Wednesday, April 11, 2018

The "Independent Character" rule should come back

Just a quick little rules thought...

Why is Independent Character as a rule gone?

Why was it replaced with these super bizarre character targeting rules?
Remember back to 7th and 6th for a second. The issue a lot of the times was Universal Special Rules, when they conferred and characters joining units to confer rules they were never designed to have. It could really make abusive combos.

But this was fixed in 8th with the introduction of Keywords and the elimination of USRs. Now characters only confer rules as designed pretty much.

So why did joining get dropped?
You could say Look Out Sir and Wound allocation made characters in units weird, but that was easily fixed now too by making wound allocation pretty much as the controlling player desires.

"But that means adding a character to a squad effectively gives them 10+ more wounds!"

Okay, but as of right now, you can pretty much do the same by making the character untargetable behind a wall of bodies. And does Guilliman behind a wall of conscripts or a Daemon Prince behind a wall of cultists make sense to be untargetable? No.

It really go far to fix alot of the issues currently if they brought back a form of IC.

Here is how I would do it
-Have a generic set of IC rules in the core rules. Basically saying things with the keyword can join units. When in a unit they cannot be targeted by shooting.
-In the fight phase, they are always treated as a separate unit
-THEN on the model's profile, you specify what keywords the unit can join with. Sometimes it could just be as generic as , like for an Inquisitor. But obviously you could get more specific, like allowing Kharn to only join Bezerkers or Dante to join Blood Angels, while preventing something like hiding a Jetbike Shield Captain behind cheap guardsmen. 
-Add a few Keywords like and so you could have large models only able to hide with other large models.
-This would require a change to snipers as well. I would make it so they could still target units in the shooting phase, but I would consider going a step further and allowing them to allocate wounds to specific models, like sergeants and weapons specialists.
-Obviously the current way of keywords conferring rules and auras would still work.
Whats cool about this is it would allow you to have something like Leman Russ Command Tanks join other Leman Russ Battle Tanks or Hive Tyrants join specific units like Tyrant Guard.

It also really helps with certain orders and psychic powers that cause a unit to move... and then leave the character behind? Like I can give Move, Move, Move to my Death Riders by a Death Rider Officer, allowing my unit to move 10"+d6" in the shooting phase. But then my Officer is forever away... despite ALSO being on a horse and clearly "with" the unit before that. This change would totally allow units to include the character for such purposes.

Furthermore, you could add cool unit rules to honor guards and the like, like making characters untargetable in shooting or combat when in the honor guard.
Lastly, it brings being able to shoot a lone character with no one within any semblance to closeness to them back into the game...

What do you think? To me it solves a lot of of issues currently facing Characters in the game. Keywords fix everything wrong with them from before. There is no need for all these extraneous targeting rules.