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A lot of people seem to really dislike the wild randomness of the Magic phase, especially the lethal nature and lack of control people can have over the phase. While thinking on this I came up with this alternative to the phase in an effort to reduce the wild randomness of the magic phase and make it more reliable for both sides. ETC has proposed solutions but I think ETC just takes a hammer to the solution and picks on the armies that the ETC rule makers do not like (For instance, I would wager the ETC rule makers just hate dark elves in general, but that's for another discussion).

First: No irresistible force for cast or dispel. Double 6 no longer auto casts or auto dispels. This means that the dispeller always has a chance to counter the spell, and can save his/her dispel scroll and feel confident if things go sour and gets caught short on dispel dice can still stop that crucial spell with a dispel scroll.

Second: If a double is rolled with any of the dice, then the casting wizard takes a number of hits equal to the dice rolled (so double 5 would be 5 hits, double 6 would be 6 hits, etc.) that automatically hit and wound on a 4+ with no armor saves allowed. Magic Resistance would be allowed so if someone really wanted to devote the points to it, they could take the 4+ ward save and something that gives magic resistance 2 and earn a 2+ ward save, but its normally not possible since 4+ ward save talismans are in the same slot as magic resist talismans. There are other options out there, but it shouldn't be overly prominent, and only slightly more prominent than the lore of life spell that does the same thing. So normally, the casts will whittle down the caster if you throw too many dice at your spells, so the risk is still there, but it's not silly threatening such as dimensional cascade sucking away your 350 point caster. Note: As an added threat, each set of doubles would apply the hits, so if a caster rolls 4 dice and rolls two 5s and two 6s, he's very likely to get the spell off, but he is also taking 11 hits that wound on a 4+. Almost as brutal as dimensional cascade from irresistible force, but something that you can choose to control a bit more, with proper item choices.

Some ramifications might be things like making dispel scrolls more mandatory than they already are, but as it is you very rarely see a list without one. It should also make bleeding dispel dice a more tactical part of the magic phase, which should make the magic phase more interesting. It also means that the dispeller can, if he/she chooses, save all the dispel dice for that Mindrazor, and feel confident that it will not get irresistibly cast and all of a sudden those dispel dice are wasted, all thanks to box cars. That makes the decision to hold dice have consequences, but not ones that are completely out of your control. (I.E. - it is in your control to accept the lesser spells cast first that are there to bait out your dispel dice, and then in your control when you choose to roll those dice against the uber spell. Your opponent getting lucky and rolling box cars removing your ability to counter at all being not in your control.)

Some additions to this change that might make things more interesting or more complicated would be to not allow more dice rolled by the dispeller than the caster IF a double is rolled, so if the caster throws 4 dice and gets double 5s, then the dispeller can throw no more than 4 dice in attempt to dispel. This can be planned around by the dispeller, still allows the dispeller a chance at success, and gives a bit of a reward to the caster for the effort.

Your solution is less threatening to the RnF around the caster, but it's much more deadly for the casters themselves
It could simply be:
double = 1 wound /w no armour saves (MR apply)

If you're giving out wounds you shouldn't get any save. Miscasts are broad enough that it affects everyone. But not all mages are the same. Some get their resilience from toughness wounds, like greater daemons and can't get access to a high ward that some wizard half their points can.

TanKoL wrote:Your solution is less threatening to the RnF around the caster, but it's much more deadly for the casters themselves
It could simply be:
double = 1 wound /w no armour saves (MR apply)

What about 1 wound on a 4+ to all models within X inches of the caster, where x= the number rolled for the doubles?

DukeRustfield wrote:If you're giving out wounds you shouldn't get any save. Miscasts are broad enough that it affects everyone. But not all mages are the same. Some get their resilience from toughness wounds, like greater daemons and can't get access to a high ward that some wizard half their points can.

that's why I chose always wound on a 4+ and no armor saves, giving the wound a strength value would favor warriors of chaos and ogre kingdoms who can get armor on their wizards, and at the same time that strength value would also give advantage to high toughness wizards like demon princes. If the average miscast value is a 3, then out of 3 hits, 1.5 wound and even a demon can ward save that decently.

They take a wound. Period. That favors no one. If you can ward save it, it's rather meaningless. And wards just become a silly prereq which dumbs down the game further. Most big wizards have them already, but it's going to be that you have to have them. And if something is have to have, and you're not prevented from having it, then all you're really doing is making all wizards have like 50ish less points and not address miscasts in any meaningful way.

I am not really sure that it is a good idea to change too much with miscasts.
Many complain that magic is broken yet if you take the risk out of the magic phase you will break it further.
The point of the miscast that we all hate, is to make you think about whether or not the risk is worth it. If you reduce that risk it just pushes that guarantee that you will always see a lvl 4 in av list and people will throw more dice to get the big spells to work.
But I am not sure what the change in rules is attempting to achieve..
Is it just to lessen the chances that the wizard suffers an ignoble death?
To level out magic I would be more likely to say you get a -1...on the miscast table for every dice you roll over 2 or 3 to represent the risk when trying to cast the bigger spells.
This will curb the 6+dice to just cast spells and not punish as harshly for those that cast average spells.
I have gone for many a game never rolling a miscast.
Rolling a miscast, then a 2-4 on the 2d6, then the 1-3 is quite an order..I just shrug it off to bad luck for the day.
How often do you roll the box cars for charge and an above average number of killing blows.? Or some crazy number of saves that you never pay attention to. Try marking down to see how often that is.

I worked out a solution which involved a scaling table. You rolled a number of dice on the table equal to what you cast the spell with.

So if you miscast on only 2 dice its not as bad as miscasting with 6 dice.


2-8: The cascading power is contained with minimal damage. D3 power dice are lost from the pool.

9-14: There is some minor backlash from the roiling magical energies. The Wizard takes a str4 hit and D6 power dice are lost from the pool.

15-20: The wizard loses control of the power, it lashes all who stand nearby. Center the small blast on the wizard. All models underneath, except the wizard, suffer a str4 hit. the wizard suffers a single wound with no saves allowed and may not cast any further spells this magic phase. In addition, lose D6 power dice.

21-25: In his effort to release the excess energy, the wizard is drained of life. The wizard suffers D6 wounds with no armor saves allowed and may not cast any more spells for the remainder of the game. All models in BtB with the wizard suffer a str6 hit.

26+: A portal is opened to the realm of chaos, a clawed hand snatches the unfortunate wizard up, as well as those foolish enough to stand nearby. The wizard and all models in BtB are removed as a casualty with no saves of any kind allowed. Characters may take a LoS roll to avoid being grabbed.

It might be interesting that whatever the upper limits are on the miscast table it has an exception that the miscast can't in any way be prevented, given to someone else, ignored, saved, etc.

So no matter who you are, what your rules are, you still have some risk.

That table is interesting. I'm assuming that, after you miscast, you pick up all of the dice that you used to cast the spell and roll them again, and consult the table?

That's what he wrote yeah
meaning on a normal to slightly higher roll on 6 dice, you'll get the 21-25 result
It might not kill your wizard, but it sure will neuter him

I think the Earthing Rod should still be available, maybe reducing the number of dice you roll on the new table by two? Or something like that

I guess I mean... you don't roll the dice to cast the spell, and then just use THAT same value when consulting the table, right?

No no, if you miscast, you then roll again, with as many dice as what you just used

 Grey Templar wrote:
I worked out a solution which involved a scaling table. You rolled a number of dice on the table equal to what you cast the spell with.

So if you miscast on only 2 dice its not as bad as miscasting with 6 dice.


2-8: The cascading power is contained with minimal damage. D3 power dice are lost from the pool.

9-14: There is some minor backlash from the roiling magical energies. The Wizard takes a str4 hit and D6 power dice are lost from the pool.

15-20: The wizard loses control of the power, it lashes all who stand nearby. Center the small blast on the wizard. All models underneath, except the wizard, suffer a str4 hit. the wizard suffers a single wound with no saves allowed and may not cast any further spells this magic phase. In addition, lose D6 power dice.

21-25: In his effort to release the excess energy, the wizard is drained of life. The wizard suffers D6 wounds with no armor saves allowed and may not cast any more spells for the remainder of the game. All models in BtB with the wizard suffer a str6 hit.

26+: A portal is opened to the realm of chaos, a clawed hand snatches the unfortunate wizard up, as well as those foolish enough to stand nearby. The wizard and all models in BtB are removed as a casualty with no saves of any kind allowed. Characters may take a LoS roll to avoid being grabbed.

One of the big reasons why I suggested the change was how frustrating it is to cast a spell and have to throw so many dice at it that the odds are, your wizard will not live through it. For instance, Mind Razor. Cast on an 18+. You have to throw 6 dice at it to AVERAGE casting it successfully. 5 will be just short. (Average roll on a d6 being 3.5) Sure everyone is going to chime in here and say how negatively impacting the game Mind Razor can be, but I would argue it is less negatively impacting than say Dwellers Below or Curse of the Horned Rat. Regardless, I like that there are things in the magic phase to be feared. It should be that way, that's part of what makes it Fantasy. With my system suggested up top however, no matter how powerful the spell, you will still have the opportunity to do something to try and prevent it. I like the chart suggested above, although I would change the 21-25 result from no more casting to may not cast anymore this round, or at most this round and the next. One thing to keep in mind is my system also causes a miscast on ANY doubles, which will come up a LOT more often than double 6s. That is partly why I kept the penalty simpler, the system was easy, did not have a chart to be memorized, but could still be deadly if you rolled too many dice. I mean, you invest so many points of your army into that wizard and have to risk losing it every time you pick up the dice in the magic phase to a freak roll. That's not fun at all.

Why not keep it simple,

1st, put back that ward save can be taken against any spell.

Now new Miscast table.

Role D6.
1. Something has gone horribly wrong, the wizard suffers d3 wounds no armor saves allowed, in addition the unit the wizard is in suffers d3 hits for every model in base contact with the wizard, wounding on 4+, no saves. Loose one Wizard level for each Wound. D6 power dice are removed from the pool.

2. The Wizard lost his train of thought, the gods are angry at him, the Spell is canceled, the wizard looses one level and immediately forgets the spell that was just cast. D3 dice are removed from the pool.

3. Center the Small round template, over the wizard. All models under it take a wound on 4+ no saves allowed, The Wizard under the hole takes a wound on a 3+ no saves allowed.

4. All friendly Wizards suffer a S10 Hit. D3 dice are removed from the pool

5. The wizards magic has gone out of control, All Units Friendly within 2D6 suffer D6 hits wounding on 4+, no Armor saves allowed, D6 dice are removed from the pool

6. The Wizard has called upon more power than he could handle, He may not cast anymore this turn and d6 dice are removed for the pool,

Most of these now put the fear of a miscast back into any wizard. Role a one, and your Wizard is probably going to die, or be in bad shape. to where you would think twice about doing it again. on a 2 that Big spell is gone, so was it really worth tossing all those dice. A 3 is going to hurt a little. 4 some wizards could shrug off a weak S4-6 hit, but no one wants to take a S10. On a 5 ouch, my army took a hit. and 6 simply ends his magic phase. All in all I would not want to toss 6+ dice anymore. Could add an escalation to the damage done for each additional 6 rolled above two, drop down one spot on the chart. So roll six sixes, and you probably just nuked your wizard.

Your table is more forgiving than the original one
on 2d6, 2-4 is 1/6 of the odds and it's worse than the "1" from your table

1) Get rid of unstoppable and always dispel of 6's.
2) Revamp how miscasts work.

I think the problem is that miscasts vary from outright death, to useless.

What I would do for miscasts is that any spell the rolls triples, causes feedback.
The wizard take a number of hits equal to the number on the triple, at a strength equal to the number of dice rolled.
ALL dice count for both feedback strength and number of hits.

So if a dark elf sorceress rolls 8 dice, and uses the knife, and gains the +D3 from the lore of fire attribute (10 dice total), and rolled triple 4's, she'd take 4 S10 hits.

Triples come up pretty often, especially when you start rolling 4, 5 or 6 dice.

Rolling 2 dice is safe, 3 dice is risky, and 4 or more becomes dangerous.


-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
1) Get rid of unstoppable and always dispel of 6's.
2) Revamp how miscasts work.

I think the problem is that miscasts vary from outright death, to useless.

What I would do for miscasts is that any spell the rolls triples, causes feedback.
The wizard take a number of hits equal to the number on the triple, at a strength equal to the number of dice rolled.
ALL dice count for both feedback strength and number of hits.

So if a dark elf sorceress rolls 8 dice, and uses the knife, and gains the +D3 from the lore of fire attribute (10 dice total), and rolled triple 4's, she'd take 4 S10 hits.

Triples come up pretty often, especially when you start rolling 4, 5 or 6 dice.

Rolling 2 dice is safe, 3 dice is risky, and 4 or more becomes dangerous.


-Matt

I actually quite like this system. I think perhaps saying "No saves of any kind allowed" would make it better, since Miscasts are meant to be baaaad...

Maybe it'd be interesting to allow only MR to what Matt indicated there
It would diminish the proeminence of Ward saves and give a slight boost to the rarely used MR items

TanKoL wrote:
Maybe it'd be interesting to allow only MR to what Matt indicated there
It would diminish the proeminence of Ward saves and give a slight boost to the rarely used MR items

Great addition.

Hits equal to the triple roll, with a strength equal to the number of dice used, no save of any kind, except for MR.
Add to that, anything that makes miscasts worst, re-roll failed rolls to wound, anything that makes miscasts less bad re-roll successful rolls to wound.
(So wizards within range of a mortis engine re-roll wounds taken, those with a throne of vines would re-roll successful wounds).

What I like about this idea is it makes rolling 2 dice totally safe, rolling 3 dice fairly safe. Rolling more dice becomes dangerous, and trying to throw a ton of dice at a huge spell is very risky. I'd much rather see most magic phases as several successful lesser spell than a single huge one.

-Matt

In this system, would you change any of the current caps on power dice? (Maximum dice per spell, maximum dice in the power pool at any one time, etc)

The question is, does this system affect the individual armies in a significant way? Does it make some too strong or too weak?

 Tangent wrote:
In this system, would you change any of the current caps on power dice? (Maximum dice per spell, maximum dice in the power pool at any one time, etc)

The question is, does this system affect the individual armies in a significant way? Does it make some too strong or too weak?

With the removal of unstoppable, I'd remove the dice cap for casting. Go ahead and throw 9 dice, it's an auto-feed back. You might even come up with more than 1 set of triples, meaning more than 1 set of hits.

Where the newer system can be abused is any build where a crapload of level 1 or level 2 wizards is too good; where previously it was miscasting that kept it balanced.
Also, hell heart would have to be re-vamped.


-Matt

That system isn't bad either, and not much different than mine. However I have concerns it would favor monstrous casters such as greater demons, demon princes, etc. Even as a dark elf player I find myself rarely using more than 5 dice to cast a spell. I can reliably get mind razor off on 5 dice, and most of the tournaments I play in are comp'd so I cannot use more than 6 anyways. even 6 strength 5 hits on a toughness 6 or 7 demon prince is laughable. (wounding on 6s) Maybe a sliding scale like you have for BS shooting. Subtract the number from rolled on the dice from 7 to determine the number required to wound, and the number of hits equals the number of dice rolled to cast the spell. So if you roll 3 5s on 5 dice to cast a spell, the wizard would take 5 hits that wound on a 2+. This is very different than 5 strength 5 hits. For an elf, there is no difference, but an Ogre Slaugthermaster isn't as concerned about it and a Greater Demon of Nurgle can somewhat laugh. That way it doesn't favor WoC or DoC in particular unfairly.

Well, the big brutish casters pay for their upgraded stats ... and they often have some difficulties to benefit from a LOS! against more mundane threats

archamedius wrote:
That system isn't bad either, and not much different than mine. However I have concerns it would favor monstrous casters such as greater demons, demon princes, etc. Even as a dark elf player I find myself rarely using more than 5 dice to cast a spell. I can reliably get mind razor off on 5 dice, and most of the tournaments I play in are comp'd so I cannot use more than 6 anyways. even 6 strength 5 hits on a toughness 6 or 7 demon prince is laughable. (wounding on 6s) Maybe a sliding scale like you have for BS shooting. Subtract the number from rolled on the dice from 7 to determine the number required to wound, and the number of hits equals the number of dice rolled to cast the spell. So if you roll 3 5s on 5 dice to cast a spell, the wizard would take 5 hits that wound on a 2+. This is very different than 5 strength 5 hits. For an elf, there is no difference, but an Ogre Slaugthermaster isn't as concerned about it and a Greater Demon of Nurgle can somewhat laugh. That way it doesn't favor WoC or DoC in particular unfairly.

Daemon princes are T5, W4, don't get their armor save, and at best 5+ ward.
T5, 3 dice averages 1.75 wounding hits, with only MR saves, means he's taking ~2 wounds. He has four. That's roughly half dead on average.

Greater daemons are better at surviving miscasts, but are also clocking in at ~400-550 points, and they cannot take any defense against miscasts.
Every other caster in the game can take something to reduce the effect of miscasts. Greater daemons have other in game balances, such as getting punked by warmachines.

The current miscast table already "favors" high toughness models like those that you listed because the S6 hits (8-9 on the table) are less likely to wound, and they cannot be in ranked up in units for detonation (Strength 10) to touch anyone. Likewise, Calamitous Detonation (S10 small blast) is only hitting the wizard, vs the wizard and ~7 friends.

-Matt

Wow, did I get bamboozled. I played at Buckeye Battles a few weeks back against Flying Circus and that guy's demon prince of Nurgle supposedly had WS 9, STR 8 T 7 with a 3+/5+ rerollable.

#WTBMANDATORYARMYBUILDERATTOURNAMENTS

archamedius wrote:
Wow, did I get bamboozled. I played at Buckeye Battles a few weeks back against Flying Circus and that guy's demon prince of Nurgle supposedly had WS 9, STR 8 T 7 with a 3+/5+ rerollable.

#WTBMANDATORYARMYBUILDERATTOURNAMENTS

Warriors of Chaos lore of nurgle attribute says that after casting successfully, roll a die. One a 6, gain +1T and +1W.

Daemon Princes can get a 2+ re-rollable armor save (chaos armor, scaly skin, dawnstone), but would then have no additional magic items (but can have more gifts); and a 5+ ward.
A daemon prince of tzeench can re-roll Ward Saves of 1.
A daemon of chaos that spends 20 of it's 25 points on a sword of might would be S8 on the charge.

All princes are WS9. All have 5+ ward.


You got hosed. My guess is your opponent took an ogre blade, a magic shield, and dawn stone, and didn't notice that you only get 25 points of magic items, and it's Daemonic Gifts that you get 100 points of. Or, he's just a big fat cheater (cause all cheaters are fat).


-Matt

Could have just had a luckstone and rerolled once.
One question and one suggestion.
I like all three of these, but Matt's is the simplest.
Would you count 4 6s as 1 triple or 4 (each possible set of 3)?
How about adding in that any friendly wizard within x inches takes a hit, where x is the casting value of the spell. That would balance out wizard spam a bit.

I was thinking that multiple triples results in multiple sets of hits.
I don't know if wizard spam is really a problem. It costs a lot of points to spam wizards, and it doesn't seem to be all that effective.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I was thinking that multiple triples results in multiple sets of hits.
I don't know if wizard spam is really a problem. It costs a lot of points to spam wizards, and it doesn't seem to be all that effective.

-Matt

I dunno, Beastmen.

They kinda need it ... the poor goats