Nerf to Morale shenanagins

I don't know if anyone has brought this up yet, but I didn't want to wade through all the pages of discussion.

From FAQ.

Q: Some Characters have aura abilities, such as a
Commissar’s Aura of Discipline or a Chaplain’s Spiritual Leader,
that allow nearby friendly units to use the character’s Leadership
characteristic instead of their own. There are also lots of abilities
that modify Leadership characteristics. Could you explain
how these rules interact and in what order I should apply the
substitution and any modifications?
A: You modify the Leadership characteristic first,
then you use the character’s Leadership characteristic
instead (this means that the modification will not affect
the unit unless the character’s Leadership has also
been modified).

So if they have a morale ability like this your phantasm grenade launchers won't work. If the character is not in the Dark creed aura it doesn't work on units in the aura.

It's a shame but better than when those models made units immune to morale.

I feel like it just means you have to be more selective in which units you spook. If they're all bubbled around a leadership model it leaves their sides open to flank, if they spread out to cover ground you have plenty of room to wiggle in your own spooky lads and throw the debuffs around.

Does anyone know or have an opinion on whether leadership penalties work on orks with their mob rule?

"When using the Leadership characteristic of this unit, you can use either its own Leadership characteristic, or you can choose for the characteristic to be equal to either the number of models in the unit, or the number of models in another friendly unit within 6" that has this ability."

Now of course a squad of 30 or so wouldn't care about a couple minuses, but I wonder about say a squad of 12 taking 2 casualties with a few points of leadership penalty. I know the question itself is asking about characters, but does mob rule count as a similar "their leadership is penalized, but then they just replace it with an penalized number."

I would say it wouldn't matter.

Whether they chose to use their base Leadership characteristic, or the number of models in the unit, that sets the baseline and you then apply the negative modifier. As per the answer, the Orks are essentially both the target unit and the supporting character, and both are being modified. So in your example their morale test would be 12 - penalty + 2 + D6.

I feel this is a case of the FAQ having to state the bleeding obvious due stupid questions. I a unit can use a characters Ld for moral, of course you're going to have to drop the characters moral to have any effect.

Ubernoob1 wrote:

Does anyone know or have an opinion on whether leadership penalties work on orks with their mob rule?

"When using the Leadership characteristic of this unit, you can use either its own Leadership characteristic, or you can choose for the characteristic to be equal to either the number of models in the unit, or the number of models in another friendly unit within 6" that has this ability."

Now of course a squad of 30 or so wouldn't care about a couple minuses, but I wonder about say a squad of 12 taking 2 casualties with a few points of leadership penalty. I know the question itself is asking about characters, but does mob rule count as a similar "their leadership is penalized, but then they just replace it with an penalized number."

Of course it does. In the above example it's a unit taking 2 different modifiers, namely Ld= model count and then applying any minuses you can throw on it. The problem comes when there's a 30 man blob 6" from the one you shot at, as the depleted unit will then be Ld30.

Yes, I agree with that.  I was answering the specific question about the singular unit.  Whether it's leadership was base or 30, it would then suffer the modifiers. If there was a nearby unit that was not suffering modifiers, they could lend their Ld to the target unit just like a Commissar or Inquisitor.

This is an interesting foil to Dark Creed, which already was the funkier Coven except for sniping shenanigans.

While I normally more than share your derision at stupid questions ( ), in this case I think there could be some order of operations debate about when the Ld is boosted. After all, it's a lot easier to inspire a guardsman standing at attention than one being chewed on by a Coven monstrosity.