Monday 11 December 2017

Characters, or The Importance of Not Being Seen


As anyone who's read, or read some coverage of, Chapter Approved will know, the CHARACTER keyword came in for a tweak. Now, a CHARACTER can only be targeted if they're the closest model, regardless of whether any other models can be seen or not. So, for example, a unit of Scouts hiding out of LOS 10" away stop you shooting a Lieutenant 24" away out in the open. This, along with a few other recent developments, seems more than a little odd. Let's take a look in more detail.

Who wants to be a hero?
Firstly, what is the CHARACTER rule trying to represent and achieve? Most obviously, it allows characters to operate in support of their troops without immediately getting shot. Since 8th Edition doesn't allow characters to join units any more, this protection is necessary so Psykers, Commissars and Techpriests don't get picked off with Lascannons. The in-game explanation is that whilst we, as players with our bird's eye view of the battlefield, know how important that Guard Officer is, it's less obvious to an Ork Loota trying to pick him out amongst the press of Guardsmen.

Look at me! No, don't! I'm so confused!
Now, we immediately come across a bit of a disconnect here. Not to put too fine a point on it, 40k characters don't tend to exactly try to hide how important they are. The whole point of a model like an Ancient is that they inspire their brothers with an enormous flag, and even the dimmest Ork can probably figure out that the Humie with a six-foot banner is an important target. (We could look back to Vietnam, where US officers learned quickly that displaying any rank insignia got them shot.)

Things get a lot worse, though, when you consider Characters who also happen to be vehicles.
Nope, nothing important here. Just a plain 'old Dreadnought
The idea that a model still gets CHARACTER protection if it also has the VEHICLE keyword is very odd. Obviously they still have to have less than 10 wounds, but two obvious examples are the Librarian Dreadnought and the Ravenwing Talonmaster. The Talonmaster is a particularly nasty one since his Land Speeder puts out a lot of firepower and his abilities naturally mean he wants to be amongst other models. The Librarian Dreadnought at least has to get somewhat close to contribute more than a plain old Librarian can.

Why the LOS change?
The exact reason why the rules regarding models that are out of LOS but still closer than a Character changed is tricky to figure out. The best explanation is the ancient art of the Rhino Snipe, where a player could position a couple of his own models, usually Rhinos or other cheap, bulky models, so that a firer could only see the exact target he was intended to shoot.  The reasons for doing this varied from Edition to Edition- some only allow models in LOS to be killed, others only allowed units to fire at the nearest enemy unit full stop- but it was a well known dodge and until Chapter Approved worked in 8th Ed.

He's only a spectator
Then, of course, we also have the fact that models in melee still count as closer models, even though they can't be shot. A Commissar standing behind a blob of Guardsmen who are in melee is safe from enemy fire, even though the enemy can't shoot the Guardsmen either. Again, this feels like having one's cake and eating it.

Trying to make sense of it all
Now, one of these issues is reasonably simple to 'fix', assuming we agree a fix is needed. For the vehicle Characters, we could say that:

"If a model has both the CHARACTER and VEHICLE keywords, it may only be targeted with shooting attacks if it is the closest model to the firing unit with the VEHICLE keyword."

This would mean that enemies would still not suddenly know, for example, that a Talonmaster was a super-important Land Speeder, but could at least choose to shoot it instead of a single Dark Angels Scout who happened to be closer. If we remove the Wound total requirement, it also allows Tank Commanders to receive some benefit from the CHARACTER keyword by not being the closest tank, which would be an interesting tweak.

Now you see him, now you don't
The LOS and melee things are trickier. We could start by tweaking the CHARACTER rule as follows:

"A model with less than 10 wounds and the CHARACTER keyword can only be targeted with shooting attacks if they are the closest eligible target to the firing model." 

This removes the protection from models that are out of LOS, and models that are locked in melee, since these aren't eligible targets. Models with an indirect fire rule would still have to shoot targets that were out of LOS (eg Artillery models) but at least they still get to fire at something. However, the Rhino Snipe is still a thing, so we would also need to say:

"For the purposes of this rule, friendly models are not considered to block Line Of Sight. If a model is closer than the CHARACTER and the firer's LOS is only blocked by friendly models, the CHARACTER may not be targeted."

Now the wording on this is fiddly, and it goes to illustrate how tricky rules writing is- believe me, before you talk about how 'vague' the rules of any game are, try writing a set of rules that can't possibly be misinterpreted or misunderstood. It really isn't easy. The idea, though, is to prevent players Rhino Sniping by basically ignoring those Rhinos when deciding if the Character is the closest visible target. In game terms, we might imagine that your squad was about to fire on the enemy infantry when the Rhino got in the way, and now they're waiting for it to move. Of course you would still have the odd strange situation, but overall it reduces some of the sillier protections Characters get without making them hopelessly vulnerable. Let's put our three rules in order, adding the 'eligible target' wording to our vehicle rule:

"A model with less than 10 wounds and the CHARACTER keyword can only be targeted with shooting attacks if they are the closest eligible target to the firing model." 

For the purposes of this rule, friendly models are not considered to block Line Of Sight. If a model is closer than the CHARACTER and the firer's LOS is only blocked by friendly models, the CHARACTER may not be targeted."

"If a model has both the CHARACTER and VEHICLE keywords, it may only be targeted with shooting attacks if it is the closest eligible target to the firing unit with the VEHICLE keyword."

Now, I think that this makes Characters make a little more sense, but I'm interested to hear other opinions on it.


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