Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?

[mr beer]

Yeah, high armour divisor is the first and most obvious thing. What about ammo loads? Maybe they risk running out of bullets in extended fights. Also, there are a lot of (mainly silly) exotic hand weapons in 40K. You can beef up the marines melee equipment with chainswords and power hammers and whatever other OTT stuff they have.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Champion duels aren't particularly pragmatic either.

If they're simply a part of a larger battle, it's not clear how they change anything. If they're instead of a larger battle, obviously they save a lot of destruction...but you could save even more by settling the matter with a game of chess instead. And a champion duel isn't any better than a chess showdown for determining who would actually win in a battle.

I've bolded the assumptions you are taking for granted.

Many kinds of warfare have units that do greatly effect the outcome of the battle: Champions in pre-formation warfare, knights in medival europe, aircraft in many modern situations. Any of these will normally kill a lot of units, and you counter them by simply replying with your own.

If that is the situation, and both sides have other enemies to worry about, its best to pit the units that will decide the battle against each other as a 'champions match'. Presumably the outcome of the battle is the same (as the deciding arm is the same), and you didn't loose all of the conscripts you would have in a pitched battle.

Close Battles are costly affairs. If you are fighting an honest to goodness one on one war, that doesn't matter. If you are dealing with a complex political situation, its advantageous.

[Tomsdad]

If you don't mind being too meta about it, remember that in the wargame, personal long arms have an maximum range of 48 yards, and heavy weapons about 120 yards!

If you do't want to just have hard and fast max range cut off. Have something like a setting switch that has AD drop by two steps once you get to say 50 yards. That actually works well for marines who are only in danger within very close range due to their high DR, and also for everyone else in low DR who will still be effected at higher ranges even at the reduced AD so will use more realistic tactics. (Not that the IG or Orks aren't likely to rush forward but they will at least die in droves when doing so)

Given the high stats that Space marines will have they should be able to rush the effective range gap quickly and engage superior force sin CC where they might be protected from short range gun fire.

Also with SM if you give them high enough stats melee will favour them anyway while also protecting them. Give H-Th weapons better AD than rifle equivalents (pretty in setting)

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I've bolded the assumptions you are taking for granted.

Many kinds of warfare have units that do greatly effect the outcome of the battle: Champions in pre-formation warfare, knights in medival europe, aircraft in many modern situations. Any of these will normally kill a lot of units, and you counter them by simply replying with your own.

If that is the situation, and both sides have other enemies to worry about, its best to pit the units that will decide the battle against each other as a 'champions match'. Presumably the outcome of the battle is the same (as the deciding arm is the same), and you didn't loose all of the conscripts you would have in a pitched battle.

Close Battles are costly affairs. If you are fighting an honest to goodness one on one war, that doesn't matter. If you are dealing with a complex political situation, its advantageous.

Problem is with that is champion vs. champion (or elite vs. elite) was actually a resource maintenance tactic. It's was mainly employed by people who just can't afford to lose large numbers of able bodied people who will otherwise be responsible for keeping you society fed and warm win or lose.

dedicated soldiers had one job to fight*. So while they are individually resource intensive to train, equip and maintain and you don't waste them by any means if they're fighting their earning their keep.

Once warm bodies become a less critical resource (and equipping them less of a burden) to gamble the out come on your best chap not having an off day becomes less attractive.

*and keep the chaps with the big hats in power.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

If you do't want to just have hard and fact max range cut off. Have something like a setting switch that has AD drop by two steps once you get to say 50 yards. That actually works well for marines who are only in danger within very close range due to their high DR, and also for everyone else in low DR who will still be effected at higher ranges even at the reduced AD so will use more realistic tactics. (Not that the IG or Orks aren't likely to rush forward but they will at least die in droves when doing so)

The AD drop is a good idea. Would you cap it at (1) or keep going?

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The AD drop is a good idea. Would you cap it at (1) or keep going?

Depends on the balance of weapon to DR I guess. If you keep going into fractional than you don't have to worry about making power armour really high (which also means you don't need really high AD in melee).

But ultimately the balance between DR and weapon damage is what going to matter here. (you can combine this all with lowering 1/2ranges as well of course which is an effective halve in AD anyway).

What's nice about it, you can still have some weapon that either don't drop their AD as much or have much longer threshold range for doing so, so that you can mix the threats up a bit.

Want to scare Mr. Chainsword wielding Space marine? Put him up against a sniper who can get past his brightly coloured power armour at 300 yards!

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Champion duels aren't particularly pragmatic either.

If they're simply a part of a larger battle, it's not clear how they change anything. If they're instead of a larger battle, obviously they save a lot of destruction...but you could save even more by settling the matter with a game of chess instead. And a champion duel isn't any better than a chess showdown for determining who would actually win in a battle.

If they are members of small tribes, eliminating the greatest warrior in either tribe could make resuming hostilities impractical. It would be like sinking a carrier. If they are nations, with a dispute that is minor strategically but major in terms of face, a duel is a reasonable way to solve it, and possibly the only way to do so and avoid shedding blood without looking like one is trying to. A game of chess lowers the stakes to much, unless of course the loser has to commit sepukku. No nation of course could be trusted to wager it's existence on a duel if it can continue to fight afterwords, but for minor disputes it can be a useful way to keep one's street cred. And of course high-strung young fools wanting to send challenges across no mans land because they are bored don't need to be practical. A lot of champion duels were no more then that and had no other intention.

[Rysith]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Stagger: Related to the above, in many First Person Shooters ranged attacks will at best cause a foe to flinch slightly, while a melee strike sends them reeling. Have foes struck in melee suffer a higher shock penalty than those attacked at range to help facilitate this. Knockback can also be useful (due to the chance of the target falling).

Given that I would assume that all of your space marines (and orks, and necrons, and and and...) are going to have HPT, giving melee weapons shock that bypasses shock, or knockback enhancements to stagger things that don't have shock penalties, seems good.

I'm going to echo all the other posters that are saying that the key is to make sure that the armor to penetration setup is such that the heavily-armored marines can close without getting ripped to shreds. Maybe justify the absurdly-short ranges mentioned above (48/120 yards) with defensive jammers/point defense that make shooting beyond that range ineffective?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

If they are members of small tribes, eliminating the greatest warrior in either tribe could make resuming hostilities impractical. It would be like sinking a carrier. If they are nations, with a dispute that is minor strategically but major in terms of face, a duel is a reasonable way to solve it, and possibly the only way to do so and avoid shedding blood without looking like one is trying to. A game of chess lowers the stakes to much, unless of course the loser has to commit sepukku. No nation of course could be trusted to wager it's existence on a duel if it can continue to fight afterwords, but for minor disputes it can be a useful way to keep one's street cred. And of course high-strung young fools wanting to send challenges across no mans land because they are bored don't need to be practical. A lot of champion duels were no more then that and had no other intention.

An ordeal might do for this purpose but it has to be a conspicuous display of prowess. I once wrote a short story where a feud in the Sword Worlds was aborted by the Wise Woman of the Mountains(a famous local backcountry diplomat), ordering the two tribes to have a race to capture an eagle in the cliffs and present it to the local Hertug's aviary. If I remember both tribes captured one, the Hertug took the hint and accepted both eagles. But the point was the Wise Woman of the Mountains realized that the real reason they were feuding was to avoid being looked upon as people who wouldn't feud-and by extension as easy prey. Giving them a rigorous task serves the same purpose. Just as a duel does. A mere chess game doesn't.

[ArchonShiva]

Why does it work in 40k?

Are effective weapon ranges incredibly low, or maybe weapons are incredibly inaccurate, jam all the time or hold very low ammo and reload or cycle very slowly?

Then again, maybe it doesn't work in 40k either.

How close to the source (which I barely know) do you want to stick?

Misunderstood, badly maintained technology is easy to make cumbersome to use. Maybe firing a ranged weapon requires being stationary, drilling spikes into the ground, getting a lock-on (which registers on your target's sensors) and so on, making you melee bait.

Give weapons a huge Bulk, and impose Bulk on unaimed shots (sort of like a better version of Third Edition Snapshot). Cap Move and Attack at 9 with ranged weapons. There's a ton of stuff you can do here.

As an aside, GURPS rounds are 1 second. If you take the duration of a 40k round (6 seconds, 1 minute, I have no idea) and determine that this is the actual rate of fire, you can possibly both follow the lore and make ranged weapons stupidly slow.