 8. You will see the report state a different amount. In your test/example the Bolt Pistol's PEN is high enough to defeat the cover amount straight away. The way the ruleset handles the damage calc when using cover is this: X Damage X Pen compared to: 1. Cover 2. TB + Armour. Pen is applied once..`

Thanks for the fast response Paul. Shouldn't PEN apply to cover and armour? For example, Cover of 3 + armour of 1+ TB of 3 against a PEN 4 weapon should be a final DR of 3 (Just the TB). I set the cover to 3, the thug has 1 armour on the body and 3 TB. The PEN 4 should blow though the 3 cover and the 1 armour, leaving a final DR of 3 (Just TB). I've attached a cap of what I'm talking about. Cover.png

In this case, the thug should have taken 14 damage (17-TB(3)), not 13 (which would be 17-TB(3)+1AP). Here's another example where I've set the cover to 0 and the Armor to 10. Hitting the covered location with a PEN 4 should reduce the armor to 6, but it doesn't. Cover.png

Like you said, PEN gets applied once, to the cover, when it should get applied to the cover + armor....unless of course that's intentional in the rules (PEN is only applied to COVER, not spill over to armour afterwards.) I've always operated with the spillover, which may not be correct.

[Paul Pratt]

@cryptoco,
Without rehashing the entire previous discussions regarding PEN vs. Cover, the way the rule is written in each book is "work out the Damage against the Armour Points of the cover instead, with any excess being applied to the target as normal". That statement without examples is rough. It is the same for each rulebook and the only example is in Rogue Trader. The statement, "work out the damage against the Armour of the cover instead", that means there is a two step function here, not a combination or addition of the cover's armour points and the target's armour points. It is "instead" of - so, we do the normal sequence of calculating damage in which we consider PEN. The next statement is "with any excess being applied as normal", meaning excess Damage, which leaves us applying excess damage versus the target's normal DR (armour +TB).

In the rules for PEN - "When a shot or blow from this weapon hits a target, reduce the target’s Armour Points by the weapon’s Penetration, with results of less than 0 counting as 0 (i.e., the armour provides no protection at all). Then calculate Damage as normal". Both have a reference to "normal" - "applied as normal" and "calculate Damage as normal". "Normal" must mean compare without consideration of PEN.


There was an issue with applying PEN twice as well, in the numbers when PC's reach the higher levels and have really advanced gear. I remember the example was regarding a weapon with PEN 8. Imagine a player in Power Armor rated with 8 Armour Points taking cover behind a sand bag defensive emplacement with Cover 8. They get hit with a PEN 8 weapon. The PEN applied twice means the cover is reduced to 0 their Armour is reduced to 0 and they take full amount of damage rolled less their TB. Meanwhile another PC is next to them in Power Armor 8 and in no cover. They also get hit with PEN 8, they would take the same amount of potential damage with only TB being applied as DR. So why use cover at all? Shouldn't the cover absorb some portion of the damage?

You can imagine how the discussion carried on. But the rule being broken down and that example of PEN 8, we finally decided to go with the interpretation of the rules as PEN being applied once to cover. That was the heart of the previous discussions here. I had an incredible response from the community with so many links sent to me to investigate this. It does make cover count more, and higher PEN weapons all the more dangerous.

[Paul Pratt]

@Goldeneale,
I think I can do that. Let me investigate.

[cryptoco]

@cryptoco,
Without rehashing the entire previous discussions regarding PEN vs. Cover, the way the rule is written in each book is "work out the Damage against the Armour Points of the cover instead, with any excess being applied to the target as normal". That statement without examples is rough. It is the same for each rulebook and the only example is in Rogue Trader. The statement, "work out the damage against the Armour of the cover instead", that means there is a two step function here, not a combination or addition of the cover's armour points and the target's armour points. It is "instead" of - so, we do the normal sequence of calculating damage in which we consider PEN. The next statement is "with any excess being applied as normal", meaning excess Damage, which leaves us applying excess damage versus the target's normal DR (armour +TB).

In the rules for PEN - "When a shot or blow from this weapon hits a target, reduce the target’s Armour Points by the weapon’s Penetration, with results of less than 0 counting as 0 (i.e., the armour provides no protection at all). Then calculate Damage as normal". Both have a reference to "normal" - "applied as normal" and "calculate Damage as normal". "Normal" must mean compare without consideration of PEN.


There was an issue with applying PEN twice as well, in the numbers when PC's reach the higher levels and have really advanced gear. I remember the example was regarding a weapon with PEN 8. Imagine a player in Power Armor rated with 8 Armour Points taking cover behind a sand bag defensive emplacement with Cover 8. They get hit with a PEN 8 weapon. The PEN applied twice means the cover is reduced to 0 their Armour is reduced to 0 and they take full amount of damage rolled less their TB. Meanwhile another PC is next to them in Power Armor 8 and in no cover. They also get hit with PEN 8, they would take the same amount of potential damage with only TB being applied as DR. So why use cover at all? Shouldn't the cover absorb some portion of the damage?

You can imagine how the discussion carried on. But the rule being broken down and that example of PEN 8, we finally decided to go with the interpretation of the rules as PEN being applied once to cover. That was the heart of the previous discussions here. I had an incredible response from the community with so many links sent to me to investigate this. It does make cover count more, and higher PEN weapons all the more dangerous.

Thanks a bunch Paul, just wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was doing wrong with your ruleset.

[Goldeneale]

Hey Paul, hate to bother you again so soon but I had some questions concerning how Hordes work in your ruleset. I've set up a Horde just for testing as I anticipate a potential need for them in my campaign, and they don't seem to work correctly when I bring them into the Combat Tracker. Firstly, their Toughness Bonus doesn't seem to be applied when they take damage. This is pretty hard to work around since they don't take locational damage anyways and I can just increase their Armour Points to compensate, but it has the drawback of their Toughness Bonus DR being penetrable, which isn't how the rules actually work in the Black Crusade/Deathwatch rulebooks to my knowledge. Second, they don't seem to take damage properly. Instead of losing one Magnitude every time they take any amount of damage, they take damage like a normal NPC.

I'm curious about whether I'm missing something with regards to how they're supposed to be used in the ruleset or if you simply didn't automate them for a lack of time or interest. I noticed that they do deal damage properly, getting the extra 1d10 depending on their Magnitude up to 2d10, which seems to indicate you at least started to make appropriate automation for them.

Either way, for now I'll be handling them manually, and it's certainly not an overly major issue as they aren't difficult to run and aren't super common. Still, it would be nice, and I just thought I'd bring it to your attention!

[Paul Pratt]

@Goldeneale,

When you roll for the hit and damage do you have the Horde button checked? That is a must as it flags the damage roll to count the target as a horde and the roll is handled differently. Expand the weapon, On the "Mods" Line one will be "Horde" check that and it should be fine.

As a side note: Almost everything that modifies damage or the attack is going to be based on how the weapon is set up. First the weapon details page (the green skull on the left just below the name of the weapon). That page establishes the base traits of the weapon and items that would change, or won't change very often. The weapon line on the character sheet when expanded has the conditional mods that can be checked when needed. Plasma weapons Maximal feature, Melta's additional PEN, Horde's, Razor Sharp. These can change frequently so I placed them on the weapon list for better access. NPC's work the same way with the additional feature of filtering the weapon list for the CT. The psychic tab works very similar to the weapons list.

Look at the first few posts, there is a pdf guide for the ruleset and two youtube videos covering most of the items.

[Goldeneale]

I've been using the guide, actually. It's very helpful, and I appreciate that you took time to make some documentation for the ruleset, though I saw no mention of Hordes or Formations in it. On your suggestion I took a look at the second video, seeing as it says they have newer versions, and I realized the issue; in my Game System Options I had the Hordes/Formations set to DH2e, which of course doesn't have any rules for Hordes built in! Now that I've switched it to Black Crusade, the modifier for Horde does in fact show up. Thanks for the help!