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Are Mortal Wounds a good mechanic?


Are mortal wounds a good mechanic?   

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  1. 1. Are mortal wounds a good mechanic?

    • Yes
      103
    • No
      60


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I think Mortal Wounds on missile weapons are fine as long as they are limited. Basic archers/gunners shouldn't have it (to reduce the ability to spam it), but artillery and heroes should still have access to mortal wounds. If you have an archer hero it makes sense that they can do those Legolas head shots and cause Mortal Wounds. For artillery maybe the projectile is explosive or extremely magical that it rends/ignores armor. If a Arkanaut Admiral take a direct hit from a Warp Lightning Cannon, their fancy armor won't do anything to stop the ray gun from boiling them like an egg.

My thinking is ranged artillery/heroes/behemoths are expensive enough and limited enough that it would balance out.

Edited by dirkdragonslayer
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Mortal wounds as a mechanic is fine. The number and extent of attacks/abilities that have them is not.

We're at a place where heroes and units are considered lackluster if they don't have mortal wound protection. So now everyone and their grandmother gets a ward save, even if it doesn't make much narrative sense. And the ones who don't have saves? Woe betide them and watch the avalanche of mortals crush them beneath the earth.

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5 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:

Except Warp Lightning Cannons and Magma Cannons.  I mean, those are like phasers and photon torpedoes compared to Aelvish arrows.  MW forever!  Even though I voted no because they should be less prevalent, and we need more rend -3 and 4 stuff instead.

Yes, special weapons that don’t hurt you in a normal way (breath weapons etc) should be the only exceptions

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3 hours ago, Mutton said:

Mortal wounds as a mechanic is fine. The number and extent of attacks/abilities that have them is not.

We're at a place where heroes and units are considered lackluster if they don't have mortal wound protection. So now everyone and their grandmother gets a ward save, even if it doesn't make much narrative sense. And the ones who don't have saves? Woe betide them and watch the avalanche of mortals crush them beneath the earth.

Additionally, the ones that narratively make sense to have a ward save, usually don’t get one *shrugs* (all Fyreslayers for example, the lore says this comes from the Ur-Gold runes, yet only Hearthguard get this save. Daemons should all have one really etc)

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Ultimately I'd say mortal wounds have a place but like others have noted I think they're a bit too common at the moment.

One point I would maybe disagree with is the idea that they've become so common simply as a tactic to sell new armies. I think the cause is instead that mortal wounds are an easy (and kind of lazy) method of injecting flavor or highlighting the armies particular strength. "X army" is good at a specific thing and so when they do it they cause mortal wounds, proving that they are indeed experts in it. The problem stems from the fact most armies are good at something and thus the ability to cause mortal wounds becomes more and more common.

Ideally I'd like rend to become a bigger factor or warscroll specific reactions as a method of highlighting strengths than an over reliance on mortal wounds.   

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I like MW because they save me time, I have always found that  rolling three times - hit, wound, save- ( without counting rerol) per unit in combat is making the game unnecessary long.

Still I don't think everybody should have MW, removing  wound rolls from the game could be enough to speed it up and I would keep MW for special characters and monster only, to represent the fact that they are so powerful they ignore armour. 

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On 4/22/2021 at 7:22 AM, Shearl said:

"X army" is good at a specific thing and so when they do it they cause mortal wounds, proving that they are indeed experts in it.

That's a big issue for me. What is a "mortal wound"? A wound that can't be saved by any means but is ignored by: Faithgod power, magic barriers, etc... 

That's a concept a bit strange (but I'm fine with it), but if we talk about what "good at something" means, we have two parameters that are exactly to show that: To Hit and To Wound.

If you are good at ranged attacks, probably you are going to have 2+ or 3+ To Hit and if the weapon and parafernalia is good enough, probably a 2+ or 3+ To Wound. THAT means that your unit/army is good, and we even have an "attack" characterístic that it's not strictly linked in how many times our units can "shoot or swing a weapon".

But then, we still have warscrolls abitilies. For example, the diferent "headshot" bonus with " every unmodified 6 in a Hit roll does..." or a more traditional "expert unit" with rerolls to hit, to wound, auto-hit, auto-wound, etc...

 

I'm not sure what "mortal wounds" are anymore. We have charge bonus, kharadron bombs, flame attacks, electric attacks, magic, decapitations/headshots, venoms/poisons (only a few, others are just rend or better wounds), lasers and warp/chaos magic, artillery (some of them), special weapons (some of them), etc...

 

 

Edited by Beliman
grammar
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I am not sure if someone has mentioned but I far prefer the implementation of damage, rend (AP), ward saves (invulnerable saves) and all damage saves including mws (Feel no Pain) in 40k.

Porting it wholesale over would have incredibly deep implications though.

Its just my preference when playing the two systems:

  • less total sources of Mws
  • more and higher rend (without invuln saves, they feel like mws)
  • ward saves ignore rend but mws go through
  • no splash/carry over damage (except for mws)
  • feel no pain saves
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I think people need to keep in mind that a lot of mechanics in AoS are by choice. 

For example @Turragor, total unsaved damage being applied to units is for simplicity purposes and to keep wound allocation problems out of the game.

MWs are a bit janky but they work, and just need to be policed a bit. We want to I think in general exclude spike MW dmg like Darkfire Daemonrift.

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They were

Now that most things cause them, no

The mechanics in AOS would be vastly improved if you didnt have to roll a million dice, so in that sense they're great 

But given that they frequently obliterate the entire mechanics around combat by ensuring it doesn't even happen, they're pretty dumb

AOS needs to work out where its meat lies in general:

If it's in battle lines coming together, don't have mechanics which basically remove that aspect when someone charges or stands near a unit 

If it's not in when battle lines come together but *how* they do eg leadershio, magic, manoeuvre etc, dont make so much of the interaction around when battle lines come together.

Either way, don't make players waste time lining up bases for a fight that's not going to follow because the equivalent of an ACME ten ton weight falls on their heads 

Edited by Nos
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I'm honestly fine with mortal wounds, even mortal wounds on 6's, so I'd vote yes. I'd say the big question is what units are ruining them for everyone else though, who's got em too easy or too much. Most post i've read here people seem fine with spells, charges, and certain odd ball weapons (dragon breath like), but everyone has been complaining about the lumineth sentinels. But I haven't been able to find much commonality of complaints about any other units specifically, so are there any units that are big causes of the problem of mortal wound oversaturation. Like I haven't seen people complain about spirit hosts since there thing only works in melee and they don't really do any other damage than mortal wounds, but what about the blood stalkers? I mean there also 6 to hit and at range, but I haven't seen complaints on them. Is it because they don't have a high enough unit cap to cause enough or because they don't have the 5+ spell? What about stormcast retributors, on or off the dracoths. They cause tons but they cost a pretty penny in points, so are they a big part of the problem? What units need to be fixed to fix the mortal wound problem, that's the question I think needs to be asked.

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11 hours ago, Dalton said:

What units need to be fixed to fix the mortal wound problem, that's the question I think needs to be asked.

While the Lumineth units certainly cop a lot of stick for this, I don't think it's necessarily a case of specific units causing problems. The big complaint seems to be that there are simply too many units capable of dealing mortal wounds in general - none of them are individually an issue, but collectively they make mortal wounds too prevalent.

Looking at that in a different way, the answer would be "All the units that can inflict mortal wounds". And not necessarily that they need that ability taken away in all cases, just that there needs to be a broad rationalisation of what mortal wounds are thematically supposed to represent, and each unit measured against that standard.

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14 hours ago, Dalton said:

I'm honestly fine with mortal wounds, even mortal wounds on 6's, so I'd vote yes. I'd say the big question is what units are ruining them for everyone else though, who's got em too easy or too much. Most post i've read here people seem fine with spells, charges, and certain odd ball weapons (dragon breath like), but everyone has been complaining about the lumineth sentinels. But I haven't been able to find much commonality of complaints about any other units specifically, so are there any units that are big causes of the problem of mortal wound oversaturation. Like I haven't seen people complain about spirit hosts since there thing only works in melee and they don't really do any other damage than mortal wounds, but what about the blood stalkers? I mean there also 6 to hit and at range, but I haven't seen complaints on them. Is it because they don't have a high enough unit cap to cause enough or because they don't have the 5+ spell? What about stormcast retributors, on or off the dracoths. They cause tons but they cost a pretty penny in points, so are they a big part of the problem? What units need to be fixed to fix the mortal wound problem, that's the question I think needs to be asked.

Sentinels do this at 30", line of sight doesn't matter, at 5+, for 16 points per model. They are also in an army geared to prevent the enemy from doing anything in return.

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Simply put, mortal wounds should have drawbacks, like everything in the game should have. So if MWs are only caused by very expensive units, squishy spellcasters or very special circumstances, and include some random elements so you can’t solely rely on them to take something out, they shouldn’t be a problem.

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A few people have made good points, that Mortal Wounds as an "on hit" effect should trigger on the Wound Roll, not the Hit Roll.

This would help to curb their output and allow things like the current iteration of "look out sir" to actually work.

You can stack -3 to hit on a hero, in cover, out of line of sight on your board edge and they will still be sniped by Sentinels from their own deployment zone without a care in the world.

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Do we really need mw? Because appart from a few units (mainly, ignore rend and 1+ save), every other mw output can be done with a -5 rend and auto-wound or any combination of that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with MW for a lot of reasons, but I'm not sure if it's used as a lazy design:

  • Magic does mortal wounds. After 15 endless spells doing any variant of 1D3 to 1D6 mw on a roll of 4+ to 6+, it becomes a bit boring...

Maybe we need less mw and more abilities tied to basic mechanics (attack, to hit, to wound, save and dmg). Rend has some good potential to be a pseudo-mw and auto-hit or auto-wound can be part of it.

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Just now, Beliman said:

Do we really need mw? Because appart from a few units (mainly, ignore rend and 1+ save), every other mw output can be done with a -5 rend and auto-wound or any combination of that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with MW for a lot of reasons, but I'm not sure if it's used as a lazy design:

  • Magic does mortal wounds. After 15 endless spells doing any variant of 1D3 to 1D6 mw on a roll of 4+ to 6+, it becomes a bit boring...

Maybe we need less mw and more abilities tied to basic mechanics (attack, to hit, to wound, save and dmg). Rend has some good potential to be a pseudo-mw and auto-hit or auto-wound can be part of it.

That is my opinion. MW seem the "easy way" designers have to just avoid thinking about multiple interactions of rules. The sort of "I want to guarantee it will, with few exceptions, do X expected damage".

 

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1 hour ago, Beliman said:

Do we really need mw? Because appart from a few units (mainly, ignore rend and 1+ save), every other mw output can be done with a -5 rend and auto-wound or any combination of that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with MW for a lot of reasons, but I'm not sure if it's used as a lazy design:

  • Magic does mortal wounds. After 15 endless spells doing any variant of 1D3 to 1D6 mw on a roll of 4+ to 6+, it becomes a bit boring...

Maybe we need less mw and more abilities tied to basic mechanics (attack, to hit, to wound, save and dmg). Rend has some good potential to be a pseudo-mw and auto-hit or auto-wound can be part of it.

In a lot of cases, "mortal wounds" are used as a convenient shorthand for "automatically wounds and has -5 rend", but I don't think that's necessarily (in itself) lazy design. If all of those were changed to variations on -5 rend and/or auto wounds, people perhaps wouldn't be pointing to "mortal wounds" as the specific culprit, but they would still be feeling that there were a lot of armour-ignoring and perhaps auto-wounding attacks in the game. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, et cetera.

(It might make Nighthaunt actual contenders again though, which would be nice!) 

Having fifteen variations on dealing D3 or D6 mortal wounds, on the other hand, is lazy design. Using mortal wounds as a mechanism for making "extra good" attacks (yes, Lumineth archers are everyone's first example) is lazy design. Endless spells should be doing far more interesting things than handing out random spurts of plain old damage. Super-good archers could have other advantages (I dunno - a 30" range or something maybe?) but should still interact with the armour system to vary their effectiveness against different types of targets.

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@Kadeton That's what I'm talking about. Behind a design, there is a philosophy that affect the whole game. 

Giving -5 Rend to Archers seems wrong. But maybe it could be used for High Quality Explosions (aether-bombs or anything like that).

Maybe Fire-breath/magic attacks don't need to be mortal wounds, they can be attacks that auto-wound  with -1 rend for every 10 models (or something like that).

That type of coherency between all aplicable damage is what I'm talking about. For some people, it will be just "damage", but for the whole game it could mean a lot more. 

Edited by Beliman
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On 4/7/2021 at 7:13 AM, Joseph Mackay said:

To add on what I said before, mortal wounds should NEVER trigger from Missile weapons. If that one thing went away I’d be at least a little bit more ok with mortal wounds in general 

I think artillery could be an exception to this. If a cannon ball/whatever big and killy missile takes your head off, it should be a mortal blow.

Edited by SentinelGuy
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18 hours ago, SentinelGuy said:

I think artillery could be an exception to this. If a cannon ball/whatever big and killy missile takes your head off, it should be a mortal blow.

I think you could actually have a much more interesting mechanic than mortal wounds for heavy artillery 😊

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