The handwriting seems to be on the wall that paying points per weapon will go away as we see more codex where weapon upgrades are free.
What do people think, assuming 10th is a major reboot is that the direction they will go in? Should they?
For me the idea works when various weapon options are comparable.
For the Imperial Guard you could have the plasma gun (kills everything, sometimes including you), melta gun (kills tanks, short range), flamer (kills light infantry, shorter range) and grenade launcher (kills nothing, kind of sucks). And a case could be made for taking any of them.
If the game became less granular, back to all power weapons having the same stats for example, it could work. The only people who'd miss out are the people who modeled 'naked' units to save points.
Should they, depends on how competent you think GW is.
I think it can work In a game with good mission and faction design.
If you could bring in niche weapons when needed against opponents that are special or break the meta.
Then it can a big deal and a fun way to change up the gameplay.
But as the game is now, if they don’t do a full reboot, I think all it accomplish will be shifting stuff around and a new best edition ever Tag.
But if they do? It will amuse me a great deal to hear all the wailing & gnashing of teeth. Both here on-line and at the local shops. As will reading the pages long rants that'll surely be typed by people who think they know best how to make a game (but don't).
I think for many units, this is fine. A lot of standard troops that have 10 models where 1 of them has a special weapon and 1 of them has a heavy weapon really do not need to be worrying about the point costs of those weapons - as the game is, they seldom earn their points back anyway.
There are some units that change dramatically based on their upgrades, such as Chaos Marine Havocs. 4 lascannons is very different than 4 heavy bolters and traditionally those lascannons have been much more expensive.
The downside to many upgrades being made 'free' is that often the points calculations that go into the unit consider the most expensive or powerful options. In other words, you're punished in a points-efficiency manner for NOT taking the most effective weapons for your units ALL the time, because those units were made more expensive considering you would add those weapons.
In Age of Sigmar, this often works because all you're paying for is a banner and a champion, which you were taking anyway.
Overall I think it would be a good change. Many people would not feel punished because they built their units a certain way 10 years ago - they can still take those units and now all those upgrades, however small, are free.
Since most weapons are just small variations in stats and don't really change how the units are played I think consolidating most of the weapons and removing point costs is the way to go forward.
Like for the imperium have all the normal power weapons that are anti elite infantry have the same stats and then have all the power weapons that are anti tank/monster have the same. So the only options are power sword or thunderhammer stats.
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool. Way less rules to keep in mind for the players and also vastly less things the game designer needs to think of when balancing the game.
We already have a ton of units with different stats and abilities. That should be enough to make a difference on the table even if there were a total of 5-10 marine weapons for melee + ranged.
Most other games function with less weapons than the amount of different marine bolters in the game and some even have less than some single models in 40k. If you went back 15 years and showed the players then the long lists of weapons we have now I would bet most would think it was satire.
Upgrades are not all equal, and making them free means you always take the best, and it means that one of your levers of balance (points changes) become even more useless (see the current Tyranid Warriors).
Upgrades are not all equal, and making them free means you always take the best, and it means that one of your levers of balance (points changes) become even more useless (see the current Tyranid Warriors).
This.
Also with making equipment cost universal in the past pretty much army wide they already provoked problems.
an exemple: A flamer did cost 5 pts, regardless who bought it. a BS 4 Veteran or a BS 2 recruit. Which one profited more from the flamer? obviously the recruit.
The inverse a melta / plasma gun did cost 15 pts, regardless if a Veteran bought it or a guardsmen. There's just one issue, the veteran has an increased capability by an additional 1/6th on the hit roll.
That allready was rather absurd, since it made the weapons on the accurate units either superior (in some cases far considering the meltas of ye olde days) or worse . and whilest a plasmagun at 15 pts for a guardsmen was ok, especially in rapid fire range, a plasma gun vet was a lot better at using it.
Now we have even left that granularity when everythings equal in points, there's no more opportunity cost associated with just taking the best option because why shouldn't i take 4 lascannons and a plasmagun on my havocs instead of Autocannons or ML?
GW doing so is kind of inevitable and the problems that will spark will however also lead to ever more equipment restrictions, like the traitorguardsmen squad becoming preciscly 1 melta, 1 plasma and 1 GL and NOT specialised equipment for a task.
Upgrades are not all equal, and making them free means you always take the best, and it means that one of your levers of balance (points changes) become even more useless (see the current Tyranid Warriors).
Spot on.
I genuinenly believe someone in the design team thinks he is being clever and managing to turn points into power level without anyone noticing.
There isn't as much gnashing of teeth over it as there perhaps should be because the internal and external balance of the codexes have been so poor this edition it hasn't mattered too much. If we ever see that improve we may see more people comment on it. But, I suspect if we ever see that improvement it will be because of staffing changes at GW and most likely "man bad at counting" will be on the chopping block in such a hypothetical.
I’m thinking I’ve missed something here. Is this just a thought exercise, or have there been indications the game may go that way?
Because it really shouldn’t. Even adding a Heavy Weapon to a squad changes it’s overall tactical applications, especially now you can split fire, as taking say a Lascannon no longer leaves the rest of the squad as Surplus Wounds.
Add in not every Codex having similar options and it just sounds like a bad idea, as those with the option to take a varying weapon loadout will have zero drawbacks to shoehorning in as many as possible, giving their forces a degree of flexibility an opponent is simply without.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m thinking I’ve missed something here. Is this just a thought exercise, or have there been indications the game may go that way?
Because it really shouldn’t. Even adding a Heavy Weapon to a squad changes it’s overall tactical applications, especially now you can split fire, as taking say a Lascannon no longer leaves the rest of the squad as Surplus Wounds.
Add in not every Codex having similar options and it just sounds like a bad idea, as those with the option to take a varying weapon loadout will have zero drawbacks to shoehorning in as many as possible, giving their forces a degree of flexibility an opponent is simply without.
It is sadly going this way, e.g. traitor guardsmen. Oh and the shoehorning will just lead to armies that had options for units to far more limited datasheets with far more specific options.
I could've also brought up commandos, which in the past could pick 2 specials and be a small tankhunter team f.e. which now are stuck with a 1/ and not more, making a lot of the equipment somewhat pointless atleast in 40k compared to killteam.
Upgrades are not all equal, and making them free means you always take the best, and it means that one of your levers of balance (points changes) become even more useless (see the current Tyranid Warriors).
Spot on.
I genuinenly believe someone in the design team thinks he is being clever and managing to turn points into power level without anyone noticing.
There isn't as much gnashing of teeth over it as there perhaps should be because the internal and external balance of the codexes have been so poor this edition it hasn't mattered too much. If we ever see that improve we may see more people comment on it. But, I suspect if we ever see that improvement it will be because of staffing changes at GW and most likely "man bad at counting" will be on the chopping block in such a hypothetical.
This sorta stuff I think would be at least partially pushed by management. Since most game design should pick up so many of these issues.
Sometimes I do think GW was the ones most affected by the forge the narrative advertising. It explain so much from a management perspective.
I think it's a terrible idea and I don't think GW will do it. If they do get rid of it I think fan-made pts patches are going to become popular, like when AoS used wounds instead of PL.
Fine-tuning balance by changing pts is easier than fine-tuning balance by changing rules. Changing pts is easier than changing rules. There is no good argument for getting rid of pts for wargear.
Age of Sigmar does not have pts for wargear. Saurus Warriors can either have spears or clubs, in the last competitive patch of the game spears had almost no benefit over clubs because they changed game rules to favour infantry by making every melee weapon have spear-like range, that makes spears a non-option for Saurus Warriors so you have to proxy or rip your models apart. Two ways to fix this: don't make every weapon into a spear and just adjust the points of underperforming infantry or reduce the price of spears to reflect their lack of value.
Gauss blasters and tesla carbines are balanced against each other at the moment on Immortals, so they don't need to have a pts cost and if GW makes more weapons use the same profile because there isn't an interesting and fluff based reason for them to be different then make them the same and cost the same amount of pts.
We had this discussion a few months ago if I recall correctly.
drbored wrote: I think for many units, this is fine. A lot of standard troops that have 10 models where 1 of them has a special weapon and 1 of them has a heavy weapon really do not need to be worrying about the point costs of those weapons - as the game is, they seldom earn their points back anyway.
A bolt pistol is better than a las pistol therefore it should cost more.
In Age of Sigmar, this often works because all you're paying for is a banner and a champion, which you were taking anyway.
Except it doesn't work in AoS because running a unit without a full command group is a non-option. Same thing with the mentally underdeveloped free terrain pieces that some factions get.
Overall I think it would be a good change. Many people would not feel punished because they built their units a certain way 10 years ago - they can still take those units and now all those upgrades, however small, are free.
And how about all the people that built their units without all the free upgrades 0 years ago? The only way for everyone to be able to have their way is if the pts for every option is as right as possible so that whether you go armed to the teeth or barebones you pay a fair price for what you get and you don't lose out on anything or pay overmuch for little benefit.
Klickor wrote: So the only options are power sword or thunderhammer stats.
And which stats are going to enable those two to be worth the same amount of pts and the same amount of pts as a chainsword as well?
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling. Your argument makes no sense.
ccs wrote: It won't bother me one way or the other.
But if they do? It will amuse me a great deal to hear all the wailing & gnashing of teeth. Both here on-line and at the local shops. As will reading the pages long rants that'll surely be typed by people who think they know best how to make a game (but don't).
Clearly the guys who never considered that Salamanders players would spam flamers or use the two flamer Stratagems printed in the same book would be used in a combo know what's best for the game. /SARCASM
I don't trust GW to come up with a different and better way how to balance a Squad with nothing / Flamers and one with everything / Lascannons / Plasma / Melter.
I won't be "gnashing and wailing" if all unit upgrades become free, but I will be disappointed. It is just lazy for a company of GW's size, and PL and open play already exist for quick, casual games.
Upgrades are not all equal, and making them free means you always take the best, and it means that one of your levers of balance (points changes) become even more useless (see the current Tyranid Warriors).
This.
Also with making equipment cost universal in the past pretty much army wide they already provoked problems.
an exemple: A flamer did cost 5 pts, regardless who bought it. a BS 4 Veteran or a BS 2 recruit. Which one profited more from the flamer? obviously the recruit.
The inverse a melta / plasma gun did cost 15 pts, regardless if a Veteran bought it or a guardsmen. There's just one issue, the veteran has an increased capability by an additional 1/6th on the hit roll.
That allready was rather absurd, since it made the weapons on the accurate units either superior (in some cases far considering the meltas of ye olde days) or worse . and whilest a plasmagun at 15 pts for a guardsmen was ok, especially in rapid fire range, a plasma gun vet was a lot better at using it.
Now we have even left that granularity when everythings equal in points, there's no more opportunity cost associated with just taking the best option because why shouldn't i take 4 lascannons and a plasmagun on my havocs instead of Autocannons or ML?
GW doing so is kind of inevitable and the problems that will spark will however also lead to ever more equipment restrictions, like the traitorguardsmen squad becoming preciscly 1 melta, 1 plasma and 1 GL and NOT specialised equipment for a task.
The most frustrating part is the GW design team once understood this much better, but have trended towards dumbing down points since ~5th edition.
For example, in the Imperial Guard 3rd edition (1st) codex, an infantry squad paid just 8pts for a single BS3 plasma gun, but a stormtrooper squad paid 10 points for up to 2 BS4 plasma guns (replacing a better basic gun), veterans paid 15pts for up to three BS4 plasmaguns (accurate and spammable) and company command squads could take up to four BS3 plasmaguns (very spammable). Platoon command squads were a slight outlier, being able to take two weapons at the same price as infantry. Heavy weapons followed the same pattern- more accurate or more spammable units had higher costs for the same weapon (such as a lascannon being 30 pts in an anti-tank squad, 23pts for veterans, and 20pts elsewhere). Flamers were more expensive for veterans still, but I think this is due to the efficiency of multiple flamers despite the lower benefit for more accurate units.
This is not especially complicated to understand, and I should think a company with GW's resources should be able to playtest this adequately, they managed it when much smaller... Having said that, I prefer the slightly more complex method of increasing the cost per weapon for repeats within the same unit (as efficiency increases) rather than simply increasing the base cost and assuming all weapons will be the same as this is optimal.
Perfect balance is unachievable in a system as complicated as 40k, but it can be trended towards.
The most frustrating part is the GW design team once understood this much better, but have trended towards dumbing down points since ~5th edition.
For example, in the Imperial Guard 3rd edition (1st) codex, an infantry squad paid just 8pts for a single BS3 plasma gun, but a stormtrooper squad paid 10 points for up to 2 BS4 plasma guns (replacing a better basic gun), veterans paid 15pts for up to three BS4 plasmaguns (accurate and spammable) and company command squads could take up to four BS3 plasmaguns (very spammable). Platoon command squads were a slight outlier, being able to take two weapons at the same price as infantry. Heavy weapons followed the same pattern- more accurate or more spammable units had higher costs for the same weapon (such as a lascannon being 30 pts in an anti-tank squad, 23pts for veterans, and 20pts elsewhere). Flamers were more expensive for veterans still, but I think this is due to the efficiency of multiple flamers despite the lower benefit for more accurate units.
This is not especially complicated to understand, and I should think a company with GW's resources should be able to playtest this adequately, they managed it when much smaller... Having said that, I prefer the slightly more complex method of increasing the cost per weapon for repeats within the same unit (as efficiency increases) rather than simply increasing the base cost and assuming all weapons will be the same as this is optimal.
Perfect balance is unachievable in a system as complicated as 40k, but it can be trended towards.
Yes. Pretty much this. the problem is GW is in full streamline mode, probably partially because it can restrict options and by extention limit 3rd party piggybacking needs partially because it lowers development time. Problem is there are points in a game system were it is better to have multiple handles and levers and this is just taking another lever out.
GW also until recently had with FW a company branch that far better understood their points system aswell. 6-7th weren't kind to horde units, f.e. however with IA13 and R&H they realeased a horde army and built in a type of discount for general boosts for that squad type by making Armor and training upgrades a flat cost, hence you could either proof your units on the moral front and take lower number squads or you could profit from flat upgrades better. It was a choice you had to make with no clear answer.
The problem though wasn't solely the equipment, in many ways the equipment (weapons or armor fwiw) could've had fixed prices IF the unit would've had a dynamic enough pricing structure as you brought up to catch up that better cost efficency. Albeit i think there would'be an even better alternatives if you added f.e.a "Veteran specialist" instead of just handing out a special weapon to a veteran which would've cost more and than added the cost of the special weapon and maybee started him out with the cheapest special weapon option for free subtracting it from the others, that would've been a better system, because if i see a unit that overperforms with certain specials or heavies i now have multiple avenues to handle that instead of flat increasing cost per model, i could've just increased the cost for special weapon vets by x ammount, or limited availability for the specialists in the worst case or if a weapon is just in general overperforming could've hiked there.
All gw achieves now is creating in essence a blindbox in which it will be difficult to find if it is overperforming weapons, or overperforming units with certain weapons, or weapon availability. In essence making it even worse to achieve a satisfying state of affairs.
Also in regards to veterans, especially melta veterans, basically it was deepstrike or infiltration all the time. the fact that the unit could buy it flat made f.e. meltas with also a flat cost and the unit itself being flat costed even more hillarious because you could compensate the only shortcoming the melta had which made it cheaper pts wise than plasma.
(hence why CSM suicide termy squads were a massive thing, because the combi meltas were too cheap and the unit could be taken in really small numbers / slot allowing for easy deepstrike and removal of units which costed far more points than that squad.)
Will they? Maybe. They've certainly been moving in that direction recently. And if they do, it'll be one more reason, on top of the already heaping pile of reasons, that make me happy that I dropped 40k and switched to HH. Anymore, I just keep up with what's happening in current 40k for the same reasons that some people slow down when they see a train wreck.
And a big second to everything that Not Online, H.B.M.C, Vict0988, and Haighus said.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Will they? Maybe. They've certainly been moving in that direction recently. And if they do, it'll be one more reason, on top of the already heaping pile of reasons, that make me happy that I dropped 40k and switched to HH. Anymore, I just keep up with what's happening in current 40k for the same reasons that some people slow down when they see a train wreck.
And a big second to everything that Not Online, H.B.M.C, Vict0988, and Haighus said.
TBF, HH also has issues with flat priced equipment, but atleast equipment is still priced meaning that they can go in and say increase cost for jumppacks on specifically praetors compared to centurions if it were the case that the praetors would just be overly efficent with it.
That said the support weapons squad volkite calvier vs the heavy support volkite calverin is still really heavily off in regards to the pricing chart. (unless the calvier was supposed to be an assault weapon like the volkite rifle, at which point i think i could live with the more expensive price on the support squad because it would make atleast some sense due to the mobility.)
mrFickle wrote: I don’t see how it would benefit the game. It would just make it easier to try different army list and feed the meta.
Maybe that’s what they want
Removing a unit to afford more bling on your remaining units isn't that hard. Removing bling to add an extra unit isn't that hard. There would be no point to try an army list that is the exact same except you replace all your S4 weapons with S3 weapons.
Not Online!!! wrote: GW also until recently had with FW a company branch that far better understood their points system aswell.
If anyone understood points worse than GW it was FW.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Will they? Maybe. They've certainly been moving in that direction recently. And if they do, it'll be one more reason, on top of the already heaping pile of reasons, that make me happy that I dropped 40k and switched to HH. Anymore, I just keep up with what's happening in current 40k for the same reasons that some people slow down when they see a train wreck.
The rumour mill says GW is removing Armour of Contempt in January, I want to believe 40k can be great again.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Will they? Maybe. They've certainly been moving in that direction recently. And if they do, it'll be one more reason, on top of the already heaping pile of reasons, that make me happy that I dropped 40k and switched to HH. Anymore, I just keep up with what's happening in current 40k for the same reasons that some people slow down when they see a train wreck.
And a big second to everything that Not Online, H.B.M.C, Vict0988, and Haighus said.
TBF, HH also has issues with flat priced equipment, but atleast equipment is still priced meaning that they can go in and say increase cost for jumppacks on specifically praetors compared to centurions if it were the case that the praetors would just be overly efficent with it.
That said the support weapons squad volkite calvier vs the heavy support volkite calverin is still really heavily off in regards to the pricing chart. (unless the calvier was supposed to be an assault weapon like the volkite rifle, at which point i think i could live with the more expensive price on the support squad because it would make atleast some sense due to the mobility.)
Yeah, I'm definitely not saying that HH is perfectly balanced, and it could use a bit of a balance pass on some things. But, they can actually do that, since optional equipment actually has a price. It's a lot harder to do that if everything is "free", as yourself and others have correctly pointed out.
Will they? No idea? Should they? No clue. Would I like if they did? Yes. I want more units to be "pick-up-and-playable" without too much thought over the minutia of their kit. Now, that does also mean I'd like the weapons to have a way that they're brought relatively into line with one another (chainswords getting more attacks to compare to power swords, heavy power weapons such as thunder hammers and powerfists having an increased drawback, or laspistols getting more shots compared to bolt pistols), but yes - I actually do like the idea of units choosing upgrades that are lateral.
vict0988 wrote:
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling.
Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
Sgt_Smudge wrote:Will they? No idea? Should they? No clue. Would I like if they did? Yes. I want more units to be "pick-up-and-playable" without too much thought over the minutia of their kit. Now, that does also mean I'd like the weapons to have a way that they're brought relatively into line with one another (chainswords getting more attacks to compare to power swords, heavy power weapons such as thunder hammers and powerfists having an increased drawback, or laspistols getting more shots compared to bolt pistols), but yes - I actually do like the idea of units choosing upgrades that are lateral.
vict0988 wrote:
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling.
Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
jaredb wrote:One step closer to using PL instead of points. I'm all for it.
The thing is, PL already exists and you can already play it. Matched play should also continue to exist for those who want to play that.
They're forgetting that they made points costs granular for a reason - it's a metric for game balance.
They're forgetting why they made some units wargear costs zero - the units and/or faction was under-performing, and this was a means to make it more viable.
Haighus wrote:The thing is, PL already exists and you can already play it. Matched play should also continue to exist for those who want to play that.
Actually, you know what, I'm swayed by that. As long as PL exists, I don't really have an opinion on what happens with points. Fair play to you!
As long as we can keep the whole "if you build your models with X you're wrong and stupid" or "PL is stupid and if you like it you shouldn't be playing any more" to a minimum, I'm happy.
However, I do still stand by that many weapon profiles could do with condensing - melee weapons and bolter variants, especially.
Haighus wrote:The thing is, PL already exists and you can already play it. Matched play should also continue to exist for those who want to play that.
Actually, you know what, I'm swayed by that. As long as PL exists, I don't really have an opinion on what happens with points. Fair play to you!
As long as we can keep the whole "if you build your models with X you're wrong and stupid" or "PL is stupid and if you like it you shouldn't be playing any more" to a minimum, I'm happy.
However, I do still stand by that many weapon profiles could do with condensing - melee weapons and bolter variants, especially.
I think that is entirely fair. The novelty of 6th edition power weapons wore off pretty sharpish.
Haighus wrote:The thing is, PL already exists and you can already play it. Matched play should also continue to exist for those who want to play that.
Actually, you know what, I'm swayed by that. As long as PL exists, I don't really have an opinion on what happens with points. Fair play to you!
As long as we can keep the whole "if you build your models with X you're wrong and stupid" or "PL is stupid and if you like it you shouldn't be playing any more" to a minimum, I'm happy.
However, I do still stand by that many weapon profiles could do with condensing - melee weapons and bolter variants, especially.
PL has inherent advantages and disadvantages. It's fast for one to design a list, it's however to some armies unfair if they lack equipment options otoh.
The problem is when points should be, arguably as seen even more granular. What gw does is not beneficial.
also Power weapons are ok compared to bolters that's at most what, 5? . Bolters on the other hand....Even 30k has LESS boltgun variations and entries across its factions than what 40k has let, that sink in for a moment.
Not Online!!! wrote: GW also until recently had with FW a company branch that far better understood their points system aswell.
If anyone understood points worse than GW it was FW.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Will they? Maybe. They've certainly been moving in that direction recently. And if they do, it'll be one more reason, on top of the already heaping pile of reasons, that make me happy that I dropped 40k and switched to HH. Anymore, I just keep up with what's happening in current 40k for the same reasons that some people slow down when they see a train wreck.
The rumour mill says GW is removing Armour of Contempt in January, I want to believe 40k can be great again.
Proof that claim. And secondly considering the core rules of 9th especially the tanks are just monstrous creatures aspect and certain other issues. NVM small boards and Stratagems i seriously doubt that at the moment.
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling.
Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
The base assumption when talking on a forum about a game must be that the goal of playing the game is winning the game as per the game's rules. Becoming offended when someone says your strategy is wrong and stupid when your strategy is in pursuit of something other than winning the game does not make sense to me as I was not informed of your pursuit or responding to your post. For all I know you might be trying to make a political statement about the art of an 1800s French painter when you charge your missile launcher Heavy Weapon Squads into melee. I am sure you are making a wonderful political statement, it remains wrong and stupid in the context of trying to win the game.
What would you take as proof? If you make a list of units in 5th edition that were busted or useless for FW and GW and the number relative to the total number of units produced by the respective team is smaller for FW you could convince me.
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling.
Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
The base assumption when talking on a forum about a game must be that the goal of playing the game is winning the game as per the game's rules. Becoming offended when someone says your strategy is wrong and stupid when your strategy is in pursuit of something other than winning the game does not make sense to me as I was not informed of your pursuit or responding to your post. For all I know you might be trying to make a political statement about the art of an 1800s French painter when you charge your missile launcher Heavy Weapon Squads into melee. I am sure you are making a wonderful political statement, it remains wrong and stupid in the context of trying to win the game.
What would you take as proof? If you make a list of units in 5th edition that were busted or useless for FW and GW and the number relative to the total number of units produced by the respective team is smaller for FW you could convince me.
you claimed that, bring it on. Also why 5th? Why not 6-7th? You know, where gw massivly fethed up?
Clearly the guys who never considered that Salamanders players would spam flamers or use the two flamer Stratagems printed in the same book would be used in a combo know what's best for the game. /SARCASM
Lol, if you actually believe them when they make such claims....
They're lying to you.
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling.
Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
The base assumption when talking on a forum about a game must be that the goal of playing the game is winning the game as per the game's rules.
No it isn't. Base assumption when talking on a forum about a game is that we all enjoy the game.
Nothing to do with winning. Can you show me where that much be the case?
Becoming offended when someone says your strategy is wrong and stupid when your strategy is in pursuit of something other than winning the game does not make sense to me as I was not informed of your pursuit or responding to your post.
Alternatively, have you considered that people might pursue something other than winning, and that calling those people "wrong and stupid" is pretty short-sighted of you?
You came in here with an assumption. It was the wrong assumption to make, especially as this is in the General Discussions forum. There is no reason that this was only about "winning" 40k, as opposed to enjoying playing it.
For all I know you might be trying to make a political statement about the art of an 1800s French painter when you charge your missile launcher Heavy Weapon Squads into melee. I am sure you are making a wonderful political statement, it remains wrong and stupid in the context of trying to win the game.
Great, but show me where this was about "winning" the game as opposed to "enjoying" it.
You're the one who decided that this whole topic has to be purely about winning the game. I'm here to politely inform you that it isn't, and that calling people "stupid and wrong" is something you really ought to walk back, especially as no such parameters were laid out.
So, like I said - are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
I'd like a lot less granularity in unit costs and upgrades. A bunch of it from what I have seen over 9th edition seems completely pointless. As in some different weapons combos costing the same points, so just roll those together in a list if nothing else. But also giving some cool thing to a unit leader who is slain before that cool thing is ever used, why am I paying for that again?
The only place I see it really being important would be Character model units where those models will actually benefit from a weapons swap. Or at least stand the highest chance of seeing a benefit. Baked in costs save time and energy. Constantly updating points is just a headache that some players, not unlike myself, just don't care about because it's just adding work. Maybe points as we knew them should have been dropped already.
The other side of the coin is it fits into GW's thinking very well, if it isn't in the kit then the option to change item for other item does not exist. Giving them even more control over how you play their game. I'm not a fan of less options historically but GW's gunna GW.
vict0988 wrote: A bolt pistol is better than a las pistol therefore it should cost more
Devil's advocate - this is a really terrible argument. Let's take for example bolt vs las pistol on IG sergeant. Taking bolt instead of las causes all of 0.02 extra wounds to a Space Marine on average. Let's be generous and call it worth 0.1 extra points.
Hello? Anyone sane can tell me why we should bother with such pointless, absurdly miniscule point changes?
As for argument usually used in response ("but they will fully load up on upgrades now!") it's a non-sequitur. All you need to do is limit upgrades somehow. Say, said IG sergeant can take 1 upgrade. You can pick either a bolter (for shooty squad) or bolt pistol (to pair it with CCW) for CQC one. There, done. Much less hassle than mucking about with fractional points changes. It would also encourage fluffy loadout, instead of minmaxed, stupid cherrypicked gak that looks ugly and makes no sense (2x chainsword spam squad, or characters juggling combi-weapon, two handed melee weapon, and storm shield all at once, looking at you).
You could then make some rarer (in fluff), stronger weapons cost two upgrade slots, discouraging spam and allowing weaker stuff like grenade launchers or flamers to have a purpose. Similar to points, except way more user friendly and you don't need to waste an hour pointlessly ensuring all these 1 pts upgrades add up to 2000 or if you're (GASP!) one whole point over, oh no!
I don't think they should but I suspect they will.
They've clearly been moving in this direction since the beginning of 9th, when they abandoned any attempt at balancing wargear or (in many cases) bothering to cost it at all.
vict0988 wrote: A bolt pistol is better than a las pistol therefore it should cost more
Devil's advocate - this is a really terrible argument. Let's take for example bolt vs las pistol on IG sergeant. Taking bolt instead of las causes all of 0.02 extra wounds to a Space Marine on average. Let's be generous and call it worth 0.1 extra points.
Hello? Anyone sane can tell me why we should bother with such pointless, absurdly miniscule point changes?
As for argument usually used in response ("but they will fully load up on upgrades now!") it's a non-sequitur. All you need to do is limit upgrades somehow. Say, said IG sergeant can take 1 upgrade. You can pick either a bolter (for shooty squad) or bolt pistol (to pair it with CCW) for CQC one. There, done. Much less hassle than mucking about with fractional points changes. It would also encourage fluffy loadout, instead of minmaxed, stupid cherrypicked gak that looks ugly and makes no sense (2x chainsword spam squad, or characters juggling combi-weapon, two handed melee weapon, and storm shield all at once, looking at you).
You could then make some rarer (in fluff), stronger weapons cost two upgrade slots, discouraging spam and allowing weaker stuff like grenade launchers or flamers to have a purpose. Similar to points, except way more user friendly and you don't need to waste an hour pointlessly ensuring all these 1 pts upgrades add up to 2000 or if you're (GASP!) one whole point over, oh no!
That you couldn't keep your list contained to not be one point over is on you.
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Sgt_Smudge wrote: Will they? No idea? Should they? No clue. Would I like if they did? Yes. I want more units to be "pick-up-and-playable" without too much thought over the minutia of their kit. Now, that does also mean I'd like the weapons to have a way that they're brought relatively into line with one another (chainswords getting more attacks to compare to power swords, heavy power weapons such as thunder hammers and powerfists having an increased drawback, or laspistols getting more shots compared to bolt pistols), but yes - I actually do like the idea of units choosing upgrades that are lateral.
vict0988 wrote:
Way easier for everyone to build models that look cool.
Unless you built your Sergeant with a chainsword then you're wrong and stupid for not giving him free bling.
Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
As an EC player all I can say is that a sonic blaster and/or a blastmaster is definitely an upgrade from a bolter. If I don't have to pay extra for either of them then I'll be very happy.
I really don't mind if they eliminate wargear cost. I already play AoS so I am used to that reality.
Problem with wargear is that all too often it usually gets in the way of more bodies on the ground. I never touched the Plague Marine upgrades until they were free. Same with Blightlord terminators and Death Shrouds.
Because as someone wrote, if the lethality of the game is this high then upgrades are all too often liabilities that may vanish in a single volley. So either GW needs to drastically change lethality or just make upgrades free as you might not even get to use that upgrade once in a game.
I mean, in some of the armies I play the upgrades cost only 5 points and even then people didn't want those upgrades because 5 points could be used for cheap chaff that has more utility.
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
So, just to confirm, you are calling me "wrong and stupid" because I want to use chainswords on my guardsmen, because I prefer my guardsman sergeants to use a more rugged and savage looking weapon? And that I prefer them to not use a different profile to the rest of their squad?
Can I just have that confirmed? Just so you know how ridiculous you sound?
That you couldn't keep your list contained to not be one point over is on you.
On a related note, I miss having 1-3pt upgrades that I can slap on to round out a list.
It bugs me when I end up with a list that's, for example, 1997pts, and I have nothing to spend those extra 3 points on because now every upgrade is 5pts minimum.
I suspect they'll not only reduce wargear costs, but also reduce wargear choices.
I.E. you can't balance Tyranid Warriors having talons/claws/pair of boneswords/whip+bonesword (or more if trade out the gun)? Stop trying. Just call them "Tyranid Warrior Melee Weapons" all with the same stat line and move on. You can model them however you like, but they'll all hit at WS3+, S7, AP2 damage 2. Or whatever is appropriate. On the table they do the same as everyone else's warriors.
This may represent an attack on the fluff, and I suspect may induce much complaining - but its much easier to operate from a game perspective.
I wonder how this would work with squads or even armies designed to have options, which have different effects and rules.
If a heavy psycanon, psi lancer and a incinerator cost the same points. Then one of those three will never be used. If a nemezis sword, falchion, force staff, nemezis halabard and a Nemezis Thunder Hammer cost the same, then not taking a full loadout of hammers or majority load out of hammers would just be stupid. The other options may as well not exist most of the time. It would be just as bad as it is playing PL.
The main problem as far as I'm concerned is when units have vastly different weapon options that would ordinarily be adjusted for in points.
For example; the rumor mill says that Plasma Inceptors are going down to 40ppm. For those non-marine players out there; this means that they are making the plasma option free. Currently it costs +20ppm to upgrade your inceptor with plasma. A 40ppm plasma inceptor is identical in cost to an inceptor with assault bolters. While it's possible that the assault bolter version is also getting an unmentioned massive point drop; lets assume for the sake of argument that this is not the case and that the assault bolter and plasma variants will cost the same.
Even at the steep cost of +20 points/model, marine players *already* vastly preferred the plasma variant over the bolt variant. Giving out this upgrade for free means you may as well remove the bolter option. There is nearly no scenario where the bolter version will be stronger. Against any armored or tough target, plasma is very much stronger. Against lighter targets the blast rule means that the non-overcharged plasma is still getting 6 shots/person, the same as the assault bolter; while at higher strength (which. is often relevant) and better ap (maybe not as relevant against hordes, but never can be completely discounted either). There is no target to which the assault bolter would be a preferable choice except maybe very small units (5 models or less) of very light infantry. Considering that plasma will easily obliterate this target also.... effectively the assault bolters are out of the game.
Already we see this with the current Lasfusil eliminators have crowded out bolt sniper eliminators after the cost of lasfusils was removed. Bolt sniper eliminators are now the wrong choice. The lasfusil costs the same, at better strength, ap, and damage. The bolt sniper still retains one small selling point of being able to ignore look out sir, so it is not as egregious as the plasma inceptor will be... but still a situation where points were keeping things in balance, and with the removal of that things have skewed vastly in favor of one particular weapon option.
vict0988 wrote: What would you take as proof? If you make a list of units in 5th edition that were busted or useless for FW and GW and the number relative to the total number of units produced by the respective team is smaller for FW you could convince me.
you claimed that, bring it on. Also why 5th? Why not 6-7th? You know, where gw massivly fethed up?
Are you saying you would recognise it if I proved it using my suggestion? You'll take whatever my definition of useless and busted units are? 7th would be pretty easy, Skatach from FW was busted and the rest of the FW units were useless because they didn't fit into the Decurion system. Necrons didn't have a lot of useless units in 7th outside of FW (maybe 20% busted, 20% useless), the number in the game overall that weren't busted or useless was probably something like 30%, but for FW it was 0%. Lack of balance has been a major complaint against FW units which is why FW was banned at tournaments, I am a bit confused why I have never seen you put forth the idea that FW has done balance better before, maybe I just forgot. How about we make this a new thread for discussion in a couple of weeks when I have more time?
Sgt_Smudge wrote: So, like I said - are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
Let's just go with deliberately slow to understand.
Great, but show me where this was about "winning" the game as opposed to "enjoying" it.
Are you assuming that I enjoy 40k? Very bold of you to assume that, I only play to have an opportunity to steal dice from people. So for me, playing smart is playing in ways that lets me steal dice, roll one dice into opponent's dice pile, score another couple of dice on the retrieval, that's why I always slow roll everything. No opponent has ever gone home from a game with me with a full dice box. That's why they call me the dice devil hæhæhæ. /særcæsm Victory conditions are in the mission pack, they don't list fun or political statements about 1800s French artists.
warhead01 wrote: But also giving some cool thing to a unit leader who is slain before that cool thing is ever used, why am I paying for that again?
I don't know, have you considered giving cool things to the unit leaders that don't get killed before they do their cool thing? You know that buying melee weapons on Space Marine Sergeants is occasionally meta right? /sarcasm All it takes is the right pts costs and then whether you choose to take the upgrades or not will be an efficient choice depending on the situation instead of it automatically being the better choice. Making weapon upgrades free also doesn't lower lethality for extremely obvious reasons.
Constantly updating points is just a headache that some players, not unlike myself, just don't care about because it's just adding work.
Don't you have a phone? There's an app for this.
Irbis wrote: As for argument usually used in response ("but they will fully load up on upgrades now!") it's a non-sequitur.
I have a great way to limit how many upgrades people take, make them cost pts! Generally, I'd go with making whatever was popular last remain popular. So if everyone has been taking bolt pistols on AM Sergeants for 10 years and they're only worth 0,5 pts, then let them keep the free bolt pistols. If everyone is taking bolt pistols on Space Wolves Wolf Sergeants and plasma pistols are only worth 0,5 pts then plasma pistols should cost 1 pt. The moment you change that 1 to a 0 you are forcing everyone to switch. With something like plasma gun vs melta gun it's complicated, I can let it slide if they're the same points but one of them is more popular, there just isn't an excuse to make bolt pistols 0 pts for AM Sergeants.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: So, like I said - are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
Let's just go with deliberately slow to understand.
Nah, go on. I know you're mincing your words, but the intent is still there.
Stop hiding, and just say it. It'll make this easier.
Great, but show me where this was about "winning" the game as opposed to "enjoying" it.
Are you assuming that I enjoy 40k? Very bold of you to assume that, I only play to have an opportunity to steal dice from people. So for me, playing smart is playing in ways that lets me steal dice, roll one dice into opponent's dice pile, score another couple of dice on the retrieval, that's why I always slow roll everything. No opponent has ever gone home from a game with me with a full dice box. That's why they call me the dice devil hæhæhæ. /særcæsm Victory conditions are in the mission pack, they don't list fun or political statements about 1800s French artists.
So, if you aren't enjoying it, why do you play? Even if you only play to "steal dice", don't you enjoy stealing dice? I'd like to hope you enjoy what you do, else why are you on a forum for it?
Also, I have absolutely no idea what this tangent about 1800s artists is. Care to explain?
Also also, you know you don't need to play 40k with a mission pack, right?
The moment you change that 1 to a 0 you are forcing everyone to switch. With something like plasma gun vs melta gun it's complicated, I can let it slide if they're the same points but one of them is more popular, there just isn't an excuse to make bolt pistols 0 pts for AM Sergeants.
Forcing? I've never felt forced to change my army because of PL. You can speak for yourself, but don't use "everyone" when you can't prove that.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: The only people who'd miss out are the people who modeled 'naked' units to save points.
I have certainly been experiencing this as IG.
I generally ran/run troopers with no upgrades, except maybe vox-casters, because they die anyway and upgrading one special weapon does not generally help the unit fulfill the battlefield objectives I have for it.
It's notable that the effective increasing in cost of all my infantry from 50 to 60 to 65+ points on the "baked in" cost of a special weapons costs me a whole tank.
I don't really like this. I would much rather have another tank or gun or two more squads of rifles that provide zoning, objective control, and critical redundancy than some plasguns that will die when looked at and will at most destroy about 1 MEQ over the course of the game if they don't get erased. Most of my special weapons are never even fired, because they're either out of range or performing actions.
Yes, but you are playing the game not to play the game, but for some other reason, a few people here do not understand.
To everyone else that is not a bot or an AI construct here, winning is stricktly corelated to fun. Even rats will stop playing with other rats, if the bigger rats don't let them win 1/3 of the time. Thankfuly, as higher beings then rats, we require higher win rates of enjoyment then 33%.
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
So, just to confirm, you are calling me "wrong and stupid" because I want to use chainswords on my guardsmen, because I prefer my guardsman sergeants to use a more rugged and savage looking weapon? And that I prefer them to not use a different profile to the rest of their squad?
Can I just have that confirmed? Just so you know how ridiculous you sound?
Well are you using the Power Sword profile and just using a proxy?
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
So, just to confirm, you are calling me "wrong and stupid" because I want to use chainswords on my guardsmen, because I prefer my guardsman sergeants to use a more rugged and savage looking weapon? And that I prefer them to not use a different profile to the rest of their squad?
Can I just have that confirmed? Just so you know how ridiculous you sound?
Well are you using the Power Sword profile and just using a proxy?
Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
So, just to confirm, you are calling me "wrong and stupid" because I want to use chainswords on my guardsmen, because I prefer my guardsman sergeants to use a more rugged and savage looking weapon? And that I prefer them to not use a different profile to the rest of their squad?
Can I just have that confirmed? Just so you know how ridiculous you sound?
Well are you using the Power Sword profile and just using a proxy?
No, of course not. My models have chainswords. I play them using chainswords. If I wanted them to use power sword profiles, they'd be armed with power swords, or power axes, or some other "power" weapon that would fit the "power sword" statblock. But, as a chainsword model can be reflected with the chainsword statblock, I'll use the chainsword statblock.
Problem?
JNAProductions wrote:Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun. Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun. Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! Very well put.
So, with that said, can we get a walk-back on the idea that someone is "wrong and stupid" for not taking free gear from those who have said it, and move on?
So you're saying that only bots or AI can can fun when they're not winning? That's a hell of a claim.
Well I a first year no one in terms of the theory of winning/losing. But there is close to two centuries of literature on how winning and losing impacts stuff ranging from physical to mental health, stuff like muscle growth, speed of healing, concentrations, enjoyment of everything etc. But be my guest write your papers about how winning is not linked to fun, or in fact a seprate thing, as you claim it. Will make as much sense as other claims you made in the past.
To have fun. Is that hard to understand?
Because you are in a thread about a game and its rules, and the impact of potential changes on the game and people playing it, and putting forth a claim that somehow all those things, crucial to determinate who is the loser and who is the winner, are not only unimportant, but somehow not linked in anyway. Because fun is somehow separate from winning. Now can you have fun not participating in something like a game, but still taking part in it? Of course. Ton of people go to the olympics knowing they will lose. But what are they are after are other, outside of the game things. Sponsorships, higher potential to get a training career etc. In w40k terms you are the guy who claims, that "the game" is okey, because even if games is bad and unfun to many other people, you are having fun by drinking beer and spending time with your friends. Nothing wrong with that, aside for one thing. You can do outside of the game activities without spending money or time on w40k. You can have fun with "friends and beer" without w40k.
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JNAProductions wrote: Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
yes, but coming in to a thread concering rules and their impact on the game, and claiming that the first option is unimportant or less important, makes as much sense, as if I now went to the lore section of the forum. Found someones thread about how they don't like the new lore for a faction, and me droping in the bomb in the form of stuff like "Not a problem the army has a 53% win rate there for it is good". On top of that w40k is game, first and far most. Without the game there would be no new models, no new lore , no new nothing. This makes any problems related to stuff like balanced and enjoyment of the game crucial to the community. Because you know what happens to game that is not played? AoS happens to the game.
So you're saying that only bots or AI can can fun when they're not winning? That's a hell of a claim.
Well I a first year no one in terms of the theory of winning/losing. But there is close to two centuries of literature on how winning and losing impacts stuff ranging from physical to mental health, stuff like muscle growth, speed of healing, concentrations, enjoyment of everything etc. But be my guest write your papers about how winning is not linked to fun, or in fact a seprate thing, as you claim it. Will make as much sense as other claims you made in the past.
That's not what I said. I said "is the only way you can have fun through winning"?
You're saying you CANNOT enjoy yourself unless you're winning? What a sad life.
To have fun. Is that hard to understand?
Because you are in a thread about a game and its rules, and the impact of potential changes on the game and people playing it, and putting forth a claim that somehow all those things, crucial to determinate who is the loser and who is the winner, are not only unimportant, but somehow not linked in anyway.
No, I'm not.
This is a thread about 40k rules, yes, but I haven't claimed "they're not linked in any way" - I actually have only really said that "some people don't care about the minutia of certain upgrades/parts of the game, and that calling those people 'stupid and wrong' is pretty inflammatory".
Instead of agreeing, certain folks, yourself included, have now decided that, no, instead of letting that simple statement go, you MUST assert how actually, the only way to enjoy yourself is to be winning the game at all costs, and that anything less than than is "stupid and wrong".
Because fun is somehow separate from winning. Now can you have fun not participating in something like a game, but still taking part in it? Of course. Ton of people go to the olympics knowing they will lose. But what are they are after are other, outside of the game things. Sponsorships, higher potential to get a training career etc. In w40k terms you are the guy who claims, that "the game" is okey, because even if games is bad and unfun to many other people, you are having fun by drinking beer and spending time with your friends. Nothing wrong with that, aside for one thing. You can do outside of the game activities without spending money or time on w40k. You can have fun with "friends and beer" without w40k.
Sure, yes, I could enjoy socialising without playing 40k. Does that mean I should be playing 40k though, because I'm not playing to win? I could be socialising without playing 40k, but we like playing with out little plastic minis, using the rules GW have given us. Should we not be doing that? Are you going to come and confiscate our stuff until we start playing "properly"?
Yes, fun is separate from winning. I don't know why this is a contention issue for people. All I'm taking objection here is the idea that not taking free equipment is "wrong and stupid". Is it not enough to say that *maybe* that's a little bit of an exaggeration, and maybe a little inappropriate?
JNAProductions wrote: Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
yes, but coming in to a thread concering rules and their impact on the game, and claiming that the first option is unimportant or less important, makes as much sense, as if I now went to the lore section of the forum. Found someones thread about how they don't like the new lore for a faction, and me droping in the bomb in the form of stuff like "Not a problem the army has a 53% win rate there for it is good".
Good job that no-one did that, let alone me.
Maybe actually read what I put, instead of coming in and saying that I'm slagging off someone's enjoyment of the game, when I never said that.
In fact, the very OPPOSITE happened - I was swayed by Haighus that EVERYONE should enjoy the game, but still opposed vict's comment that people who enjoy the game differently are "wrong and stupid".
Maybe you should be having this conversation with them instead.
On top of that w40k is game, first and far most.
Yeah, a game to *enjoy*. Do you know why games exist? To have *fun*.
Without the game there would be no new models, no new lore , no new nothing.
I think you'll find it's the other way around, actually. The game exists as a justification for making the models. The lore exists to give a reason why you can push your plastic models around. The video games, media, and shows being made? They exist because of the lore. The lore, video games, media, and shows then provide a reason to make new models.
It's a circle. Every part exists to feed the others.
Because you know what happens to game that is not played? AoS happens to the game.
Strange - AoS is doing pretty well, with some gorgeous models, and a thriving community. Sounds like I like the sound of that.
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
So, just to confirm, you are calling me "wrong and stupid" because I want to use chainswords on my guardsmen, because I prefer my guardsman sergeants to use a more rugged and savage looking weapon? And that I prefer them to not use a different profile to the rest of their squad?
Can I just have that confirmed? Just so you know how ridiculous you sound?
They have no idea, they live in a world where mot taking the best is not even an option.
Karol wrote:Yes, but you are playing the game not to play the game, but for some other reason, a few people here do not understand.
To everyone else that is not a bot or an AI construct here, winning is stricktly corelated to fun. Even rats will stop playing with other rats, if the bigger rats don't let them win 1/3 of the time. Thankfuly, as higher beings then rats, we require higher win rates of enjoyment then 33%.
Must be some good crack you have access to in Poland.
Honestly I might have more fun playing 40k with a rat than some players.
WINNING HAS ZERO IMPACT ON MY ENJOYMRMT OF THE GAME! Not a very difficult concept to understand. Unless you live in the ultra-competitive hellscape that is (wherever Karol lives in Poland)
WINNING HAS ZERO IMPACT ON MY ENJOYMRMT OF THE GAME! Not a very difficult concept to understand. Unless you live in the ultra-competitive hellscape that is (wherever Karol lives in Poland)
So you'd be fine with your armies taking an arbitrary 10 point increase per model?
When they're the same cost, yes. You have literally no reason not to use Power Swords.
So, just to confirm, you are calling me "wrong and stupid" because I want to use chainswords on my guardsmen, because I prefer my guardsman sergeants to use a more rugged and savage looking weapon? And that I prefer them to not use a different profile to the rest of their squad?
Can I just have that confirmed? Just so you know how ridiculous you sound?
Well are you using the Power Sword profile and just using a proxy?
Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
EviscerationPlague wrote: Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Only if you're trying to min/max the last percentile point of power out of your list, and not everyone chooses to play like that.
warhead01 wrote: But also giving some cool thing to a unit leader who is slain before that cool thing is ever used, why am I paying for that again?
I don't know, have you considered giving cool things to the unit leaders that don't get killed before they do their cool thing? You know that buying melee weapons on Space Marine Sergeants is occasionally meta right? /sarcasm All it takes is the right pts costs and then whether you choose to take the upgrades or not will be an efficient choice depending on the situation instead of it automatically being the better choice. Making weapon upgrades free also doesn't lower lethality for extremely obvious reasons.
Constantly updating points is just a headache that some players, not unlike myself, just don't care about because it's just adding work.
Don't you have a phone? There's an app for this.
Well there it is the best advice for a casual player. Git Gud Bro. Nice.
Stay classy Santiago.
Yes, I know there's an app. We all know there is an app.
Having units with no cost upgrades can work if you design it from the beginning.
AoS tried doing it from the beginning and it sucked because most units had mathematically better options.
Imagine trying to replicate that in 40k where units have been designed with the idea of having cheap options and expensive options.
Theres no way you can make a grenade launcher a horizontal upgrade to a lascannon without going agaisnt the fluff (Or having a better system where things like a grenade launcher shooting smoke grenades are possible, offering flexibility and utility over a lasscannon firepower).
EviscerationPlague wrote: Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Only if you're trying to min/max the last percentile point of power out of your list, and not everyone chooses to play like that.
Not sure if it will be applied across the board, but the trend seems to be squads = free stuff (i.e. all imperial guard infantry except fancy pistols and power weapons), big single models = some points variety (i.e. sponsons on rogal dorn). I expect it will continue to be applied like this.
I'm not a fan of this, as it is a soft swap over to PL where you just take the statistically best stuff and removes another aspect of the game where you have to think about what you are doing.
EviscerationPlague wrote: Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Only if you're trying to min/max the last percentile point of power out of your list, and not everyone chooses to play like that.
Eliminating points inherently encourages this type of min/maxing. With wargear level points you are rewarded for playing your dudes vs penalised for taking only the best performers. Eventually even the most novice players notice this kind of thing.
Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Like I said:
"My models have chainswords. I play them using chainswords. If I wanted them to use power sword profiles, they'd be armed with power swords, or power axes, or some other "power" weapon that would fit the "power sword" statblock. But, as a chainsword model can be reflected with the chainsword statblock, I'll use the chainsword statblock." No, it's not inappropriate. They're my models. I'll equip and play with them how I want to, in a way I enjoy.
So, like I finished that paragraph with:
"Problem?"
I swear we JUST had like 3-5 threads on this, with the last 2-3 being started by the same guy just remaking profiles to start troll threads.
Basically, 40k/Dakka is filled with contrarians, and when presented with a binary choice, the worst comes out, and the threads get locked. So yeah. Asked and answered.
Casual gamers - PL is the most fun.
Serious players - Points are more fun.
Ultra Competitive WAAC - Doesn't matter because points never really matter at that level, skill does.
Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Like I said:
"My models have chainswords. I play them using chainswords. If I wanted them to use power sword profiles, they'd be armed with power swords, or power axes, or some other "power" weapon that would fit the "power sword" statblock. But, as a chainsword model can be reflected with the chainsword statblock, I'll use the chainsword statblock." No, it's not inappropriate. They're my models. I'll equip and play with them how I want to, in a way I enjoy.
So, like I finished that paragraph with:
"Problem?"
Yeah, because you probably have the same pretend attitude of "I don't actually care if I win or lose", so I'm sure you'd be fine with a 10 point hike per model on your army if winning is not important.
Insularum wrote: Not sure if it will be applied across the board, but the trend seems to be squads = free stuff (i.e. all imperial guard infantry except fancy pistols and power weapons), big single models = some points variety (i.e. sponsons on rogal dorn). I expect it will continue to be applied like this.
I'm not a fan of this, as it is a soft swap over to PL where you just take the statistically best stuff and removes another aspect of the game where you have to think about what you are doing.
EviscerationPlague wrote: Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Only if you're trying to min/max the last percentile point of power out of your list, and not everyone chooses to play like that.
Eliminating points inherently encourages this type of min/maxing. With wargear level points you are rewarded for playing your dudes vs penalised for taking only the best performers. Eventually even the most novice players notice this kind of thing.
Bingo. One player gets inherently punished for an aesthetic they prefer. That's garbage game design to attempt defending.
Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun. Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun. Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Like I said: "My models have chainswords. I play them using chainswords. If I wanted them to use power sword profiles, they'd be armed with power swords, or power axes, or some other "power" weapon that would fit the "power sword" statblock. But, as a chainsword model can be reflected with the chainsword statblock, I'll use the chainsword statblock." No, it's not inappropriate. They're my models. I'll equip and play with them how I want to, in a way I enjoy.
So, like I finished that paragraph with: "Problem?"
Yeah, because you probably have the same pretend attitude of "I don't actually care if I win or lose", so I'm sure you'd be fine with a 10 point hike per model on your army if winning is not important.
You'll have a hard time with it for me, because I don't use points.
Again, I love how the idea of "eh, I don't really mind" is so threatening to you that you respond with "you say you don't care, HOW ABOUT I TAKE ITTO EXTREME LEVELS HUH SEE HOW MUCH YOU CARE NOW???"
I mean, yeah. It's unreasonable, not because adding 10ppm is an issue (especially for a low model count army), but because you're doing it deliberately out of spite, in an attempt to win an pretty pathetic argument. You're being deliberately inflammatory and dishonest in your argument, as well as refusing to countenance the idea that some people just aren't like you.
I pity you. You could have kept this thread much more clean. But you just had to go ahead with your diatribe.
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I want more units to be "pick-up-and-playable" without too much thought over the minutia of their kit.
That's Power Level, so if you want that, play Power Level.
They shouldn't dumb down points to make it a slightly different version of Power Level.
Hey! Hey you! Yes, you!
How about reading the thread? I know it's three pages long, but I understand it's a busy time for you! In case you missed it (on the first page):
Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Haighus wrote:The thing is, PL already exists and you can already play it. Matched play should also continue to exist for those who want to play that.
Actually, you know what, I'm swayed by that. As long as PL exists, I don't really have an opinion on what happens with points. Fair play to you!
I already realised that actually, as long as PL exists, I don't care what happens with points.
So, I think you can take that back now, as you're a little late to the party.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
You're missing his point completely by trying to play the victim of an insult. Well done.
Trying? My fella, they just called people like me "wrong and stupid" - in case you missed the memo, that's a little insulting.
I'm offering them a chance to walk that comment back, but no, we have other folks pouring gasoline on it and insisting that "no, it's okay to call those players wrong and stupid, because that's a reasonable stance to take about playing with plastic toy soldiers".
They can't even say I didn't provide off-ramps for it. I've repeated that the issue, over and over, has been that it's not exactly pleasant to call people "wrong and stupid". Yet, apparently, there's a handful of users who actually think that's okay to say about how someone like playing with their war dollies.
Some people play the game to win-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the aesthetics-that's how they have fun.
Some people play the game for the stories that come from it-that's how they have fun.
None of those people are wrong. So long as you're polite and respectful to your opponent, if everyone has a good time, that's a successful game, no matter who wins and loses.
Nah, I call BS. If two people brought the same exact list, except one player used all Power Swords, Bolt Pistols, etc. While the other defaulted to Chainswords and Laspistols, one player has an inherent advantage for no reason. It would be inappropriate NOT to proxy when all wargear costs the same.
Like I said:
"My models have chainswords. I play them using chainswords. If I wanted them to use power sword profiles, they'd be armed with power swords, or power axes, or some other "power" weapon that would fit the "power sword" statblock. But, as a chainsword model can be reflected with the chainsword statblock, I'll use the chainsword statblock." No, it's not inappropriate. They're my models. I'll equip and play with them how I want to, in a way I enjoy.
So, like I finished that paragraph with:
"Problem?"
Yeah, because you probably have the same pretend attitude of "I don't actually care if I win or lose", so I'm sure you'd be fine with a 10 point hike per model on your army if winning is not important.
You'll have a hard time with it for me, because I don't use points.
Again, I love how the idea of "eh, I don't really mind" is so threatening to you that you respond with "you say you don't care, HOW ABOUT I TAKE ITTO EXTREME LEVELS HUH SEE HOW MUCH YOU CARE NOW???"
I mean, yeah. It's unreasonable, not because adding 10ppm is an issue (especially for a low model count army), but because you're doing it deliberately out of spite, in an attempt to win an pretty pathetic argument. You're being deliberately inflammatory and dishonest in your argument, as well as refusing to countenance the idea that some people just aren't like you.
I pity you. You could have kept this thread much more clean. But you just had to go ahead with your diatribe.
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I want more units to be "pick-up-and-playable" without too much thought over the minutia of their kit.
That's Power Level, so if you want that, play Power Level.
They shouldn't dumb down points to make it a slightly different version of Power Level.
Hey! Hey you! Yes, you!
How about reading the thread? I know it's three pages long, but I understand it's a busy time for you! In case you missed it (on the first page):
Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Haighus wrote:The thing is, PL already exists and you can already play it. Matched play should also continue to exist for those who want to play that.
Actually, you know what, I'm swayed by that. As long as PL exists, I don't really have an opinion on what happens with points. Fair play to you!
I already realised that actually, as long as PL exists, I don't care what happens with points.
So, I think you can take that back now, as you're a little late to the party.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Calling people "wrong and stupid" is a pretty sure fire way for me to lose sympathy for your position.
Chainswords are cool. All my guardsmen sergeants carry laspistol and chainsword, and I play PL. Are you calling me "wrong and stupid"?
You're missing his point completely by trying to play the victim of an insult. Well done.
Trying? My fella, they just called people like me "wrong and stupid" - in case you missed the memo, that's a little insulting.
I'm offering them a chance to walk that comment back, but no, we have other folks pouring gasoline on it and insisting that "no, it's okay to call those players wrong and stupid, because that's a reasonable stance to take about playing with plastic toy soldiers".
They can't even say I didn't provide off-ramps for it. I've repeated that the issue, over and over, has been that it's not exactly pleasant to call people "wrong and stupid". Yet, apparently, there's a handful of users who actually think that's okay to say about how someone like playing with their war dollies.
That's on them.
An increase of 10 points per model is a lot of PL added to your infantry squads. Avoided the point made is awesome, but I'd expect a general avoidance of that with anyone that attempts a defense of PL
Ideally for me, GW would take a middle ground where many wargear options were free, but not all.
For units with very limited number of upgrades over a larger number of models, baking in the cost of most upgrades would lead to more thematic units in matched play armies. AM Infantry Squads with special weapons, voxcasters, and heavy weapons teams are very thematic. So putting the unit at 65 points and only having select upgrades cost points is reasonable. It just should probably be more than only Plasma Pistols and Power Swords.
However, this can go very wrong very easily if taken as a blanket rule like down in Power Levels. Units like Devastators, Retributors, and even Heavy Weapons Squad have very different effectiveness when comparing 4 Heavy Boaters to 4 Multi-Meltas/Lascannons. These types of units need price differences between the the most extreme options.
So unless GW overhauls weapons to make the effectiveness between different options much more even than currently, I don't want to see no wargear cost.
EviscerationPlague wrote:An increase of 10 points per model is a lot of PL added to your infantry squads.
Points and PL don't exactly correlate, and you know that. No matter what "points" changes you make, PL is not exactly corresponding to it.
Adding 10ppm to my infantry squads doesn't change their PL, because the two systems aren't the same. I thought we were all in favour of separation between points and PL here?
Avoided the point made is awesome, but I'd expect a general avoidance of that with anyone that attempts a defense of PL
No, I saw your point. I just filed it down to the thrust of what you were saying - that you feel so threatened by the idea of someone enjoying PL that you feel the need to spear them. Why do you feel the need to "prove" someone's preferences? Why does that have to be an invitation for a "gotcha" moment? Why do you need to test and dispute the idea that people enjoy themselves differently?
Why is that? Why are you terrified of the idea of "alternative fun"? Why is PL even on topic in this thread? All I said was "maybe we shouldn't call people wrong and stupid for liking things"? Isn't it enough to agree and say "yes, it isn't very good to say that people are wrong and stupid for enjoying the game their way"? Isn't that the civil option?
alextroy wrote: Ideally for me, GW would take a middle ground where many wargear options were free, but not all.
They could easily allow equivalent "special weapon" choices for no cost and allow one "free" heavy weapon and then charge to upgrade it to a better one. For example, a squad gets a flamer and a heavy bolter as standard, but lascannon or melta costs extra.
Part of me thinks that they will go all-in, though, and power swords will cost the same a chain swords and GW will demand strict adherence to WYSIWYG, enjoying a wave of purchases as everyone rushes to convert to "free" upgrades.
EviscerationPlague wrote:An increase of 10 points per model is a lot of PL added to your infantry squads.
Points and PL don't exactly correlate, and you know that. No matter what "points" changes you make, PL is not exactly corresponding to it.
Adding 10ppm to my infantry squads doesn't change their PL, because the two systems aren't the same. I thought we were all in favour of separation between points and PL here?
Avoided the point made is awesome, but I'd expect a general avoidance of that with anyone that attempts a defense of PL
No, I saw your point. I just filed it down to the thrust of what you were saying - that you feel so threatened by the idea of someone enjoying PL that you feel the need to spear them. Why do you feel the need to "prove" someone's preferences? Why does that have to be an invitation for a "gotcha" moment? Why do you need to test and dispute the idea that people enjoy themselves differently?
Why is that? Why are you terrified of the idea of "alternative fun"? Why is PL even on topic in this thread? All I said was "maybe we shouldn't call people wrong and stupid for liking things"?
Isn't it enough to agree and say "yes, it isn't very good to say that people are wrong and stupid for enjoying the game their way"? Isn't that the civil option?
Smudge, you know better. Don't get caught up in engaging with people who refuse to, or are unable to, listen to alternative viewpoints. Just let the thread die, and give yourself a pat on the back for being a bigger person.
I personally believe that pricing the upgrades rather than having a singular unit cost is better for all walks of players:
If you care about high end efficiency towards victory, you have the ability to tailor the units more discretely, and of course pay the theoretically most appropriate cost for the actual capability of a unit, thus theoretically creating a more balanced experience
If you aren't tailoring for high end efficiency and are just fielding the models you have, you can select what you have and be priced accordingly for your less-optimal configuration, resulting in a reduced penalty to your odds of winning for your suboptimal selection.
And, for the CAAC people, who are quite proud of the aggressively negative enjoyment they derive from being able to win the game, the manner by which the units are selected doesn't matter, since the degradation or lack thereof of your odds of winning from fielding less or more optimal configurations isn't one of the factors that has even the smallest bearing on your enjoyment of the game.
alextroy wrote: Ideally for me, GW would take a middle ground where many wargear options were free, but not all.
They could easily allow equivalent "special weapon" choices for no cost and allow one "free" heavy weapon and then charge to upgrade it to a better one. For example, a squad gets a flamer and a heavy bolter as standard, but lascannon or melta costs extra.
Part of me thinks that they will go all-in, though, and power swords will cost the same a chain swords and GW will demand strict adherence to WYSIWYG, enjoying a wave of purchases as everyone rushes to convert to "free" upgrades.
Which 11th Edition will undo.
We can only sit back and wait to see what they are thinking with the upcoming MFM. We see them moving units slowly to this state in various codexes and past MFM. Will they dive in or keep slowly moving units into the no/less wargear with cost?
EviscerationPlague wrote:An increase of 10 points per model is a lot of PL added to your infantry squads.
Points and PL don't exactly correlate, and you know that. No matter what "points" changes you make, PL is not exactly corresponding to it.
Adding 10ppm to my infantry squads doesn't change their PL, because the two systems aren't the same. I thought we were all in favour of separation between points and PL here?
Avoided the point made is awesome, but I'd expect a general avoidance of that with anyone that attempts a defense of PL
No, I saw your point. I just filed it down to the thrust of what you were saying - that you feel so threatened by the idea of someone enjoying PL that you feel the need to spear them. Why do you feel the need to "prove" someone's preferences? Why does that have to be an invitation for a "gotcha" moment? Why do you need to test and dispute the idea that people enjoy themselves differently?
Why is that? Why are you terrified of the idea of "alternative fun"? Why is PL even on topic in this thread? All I said was "maybe we shouldn't call people wrong and stupid for liking things"?
Isn't it enough to agree and say "yes, it isn't very good to say that people are wrong and stupid for enjoying the game their way"? Isn't that the civil option?
Smudge, you know better. Don't get caught up in engaging with people who refuse to, or are unable to, listen to alternative viewpoints. Just let the thread die, and give yourself a pat on the back for being a bigger person.
All upgrades costing the same is objectively bad game design. There's no "alternative" viewpoint besides the CAAC contrarian
vict0988 wrote:Let's just go with deliberately slow to understand.
Nah, go on. I know you're mincing your words, but the intent is still there.
Stop hiding, and just say it. It'll make this easier.
I think you misunderstood my point, and that's my fault. Klickor said that it was easier to build models how you like if the options don't have pts costs. Now whether someone like Sgt_Smudge who doesn't care about pts-efficiency plays with pts or power level is irrelevant because you will always pick the more flavourful option. It is when it comes to someone like Karol who does care about pts efficiency that it actually matters. By making thunderhammers and powerswords cost the same, people in Karol's community who see his Grey Knights army with power swords instead of thunderhammers won't take notice of that and adjust the number of special weapons and melee upgrades they take, they'll have an easy game and then tell Karol to rip his models apart because taking power swords is wrong and stupid. That's an attitude that some people have, it doesn't matter whether Karol likes power swords or doesn't want to rip his models apart. My comment was never about how I feel about players making sub-optimal choices for the benefit of fluff, but about how the experiences of players will be ruined by poor internal balance on datasheets which will automatically come about when you rule out wargear costs where they would be appropriate. When I tell people that X or Y option or unit is bad I always try to say that it's fine if they like that unit and that they should be careful about only taking the best units because then they'll have to play against better lists as well.
PL is a silly format and if I thought there was a 99% chance of GW keeping pts and a 100% chance of GW keeping pts if I pressed a big button that got rid of PL then I'd press the button twice. But I don't hate PL or the people that enjoy. I would really like you all to understand that you are playing a silly format and understand that most people want better than the mediocrity of PL. Pts have been mediocre in 9th, but they can be good, PL will never be better than mediocre. One thing that has ticked me off a little bit is when people say that PL doesn't hurt pts players since GW is moving so fast in the direction of PL we get multiple threads in one year asking if it's going to happen and if it happens will it be good or bad for the game.
All of this is not mentioning how difficult it is to make and define a casual list regardless of format, it should be GW's job to make sure that most lists are okay. Some lists will do better in certain events because of the terrain and missions used and better use of synergies, but there should be a bell curve of list strength, with few useless lists, many okay lists and very few overperforming lists.
So, if you aren't enjoying it, why do you play? Even if you only play to "steal dice", don't you enjoy stealing dice? I'd like to hope you enjoy what you do, else why are you on a forum for it?
Also, I have absolutely no idea what this tangent about 1800s artists is. Care to explain?
I don't steal dice, everything that comes before "/sarcasm" is said in jest. I do enjoy 40k and not for the purpose of winning, I only play to teach other people how to play. To feel their excitement, be of service and be appreciated. Points don't matter to me at all at the moment because I am not trying to win while building my lists. All of that's because I cannot enjoy 40k for what it is supposed to be, a game about trying to complete the victory conditions. I think Armour of Contempt is a bunch of gak and I don't like how imbalanced the game was for a long while between the release of Drukhari and Tyranids, more than a year of complete garbage fire balance and an avalanche of bloat. The other day I spent 4 hours reading Stratagems from new codexes, I'm still not done. PL is one step further away from where I want the game to be such that I can return to enjoying it like I did 8th, where I could play casually or competitively and enjoy the fluff at the same time.
You could make a commentary on an 1800s artist with an essay, or perhaps you could do it more abstractly through a play or a piece of music to convey your thoughts and feelings on the subject of the artist, it'd be obvious you were commenting on it in an essay, with a play or a piece of music it would be more abstract and most would miss it unless you noted it before playing the play or music. But conveying your thoughts through the medium of your 40k list is so abstract as to be absurd. When I discuss tactics I am not thinking about 1800s artists or fluff, those are separate concerns. An army can be stupid and wrong from the perspective of trying to win the game, while being sensical from the point of view of just trying to have a good time. Like putting a Triarch Stalker (supports ranged units) into a Novokh army (melee army) is stupid and wrong and I routinely do it because I don't care whether it is smart, like the people who did Jackass didn't care whether everything they did was smart, the goal was entertainment.
The moment you change that 1 to a 0 you are forcing everyone to switch. With something like plasma gun vs melta gun it's complicated, I can let it slide if they're the same points but one of them is more popular, there just isn't an excuse to make bolt pistols 0 pts for AM Sergeants.
Forcing? I've never felt forced to change my army because of PL. You can speak for yourself, but don't use "everyone" when you can't prove that.
Also also, you know you don't need to play 40k with a mission pack, right?
Forced in the same way that you're forced to say whether you like your mother or your father best if you had a gun to your head, you could say both but then you'd get shot. You could take the laspistol but then your army is undeniably less suited to completing the victory conditions of whatever mission you are playing.
Mission is required, it's pretty much the first rule in the core rules. If you want to knock models around and make laser sounds that's cool, but it's not 40k unless there are victory conditions as far as I am concerned.
warhead01 wrote: But also giving some cool thing to a unit leader who is slain before that cool thing is ever used, why am I paying for that again?
I don't know, have you considered giving cool things to the unit leaders that don't get killed before they do their cool thing? You know that buying melee weapons on Space Marine Sergeants is occasionally meta right? /sarcasm All it takes is the right pts costs and then whether you choose to take the upgrades or not will be an efficient choice depending on the situation instead of it automatically being the better choice. Making weapon upgrades free also doesn't lower lethality for extremely obvious reasons.
Constantly updating points is just a headache that some players, not unlike myself, just don't care about because it's just adding work.
Don't you have a phone? There's an app for this.
Well there it is the best advice for a casual player. Git Gud Bro. Nice.
Stay classy Santiago.
Yes, I know there's an app. We all know there is an app.
Let's carry out your reasoning to the rest of the game. Howling Banshees die as easily as Guardsmen, so they should cost the same. Vanguard Veterans die as easily as Assault Marines, they should cost the same. Do you see how silly you are being? If you cannot keep your Vanguard Veterans safe and they always die before they see melee then downgrade them to Assault Marines. Think about the people that want to run Assault Marines (or barebones units) why should you get units that are strictly better without paying more?
I find it funny that GW are basically going “here have free melta guns, plasma guns, and lascannons, but you still have to pay 5 points for a sergeant plasma pistol.”
As if that’s somehow better than a free plasma gun.
Jarms48 wrote: I find it funny that GW are basically going “here have free melta guns, plasma guns, and lascannons, but you still have to pay 5 points for a sergeant plasma pistol.”
As if that’s somehow better than a free plasma gun.
Sure, a plasma pistol is far superior afterall to either a powersword or plasma gun or grenade launcher of melta.
And all of the above at the end are clearly equal with the sniperrifle.
What could go wrong...
Oh wait you can literally make cultists even more obsolete than what mere mortals does to them and the cultist keyword
My ideal would be to keep prices per weapon, with a concerned effort to merge similar weapons and keep options competitive. One problem has always been that since slots are limited I won't take a non-viable weapon for 5 points when a viable is one is just 10, 15 or 20 points. It's the difference between a squad that can do nothing, and one that can have an effect.
I thought the 3-5th system where all power weapons were the same was a good one. I'd go farther with give the Imperium power weapons (S: user, AP -3) and heavy power weapons (S: 2xuser, AP -4, always goes last).
For the IG, most of the special weapons have a use, except for the Grenade Launcher. I would not take it at any price, even free. But make it rapid fire, or indirect and I might give it a new look.
My reason for starting the thread is looking at my spanking brand new Cadia Stands box and trying to figure out what I should make with it, and GW's new paradigm is not helping me.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: The handwriting seems to be on the wall that paying points per weapon will go away as we see more codex where weapon upgrades are free.
What do people think, assuming 10th is a major reboot is that the direction they will go in? Should they?
For me the idea works when various weapon options are comparable.
I'm actually OK with the idea, but would need to see how it's implemented. There are other ways of costing things other than points - look at infinitys SWC. Points are often the worst and least-effective lever to pull - its better to look at the overall system.
Whether a mook has an x-weapon or a y-weapon often means less than people think it does when you zoom out and look at the big picture. But that's assuming other factors too.
Coming from the perspective of other games like pp's warmachine and warcaster:nm, especially the latter, where they are clearly moving away from 'assign every 'thing' a specific cost, tgos might be just a gradual shift in the industry as a while. Even gw's recent crackingly good kill-team has stepped away from 'traditional' approach to lost building/points costings so it would not surprise me to see some variation of this applied to the mass battle game.
vict0988 wrote:Let's just go with deliberately slow to understand.
Nah, go on. I know you're mincing your words, but the intent is still there.
Stop hiding, and just say it. It'll make this easier.
I think you misunderstood my point, and that's my fault. Klickor said that it was easier to build models how you like if the options don't have pts costs. Now whether someone like Sgt_Smudge who doesn't care about pts-efficiency plays with pts or power level is irrelevant because you will always pick the more flavourful option. It is when it comes to someone like Karol who does care about pts efficiency that it actually matters. By making thunderhammers and powerswords cost the same, people in Karol's community who see his Grey Knights army with power swords instead of thunderhammers won't take notice of that and adjust the number of special weapons and melee upgrades they take, they'll have an easy game and then tell Karol to rip his models apart because taking power swords is wrong and stupid. That's an attitude that some people have, it doesn't matter whether Karol likes power swords or doesn't want to rip his models apart. My comment was never about how I feel about players making sub-optimal choices for the benefit of fluff, but about how the experiences of players will be ruined by poor internal balance on datasheets which will automatically come about when you rule out wargear costs where they would be appropriate. When I tell people that X or Y option or unit is bad I always try to say that it's fine if they like that unit and that they should be careful about only taking the best units because then they'll have to play against better lists as well.
I will just add that a very important part about the options not having point costs is that I also think they should consolidate the options at the same time. So it wouldn't really matter what weapon they have so no need to rip them off the arms and rebuild them. If "anti infantry power weapon" is equally as good as "anti tank power weapon" and just have different niches so one isn't superior to the other then it would be fine if "Thunder Hammers" and "power swords" cost the same. Right now thunder hammers would be the better option if they both were free but if they at the same time gave "power sword" option +1 attack when fighting infantry or "thunder hammers" an additional -1 to hit against infantry or both then they would be used for mutually exclusive things and not really be a problem if one is "better" than the other since you probably wouldn't kit out your entire army with one of the options.
Deadnight wrote: Points are often the worst and least-effective lever to pull - its better to look at the overall system.
You can't give me a better alternative that allows for as much freedom without punishing people for their choices. Free wargear punishes people that don't want to take extra wargear. Limited options makes it impossible to bling out a squad. SWC cannot distinguish between a better weapon and a much better weapon, so the balance is going to be really rough. How silly would you feel for suggesting it should cost something other than pts to upgrade Assault Marines to Vanguard Veterans. Sometimes Assault Marines are bad, sometimes Vanguard Veterans are bad, with free upgrades Assault Marines are always bad, with SWC you still have the same old problem of whether the upgrade is worth the currency. But with SWC you're also running into the problem of whether every army can use the currency for anything.
Eliminate wargear costs? Sure, why not. If it gets the game closer to playing with PL, I'm good
Unlike many people, I don't care too much if 40K is "perfectly balanced". I have a strong dislike for Matched Play in general, give me asymmetric boards and lopsided forces with interesting mission objectives anyday instead of L-shaped ruins and "balanced" dross
Why not get rid of dice throwing altogether? It's ruining balanced gaming
tauist wrote: Eliminate wargear costs? Sure, why not. If it gets the game closer to playing with PL, I'm good
Unlike many people, I don't care too much if 40K is "perfectly balanced". I have a strong dislike for Matched Play in general, give me asymmetric boards and lopsided forces with interesting mission objectives anyday instead of L-shaped ruins and "balanced" dross
Why not get rid of dice throwing altogether? It's ruining balanced gaming
Yeah, sure, that gonna work out really nicely, if only we didn't make points, truly we will end up with a superior gameformat....
cough aos 1.
Of course if you want real balance points is one thing you do need to get rid of. Point of points isn't balance but quick way to set game up. Only noobs assume points give actual real balance. It's not their job and if you keep using points for that yot keep failing.
tauist wrote: Eliminate wargear costs? Sure, why not. If it gets the game closer to playing with PL, I'm good
Why would you want a different system to be closer to Power Level? Just use Power Level!
It'd be like me saying "Anything to make Tau more like Necrons, I'm good." Why wouldn't I just play Necrons if I love them so much. You have PL. Play PL. Why advocate for points to also be PL. What would be the point?
tauist wrote: ... I don't care too much if 40K is "perfectly balanced"...
Oh Christ not this claptrap again. Who precisely is calling for a "perfectly balanced" game in this thread?
ccs wrote: Lol. Just think, if some of you are this worked up now, over the idea of this change? Whatll happen to you if it becomes real?
That's two posts out of three on posts just blanket attacking everyone participating in the thread.
You planning on participating yourself, or just continuing to snipe from the shadows?
tneva82 wrote: Of course if you want real balance points is one thing you do need to get rid of. Point of points isn't balance but quick way to set game up. Only noobs assume points give actual real balance. It's not their job and if you keep using points for that yot keep failing.
GW is unique in the way that their points never work out. Other systems figured it out. In my own game, I looked at hit probabilities set a baseline at 50% and then modified it up and down based on the shifts. It took a while, but eventually I got a formula that pretty accurately reflects relative combat power.
GW's point system is just notoriously bad. In some editions, it is less bad, but it's still bad.
I don't really see a lot of game balance implications because GW isn't interested in anything other than selling models. I recall when AP 3 was king, and everyone scrambled to retool their armies to load up on things that used it. I see a similar dynamic here.
If GW decides power swords don't cost more than chainswords, you're going to see every army capable of fielding them re-equip with them because "they're free." (Yes, there will be stubborn grognards who don't convert, but GW will still make its money.)
And then, when the power curve explodes, GW will step in and change the rule to something else and people will cheer the return to reason and then have to modify all their armies again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
vict0988 wrote:Let's just go with deliberately slow to understand.
Nah, go on. I know you're mincing your words, but the intent is still there.
Stop hiding, and just say it. It'll make this easier.
I think you misunderstood my point, and that's my fault. Klickor said that it was easier to build models how you like if the options don't have pts costs. Now whether someone like Sgt_Smudge who doesn't care about pts-efficiency plays with pts or power level is irrelevant because you will always pick the more flavourful option. It is when it comes to someone like Karol who does care about pts efficiency that it actually matters. By making thunderhammers and powerswords cost the same, people in Karol's community who see his Grey Knights army with power swords instead of thunderhammers won't take notice of that and adjust the number of special weapons and melee upgrades they take, they'll have an easy game and then tell Karol to rip his models apart because taking power swords is wrong and stupid. That's an attitude that some people have, it doesn't matter whether Karol likes power swords or doesn't want to rip his models apart. My comment was never about how I feel about players making sub-optimal choices for the benefit of fluff, but about how the experiences of players will be ruined by poor internal balance on datasheets which will automatically come about when you rule out wargear costs where they would be appropriate. When I tell people that X or Y option or unit is bad I always try to say that it's fine if they like that unit and that they should be careful about only taking the best units because then they'll have to play against better lists as well.
I think I understand what you were saying, thank you for the elaboration and explanation. All the same, I must admit, I'm rather disappointed by the amount of other users who are now SUPPORTING the statement that players are "wrong and stupid" for taking "sub-par" choices, even if you yourself were not saying that (or only saying it as an example of toxic players who would make that claim).
PL is a silly format and if I thought there was a 99% chance of GW keeping pts and a 100% chance of GW keeping pts if I pressed a big button that got rid of PL then I'd press the button twice. But I don't hate PL or the people that enjoy. I would really like you all to understand that you are playing a silly format and understand that most people want better than the mediocrity of PL. Pts have been mediocre in 9th, but they can be good, PL will never be better than mediocre. One thing that has ticked me off a little bit is when people say that PL doesn't hurt pts players since GW is moving so fast in the direction of PL we get multiple threads in one year asking if it's going to happen and if it happens will it be good or bad for the game.
Now, that last bit is a fair point. As mentioned by Haighus, I don't want points and PL to become the same thing. I like them being separate. I like them both having a niche to exist. I don't believe that it's a silly format, though I can understand how someone else might believe so, and that's why I will still advocate for points to be what points players want it to be. However, when you say PL will only be mediocre, I have to disagree, but this is probably because our metrics of what we want from it are different. For me, PL is much more than that, and I like it.
So, if you aren't enjoying it, why do you play? Even if you only play to "steal dice", don't you enjoy stealing dice? I'd like to hope you enjoy what you do, else why are you on a forum for it?
Also, I have absolutely no idea what this tangent about 1800s artists is. Care to explain?
I don't steal dice, everything that comes before "/sarcasm" is said in jest.
I did get that, I was extending your metaphor - but I'm glad you don't steal dice!
All of that's because I cannot enjoy 40k for what it is supposed to be, a game about trying to complete the victory conditions.
And I think this is where we disagree, because I don't see 40k as that. I see it as a chance to tell stories, to enjoy playing with our lil plastic minis with a shared ruleset and framework, and a chance to create spectacle. Playing to the objective is entirely secondary to my experience.
You could make a commentary on an 1800s artist with an essay, or perhaps you could do it more abstractly through a play or a piece of music to convey your thoughts and feelings on the subject of the artist, it'd be obvious you were commenting on it in an essay, with a play or a piece of music it would be more abstract and most would miss it unless you noted it before playing the play or music. But conveying your thoughts through the medium of your 40k list is so abstract as to be absurd. When I discuss tactics I am not thinking about 1800s artists or fluff, those are separate concerns. An army can be stupid and wrong from the perspective of trying to win the game, while being sensical from the point of view of just trying to have a good time. Like putting a Triarch Stalker (supports ranged units) into a Novokh army (melee army) is stupid and wrong and I routinely do it because I don't care whether it is smart, like the people who did Jackass didn't care whether everything they did was smart, the goal was entertainment.
I still must say, I don't understand the 1800s analogy still at all. My "thoughts" are literally "tell a fun story, put on a good show, enjoy ourselves pushing around plastic minis with a shared framework".
You say "stupid and wrong", but that is only from that ONE perspective, and it is not the only one. Therefore, I think establishing that there isn't just one way to enjoy the game, and that there are a multitude which deserve equal respect is important, especially on this forum where even mentioning PL gets me dogpiled.
Forcing? I've never felt forced to change my army because of PL. You can speak for yourself, but don't use "everyone" when you can't prove that.
Also also, you know you don't need to play 40k with a mission pack, right?
Forced in the same way that you're forced to say whether you like your mother or your father best if you had a gun to your head, you could say both but then you'd get shot. You could take the laspistol but then your army is undeniably less suited to completing the victory conditions of whatever mission you are playing.
Mission is required, it's pretty much the first rule in the core rules. If you want to knock models around and make laser sounds that's cool, but it's not 40k unless there are victory conditions as far as I am concerned.
Mission are in the rules, yes, but so is "have fun playing". In fact, I think "have fun" comes before missions in the rulebook.
Plus, there are plenty of ways to play 40k that involve asymmetric styles of play, or even unwinnable games, where you just see how long you can last. After all, if a chance for victory is what defines 40k, then surely you should be ending games the moment one army has a significant enough lead that victory is assured. I keep playing on, because I like to see my games out to the end, and see what stories I can tell with it.
Again - I think forced is too strong a word here, because I'm not being "forced" in any practical way.
Deadnight wrote: Points are often the worst and least-effective lever to pull - its better to look at the overall system.
You can't give me a better alternative that allows for as much freedom without punishing people for their choices.
Here's the thing, in case you misunderstand my position. I'm coming from the pov that ttg's are very limited systems, can't hold much weight and really, we can only expect 'so much' from them before things start to go awry. We put the emphasis on collaborative game building and list-'matching' rather than double blind list-building-for-advantage for a reason.
Every approach has problems and consequences. It's the nature of ttgs.
'Being punished for your choices?' Yeah, That sounds like every implemented points system I've ever looked at.
Freedom of choice is illusory, especially when of your million choices only a handful are ever 'worth it'. And ascribing a universal cost to anything is a faulty foundation to begin with considering context ascribes value, more than anything else.
Buy this is going o/t and I'm.gonna leave it there.
Free wargear punishes people that don't want to take extra wargear. Limited options makes it impossible to bling out a squad. SWC cannot distinguish between a better weapon and a much better weapon, so the balance is going to be really rough.
Coming from a wmh background I'm perfectly OK with a 'lessening' or elimination of the wargear options and I don't see it as detrimental in any way. More stuff is just more book keeping and often just more bloat for very little value in my experience. 'Less is more' is not a punishment.
'Free' warhead can have a place. I remember when marines were 15pts and came with a bolter. Now they're whatever and get 'free' pistols and frag and kraks. And 'free' wargear can have a place if it's built into the overall unit cost - the cost is essentially carried elsewhere.
And i only mentioned swc as Swc is an interesting set up providing a second track to track cost and put the brakes on runaway builds. You can't just take 8x models with hmg's, even if you had the points. It's not ne essarily 'the answer', merely an example of an alternative approach. I.could have easily mrntioned pp's 2-list formats or multiple win conditions which had a far greater impact on promoting improved balance in their games' ecosystems than any amount of points-adjustments. I doubt most folks would be aware of w:nm's approach to list building, for example.
Lord Damocles wrote: I like how even in the OP's example of Guard weapons, the options clearly aren't equal, and therefore shouldn't be costed (or not) as such...
Thats really an issue of the grenade launcher being absolute trash and in need of a complete stats/role overhaul than anything else. Flamers, meltaguns, and plasmaguns all have strong arguments to be made for taking any of them despite the fact that they all cost the same currently (as far as guard are concerned anyway), and you will see competitive lists make use of any/all of them. The flamer is borderline though as most armies don't want for ways to kill more infantry, so its often reduced to a debate between plasma v melta as a result, with the tradeoff between them being that the melta offers raw stopping power against a single target, whereas the plasma gun is a bit less effective but has greater utility against a greater range of targets.
They're forgetting that they made points costs granular for a reason - it's a metric for game balance.
Its cute that people think this, but it honestly is not true, just an extremely pervasive misconstrued belief that has surface-level logic behind it that makes it seem like a reasonable assumption, but which does not actually stand up to deeper scrutiny or statistical analysis.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I swear we JUST had like 3-5 threads on this, with the last 2-3 being started by the same guy just remaking profiles to start troll threads.
Basically, 40k/Dakka is filled with contrarians, and when presented with a binary choice, the worst comes out, and the threads get locked. So yeah. Asked and answered.
Casual gamers - PL is the most fun.
Serious players - Points are more fun.
Ultra Competitive WAAC - Doesn't matter because points never really matter at that level, skill does.
People with game design pedigrees - You're all understanding, using, and applying points incorrectly (including GWs design team)
The issue with a lot of upgrades is that they are borderline meaningless - and so shouldn't obviously have a points cost. Even if they are objectively better.
So yes, a Guardsman sergeant expects to do twice as much damage with a power sword into Marines (with AOC) as with a Chainsword. But in real terms - we are talking about expecting to do 1/6th of a wound more. I.E. about 1.66 points extra damage if you get to swing - and you have not got instantly wiped out by something shooting or charging you.
What is that worth? 5 points? Obviously not. The odds of you making your points back are slim - in practice you'd just be giving your opponent an extra 5 points when they casually wipe the squad. A single point just because then? Maybe. But if so, surely you can just leave it at zero, and I suspect it will have almost no impact on the balance of the game.
Its arguably even more extreme in the case of a bolt pistol over a laspistol. The bolt pistol expects to do a quarter of a point more damage into marines every time I get to fire it over the las pistol. What is that worth to me? That's not worth a point.
On average I'd need to fire 72 bolt pistols to kill an additional marine over 72 laspistols. It seems somewhat unlikely to happen in any real game.
A plasma pistol by contrast seems worth something - because when supercharging that does about 10 times the damage into Marines, or about 5.5 points, rather than 0.555 the las pistol is giving you. Although you do need to factor in some reduction due to the chance of killing yourself.
But again, how many points are we talking here? Paying 5 points to do 5 extra points of damage sounds good. Unfortunately its on a 12" range in a Guardsmen squad that dies to a stiff breeze. You are therefore going to get plenty of games where you don't get to shoot - due to being out of range and then dead. So maybe it should be 2-3 points. But we could just go the full-hog and make it zero points. If you are taking 10 squads and have 10 free plasma pistols which "should cost an extra 20-30 points" is it likely to be a balance issue? Will anyone look at Guard win rates and go "its the free plasma pistols?" It seems unlikely.
But clearly as said, if plasma pistols are free, why would you ever bother with the other two? But I'd argue this is why weapon options should only exist if they bring utility. The laspistol has to be the "right choice" into certain lists. But there are none. So you are stuck with "what's it worth to upgrade a laspistol to a plasma pistol" - and the answer surely is "not much". At which point, whether its 0 points or 2 points is essentially academic.
What GW have often really struggled with is the glasscannonification of points increases. So you can say "this gun does more damage, it should cost more points". But this often overlooks that the unit is now giving up more points in turn. Which is why the whole game moves towards being glorified checkers - because everything kills everything.
And arguably, if you math things out so a unit having a special weapon does more damage, but gives up more points when attacked itself, you can potentially end up in the situation where it doesn't matter whether you take special weapons or not. Which might be good for balance, but feels a bit silly.
Which basically brings us back to wargear choices should somehow do something in game. A squad with a flamer is somehow very different to one with a melta gun - or nothing etc. Rather than just being more or less efficient in specific games and the meta as a whole.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: The handwriting seems to be on the wall that paying points per weapon will go away as we see more codex where weapon upgrades are free.
What do people think, assuming 10th is a major reboot is that the direction they will go in? Should they?
For me the idea works when various weapon options are comparable.
For the Imperial Guard you could have the plasma gun (kills everything, sometimes including you), melta gun (kills tanks, short range), flamer (kills light infantry, shorter range) and grenade launcher (kills nothing, kind of sucks). And a case could be made for taking any of them.
If the game became less granular, back to all power weapons having the same stats for example, it could work. The only people who'd miss out are the people who modeled 'naked' units to save points.
It would be terrible for the game and would give certain factions/units a ridiculous advantage over others.
A great example of this is just simple troop choices between Marines and Orkz. A Marine can take 5 man units and include a Sgt with a host of weapon options and a special or heavy weapons option. The unit come costs 90pts, it would end up receiving 58pts of FREE upgrades. (Multi-melta and combi-melta/PF)
What can the Boyz squad take? Well for starters they have to take 10 models, and the best "Free" gear would be a Rokkit Launcha and the Nob with 2 Killsaws So an 80pt squad gets 30pts of "free" upgrades
Marines get 64% more points and the Ork boyz get...37.5% more points. And of course the fact that the weapon options aren't correctly priced to begin with (10pts for a 1/3rd chance to hit with a rokkit isn't worth it)
And this isn't even going to the extreme examples. There are units which can take a ridiculous amount of weapon and gear upgrades. This idea would simply destroy any sense of balance or competitiveness in the game and it would become useless to play. Points at least vaguely balance things, taking 60%+ more points than your opponent because someone thought free upgrades was a good idea will just destroy the game.
@Semper Mortis it only wrecks internal balance, Plague Marines get tonnes of free stuff but Orks can still beat them if they're cheap enough and Plague Marines aren't even an auto-include in DG lists.
The issue with a lot of upgrades is that they are borderline meaningless - and so shouldn't obviously have a points cost. Even if they are objectively better.
So yes, a Guardsman sergeant expects to do twice as much damage with a power sword into Marines (with AOC) as with a Chainsword. But in real terms - we are talking about expecting to do 1/6th of a wound more. I.E. about 1.66 points extra damage if you get to swing - and you have not got instantly wiped out by something shooting or charging you.
What is that worth? 5 points? Obviously not. The odds of you making your points back are slim - in practice you'd just be giving your opponent an extra 5 points when they casually wipe the squad. A single point just because then? Maybe. But if so, surely you can just leave it at zero, and I suspect it will have almost no impact on the balance of the game.
That's only looking at external balance, internal balance means that there is a reason to take every option in the book. Even if a bolt pistol is overcosted at 1 point, there is still a reason to take it, it gives the shooting attack on your Sergeant +1 S. Power swords are a bit more complicated, against an Ork or Daemon you'll get more damage from a chainsword, there are enough downsides to taking a power sword on an AM Infantry Squad that it's fine to leave it at 0 pts compared to a chainsword.
I reckon a bolt pistol should be about 0,2 pts. You learn fractions in third grade and your app can handle the bigger numbers, I'm just not convinced that ease of calculating PL in your head is a real upside when more mistakes are bound to happen when you do mental calculations instead of using at the very least a piece of paper. Bolt pistols are just a question of principle, but the issue is very clear when you look at Plague Marines and their free wargear, it's a complete mess with every unit being completely blinged out. The bling might change a little from list to list but it's always there, if you own boltgun Plague Marines you might as well throw them in the trash.
And arguably, if you math things out so a unit having a special weapon does more damage, but gives up more points when attacked itself, you can potentially end up in the situation where it doesn't matter whether you take special weapons or not.
It absolutely matters, because you want your glasscannons safe and you want your sacrificial units cheap. There is no gameplay incentive to take weaker options unless they cost less. I get it is frustrating you want to bling out your squads and you don't feel the bling is worth it, but there is free where you'll always take something, undercosted where you'll probably take it, perfectly balanced where you'll take it if it fits your list, overcosted where you'll only take it if you have nothing else to use the pts for and hilariously overcosted where it is never worth it.
Lord Damocles wrote: I like how even in the OP's example of Guard weapons, the options clearly aren't equal, and therefore shouldn't be costed (or not) as such...
Thats really an issue of the grenade launcher being absolute trash and in need of a complete stats/role overhaul than anything else. Flamers, meltaguns, and plasmaguns all have strong arguments to be made for taking any of them despite the fact that they all cost the same currently (as far as guard are concerned anyway), and you will see competitive lists make use of any/all of them. The flamer is borderline though as most armies don't want for ways to kill more infantry, so its often reduced to a debate between plasma v melta as a result, with the tradeoff between them being that the melta offers raw stopping power against a single target, whereas the plasma gun is a bit less effective but has greater utility against a greater range of targets.
So the choices are equal, except for the one which is trash, and the other one which nobody takes already. Cooool.
Hey 2/4 are worth considering. That's GW balance in a nutshell...
ccs wrote: Lol. Just think, if some of you are this worked up now, over the idea of this change? Whatll happen to you if it becomes real?
That's two posts out of three on posts just blanket attacking everyone participating in the thread.
You planning on participating yourself, or just continuing to snipe from the shadows?
1) I said my piece on the subject waaay back near the top. But for you I'll repeat it: I'm ok with it wich ever way it goes. Though as I've said in other posts on PL I am a bit lazy & like just looking at a unit & seeing that it costs x. Doesn't matter to me if x is one digit, two, three....
On free/no cost meaning that I'll always take the best option? No it doesn't.
Because a lot of my stuff was built before 1/2 of you ever played your 1st game. Maybe I built it optimized for the edition I built the unit during. Of course maybe I also just built it to suit my own vision at the time. (I've always done that alot. Always will.) I likely don't remember. But it doesn't matter here in 2022+. These are finished models/units that I've been playing with for years & will continue to play with for more years. As long as the weapons options I built them with are options in the current edition I'm fine & my only question is: How many pts does this model/unit cost today.
New stuff I build today? Maybe it'll be optimized, maybe not. Odds are pretty equal. For ex: Come Jan when I start building my Votann? I'll build them heavy on Ion blasters & Beam weapons. Because that's what grabs my imagination with this force. Is that optimal? Sub-optimal? Doesn't matter. I like it & will figure out how to make it work for me. And a few years from now in 15th edition? Rules permitting, my nu-squats will still be armed like this.
2) It's not an attack. It's an honest question. And one that you should be considering how to answer. Some of you are pretty upset over a possible change. What will you do if it becomes real?
* Will you quit current 40k?
* Will you continue to play current 40k?
** Will you be like my friend Joe who continues to, for reasons known only to him, play versions of games he really doesn't like & then complains non-stop?
* Will any of you have mental breakdowns or aneurisms or post amusing vids of you burning your toys?
Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it.
There are loads of examples for this, such as the way everyone overcharges plasma almost all the time, because re-rolls are trivially easy to provide and the damage boost is basically always worth it.
If heavy and special weapons had more meaningful restrictions attached to them, it would be easier to balance them. Obviously not a practical example for 40k, but things like the Necromunda ammo rolls are a good example of what kind of things can be done- advanced support weapons are less reliable than basic guns in that setting.
They're forgetting that they made points costs granular for a reason - it's a metric for game balance.
Its cute that people think this, but it honestly is not true, just an extremely pervasive misconstrued belief that has surface-level logic behind it that makes it seem like a reasonable assumption, but which does not actually stand up to deeper scrutiny or statistical analysis.
People with game design pedigrees - You're all understanding, using, and applying points incorrectly (including GWs design team)
I think it would be helpful for the discussion if you explain why points are not a metric for game balance, and maybe explaine what they are, in your opinion/experience. As it stands, this post comes across as pretty condescending (esp. when using the word pedigree) and I don't think that is your intention.
It would be terrible for the game and would give certain factions/units a ridiculous advantage over others.
A great example of this is just simple troop choices between Marines and Orkz. A Marine can take 5 man units and include a Sgt with a host of weapon options and a special or heavy weapons option. The unit come costs 90pts, it would end up receiving 58pts of FREE upgrades. (Multi-melta and combi-melta/PF)
That is assuming GW won't increase the point costs of Space Marines which I expect them to do. If anything this means that we won't see an endless cascade of barebones squads.
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H.B.M.C. wrote: If one weapon is better than another, then upgrading to that weapon should have a cost.
The problem that lies therein is that either the weapon needs extra shots(like Multi-melta got) or we need to change the point costs. The current system is just too low end and to get to some realistic point you'd have to play 10.000 point games where a Battle Sister would cost around 80+ points. I would imagine that's something GW doesn't want to do.
The issue with a lot of upgrades is that they are borderline meaningless - and so shouldn't obviously have a points cost. Even if they are objectively better.
So yes, a Guardsman sergeant expects to do twice as much damage with a power sword into Marines (with AOC) as with a Chainsword. But in real terms - we are talking about expecting to do 1/6th of a wound more. I.E. about 1.66 points extra damage if you get to swing - and you have not got instantly wiped out by something shooting or charging you.
What is that worth? 5 points? Obviously not. The odds of you making your points back are slim - in practice you'd just be giving your opponent an extra 5 points when they casually wipe the squad. A single point just because then? Maybe. But if so, surely you can just leave it at zero, and I suspect it will have almost no impact on the balance of the game.
It doesn't matter. The Power Sword is not a sidegrade, it's an upgrade. The Chainsword has minimal targets you'd want it over. A system of free upgraded rewards someone that either can break the system or rewards someone that likes a particular aesthetic. How can you defend that?
The issue with a lot of upgrades is that they are borderline meaningless - and so shouldn't obviously have a points cost. Even if they are objectively better.
So yes, a Guardsman sergeant expects to do twice as much damage with a power sword into Marines (with AOC) as with a Chainsword. But in real terms - we are talking about expecting to do 1/6th of a wound more. I.E. about 1.66 points extra damage if you get to swing - and you have not got instantly wiped out by something shooting or charging you.
What is that worth? 5 points? Obviously not. The odds of you making your points back are slim - in practice you'd just be giving your opponent an extra 5 points when they casually wipe the squad. A single point just because then? Maybe. But if so, surely you can just leave it at zero, and I suspect it will have almost no impact on the balance of the game.
It doesn't matter. The Power Sword is not a sidegrade, it's an upgrade. The Chainsword has minimal targets you'd want it over. A system of free upgraded rewards someone that either can break the system or rewards someone that likes a particular aesthetic. How can you defend that?
So how many points is a Power Sword worth for a Guard Sergeant?
What's the fair cost, when a squad of Guard is 65 Points base?
Even against an enemy GEQ squad, you're looking at doing no damage from the Sarge 4/9 times. That's better than a Chainsword... But not by much.
Against a MEQ, it's 84% chance of doing nothing with a Chainsword, and 69% with a Power Sword.
It's such a paltry amount of melee damage from a non-melee squad that it'll be irrelevant in nine games out of ten, at least.
I can agree that a Lascannon should cost more than a Missile Launcher (or the Missile Launcher should be buffed to be worth the same) but the melee options? None of them make the Sergeant a good melee combatant, let alone the whole squad.
@JNA How much a power sword is worth depends on combos and synergies, I don't know how much exists, but I can see it being worth 5 points at the high end if you're looking at a 3A S4 WS4+ dude with Hatred and the potential to fight twice. Otherwise? Probably 1 point. It's not a big deal to pay 1 extra point, where do you need those extra 12 points you're spending on your perhaps slightly overcosted power swords and bolt pistols anyway?
You're ignoring the bigger issue which is trading a plague knife for Nurgle's sacred plague Daeamon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus star of death for 0 pts.
Eldarsif wrote: The problem that lies therein is that either the weapon needs extra shots(like Multi-melta got) or we need to change the point costs. The current system is just too low end and to get to some realistic point you'd have to play 10.000 point games where a Battle Sister would cost around 80+ points. I would imagine that's something GW doesn't want to do.
A children's card game (Yugioh) has 8000 life points, 40k players can play with 40000 pts, that's ignoring the option of fractions and the fact that bolt pistols being 1 point overcosted isn't a big deal, but absolute upgrades being free is a big deal because there is no reason not to take them if you want to win.
The issue with a lot of upgrades is that they are borderline meaningless - and so shouldn't obviously have a points cost. Even if they are objectively better.
So yes, a Guardsman sergeant expects to do twice as much damage with a power sword into Marines (with AOC) as with a Chainsword. But in real terms - we are talking about expecting to do 1/6th of a wound more. I.E. about 1.66 points extra damage if you get to swing - and you have not got instantly wiped out by something shooting or charging you.
What is that worth? 5 points? Obviously not. The odds of you making your points back are slim - in practice you'd just be giving your opponent an extra 5 points when they casually wipe the squad. A single point just because then? Maybe. But if so, surely you can just leave it at zero, and I suspect it will have almost no impact on the balance of the game.
It doesn't matter. The Power Sword is not a sidegrade, it's an upgrade. The Chainsword has minimal targets you'd want it over. A system of free upgraded rewards someone that either can break the system or rewards someone that likes a particular aesthetic. How can you defend that?
So how many points is a Power Sword worth for a Guard Sergeant?
What's the fair cost, when a squad of Guard is 65 Points base?
Even against an enemy GEQ squad, you're looking at doing no damage from the Sarge 4/9 times. That's better than a Chainsword... But not by much.
Against a MEQ, it's 84% chance of doing nothing with a Chainsword, and 69% with a Power Sword.
It's such a paltry amount of melee damage from a non-melee squad that it'll be irrelevant in nine games out of ten, at least.
It doesn't matter how irrelevant you think it is. The melee option exists for sergeants for a reason. 0 points for a Power Sword on a Devastator sergeant would be bad design too, even though it's a range squad first and foremost. If it's an improvement, it had a cost. Period.
For a fair price, that's a different story. GW sticking with increments of 5 for upgrades is more a problem than anything. Knock it down to 3 points and see how it goes. Even to 2 if you want. It should NOT be a free exchange though.
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Racerguy180 wrote: How about we stick to base profiles first before factoring in wombocombos?
I for one would be fine if they added a zero to EVERY SINGLE POINTS COST IN GAME! More granularity couldn't hurt.
I don't think we need a zero added. I think just multiplying by 2 would help do the trick.
vict0988 wrote: You're ignoring the bigger issue which is trading a plague knife for Nurgle's sacred plague Daeamon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus star of death for 0 pts.
But if Nurgle's Sacred Plague Daemon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus start of death amounts to... you get +1S, how many points is it worth?
Somewhere between zero and 1? In which case, what's the gameplay impact of it being zero?
I mean your Plague Marine Champion does 33% more damage into MEQ. But in real terms, we are talking about an expected damage increase of 1.29~ points going into a 20 point Intercessor. Who cares? This has essentially no impact on winning a game of 9th edition 40k. Which is why it can be zero points and not matter.
In the same way of "how do I defend a power sword being free"? Because it doesn't matter.
I don't want to say this applies to everything - because say a guardsmen squad with plasma/melta is clearly better than just lasguns. And quite significantly so in certain circumstances. But I don't mind a system where this is incorporated into a squads cost, and people who didn't build any specials are a bit worse off. Go and buy some if it bothers you.
vict0988 wrote: You're ignoring the bigger issue which is trading a plague knife for Nurgle's sacred plague Daeamon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus star of death for 0 pts.
But if Nurgle's Sacred Plague Daemon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus start of death amounts to... you get +1S, how many points is it worth?
About tree fiddy. Now you tell me why Nurgle's sacred plague Daeamon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus star of death only adds +1S. Is it because you wanted to remove pts costs from upgrades for no good reason?
what's the gameplay impact of it being zero?
The gameplay impact is that you have no good reason to use your plague knife and bolter Plague Marines so the game pieces you paid for stop being game pieces and that's annoying and unethical.
And quite significantly so in certain circumstances. But I don't mind a system where this is incorporated into a squads cost, and people who didn't build any specials are a bit worse off. Go and buy some if it bothers you.
What's the upside of giving up internal balance like this? Just pay whatever Nurgle's sacred plague Daeamon blade forged in the heart of a dying pus star of death is worth if you want to use it and if you don't then take your discount.
I'd rather see more impactful things addressed before minutiae.
Interfaction and intrafaction balance for one. Look at Daemons-Tzeentch has arguably the single best datasheet in the entire game, and Khorne is doing reasonably well across the board for the most part. And Nurgle... Well, it's there.
Quibbling over a whether a Power Sword on a GEQ should be 0-1 points is something that can be addressed later.
I'm ok with free weapons to a point. When it's small units, overly restricted weapons, or units that don't often do much on the table then go for it.
When it comes to something like Kasrkin I'm a little more skeptical. Clearly no one will ever not take all four specials. OTOH this gives us a more consistent outcome for the unit in games.
Obviously some weapons are much more edge case ( e.g. flamers ) than others, but overall the difference in weapon function and targeting is so much better that there is no real one size fits all choice.
JNAProductions wrote: I'd rather see more impactful things addressed before minutiae.
Interfaction and intrafaction balance for one. Look at Daemons-Tzeentch has arguably the single best datasheet in the entire game, and Khorne is doing reasonably well across the board for the most part. And Nurgle... Well, it's there.
Quibbling over a whether a Power Sword on a GEQ should be 0-1 points is something that can be addressed later.
Internal balance needs to be checked before external balance can.
Daedalus81 wrote: I'm ok with free weapons to a point. When it's small units, overly restricted weapons, or units that don't often do much on the table then go for it.
When it comes to something like Kasrkin I'm a little more skeptical. Clearly no one will ever not take all four specials. OTOH this gives us a more consistent outcome for the unit in games.
Obviously some weapons are much more edge case ( e.g. flamers ) than others, but overall the difference in weapon function and targeting is so much better that there is no real one size fits all choice.
Good point, but with Kasrkin it's even weirder - not taking all the specials is actually the strongest loud out (taking only hotshot weapons including volley and maybe sniper and using the MW strat is already showing up in tournament topping lists).
For me, baking in some costs is fine but anything that substantially alters a units function has to be priced otherwise we end up in situations where options don't matter as there is simply a selection of items that are either underpriced or overpriced relative to the arbitrary value assigned to the unit.
Racerguy180 wrote: How about we stick to base profiles first before factoring in wombocombos?
I for one would be fine if they added a zero to EVERY SINGLE POINTS COST IN GAME! More granularity couldn't hurt.
Because combos exist. GW though tyranid warriors were balanced for what they did. They were a bit off on that, because they are a bit too good. But when they could suddenly be only wounded on a +4, it drasticly changed them.
Any unit or weapon that seems balanced, stops being balanced if extra rules are added. Lets take intercessor for example. They have a grenade launcher option per 5 dudes. In effecient and moot rule most of the time. but what if with the return of the Lion the weapon vaults of the DA are open for that one faction, and suddenly those intercessors are shoting vortex grenades with a 2-3CP stratagem. Only DAs can do it. Other mariens don't have access. Now GWs anwsers to such problems is almost never the changing of the problem unit, but rather carpet bombing the entire slot. Tau Cmds and Tyrants a problem? now no one can take 3+ units of non troops. Tau bomber are NPE, opponents can do nothing about. GW nukes all fliers, including 99% that are bad and now got worse. LoV Thunder dudes are horrible, but the community calls for nerfs so lets hike up their point costs, so that no one who can read buys the unit. etc.
It would be better for the game if GW just be open about it, build one working list for each faction. And if someone wants to play an in efficient or not working list, then they can play narrative or open. This way at least stuff would be in the open and new players wouldn't have to learn the fact that hard way. It would also mean that if GW decided that a type of build should no longer be a thing, they would have to change point costs and rules in a such a way that the faction doesn't get stranded with nothing, but now has a new way to play. It would still be better then what exits now.
They've been "streamlining" to the absolute cost of the battle experience since 8th was conceived of so why not?
We have a game which is essentially a video game of two forces hitting attack over and over until one runs out of hitpoints and they are hiding this by ensuring the player has an awful lot of "processing" to do. Special weapon points are irrelevant.
Dai wrote: They've been "streamlining" to the absolute cost of the battle experience since 8th was conceived of so why not?
We have a game which is essentially a video game of two forces hitting attack over and over until one runs out of hitpoints and they are hiding this by ensuring the player has an awful lot of "processing" to do. Special weapon points are irrelevant.
Sadly, this is all too true.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it.
This is also true. The fact that you can now assault after firing *any* weapon (not just Assault and Pistol weapons), means that Assault is frequently just a markedly worse type than rapid fire (and I'm not sure many profiles/costs were changed to reflect this fact).
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
JNAProductions wrote: I'd rather see more impactful things addressed before minutiae.
Interfaction and intrafaction balance for one. Look at Daemons-Tzeentch has arguably the single best datasheet in the entire game, and Khorne is doing reasonably well across the board for the most part. And Nurgle... Well, it's there.
Quibbling over a whether a Power Sword on a GEQ should be 0-1 points is something that can be addressed later.
So what happens if GW removes pts costs for all SM upgrades and fix Flamers of Tzeentch? You call that a step forward? Internal balance matters more to 40k players than one faction having one overpowered datasheet. It's not even like Flamers lists win every tournament.
The game needs a balance foundation instead of this hopping from one branch to the next branch with a broken wing underdeveloped gak. Put the bird out of its misery and start at the basics, write rules based on fluff, scissors should not be AP-1. Things that are strictly better should cost more points. Determine the value of a point to the Space Marines codex. Playtest pts with the finalized rules before release against Space Marines and several other factions. The most popular units in the most overperforming factions in competitive play should cost more. The least popular units in underperforming factions in competitive play should cost less.
If GW slowed down releases in a more "fixed" edition and then removed all wargear costs and made all upgrades free and then worked from there I think they could massively improve the game. Current GW with the current way 40k works points for wargear is just too much work for GW.
If they started with trying to find the point cost of the most powerful load out (and didn't change everything every 6 months) then they could start with at least getting that load out the correct points and at least have 1 build for each unit that is balanced around competitive play. Like say they give devastators a cost of 100 and assume everyone is going to go for all meltas. If people want they can go lascannons or heavy bolters in their casual games and it will still cost 100pts. After 6 months they might find out that it should have been 105pts and the unit is perfect at the higher end like that. Then they can try having all the other options at -5pts for the unit and work down. Over time more and more options would be balanced. If they can't do it then they should perhaps consolidate some options and slow down on their updating.
Rather than now where everything goes up and down in points and its a pure 50/50 if it was a good or bad decision from GW and entire units (not to mention specific load outs) can go from stellar to crap or the reverse at any point. Not everything needs to be perfect. But the current way make almost no unit well costed. It is just that a combination of limited under costed units is balanced by having mandatory overcosted units so as a whole it is balanced if the right units are taken. But I would prefer at least some units and some load outs are well balanced and then GW tries to balance more. Strive to reach perfection by iteration over time. Not all at once.
IF GW were good at this I would love even more points and more options than there currently is. I love mathhammer and thinking about optimal load outs and how different game mechanics work. I'm the type that used to go look up the .txt files in old computer games(or not so old for things like Paradox games) for getting the exact stats and mechanics so I could take out my notebook and calculator. So if GW could give me more of that I would be happy. But they obviously can't and the game is more bloated then ever without having well costed units, items and abilities. So for everyones sake they should reduce the amount of bloat until they have learned how to handle it.
I think saying pts changes are 50/50 good/bad is too harsh, it's 90% good, 10% bad. If GW stopped with the rules changes like implementing Armour of Contempt and randomly giving Custodes Martial Katahs or improving Flayed Ones AP for no reason things would go a lot faster.
The problem with 40k is that there is no baseline of saying what is balanced, if Space Marines were internally balanced around Intercessors then other armies could be balanced around Space Marines, trying to keep Space Marines in a 50% win rate overall.
Whether the most cost-efficient option for Devastators is heavy bolters or multi-meltas doesn't really matter, you still have to buff the underperforming options or nerf the overperforming option based on how good Devastators are relative to the rest of the SM faction and how good SM are compared to the rest of the meta.
All the wargear options in 40k are peanuts compared to how much Stratagems and Chapter Tactics affect balance, remove 90% of Stratagems and every Chapter Tactic and that'll give GW that chance to actually balance stuff. As Karol mentioned, it's not the grenade launcher that's OP, it's the Dark Angels Stratagem that makes an otherwise fair option too good.
I think it is a combination. Even if they just reduced the amount of special rules I think they have wargear overload and there is no way they will be able to balance it with the current release schedule and design team. So I would be content if GW settled for at least one load out to be internally balanced for each unit. (and might as well consolidate the weapon profiles at the same time) When they can manage that then they can try balancing different load outs for the same unit.(and split the profiles up again if they can manage)
I think this is a good example of "Perfect is the enemy of good enough". Rather than try to fix one thing they try to fix everything at once and thus will never succeed. Strive for good enough and then improve it and if you can or can not reach perfection it is of less importance as long as it is good enough.
60% of options having no use case because of a refusal to add costs to wargear isn't good, it is awful. The only way to do worse would be for the inferior option to cost more than the superior option (0 pt plasma 0 pt grenade launcher terrible, 5 pt plasma 10 pt grenade launcher unfathomably bad). You are the one pretending that if wargear options aren't perfectly balanced then there is no reason for any of them to have different pts costs (perfect is 5 pt plasma 0 pt grenade launcher or something like that but 8 pt plasma 3 pt grenade launcher is still good). It's not that hard to figure out that lasguns and grenade launchers should cost less than plasma guns or that bolt pistols and plasma pistols should cost more than las pistols.
GW has the money to hire an Indian off Fiverr to figure out what options are roughly worth. Then they decide on a value and ask their testers what adjustments need to be made without changing stats any more. Every year they review based on community opinion and competitive performance and update pts within the parameters of the math they did at the start.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Frankly the increased availabilty in slots is also the removal of a cost.
I can't wait for the GSC horde lists with bonus CP to roll over some unsuspecting list with the new ark of omens detachment. Afterall 12 troop slots mean 6 suicide squads and 6 neophyte squads for the tax of one HQ instead of 2 and some cp.
Not Online!!! wrote: Frankly the increased availabilty in slots is also the removal of a cost.
I can't wait for the GSC horde lists with bonus CP to roll over some unsuspecting list with the new ark of omens detachment. Afterall 12 troop slots mean 6 suicide squads and 6 neophyte squads for the tax of one HQ instead of 2 and some cp.
Yes, the expansion of FOCs has also reduced balance by reducing scarcity.
Not Online!!! wrote: Frankly the increased availabilty in slots is also the removal of a cost.
I can't wait for the GSC horde lists with bonus CP to roll over some unsuspecting list with the new ark of omens detachment. Afterall 12 troop slots mean 6 suicide squads and 6 neophyte squads for the tax of one HQ instead of 2 and some cp.
Yes, the expansion of FOCs has also reduced balance by reducing scarcity.
Tbf that was in the past already a problem, f.e. Nurgle CSM lords allowing PM's when they were actually good to be taken as troops, making CSM's even more redundant in a whole edition than they in general already were. (4th)... or certain formations...
but more on my exemple above, it actually is doubly problematic because CPs which supposedly were a hard to come by ressource then an easy and now once again a hard to come by one also got less scarce. It's doubly stupid so to speak. And i wonder how armies will be able to deal with 12 powertool weapons in their face AND the 12 mining weapons in the back ontop of that if they themselves have not cheap chaff to screen...
Edit: incidentally when slots were scarcer and unit types more pronounced (e.g. actual armor) then that placed opportunity cost on units like raptors or havocs because you'd forgo an Armor value unit instead...
Wraithguard being bad while away from a Psyker isn't going to balance them, the only way to achieve balance is with an appropriate pts cost. You can have units with downsides that are bad, fair or strong and units without downsides that are bad, fair or strong.
Not Online!!! wrote: Frankly the increased availabilty in slots is also the removal of a cost.
I can't wait for the GSC horde lists with bonus CP to roll over some unsuspecting list with the new ark of omens detachment. Afterall 12 troop slots mean 6 suicide squads and 6 neophyte squads for the tax of one HQ instead of 2 and some cp.
Yes, the expansion of FOCs has also reduced balance by reducing scarcity.
If people only take Tactical Squads because of a Detachment tax and never any more than the tax requires then is there really internal balance? If SM paying their Tactical Squad tax to play causes SM to have a 40% win rate against armies with balanced or undercosted Troops choices is the external balance any better than in a world where Space Marines just skip the overcosted Troops and take their more appropriately costed Vindicators and get a 45% win rate? Balance is achieved through pts, everything else is fluff. You lose and gain weight through nutrition, exercise is for performance and aesthetics.
tauist wrote: Eliminate wargear costs? Sure, why not. If it gets the game closer to playing with PL, I'm good
Why would you want a different system to be closer to Power Level? Just use Power Level!
It'd be like me saying "Anything to make Tau more like Necrons, I'm good." Why wouldn't I just play Necrons if I love them so much. You have PL. Play PL. Why advocate for points to also be PL. What would be the point?
No, your analogue is flawed. I want PL to reign supreme over points because GW doesn't do consistent, which means PL and points will never get equal amount of attention, especially when an edition has been dragged out over halfway of its lifespan. Points had their chance in all other editions of the game, lets try PL only for one edition just to shake things up
tauist wrote: ... I don't care too much if 40K is "perfectly balanced"...
Oh Christ not this claptrap again. Who precisely is calling for a "perfectly balanced" game in this thread?
You know what? I don't take this stuff half as serious as some of you guys. Maybe I shouldn't post my opinions on these threads at all. But youknow this is still a public forum, so I'm allowed my 2 markka's just as anyone. Isn't ever increasing balance the holy grail most of yall seek for this game? perfect statistical winrates for all factions? *yawn* That's what it always feels like to me anyway..
Tell you what, I'll denote my "snipe comments" better in the future so no one needs to bother replying. I'm not really looking to debate my hot takes. Jolly good? Carry on.
vict0988 wrote: 60% of options having no use case because of a refusal to add costs to wargear isn't good, it is awful.
Then fix the wargear items or remove them.
The example in here of guard officer chainsword vs power sword is a good one. Either have a "guard Sargent melee weapon" which is a blended profile or leave the power sword as is and give them a guard chainsword that gives enough of a boost to give it an equivalent use case.
vict0988 wrote: Wraithguard being bad while away from a Psyker isn't going to balance them, the only way to achieve balance is with an appropriate pts cost. You can have units with downsides that are bad, fair or strong and units without downsides that are bad, fair or strong.
Not Online!!! wrote: Frankly the increased availabilty in slots is also the removal of a cost.
I can't wait for the GSC horde lists with bonus CP to roll over some unsuspecting list with the new ark of omens detachment. Afterall 12 troop slots mean 6 suicide squads and 6 neophyte squads for the tax of one HQ instead of 2 and some cp.
Yes, the expansion of FOCs has also reduced balance by reducing scarcity.
If people only take Tactical Squads because of a Detachment tax and never any more than the tax requires then is there really internal balance? If SM paying their Tactical Squad tax to play causes SM to have a 40% win rate against armies with balanced or undercosted Troops choices is the external balance any better than in a world where Space Marines just skip the overcosted Troops and take their more appropriately costed Vindicators and get a 45% win rate? Balance is achieved through pts, everything else is fluff. You lose and gain weight through nutrition, exercise is for performance and aesthetics.
i disagree, insofar that is a shortsighted view for multiple reasons.
For one not requiring x of a unit type is a clear hallmark that lists can skew and by extention turns the game into an overcomplex game of rock paper scissors because it is an easy way to tap into diffrent types of durability at no detriment requiring specific answers (it's also a reason why i think imperial knights never should've been released the way they were but here we are).
For two GW failing at making troop units any good or fullfill a role (especially in elite armies a theme from GW) is a failure on GW's side of things.
For three it allowed for easier management of the supposed asymetric balance of the game but not turning it into spam fest.But since it's gw that we are talking about the FOC was only a limit to some factions whilest others didn't have that, because in theory it allowed armies to have moe efficent units in some slots whilest not being oppresive due to a cap on said units.
vict0988 wrote: Wraithguard being bad while away from a Psyker isn't going to balance them, the only way to achieve balance is with an appropriate pts cost. You can have units with downsides that are bad, fair or strong and units without downsides that are bad, fair or strong.
Not Online!!! wrote: Frankly the increased availabilty in slots is also the removal of a cost.
I can't wait for the GSC horde lists with bonus CP to roll over some unsuspecting list with the new ark of omens detachment. Afterall 12 troop slots mean 6 suicide squads and 6 neophyte squads for the tax of one HQ instead of 2 and some cp.
Yes, the expansion of FOCs has also reduced balance by reducing scarcity.
If people only take Tactical Squads because of a Detachment tax and never any more than the tax requires then is there really internal balance? If SM paying their Tactical Squad tax to play causes SM to have a 40% win rate against armies with balanced or undercosted Troops choices is the external balance any better than in a world where Space Marines just skip the overcosted Troops and take their more appropriately costed Vindicators and get a 45% win rate? Balance is achieved through pts, everything else is fluff. You lose and gain weight through nutrition, exercise is for performance and aesthetics.
It is more for internal balance than external balance, but yes, it is just a tool in the toolbox. I think a useful one within 40k where the increased killing efficiency of elites and heavy support units tend to be difficult to balance against the (sometimes) better scoring of troops. There also used to be more 0-1 or 0-2 limits to restrict units that could be too powerful en masse.
vict0988 wrote: 60% of options having no use case because of a refusal to add costs to wargear isn't good, it is awful.
Then fix the wargear items or remove them.
The example in here of guard officer chainsword vs power sword is a good one. Either have a "guard Sargent melee weapon" which is a blended profile or leave the power sword as is and give them a guard chainsword that gives enough of a boost to give it an equivalent use case.
Blended profiles you say? like the CSM terminators? Because that is a good solution on paper but ridicoulus because it leads to the Traitor guardsmen squad i posted before. On paper a squad with nothing is equal in points to a squad with all the bling? And then we remove the bling and give a flat profile to the traitor guardsmen lasgun?
And why excactly should guard or csm for that matter get the removal of options when it is the SM codex that literally has more bolter variations than what 30k has in shooting weapons total at this stage?
vict0988 wrote: 60% of options having no use case because of a refusal to add costs to wargear isn't good, it is awful.
Then fix the wargear items or remove them.
The example in here of guard officer chainsword vs power sword is a good one. Either have a "guard Sargent melee weapon" which is a blended profile or leave the power sword as is and give them a guard chainsword that gives enough of a boost to give it an equivalent use case.
Blended profiles you say? like the CSM terminators? Because that is a good solution on paper but ridicoulus because it leads to the Traitor guardsmen squad i posted before. On paper a squad with nothing is equal in points to a squad with all the bling? And then we remove the bling and give a flat profile to the traitor guardsmen lasgun?
And why excactly should guard or csm for that matter get the removal of options when it is the SM codex that literally has more bolter variations than what 30k has in shooting weapons total at this stage?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to write the rules for a squad with the assumption they'll take whatever special/heavy options they have, especially if options are free.
So to go back to your examples, the issue with the traitor guard squad is that the upgrade items aren't well balanced against each other. If there is a reasonable opportunity cost to all options, without one being the "best" or "most efficient" then it doesn't matter any more.
Now before you inevitably say "but that's what points are for", we've decades of evidence that GW can't nuance the levels of difference between options, they simply don't allow the room or granularity. A 5pt window for a melee upgrade on a Sergeant is sat in that line between "not needed, save points" or it's "basically free include anyway". Balance the weapons out so there isn't an intentionally bad cheaper option and that goes away.
I'd also hop in to agree bolters want consolidation but ironically, bolt rifles, auto bolters and stalker rifles all have different niches that warrant their existence.
vict0988 wrote: 60% of options having no use case because of a refusal to add costs to wargear isn't good, it is awful.
Then fix the wargear items or remove them.
The example in here of guard officer chainsword vs power sword is a good one. Either have a "guard Sargent melee weapon" which is a blended profile or leave the power sword as is and give them a guard chainsword that gives enough of a boost to give it an equivalent use case.
Blended profiles you say? like the CSM terminators? Because that is a good solution on paper but ridicoulus because it leads to the Traitor guardsmen squad i posted before. On paper a squad with nothing is equal in points to a squad with all the bling? And then we remove the bling and give a flat profile to the traitor guardsmen lasgun?
And why excactly should guard or csm for that matter get the removal of options when it is the SM codex that literally has more bolter variations than what 30k has in shooting weapons total at this stage?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to write the rules for a squad with the assumption they'll take whatever special/heavy options they have, especially if options are free.
That is true, but inherently questionable design due to weapons being designed for specific tasks. Because it further leads to restrictions on gw's side and disallows for specialised units. At which point why even bother handing out options at all and operate on a fixed loadout system.
So to go back to your examples, the issue with the traitor guard squad is that the upgrade items aren't well balanced against each other. If there is a reasonable opportunity cost to all options, without one being the "best" or "most efficient" then it doesn't matter any more.
Nope, missed the issue, the issue is 3 special weapons but not being able to specialise whilest at the same time being far superior to normal cultists.
Now before you inevitably say "but that's what points are for", we've decades of evidence that GW can't nuance the levels of difference between options, they simply don't allow the room or granularity. A 5pt window for a melee upgrade on a Sergeant is sat in that line between "not needed, save points" or it's "basically free include anyway". Balance the weapons out so there isn't an intentionally bad cheaper option and that goes away.
but that is what points are for, GW running 40k with the same clowns in the rulesteam still whilest 30k does a better job already (still far from perfect but not anymore 5 pts increments for upgrades) is just a proof for that this is a GW issue and not a points as a system issue. You don't solve that however by streamlining and removing the system which should bring in opportunity cost, you fire instead the 40k ruleswriters which to this day refuse to take responsibility and borderline snap at people in FAQ's when they made the rules mistakes and not the players and get confronted by issues presented to them by the players. Or releasing codices that require pre-full-release nerfs.
I'd also hop in to agree bolters want consolidation but ironically, bolt rifles, auto bolters and stalker rifles all have different niches that warrant their existence.
5 bolt versions are good enough. Pistol, boltgun, Heavy bolter, assault bolter and a sniper / kraken bolter. The fact as it stands that we have literally more boltgun profiles than we had full weapon profiles in older SM codices or just flat out more boltguns than shooting weapons in 30k in total is just idiocy.
vict0988 wrote: 60% of options having no use case because of a refusal to add costs to wargear isn't good, it is awful.
Then fix the wargear items or remove them.
The example in here of guard officer chainsword vs power sword is a good one. Either have a "guard Sargent melee weapon" which is a blended profile or leave the power sword as is and give them a guard chainsword that gives enough of a boost to give it an equivalent use case.
You still haven't established what is wrong with the wargear or the benefits of a 0 cost wargear system. Your offering solutions to a problem that doesn't exist yet. Solutions that aren't lore friendly which is the whole purpose of playing 40k instead of chess. Now you also have 5 million more weapon profiles worth of bloat.
Not Online!!! wrote: For one not requiring x of a unit type is a clear hallmark that lists can skew and by extention turns the game into an overcomplex game of rock paper scissors because it is an easy way to tap into diffrent types of durability at no detriment requiring specific answers (it's also a reason why i think imperial knights never should've been released the way they were but here we are).
You can still skew with a CAD. There is no rhyme or reason to battlefield roles.
For three it allowed for easier management of the supposed asymetric balance of the game but not turning it into spam fest.
Spamfests were stopped by rule of 3 and secondaries. Units were not intelligently put into battlefield roles, limiting FLYERS and COMMANDERS does so in a much more appropriate way. Taking 3 units of Canoptek Wraiths and 3 units of Canoptek Scarabs has never and will never be a problem. Space Marines were allowed to spam Dreadnoughts in a CAD and many proponents of the CAD want something similar for their army. I say let freedom reign and punish spam through secondaries.
Dudeface wrote: I think it's perfectly reasonable to write the rules for a squad with the assumption they'll take whatever special/heavy options they have, especially if options are free.
Options were not free 12 months ago. It is immoral to tell people that their Plague Marines with boltguns and plague knives aren't valid game pieces any longer. What happened to Your Dudes?
Now before you inevitably say "but that's what points are for", we've decades of evidence that GW can't nuance the levels of difference between options, they simply don't allow the room or granularity. A 5pt window for a melee upgrade on a Sergeant is sat in that line between "not needed, save points" or it's "basically free include anyway". Balance the weapons out so there isn't an intentionally bad cheaper option and that goes away.
Storm shield VanVets are OP compared to boltgun VanVets but storm shield Terminators are balanced compared to combi-bolter Terminators, what do you do?
Daedalus81 wrote: I'm ok with free weapons to a point. When it's small units, overly restricted weapons, or units that don't often do much on the table then go for it.
When it comes to something like Kasrkin I'm a little more skeptical. Clearly no one will ever not take all four specials. OTOH this gives us a more consistent outcome for the unit in games.
Obviously some weapons are much more edge case ( e.g. flamers ) than others, but overall the difference in weapon function and targeting is so much better that there is no real one size fits all choice.
Good point, but with Kasrkin it's even weirder - not taking all the specials is actually the strongest loud out (taking only hotshot weapons including volley and maybe sniper and using the MW strat is already showing up in tournament topping lists).
For me, baking in some costs is fine but anything that substantially alters a units function has to be priced otherwise we end up in situations where options don't matter as there is simply a selection of items that are either underpriced or overpriced relative to the arbitrary value assigned to the unit.
Good to know - I haven't taken a deep dive on that book yet. I'm guessing they're using FRFSRF and Born Soldiers to push the MW. I wonder if there's some middle point where a couple meltas would be worth losing the 1MW on average from the strat.
Strats are another layer that ( bad or good ) can create scenarios that change your loadout choices. I know lots of people don't like them, but they do offer a limited way to improve things that are hard to balance through points ( but obviously they can also screw up balance ).
Ideally, options should be equal, because points costs aren't all that great at differentiating options. After all, it's not the choice between a killgun and a metadeathgun or whatever that you're making, it's the choice between a whole squad with one of those. In a points system, many upgrades just won't ever be worth it. If you have a melee unit, and you have a 'choice' to get either a regular old melee weapon or a power axe, you either always take the power axe (if it's worth the points) or never. Many units in 40k either are just bodies or they carry serious weapons, and that's the choice you're making.
It would be much better to make all the different options actually worth it. Plasma and melta, to take common examples, both are serious upgrades that can be clearly differentiated. Flamers tend to be more difficult because they don't do all that much and
As for melee weapons, I'm a huge fan of just going back to having a few categories. There's no need to differentiate all sorts of differently shaped weapons because it only leads to more subobtimal choices without actually adding much to the game (sure, the numbers are a bit different but a power sword, axe, and what have you are all fundamentally the same kind of weapon). And so, you have a more or less efficient option. If you make them all the same you remove that whole issue without actually hurting the game.
For weapons that actually are pretty different,they should have clear roles that differentiate them, not some tiny differences in points. Sure, it can be 5 or 10 points for a weapon, but that's not what people are actual paying. They're paying 100 or 105 points for a unit, and if one option actually gives that unit more real capability, it will always be taken.
Good to know - I haven't taken a deep dive on that book yet. I'm guessing they're using FRFSRF and Born Soldiers to push the MW. I wonder if there's some middle point where a couple meltas would be worth losing the 1MW on average from the strat.
tauist wrote: Eliminate wargear costs? Sure, why not. If it gets the game closer to playing with PL, I'm good
Why would you want a different system to be closer to Power Level? Just use Power Level!
It'd be like me saying "Anything to make Tau more like Necrons, I'm good." Why wouldn't I just play Necrons if I love them so much. You have PL. Play PL. Why advocate for points to also be PL. What would be the point?
No, your analogue is flawed. I want PL to reign supreme over points because GW doesn't do consistent, which means PL and points will never get equal amount of attention
Good. PL doesn't warrant attention.
Any system that rewards mixmax with no drawbacks or favors a player that just likes a certain aesthetic is objectively bad writing. Feel free to defend that.
Any system that rewards mixmax with no drawbacks or favors a player that just likes a certain aesthetic is objectively bad writing. Feel free to defend that.
Good to know - I haven't taken a deep dive on that book yet. I'm guessing they're using FRFSRF and Born Soldiers to push the MW. I wonder if there's some middle point where a couple meltas would be worth losing the 1MW on average from the strat.
Dolnikan wrote: For weapons that actually are pretty different,they should have clear roles that differentiate them, not some tiny differences in points.
What are you going to do when the gauss blaster Immortal because of lacking synergy is totally unviable while the tesla carbine Immortal is meta?
Dudeface wrote: So to go back to your examples, the issue with the traitor guard squad is that the upgrade items aren't well balanced against each other. If there is a reasonable opportunity cost to all options, without one being the "best" or "most efficient" then it doesn't matter any more.
Now before you inevitably say "but that's what points are for", we've decades of evidence that GW can't nuance the levels of difference between options, they simply don't allow the room or granularity. A 5pt window for a melee upgrade on a Sergeant is sat in that line between "not needed, save points" or it's "basically free include anyway". Balance the weapons out so there isn't an intentionally bad cheaper option and that goes away.
You can't make weapons equally viable just by tweaking stats when their relative utility heavily depends on what unit is carrying them. It's the same issue we see now where certain options are auto-takes on some units but worthless on others, because the costs are universal while utility varies.
As a very basic example, you might be able to balance out the stats of grenade launchers, plasma guns, flamers, and meltaguns in the context of a footslogging BS4+ Guardsman squad, but a squad of Scions that is BS3+ and can reliably deliver those weapons to inside 12" via DS is not going to have the same relative utility across weapons.
In the past, GW addressed this by putting points costs on the unit entries and varying them between units. That provided a bespoke means of adjustment. The use of points wasn't the problem, it was trying to set universal values for options; getting rid of the points cost won't make it any easier to balance out options, it just removes a balancing lever.
(Not even getting into stratagems or subfaction traits, because that only makes it worse- abilities like auto-wound or mortal wounds on 6s throw relative utility all out of whack.)
Where does it say that weapon has to have current stats forever?
So you're going change half the weapon stat blocks in every codex, don't you see how much easier it'd be to just change the pts? Now tell me how you're going to make boltguns as good as twin boltguns.
Any system that rewards mixmax with no drawbacks or favors a player that just likes a certain aesthetic is objectively bad writing. Feel free to defend that.
gr8 b8 m8
Dont seethe at the fact I'm right. Any system you can only defend with "don't play like that" with the first part is bad enough, but please feel free to defend a system where one player has an advantage just for liking a specific aesthetic. This'll be good!
Any system that rewards mixmax with no drawbacks or favors a player that just likes a certain aesthetic is objectively bad writing. Feel free to defend that.
gr8 b8 m8
Dont seethe at the fact I'm right. Any system you can only defend with "don't play like that" with the first part is bad enough, but please feel free to defend a system where one player has an advantage just for liking a specific aesthetic. This'll be good!
I'm waiting for your response to my earlier comment. Why are you so scared that you need to posture like this? Why do you demand that I need to defend something to you?
Moreover, why do you keep stirring the pot? Surely you realise that's exactly what you're attempting to do?
Any system that rewards mixmax with no drawbacks or favors a player that just likes a certain aesthetic is objectively bad writing. Feel free to defend that.
gr8 b8 m8
Dont seethe at the fact I'm right. Any system you can only defend with "don't play like that" with the first part is bad enough, but please feel free to defend a system where one player has an advantage just for liking a specific aesthetic. This'll be good!
I'm waiting for your response to my earlier comment. Why are you so scared that you need to posture like this? Why do you demand that I need to defend something to you?
Moreover, why do you keep stirring the pot? Surely you realise that's exactly what you're attempting to do?
I'm not the one that's defending objectively bad game design in the name of "I can make an army list in 5 less minutes". Either address the point or admit you're wrong.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Dudeface wrote: So to go back to your examples, the issue with the traitor guard squad is that the upgrade items aren't well balanced against each other. If there is a reasonable opportunity cost to all options, without one being the "best" or "most efficient" then it doesn't matter any more.
Now before you inevitably say "but that's what points are for", we've decades of evidence that GW can't nuance the levels of difference between options, they simply don't allow the room or granularity. A 5pt window for a melee upgrade on a Sergeant is sat in that line between "not needed, save points" or it's "basically free include anyway". Balance the weapons out so there isn't an intentionally bad cheaper option and that goes away.
You can't make weapons equally viable just by tweaking stats when their relative utility heavily depends on what unit is carrying them. It's the same issue we see now where certain options are auto-takes on some units but worthless on others, because the costs are universal while utility varies.
As a very basic example, you might be able to balance out the stats of grenade launchers, plasma guns, flamers, and meltaguns in the context of a footslogging BS4+ Guardsman squad, but a squad of Scions that is BS3+ and can reliably deliver those weapons to inside 12" via DS is not going to have the same relative utility across weapons.
In the past, GW addressed this by putting points costs on the unit entries and varying them between units. That provided a bespoke means of adjustment. The use of points wasn't the problem, it was trying to set universal values for options; getting rid of the points cost won't make it any easier to balance out options, it just removes a balancing lever.
(Not even getting into stratagems or subfaction traits, because that only makes it worse- abilities like auto-wound or mortal wounds on 6s throw relative utility all out of whack.)
The sad thing is, this was something they had actually started doing again towards the end of 8th (e.g. plasmaguns were markedly more expensive for Scions) but then completely abandoned in 9th.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
Potential damage was way down because of Wound inflation. Average was also far from it. 2/1,333 2/1,5 2/1,667 2/1,833
It's simple and there are fewer brainless re-rolls is good. I don't think it was good or bad.
Lord Damocles wrote: Logically, twin-linked weapons should just fire like a normal weapon, but double the number of hits achieved.
That is how they originally worked.
Reading this debate is fascinating because while I'm hopelessly out of date, I am thinking of how - in addition to the points - GW did provide in-game balancing with various weapons. Heavy weapons were not only move or fire, but each variety had some limits on it as well. Heavy plasma had to recharge if used on the awesome S10 setting. Sustained fire dice were kind of a neat way to having high rates of fire but also force reloads/clear jams. Template weapons always hit, but had extreme short range.
Above all else, you didn't have the dizzying variety of troops and armies and doctrines and stratagems, which make it impossible to really playtest all the possible combinations.
I do stand by my prediction - GW will always choose whatever sells the most models and then when that subsides, change the rules again to force a new wave of retrofits.
Thus, "free" wargear with differentiated effects will cause a spike of sales in the most effective weapons/units, which will dominate the tabletop until GW decides they're ready to switch things back, and then there will be cries of joy and a renewed burst of sales/conversions as everyone goes to the new hotness.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
It's smart because it was just rerolls on several weapons, and therefore the weapons were unable to be buffed outside rerolling to wound/pen. NOW there's reason to use a reroll hit buff on those weapons.
In terms of lethality, I'd argue the only problem has been Assault Cannons.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
It's smart because it was just rerolls on several weapons, and therefore the weapons were unable to be buffed outside rerolling to wound/pen. NOW there's reason to use a reroll hit buff on those weapons.
In terms of lethality, I'd argue the only problem has been Assault Cannons.
And I'd argue that "buffs" are one of the reasons that actual balance is so hard to achieve. Combo Hammer can go burn, as far as I'm concerned.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
It's smart because it was just rerolls on several weapons, and therefore the weapons were unable to be buffed outside rerolling to wound/pen. NOW there's reason to use a reroll hit buff on those weapons.
In terms of lethality, I'd argue the only problem has been Assault Cannons.
You mean that doubling the shots then giving the bulk lf the game rerolls anyway is smart?
At this point all I can do is shrug and say "feth it." The modern 40k is in a state I find so unfun that I'm not currently playing it, so from my perspective the only way to go is up. It can't get worse because I would go from not playing to... still not playing, but if GW starts throwing stuff at the wall there's a chance something will stick.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
It's smart because it was just rerolls on several weapons, and therefore the weapons were unable to be buffed outside rerolling to wound/pen. NOW there's reason to use a reroll hit buff on those weapons.
In terms of lethality, I'd argue the only problem has been Assault Cannons.
And I'd argue that "buffs" are one of the reasons that actual balance is so hard to achieve. Combo Hammer can go burn, as far as I'm concerned.
The game has always been Combohammer. Being unable to accept that is a problem.
Haighus wrote: Part of the problem is that GW is not great at applying negative consequences to upgrades to make them not automatically better, and is getting actively worse at it. Indeed, it seems they are going out of their way to allow players to ignore core rules that apply negatives to models. A good example is the increased utility of basically every weapon type over the editions- rapid fire gained the ability to move and shoot at full range. It then gained the ability to shoot and assault in the same turn. Pistols gained the ability to shoot in melee. Assault weapons gained the ability to shoot after advancing. Heavy weapons lost the restriction of being unable to shoot after moving- this last one was a big balance consideration in the past, an upgrade might be powerful, but you would sacrifice mobility for it
This is the part you have problems with?
No, pistols being able to do a clunky, inconvenient shot in melee (because they lost +1A) or heavies doing snap shots after move is peanuts next to broken gak stat inflation in xeno and chaos armies removing all the balance elements from the game. Tau used to max at 4+ skill, if you wanted more you needed markerlights and characters. Now? 2+ handed out like candy. Orkstodes and demons used to be T3, now it's T5 in half the entries because frak you. Eldar wraith units had very high stats in return for babysitter getting them to do what you wanted - no more, Eldar players whined so that was binned. Cheap chaos demon auxilias used to have 4+ skill to make 3+ of CSM stand out - nope, all 3+ now, hell, 2+ in some cases. Helbrutes and demon weapons were poweful but disobedient on roll of 1 - screw that, chaos must be predictable so that's gone too. Etc, etc, there were hundreds of characterful downsides in the game to balance upsides but not only it's in the past, the upsides that were once so good they needed a check are now being buffed into the stratosphere even though downside is gone
Meanwhile Imperial armies mostly kept the statlines and weapons, no matter how stupid they were - why SM veteran of centuries of warfare, clad in small tank, namely terminator plate, is still S4 T4 when any ork runt in t-shirt or small demon in loincloth now sports better stats? Why gravis statline is a joke next to ton of entries that shouldn't be even close to it? Why SM kept 3+/3+ when say Tau kid fresh out of academy (or DE teens with mom-funded gear on first raid) gets 2+/2+ just for existing? Why bolters are S4 AP- when junk colts bashed from scrap by GSC mooks are not only better than this, but are also better than most legendary, relic bolt pistols millennia old costing relic slots? Because frak you, that's why
No, this is an illustrative example of the overall problem that is easy to see in the core rules, and highlights an issue with the general trend of GW's game design towards less restrictions. The Eldar wraithguard example is very similar, but specific to a single faction and less generalisable.
The stat stuff is irrelevant- units with better stats have always existed and are entirely possible to balance appropriately with the correct costs (not just points). Costs which GW are increasingly removing.
Going back to this point, it was the endless new ways to reroll dice that has made each edition progressively snowball. Your HQs uses to be melee beatsticks, and rerolls from shooting was from twin linked weapons.
That fix to TL weapons was one of the smarter things GW did.
Only if you like the massive increase in lethality we've seen since 8th edition. The change to Twin-Linked weapons literally doubled the potential damage of every weapon that it affected. I'm not sure what I'd consider "smart" about that needless "fix".
It's smart because it was just rerolls on several weapons, and therefore the weapons were unable to be buffed outside rerolling to wound/pen. NOW there's reason to use a reroll hit buff on those weapons.
In terms of lethality, I'd argue the only problem has been Assault Cannons.
You mean that doubling the shots then giving the bulk lf the game rerolls anyway is smart?
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm waiting for your response to my earlier comment. Why are you so scared that you need to posture like this? Why do you demand that I need to defend something to you?
Moreover, why do you keep stirring the pot? Surely you realise that's exactly what you're attempting to do?
I'm not the one that's defending objectively bad game design in the name of "I can make an army list in 5 less minutes". Either address the point or admit you're wrong.
What point? Why? You're the one gakking the bed over the idea of it.
This isn't even a discussion. You could absolutely just turn around and say "fair enough, enjoy yourself". But no, you're the one stirring the pot, even now. Why? Are you intimidated by it? Address the point, or admit you're wrong.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I'm waiting for your response to my earlier comment. Why are you so scared that you need to posture like this? Why do you demand that I need to defend something to you?
Moreover, why do you keep stirring the pot? Surely you realise that's exactly what you're attempting to do?
I'm not the one that's defending objectively bad game design in the name of "I can make an army list in 5 less minutes". Either address the point or admit you're wrong.
What point? Why? You're the one gakking the bed over the idea of it.
This isn't even a discussion. You could absolutely just turn around and say "fair enough, enjoy yourself". But no, you're the one stirring the pot, even now. Why? Are you intimidated by it? Address the point, or admit you're wrong.
"Let people enjoy things" is the ultimate cop out to an analysis of your viewpoint. Well guess what, I enjoy good game design. You obviously don't and won't defend it outside "I can make a list in 5 less minutes".
And not everything used to be Twin-Linked.
Plus, there is no BS value where full rerolls is more deadly than double shots. BS 6+ gets close-but not quite.
EviscerationPlague wrote: Well guess what, I enjoy good game design. You obviously don't and won't defend it outside "I can make a list in 5 less minutes".
JNAProductions wrote: And not everything used to be Twin-Linked.
Plus, there is no BS value where full rerolls is more deadly than double shots. BS 6+ gets close-but not quite.
As a game mechanic, re-rolling is not only time-consuming, but also terribly unbalanced in a point-based system. It isn't a flat rate thing; the odds shift of re-rolling 3+ are considerably different than 6+.
I sometimes wonder if GW doesn't understand basic probability or simply doesn't care.
JNAProductions wrote: And not everything used to be Twin-Linked.
Plus, there is no BS value where full rerolls is more deadly than double shots. BS 6+ gets close-but not quite.
As a game mechanic, re-rolling is not only time-consuming, but also terribly unbalanced in a point-based system. It isn't a flat rate thing; the odds shift of re-rolling 3+ are considerably different than 6+.
I sometimes wonder if GW doesn't understand basic probability or simply doesn't care.
Honestly, 40k has become riddled with time-wasting mechanics.
e.g. Psychic powers that involve a ridiculous number of steps for what amounts to d3 mortal wounds, because doing otherwise would involve admitting that every third power is a Smite clone.
These are by no means the worst offenders but they serve to illustrate how 40k increasingly relies on faffing about to try and distract from the monotony of its mechanics.
JNAProductions wrote: And not everything used to be Twin-Linked.
Plus, there is no BS value where full rerolls is more deadly than double shots. BS 6+ gets close-but not quite.
As a game mechanic, re-rolling is not only time-consuming, but also terribly unbalanced in a point-based system. It isn't a flat rate thing; the odds shift of re-rolling 3+ are considerably different than 6+.
I sometimes wonder if GW doesn't understand basic probability or simply doesn't care.
Honestly, 40k has become riddled with time-wasting mechanics.
e.g. Psychic powers that involve a ridiculous number of steps for what amounts to d3 mortal wounds, because doing otherwise would involve admitting that every third power is a Smite clone.
These are by no means the worst offenders but they serve to illustrate how 40k increasingly relies on faffing about to try and distract from the monotony of its mechanics.
What powers are you thinking of?
Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.
Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.
Is that too complicated?
When your re-rolling, moding rolls, and on top of that the powers were not created to fail half the time, so most of them go off for EACH unit in the entire army, often multiple times, then yes, tracking of when and which were used becomes hard. Both for people who are not used to using mass psychic powers themselfs and for those that have to keep track of their own.
Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.
Is that too complicated?
You almost found it.
Witchfire: Baleful Devolution has a warp charge value of 8. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER that contains 6 or more models. Roll a number of D6 equal to the result of the Psychic test: for each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers D3 mortal wounds.
So, there are 36 possible casting results for a psychic test, factoring in the +1 to cast TS get, the average expected MW value of this spell is 1.88 MWs. Compared to, your 1st smite does on average 2.08 MWs, 2nd 1.92, 3rd 1.69.
If you cast it on a 13 (roll a 12) you get to roll 2 dice for the cast, 13 dice to see how many d3 MWs you do, and then 2.17 dice to determine the MWs, so 17.17 dice on average, in order to dish out 4.33 MWs on average. To be fair, the average number of dice you roll is 2.65 thanks to so many outcomes being a failed cast, but what a waste of time on the successes.
I have always disliked 'roll a dice to roll a dice' mechanics but I have come to really resent them in recent years due to their proliferation. AoS in particular has a TON of abilities which inflict d3 mortal wounds on a 2+. Seriously just make it a flat d3 and save us the time, the average damage barely changes. And d3 MWs on a 4+? Just make it 1. That's it. No need to roll a dice for what is ultimately a small side mechanic. Or if they REALLY want the randomness they could make it d6-3, which is the same thing but faster and easier.
What if, and I'm going out on a limb here, but the possible war gear options were "baked into the cost" of said unit? So instead of trying to average out the cost of every possible weapon, a Skittarri ranger was costed for what they COULD accomplish, not what their stats reflect.
This would be a major nerf to elite armies, and knights, but hey, no one really likes Custodes or knights much anyway.
I feel like Custodian Guardians and Sagitarum need a points bump now with the new system for taking troops. The Sag guard are possibly one of the best troops in the game. Harlequins need a massive nerf by this thinking. Each troupe should cost over 200 points, with all war gear baked in.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I have always disliked 'roll a dice to roll a dice' mechanics but I have come to really resent them in recent years due to their proliferation. AoS in particular has a TON of abilities which inflict d3 mortal wounds on a 2+. Seriously just make it a flat d3 and save us the time, the average damage barely changes. And d3 MWs on a 4+? Just make it 1. That's it. No need to roll a dice for what is ultimately a small side mechanic. Or if they REALLY want the randomness they could make it d6-3, which is the same thing but faster and easier.
I agree, when I rewrote the 40k battlezones I did this for all the mechanics. I just haven't found a lot of that in psychic powers. Fixing Baleful Devolution would be pretty easy (1MW on 5+ instead of D3 on 6+). The problem is that as Vipoid noted Baleful Devolution is really just a copy of Tzeentch's Firestorm which is already pretty close to just being Smite in the first place.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: What if, and I'm going out on a limb here, but the possible war gear options were "baked into the cost" of said unit? So instead of trying to average out the cost of every possible weapon, a Skittarri ranger was costed for what they COULD accomplish, not what their stats reflect.
This would be a major nerf to elite armies, and knights, but hey, no one really likes Custodes or knights much anyway.
I feel like Custodian Guardians and Sagitarum need a points bump now with the new system for taking troops. The Sag guard are possibly one of the best troops in the game. Harlequins need a massive nerf by this thinking. Each troupe should cost over 200 points, with all war gear baked in.
If you want Knights, Custodes and Harlequins to be bad you can make them overpriced without making them internally unbalanced by removing wargear costs.
They probably will remove wargear costs, and it will suck, but at the same time they appear to be drastically cutting down on options (which also sucks) so it balances out I guess?
The sad truth about the options is that the game has gotten so big and bloated that it has out grown having a detailed list of squad upgrades; 40k is closer to a mass battle game than a skirmish game, and in mass battle games you tend not to have huge upgrade lists.
You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.
You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.
On the other hand, Primaris have a nonsensical proliferation of micro-differentiated wargear like their half-dozen variant bolt rifles, or stuff nobody asked for, e.g. heavy bolt pistols.
You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.
On the other hand, Primaris have a nonsensical proliferation of micro-differentiated wargear like their half-dozen variant bolt rifles, or stuff nobody asked for, e.g. heavy bolt pistols.
True, it's like GW really can't decide if they want to streamline the game and complete it's transition to a mass battle wargame (hence limited loadouts), or keep the granularity in equipment as in previous editions (hence the sheer glut of bespoke rules, equipment and strats).
They really need to commit to one.
I don't know who's writing the rules, but I can tell they aren't experienced. Must be that "hire for enthusiasm" policy they have going.
You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.
On the other hand, Primaris have a nonsensical proliferation of micro-differentiated wargear like their half-dozen variant bolt rifles, or stuff nobody asked for, e.g. heavy bolt pistols.
Stuff like the heavy bolt pistol usually just comes down to gw trying to make everything "primaris" +1 over "standard" Astartes equivalents. A primaris "heavy bolt pistol" is better than a "normal" bolt pistol, a primaris "bolt rifle" is better than a "standard" bolter, a primaris "plasma incinerator" is better than a "standard" plasma gun, etc, etc. It's just straight power creep. No idea why we need all of the weird variations of each, though.
You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.
On the other hand, Primaris have a nonsensical proliferation of micro-differentiated wargear like their half-dozen variant bolt rifles, or stuff nobody asked for, e.g. heavy bolt pistols.
True, it's like GW really can't decide if they want to streamline the game and complete it's transition to a mass battle wargame (hence limited loadouts), or keep the granularity in equipment as in previous editions (hence the sheer glut of bespoke rules, equipment and strats).
They really need to commit to one.
I don't know who's writing the rules, but I can tell they aren't experienced. Must be that "hire for enthusiasm" policy they have going.
Indeed. Not only does that glut of almost-identical stuff make it more difficult to remember what your - and of course also your opponent's - army does on the tabletop, it also greatly increases the likelyhood of broken/degenerate interactions with other rules that e.g. give global boosts to all bolt weapons. The possible combinations between wargear, army-wide rules, stratagems and so on increase geometrically, to the point where you just can't test or predict all possible interactions.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: They probably will remove wargear costs, and it will suck, but at the same time they appear to be drastically cutting down on options (which also sucks) so it balances out I guess?
The sad truth about the options is that the game has gotten so big and bloated that it has out grown having a detailed list of squad upgrades; 40k is closer to a mass battle game than a skirmish game, and in mass battle games you tend not to have huge upgrade lists.
You already see that with primaris, which unless I'm mistaken, tend not to have any versatility and incredibly specific loadouts and roles, in contrast to how marines used to have a variety of options.
No because A they will still play favourites with some armies and mid 10th they will change the paradigma and armies will start getting options again, and then every army which has an old style book will have tons of fun waiting for the 11th ed update. And the fact that we are talking about it right now, in 9th ed is something I find very funny.
Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.
Is that too complicated?
Yes. Just reading that caused my eyes to glaze over, and I'm sure that's one power out of many.
Making something random doesn't make it balanced, though GW has believed that for 30 years so why change?
Point costs are supposed to help players have something approaching an even playing field. That's it. If players want to have a lop-sided scenario, they can then decide among themselves to do that.
Where it becomes a problem isn't so much the competitive min-maxing but the casual game where both players try to choose a decent list only to find one effortlessly wipes the floor with the other.
Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.
Is that too complicated?
Yes. Just reading that caused my eyes to glaze over, and I'm sure that's one power out of many.
Making something random doesn't make it balanced, though GW has believed that for 30 years so why change?
Point costs are supposed to help players have something approaching an even playing field. That's it. If players want to have a lop-sided scenario, they can then decide among themselves to do that.
Where it becomes a problem isn't so much the competitive min-maxing but the casual game where both players try to choose a decent list only to find one effortlessly wipes the floor with the other.
If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.
If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.
Psychic powers always seem a bit boring as they were historical game changers. I understand why people might not want such a swingy, random phase but at this stage the psychic phase is immersion breaking in how lacklustre it is. May as well just have a "psykers of the 41st millenium are too precious to have in the frontlines" fluff and scrap the whole thing other than for some specialised characters and factions designed around it maybe
Dudeface wrote: If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.
If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.
But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?
Also, why roll many dice if one will do the trick? As people upthread pointed out, a lot of these outcomes could be boiled down to "if you activate the power, you inflict two wounds."
Dice made their way into wargaming in an effort to simulate unknown factors and teach commanders to cope with the unexpected, but GW has taken it to the illogical extreme, and often simply uses lots of dice in weird ways to obtain the exact same outcome while making it seem different.
Re-rolls are a superb example of this. What they do is simply shift the probability, which you could do by other less time-consuming means. GW's default solution to working out game balance is basically "roll more dice and don't blame us!"
Witchfire: Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER and roll nine D6. For each roll of 6, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If the result of the Psychic test was an unmodified 9+, that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound for each roll of 5+ instead.
Is that too complicated?
Yes. Just reading that caused my eyes to glaze over, and I'm sure that's one power out of many.
So Witchfire powers should not deal a random number of MWs? Why? How do you feel about weapons with random numbers of shots or Damage?
Making something random doesn't make it balanced, though GW has believed that for 30 years so why change?
I don't really think balance is the goal, I think Witchfire psychic powers would just get boring if they deal X+1/2/3 MW.
Witchfire:Tzeentch’s Firestorm has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER. That enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. If that unit includes 6+ models it suffers 1 mortal wound. If that unit includes 11+ models it suffers 1 mortal wound.
Witchfire: Wrack and Ruin has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select one enemy unit within 18" of and visible to this PSYKER. If that unit is wholly on or within a terrain feature it suffers 2 mortal wounds. If that unit is a BUILDING it suffers 3 mortal wounds.
Is this the kind of design you're looking for? I don't know how you could make powers more simple.
Old powers were like this:
Vortex of Doom is a witchfire power with the profile below. If, when using this power, the Psyker fails his Psychic test, he automatically suffers Perils of the Warp.
Range 12"
S D
AP 1
Type Assault 1, Blast, Vortex
Vortex: A weapon with this special rule is a Destroyer weapon and uses a blast marker of some type (e.g. blast, large blast, massive blast, etc). Place the appropriate marker, roll for scatter and apply damage. For determining Wound allocation, always assume the shot is coming from the centre of the marker, in the same manner as a Barrage weapon.
The marker for a Vortex weapon is not removed from play after damage has been resolved. Leave it in play on the tabletop. The marker is impassable terrain as long as it remains in play.
At the beginning of every subsequent player turn, the marker scatters 2D6" (use the little arrow if you roll a Hit!). If a double is rolled, the marker is removed from play instead. Any unit under the marker’s new location is hit. Apply damage as described above.
Where is the skill in that?
40k should not be a game of pure skill, randomness can be fun and can give the underdog a chance to win.
Dudeface wrote: If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.
If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.
But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?
Also, why roll many dice if one will do the trick? As people upthread pointed out, a lot of these outcomes could be boiled down to "if you activate the power, you inflict two wounds."
Dice made their way into wargaming in an effort to simulate unknown factors and teach commanders to cope with the unexpected, but GW has taken it to the illogical extreme, and often simply uses lots of dice in weird ways to obtain the exact same outcome while making it seem different.
Re-rolls are a superb example of this. What they do is simply shift the probability, which you could do by other less time-consuming means. GW's default solution to working out game balance is basically "roll more dice and don't blame us!"
Have they ever said they take or retue responsibility for roling dice or asked not to be blamed? I think they understand that people like to have some different ways to get to the same end result, variety is spice of life etc.
Beyond that I don't think they care how they get there overly.
40k should not be a game of pure skill, randomness can be fun and can give the underdog a chance to win.
That is like saying a win in sports because someone got the runs pre event or slipped on the map is a good thing, for the person who spent months investing in to training . Or that your car can suddenly combust giving the chance for people behind you to get a show while stuck in traffic, is a good thing, that should be implemented in to army design.
But the main problem is that random ain't equal to random in GW games. A lascanon doing d6 wounds is very very BAD, especialy when GW knows it is bad, and updates lascanons for other factions to do 3d+3 wounds and you have to wait for years for a fix. Sometimes the fix does not happen. Also random often makes the powerful factions better. Because they are either able to smooth the curve or even shift it in their favour , or the random effect is so powerful that when spamed it always gives the army the edge. A marine tank with its odd dmg rolls, is not "giving the marine chance to win", it makes him lose, if he is foolish enough to take them.
Have they ever said they take or retue responsibility for roling dice or asked not to be blamed? I think they understand that people like to have some different ways to get to the same end result, variety is spice of life etc.
Beyond that I don't think they care how they get there overly.
I don't think they even care where they are going, and yes, they are aware that there a bunch of people who think convoluted mechanics are neat for their own sake. I'm just not one of them.
Dudeface wrote: If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.
If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.
But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?
I think a particular issue with psychic powers (and their equivalents) is that the designers have confined themselves entirely to Mortal Wounds.
In the past, psychic attacks worked like weapons. e.g. one might have 24" Assault 4 S6 AP4 - which you would then resolve like a normal weapon. So you'd generally have hit rolls, wound rolls, and saving throw rolls (some of these might be bypassed if the power works like a flamer or if its AP is high enough but you get the idea).
Now, though, all psychic powers use Mortal Wounds - which don't need to roll to hit or wound and don't allow any saving throws, save for FNP.
In other words, the designers have chosen to use a mechanic that negates almost all the rolls that used to exist . . . only to then add a bunch of new rolls instead.
Surely we might as well just go back to having psychic powers as weapon profiles? At least then we might get a little more variety, rather than four hundred marginally different ways to inflict ~d3 mortal wounds on an enemy unit.
Failing that, perhaps psychic powers should be closer to AoS and lean more towards inflicting different debuffs, with the mortal wounds being more of an extra than the main focus for most powers?
Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.
Dudeface wrote: If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.
If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.
But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?
I think a particular issue with psychic powers (and their equivalents) is that the designers have confined themselves entirely to Mortal Wounds.
In the past, psychic attacks worked like weapons. e.g. one might have 24" Assault 4 S6 AP4 - which you would then resolve like a normal weapon. So you'd generally have hit rolls, wound rolls, and saving throw rolls (some of these might be bypassed if the power works like a flamer or if its AP is high enough but you get the idea).
Now, though, all psychic powers use Mortal Wounds - which don't need to roll to hit or wound and don't allow any saving throws, save for FNP.
In other words, the designers have chosen to use a mechanic that negates almost all the rolls that used to exist . . . only to then add a bunch of new rolls instead.
Surely we might as well just go back to having psychic powers as weapon profiles? At least then we might get a little more variety, rather than four hundred marginally different ways to inflict ~d3 mortal wounds on an enemy unit.
Failing that, perhaps psychic powers should be closer to AoS and lean more towards inflicting different debuffs, with the mortal wounds being more of an extra than the main focus for most powers?
Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.
My issue with the psychic phase is not everyone has psykers. So if you don't have psykers of your own you have to sit through another phase (so even longer turns) where you watch your troops get killed with nothing to really do. The Magic Phase worked in WHF because everyone had some sort of caster or casting equivalent. Even if you had no casters, you can still dispel. It doesn't really work that way in 40k, and I think it's worse off for it.
But yeah, the fact that it only deals mortal wounds is kind of lame. Compare it to magic in Fantasy, where the attacks had an actual strength value, a damage type (usually magic, but could be flaming or even just normal) and you had a lot of buffs and debuffs to play with. A lot more interesting than "lol, I rolled big number on 2 dice, you immediately take casualties with no saves"
vipoid wrote: Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.
You have a limited number of attempts to manifest or deny powers each turn and you only get one command point re-roll in the psychic phase.
Balancing powers is way easier than in systems with more freedom like WHFB where you could throw up to 6 dice at a power.
I think the conclusion people came to at the end of WHFB's life was that the best idea was to just throw 6 dice at the biggest baddest spell and hope that you rolled two 6s so your opponent couldn't interact with your magic phase and the effects of the biggest spells ignored all saves (even the ones specifically designed to prevent damage from spells). For more complicated systems to work out I think they need more testing and theorising than I would trust GW to do. I really love the current psychic phase mechanics.
Denies were rather soul-crushing in some editions, if you have 1 psyker vs 1 psyker now then generally the psyker manifesting will get to manifest two and deny 1 so you're likely to get off a good amount of powers while your opponent has to make hard choices, but even if it's 1 psyker against 2 because denying requires rolling above it's not completely hopeless unlike in previous editions where the Primaris Psyker could just pack up and go home when he faced 3 Grey Knight Strike Squads.
GW can also still achieve some bigger effects by combining powers, like having a power that boosts the range of future powers until the end of the phase, a power that makes the next spell go off automatically at the minimum casting value and then a power that is really strong but has an unreasonably high casting value of 10+. Limiting the design space of damage dealing psychic powers to just mortal wounds seems like a mistake to me as well, but the amount of powers that were effectively useless because they did not have AP3 in previous editions was also rather high if I remember correctly.
Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.
Karol wrote: Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.
I don't see how you can get around some powers being stronger than others or why that is inherently a problem.
You can have super casters in any psychic system, I don't understand what makes it especially bad in the current system.
What power is essential to GK?
How about psychic powers, should they cost points?
Balancing powers is way easier than in systems with more freedom like WHFB where you could throw up to 6 dice at a power.
I think the conclusion people came to at the end of WHFB's life was that the best idea was to just throw 6 dice at the biggest baddest spell and hope that you rolled two 6s so your opponent couldn't interact with your magic phase and the effects of the biggest spells ignored all saves (even the ones specifically designed to prevent damage from spells). For more comp
As I said, I have no wish to return to 7th's aping the worst elements of WHFB's magic system.
However, as it stands, the psychic phase in 8th/9th seems to exist merely to give the illusion of choice.
Yes, you have limited casts, but you also have limited powers. And since every power costs 1 cast, there's almost always an obvious best choice.
Further, while different psychic powers have different cast values, it makes little difference because there's nothing you can do to influence them. You can't throw extra dice like you could in 7th, so all you can do is hope to roll well. There's no skill or strategy involved.
To my mind, if GW really, desperately want a psychic phase, it would be better to roll a number of d6s (based on the number of psykers in your army, similar to 7th), and then subtract the casting values of psychic powers to cast them but without rolling additional dice. e.g. if you roll 15, then you can cast a number of psychic powers with a total power level of 15 or less. It's a rough outline, obviously, but it would add a resource-management aspect, whilst also keeping a degree of randomness, whilst also making casting values more impactful.
Otherwise, if every model is just going to cast on an individual basis anyway, you might as well just go back to them casting powers in the relevant phase like in editions prior to 7th.
I would give both players a random number of casting / dispelling dice, an additional casting die for each psyker and an additional dispel die for each psyker and unit that states that it gives such die.
The latter distinction is important, as it would cover a lot more than just psykers and would represent the warp being influenced either by faith or other esoteric means.
So ethereals would give a dispel die because of their faith in the Greater Good. Crypteks would give a die because of their weird tech.
Imperial Priests would give a die because of their faith in the emperor.
You get the idea. The aim is to give the armies without psykers some level of defense against psionics and something to do during the psychic phase instead of removing their models.
One of the good aspects of the WHFB magic phase was the resource management aspect. You had a limited number of dice to work with, so you had to choose.
Granted, 8th ed sort of screwed that over with the level 1 wizard bomb and irresistible force, but the idea was solid at least.
Fortunately, in 40k I don't think there's a irresistible force equivalent? I'm pretty sure high rolls just give you stronger effects rather than an auto-pass, so investing more dice to cast (and conversely, more dice to dispel) shouldn't be as overbearing as 8th ed magic. Perils would balance out that anyway; higher chance of success and extra effects, higher chance of perils.
Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.
I'm probably showing my age, but to my mind the only point of psychic powers are to produce non-kinetic effects. In the 40k environment, blasting people from afar is commonplace, so another death beam with a more convoluted firing sequence is simply a waste of time.
The true value to psychic powers was teleporting or enhancing a unit in some way. That puts it outside the realm of "just another big gun" and required some tactical skill to exploit it properly.
When I looked at building a magic system for my fantasy rules, I recognized that each school of magic had to have a "zzap!" spell, but what was more impactful were unit-enhancing spells, and that is where most of the design space went.
In 40k terms, having a psychic power that turns Imperial Guard into melee monsters for a round would at least be tactically interesting.
As a sidebar, one of the oldest "streamlining" methods for 2nd ed. 40k was for both players to agree not to take psykers. In every single game I played, that question was asked for that reason. If no one took any, you immediately cut out out a ton of time spent shuffling, dealing and playing with cards. I would say that one advantage of having a phase is that both players can agree to skip it by not taking any.
Honestly, though, the entire psychic phase seems like something that could be largely cut from the game. Not the powers per se but rather the idea of having a dedicated phase, when there's no tactics, resource-management or other meaningful decisions to be made. You roll 2 dice and hope for big number. Possibly your opponent rolls 2 dice and hopes for bigger number. Not that I'd want to return to the abomination that was 7th, but it feels about as tactical as Ludo.
I'm probably showing my age, but to my mind the only point of psychic powers are to produce non-kinetic effects. In the 40k environment, blasting people from afar is commonplace, so another death beam with a more convoluted firing sequence is simply a waste of time.
The true value to psychic powers was teleporting or enhancing a unit in some way. That puts it outside the realm of "just another big gun" and required some tactical skill to exploit it properly.
When I looked at building a magic system for my fantasy rules, I recognized that each school of magic had to have a "zzap!" spell, but what was more impactful were unit-enhancing spells, and that is where most of the design space went.
In 40k terms, having a psychic power that turns Imperial Guard into melee monsters for a round would at least be tactically interesting.
Yeah, I think there should be a lot more buffs and debuffs than just damaging spells. It should make the psychic phase a little more interesting.
vipoid wrote: Yes, you have limited casts, but you also have limited powers. And since every power costs 1 cast, there's almost always an obvious best choice.
Good point, Necrons lost their choice with C'tan powers as well because the named ones know 2 and cast 2, which I think was a bad design choice. How much would giving most psykers an extra power help?
Further, while different psychic powers have different cast values, it makes little difference because there's nothing you can do to influence them. You can't throw extra dice like you could in 7th, so all you can do is hope to roll well. There's no skill or strategy involved.
You have to choose between the more powerful and easier power. The CP re-roll also means you have to evaluate which ones are most worth spending a CP re-roll on and use those first while juggling the possibility of denies and trying to get your opponent to waste those somehow.
Otherwise, if every model is just going to cast on an individual basis anyway, you might as well just go back to them casting powers in the relevant phase like in editions prior to 7th.
It'd be harder to keep track of which units have manifested and denied powers, so I don't agree with that. The ability to boost Movement instead of having move twice effects would be the only upside of changing back to the old system as far as I can see.
Psykers being able to cast any spell from their designated school could be more fun than "you have these auto-includes and you will pretty much always want these ones to pass and don't care as much about the others".
But equally, you are in danger of creating an extensive game in a game which some factions/builds don't get to participate in.
Dai wrote: Psychic powers always seem a bit boring as they were historical game changers. I understand why people might not want such a swingy, random phase but at this stage the psychic phase is immersion breaking in how lacklustre it is. May as well just have a "psykers of the 41st millenium are too precious to have in the frontlines" fluff and scrap the whole thing other than for some specialised characters and factions designed around it maybe
I don't find mine to be lacklustre, but my army naturally leans into it. If it were any stronger I'd auto-win games. Some people go so light that I see why they might feel that way. Loyalist psykers in general don't do much worth writing home about - at least not when they're opposite me.
Gone are the days of the invisible biker horde, surely.
Karol wrote: Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.
I don't see how you can get around some powers being stronger than others or why that is inherently a problem.
You can have super casters in any psychic system, I don't understand what makes it especially bad in the current system.
What power is essential to GK?
How about psychic powers, should they cost points?
Karol wrote: Yes, but then it gives priority to armies that have A been give low casting lvls on their powers, and GW decided to not cut their attempt per phase to cast B GW decided to either give the faction a super caster and/or buffs to casting powers. Which now means that with one power per turn, and some of them being crucial to the entire army working properly a single 1ksons sorc, can stop the entire GK army from functioning just by virtue of GK having crazy high cast values, no-rolls, while the reliance on psychic power only got bigger for the faction.
I don't see how you can get around some powers being stronger than others or why that is inherently a problem.
You can have super casters in any psychic system, I don't understand what makes it especially bad in the current system.
What power is essential to GK?
How about psychic powers, should they cost points?
Dudeface wrote: If you mean rolling dice to achieve an outcome is "random" you've basically rule down out the entire game. There's 2 points of failure on the power, the psychic test and then a probability distribution over the 5+'s on the wounds. It's not what I'd define as random in the context of this game.
If it was "cast value 7, roll d3 and one of these 3 things happens" yes, that's random.
But why is it random? You pay points for something, and sometimes it works. Where is the skill in that?
Also, why roll many dice if one will do the trick? As people upthread pointed out, a lot of these outcomes could be boiled down to "if you activate the power, you inflict two wounds."
Dice made their way into wargaming in an effort to simulate unknown factors and teach commanders to cope with the unexpected, but GW has taken it to the illogical extreme, and often simply uses lots of dice in weird ways to obtain the exact same outcome while making it seem different.
Re-rolls are a superb example of this. What they do is simply shift the probability, which you could do by other less time-consuming means. GW's default solution to working out game balance is basically "roll more dice and don't blame us!"
Where is the skill?
1. Positioning - getting the psyker to within 18", still be protected, and have the target visible
2. Target selection - understanding the limitations of your powers that can and can not target the closest and how those relate to the objectives you need to score since your removal potential is limited.
3. Managing resources ( Thousand Sons ) - knowing your goals for the phase and available cabal points to cast spells in the right order and to use cabal abilities in an appropriate sequence - also dependent on secondaries.
I feel like this psychic phase has more skill required than any previous edition and if not an equal amount.
If you're just bringing a single psyker to push a buff then surely there's not much thinking involved and you're just dealing with the risk / reward cost.
This thread seems to want to focus on the one single spell that has a bit more rolling than usual and it's just their attempt at creating something to can have a huge swing potential. I think it's literally the only spell out there like it. The design of the spell allows me to adjust my cabal spending to try and push on it as hard as I can to get the best result possible. Whether or not it's worthwhile is a calculation you have to make in the moment.
So you like points for psychic powers, how about similar things like Necron Powers of the C'tan and (C)SM Chaplain prayers or things like Necron Transcendent C'tan Fractured Personality or Drukhari Combat Drugs. Should the design goal be that all these cost 0 pts and then add pts as it turns out during playtesting and post release that some options are auto-takes when they're free or should some options be deliberately stronger at the cost of points like a thunder hammer vs a power sword?
Good point, Necrons lost their choice with C'tan powers as well because the named ones know 2 and cast 2, which I think was a bad design choice. How much would giving most psykers an extra power help?
It would be something, at least.
Though, I also think things are hampered by the fact that only Smite can be attempted multiple times per turn.
You have to choose between the more powerful and easier power. The CP re-roll also means you have to evaluate which ones are most worth spending a CP re-roll on and use those first while juggling the possibility of denies and trying to get your opponent to waste those somehow.
Except that, as above, you rarely have that much choice to begin with.
What's more, why would you take an expensive power in the first place if you're not going to risk casting it? The odds are the same each turn, so I don't see how delaying would help in any way. Maybe if there was a proper resource-management system...
As for the CP reroll, tying it to the psychic phase at all seems very generous.
In terms of denies, once again I'm really not seeing the strategy. Most of the time, you're wholly reliant on probability, so you'll throw them at a power your opponent has succeeded on with a low roll. In other words, you're waiting for your opponent to randomly roll bad. So that you can randomly roll better. We're not exactly in Sun Tzu territory.
It'd be harder to keep track of which units have manifested and denied powers, so I don't agree with that. The ability to boost Movement instead of having move twice effects would be the only upside of changing back to the old system as far as I can see.
People seemed to manage well enough in past editions. It seems no more difficult than remembering which units have already shot in the shooting phase.
It'd be harder to keep track of which units have manifested and denied powers, so I don't agree with that. The ability to boost Movement instead of having move twice effects would be the only upside of changing back to the old system as far as I can see.
People seemed to manage well enough in past editions. It seems no more difficult than remembering which units have already shot in the shooting phase.
It's pretty easy to remember who has shot in the shooting phase, it might be a little harder if you did it across every phase of the game instead of the shooting phase though
Eh, HH uses the "cast in appropriate phase" psychic system, and it doesn't seem to confuse anyone. Not even the 1ksons players, who obviously cast a lot.
AoS has magic happen in that game's equivalent of the Command Phase and it has never produced any issues or complaints.
Restricting spells/powers to only MWs as a damage source, though, has always sucked. I remain disappointed in this aspect because GWs creativity has consistently been a strong point over the years--they could do a LOT of really cool stuff if they didn't artificially limit themselves.
1. Positioning - getting the psyker to within 18", still be protected, and have the target visible
2. Target selection - understanding the limitations of your powers that can and can not target the closest and how those relate to the objectives you need to score since your removal potential is limited.
3. Managing resources ( Thousand Sons ) - knowing your goals for the phase and available cabal points to cast spells in the right order and to use cabal abilities in an appropriate sequence - also dependent on secondaries.
That wasn't what I was talking about. I was talking about the wide swings that the convoluted dice mechanics can bring.
You can do all of the above and the dice go south and none come up above a 2. Or it's sixes as far as the eye can see.
I know there are those who are all about "the uncontrollable unknowable power of the warp," and in that case, lets just roll a d6 and have each player eliminate that many models, determined randomly. Can't get any more balanced than that, right?
vipoid wrote: Out of interest, how does everyone feel about Perils of the Warp as it stands?
It's fine I guess? It seems to be a pretty rare event so maybe it should be a D6 risk of MW as opposed to a D3 risk, but its fine.
The lack of interaction for the other player is a more pressing matter, imo.
vipoid wrote: Out of interest, how does everyone feel about Perils of the Warp as it stands?
I find it rather dull, just like many aspects of the psychic phase. I think that it would have been more interesting to have at least a small miscast table or the like. If it's meant to be random there can be more interesting things happening than even more mortal wounds.
vipoid wrote: Out of interest, how does everyone feel about Perils of the Warp as it stands?
I find it rather dull, just like many aspects of the psychic phase. I think that it would have been more interesting to have at least a small miscast table or the like. If it's meant to be random there can be more interesting things happening than even more mortal wounds.
Maybe, that's what WHFB had. Then again, there was a bad case of random tables for the sake of random tables in earlier editions, and GW might be tempted to back to that nonsense. If the psychic phase wasn't such a one sided affair then it probably wouldn't seem so dull.
Having a chance of a daemon incursion or possession that's hostile to everyone would be interesting, but then you'd have to write in an "AI" and expect everyone to have a bunch of daemon models on hand.
Commissar von Toussaint wrote: That wasn't what I was talking about. I was talking about the wide swings that the convoluted dice mechanics can bring.
How is that different to charging, shooting or assaulting?
Which is kind of the same argument for the lack of interaction.
I think Perils of the Warp is kind of stupid from a gameplay perspective. Seeing as its essentially meaningless - or a feels bad moment - without much interactivity. (Beyond "oh I've got one wound left, maybe I shouldn't risk it by casting at all".) It feels like something that should punish you taking risks - i.e. rolling a third dice or something. But then we'd need pooled power dice or some other mechanic.
As always though, if you make the downsides much more dramatic, people will just take insurance. And if there isn't affordable insurance, they just won't run psykers over other things.
1. Positioning - getting the psyker to within 18", still be protected, and have the target visible
2. Target selection - understanding the limitations of your powers that can and can not target the closest and how those relate to the objectives you need to score since your removal potential is limited.
3. Managing resources ( Thousand Sons ) - knowing your goals for the phase and available cabal points to cast spells in the right order and to use cabal abilities in an appropriate sequence - also dependent on secondaries.
That wasn't what I was talking about. I was talking about the wide swings that the convoluted dice mechanics can bring.
You can do all of the above and the dice go south and none come up above a 2. Or it's sixes as far as the eye can see.
I know there are those who are all about "the uncontrollable unknowable power of the warp," and in that case, lets just roll a d6 and have each player eliminate that many models, determined randomly. Can't get any more balanced than that, right?
Baleful is about the only super swingy spell there is. I cast it once with a 15 and managed to do 2 MW total, but that's just dice and I soon learned that the diminishing returns are pretty sharp.
In general it seems that GW gives an increase variability when your flexibility increases. Doombolt is closest at 18" and 3MW. Firestorm is 6+/5+ on 9 dice, but it can go out to 24" and can freely target. That to me is a very competent dynamic that promotes taking a gamble at a crucial target without outright giving you the ability to snipe out characters.
Baleful has high potential and increased variability as well as increased casting requirements. Let's say you cast Smite on a 8(9). You can punch that up to a D6 with a +2. A single D6 is a very swingy result. Baleful on an 11 can get you 2D3 30% of the time, which is better than D6. It will get you 3D3 or 4D3 25% of the time. 43% of the time the outcome is possibly worse to completely worse. If you happen to cast unmodified 10 or 11 then boosting it to 13 is almost a negligible increase in the outcome.
But then Baleful is not closest and Smite is so if you really needed to hit that big unit behind a smite screen...
With regards to randomness, there's two kinds of randomness:
Die rolls have been used to adjudicate the success/failure of actors at carrying out the player's orders since Kriegspiel. The player is not expected to shoot a musket for each soldier in the formation. There is a P_success of any given action, and a roll is made to determine if it succeeds or fails, and potentially the margin of success. The Psuccess of a Guardsman shooting a Space Marine is 6%, the Psuccess of the inverse is 30%. This actual value is non-deliberately obfuscated by the rolling of 3 consecutive D6's, which has the benefit of being easier to do, available, and having the warm fuzzies of being able to roll a bunch of dice and feel like both players are doing something, but you could just replace it all with a 1d100 without changing the game.
This is not bad randomness. From the perspective as a model of war, this randomness models something concrete: the performance of actors below the players' level of control. From the game perspective, this kind of randomness, even for low Psuccess actions, is plannable as long as the Psuccess can be reasonably understood [does not need to be precisely known, just its characteristics across the potential range of decisions to be made be estimated].
I would say that "bad randomness" is stuff like the BubbleChucka or the Obliterator.
Theoretically, this models the unreliability of the Bubblechucka. Practically, this is just rolling a bunch of dice because they thought it was funny, and makes the weapon completely unplannable. It's Psuccess could be quite literally anything against anything.
An Exorcist is also an unreliable weapon, hence the 1d6 shots. 1d6 Shots at S8, AP1 has a pretty substantial uncertainly in Psuccess. However, it is still plannable, because while it can range dramatically against any given target, it can also be understood that whatever the reliability factor causes, the Exorcist will always perform better against TEQ Infantry and Medium Vehicles than Heavy Vehicles or GEQ Infantry.
As for the psychic powers, most of it I would say is also "bad randomness" in the other way, because all of them just do about 2-4 MW, and it's really just rolling a bunch of dice to get there because GW thinks that rolling dice will be entertaining. Their final effect is all the same. They are plannable, but they don't model anything.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I would say that "bad randomness" is stuff like the BubbleChucka or the Obliterator.
Theoretically, this models the unreliability of the Bubblechucka. Practically, this is just rolling a bunch of dice because they thought it was funny, and makes the weapon completely unplannable. It's Psuccess could be quite literally anything against anything.
An Exorcist is also an unreliable weapon, hence the 1d6 shots. 1d6 Shots at S8, AP1 has a pretty substantial uncertainly in Psuccess. However, it is still plannable, because while it can range dramatically against any given target, it can also be understood that whatever the reliability factor causes, the Exorcist will always perform better against TEQ Infantry and Medium Vehicles than Heavy Vehicles or GEQ Infantry.
I think bad randomness is what slows the game down. Like getting D3 MWs on a 6 instead of 1 MW on a 5+ or 2 MW on a 6+. Bubblechukkas are super slow to resolve, because you have to do them one a at a time which I find to be the main crime in their design. How often are you going to get the highest number of wounds with the right profile against the right target? The middle profile can already get lucky and swat 6 Guardsmen and unlucky and do nothing, same thing against a Chimera.
As for the psychic powers, most of it I would say is also "bad randomness" in the other way, because all of them just do about 2-4 MW, and it's really just rolling a bunch of dice to get there because GW thinks that rolling dice will be entertaining. Their final effect is all the same. They are plannable, but they don't model anything.
Ork #1 is better against low T units. Ork #5 is better against bigger units. Thousand Sons #11 is good against high-save units. #23 is anti-horde. There are wrong ways to use all these powers just like with an exorcist. If the target average of a power is 1,5 MW then that's different from a power with a target average of 2 or 3, otherwise, you could say that a lasgun, a boltgun and a storm bolter should have the same profile. Rolling 9D6 on 6+ doesn't take longer than 3D6 on 4+ so it's actually good design to roll 9D6 on 6+ if the number 6 or 9 is flavourful for the faction or if the faction is supposed to be more swingy and random.
vict0988 wrote: Rolling 9D6 on 6+ doesn't take longer than 3D6 on 4+ so it's actually good design to roll 9D6 on 6+ if the number 6 or 9 is flavourful for the faction or if the faction is supposed to be more swingy and random.
vict0988 wrote: Rolling 9D6 on 6+ doesn't take longer than 3D6 on 4+ so it's actually good design to roll 9D6 on 6+ if the number 6 or 9 is flavourful for the faction or if the faction is supposed to be more swingy and random.
So rolling 20d6 doesn't take more time than 2d6?
The difference between 3 and 9 dice is pretty negligible.
They could always strip things out, but people were pretty much against AoS not having a toughness value. People have certainly adapted to it, but I doubt there would be many complaints if T came back to the system.
There are mechanics to get you to a raw mathematical output and there are mechanics that help you experience the world you're playing in. Part of Warhammer is that sort of gummy randomness and I bet most people would be adverse to rolling a single attack dice for an outcome.
vict0988 wrote: Rolling 9D6 on 6+ doesn't take longer than 3D6 on 4+ so it's actually good design to roll 9D6 on 6+ if the number 6 or 9 is flavourful for the faction or if the faction is supposed to be more swingy and random.
So rolling 20d6 doesn't take more time than 2d6?
The difference between 3 and 9 dice is pretty negligible.
Rolling dice, it mostly a bit of extra time gathering and reading.
Effectiveness on the battle field is massive. If the target is a spell that does up to 9 Mortal Wounds, I can't think of a more swingy option than roll 9d6 and hope of 6's:
9d6, 6= 1 MW yields Average 1.5 MW (Less than 1% chance of 5+ MW, 19.38% chance of 0 MW)
9d6, 5 or 6 = 1 MW yields Average 3 MW (Less than 1% chance of 7+ MW, only 2.6% chance of 0 MW)
3d3 MW yields Average of 6 MW with a 3.7% chance of 9 MW
1d3 + 1d6 MW yields average of 5.5 MW with a 5.56 chance of 9 MW
So this is really about rolling 9 dice, not having a useful spell with any reasonable success rate. Bad rules writing!
I don't feel rolling 9 dice at once and looking for 6s is that onerous compared with say rolling 3 dice and looking for 4s. Or one D3 and that's it.
The whinge I see is more that the typical three step hit/wound/save process for determining an attack is now often 7 or 8 steps.
I.E. Dice to determine number of shots, roll to hit, rerolls, roll to wound, rerolls, save, dice to determine damage, FNP rolls etc. Plus exploding/proccing 6s that need to be picked out. You probably won't have all of these up all the time - and I think GW has sort of started trying to moderate it. But its inconsistent like usual.
Some of this - arguably all of this - is about simulating mechanics to "experience the world" etc. But that doesn't stop it feeling kind of clunky.
The problem is I know if they removed all rerolls in the next edition I'd be the first person on here going "wow, it really sucks when you get an unlucky (but statistically inevitable) roll and there is nothing you can do about it."
Tyel wrote: I don't feel rolling 9 dice at once and looking for 6s is that onerous compared with say rolling 3 dice and looking for 4s. Or one D3 and that's it.
The whinge I see is more that the typical three step hit/wound/save process for determining an attack is now often 7 or 8 steps.
I.E. Dice to determine number of shots, roll to hit, rerolls, roll to wound, rerolls, save, dice to determine damage, FNP rolls etc. Plus exploding/proccing 6s that need to be picked out. You probably won't have all of these up all the time - and I think GW has sort of started trying to moderate it. But its inconsistent like usual.
Some of this - arguably all of this - is about simulating mechanics to "experience the world" etc. But that doesn't stop it feeling kind of clunky.
The problem is I know if they removed all rerolls in the next edition I'd be the first person on here going "wow, it really sucks when you get an unlucky (but statistically inevitable) roll and there is nothing you can do about it."
Yeah it is a fine balance and I am a lot more sympathetic to GW rules mistakes than most, knock on effects are difficult to see. WFB 8th is the lerfect example of this for me. Good intentions and on the surface good changes all round to encourage infantry units. In reality, massive blocks rolling dice at each other.
vict0988 wrote: Rolling 9D6 on 6+ doesn't take longer than 3D6 on 4+ so it's actually good design to roll 9D6 on 6+ if the number 6 or 9 is flavourful for the faction or if the faction is supposed to be more swingy and random.
So rolling 20d6 doesn't take more time than 2d6?
The difference between 3 and 9 dice is pretty negligible.
Rolling dice, it mostly a bit of extra time gathering and reading.
Effectiveness on the battle field is massive. If the target is a spell that does up to 9 Mortal Wounds, I can't think of a more swingy option than roll 9d6 and hope of 6's:
9d6, 6= 1 MW yields Average 1.5 MW (Less than 1% chance of 5+ MW, 19.38% chance of 0 MW)
9d6, 5 or 6 = 1 MW yields Average 3 MW (Less than 1% chance of 7+ MW, only 2.6% chance of 0 MW)
3d3 MW yields Average of 6 MW with a 3.7% chance of 9 MW
1d3 + 1d6 MW yields average of 5.5 MW with a 5.56 chance of 9 MW
So this is really about rolling 9 dice, not having a useful spell with any reasonable success rate. Bad rules writing!
You listed a bunch of outcomes based on different dice formats there, but didn't really relate to the core issue.
5+ Firestorm averages 3MW. So do you just make it flat 3MW? Or maybe just D3+1? Certainly that's simpler, but it isn't the same.
An unmodified 9+ isn't easy to roll. I can get a super smite with less effort. Giving it a flat value or low variance doesn't give the same potential. D3+1 gets you to the same average, but not the same spikes.
And what will you do with the 6+ variant? Surely it can't be D3, because getting just one extra MW for a 9 seems pretty silly and a flat 1 or 2 makes me consider Gaze and a better spell. It hasn't been uncommon for me to still do 2 or 3 MW by spiking 6s.
Rolling up and dropping 5 or 6 5+ out of 9 dice is a rare and often crushing outcome. Certainly we've moved away from the ultra-random and goofy things, but having some minor multi-level spells is hardly pushing the envelope.
Tyel wrote: The problem is I know if they removed all rerolls in the next edition I'd be the first person on here going "wow, it really sucks when you get an unlucky (but statistically inevitable) roll and there is nothing you can do about it."
Frankly, GW should just make a dice-free variant for people who don't want randomness in their dice-based wargame. Perhaps based on a deck of cards, so that there's some variance but your 'luck' is a finite quantity that always balances out in the end.
I find that re-rolls out the wazoo make for an experience that is not only tedious to resolve, but downright dull to play, because the result is typically so predictable. I am not on the edge of my seat waiting to see how twenty shots hitting on 3s re-rolling all failures will pan out, and I much prefer a system where you have to accept some risk and cannot stack buffs until a positive outcome is virtually guaranteed. Yeah, sometimes your single lascannon shot hitting on 2s will roll a 1 and there's nothing you can do about it- except having contingencies beyond blaming the dice.
leopard wrote: GW need to decide what game scale 40k is meant to be and adjust accordingly.
if its squad based (it isn't) it needs more detail, if its company based, probably less
If you zoom out far enough that you can't see whether your Havocs have heavy bolters or lascannons then you've gone too far, if you zoom in far enough that you have to choose a background for unit champions you've gone too far. That's where 40k becomes Apocalypse and Kill Team respectively.
Tyel wrote: I don't feel rolling 9 dice at once and looking for 6s is that onerous compared with say rolling 3 dice and looking for 4s. Or one D3 and that's it.
The whinge I see is more that the typical three step hit/wound/save process for determining an attack is now often 7 or 8 steps.
I.E. Dice to determine number of shots, roll to hit, rerolls, roll to wound, rerolls, save, dice to determine damage, FNP rolls etc. Plus exploding/proccing 6s that need to be picked out. You probably won't have all of these up all the time - and I think GW has sort of started trying to moderate it. But its inconsistent like usual.
Some of this - arguably all of this - is about simulating mechanics to "experience the world" etc. But that doesn't stop it feeling kind of clunky.
The problem is I know if they removed all rerolls in the next edition I'd be the first person on here going "wow, it really sucks when you get an unlucky (but statistically inevitable) roll and there is nothing you can do about it."
Yeah it is a fine balance and I am a lot more sympathetic to GW rules mistakes than most, knock on effects are difficult to see. WFB 8th is the lerfect example of this for me. Good intentions and on the surface good changes all round to encourage infantry units. In reality, massive blocks rolling dice at each other.
The magic changes indicate they knew it'd be going that way with many spells being great against those giant units.
It's GW's fault they don't find knock on effects, they could properly playtest their games, no need to be sympathetic towards the company. Have sympathy for the playtesters who aren't given proper instructions. Have sympathy for the writers being pressed for time. But the overall company is still incompetent enough to be worth contempt and even if the writers are pressed for time they shouldn't be writing rules like Hammer of the Emperor or the old Iyanden Craftworld bonus which break the narrative of the game. Spells that ignore spell resistance was just the worst idea ever.
Tyel wrote: The problem is I know if they removed all rerolls in the next edition I'd be the first person on here going "wow, it really sucks when you get an unlucky (but statistically inevitable) roll and there is nothing you can do about it."
Frankly, GW should just make a dice-free variant for people who don't want randomness in their dice-based wargame. Perhaps based on a deck of cards, so that there's some variance but your 'luck' is a finite quantity that always balances out in the end.
I find that re-rolls out the wazoo make for an experience that is not only tedious to resolve, but downright dull to play, because the result is typically so predictable. I am not on the edge of my seat waiting to see how twenty shots hitting on 3s re-rolling all failures will pan out, and I much prefer a system where you have to accept some risk and cannot stack buffs until a positive outcome is virtually guaranteed. Yeah, sometimes your single lascannon shot hitting on 2s will roll a 1 and there's nothing you can do about it- except having contingencies beyond blaming the dice.
The alternative where high rolls are much higher isn't much better, stacking buffs is a problem. Boring auras is another problem. But if you can come up with a good reason for a unit to have or grant re-rolls then that's fine. It just became the default aura that every character got because 8th had to be shipped and making characters something other than more or less effective beat sticks was a design goal (good design goal IMO). Like if you take Destroyers and their re-roll 1s ability and replaced it with the much more interesting effect printed in the new Army of Renown granting +1 to hit against units with missing models and then replaced the Destroyer Lord's aura effect with +1 to Wound against units missing at least half their models instead of yet another re-roll wound rolls of 1 aura the codex would be more interesting and have less re-rolls. Re-roll 1s to hit and to wound isn't even that impactful, you can still roll 2s. Exploding 6s to hit and to wound wouldn't have been much better, it'd still wouldn't be backed by fluff and you'd still have to count 6s for the exploding results. But targeting units that are less than full strength and half strength respectively suddenly makes the rules mean something narratively and tactically. If a rule isn't saying something narratively it shouldn't be there. Calling something "Superior Tactical Precision" or "Conqueror of Worlds" does not make that rule feel like you are in control of something like that if it's just a re-roll 1s aura.
vict0988 wrote: The alternative where high rolls are much higher isn't much better, stacking buffs is a problem. Boring auras is another problem. But if you can come up with a good reason for a unit to have or grant re-rolls then that's fine. It just became the default aura that every character got because 8th had to be shipped and making characters something other than more or less effective beat sticks was a design goal (good design goal IMO). Like if you take Destroyers and their re-roll 1s ability and replaced it with the much more interesting effect printed in the new Army of Renown granting +1 to hit against units with missing models and then replaced the Destroyer Lord's aura effect with +1 to Wound against units missing at least half their models instead of yet another re-roll wound rolls of 1 aura the codex would be more interesting and have less re-rolls. Re-roll 1s to hit and to wound isn't even that impactful, you can still roll 2s. Exploding 6s to hit and to wound wouldn't have been much better, it'd still wouldn't be backed by fluff and you'd still have to count 6s for the exploding results. But targeting units that are less than full strength and half strength respectively suddenly makes the rules mean something narratively and tactically. If a rule isn't saying something narratively it shouldn't be there. Calling something "Superior Tactical Precision" or "Conqueror of Worlds" does not make that rule feel like you are in control of something like that if it's just a re-roll 1s aura.
Agreed, conditional abilities granting +1s is more impactful, more interesting, and less tedious than re-rolls.
But I do also feel there that too many characters are reduced to 'everyone around me hits harder', even if it is put behind a condition that must be met. It'd be cool if you could have beatstick characters that fight directly, buff characters that boost units around them, and command characters that actually lead your army in some manner. If only there was some sort of resource that you could leverage for command-like abilities. Some kind of command tokens. Command currency. Command p- ah, forget it.
AoS 2nd leaned into re-rolls as well, but in AoS 3rd they have gone the opposite direction; old abilities were all eratta'd to be +1 to hit/wound/save (as appropriate) with a core rules limit of +1 (after all math). Since there are plenty of penalties out there stacking multiple + buffs still has a point, but it is also diminishing returns. Wombo-combo largely doesn't work because in absence of debuffs multiple +s do nothing. Fingers crossed 40k goes in this direction.
catbarf wrote: But I do also feel there that too many characters are reduced to 'everyone around me hits harder', even if it is put behind a condition that must be met. It'd be cool if you could have beatstick characters that fight directly, buff characters that boost units around them, and command characters that actually lead your army in some manner. If only there was some sort of resource that you could leverage for command-like abilities. Some kind of command tokens. Command currency. Command p- ah, forget it.
100%, like the Commissar's morale stuff or back when Techmarines could boost terrain. I think for the Destroyer Lord though he should be boosting offense, it just doesn't seem like a deliberate design choice when offense auras are what everyone gets. How do you feel about abilities like Move! Move! Move! which allows Astra Militarum units to move twice? Because to me that level of effect is too high, it's not natural to have Guardsmen that are faster than bikes. Do they hop on to bicycles or something? What I'd like to see instead is something like +3" to Advance rolls or automatic 6" Advance in an Aura so that the effect doesn't become too high.
catbarf wrote: But I do also feel there that too many characters are reduced to 'everyone around me hits harder', even if it is put behind a condition that must be met. It'd be cool if you could have beatstick characters that fight directly, buff characters that boost units around them, and command characters that actually lead your army in some manner. If only there was some sort of resource that you could leverage for command-like abilities. Some kind of command tokens. Command currency. Command p- ah, forget it.
100%, like the Commissar's morale stuff or back when Techmarines could boost terrain. I think for the Destroyer Lord though he should be boosting offense, it just doesn't seem like a deliberate design choice when offense auras are what everyone gets. How do you feel about abilities like Move! Move! Move! which allows Astra Militarum units to move twice? Because to me that level of effect is too high, it's not natural to have Guardsmen that are faster than bikes. Do they hop on to bicycles or something? What I'd like to see instead is something like +3" to Advance rolls or automatic 6" Advance in an Aura so that the effect doesn't become too high.
Yeah, the Destroyer Lord being a combat buff is fine.
I'm not a big fan of Guard orders. I like the concept, but ever since their introduction I feel they've been too impactful, and particularly with the stratagem system in the game there's a lot of overlap between what orders do and what stratagems do. IMO it was cleaner when officers provided Leadership bubbles, but with morale no longer being a particularly important mechanic that probably wouldn't fly.
I'd be okay with more restrained effects- maybe Move Move Move lets you roll 2D6 and pick highest to advance- but ideally I'd tie it into the stratagem mechanic, if that's sticking around. Reduced CP costs on units that are in command range feels appropriate, but that's just spitballing.
Frankly, GW should just make a dice-free variant for people who don't want randomness in their dice-based wargame. Perhaps based on a deck of cards, so that there's some variance but your 'luck' is a finite quantity that always balances out in the end.
I don't have a problem with random elements, I have a problem with clunky, time-consuming mechanics that are used to generate randomness is hugely inefficient ways.
When it comes to rolling dice, less is less and more is more. If you can generate the same probability with a single roll, that's a much more efficient way to do it than rolling 9 dice, especially when you multiply it across multiple actions.
In theory there is some sort of regression to the mean, but there are still going to be those outlier rolls that absolutely wreck stuff. One can say "well, that's pretty rare," but why allow it at all?
GW's love of weird dice mechanics deciding games goes back decades, so this isn't anything new, but it's still annoying.
vict0988 wrote: Rolling 9D6 on 6+ doesn't take longer than 3D6 on 4+ so it's actually good design to roll 9D6 on 6+ if the number 6 or 9 is flavourful for the faction or if the faction is supposed to be more swingy and random.
So rolling 20d6 doesn't take more time than 2d6?
The difference between 3 and 9 dice is pretty negligible.
Rolling dice, it mostly a bit of extra time gathering and reading.
Effectiveness on the battle field is massive. If the target is a spell that does up to 9 Mortal Wounds, I can't think of a more swingy option than roll 9d6 and hope of 6's:
9d6, 6= 1 MW yields Average 1.5 MW (Less than 1% chance of 5+ MW, 19.38% chance of 0 MW)
9d6, 5 or 6 = 1 MW yields Average 3 MW (Less than 1% chance of 7+ MW, only 2.6% chance of 0 MW)
3d3 MW yields Average of 6 MW with a 3.7% chance of 9 MW
1d3 + 1d6 MW yields average of 5.5 MW with a 5.56 chance of 9 MW
So this is really about rolling 9 dice, not having a useful spell with any reasonable success rate. Bad rules writing!
You listed a bunch of outcomes based on different dice formats there, but didn't really relate to the core issue.
5+ Firestorm averages 3MW. So do you just make it flat 3MW? Or maybe just D3+1? Certainly that's simpler, but it isn't the same.
An unmodified 9+ isn't easy to roll. I can get a super smite with less effort. Giving it a flat value or low variance doesn't give the same potential. D3+1 gets you to the same average, but not the same spikes.
And what will you do with the 6+ variant? Surely it can't be D3, because getting just one extra MW for a 9 seems pretty silly and a flat 1 or 2 makes me consider Gaze and a better spell. It hasn't been uncommon for me to still do 2 or 3 MW by spiking 6s.
Rolling up and dropping 5 or 6 5+ out of 9 dice is a rare and often crushing outcome. Certainly we've moved away from the ultra-random and goofy things, but having some minor multi-level spells is hardly pushing the envelope.
This is a question of what is the goal of the spell? How much damage do they really want it to do and then write the rules appropriately. Instead, the decided "this is a great thematic idea" and forgot to determine "is it an effective idea?"
If the damage is about right, but you don't want to waste time rolling 9 dice to little variable effect (and risking no damage at all!) I would say 1 MW on a normal cast (drop WC to 6+), 3 MW on a 9+.
Tyel wrote: The problem is I know if they removed all rerolls in the next edition I'd be the first person on here going "wow, it really sucks when you get an unlucky (but statistically inevitable) roll and there is nothing you can do about it."
Frankly, GW should just make a dice-free variant for people who don't want randomness in their dice-based wargame. Perhaps based on a deck of cards, so that there's some variance but your 'luck' is a finite quantity that always balances out in the end.
I find that re-rolls out the wazoo make for an experience that is not only tedious to resolve, but downright dull to play, because the result is typically so predictable. I am not on the edge of my seat waiting to see how twenty shots hitting on 3s re-rolling all failures will pan out, and I much prefer a system where you have to accept some risk and cannot stack buffs until a positive outcome is virtually guaranteed. Yeah, sometimes your single lascannon shot hitting on 2s will roll a 1 and there's nothing you can do about it- except having contingencies beyond blaming the dice.
still have a copy somewhere, GDWs 'Battle Rider' did just that, the game was based around 2d6 rolls, the designers worked out that rolling many, many 2d6 took time and was tedious so you got a deck of cards both players shared - these all had among the things on them a single 1d6 result, and then a "success/fail" based on the 2d6 probability (with secondary results for green and veteran units) - you make ten attacks, deal ten cards.
the deck was made of 144 cards, so each possible 2d6 result was there four times - as you note its not truly random, however it did work quite nicely and was fast
a good one from a naval game I have is using a d20, your unit attacks with say 20 shots, there is a lookup table, roll the dice, it tells you how many hits you have - IIRC the table goes to 40, it you make say 45 attacks its a roll as 40 and a roll as 5. because the d20 is a single die each line has a bit of a bell curve baked in, thats also pretty fast
what 40k and similar games do currently is basically come down to more attacks usually trumps better attacks just because the law of averages helps, when I was running IG or my nids the outcome of most attack phases was pretty predictable, a lot of dice rolled then one, maybe two enemy models removed - individual rolls for smaller, elite units or heros is good, lets them swing a battle, but for the huddled unwashed hordes some sort of statistical system is better - even if its something like every five models gets one attack that has the potential to do more damage to make it all a bit more varied
Agreed, conditional abilities granting +1s is more impactful, more interesting, and less tedious than re-rolls.
But I do also feel there that too many characters are reduced to 'everyone around me hits harder', even if it is put behind a condition that must be met. It'd be cool if you could have beatstick characters that fight directly, buff characters that boost units around them, and command characters that actually lead your army in some manner. If only there was some sort of resource that you could leverage for command-like abilities. Some kind of command tokens. Command currency. Command p- ah, forget it.
I agree with some of what you're saying. However, I'd add, too, that static auras (regardless of whether they're applying a reroll or some other buff) seem by far the least interesting and least flavourful mechanic for a buff character. I have my issues with the current psychic phase, but at least psychic powers involve some choice and interactivity.
Whilst not divorced from auras, I will say that I really like the Harlequin Pivotal Role mechanic. The ability to choose how you want a given character to play (e.g. whether you want your sniper to focus on debuffing enemies or doing more damage to them; whether you want your support psyker to protect against ranged or melee attacks etc.) would go a long way for a lot of characters in other books.
Anyway, as you say, it seems like it would make a lot of sense to integrate the CP mechanic into this sort of ability. Indeed, my preference would be to scrap Stratagems entirely and spend them on character abilities instead.
100%, like the Commissar's morale stuff or back when Techmarines could boost terrain. I think for the Destroyer Lord though he should be boosting offense, it just doesn't seem like a deliberate design choice when offense auras are what everyone gets. How do you feel about abilities like Move! Move! Move! which allows Astra Militarum units to move twice? Because to me that level of effect is too high, it's not natural to have Guardsmen that are faster than bikes. Do they hop on to bicycles or something? What I'd like to see instead is something like +3" to Advance rolls or automatic 6" Advance in an Aura so that the effect doesn't become too high.
I know this question wasn't directed at me but I wanted to answer anyway.
I think you're right in that some of the orders do a little too much. At the same time, I really like Orders as a basic mechanic. IMO, having a toolbox of abilities to choose from makes for a far more interesting time than a static aura.
catbarf wrote: But I do also feel there that too many characters are reduced to 'everyone around me hits harder', even if it is put behind a condition that must be met. It'd be cool if you could have beatstick characters that fight directly, buff characters that boost units around them, and command characters that actually lead your army in some manner. If only there was some sort of resource that you could leverage for command-like abilities. Some kind of command tokens. Command currency. Command p- ah, forget it.
The problem is that currently the majority of stratagems are just some form of "your dice math is better" rather than any meaningful representation of the chain of command. Is it really improving things to replace an aura of re-rolls with CP generation that you spend on stratagems to get re-rolls? At least with the auras you're constrained to getting that single re-roll 1s effect, with generating CP to spend on re-roll 1s effects you also have the risk of using it to unlock nonsense stratagem combos and make the buff stacking far worse.
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vict0988 wrote: How do you feel about abilities like Move! Move! Move! which allows Astra Militarum units to move twice? Because to me that level of effect is too high, it's not natural to have Guardsmen that are faster than bikes. Do they hop on to bicycles or something? What I'd like to see instead is something like +3" to Advance rolls or automatic 6" Advance in an Aura so that the effect doesn't become too high.
Thankfully this has already been fixed in the new codex. MMM is now +2" move on a normal move or auto-6 if you advance.
catbarf wrote: Frankly, GW should just make a dice-free variant for people who don't want randomness in their dice-based wargame. Perhaps based on a deck of cards, so that there's some variance but your 'luck' is a finite quantity that always balances out in the end.
Beware of unintended consequences and perverse incentives. If you have a small enough deck for luck to reliably balance out you have a small enough deck that card counting becomes an important skill. You really don't want a situation where you save your biggest guns for once you've drawn enough low cards from the deck that you can expect above-average results, or where you decline to charge the enemy because you know the cards in the deck are currently below average and you have little hope of winning the fight. And if you make the deck large enough to avoid card counting you now have a large enough RNG pool that drawing a bunch of low cards no longer guarantees that you'll see some high cards to balance it out, at which point you might as well use normal dice.
You mean "second" Marines right? I.e. not First/True/Realborn right? :p
Just playing with words. Primaris Marines are basically all what SM are about nowadays. Old style marines, aka secundis, should disappear. That way they can remove the stupid transport restrictions and phase out old molds.
So no, XD. Eliminate first borns, the way that the imperium did with thunder warriors.
You mean "second" Marines right? I.e. not First/True/Realborn right? :p
Just playing with words. Primaris Marines are basically all what SM are about nowadays. Old style marines, aka secundis, should disappear. That way they can remove the stupid transport restrictions and phase out old molds.
So no, XD. Eliminate first borns, the way that the imperium did with thunder warriors.
The rumor is they'll be split out into their own codex. But I'm pretty skeptical of that. Primaris Ultramarines are still Ultramarines, as are First Born Ultramarines. So the only thing that does is make us buy two codexes, two supplements and even GW isn't that dumb. And it might be beneficial for both sets to get a datasheet/model splurge but that's also unlikely because of the constant whining during the Primaris surge.
Maybe if there was a proper resource-management system...
