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Why do you think Rending was nerfed between 4th and 5th editions?

  • Genestealers

    Votes: 29 34.9%
  • Space Marine Assault Cannons

    Votes: 36 43.4%
  • Daemonettes of Slaanesh

    Votes: 3 3.6%
  • Other, please explain

    Votes: 15 18.1%

Why was Rending nerfed in 5th?

7K views 31 replies 21 participants last post by  Red Archer 
#1 ·
I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, but because this was a rule change, I thought I'd post it here.

I was having a little debate with another in the tyranid forum. Now I'm a little new to 40k having started during 4th edition. But I feel the reason why rending was nerfed was due to the genestealers. The other person said it was because of space marine assault cannons - that ever since the assault cannons became rending, everyone was using it because it could rend from long range.

I'd like to get your opinions regarding its origins - basically why was rending nerfed (reduced in power) between 4th edition to 5th?
 
#3 ·
I think there's no nefarious scheme or simple single cause. Things that are very popular because of their power/cost always get toned down across revisions of a game, that's the whole principal of balancing, no?

Marines did get it worse though. 'stealers ended up buffed overall if you pay the 2pt tax for feeder tendrils.

Daemonettes were most definitely play tested using 5E core rules, and I suspect that play testing for even Eldar and those Harlequins was done with some draft form of 5E. They're certainly not the 'cause' of the change, they were created knowing about it/to work within it.
One likes to think the design studio is organised enough that holo fields and harlequins were created knowing about the coming changes to skimmers and rending, and not that skimmers and rending were changed in response to a big 'oops' when they released the book ;)
 
#4 ·
On that note... Who says that Rending was "nerfed" at all? Just the use of that terminology belies an insistence towards complaint...

Besides, it makes more sense that a wounding effect should take place on the "to wound" roll.
 
#7 ·
Rending was "nerfed" because the old rending rules were silly. So the cause is not any of those you listed, but in fact was simply an improvement to the rules.

And before anyone complains about my comments, keep in mind that I play Tyranids with genestealers myself, and I like the new rending rules far more because they are more balanced and make more sense.
 
#9 ·
A unit of 12 genestealers with scything talons = 36 rending attacks (48 on the charge). Now imagine 6 squads of them + 1 retinue and add to that the fact that they hit most enemies on 3+ and most likely attacked first.

InquisitorAffe said:
I think there's no nefarious scheme or simple single cause. Things that are very popular because of their power/cost always get toned down across revisions of a game, that's the whole principal of balancing, no?
Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more. But why did it get toned down? Why had the authors felt that it was unbalancing? And why was it so popular? Because it was playtested with various units (genestealers, assault cannons, daemonettes, harlequins, etc.) by millions of people.

I just remember that when I was playing 4th and went up against marines, I never thought "oh no...not those blasted assault cannons". I mean, after all, how many AC's can a marine squad have? Maybe 2-3 at most in the typical army - on 1-2 dreads or termies and then maybe a land raider. But when I played against 'nids, it was always "uh oh...genestealers...gotta get rid of them as quickly as possible before they get close". They were almost always on everyone's most feared list when facing a tyranid army.
 
#10 ·
FnP and Rending suffered from the same fate. Once upon a time both were unique features to a single unit (Genestealers for Rending and Death Company for FnP), but as they were applied to more and more units problems arose. Back in 4th, anything with rending was gold, you didn't need any good melee stats for the ability to work.

Long story short, GW wanted every codex to have these abilities in some form, so they toned them down to keep the game from revolving around them.
 
#11 ·
Long story short, GW wanted every codex to have these abilities in some form, so they toned them down to keep the game from revolving around them.
THAT'S called "balancing", and in my opinion it's a good thing. Back when I used to play in 3rd Edition the only way to really know what everyone else's army could (and, conversely, couldn't) do was to buy their Codex and read through it. It was a pain, and a constant source of arguments (and remains so to this day; force weapons from the Daemonhunters and Witch Hunters codexes are a good example). Standardising everything around the core rulebook is far simpler and serves to streamline things nicely.
 
#12 ·
because it damn well needed it, in my opinion Rending should die completely and should only be a Tyranid thing like back in the wonderful days of 3rd edition (although it should only affect infantry NOT tanks)

Assault cannons penetrating Main line tanks is one of the dumbest things ever thought up by the morons at GW, not even an A-10's cannon can penetrate a modern Main battle tank, and that fires bigger rounds at less advanced (maybe) armour
 
#13 ·
Actually A-10s can pierce most armor, but only because their shots are usually on the less protected top armor and have a high volume of shots. In a front arc on a trajectory paralell to the ground, all you'll do is severely annoy the crew.
 
#19 ·
THe official explanation behind the workings of the bolter make enough sense, they're simply rocket propelled explosive rifles, well within today's modern tech. They had rocket propelled rifles since the VIetnam war era. As for Hellguns, the new guard rules make more sense than the old ones, since someone carrything a lazergun powered by a giant backpack should be able to punch through power armour.
 
#20 ·
I think rending got re-tuned, to be more inline with how 5th edition is meant to be played. Hitting, wounding, ignoring armor saves, with a single roll of a 6, is off balance regardless from where it came from.

Being able to hit your mark, then having that ammo, weapon, or claw, deal its damage really effectively makes sense to me as rolling to see if you hit, then determining how effectively the target was wounded. I think close combat is severe enough as it is, removing models after a single roll as opposed to 3, is quite overpowerful. Reducing to rolling 2 dice, and cutting out the "save" roll, is still powerful, just not overly so.
 
#21 ·
I agree that rending needed to be fine-tuned/improved upon. Back then, rending was probably one of the most feared special rules. Not only did you rend on the hit roll, but in 4th, rending added +1d6 to vehicle AP on a roll of 6.

A squad of genestealers would just about tear through anything, including Landraiders and Leman Russ's front armor (with the exception of only the Monolith). While with an assault cannon, you would maybe hope that it didn't penetrate your LR's armor. But with genestealers, you would pray that your LR would survive their onslaught.
 
#22 ·
I personally believe that the old rending was understandable, but am happy to see it softened.
If a basic boltgun fires actual explosive rockets as shells, what the hell would an assault cannon fire? The basic idea in my eyes, is that the rending hit, the shell is just too powerful.
But with the ability to take a unit of 20 deaomnettes w/ rending, still in 4th, it was just stupidly overpowered.

It's a rather difficult question, i think it balanced units as weak as deamonettes, but screwed items as powerful as dreadnought mounted assault cannons.

Still, all my rending is still to hit as i use knarlocs.
 
#23 ·
Heres my take on it.

They got nerfed because I bought 14 Daemonettes after rereading the rending rules after playing against Genestealers in 4th Edition. While I was painting them the new Chaos codex came out and rending Daemonettes were gone from the codex.

(I admit that this is very unlikely but thats how it seemed to me at the time)
 
#26 ·
Damn! I was trying to avoid blame. :)

Seriously though I find myself in agreement with Izzinatah, it seemed like every Marine army was packed to the teeth with Assualt Cannons for a while. I remember seeing one that had something like 10 assualt cannons in it. Just crazy.
 
#28 ·
Well, let's be honest in saying that Genestealers were ridiculously overpowered and utterly amazing in every way, they still are but just not quite to the same degree. I don't think there was any single reason for the Rending nerf, it was just another rules change GW decided to implement.

~ DiW
 
#29 ·
No, it really was ranged rending which became silly to the point that the assault cannon (with it's large number of attacks) became statistically better than most other heavy weapons vs a broad range of targets.

Rending genestealers are good, for sure, but they are about the same cost as your average space marine, have no shooting attack whatsoever and come standard with a 5+ save which every bolter and then some can negate. Any shooting and you'll see the nasty bugs disappear in a red mist. You can increase their save, of course, but then you're getting seriously expensive.

And their high I can be negated through judicious use of cover, so it's not that of a big hit.

Daemonettes are basically the same as genestealers, but cheaper (oh, they may have less toughness and strength, but since you are killing through rending and high I, what does your S or T matter?) and they get an invulnerable save on top of that.

The widespread use of the rending rule (DC, assault cannons, daemonettes, harlequins) is what brought the nerf, not that genestealers were OP, since at their points cost, they weren't.

5e allowed us to screen genestealers with gaunts, which somewhat alleviates the need for the save upgrade, but it also brought changes to the combat resolution and disallowed the consolidation into a new combat (genestealers in the open after winning combat = dead stealers) so I still find the bugs slightly overcosted.
 
#30 ·
I think it was becoming more common. It was originally used for stealer etc as a replacement for there old power weapons but when it started to become more popular it became more of a problem. This aside it was probably just a small change so they could bring out a new rules book. They always make small changes for little reason just to keep people interested I think this is the real reason for the change.
 
#31 ·
Any weapon that by-passes the tables (even partially) will break the game if handed out too readily and I can see that ‘Poisoned Weapons’ are set to fall into the same trap here.

‘Rending’ should have been something reserved for characters only but since it’s impossible to retract once given out the only recourse open to GW was to change the rule.

And the reason for its past popularity was that it was an easy fix with no convolutions needed with some fancy wargear or added ability.
 
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