Do we really need a "to wound roll"? I mean the weapons are so powerful if you are hit, you should be dead. There really shouldn't be a reason "to wound". That is why we have armour. If we are hit, then the armour should save us. If it doesn't then we die like we didn't have armour. So what do you think? Get hit, just roll your armour save if you get one. I think it would make the game more fun by less rolling and making the game go faster.

What is your opinion on this?

And instantly, Imperial Guardsmen become the best shooting army in the game.

No.

No. Because of the scale of the creatures in the game.

Do you think a rusty revolver toted by a Grot should be able to hurt a creature that is as big as a city block and has skin thicker than most guardsman's armour?

a lasgun to the head is often lethal. A lasgun to the foot is not. That is why we roll to wound: more than anything to see if the 'hit' was a lethal one.

At this point in the game, no.

Wildly varying strength levels mean that some weapons really shouldn't be causing any damage to tough units.

Infinity follows the same principle as what the OP has, but the weapons have very little variation in strength (and a D20 system to balance it out).

Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

 General Kroll wrote:
Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

Sternguard kraken rounds, within rapidfire range, become as good as an autocannon.

I'm not for it in 40K.
In Warzone it worked well enough. that game used D20. Shooter rolls to hit. roll of a 1 was like a crit, no save allowed. Cover modified the to hit roll and Savers were modified by the Strength of the weapon. I think it might have been Strength - Armour Save = roll to save.
I think the D6 system would be an issue for a system like that. So I can't think of a way to make it fit.
(Not saying it can't be done)

I agree with the OP, it's an unnecessary step. Some models may be bigger or tougher, but that's what armour and wounds are for in my opinion.
Bolt Action, Lord of the Rings, Gates of Antares, Epic 40k, In Her Majesty's Name- all do it in 2 rolls.

 obithius wrote:
I agree with the OP, it's an unnecessary step. Some models may be bigger or tougher, but that's what armour and wounds are for in my opinion.
Bolt Action, Lord of the Rings, Gates of Antares, Epic 40k, In Her Majesty's Name- all do it in 2 rolls.

So to you, a Grot is as likely to survive a lasgun round as an unarmoured Space Marine? Even though we have plenty of fluff evidence that Space Marines are completely unfazed by such meagre obstacles? Sure.

curran12 wrote:And instantly, Imperial Guardsmen become the best shooting army in the game.
No.

Nothing wrong with that. Adjust point costs accordingly.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:No. Because of the scale of the creatures in the game.

Do you think a rusty revolver toted by a Grot should be able to hurt a creature that is as big as a city block and has skin thicker than most guardsman's armour?

Depends. I mean, if the creature has an armour save that is so good that the grot shooting would be irrelevant, or else a special rule that makes it immune to shots thst are lower than strX (we're removing the to wound roll, not strength values if I read right?)

Brennonjw wrote:a lasgun to the head is often lethal. A lasgun to the foot is not. That is why we roll to wound: more than anything to see if the 'hit' was a lethal one.

No, that's the purpose of armour saves, to determine whether a shot was lethal or not. The to-wound roll is dead weight, it's simply asking exactly the same question as the armour save. There is a reason a lot of other games stick to a two roll resolution mechanic.

General Kroll wrote:Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

It depends. Look at infinity which also has an armour save versus-weapon strength roll off (like 40ks weapon skill, or strength/toughness roll off). No 'to wound roll' and yet armour is less effective against more powerful rounds.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 obithius wrote:
I agree with the OP, it's an unnecessary step. Some models may be bigger or tougher, but that's what armour and wounds are for in my opinion.
Bolt Action, Lord of the Rings, Gates of Antares, Epic 40k, In Her Majesty's Name- all do it in 2 rolls.

So to you, a Grot is as likely to survive a lasgun round as an unarmoured Space Marine? Even though we have plenty of fluff evidence that Space Marines are completely unfazed by such meagre obstacles? Sure.

No, but if we are re-designing the game I'd give a Grot 1 wound and a Marine 2 or 3

 curran12 wrote:
And instantly, Imperial Guardsmen become the best shooting army in the game.

No.

You simply reduce their To Hit.

The To Hit/To Wound/To Save sequence merely generates a probability of a weapon scoring a "hit" on a target. If you remove the To Wound modifier you only have to compensate for it by reducing To Hit or increasing To Save.

There are games that use a single roll to wound and pierce armour, if that's what your getting at. (e.g. LOTR strategy battle game). But they still take toughness into account. It's only realistic that they do.

Toughness, Hits (Wounds), Armour Save and so on all can be part of the equation.

The idea that a lasgun and a lascannon are both just as likely to wound a single guy and a giant monstrous creature (with no difference in the requirement to wound either) is rediculous. Sure, you could put in special rules where a weapon needs to meet certain requirments to wound certain types of unit but do we really need a whole mass of extra rules for basic game play? In a game like 40K where we have such a massive amount of variety in weapon and unit types, any attempt to streamline the game by removing mechanics without thoroughly considering it's effects on all aspects and factions of the game will at best break some armies and at worst completely gut the game.

Frankly it's not the to hit/to wound/save mechanic that slows the game down, it's the rules bloat and bad structure.

Anything to get rid of charts..

Seems like a bad idea unless you massively tone down the game. Which isn't happening.

Charts aren't that bad....

 obithius wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 obithius wrote:
I agree with the OP, it's an unnecessary step. Some models may be bigger or tougher, but that's what armour and wounds are for in my opinion.
Bolt Action, Lord of the Rings, Gates of Antares, Epic 40k, In Her Majesty's Name- all do it in 2 rolls.

So to you, a Grot is as likely to survive a lasgun round as an unarmoured Space Marine? Even though we have plenty of fluff evidence that Space Marines are completely unfazed by such meagre obstacles? Sure.

No, but if we are re-designing the game I'd give a Grot 1 wound and a Marine 2 or 3

This would prompt a massive overhaul in game mechanics, for each unit.

You might as well start from the ground up at this point - which might be a good thing.

I think it all comes down to the limited results you can get on a d6 (i.e. literally just a 1-6). That isn't much variation.

Having a to wound roll effectively gives you further variation/randomisation in the output, so for me, it's a 'yes' we do need a to wound with the current d6 system.

 General Kroll wrote:
Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

Not really. Can be differentiated by this thing called "save".

And before you say both are AP2 and ignore who says saving would work in the same way?

While I'm not in favour of his proposal I'm not assuming nothing else would change. Lasgun wouldn't have to be much if any better against taking out wraithknight than it is now just because to wound roll is removed.

tneva82 wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

Not really. Can be differentiated by this thing called "save".

And before you say both are AP2 and ignore who says saving would work in the same way?

While I'm not in favour of his proposal I'm not assuming nothing else would change. Lasgun wouldn't have to be much if any better against taking out wraithknight than it is now just because to wound roll is removed.

So how would you change the armour system to reflect the toughness of models then?

We need TAC0 and Hit points for each model ; )

I will agree there needs to be a new method used to make the game have less rolling of dice and speed up game play. Just removing the to wound roll would not work but if the system was changed enough it could be changed from 3 dice rolls (to hit, to wound, save) down to two dice rolls.

 General Kroll wrote:
Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

Its possible. Warpath has no strength values, but uses an AP value that lowers the target's defenses, making it easier to damage.

But 40k isn't Warpath, its 40k. It should not copy another company's mechanics.

The order of operation should be different though.
It should be Hit --> Save --> Wound.
If you make the save no wound roll is required.

The game needs multiple rolls to spread the odds out. In a D6 system you limit the possible results too much by having 1 roll. I've always viewed the 3 rolls of hit wound and save as all part of hitting the target.

Why would you want to remove a massive majority of variation from every weapon in the game? Even Age of Sigmar, the shortest ruleset I've ever seen in wargaming uses it for variation because on a d6 system it would be very stale otherwise.

To speed up games? I don't think rules should never be watered down to 'speed up' potential games. In fact the speed of the game usually is determined by how many points you're playing and how well each player knows their list/army.

This is the silliest thing I've heard.

"yea but armor saves"

Congratulations you've just made Tau tier 0.

 Brennonjw wrote:
a lasgun to the head is often lethal. A lasgun to the foot is not. That is why we roll to wound: more than anything to see if the 'hit' was a lethal one.

Unless you are a Space Marine, according to FFG.

 Brennonjw wrote:
a lasgun to the head is often lethal.

Sir I would like to return my lasgun. It seems to be defective, it could not even cut trough the local mawlocks.

The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

Except, it's not ridiculous. It's a perfectly legitimate way to differentiate between shooting someone (say, with a pistol) wearing a bullet proof vest as opposed to shooting someone not wearing a bullet proof vest, for example.

You might be aiming the gun well. You might have shot him in such a way as to have pierced a vital organ (assuming that there are no hindrances).

But if there's a bullet proof vest in the way, none of that really matters, does it?

On the other hand, if you shoot someone with a .50 caliber anti-tank rifle...

Point is, my power-armored marines should be able to tank lasgun shots. All day long.

 Traditio wrote:
Except, it's not ridiculous. It's a perfectly legitimate way to differentiate between shooting someone (say, with a pistol) wearing a bullet proof vest as opposed to shooting someone not wearing a bullet proof vest, for example.

Which you can do with a single strength vs. toughness value. Normal human = T3. Normal human with a bullet proof vest = T4. Space marine = T5. Space marine with better armor = T6. There is no need to represent armor as an additional die roll instead of part of a single toughness stat.

But if there's a bullet proof vest in the way, none of that really matters, does it?

Except that's not how 40k's armor system works. You don't have a binary "either your armor stops this entirely or it does effectively nothing" depending on the weapon, you have a random chance of your bullet proof vest doing anything. That's mathematically equivalent to a single strength vs. toughness roll (with different numbers than the current system, obviously), it just involves rolling more dice.

On the other hand, if you shoot someone with a .50 caliber anti-tank rifle...

Which can be adequately represented by a higher strength value. For example, that .50cal rifle might be a STR 6 weapon compared to a STR 3 assault rifle, allowing it to wound both the normal human and the normal human with a bullet proof vest on a 2+.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:
Point is, my power-armored marines should be able to tank lasgun shots. All day long.

Aren't you the same person who had a whole thread explaining how people are WAAC TFGs if they play units that are too durable and the game doesn't involve mass casualties on both sides? And now you're telling us that you want your special snowflake marines to be immune to an infantry IG* army's primary weapons? Does the "stuff needs to die" rule only apply when it's everyone else's stuff dying?

*IOW, the only IG army, since you've also stated that playing tank-spam IG is WAAC TFG behavior.

Simply dropping the wound roll would cause all sorts of issues... But there's various alternate systems that could be used to incorporate hitting and Wounding into one roll.

I suggested this one in Proposed Rules a while back, as a way to incorporate the two without having to make widescale changes to anything else...

Peregrine:

I understand the points that you are making, and I broadly agree with it; the problem is that 40k bases itself on six-diced dice.

It "works" in a system like D&D because that system is based on 20-sided dice.

And frankly, I don't think that this kind of giant shift is needed. Your lasgun, under the current system, has a 1/9 chance of killing a marine (assuming a successful to hit roll). That's roughly equivalent to requiring a roll of 18 or 19 on a d20.

Even if the system were rescaled, etc., you'd still need that 18 or 19 to deal a wound.

At this point, I find myself asking:

Isn't it just more convenient to use the current system? It's a bit more "tedious," but it does save the bother of having to accumulate a large number of twenty-sided dice and completely re-writing the rules.

 Traditio wrote:
I understand the points that you are making, and I broadly agree with it; the problem is that 40k bases itself on six-diced dice.

Then fix the D6 problem. We don't need to keep using D6s just because some 1980s fantasy game used them.

Isn't it just more convenient to use the current system? It's a bit more "tedious," but it does save the bother of having to accumulate a large number of twenty-sided dice and completely re-writing the rules.

Yes, of course it's more convenient. The rules are garbage in general and need to be re-written anyway, so this is just one fix among many for a hypothetical new edition. And getting D20s is easy, you just go to the store and buy some. Ideally removing saves is just one of many examples of tedious dice rolling that will be fixed, so you won't even need to buy that many D20s.

A lot of other games have a to hit roll and then a save. It works well, is faster, and honestly 'to wound' is redundant. Especially when you can see over 60+ dice rolled in a single unit's shooting phase. If you told me tomorrow they had gotten rid of a 3rd of the rolling involved in shooting/melee Id be overjoyed.

However, youd have to reboot 40k with a completely new ruleset in order to do that and 40k players are terrified of change, especially after age of sigmar, so itll never happen. The entire way weapon profiles, model characteristics, and even the shooting/assault rules would need to be redone.

 Traditio wrote:
Point is, my power-armored marines should be able to tank lasgun shots. All day long.

So you believe boltguns should be able to kill Warlord Titans by glancing them do death but lasguns shouldn't even be able to kill Marines?

wat

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
I understand the points that you are making, and I broadly agree with it; the problem is that 40k bases itself on six-diced dice.

Then fix the D6 problem. We don't need to keep using D6s just because some 1980s fantasy game used them.

Isn't it just more convenient to use the current system? It's a bit more "tedious," but it does save the bother of having to accumulate a large number of twenty-sided dice and completely re-writing the rules.

Yes, of course it's more convenient. The rules are garbage in general and need to be re-written anyway, so this is just one fix among many for a hypothetical new edition. And getting D20s is easy, you just go to the store and buy some. Ideally removing saves is just one of many examples of tedious dice rolling that will be fixed, so you won't even need to buy that many D20s.

So if you play guard or orks you're okay with buying 200 d20s. Look if you can't handle 2-2-3-4-5-6-6 that's fine if you prefer d20 systems cool, infinity is a great game, the to wound roll is not one of the big problems 40k has and the d6 system is fine. Let's try to fix what's broken before we start fixing what isn't

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

This is the best answer. To wound and to save are essentially asking the same question- does the hit* cause damage?

*hit being defined as an attack of sufficient accuracy to potentially mission kill quality wound.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Toughness, Hits (Wounds), Armour Save and so on all can be part of the equation.

Strength can be folded into Ballistic Skill for a combined Attack roll, so Lasguns succeed on a 6+, whereas (IG) Lascannons succeed on a 5+ and Eldar Destroyer weapons succeed on 2+. Not that difficult.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Toughness, Hits (Wounds), Armour Save and so on all can be part of the equation.

Strength can be folded into Ballistic Skill for a combined Attack roll, so Lasguns succeed on a 6+, whereas (IG) Lascannons succeed on a 5+ and Eldar Destroyer weapons succeed on 2+. Not that difficult.

You make it sound a lot more simple than it actually is. Such a system would also likely require a D10 or a D20 to properly account for all the current variation within the system. That being said, I like the idea but I have my doubts about this being a better system.

ERJAK wrote:
So if you play guard or orks you're okay with buying 200 d20s. Look if you can't handle 2-2-3-4-5-6-6 that's fine if you prefer d20 systems cool, infinity is a great game, the to wound roll is not one of the big problems 40k has and the d6 system is fine. Let's try to fix what's broken before we start fixing what isn't

Here's an example idea: have rapid fire give a strength bonus instead of double shots. Now you've cut the maximum dice count in half. Repeat with similar ideas until you have a smaller dice pool. Which is the whole point of this exercise. The to-wound numbers are easy to learn, but they still involve too many rolls to get a result.

And no, the D6 system isn't fine. It has major scaling issues, especially since GW has apparently decided that 90% of all stats will be 3 or 4 and the rest of the potential range will remain theoretical. And it's a serious factor in driving the rules bloat of 40k. For example, in a D20 system you can add a 5% increment simply by giving a +1 bonus. But with a D6 system you have to add a more complicated special rule, like "may re-roll 1s, succeeding on a 5+". Which is of course different from re-rolling 1s, or re-rolling 1s against particular targets, or re-rolling all failures, or +1 strength, or re-rolling to wound, etc. And so you end up with a complicated mess of different rules which all say essentially the same thing: "add a better chance of success".

 Kilkrazy wrote:

You simply reduce their To Hit.

The To Hit/To Wound/To Save sequence merely generates a probability of a weapon scoring a "hit" on a target. If you remove the To Wound modifier you only have to compensate for it by reducing To Hit or increasing To Save.

Not enough variation in the d6 system for that to be feasible.

 IllumiNini wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Toughness, Hits (Wounds), Armour Save and so on all can be part of the equation.

Strength can be folded into Ballistic Skill for a combined Attack roll, so Lasguns succeed on a 6+, whereas (IG) Lascannons succeed on a 5+ and Eldar Destroyer weapons succeed on 2+. Not that difficult.

You make it sound a lot more simple than it actually is. Such a system would also likely require a D10 or a D20 to properly account for all the current variation within the system. That being said, I like the idea but I have my doubts about this being a better system.

No, it actually is that simple, and it would work just fine with a d6. 40k doesn't need to be so fine-grained.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Strength can be folded into Ballistic Skill for a combined Attack roll, so Lasguns succeed on a 6+, whereas (IG) Lascannons succeed on a 5+ and Eldar Destroyer weapons succeed on 2+. Not that difficult.

IMO the problem with having strength and accuracy related is that you have units with lots of different weapon options, and weapon options that are shared across lots of different units. You can make a mathematically equivalent single roll for strength and accuracy, but it makes things a lot simpler to understand if the unit's stats determine whether or not you hit, then the weapon's stats compared to the target's stats determine whether or not you inflict damage. The reason you can get away with consolidating toughness and saves is that they're both representing the same exact concept: how hard it is to disable or kill a model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
No, it actually is that simple, and it would work just fine with a d6. 40k doesn't need to be so fine-grained.

It really does, simply because of the sheer range of things it includes. For example, a normal human in carapace armor and a space marine in power armor should clearly have different defense values, but at the same time the normal human in carapace armor should have better defense than the normal human wearing a t-shirt flak "armor". Once you list the different units/weapons/etc you need to include you pretty obviously have more than six different values. And that means either using a die with more sides on it or multiple D6 rolls/special rules for D6 rolls/etc.

And yes, these differences should be included. My DKoK grenadiers clearly have much better armor than the few scraps of cloth that Catachan guardsmen wear, and it would be pretty weird for them both to have the same defense values. But if those grenadiers get bumped up all the way to tactical marine level then there are going to be a lot of unhappy marine fanboys.

I don't believe there needs to be both a 'to wound' and an 'armour save'. Merge them into one and speed the game up, a to hit, to wound and save is clunky, dated, game design.

Either remove toughness and have a model's toughness reflected in it's armour save, or remove the save and have it's armour reflected in it's toughness.

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

 Griddlelol wrote:
While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

The solution to this is to get rid of IGOUGO, which is a terrible mechanic. If the only thing keeping a player doing something is rolling dice that are mathematically equivalent to their opponent rolling to beat an armor save, with no (meaningful) decisions involved at any point in the process, then that's a problem that needs to be fixed. And adding extra complexity for the sake of letting players pretend that something fun is happening is not the solution.

If you want to implement this idea without changing point values then you would have the unit roll one extra die per point of toughness beyond the strength of the weapon PER SHOT. Then, if they succeed on any of the rolls they would ignore the wound. That would make a wraithknight roll 3d6 to negate a str5 wound but if it was ap3 it would be a more serious threat to it. It would get 3d6 for feel no pain as well, so the shot would probably do absolutely nothing until you hit krakk missiles because there you would have only a single feel no pain roll as you do now.

It could work, but would add a HUGE amount of time to the game...

 Peregrine wrote:


The solution to this is to get rid of IGOUGO, which is a terrible mechanic. If the only thing keeping a player doing something is rolling dice that are mathematically equivalent to their opponent rolling to beat an armor save, with no (meaningful) decisions involved at any point in the process, then that's a problem that needs to be fixed. And adding extra complexity for the sake of letting players pretend that something fun is happening is not the solution.

How do you propose it's done? Turn based games are a very easy to understand and nicely organised. I've never played a war-game that's not turn based, it seems like it'd be chaos.

I agree with you in theory, armour saves are not interesting, they're not meaningful decisions, they're just rolling a handful of dice, I just have no idea what the practical solution is.

 Traditio wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

Except, it's not ridiculous. It's a perfectly legitimate way to differentiate between shooting someone (say, with a pistol) wearing a bullet proof vest as opposed to shooting someone not wearing a bullet proof vest, for example.

You might be aiming the gun well. You might have shot him in such a way as to have pierced a vital organ (assuming that there are no hindrances).

But if there's a bullet proof vest in the way, none of that really matters, does it?

On the other hand, if you shoot someone with a .50 caliber anti-tank rifle...

Point is, my power-armored marines should be able to tank lasgun shots. All day long.

Lord of the ring had no to save roll. Yet curiously enough there was difference whether you had plate armour or not.

Warmachine has no separate to wound and to save roll either. Curiously enough there's difference between guns you use and armour or not you are wearing...

Peregrine wrote:The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

Whether the shooting player rolls a dice to 'kill/wound' something on say, a 6, or whether the defending player rolls a dice to 'save' something on 'not a 6' is often fundamentally the same thing.

Look at infinity. You roll to hit, modified by distance/cover etc. Then you roll to save against the strength of whatever was shot at you. It's a d20 system. Rifles have a 'strength' of 13. If you're shot by one, you roll to save, with cover/armour being a positive modifier. power armour in infinity is a +3, or a +4 save modifier. Cover is an additional +3 modifier (it confers additional protection) Let's assume +3 for now. To save against that rifle shot of 13, you need to roll a 14 or greater. Modified by armour. Assuming an armour value of +3, you 'safe' on a roll of 11+ on a d20. This is functionally exactly the same thing as the shooting player rolling a 'to wound' dice where he needs to roll under a target value - in this case 1-10. (infinity mechanics are, aside from armour saves, kinda like blackjack. You want to roll equal to, or under a specific target number, and the closer you are to thst number the better).

There is no reason this system couldn't work in 40k, whether you go with the 'to wound' approach or 'to save'. Assume a marine with an armour save of +3 is shot by a Bolter (strength 4). He needs to roll a 5+, modified by armour saves. He saves on a 2+ when his armour is factored in. (So 3+ to hit him! probably modified by cover/range and then a straight up armour save) If he is shot by a heavy Bolter, or pulse rifle (strength 5) he saves on a 3+ when his armour is factored in. Although thi s system would probably require to hit modifiers as well for range/cover, it's pretty intuitive in infinity which uses it.

Traditio wrote:
Except, it's not ridiculous. It's a perfectly legitimate way to differentiate between shooting someone (say, with a pistol) wearing a bullet proof vest as opposed to shooting someone not wearing a bullet proof vest, for example.

It's excessive, it's bloated and it's unnecessary. It asks exactly the same 'question' as the the armour save roll (Ie did the shot I fired do any damage?).

Traditio wrote:
You might be aiming the gun well. You might have shot him in such a way as to have pierced a vital organ (assuming that there are no hindrances).
But if there's a bullet proof vest in the way, none of that really matters, does it?

Thst bulletproof vest in the way is represented by something like passing your armour save, or rolling above the 'threshold' that the game mechanics define as what you need to resist damage or passing . In 40k we have an incredibly bloated three roll system. It's counter intuitive to say 'yes, I shot you!' (To hit), 'yes, I wounded you!' (To wound roll) Followed by 'no, I didn't wound you!'(armour save). The third directly contradicts what the second achieves. The 'to wound roll' in this three roll mechanism is entirely illogical and contradictory in its nature, and adds nothing. Shooting him in such s way to piece a vital organ is already represented by succeeding in your hit roll, and failing your armour save (is my armour did nothing! The bullet proof vest I wore wasn't 'in the way!).

Two roll systems are better than three roll systems.

Traditio wrote:
On the other hand, if you shoot someone with a .50 caliber anti-tank rifle...

The .50cal anti rank rifle in all likelihood can be represented by having a higher strength/damage value than a low calibre pistol.

Traditio wrote:

Point is, my power-armored marines should be able to tank lasgun shots. All day long.

There is no reason this can't happen in a two roll system.

the real question should be do we really need a negating ap system and cover saves... both could be simplyfied like in fantasy... but on the other hand that would completly mess up the point value of certain troops...

I think the reason it takes 3 rolls to resolve a combat exists to add granularity to the d6 system. I agree with eliminating the to wound roll, but something would have to be done about d6's. I have a feeling GW will never leave the handfuls of d6 rich mans yahtzee that they have developed.

 Griddlelol wrote:

I agree with you in theory, armour saves are not interesting, they're not meaningful decisions, they're just rolling a handful of dice, I just have no idea what the practical solution is.

Rolling saves gives you the feeling of a chance to survive. Time spent playing Orks makes me know all to well how painful it is when I don't get any saves. They make their rolls and then tell me how many of my guys I remove from the table because their shooting has ignores cover. It gives the illusion of interactivity puts the feeling of success and failure into your own hands. People play craps in casinos (not sure why but they do) but if they removed the dice rolling and just had you bet on a number and let the dealer roll or use a program to RNG a number then people wouldn't find it as interesting. Rolling dice is fun and having both players making rolls to decide casualties from an attack is important to the feeling of having a chance and being apart of the game.

As to the whole To Wound roll thing. Honestly rolling to wound isn't a bad thing as its very straight forward and it shows the differences in strength of different weapons, durability of a unit, and the type of defense (save) they have. It what differs a fire dragon's durability from a wratihguard or a space marine on foot with a space marine on a bike. It what makes a krak missile work differently than a hotshot lasgun as they have the same AP but its the strength that matters for them. If there is a "better" system then it would be worth looking into but honestly nothing on this thread has been close to a reasonable replacement in my opinion. Its honestly more complicated to figure out and it requires a massive rework the entire game system for a mechanic that honestly isn't hard to play currently. Perhaps there are too many high toughness MCs in the game that make to wound feel like a pain to roll but that generally is a problem with newer unit design than the core wounding mechanic.

Yea, I understand why they're there, I just don't think they're that great. It's an attempt to keep both players engaged during both turns.
I don't think they're fun or interesting though. 2+ saves make you feel like luck is against you when you roll a 1.
5+ saves make you feel like you're wasting your time rolling.

There must be other ways to engage each player in each turn.

tneva82 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

Except, it's not ridiculous. It's a perfectly legitimate way to differentiate between shooting someone (say, with a pistol) wearing a bullet proof vest as opposed to shooting someone not wearing a bullet proof vest, for example.

You might be aiming the gun well. You might have shot him in such a way as to have pierced a vital organ (assuming that there are no hindrances).

But if there's a bullet proof vest in the way, none of that really matters, does it?

On the other hand, if you shoot someone with a .50 caliber anti-tank rifle...

Point is, my power-armored marines should be able to tank lasgun shots. All day long.

Lord of the ring had no to save roll. Yet curiously enough there was difference whether you had plate armour or not.

Warmachine has no separate to wound and to save roll either. Curiously enough there's difference between guns you use and armour or not you are wearing...

You have added zero meaningful information to those not familiar with said systems.

If it were integrated into a single roll, armour still needs to account for a set amount of that toughness -Armour Piercing weapons should only be able to reduce or totally negate (depending on the weapon) the toughness bonus provided by the armour.

The obvious reason being Armour Piercing shots are effective against an armoured target, but no more effective than ordinary ammo vs an unarmoured target.

A few thoughts, first any simulation argument is doomed to failure, 40k is not a realistic game, so arguing that it need a mechanic to separate a flesh wound from getting ones head shot off seems to miss the point it's a game. Every mechanic has to be defensible as a mechanic that adds something to the game, and I'm not sure armor saves and to wound rolls pass that smell test. Together they triple the time spent rolling dice to resolve a single action, and lets face it, 40k's speed is a major issue for the game.

It could be replaced by a single roll, where you add the attackers offensive value (a combination of weapon strength, accuracy, units skill at arms etc.), and try to get higher than the defenders defense value (representing toughness, armor, dodginess, etc). This gets rid of half of the rules in 40k, and almost all of the lame ones.

Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

Steamline the rules so that turns are much faster and embrace the idea that you will not roll anything in your opponent's turn. Kings of War does this, even going so far as to have your opponent roll your moral checks for you. When it's your opponent's turn you don't touch your dice, but even playing games on par with 3000 point WHFB games a turn lasts 10 or 15 minutes, not 30-45 minutes.

Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


The solution to this is to get rid of IGOUGO, which is a terrible mechanic. If the only thing keeping a player doing something is rolling dice that are mathematically equivalent to their opponent rolling to beat an armor save, with no (meaningful) decisions involved at any point in the process, then that's a problem that needs to be fixed. And adding extra complexity for the sake of letting players pretend that something fun is happening is not the solution.

How do you propose it's done? Turn based games are a very easy to understand and nicely organised. I've never played a war-game that's not turn based, it seems like it'd be chaos.

I agree with you in theory, armour saves are not interesting, they're not meaningful decisions, they're just rolling a handful of dice, I just have no idea what the practical solution is.

Dystopian Wars and Star Wars Armada both immediately come to mind as games I've played with alternating activation and it works VERY well for those larger scale games (which anything over 1k points of 40k should be imo). It is literally as simple as pick 1 unit, move it, shoot with it, assault with it, maybe lay down a token to represent that it has acted, and then your opponent does the same.
It is very good at negating the 'alpha strike' effect that can leave an opponent removing multiple units from the table before they have even gotten to activate them. I've never found either game to be chaotic*, in fact I'd say they are a ton more engaging because of it if anything.




(*I have called Dystopian Wars chaotic on many an occasion, but that is purely because I tried playing several week-long games on 12 foot tables with absurdly large armies.)

10-15 minutes is a long ass time. Although I rarely play with 3000 points.

I like the idea of moving one unit at a time, would be interesting to try out and see how it affects the game.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

Steamline the rules so that turns are much faster and embrace the idea that you will not roll anything in your opponent's turn. Kings of War does this, even going so far as to have your opponent roll your moral checks for you. When it's your opponent's turn you don't touch your dice, but even playing games on par with 3000 point WHFB games a turn lasts 10 or 15 minutes, not 30-45 minutes.

Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


The solution to this is to get rid of IGOUGO, which is a terrible mechanic. If the only thing keeping a player doing something is rolling dice that are mathematically equivalent to their opponent rolling to beat an armor save, with no (meaningful) decisions involved at any point in the process, then that's a problem that needs to be fixed. And adding extra complexity for the sake of letting players pretend that something fun is happening is not the solution.

How do you propose it's done? Turn based games are a very easy to understand and nicely organised. I've never played a war-game that's not turn based, it seems like it'd be chaos.

I agree with you in theory, armour saves are not interesting, they're not meaningful decisions, they're just rolling a handful of dice, I just have no idea what the practical solution is.

Dystopian Wars and Star Wars Armada both immediately come to mind as games I've played with alternating activation and it works VERY well for those larger scale games (which anything over 1k points of 40k should be imo). It is literally as simple as pick 1 unit, move it, shoot with it, assault with it, maybe lay down a token to represent that it has acted, and then your opponent does the same.
It is very good at negating the 'alpha strike' effect that can leave an opponent removing multiple units from the table before they have even gotten to activate them. I've never found either game to be chaotic*, in fact I'd say they are a ton more engaging because of it if anything.




(*I have called Dystopian Wars chaotic on many an occasion, but that is purely because I tried playing several week-long games on 12 foot tables with absurdly large armies.)

Dust has a very similar system, where players trade off activating units until all of them have been activated.

@jonolikespie Honestly what makes the game take forever is melee combat and movement. Movement for horde or MSU armies can take a while as you got to measure movements, move each model (no movement trays), trying to fit models around/on terrain, and if blast weapons are a big deal making sure you maintain unit cohesion and spacing out as needed.

For melee or shooting the longest part is figuring out how many models can shoot/swing, have LoS, if they are in rapid fire range, looking up special rules, etc then counting out the dice needed to roll. For melee it gets even worse with pile in moves, multiple combats, calculating casualties for leadership checks, and then the whole sweeping, consolidation moves, falling back, etc that tack on more time to the game. Its these nuaunce rules and mechanics that bog the game down as they don't happen as often and most players aren't that quick at moving through those steps (I know I'm slow at it)

The whole To Hit, To Wound, and Save mechanic is relatively quick and easy for basic units like Tactical Marines, Fire Warriors, etc. Once know how many attacks are being made you roll and count out hits, roll and count out wounds and then your opponent makes saves. For units with all the same save it is a quick roll and remove wounds/models as needed. Even myself who is rather slow at playing can make these rolls relatively quickly.

 BoomWolf wrote:


You have added zero meaningful information to those not familiar with said systems.

LotR had items like armour and shields give a Defence (= Toughness) bonus instead of a save. As a result, Dain had T9 W3 if I recall correctly because his armour was so ridiculously good, though he was slow, expensive and had moderate attack power. Gondor soldiers like the movie had like S3 T6.

But then, shooting was a lot less powerful than in 40k (single shot las or boltguns being the norm) and in melee, only one side got to actually strike - the one that won the WS rolloff - but heroes and characters with high WS had more humble statlines than in 40k.

To be honest I don't think it is a lot of rolling. The main thing taking up time is movement.

Not saying I wouldn't be open to a new core ruleset, but I think the wrong thing is being complained about here.

tneva82 wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

Not really. Can be differentiated by this thing called "save".

And before you say both are AP2 and ignore who says saving would work in the same way?

While I'm not in favour of his proposal I'm not assuming nothing else would change. Lasgun wouldn't have to be much if any better against taking out wraithknight than it is now just because to wound roll is removed.

The problem is the op didn't ask if they wanted a rules overhaul, they only asked if the to wound roll should be scrapped.

RedNoak wrote:
the real question should be do we really need a negating ap system and cover saves... both could be simplyfied like in fantasy... but on the other hand that would completly mess up the point value of certain troops...

Except obviously pretty much all the changes suggested here require major rehaul to overall wounding system so will also require new evaluation of points and stats. Codexes would be invalidated.

Would be good opportunity to rework 40k from groundup.

Nobody(I hope) is suggesting to simply say remove wound roll and be done with that. THAT ain't going to work!

Surely it is obvious that the To Save roll isn't needed, and removing it would reduce the time needed to resolve a combat situation by 25 to 35% but a major stat line revision would required to being all the units' To Hit, To Save and relevant modifiers back to the same level of probability as before.

In short it certainly is doable if the whole game is revised.

I have a major regret about AoS that they stuck with To Hit/To Wound/To Save, when it was the perfect opportunity to ditch To Wound.

Of course it must be remembered that some people like to roll lots of dice. They would lose an aspect of the game if To Wound was ditched.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

Good games get around this by having alternating activations, or by instilling more mechanics that actually involve the other player, like reaction abilities and overwatch.

Starship Troopers has a really cool system based on this idea where each unit has "reaction zones" of a certain distance in a bubble around them, usually 10 inches. When enemy units finish an action in your bubble, you can perform a free action against them. Bugs could move toward the enemy unit, MI could ready or fire, etc. Keeps both players engaged even though the main rules were still IGOUGO.

Griddlelol wrote:Yea, I understand why they're there, I just don't think they're that great. It's an attempt to keep both players engaged during both turns.
I don't think they're fun or interesting though. 2+ saves make you feel like luck is against you when you roll a 1.
5+ saves make you feel like you're wasting your time rolling.

There must be other ways to engage each player in each turn.

There are. Reaction mechanics, which are epitomised by games like Infinity are becoming more and more popular. In Infinity, the cheeky com ent is it's always your turn.

Vankraken wrote:
As to the whole To Wound roll thing. Honestly rolling to wound isn't a bad thing as its very straight forward and it shows the differences in strength of different weapons, durability of a unit, and the type of defense (save) they have. It what differs a fire dragon's durability from a wratihguard or a space marine on foot with a space marine on a bike.

But it is counter intuitive, and it's an excessive mechanic in a game that is already extremely bloated. And let's be fair here - there is no reason that a to hit/ armour save system can't differ things between a fire dragon and a wraith guard - after all, infinity does it.

Vankraken wrote:
It what makes a krak missile work differently than a hotshot lasgun as they have the same AP but its the strength that matters for them.

The all or nothing AP system is another thing that needs to go. AP as represented by the 40k rules is again, excessive and counter intuitive. There is no reason thst the strength of a weapon and it's ability to penetrate armour need to be artificially separated.

Again, in a strength only system,or a two roll system what's stopping the krak missile and the hotshot lasgun bring represented differently on the table top? In infinity, they are.

Vankraken wrote:
If there is a "better" system then it would be worth looking into but honestly nothing on this thread has been close to a reasonable replacement in my opinion.

Infinity Mated with the core of Andy chambers' starship troopers rules (the originally intended 4th ed 40k). Greatest rules system that has never been made.
Oh there are far better rules sets out there that manage things far more intuitively, and with a lot less clutter and bloat than the mechanics you see in 40k.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 IllumiNini wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Toughness, Hits (Wounds), Armour Save and so on all can be part of the equation.

Strength can be folded into Ballistic Skill for a combined Attack roll, so Lasguns succeed on a 6+, whereas (IG) Lascannons succeed on a 5+ and Eldar Destroyer weapons succeed on 2+. Not that difficult.

You make it sound a lot more simple than it actually is. Such a system would also likely require a D10 or a D20 to properly account for all the current variation within the system. That being said, I like the idea but I have my doubts about this being a better system.

No, it actually is that simple, and it would work just fine with a d6. 40k doesn't need to be so fine-grained.

Exactly. All the rolls were fine when you were playing a small skirmish game with 20 or 30 models per side. Now the games are huge in comparison and things need to be streamlined.

The GW rules are archaic. Games take way too long and require way to many rolls of the dice. So many other miniature systems exist that are more elegant and play faster which is why I play 40K less and less. Eliminate to wound or to save or change the d6. Whatever, just do something to speed it up.

It's important to differentiate between streamlining and simplification.

Most of us will agree they want the game streamlined, whether that be through a serious revision, or a total re-write of the rules from the ground up.

A lot of players also want simplification of core mechanics for ease of play. This particularly seems to be the case for anyone who tends towards larger scale battles, and it's fully understandable. But other players, particularly those of us who like to play smaller games appreciate a level of detail to the mechanics of the game, we don't want dice rolling at the squad level etc. We want to kit out our squadies individually and want to be able to see that our sniper landed a clean hit that blew a hole clean through that Nurgle champions power armour but he barely felt the wound and just kept coming!

I think the problem is the rules developers are trying to appease both types of players, and it's not cutting it for either group. The large battle players are frustrated at clunkiness, overly-detailed mechanics and micro-managing, and the skirmishers are unhappy at the nonsensical elements that make the game swingy and tactically unrewarding at that scale.

Mantic have written up 2 separate rule sets (Warpath and Warpath: Firefight) for a battles and skirmishes, respectively. GW should follow suit.

Having three rolls in combat resolution isn't simpler or more difficult than having two, it's just more clunky.

But I think you're right that GW have managed to make an OK skirmish game into a fairly crappy big battle game that also works as a fairly crappy skirmish game.

I suggest the basic solution is to strip the rules down to a simpler core set of mechanisms and develop them into two alternative rulesets.

For example, in the Skirmish rules any combat resolution would be done per figure, while in the Battle rules it would be done per squad, with the various different weapons in the squad factored into an overall attack value.

The issue I can see arriving from taking turns to move individual units, rather than moving your whole army, is that it rewards the player for not killing off units.

You focus something until it's weak, then move on to the next target. Make that weak until everything is only 1 or 2 models left and can barely do anything. Then you finish off the unit.

Is that a bad thing?

Concentration of force is a basic military principle.

I don't really know if it's a bad thing, it's just strange and different. Instead of focussing a unit to death, you do it until it's neutered enough.

That could add some tactical nuance.

I think it seems strange to 40K players because the focus of the game for years has been on killing enemy units (Kill Points, etc) rather than winning the battle.

From the historical viewpoint, destroying enemy units actually is counter-productive if it uses up more combat power than is required to make a target unit functionally ineffective.

Without completely retooling the entire game to add more wounds as necessary, absolutely we need to wound rolls.

Though, I think there should be a point where we don't have to roll to wound - say, if the attack is triple toughness. For example, a lascannon should have a 100% chance of killing a grot, or a warboss v. a guardsman.

thegreatchimp wrote:A lot of players also want simplification of core mechanics for ease of play. This particularly seems to be the case for anyone who tends towards larger scale battles, and it's fully understandable. But other players, particularly those of us who like to play smaller games appreciate a level of detail to the mechanics of the game, we don't want dice rolling at the squad level etc. We want to kit out our squadies individually and want to be able to see that our sniper landed a clean hit that blew a hole clean through that Nurgle champions power armour but he barely felt the wound and just kept coming!

I think the problem is the rules developers are trying to appease both types of players, and it's not cutting it for either group. The large battle players are frustrated at clunkiness, overly-detailed mechanics and micro-managing, and the skirmishers are unhappy at the nonsensical elements that make the game swingy and tactically unrewarding at that scale.

Mantic have written up 2 separate rule sets (Warpath and Warpath: Firefight) for a battles and skirmishes, respectively. GW should follow suit.

I agree that designers should decide on the type of game they want to make and focus on that, trying to include players that want different things is going to make a bad game. I'm not convinced that GW should follow what Mantic is doing though. Why compete when you can just target a different market?
It is actually what I think is what GW did right with AoS. May people don't like AoS, because it isn't the kind of game they wanted, but the game they wanted already existed. Instead of making a GW brand KoW, they did something (very) different. AoS is well written (and the controversial decisions make sense) for the casual; "put awesome stuff on the table and have epic happen" game that GW wanted to make.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Coming from ancients, the triple roll was new to me. Intuitive, but maybe excessive.

I played games where we used comparative scores.Best roll (with modifiers) wins, what happens to the loser would then depend on how badly they lost.

In case you were wondering; I'm referring to DBM and FoG and a game of either takes 3 hours, but the scale is way smaller (i.e. more troops on the field).

Do we really need a to wound roll?
No, because the current rules don't take an advantage of the "to wound" table.

But having a S VS T chart with a hardcap of e.g. +/-2 (so S9 automatic wounds T6 and S6 cannot wound T9) add some more posibilities to the game. Low Strength high rate of fire would not be the answer to everything and an additional system for tanks would not be needed.
Like if you don't want Super Heavies being killed by standard weapons, give them T15 and add Titankillers with S15 to the game.

 DarkBlack wrote:
I'm not convinced that GW should follow what Mantic is doing though. Why compete when you can just target a different market?

Why limit yourself to only half* of your potential customers? The bulk of their costs is in the models themselves, and the artwork. If they re-released 40k as a fast paced mass battle system it would not be a big investment for them to also create and maintain a skirmish / small battle rule set. It's jsut one more rulebook. The amount of money this would cost to create and maintain would not be a financial risk.

*I say half as a ball park figure -I have no idea what the actual breakdown is.

 Griddlelol wrote:
The issue I can see arriving from taking turns to move individual units, rather than moving your whole army, is that it rewards the player for not killing off units.

You focus something until it's weak, then move on to the next target. Make that weak until everything is only 1 or 2 models left and can barely do anything. Then you finish off the unit.

Uhhh, what alternate activation rulesets have you played that rewarded not killing enemy units?

Because I've yet to see one where it rewarded you not killing a unit. Sometimes the unit runs or something but even if its functionally "dead" fighting wise, it still offers the owning player an advantage of giving him a weak "throwaway" move at the start of a turn if he wants to wait to react to your moves.

Bolt Action rewards you by eliminating an order die the unit owns, making it more likely you draw a die first, so killing units is very important. A common strategy is to buy cheap, small units like a medic or a kubelwagen just to get another die. A unit with even just a single soldier cowering in a foxhole still has use in that game.

Dropzone Commander makes it where it just has each player activate a unit at a time, so killing a unit never hurts you, and usually helps with killpoints and is a tiebreaker for missions.N ot to mention you can activate any order you want, so a weak unit can be used to stall in a turn and burn an activation without having to move before youre ready.

X-Wing is kind of alternate activation in that units move in a set order by pilot skill, meaning that players can alternate in all sorts of ways, and tournament play is entirely decided by killpoints.

Armada also has back and forth activation and killing a unit there doesnt hurt you in anyway and offers no advantage for leaving a unit maimed but alive.


Can you provide an example for your reasoning, because it sounds like youve never played an alternate activation system at all, or at least are very bad at them.

I think the to wound roll is needed. Rather, I would make an argument that it is the save roll that needs to be ditched because it is superfluous when you already have a wound roll which could represent armour or a tough skin and such stopping or failing to stop a hit (and thus wounding or not wounding).
They could re-structure it like in the LotR system.
In LotR there is only a to wound roll (which measures the strenght of the attacker vs the defence value of the defender). To hit rolls are only needed for ranged weapons and are very simple, while close combat is decided through both players throwing a dice (to represent both combatants fighting each other simultaneously rather than two guys hitting each other alternately) with the player rolling the highest winning the fight and getting a to wound roll.
I've always thought it a fast and intuitive system. Two rolls are all you need.

Yes, I agree with that. It's not the To Wound roll in itself, the point is that three rolls are not needed. It doesn't matter what they are called. To Hit, To Save allows both sides to have a go during the round, which is a benefit.

On a personal note, I always found it a bit silly that you would do all the work to get enemy figures "wounded" just for them to save.

Or, just call it "attack" and "defense"...

Mechanically, is there any reason not to roll X attacks for hits, removing misses vs. Y "saves", removing fails, and cancelling 1:1? Probably not. It'd probably be even faster than the current system because the dice could be rolled simultaneously, rather than waiting for attacker successes.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Having three rolls in combat resolution isn't simpler or more difficult than having two, it's just more clunky.

But I think you're right that GW have managed to make an OK skirmish game into a fairly crappy big battle game that also works as a fairly crappy skirmish game.

I suggest the basic solution is to strip the rules down to a simpler core set of mechanisms and develop them into two alternative rulesets.

For example, in the Skirmish rules any combat resolution would be done per figure, while in the Battle rules it would be done per squad, with the various different weapons in the squad factored into an overall attack value.

See here is where the issue comes in because as a skirmish game 40k is SUPER dull, 1000pts is pretty much the lowest point level I still enjoy playing and I can usually wrap that size game in about 90 minutes, which is not terrible, basically like a big board game.
I would rather they scrap any attempt to make it a skirmish game and put that effort into making the 1000-2000 point range games quicker and more intuitive, especially in terms of pregame set up.

As for it being a 'fairly crappy' big battle game, i say relative to what? Up to about 2500 where it starts to fall off hard, I find 40k extremely fun, if poorly balanced, especially compared to other 28mm big battle games. Horus Heresy is pretty much the same game up to 2500pts where it can go even more nuts than 40k. WHFB is basically writing a statline on a movement tray in sharpie and pushing it at your opponent until you hit something, Warmachine/Hordes, (which are absolutely big battle game/s, screw what PP says) is super fiddly and whenever I play it I get the same feeling I get when I try to get a picture frame to sit even without a level; that I'm expending a lot of energy to do something that probably won't work, definitely won't accomplish anything meaningful, and will leave me wondering why I ever bothered. Also I have 0 interest in playing any modern or WWII miniature games.

ERJAK wrote:
As for it being a 'fairly crappy' big battle game, i say relative to what?

5th ed 40k for one. I never played 3rd or 4th, but in 5th my club regularly played 3k games on regular club days. 2k points was considered a small game when we played, and 2500 was the standard yet we got games done on time.

Dystopian Wars and Star Wars Armada both come to mind as larger scale games I've personally played that have appropriate rules to play out huge battles in a reasonable amount of time, and I believe Dropzone Commander and Flames of War both do it very well.

Simple fact is 7th ed 40k is a mass battle scaled game but it includes rules like Look Out Sir, challenges, remove models from the front, and others that have NO place in mass battle games slowing it down.

40k is a hugely oversized individual model skirmish that only works when you use giant models to bring the total model count down.

Yeah, it can't decide if it wants to mass battle or skirmish.
It needs to go back to how it was in 4th, with mostly infantry and a few vehicles.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Can you provide an example for your reasoning, because it sounds like youve never played an alternate activation system at all, or at least are very bad at them.

I've never played one. My instinct is that:

Say there are 3 tactical squads of 10 men.

If I shoot one, and reduce it to 2 models, it's now basically useless. 2 bolters aren't going to be a threat to anything. There's now no reason to shoot at it again. So I move on to the next unit. Shoot it until it's neutered and continue until all units are no longer a threat, but never wasting so much firepower as a unit is entirely destroyed - what's the point? At 2 models it's no longer a threat to anything.

Of course it depends if the unit activation is set, or whether it's changed depending on the player's choice. If it's set then you just attack what ever unit is next. If it depends on the player's choice it's different.

Or ... you activate one of your units, moving into position and shooting at one of those Tactical squads. You get lucky and gun down 8 of them. Next, another Tactical squad does the same to one of your unactivated units, or it moves into cover, a flanking position, etc.

If the activation sequence is fixed (the only game I can think of like that is the long-OOP Confrontation, or a lot of RPGs), then what's to say your active unit is in position to do anything to the next enemy unit to activate (if each side's activation sequence is even known to the other player, or to the controlling player for that matter)?

I think it's cool. Just because you hit and penetrate the armor/carapace/thick skin/whatever, doesn't mean you kill. A space marine is what? 7+ feet tall? I think a SM or ork could easily withstand a shot or two, hence the wound roll to see if they survive.

Therefore you prefer the To Hit/To Wound/To Save combat resolution over To Hit/To Save?

This is a terrible idea. No argument is even necessary.

From a gameplay perspective, the 3 rolls are there to help differentiate between outcomes, for example the probability of rolling 3 6s in a row is 1/216, to get the same probability with 2 dice, those dice would need at least 30 sides between them (ie D20 + D10 gives 1/200)

The order (to hit, to wound, to save) was probably decided upon because then the defending player rolls last, instead of in the middle, more intuitive in terms of gameplay, less so when considering what is 'actually' happening.

123ply wrote:
This is a terrible idea. No argument is even necessary.

That is right. No argument is necessary, but debating is. Also it's fun debating as well.

machineuk wrote:


The order (to hit, to wound, to save) was probably decided upon because then the defending player rolls last, instead of in the middle, more intuitive in terms of gameplay, less so when considering what is 'actually' happening.

Yeah, the illogic of the armour save being made after the wound roll has long irritated me. It's also questionable as to why it isn't the active player "rolling to pierce" as opposed to the inactive player rolling saves. I get that it gives the inactive player something to do, but I wonder is that really important -during my opponents turn -while I like to pay attention to the outcomes of shooting and assaults - I'd sooner have some time to observe the battlefield than rolling bunches of dice.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
Yeah, the illogic of the armour save being made after the wound roll has long irritated me.

Mechanically it's sound. If you get 10 hits, you have 10 potential wounds. Sure you can roll 10 dice now and see how many you save, but it's easier to roll the wounds first. After all if you don't get anythen you can skip the save step altogether. Remember 40k used to deal in much lower volumes of fire which is where this system originated. Back when it was 'these two marines shoot at that ork, I'll roll my 2 dice to hit' it made a lot more sense not to waste time saving wounds that weren't by any means guaranteed. Now the volumes of fire are so great some number of wounds is almost inevitable.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
Yeah, the illogic of the armour save being made after the wound roll has long irritated me. It's also questionable as to why it isn't the active player "rolling to pierce" as opposed to the inactive player rolling saves. I get that it gives the inactive player something to do, but I wonder is that really important -during my opponents turn -while I like to pay attention to the outcomes of shooting and assaults - I'd sooner have some time to observe the battlefield than rolling bunches of dice.

It works that way because GW wants to give you the illusion of being able to do something to "save" your models from death. Even though you aren't making any choices you still have that moment where you roll the dice and hope your models will survive. It's the kind of artificial "action" that GW is a fan of, even the most clueless newbie can still "save" just as many models as the most experienced veteran and feel like they accomplished something. But at some point you realize that you're just rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice, and the system is a bloated mess with no real strategic depth.

The illusion of agency over events completely out of player control (such as save results) is nothing unique to GW, and us a cornerstone in game design.

Even when the player can't do anything, you want him to FEEL like he did, and saves accomplish this. And such tool, much like placebo medicine, are still just as effective as you are aware if them.
It matters not the result was random as long you feel you did something even a hail merry attempt. It will make the low odd that succeeded feel great and the sure save that failed feel painful.

Simple and efficent design tool, even if it looks wonky when you really look at it.



Now, it's best used when implementated with some meaningful choices alongside it, 40k only has the jink/gotoground and the lookoutsir mechanics there for most units, but even with so little, even if there were none, it's still a useful tool.

 Kojiro wrote:

 thegreatchimp wrote:
Yeah, the illogic of the armour save being made after the wound roll has long irritated me.

Mechanically it's sound. If you get 10 hits, you have 10 potential wounds. Sure you can roll 10 dice now and see how many you save, but it's easier to roll the wounds first. After all if you don't get anythen you can skip the save step altogether. Remember 40k used to deal in much lower volumes of fire which is where this system originated. Back when it was 'these two marines shoot at that ork, I'll roll my 2 dice to hit' it made a lot more sense not to waste time saving wounds that weren't by any means guaranteed. Now the volumes of fire are so great some number of wounds is almost inevitable.

It should still be rolling a save to negate a hit. It makes more sense that way.
If an hit is blocked by armor, then that hit cannot wound, no? It doesn't seem logical that an injury is magically cancelled out by armor.
I get that its potential wounds; that the wound could have happened, but it was negated. But that just adds padding, doesn't it? If the wound didn't happen due to armor, then why bother rolling for it?

The system should really be hit --> save --> Wound

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
The system should really be hit --> save --> Wound

The problem is this means passing the dice back and forth an extra time. It's simpler to have one player finish all of their rolls then have the other player do theirs.

Why are people arguing that rolling dice should be closer to an approximation of what "would" happen?

It's a game, not a simulation. Players literally take turns to move their whole armies made up of sentient mushrooms, daemons or magical space men. The order of dice rolling is the last thing on the list when it comes to realism.

You could of course bundle all of it in to one roll. To hit/to wound/to save could easily be simplified to a single roll. I don't think it'd really be of benefit though, I never found the 3 rolls to be all that time consuming unless you're playing against someone who is a slow roller. What slows down 40k and can make the game tedious isn't the rolling so much as the movement, model removal, excessive special rules that interrupt the flow of the game and so forth.

123ply wrote:
This is a terrible idea. No argument is even necessary.

It's not that bad an idea. It's worked OK for over 30 years, after all.

With the current system there is no way we could remove to wound rolls. The six sided die just doesnt have enough variation for that. However if you moved to a d20 that would be a different story. On the other hand who wants to roll 50 lasgun shots with d20's? Who actually has 50 d20's? I may have about 20 but definitely not 50.

machineuk wrote:
From a gameplay perspective, the 3 rolls are there to help differentiate between outcomes, for example the probability of rolling 3 6s in a row is 1/216, to get the same probability with 2 dice, those dice would need at least 30 sides between them (ie D20 + D10 gives 1/200)

The order (to hit, to wound, to save) was probably decided upon because then the defending player rolls last, instead of in the middle, more intuitive in terms of gameplay, less so when considering what is 'actually' happening.

That is correct, however does the game need to differentiate between outcomes whose difference in probability is under 0.5%?

To put it in practical terms, do we really need to be able to establish that Unit A is 0.46% more likely than Unit B to successfully attack enemy Unit 1?

The use of two D6 gives outcomes with a difference of under 3%, allowing you to have 35 discreet attack/defence graduations without taking into account range, rate of fire, hit points, tactical modifiers and other variables that can be used to create additional variation between units.

If the game was made slicker and faster, it would be easier to play more matches in a given time, or else play larger matches. Either option gives you a bigger range of possible outcomes with more opportunities to affect them by tactics of actually playing the game rather than selecting a particular unit type to gain a 0.46% advantage.

 Xerics wrote:
With the current system there is no way we could remove to wound rolls. The six sided die just doesnt have enough variation for that. However if you moved to a d20 that would be a different story. On the other hand who wants to roll 50 lasgun shots with d20's? Who actually has 50 d20's? I may have about 20 but definitely not 50.

Wich is not true for 40k.
The variation in 40k is non existend and a single D6 would be enough to cover all possibilities from all units out there.
If you keep 2 D6 rolls, you gave enough variation for a good SciFi Mass Skirmish game.

40k has 3 dice rolls, but does not use the possibilities of variation they give them.
It is a good idea to keep hit/wound/save if they would be used to add more variation to the game and not just keep the same 3 different kind of units for all factions.

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

The dice roll to save is the only response you get to shooting, other than to declare going to ground. Otherwise you could just go to the bathroom during your opponents turn. it gives you something to do and a stake in whats happening.

This debate usually comes down to either-

Armour becoming a toughness bonus and consequently AP being a strength bonus- playing havoc with low AP anti infantry weapons like Hellguns and inferno bolts.
Toughness becoming an armour bonus with strength becoming an AP modifier or AP becoming a modifier to saves.

LOTR already required a roll to hit and EXTRA rolls to hit for high toughness/armoured targets like Trolls (hit on a 6 and then another 5 or whatever)
That's the same damn thing as a to-wound/save roll- just more tedious because the same player is doing all the rolling.

I'd be far more in favour of the to-hit roll being folded into the to-wound roll as a modifier. BS2 would become BS-2. The effect would be that a BS2 model with a lasgun shooting a T4 target would need a 5+ to wound, modified to a 7+(treat as 6?) because of BS.
A BS 5 model would wound a t4 target on a 5, modified to 3+ because of BS.

This would nicely allow BS higher than 5 to have a decent effect ingame again.

Griddlelol wrote:Why are people arguing that rolling dice should be closer to an approximation of what "would" happen?

Who is arguing? Surprisingly we are not arguing, we are having a friendly debate.

Has anyone seen the one page 40k ruleset?

There are no strength values, only more dice generated. Marines are 3+ troops meaning they generate hits on a 3+ and save hits generated against them on a 3+.

A lascannon generates the same amount of dice as a plasmacannon. In practice this means that they are equally good at killing troops and vehicles - though the lascannon has more range.

A solution to this and other problems with removing toughness/saves would be to give weapons a separate anti personnel/ anti tank value like epic.

Davor wrote:

Griddlelol wrote:Why are people arguing that rolling dice should be closer to an approximation of what "would" happen?

Who is arguing? Surprisingly we are not arguing, we are having a friendly debate.

Argue doesn't have to mean angry. It can simply mean to put forth your opinions or reasons for/against something.

If we didn't have the to wound roll.... The imperial guard would be the best faction in the game. But unlike 40k, bolt action you always wound on a three... Try that if you don't like wound rolls that are too "Serious or big"

It makes sense to me to keep wound rolls. Hits don't necessarily have to be significantly damaging by their nature.

And like others have said, the saves are a way to keep the other player invested. It makes the game more interactive, and when you're playing a game, you usually want to interact with it in some way (at least I do), so I like having the chance to roll some saves.

So I would argue to keep it as it is.

 Griddlelol wrote:

Davor wrote:

Griddlelol wrote:Why are people arguing that rolling dice should be closer to an approximation of what "would" happen?

Who is arguing? Surprisingly we are not arguing, we are having a friendly debate.

Argue doesn't have to mean angry. It can simply mean to put forth your opinions or reasons for/against something.

Dang you are right. Just checked the dictionary online and first description is what you said. The way I see it is the seconded description when "things get heated" lol. Never knew argue would be taken as a debate, always thought it was when people get heated or angry. Learn something new everyday.

Davor wrote:

 Griddlelol wrote:

Davor wrote:

Griddlelol wrote:Why are people arguing that rolling dice should be closer to an approximation of what "would" happen?

Who is arguing? Surprisingly we are not arguing, we are having a friendly debate.

Argue doesn't have to mean angry. It can simply mean to put forth your opinions or reasons for/against something.

Dang you are right. Just checked the dictionary online and first description is what you said. The way I see it is the seconded description when "things get heated" lol. Never knew argue would be taken as a debate, always thought it was when people get heated or angry. Learn something new everyday.

That's why in a debate, you're often asked to present an argument. It doesn't have to have the connotation of aggression, we've just attached that connotation.

 Peregrine wrote:
But at some point you realize that you're just rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice, and the system is a bloated mess with no real strategic depth.

Too right

 Griddlelol wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Can you provide an example for your reasoning, because it sounds like youve never played an alternate activation system at all, or at least are very bad at them.

I've never played one. My instinct is that:

Say there are 3 tactical squads of 10 men.

If I shoot one, and reduce it to 2 models, it's now basically useless. 2 bolters aren't going to be a threat to anything. There's now no reason to shoot at it again. So I move on to the next unit. Shoot it until it's neutered and continue until all units are no longer a threat, but never wasting so much firepower as a unit is entirely destroyed - what's the point? At 2 models it's no longer a threat to anything.

Of course it depends if the unit activation is set, or whether it's changed depending on the player's choice. If it's set then you just attack what ever unit is next. If it depends on the player's choice it's different.

I don't really understand how this is a criticism of alternate activation game systems. Everything you said also applies to how 40K works now.

I didn't say it was a criticism...at least I didn't intend to.

More just thinking out loud as I've never played an alternative activation system. Even video games are all classically turn based.

I wouldn't fight the change if it was good!

All I think about is DE.

Dis Cannon is 3 shot ap2

I can put in 37 Dis Cannons into a 1850 list

Thats 111 AP2 36" shots all on vehicles that can move 12" and fire with 14 ObjSec units as well.

If I go 1st you better have a Tank Army.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
All I think about is DE.

Dis Cannon is 3 shot ap2

I can put in 37 Dis Cannons into a 1850 list

Thats 111 AP2 36" shots all on vehicles that can move 12" and fire with 14 ObjSec units as well.

If I go 1st you better have a Tank Army.

With no 'to wound' roll there would presumably also not be a 'to pen' roll so even tanks wouldn't help when every single shot that hits is doing damage.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

machineuk wrote:
From a gameplay perspective, the 3 rolls are there to help differentiate between outcomes, for example the probability of rolling 3 6s in a row is 1/216, to get the same probability with 2 dice, those dice would need at least 30 sides between them (ie D20 + D10 gives 1/200)

That is correct, however does the game need to differentiate between outcomes whose difference in probability is under 0.5%?

If the game was made slicker and faster, it would be easier to play more matches in a given time, or else play larger matches. Either option gives you a bigger range of possible outcomes with more opportunities to affect them by tactics of actually playing the game rather than selecting a particular unit type to gain a 0.46% advantage.

It does not. Especially when we look at 40k HtH only using 3+, 4+ and 5+. That right there cuts the potential 216 down to something well under 72.

AP weapons mean the design space is less than 36, which might as well be opposed d6 vs d6.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

It should still be rolling a save to negate a hit. It makes more sense that way.
If an hit is blocked by armor, then that hit cannot wound, no? It doesn't seem logical that an injury is magically cancelled out by armor.
I get that its potential wounds; that the wound could have happened, but it was negated. But that just adds padding, doesn't it? If the wound didn't happen due to armor, then why bother rolling for it?

The system should really be hit --> save --> Wound

I'd argue that since you don't always need/get a save, adding the non essential roll last (remember this system pre dates cover saves) is more streamlined if cinematically odd. The other thing to consider would be mixed save units, where you'd need to assign wounds before you'd know who was making what saves.

I grant you it seems odd from a visual perspective, but the dice represent a step by step resolution mechanic, not a step by step descriptive guide to 'actual events'.

Either way there's no need for both armour and saves.

So the reason I think this is getting as much back and forth as it is is because the OP misrepresented the question.

The statement in the post was 'remove the wound roll' which is said in such a way that it suggests a simple, lightweight mechanical improvement, 'just cut out this one thing and the system will be faster right?' without acknowledging that the system as ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES the to wound roll to work, things would go f***nuts without it, as many posters have stated.

What the OP and later posters are actually suggesting is a complete overhall of the damage application system of 40k, which is not unreasonable. If we can find a way to represent the same actions quicker (while hopefully still using D6s, remember that you do need to be able to bring and roll 50+dice at tournaments routinely) then we should absolutely do that for the health of the game. I just think that making it seem as easy as removing 1 roll is a tad disingenuous.

ERJAK wrote:
So the reason I think this is getting as much back and forth as it is is because the OP misrepresented the question.

No I didn't. I can see how some people feel it's needed. Everyone is bringing up great points.