Excess damage spillover

[Carnelian]

I like how in new 40k, wounds caused to a model do not spill over if they exceed the number of wounds that model has.

This makes there more of a balance between say lascannon that cause d6 damage and multiple shot weapons that cause 1 damage. 

However mortal wounds do spill over like all wounds do in AoS. 

This makes for tougher choices in deciding which weapons to take.

What would happen if this distinction introduced into aos? What would be the down side?

And which units would come out winners and losers?

This is a topic for fun discussion rather than a serious rules suggestion so let's keep that in mind!

I'll start the ball rolling...clear losers would be all units with multiple damage weapons, partocularly monsters like the bloodthirster of insensate rate who have only a few veey hard hitting attacks.

Clear winners would be most infantry units which would get tougher to scythe through. 

The upshot of which might be that there would be less monsters on the table I guess which would be sad

[Sleboda]

Well, since the entire system, including all warscrolls, is designed from the ground up with the idea of spillover, I dare say it would break the system to do this.  It's not a good plan to take a core mechanic and just ditch it.

I agree that it's cool ... for 40K.  That game was designed WITH this rule in mind, so it works in that game.

[#SteveJames]

Think I would have to agree with @Sleboda, although I'm really enjoying 40k there are certain mechanic that have been designed for it that wouldn't work in AOS. Hopefully with the new GHB there won't be too many changes to the core rules but points rebalancing and loads of cool new ability and artifacts.  

[Arkiham]

give it time, 2018 will see any major changes if any are coming as they'll see the results of 40k 8th edition and take the best bits from that. 

[Carnelian]

No doubt it would break the entire current points system

Just think it's a cool thinking point! Be great to have more of a toss up between quick rate of fire and heavy hitters!

[klunc]

I like the cinematic aspect of a big monster going into a unit of infantry and just backhanding several away at a time, kind of like Sauron at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring

[TerrorPenguin]

Imho it's one of the best rules as it makes a balanced list a requirement and prevents spamming of a single unit. 

[Jamopower]

In 40k, there already seems to be problems with horde type of units partly because of this. it also has made blast weapons bit strange as instead of rolling to hit once and doing damage to a random number of models, you roll random number of hits for single models.

There is also a difference in the weapons themselves, in AoS high damage weapons are most often sweeping blows or powerful shooting going through units (like warmachines). In 40k you have a lot more of anti tank weapons where the damage spilling is not so intuitive. I would have preferred the same system as in AoS for 40k as well, but with added line of rules for those anti tank weapons that they would do more damage against vehicles or monsters than against infantry, now that there are the keywords for that. It would be more clear.

[Solaris]

All big monsters would suffer tremendously. My Stonehorn would cry rocky tears. My Skeletons, which are already ferocious, would be extremely happy, and I would have to build another unit of 40 of them. My Fimir would also be thrilled, because they would be one of the few units in the game that retained their damage output after such a change. Tzaangors and Skullreapers would also be clear winners.

In general, I think we'd see a shift from large monsters to more infantry-based armies, which might not be such a bad thing. I like the look of those kinds of armies, where there are a lot of basic troops and maybe one big centerpiece monster rather than the three I run in my Destruction-list for example.

[Caffran101]

9 hours ago, klunc said:

I like the cinematic aspect of a big monster going into a unit of infantry and just backhanding several away at a time, kind of like Sauron at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring

Fairly sure that wounds in combat do spill over. So you can keep your cinematic thoughts flowing.

[Jamopower]

12 hours ago, Carnelian said:

No doubt it would break the entire current points system

Just think it's a cool thinking point! Be great to have more of a toss up between quick rate of fire and heavy hitters!

Actually it's already there with units like Deepwood rangers that are normally damage 1, but damage d3 against monsters.

[Carnelian]

6 hours ago, Jamopower said:

Actually it's already there with units like Deepwood rangers that are normally damage 1, but damage d3 against monsters.

Great point! Personally I'd love to see more weapons like that

[Squirrelmaster]

I prefer the 40K way of capping damage (actually, I'd prefer if it was capped at the target's wound characteristic instead of remaining wounds), but to implement in AoS would need a complete redo of all the warscrolls imo. It's not just a matter of points, damage carrying over is too much of a fundamental part of the game.

The other thing I would have liked for 40K would be blasts/templates having their maximum number of hits capped at the number of models in the target unit, making them good for hordes but not so much for anti-tank. Too late now, I guess.

One of AoS's failings, imo, is that you can pretty much condense the number of attacks, to-hit roll, to-wound roll, and damage characteristics together into a single value that doesn't generally depend on what you're attacking. It reduces the effective variety in the units you can take.

[Carnelian]

46 minutes ago, Squirrelmaster said:

The other thing I would have liked for 40K would be blasts/templates having their maximum number of hits capped at the number of models in the target unit, making them good for hordes but not so much for anti-tank. Too late now, I guess.

One of AoS's failings, imo, is that you can pretty much condense the number of attacks, to-hit roll, to-wound roll, and damage characteristics together into a single value that doesn't generally depend on what you're attacking. It reduces the effective variety in the units you can take.

I agree on both those points! Eloquently put

[Caffran101]

10 hours ago, Caffran101 said:

Fairly sure that wounds in combat do spill over. So you can keep your cinematic thoughts flowing.

turns out I was wrong. What a terrible way to do it.

[Jamopower]

It's a double edged sword. Having damage capped per model increases the variety, but at the same time allows for "skewed" armies that target on playing around that avoiding multiple wounded models, thus making multi wound weapons worth less than their cost and thus gaining advantage. Some people of course like this kind of system, but I'm not so big fan. It brings all sorts of anomalies that don't make too much sense. For example in a 40k game I had, a hive tyrant (with damage 3 weapons) was in combat against clawed fiends (4 wounds). Three unsaved wounds managed to kill one Fiend with 9 caused wounds...

 

It's good to remember that 3 attacks with damage 1 and one attack with damage 3 is not the same, even if they hit and wound on same rolls. The probabilities for damage are different, even if the average damage is the same. Also there are lot of modifiers for wound and hit rolls, giving a twist to straight condensation of all these parameters to a single value.

[PJetski]

I like that in 40k the damage does not spill over because it makes infantry more important since they stick around longer.  On the other hand, I like the idea that a powerful melee character can cleave through multiple models.

What about a compromise?

Shooting damage does not spill over, but melee damage does spill over.

Some artillery cannons would have to be rebalanced to more shots and less damage per hit, since their intent is to be anti-infantry.

[AGPO]

No matter how hard my terminator captain punches an Eldar guardian in the face with a power fist, it's not going to kill the other Eldar stood three metres away.  No spillover makes sense to me, especially with shooting attacks from lascannons and such.

[Jamopower]

There is a difference between the games in that. In AoS the high damage stuff is usually warmachines and monsters/characters that you can easilly imagine making sweeping blows though swathes of infantry, when in 40k the high damage stuff is metlaguns, lascannons and chainfists, that is bit harder to imagine making damage to many models.

[Carnelian]

3 hours ago, PJetski said:

What about a compromise?

Shooting damage does not spill over, but melee damage does spill over.

that sounds like a great solution!

[PJetski]

2 hours ago, AGPO said:

No matter how hard my terminator captain punches an Eldar guardian in the face with a power fist, it's not going to kill the other Eldar stood three metres away.  No spillover makes sense to me, especially with shooting attacks from lascannons and such.

Counterpoint: Durthu's massive sword should definitely cleave down more than one skeleton per attack

[Dragonsound]

41 minutes ago, PJetski said:

Counterpoint: Durthu's massive sword should definitely cleave down more than one skeleton per attack

Keeping that in mind we may want to make spillover an ability of some sort.

Make no damage spillover the default so that captains don't have 6 foot phantom punches, but give big guys like Durthu the ability "Damage spills over".

We get flexibility in warscroll design and the flavor is conserved.

[Veterannoob]

It kinda already does in AoS...unless I'm misunderstanding the question. It's been awesome for me to teach 40K players who have no experience w/AoS how some mechanics work and using piling in--not always b2b immediately--to get more guys in or propel your unit further. That type of stuff  

[DarkBlack]

I like that rule too; gives more flavour to weapons and what they are good for. It would require a lot of reworking though.

[Jamopower]

There just isn't so many weapons that would be like that, and as said that rule exists already, like on the aforementioned Deepwood rangers.