Its been my experience that most people kill the guard first and then go for slann after. Its an unfavorable change for the slann, but I do not think it will impact much in the long run.
I guess it's less of a faq and more of a question of whether or not they realized it would come up as a result of the change, then they can decide whether or not they intended it to be this way
I may have misunderstood the question, but how would Guard be affected? Scaly Skin has never altered the damage taken from their bodyguard ability, as far as I understand. I think all that will change is, now that the Slann doesn't have Scaly Skin, when failing a save, he will take full damage from a multi-damage attack. So, he will just pass off more wounds to the Guard.
Yeah that's the issue, guard now take full damage from the slann passing off damage instead of taking reduced damage from scaly skin. It's just kind of lame since one of the benefits of taking saurus is that you still get scaly skin, but they take full damage in this instance
They never took reduced damage to begin with the bodyguard ability passes wounds off as mortal wounds. Scaly skin got faqd for mortal wounds 1 month after our 2ed codex came out
That's not what they're referring to. Pre GHB2022: I shoot slann with an attack that's damage 2. This is reduced to damage 1 by Scaly Skin. The 1 point of damage is passed off to the Saurus Guard. Post GHB: I shoot slann with an attack that's damage 2. The slann no longer has Scaly Skin and so takes 2 damage. The slann passes off the damage, and the Guard still take 2 damage despite still having Scaly Skin. The point is that Guard are now significantly worse as bodyguards seeing as without Scaly Skin the slann is passing the full amount of damage onto them with no chance at negating that first point of damage from each attack. Seeing as being bodyguards is about the only thing Guard do well, this isn't especially good news for them.
Again. Passed off as mortal wounds. Scaly skin never should of allowed a guard to lower the wounds anyways. again What's the problem? Slann not having scaly skin? Or guard not being able to lower mortal wound damage that's passed onto them to begin with? Or am I confused on the bodyguard rule?
I wouldn't even call this a problem - just a likely unanticipated side effect of removing Scaly Skin from slann. The main way Saurus Guard die (at least in my experience) is by taking wounds for a Slann. So Guard are going to be taking the full amount of damage, despite benefitting from Scaly Skin which would take a point off that damage if they were attacked directly. Obviously this is how it's always worked for Starborne, but it just means that as Coalesced you're not getting quite as much bang for your buck out of those Guard.
It's all just a bit silly and game-y as scaly skin now makes even less sense fluff-wise due to it's inconsistent behaviour. And knowing GW, it's entirely possible this is an oversight. Because 90% of the damage guard suffer comes from protecting the Slann this change has the side-effect of making the guard feel like the "squishiest" Saurus if they fullfill their role properly. Which is weird. It also accentuates how silly it is that mortal wounds don't count for scaly skin. We already had some weird situations where attacks with similar fluff are affected differently by scaling skin (e.g. a stegadon's crushing stomps v.s. his unstoppable stampede, both represent a big dinosaur stepping on you, only one is affected by scaly skin). But now we literally have situations where the same attack is only sometimes affected by scaly skin, because according to the rules a Guard magically loses his scaly skin if he jumps in front of a Slann to catch a blade, while his skin works perfectly fine if he gets stabbed in another situation by that same blade....
I suppose, main targets of the nerf were blocks of 30 skinks in TL, salamanders and Kroak. Since scaly skin reduces damage from incoming attacks, damage which passes from slann to guard can't be affected at all
I think here are two facts that should seperated: If you run Kroak in a coalest List he bekomes a bit worst (bit he wasent part of the Meta) If you run a Slann in coalest, it is realy unlikely that you Slan with Guard is the first Targel of you enemy. Usesally he sits in the realmshaper and dies (even if) late in the game. So lost of Scaly Skin is not a big deal.
Yeah it really felt like GW originally wanted coalesced to be saurus and monster focused and starborne to be slann, skink, and sally focused. Problem was the buffs from coalesced are just so much better in the current meta.
The issue is that because the slann no longer has scaly skin, the damage the slann would take is no longer reduced before passing it off to the guard. Effectively, coalesced saurus guard also lost scaly skin when they bodyguard for a slann, which is unfortunate, especially because bodyguarding is their one job, and saurus were supposed to retain their scaly skin damage reduction as a perk to take them over skinks in Coalesced now. As some have mentioned, this isn't a huge nerf to guard or anything, but it's definitely a nerf nonetheless.
In 5th edition it was an armor save that couldn't be reduced past a 6+. From 6th edition onward it was just a natural armor save, like wearing heavy armor for instance. It had some minor advantageous interactions with things like the Lorr of Metal since it wasn't actually armor, it just granted a save
After some careful reading, it's possible you're still getting the benefit of Scaly Skin. Rules as written, what you're doing with Selfless Protectors is seeing if wounds and mortal wounds, not damage, get sloughed off onto the nearby Guard unit. Where this starts tripping up however is the question of what is considered to be the targeted unit, since the Scaly Skin revision makes specific wording that about only benefiting the targeted unit, and Selfless Protectors makes no mention of Saurus Guard being treated as if it were the targeted unit for the purposes of such. If it's the Slann who is implied to be the target in all cases, then yes, Scaly Skin does not apply to the Saurus Guard. If Saurus Guard are treated as being the targeted unit for successful attacks allocated to them however, then they may very well still issue the -1 debuff to inbound damage per wound.
At least the Slaan benefit from garnison in the pyramide and still has -1 hit and +1 save. So now the opponent has a true choice between target or the Slaan or the saurus guard. Except if the guard are also in the pyramide obviously