An open Oldhammer topic, about one of my bugbears introduced with 3rd Ed. As per the title, it’s the AP System.
In practice, I loathed it utterly. Having cut my teeth on 2nd Ed, going to “all or nothing” when it came to armour saves didn’t sit right with me at all. And thanks to Forum Advice, people quickly tried to shoehorn in as much high (low? Hmm) AP weapons as they could, forgoing more middling, or those at the other end of the spectrum. And so it felt like it reduced army variety.
For instance, and I have to pick on someone, but it’s not personal, Eldar. Other than points? Why on earth would you take a Shuriken Cannon or Scatter Laser over a Starcannon where you had a choice in the matter? And the Starcannon’s ubiquity against Infantry and Monsters of all types saw the Bright Lance rule over the Eldar Missile Launcher.
Close Combat was even worse on the binary Save or No Save (I said Save, Edmonds. Back in your hole!), as unless you were packing a Power Weapon, your opponent got an unmodified save. At least at first. I think around….6th we started to see AP on different melee weapons.
It also impacted other things, where AP4 was just….kind of a waste. It gave no perk against vehicles, and given the most common saves were 5+ or 3+, it felt just a bit too niche to me.
But this is all just my opinion, perspective and hazy memory. And as is healthy, I’m looking to challenge myself here. The topic is binary by wording, but I’m open to other, in the middle views as well.
"poor implementation" can be used to describe a lot of gw mechanical approaches to games. They often have good ideas, but then either go overboard with them; balance them poorly or abandon them at the end of an edition just when they were getting the hang of them.
In my view one problem with AP systems is its only a limit in one direction. And AP3 weapon is superior to an AP2 because anything the AP2 can hurt the AP3 can hurt equally as well; whilst it can also hurt things the AP2 can't or can't hurt as well.
Now normally this just means that you make the higher AP cost more; but you "have" to take them because high armour units are going to be present in armies and they are going to be tanks and heavy vehicles/monsters that also have high health. So not only do your high AP weapons have to be present; but they have to hit hard too.
So suddenly low armour targets and low AP weapons start to lose importance.
In practice low AP should be massed infantry so having high AP weapons with few attacks but high damage should work out as the damage can't spread to other models in the targeted squad.
However Warhammer has loads of elite units and solo models that are low AP but still not the ideal target for a high AP weapon.
A sliding scale would also work - having high AP weapons be less effective to low armour targets would make low and no AP weapons more viable choices against softer targets without weakening the high AP options. It also doesn't mean you can't use them on those targets (so you don't end up with the early air/anti-air issue of being locked out of hurting a specific target if you don't take the perfect counter)
It was fast and decisive, and put a large split between the save groups... but was reliant on pricing/availability and quantity of cover.
And GW just threw a whole lot of cheap, high strength AP2 weapons out there from day one.
I'm not sure that overall lethality was actually higher for marines facing a hail of 5+ saves rather than mostly 3+ with some no-saves in the mix, but with the binary save system you certainly noticed it more.
The old AP system made everything that wasn't Ap2 or Ap1 pretty much irrelevant, not only against marines because every faction had something with better Armor than 5+ or 4+. Of course there were also other factors like numbers of shots or Strength (Autocannons come to mind because of their multipurpose role, or assault cannons because of their rate of fire), but usually the weapons with Ap2 and 1 also had some bonus against vehicles making them good or usable against everything.
Ap3 in theory wasn't bad as well, but there were few weapons with it. The infamous Heldrake comes to mind.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: The old AP system made everything that wasn't Ap2 or Ap1 pretty much irrelevant, not only against marines because every faction had something with better Armor than 5+ or 4+. Of course there were also other factors like numbers of shots or Strength (Autocannons come to mind because of their multipurpose role, or assault cannons because of their rate of fire), but usually the weapons with Ap2 and 1 also had some bonus against vehicles making them good or usable against everything.
Ap3 in theory wasn't bad as well, but there were few weapons with it. The infamous Heldrake comes to mind.
It was the extremes. AP2 and AP- 3rd was also the edition where you killed Terminators by death to a thousand flashlights. You either buried the armor, or you flooded the zone so the sheer weight of numbers won too.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: The old AP system made everything that wasn't Ap2 or Ap1 pretty much irrelevant,
Three AP- wounds were the equal of one AP2 wound against a MEQ out of cover, and by 5e the game was pushing quite a bit of 4+ cover (bad idea in retrospect) and 3+ invulnerables.
You had to roll to wound of course which is where a lot of the poor AP weapons fell away but for something like an assault squad jumping in with bolt and plasma pistols it wasn't unreasonable for the small stuff to be half or more of your kills.
Overread wrote: "poor implementation" can be used to describe a lot of gw mechanical approaches to games. They often have good ideas, but then either go overboard with them; balance them poorly or abandon them at the end of an edition just when they were getting the hang of them.
In my view one problem with AP systems is its only a limit in one direction. And AP3 weapon is superior to an AP2 because anything the AP2 can hurt the AP3 can hurt equally as well; whilst it can also hurt things the AP2 can't or can't hurt as well.
??
Isn't Doc talking about AP in 3rd-7th ed?
AP3 is NOT superior to AP2 in those editions. Nor in Heresy.
Binary systems are pretty fundamentally flawed. I don't think there's a way to implement the old system that results in something better than what we have now.
Really though, any system built on a D6 is going to have issues. 5+ being twice as effective as 6+ is an awful curve as is the obvious issues with 1+ and even 2+ making 3/4/5 the only "good" values to work with. It's not useless and what we have now works pretty well, but you're always going to run into issues of diversity with such a small usable range.
They, and Striking Scorpions, are to me good examples of the game being on the wonk.
Most of your models would have Stick and Pistol, with no difference between your Stick, and my Stick. Both would grant the foe their full armour save.
But, Vet Sarge and Exarch could typically pack something a bit hittier, like a Powerfist or Scorpion’s Claw. And they did your really reliable damage, regardless of who or what you were duffing up. This left the feeling that the rest of the squad were really just ablative wounds in a Powerfist Delivery System.
Contrast with the preceding system. Whilst Scorpions were stuck with their Ritual Gear, they could at least Parry, giving them a real edge against bog standard infantry, as you were more likely to win a given fight. And the Chainswords alone made your Scorpions S4. Assault Marines could have a lot of upgrades. Power Swords, Power Axes, Plasma Pistols, Power Fists, Hand Flamers. Points intensive, yes. But made for a pretty Killy squad provided you had at least some discretion in what you tried to beat up.
And so the AP system really made combat a bit boring. Any squad with all Power Weapons were just inherently more reliable, as they negated armour saves entirely. Everyone else had a tooled up squad leader, with his mates just there to catch bullets.
That for me fundamentally changed the feel of the game.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: This left the feeling that the rest of the squad were really just ablative wounds in a Powerfist Delivery System.
That is 3e onwards compared to 2e and earlier though - 3rd edition was all about units as an entity, a 10 man unit was very much like a 10 wound model with a degrading profile.
2e and rogue trader were grouped individuals where you moved as a group, shot sometimes as a group, and fought alone - a squad of ten marines charged by 20 orks triggered up to 20 individual combat rounds.
A.T. wrote: It was fast and decisive, and put a large split between the save groups... but was reliant on pricing/availability and quantity of cover.
And GW just threw a whole lot of cheap, high strength AP2 weapons out there from day one.
I agree with the first part, but not the second. ImoGW overdid the AP prevalence in 5th edition, but for 3rd -4th it worked great with only a couple problem examples. (Starcannons should have been priced higher, and Choppas should have been -1, not auto-drop to 4+ save.)
I prefer the binary system to the modifier system. Is that nostalgia talking? Probably.
That said! I do think modifiers have a place even in the binary system. Make a rule, High Impact [X] or whatever you want to call it. X is a penalty applied to armor save rolls made against this weapon.
So a Heavy 3 S5 AP4 Heavy Bolter hitting on a 3+ does 4/9ths a wound to MEQ.
A Heavy 2 S7 AP4 High Impact [1] hitting on a 3+ Autocannon does 5/9ths.
A Power Weapon (which I am fine being a generic profile-Axes, Swords, and Mauls don't REALLY need differentiation) could be S:User or S:+1 AP3 High Impact [1].
there's nothing wrong with a binary system if it's implemented correctly.
And by correctly, I mean looking at the game as a whole and genericising the AP concept, rather than giving each weapon an ap value as part of its stats.
Standard infantry weapons shouldn't have had any ap, that should have been a special rule for heavy and special weapons.
Armour saves could have been split between light (4+, 5+, 6+) and heavy (2+, 3+).
You then have rules like:
Anti Personnel - this weapon ignores light armour saves.
Anti Tank - this weapon ignores heavy and light armour saves.
With another rule called Penetrator (X), where the enemy's save is reduced by X, but this would be for special weapons, rules or situations.
The game is much easier to balance when your save ignoring abilities come from individual weapons rather than whole squads. Especially when you've defaulted standard rifles to ignoring standard armour, it becomes silly then.
A 5+ save already incorporates it's lack of protection into its low value, AP5 is just additional punishment for no good reason.
AP weapons
flamers
heavy bolters
shuriken cannons
autocannons
big shootas
(low ap weapons like multi lasers, heavy stubbers and scatter lasers would just allow saves as normal).
AT weapons
Lascannons
plasma guns
melta guns
starcannons
railguns
etc.
your effectiveness at destroying vehicles is reflected by Strength anyway - a S6 starcannon was no good at killing a tank, but light vehicles were ok.
There are a range of things you could do to the mechanics beyond this, like giving vehicles armour saves.
Your mechanics shouldn't have a core stat ignored most of the time because you've calibrated a different value to do so. Start with saves and any manipulation of them is the exception not the rule.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JNAProductions wrote:I prefer the binary system to the modifier system. Is that nostalgia talking? Probably.
That said! I do think modifiers have a place even in the binary system. Make a rule, High Impact [X] or whatever you want to call it. X is a penalty applied to armor save rolls made against this weapon.
So a Heavy 3 S5 AP4 Heavy Bolter hitting on a 3+ does 4/9ths a wound to MEQ.
A Heavy 2 S7 AP4 High Impact [1] hitting on a 3+ Autocannon does 5/9ths.
A Power Weapon (which I am fine being a generic profile-Axes, Swords, and Mauls don't REALLY need differentiation) could be S:User or S:+1 AP3 High Impact [1].
Baragash wrote:As someone that also started at the start of 2nd, I preferred the binary system of 3rd etc.
In 2nd, MEQ saves were regularly and easily reduced to 5+/6+ or even negated. Nothing about armour modifiers ever made MEQs feel like MEQs.
(29 Orks with Autocannons, 1SD, -3 Sv lolwut).
I can see the PoV regarding combats feeling like pillowfights under the binary system though.
But you're showing the bias again - it's all about MEQs. When more than half the armies aren't MEQs and their stats are screwed by the system. If the only advantage you can point to is measuring against marines, it's not an advantage for the GAME, but for one faction that skews the mechanics. This is why it works in HH, when your system favours 3+ saves, it's easier to use when most model HAVE 3+ saves.
3rd ed played fine when it was marine on marine, because their basic weapons didn't ignore each other's armour.
It's like arguing that the Leadership and breaking rules are great and work perfectly because your 100% fearless army is unaffected by it.
Baragash wrote: As someone that also started at the start of 2nd, I preferred the binary system of 3rd etc.
In 2nd, MEQ saves were regularly and easily reduced to 5+/6+ or even negated. Nothing about armour modifiers ever made MEQs feel like MEQs.
(29 Orks with Autocannons, 1SD, -3 Sv lolwut).
I can see the PoV regarding combats feeling like pillowfights under the binary system though.
Trouble there is said 29 Orks with Autocannon were pretty points intensive, comprised multiple Mobs, and suffered the then standard Orky deficiency if not much of a save, and middling at best Leadership,
In 2nd Ed, Marines felt like Marines through sheer squad efficiency. Every stat was above average except for movement. Their armour and standard small arms were above average. Their equipment options were solid. They could Combat Squad. Their Dreadnoughts were arguably the best in the game, and their Tanks were no slouches, again thanks to above average Ballistic Skill and typically the guns to make that count - which also came with Targetters.
And they still got their save, of some value, longer than most other armies. Guard, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids all tended, with the odd exception, to cap out at 4+, the majority being 5+ or 6+.
Also on the squad claimed? Presumably Deathskulls Mob. Which came 3-10 strong. And with all Autocannon, cost a pretty 28 points a pop. For reference, a standard Marine was 30 points, had superior stats barring a tied Toughness, and a 3+ save compared to the Deathskulls 6+ Flak Armour.
So, 29 models at 28 points? Is a minimum of three Mobs, and 812 points worth of models. And they’d die to a stiff breeze thanks to no armour worth worrying about. So, Potent, sure. But also having to take on equal points of Marines in little more than T-Shirt and good wishes. Get those Marines in Hard Cover, and you’re hitting me on a 6+, with one in six firing no shots due to Jam on Sustained Fire. Not exactly as fearsome as you painted it. Or a more direct Heavy Support Squad? Marjorie, bring me my Devastators with as many Heavy Bolters as possible, and we’ll show these blighters who’s wearing the finest fighting pantaloons.
Interesting concepts you have here that can be pressed even further.
Hellebore wrote: there's nothing wrong with a binary system if it's implemented correctly.
And by correctly, I mean looking at the game as a whole and genericising the AP concept, rather than giving each weapon an ap value as part of its stats.
Standard infantry weapons shouldn't have had any ap, that should have been a special rule for heavy and special weapons.
Armour saves could have been split between light (4+, 5+, 6+) and heavy (2+, 3+).
You then have rules like:
Anti Personnel - this weapon ignores light armour saves.
Anti Tank - this weapon ignores heavy and light armour saves.
With another rule called Penetrator (X), where the enemy's save is reduced by X, but this would be for special weapons, rules or situations.
If you define models as having Light or Heavy armor, you can actually use more save values in both categories. Heavy 4+ armor would still get a save against Anti-Personal while Light 4+ armor would not. Imagine the possibilities!
Baragash wrote: As someone that also started at the start of 2nd, I preferred the binary system of 3rd etc.
In 2nd, MEQ saves were regularly and easily reduced to 5+/6+ or even negated. Nothing about armour modifiers ever made MEQs feel like MEQs.
(29 Orks with Autocannons, 1SD, -3 Sv lolwut).
I can see the PoV regarding combats feeling like pillowfights under the binary system though.
That was a design and calibration issue, not a mechanic issue.
Lasguns shouldn't have had a -1 save modifier. Shuriken catapults shouldn't have had a -2 save modifier.
Boltguns with a -1 save mod and heavy bolters with -2 seemed about right.
A BS3 Ork being equipped with the main turret gun of a Predator for +16 points is pretty questionable.
I think these notions of "balance" hearken back to the ol' "How do you think Marines should fight"?
Because the Save modifiers in the 2nd ed context meant that if you actually hit your opponent in cover, then you're likely do do something, and if you catch your opponent out of cover, it's bad news for them. But those few, elite Marines could be standing and rapid firing from Hard Cover in 2nd (-2 to hit), in which case your Guardsmen or Guardians in a firefight are only hitting them on 6s. If you nerf the Lasguns and Catapults, then it becomes even more of an uphill battle for them. (not to mention all the potential non-MEQ disadvantages regarding chemical warfare, grenade throwing, Ld. etc).
But of course if you expect your Marines to just wade through enemy firepower out in the open, then you might think those -1s and -2s are just too lethal for those Marines.
To compare 2nd to 3rd+, you really really have to take into account the larger context of potential modifiers or other avenues of Marine advantages. Remember that cover didn't help Marines at all against small arms in 3rd-7th. It's a huge difference in troop behavioral expectation between the two.
I think the old AP system of all or nothing was superior to the save modifications of newer editions due mostly to how it paired with cover saves. The current type of system just rewards more AP as it defeats any sort of defense besides invuln saves/FNP while the old AP system was about finding the right targets for the weapons. You didn't want to waste AP2 vs somebody with cardboard armor as it was usually exceptionally expensive (note: GW messed this up with certain AP2 weapons) while throwing AP4 against 3+ was inefficient usage of firepower. Having cover changed the dynamic as that AP2 plasma weapon that could melt marine armor is only resulting in a 4+ save but shooting those scouts in the open who normally have 4+ saves might be the more cost effective decision. The battlefield conditions changed the math on what was the optimal choice and then it of course got muddied more with regards to threat assessments and clearing objectives.
When points balanced was roughly decent you got these sweet spots where certain weapons shined and other spots where they fell off terribly or ended up being so cheap that they could become decent at brute forcing saves. Of course it also breaks down when it's too easy to have ignores cover applied to AP2 weapons (see 6th and 7th Tau or Eldar). Still, it was harder to have the optimized weapon selection that wins vs all types of infantry or vehicles/MCs. Again, stuff like Grav, cheap ignores cover AP2, psychic power buffs, Special rules stacking, etc could break this but that isn't a flaw with the older AP system but with GW's points and codex design decisions.
I'm not sure the 3rd Edition AP/armour rules can be solved while players have agency over what they take or don't take.
I mean Starcannon Spam is a double edged sword. Yes, Marine players complained bitterly. But if all you ever found yourself playing was various different coloured space marines what were you going to take?
If you nerf Starcannons by upping the points - or other sources of AP3 - it likely just makes Eldar a bit worse - but now even more dependent on the AP3 they can still fit into their list. It isn't going to suddenly make all the units that can only tickle marines any better or more attractive.
I mean you can argue this is GW's fault for not forcing some TAC list with a range of AP and armour profiles. But if half the people I'm actually going to play are running armies of 3+ save models...? I'm hardly going to thank GW for making me bring models we both know are bad.
What this leads me to is the dangerous heresy that Marines shouldn't have been MEQ. If say Scouts were 5+ save, Tactical Marines 4+, "elite Marines" 3+, and Terminators 2+ - and you apply the same logic for other factions - then you might have got the diversity of armour profiles that would have justified it on weapon profiles. But that wasn't the case and you didn't.
Bring a lot of AP3 with a splash of AP2, and if you ran into someone running hordes of bodies you might be a bit sad but in a lot of editions these armies were functionally so bad you had good odds of winning anyway.
I’m never going to be persuaded that AP and Cover Saves worked at all well.
Yes it encouraged thematic play to an extent, as when Marines only benefitted against high (low?) AP weapons, but everyone else effectively got an Invulnerable Save, it reduced player choice.
Of course, 2nd Ed was a much smaller scaled games. Even a 2,000 point army might comprise three dozen models, depending on army and loadout etc. And so you tended to have more time for working out modifiers to hit, wound and save. 3rd Ed had been streamlined to remove much of that. And I’m not necessarily arguing the removal was wrong.
But when a slew of armies just didn’t really benefit from cover? It felt wrong to my 2nd Ed obsessed mind. Especially when cover affected who fought first.
Tyel wrote: I mean Starcannon Spam is a double edged sword. Yes, Marine players complained bitterly. But if all you ever found yourself playing was various different coloured space marines what were you going to take?
AP2, long range, good strength and rapid fire for less points than a missile launcher - and available on every wave serpent at half cost and twinlinked.
Not just marine killers, they were a little too good against all elite targets. All the balance issues of the editions cheap plasma guns but firing from the far side of the board.
Also not too shabby against side or rear armour. A weapon of true ubiquity. And one which broke the game.
Not because Eldar players are unimaginative or power gamey, but because the Star Cannon was just a no brainer compared to its stablemates.
Which I think is the biggest flaw of 3rd and others onwards. The binary approach of the AP system lead to every army having some kind of no brainer option. A weapon typically seen to the exclusion of others.
I played nids, mainly vs two marine players. I imagined them in cover, holding the line while blasting my hordes of approaching gribblies. In practice the marines just walked all over the board completely* ignoring terrain as all nid guns were ap4 at best** and couldn't penetrate their armor anyway. Meanwhile my hordes had to hug cover to be able to get a save at all. So I was absolutely thrilled when 8th reintroduced save modifiers (didn't last long, hah).
*except for the one or two squads near my genestealers, since stealers struck last when charging into cover and were glass cannons. But that's a rant for another day.
**except for the 1-2 psykers I brought with warp blast, although I mainly used it against vehicles
Edit: I absolutely adored plinking terminators to death with 10 fleshborer gaunt squads though
shortymcnostrill wrote: I played nids, mainly vs two marine players. I imagined them in cover, holding the line while blasting my hordes of approaching gribblies
Probably for the best they didn't benefit from cover. Wouldn't have wanted 2+ save marines hiding behind walls all day.
A.T. wrote: AP2, long range, good strength and rapid fire for less points than a missile launcher - and available on every wave serpent at half cost and twinlinked.
Not just marine killers, they were a little too good against all elite targets. All the balance issues of the editions cheap plasma guns but firing from the far side of the board.
Certainly true.
Although I'd probably argue in turn that missile launchers were systematically over-costed for most of the game. GW seemed to really overvalue "ah, you've run out of high value tanks/monsters to shoot with your worse bright lances/lascannons? Then you can... idk, pop a couple of guardsmen, that will add up."
I guess at least you might want to do this as the whole unit/tank could presumably shoot at such units, while its lighter guns were often wasted on vehicles.
I stand my view that you can argue it could be balanced, but you'd need to fundamentally change so much that it doesn't have much similarity to our 3rd-7th.
In a less skewed reality of the system, Missile Launchers probably were worth their points on paper, precisely because they did provide a bit of everything. By no means the most efficient Anti-Tank or Anti-Personnel heavy weapon, sure. But still fairly capable in both roles, bringing the appeal of being unlikely to run out of worthwhile targets.
Certainly I found them of particular use against Nids, as outside of Extended Carapace, the Krak Missile’s AP3 was plenty for swatting big bugs, and the relatively lack of AP on a Frag Missile was less of an issue against Gaunts.
Tyel wrote: Although I'd probably argue in turn that missile launchers were systematically over-costed for most of the game
I'm not sure there was much of a system to it, save for a gradual reduction with each new book.
HBolt..Miss..Melta...Plas....Las
..15......30......35......35......35......3e SM ..15......20......20......35......35......4e SM ..15......15......15......25......35......5e SM ...5.......10......10......20......25......5e Wolves
..10......10......10......15......25......5e BA ..10......10......10......15......20......6e SM
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: In a less skewed reality of the system, Missile Launchers probably were worth their points on paper, precisely because they did provide a bit of everything. By no means the most efficient Anti-Tank or Anti-Personnel heavy weapon, sure. But still fairly capable in both roles, bringing the appeal of being unlikely to run out of worthwhile targets.
Certainly I found them of particular use against Nids, as outside of Extended Carapace, the Krak Missile’s AP3 was plenty for swatting big bugs, and the relatively lack of AP on a Frag Missile was less of an issue against Gaunts.
Across every edition, whenever I saw a situation where a frag seemed like it should have been the right call, it ended up not being. With one exception, I think in 4-5th where my TML landspeeder dropped a pair of frags into a gaunt squad caught in the open and did ugly things to them. Every other time I was just tossing krack missiles downrange, or should have been. And if you are shooting kracks all the time, why not just pony up for the LC? MLs were being charged for a flexibility that I never used. Which sums up a lot about marines, honestly.
On pricing, I liked it in 5th? Where they were a free upgrade in tac squads, if you took a full 10 man squad. The rules of the game meant it wasn’t going to get the same use as in a dedicated Dev squad, so they cut you a break.
And now, in 10th, the humble missile launcher is hot garbage against any serious vehicle. Whereas a Primaris Lieutenant is a great choice for wounding vehicles in melee
In 5th-9th, I always found Aeldari missile launchers to be a pretty valid choice. They were generally a little less effective against vehicles than a lance, but not so much though that they were "bad" at the job. And when you happened to run into a carpet of gaunts or a 9th edition blob of gargoyles, you were glad for the extra horde clearing power. The key difference between the AML and the human ML generally being like, a pip of AP or something. You generally wanted to bring *some* lances or fire dragons in your army, but you could equip a few warwalkers with the AML and look at it as a genuinely decent option.
In 10th, I feel like missile launchers would be pretty viable if you just bumped the high strength profile up to S12. Compared to a lascannon/brightlance, missiles should probably be worse at wounding OR worse at doing damage; not both. Heck, you could even match the Strength AND Damage and the las/lance weapons would still have the edge in terms of AP.
They just went overboard in making krak missiles inferior in too many ways all at once. The frag/plasma profile is a nice to have but still pretty low value even when there *is* a juicy T3 horde to shoot at. So the trade-off for gaining that limited value anti-horde attack should be similarly minor. Especially if GW insists on not having wargear points to make the less powerful weapon less of an investment.
They, and Striking Scorpions, are to me good examples of the game being on the wonk.
Most of your models would have Stick and Pistol, with no difference between your Stick, and my Stick. Both would grant the foe their full armour save.
But, Vet Sarge and Exarch could typically pack something a bit hittier, like a Powerfist or Scorpion’s Claw. And they did your really reliable damage, regardless of who or what you were duffing up. This left the feeling that the rest of the squad were really just ablative wounds in a Powerfist Delivery System.
Contrast with the preceding system. Whilst Scorpions were stuck with their Ritual Gear, they could at least Parry, giving them a real edge against bog standard infantry, as you were more likely to win a given fight. And the Chainswords alone made your Scorpions S4. Assault Marines could have a lot of upgrades. Power Swords, Power Axes, Plasma Pistols, Power Fists, Hand Flamers. Points intensive, yes. But made for a pretty Killy squad provided you had at least some discretion in what you tried to beat up.
And so the AP system really made combat a bit boring. Any squad with all Power Weapons were just inherently more reliable, as they negated armour saves entirely. Everyone else had a tooled up squad leader, with his mates just there to catch bullets.
That for me fundamentally changed the feel of the game.
Lemme make sure I'm reading this right -
In 2nd Assault Marines could do all pistol+power sword/fist/maul/axe etc
In 3rd+ Power Weapons negated armor saves
But in 3rd Assault Squads had already lost the armory access - so no more power weapons (except on the leader)
In 2nd Power Weapons didn't automatically negate saves - most were -3, 1 was -2, and the fist was -5 but 3+ -3 still saves on a 6.
The AP system is fundamentally flawed in a game in which armor is a faction characteristic and half the game runs on 3+ or better.
For it to work you would need to either merge Marines and Guard into a single army with a variety of armor saves (and force them to play mixed armies) or nerf power armor into 4+.
Tyran wrote: The AP system is fundamentally flawed in a game in which armor is a faction characteristic and half the game runs on 3+ or better.
For it to work you would need to either merge Marines and Guard into a single army with a variety of armor saves (and force them to play mixed armies) or nerf power armor into 4+.
Hooo boy, now we're talking. I'm not against this.
Assuming a recalibration and a squash down the scale.
They, and Striking Scorpions, are to me good examples of the game being on the wonk.
Most of your models would have Stick and Pistol, with no difference between your Stick, and my Stick. Both would grant the foe their full armour save.
But, Vet Sarge and Exarch could typically pack something a bit hittier, like a Powerfist or Scorpion’s Claw. And they did your really reliable damage, regardless of who or what you were duffing up. This left the feeling that the rest of the squad were really just ablative wounds in a Powerfist Delivery System.
Contrast with the preceding system. Whilst Scorpions were stuck with their Ritual Gear, they could at least Parry, giving them a real edge against bog standard infantry, as you were more likely to win a given fight. And the Chainswords alone made your Scorpions S4. Assault Marines could have a lot of upgrades. Power Swords, Power Axes, Plasma Pistols, Power Fists, Hand Flamers. Points intensive, yes. But made for a pretty Killy squad provided you had at least some discretion in what you tried to beat up.
And so the AP system really made combat a bit boring. Any squad with all Power Weapons were just inherently more reliable, as they negated armour saves entirely. Everyone else had a tooled up squad leader, with his mates just there to catch bullets.
That for me fundamentally changed the feel of the game.
Lemme make sure I'm reading this right -
In 2nd Assault Marines could do all pistol+power sword/fist/maul/axe etc
In 3rd+ Power Weapons negated armor saves
But in 3rd Assault Squads had already lost the armory access - so no more power weapons (except on the leader)
In 2nd Power Weapons didn't automatically negate saves - most were -3, 1 was -2, and the fist was -5 but 3+ -3 still saves on a 6.
Exactly that. And because 3rd and 4th (possibly 5th? Can’t remember when melee AP was introduced) an Assault Marine essentially had no AP, they just didn’t feel particularly deadly.
3rd I used them a lot, lead by a chaplain. Who, granted did a lot of the lifting, but re-rolls and weight of attacks put some work in. Also 5 point plasma pistols.
They were a good backfield harassing unit. Against dedicated assault squads, they were not going to fare well. But they could beat a dev squad in a fight. And even if it took a few turns of slapping each other with pillows, the time it took was time the Dev’s LCs were not popping your tanks.
They were one of the units that took it on the chin hard in the simplification of 3rd, but that’s more a unit issue, and less of the AP system.
Exactly that. And because 3rd and 4th (possibly 5th? Can’t remember when melee AP was introduced) an Assault Marine essentially had no AP, they just didn’t feel particularly deadly.
OK, then let me ask this cause I'm still getting lost here:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Any squad with all Power Weapons were just inherently more reliable, as they negated armour saves entirely. Everyone else had a tooled up squad leader,
Orighinally we're talking about Striking Scorpions and Assault Marines. In 2nd Assault Marines had beaucoup power (usually) swords. And in third units that had all Power Weapons being inherently more reliable/deadly - but in third Assault Marines only had the tooled up squad leader everyone else had. Is there a third unit I missed being named? There's a transition here I'm stumbling over.
In 2nd Ed Assault Marines were pretty reliable, as their loadout gave you real options.
3rd Ed? As only the Veteran had access to power weapons, the rest of the squad just became their ablative wounds.
No problem, I just wanted to make sure cause I was really spinning my wheels on that one. Now a little later on it got even more "interesting" with Vanguard Vets.
Kinda miss it, but then again I had an army that was almost entirely AP3 (Tempestus Scions) with low-ish str. It made for an interesting combo, imo, where the issue was wounding more than piercing armor, and cover was a real issue.
So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
I don't think D6s are bad for a wargame and think that people are bit too enamoured with the theory of additional pips, rather than the practice. Slicing your percentages smaller and smaller reduces the effect of stat changes and leaves a set of stats that are impractical. Just because you could theoretically provide those stats doesn't mean they'll be practically useful in game.
ie going to a d12, 11+ is the same as 6+. But 6+ is already hard to balance because of how unlikely it is, so allowing the opportunity for a 12+ doesn't improve that. Similarly 2+ is 3+ on a d12, and it's already really good, so 2+ is going to be too much. So what you actually have is at best, 3+-11+ which is fine, except the steps are only 8% which means you won't get very big differences in your actual rolls.
Take 7+ (equal to 4+ on a d6) vs 8+ (4.5 on a d6). 10 rolls on a squads is 50% or 5 vs 58% or 5.8. Over 5 turns that squad will generate 4 extra dice. It's not nothing but it's also not a lot of anything. Push it to an extreme of d100s and you see the issue clearly, 1% difference is not nothing, but practically is.
Even a d8 only adds 2 pips to your range, at the cost of each individual pip having less improvement over the previous. Each stat change on a d8 is 12%, only 75% of the range of a d6, reducing the comparative impact of the stat by 25%.
For your game play to be interesting in a narrow window of dice rolls during the game, the stat differences need to be meaningful enough that they impact the gameplay, but not too binary that it's a coin flip.
The issue with D6s is how they're implemented, not their pip percentages. The more GW relies on static X+ rolls, the worse the d6 looks, because there's nowhere to go, except to roll more or less dice. But comparison rolls, where the range is abstracted from the stats, or dice pools of static X+ success values, are ways that D6s are used well.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
That's kinda funny because Flamers were one of the better options against SMs in 2nd edition, hitting multiple models with a -2 save modifier. I think you just assume that sensitive joints in the armor get burned away under sci-fi flamer acid-fuel.
Terminators could ignore the effects of continuous fire in 2nd though, iirc. It could damage them if they failed their save, but they wouldn't run around randomly like other models until the fire was extinguished.
. . .
But moving away from D6 is a non-starter for 40k I think. D6s are easy to get a lot of, easy to read at a distance, settle more cleanly than more-sided alternatives, and have proved to be versatile enough for the scope of the game. The problems of 40k typically arise from mechanics and stat distributions, not the dice.
I guess I can kind of squint and see the issue from a verisimilitude perspective. I have unfortunately been trapped in a Games Workshop while some guy went on - and on - about how Bolters should be at least Krak grenade strength because he'd read a book once and...
But gameplay wise I just don't think it matters. You have the hit roll, the wound roll, the save roll. You can mess about with additional effects on top of this (Rending and mortal wounds, FNP). All this gives you considerable space for determining probabilities versus a range of targets.
I mean there have been people who seem to think my mind will be blown by a D12 world where say Marines are BS3+, Eldar BS4+ and Necrons BS5+. But... who cares? Logically it should all be reversed back to the points cost. So allowing for some level of soft stats - so "BS X/S Y/AP Z" shots have to be worth "the same points" as so many "BS A/S B/AP C" shots.
Its the same as people who say "Orks are inaccurate, so they should only hit on 6s". Fine - but then logically they have to have a bazillion shots on their shooting units to compensate this inaccuracy. Unless there's something "intrinsic" to Ork Shooting entailing you roll a KFC Bucket worth of dice (which it could be) then this is silly. The game would work entirely fine if the relative "lethality" of the unit shooting was abstracted down to fewer shots hitting on 3s.
Its like the ancient cliche of "I have two hand weapons so I get an extra attack". I mean okay as game abstraction it has a certain sense - but in real life this is just nonsense. Its much easier to attack twice with a weapon in one hand. Why should the number of swings I get depend on how many hands or tentacles I happen to have, as opposed to just how quick I am? (A rule which initially tended to only apply to characters but GW has belated started to roll out when they feel like it.)
Tyran wrote: The AP system is fundamentally flawed in a game in which armor is a faction characteristic and half the game runs on 3+ or better.
For it to work you would need to either merge Marines and Guard into a single army with a variety of armor saves (and force them to play mixed armies) or nerf power armor into 4+.
Yeah and this was the fundamental problem with it in my view. In 40k the attacker selects the engagement, usually at least. This means the optimal strategy is to have a variety of guns (to give you the most options) but to skew every unit to a single identical defense (to deny your opponent options). If you play Nidzilla with all 2+ saves you negate the effectiveness of most weapons, and if you play a huge gaunt horde then you negate the value of most special and heavy weapons. But if you play a mix of 2+ carnifexes, 4+ genestealers, and 5+ gaunts then your opponent can use lascannons, heavy bolters, and flamers to full effectiveness.
So in order for the AP system to actually be interactive, with a mix of both APand armor save values in both armies, you can't just allow armies to have a mix a saves you must force them to do so. And of course forcing Space Marine players to take units with bad saves would never happen. So the practical outcome of the AP system was that AP only mattered in list-building to counter the current "meta", and rarely allowed for interesting in-game choices because most of your opponent's army had the exact same save across the board.
^I think that's more of an issue with a high probability of local metas being full of Marine or other 3+ save armies, CSM, Necrons. Because once Orks, DE, Nids (swarm) armies showed up it really revealed how unprepared number of lists were for dealing with a different set of targets.
I also think it's a shallow game if there's nothing more than AP-based target choice to make things interesting. There should still be a heirarchy of target priority to deal with, cover/LOS blocking, tactical opportunitites in the form of optimal assaults and unit coordination, placement of reinforcements or other avenues for effect like leadership effects (morale/pinning) or whatever.
I always thought that the 3rd ed+ AP system was great for selling Space Marines but impossible to balance.
If some part of your points value is represented by your armour save and another part by your weapon's AP, those points are totally wasted if your opponent's armour is higher than your AP. While if your opponent's AP exceeds your armour save, the points constituting that AP are incredibly well spent.
A 3+ save AP5 army is overwhelmingly powerful against a 5+ save AP0-4 army. The same 5+ save army is comparatively durable and powerful against a 6+ save AP0 army.
In a system with save modifiers, you're always reducing the enemy's protection by a given amount, potentially negating it.
Tyran wrote: ...merge Marines and Guard into a single army with a variety of armor saves...
Why condemn Guard for the sins of the Space Marines? I'd be the last to suggest that the SM codex needs more units, but *adding more med/light armor units (are chapter auxiliaries a thing?) or reworking power armor to have more varied save profiles seems the far better option here.
Now I do disagree on the d6 thing. For one it would make it possible for marine chapters/legions to be actualy different. SW could be better in melee, RG would get better cover and ultramarines wouldn't be the best, because they have the most special characters that modify basic rules.
In the end the problem with game isn't the save mods or the AP system. It is the game size and the rule set that tries to be both a table top game and a skirmish system at the same time.
In a perfect world GW would have to decide on one or the other. And we would either be playing with 20-30 models in a marine army, and have all the intricate weapon stats, grenades, special rules for units/armies/army variants/etc or we would get a something like Space marine devastator squads hits on +X, weapon option Anti personal wounds infantry on +3 vehicles/monsters on +5, and the Anti tank version wounds infantry on +5, wounds vehicles on +4, on +3 at half effective range.
And there could be maybe some faction specific rules, like tyranids could fire anti personal weapons at -1 after "running", Maybe the "special" IF rule would be that if they stand they do X. But the stuff would be limited and army/army type specific. No FnP, saves on only the most tough stuff (terminators, some walkers/monsters, some tanks). But then we would more or less be playing a smaller version of epic 2ed.
And again this is the perfect world. GW is not going to do away with the d6, they are still going to try to put skirmish style rules (LoS/terrain movement, weapon stats etc) in game where they want elit armies to run 40+ models.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
Flamethrowers are definitely able to harm tanks if aimed in the right place (i.e the engines), so I have no problem with the latter.
Oktoglokk wrote: If some part of your points value is represented by your armour save and another part by your weapon's AP, those points are totally wasted if your opponent's armour is higher than your AP. While if your opponent's AP exceeds your armour save, the points constituting that AP are incredibly well spent.
Not exactly.
Your 5+ save models were usually considerably cheaper than your 3+ models. A marine might save one out of three wounds but you got three guardsmen to every marine, if not for reduced strength and accuracy the better armour would mean nothing.
And on the flip side those low AP weapons were points inefficient against the poor save models. Firing a plasmagun into a 5e marine was a good 16+pts of return on your 15pt gun. Not so much when you are killing a grot and a good way to lose the game was to turn up with piles of lascannons and power weapons only to get bogged down or run over by chaff - especially in eras of slower movement and no split fire where no matter how much stronger your units were they only had three or four actual attack actions all game.
Personally I think AP should reduce armor save instead of either completely negating it or doing nothing.
I also think terrain/cover should provide two possible bonuses.
Concealment: reduces the chance to hit, so concealment 1 would be -1 penalty to hit units in the terrain, concealment 2 would be -2 penalty to hit, etc.
Cover: negates points of AP. So terrain that provides Cover 1 would reduce 1 point of AP from weapons shooting into the terrain, Cover 2 would reduce 2 points of AP, etc.
So, AP can be dangerous for every unit, and terrain can provide different bonuses and different mixes of bonuses, either making units harder to hit with shooting, or helping negate AP. Some special weapons could have "ignore cover" or "ignore concealment" to provide good situational bonuses. And every unit has some reason to want to be in terrain instead of either NEEDIng to be in terrain or wanting to completely ignore being in terrain at all.
I would also reduce some movement penalties for terrain to make it easier to keep things moving.
While I'm thinking about it - yes the 3E-Whenever AP system was inherently flawed. The hard plateaus lead to huge valleys in RNG. If your weapon didn't invalidate the same outright, when it came to armor saves there was no differentiation between it and a lasgun - in other words a 3+ Space Marine was as afraid of a big giant vehicle mounted Autocannon with AP4 as they were of a pitiful AP- lasgun once you got to the armor save step.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+. In the all-or-nothing system, the prevalence of Marines made AP3 a magic breakpoint. In the modifier system, a single step better halves your incoming damage, a single step worse increases it by 50%.
Linear modifiers on individual dice have outsized impact in this environment that would not be nearly as problematic if the baseline was 4+ or 5+. Or simply folded into a more generic defensive stat, because the modeled distinction between Toughness, Wounds, and Save is now entirely arbitrary and in practice T and Sv are largely redundant to one another.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+. In the all-or-nothing system, the prevalence of Marines made AP3 a magic breakpoint. In the modifier system, a single step better halves your incoming damage, a single step worse increases it by 50%.
Linear modifiers on individual dice have outsized impact in this environment that would not be nearly as problematic if the baseline was 4+ or 5+. Or simply folded into a more generic defensive stat, because the modeled distinction between Toughness, Wounds, and Save is now entirely arbitrary and in practice T and Sv are largely redundant to one another.
Are you sure about that?
It is my understanding that in a typical Warhammer game system, when it comes to shooting, the most prescious stat (after the amount of shots a weapon fires) is the to-hit roll number, followed by toughness, followed by save. This being because the dice pools are resolved in the shoot-wound-save order, and whichever comes first affects the amount of dice that get to the next stage the most.
Or is this because to wound roll values are dictated by the S-vs-T table, in which 1 pip +/- is not as significant as in the other two stages, which modulate linearly?
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+.
They didn't. The players did. There is a fault with GW and implementation, but its not quite everybody and their sister having an MEQ army. The problem with GW implementation is (almost) everyone follows the same formula. Various "eldar" for example have same-to-hit, same-to-wound- and moderate saves - instead of harder to hit, same-to-wound, and moderate saves to reflect their agility. Arguably the biggest cookie cutter divergence are harlequinns that use(d) Invulns as their baseline save. How much different would it be if all the Space Elves had some sort of (balanced) baseline -1 to hit - i.e. from outside 12" or when not-battleshocked, or all the time - whatever is balanced. What if we still had an Initiative Stat, and all the to-hit rolls were opposed like the to-wound rolls? Ballistic Skill vs Initiative, Weapon Skill vs Weapon Skill, same 2+/3+/4+/5+/6+ chart To Wound uses. Now basic Aeldari have an I of 5, your Tactical Marine has a BS of 4, hit on a 5+. GEQ have BS 3 hit on a 5+. Harlequinns have I6 5+, 6+ etc. Meanwhile Devastators with their Targeter have BS5 vs I5 is a hit on 4's, and Hellhounds with their flamers auto-hit. 90% of the differentiation is all on the one dice roll, the armor save. Spread it out so that different factions/units get their differences on other rolls.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+. In the all-or-nothing system, the prevalence of Marines made AP3 a magic breakpoint. In the modifier system, a single step better halves your incoming damage, a single step worse increases it by 50%.
Linear modifiers on individual dice have outsized impact in this environment that would not be nearly as problematic if the baseline was 4+ or 5+. Or simply folded into a more generic defensive stat, because the modeled distinction between Toughness, Wounds, and Save is now entirely arbitrary and in practice T and Sv are largely redundant to one another.
Are you sure about that?
It is my understanding that in a typical Warhammer game system, when it comes to shooting, the most prescious stat (after the amount of shots a weapon fires) is the to-hit roll number, followed by toughness, followed by save. This being because the dice pools are resolved in the shoot-wound-save order, and whichever comes first affects the amount of dice that get to the next stage the most.
Or is this because to wound roll values are dictated by the S-vs-T table, in which 1 pip +/- is not as significant as in the other two stages, which modulate linearly?
Very broadly I’d agree. Let’s say we’re comparing two guns. Both have 36” range. Both have Strength 6. One has AP4, and six shots. The other has AP1 and one shot.
In this deliberately simplified example, AP4 and six shots has greater ubiquity than AP1 and one shot. You’re cushioned against a poor dice roll at every stage, and you’ve a greater variety of worthwhile targets, as the six shots can be used to mess up infantry and light vehicles, as well as pose a middling threat to side and rear armour values.
But, the comparison is flawed, because this is 40K, and we can be sure there’s a 36” range, S6, AP3 and three shots weapon to be put into the mix, which trumps the other two precisely because of the AP3. I’m arguably sacrificing three shots, but I’m bypassing the majority of armour saves.
Dice rolls are multiplicative, order doesn't really matter.
A 3+ to hit with a 4+ to wound is the same as a 4+ to hit with a 3+ to wound. Both are 0.1667 chance to get to the saving phase.
Nowadays to hit is the best characteristics because it is damn hard to waste it. Meanwhile extra strength or extra SV modifiers can be wasted.
But with the old AP system, its nature to either to bypass the entire saving part or do nothing often made it either the strongest or weakest characteristic and the saving calculation the strongest part of the whole sequence.
This also made invulnerable saves, cover and cover ignoring rules extremely powerful. It also made AP modifiers extremely rare because a weapon could jump entire categories just by a small difference in AP.
A 5+ save already incorporates it's lack of protection into its low value, AP5 is just additional punishment for no good reason.
In any case, I think implementation was the real issue - especially in 6th-7th, when some armies could put out ridiculous amounts of AP2-3 firepower, whilst others didn't have even a single AP2 melee weapon to their name.
That said, modifiers have been little better in terms of implementation.
For example, if meltas and the like are going to have very high AP, the obvious thing would be to give vehicles very good armour saves (e.g. 1+) so that most other weapons still leave them with 3+ saves at worst. That way, meltas serve a useful function in reliably damaging vehicles, which most other weapons (with significantly lower AP) will struggle to efficiently grind down.
Instead, GW gave most vehicles weak armour saves and then handed out invulnerable saves to vehicles like candy.
We still use the old AP system, and it works fine with a couple mods. We also still use cover saves.
Shooting into or through terrain is -1 to hit, so all models benefit for having cover.
A terrain's cover save eventually defeats AP weapons of a higher value. So a forest section that provides a 5+ cover save stops an ork's AP6 shoota from going through it. It can go into models in cover there, but not past.
We still use 4th Ed's principle of cover stopping all fire after two pieces of area terrain (exceptions: sniper weapons & railguns). Overall we find the old system works pretty well.
On a side note, we still have 1 wound marines but they do get a 6+ invulnerable save which mitigates their vulnerability to low AP weaponry somewhat.
Hellebore wrote: A 5+ save already incorporates it's lack of protection into its low value, AP5 is just additional punishment for no good reason.
In the context of early oldhammer the AP5 weapons were notably the domain of elite units like marines, crons, eldar, stormtroopers, etc.
Whereas horde units like guard, orks, gaunts were firing AP6 or AP- and would grant saves to their peer opponents.
Hellebore wrote: A 5+ save already incorporates it's lack of protection into its low value, AP5 is just additional punishment for no good reason.
In the context of early oldhammer the AP5 weapons were notably the domain of elite units like marines, crons, eldar, stormtroopers, etc.
Whereas horde units like guard, orks, gaunts were firing AP6 or AP- and would grant saves to their peer opponents.
That's not really relevant to the mechanic though. Armour was a form of protection, having half your factions ignore the armour of half your other factions in the name of being 'elite' is terrible design.
They had plenty of other means of showing their eliteness - BSWS, armour, Ld. All show eliteness.
The game would have been much better if they dropped AP entirely. Trying playing 3rd ed with no AP, relying on Strength and shots to kill things. 5+ saves kill your opponents by their fail rate, you don't need to ignore them for them to fail.
Hellebore wrote: That's not really relevant to the mechanic though. Armour was a form of protection, having half your factions ignore the armour of half your other factions in the name of being 'elite' is terrible design.
It makes them better against chaff units without improving their performance against other elite units.
The drawback of save modifiers is that if you want to make your elite units better able to blow through flak armour or the like you also make them better against power armour - see 2nd editions anti-marine flamethrowers and the like.
Hellebore wrote: That's not really relevant to the mechanic though. Armour was a form of protection, having half your factions ignore the armour of half your other factions in the name of being 'elite' is terrible design.
It makes them better against chaff units without improve their performance against other elite units.
The drawback of save modifiers is that if you want to make your elite units better able to blow through flak armour or the like you also make them better against power armour - see 2nd editions anti-marine flamethrowers and the like.
My point is that you don't need to 'blow through' flak armour when it fails 2/3rds of the time anyway. It's success rate already incorporates being chaff and not surviving taking hits. 12 wounds on guardsmen sees all 12 die from AP5, but still 8 die from AP-. That's not nothing but it's certainly not a fun experience when you have nothing left, as marine players know when they are on the receiving end of AP2 shots.
It's literally only declared a problem when Marines suffer the same experience of not getting a save as other armies, when the players of those other armies still have to put up with it.
For a quick 3rd ed AP patch try this - ignore AP in the game*. Anything that inflicts instant death ignores armour. Has an equal impact across all armies, but the fact that elite armies are tougher or have better saves makes them stand out from chaff units. AP only affected infantry models so this has no real impact on vehicles.
*if you really want to reflect the high AP end of the system, you can have the following - AP1/2 weapons automatically wound regardless of toughness. Unless they cause ID you still get a save, you just remove the 1/6 chance most AP1/2 weapons have of failing to wound.
Insectum7 wrote: ^I think that's more of an issue with a high probability of local metas being full of Marine or other 3+ save armies, CSM, Necrons. Because once Orks, DE, Nids (swarm) armies showed up it really revealed how unprepared number of lists were for dealing with a different set of targets.
That was true but then that's the same dynamic from the other direction. If my entire army is 6+ Slugga Boys the AP of your weapons is now irrelevant; there's no "good" target for power weapons or plasma guns and I've therefore wasted all of the points that you've spent on those just by building my list like that.
I also think it's a shallow game if there's nothing more than AP-based target choice to make things interesting. There should still be a heirarchy of target priority to deal with, cover/LOS blocking, tactical opportunitites in the form of optimal assaults and unit coordination, placement of reinforcements or other avenues for effect like leadership effects (morale/pinning) or whatever.
That's true but the game is made more complex by it still being one factor; if every possible target has the same save it just ceases to be one. Or at least it turns into a pure list-building decision. Putting plasma guns in your list against Deathwing is a good strategy, but once the game begins plasma guns are just a universally stronger weapon against everyone, not a weapon with a specialized role against some specific targets that you need to engage them with. Whereas if you're playing against Orks with a squad of Meganobs then getting your plasma guns into range of them (rather than Sluggas) is now important.
Hellebore wrote: My point is that you don't need to 'blow through' flak armour when it fails 2/3rds of the time anyway. It's success rate already incorporates being chaff and not surviving taking hits. 12 wounds on guardsmen sees all 12 die from AP5, but still 8 die from AP-. That's not nothing but it's certainly not a fun experience when you have nothing left, as marine players know when they are on the receiving end of AP2 shots.
It's literally only declared a problem when Marines suffer the same experience of not getting a save as other armies, when the players of those other armies still have to put up with it.
Ironic when the whole basis for saves rolled by the defender is to let the other player feel like a participant. It would be faster to just have the attacker roll them. (Also why they would hand out 5+ invuls by default to most HQ choices.)
Hellebore wrote: 12 wounds on guardsmen sees all 12 die from AP5, but still 8 die from AP-. That's not nothing but it's certainly not a fun experience.
12 wounds?
27 shots if they are standing outside of cover. 41 shots in cover or otherwise getting to roll their armour save. 300+ points of marines to kill 60 points of guard.
Insectum7 wrote: ^I think that's more of an issue with a high probability of local metas being full of Marine or other 3+ save armies, CSM, Necrons. Because once Orks, DE, Nids (swarm) armies showed up it really revealed how unprepared number of lists were for dealing with a different set of targets.
That was true but then that's the same dynamic from the other direction. If my entire army is 6+ Slugga Boys the AP of your weapons is now irrelevant; there's no "good" target for power weapons or plasma guns and I've therefore wasted all of the points that you've spent on those just by building my list like that.
I also think it's a shallow game if there's nothing more than AP-based target choice to make things interesting. There should still be a heirarchy of target priority to deal with, cover/LOS blocking, tactical opportunitites in the form of optimal assaults and unit coordination, placement of reinforcements or other avenues for effect like leadership effects (morale/pinning) or whatever.
That's true but the game is made more complex by it still being one factor; if every possible target has the same save it just ceases to be one. Or at least it turns into a pure list-building decision. Putting plasma guns in your list against Deathwing is a good strategy, but once the game begins plasma guns are just a universally stronger weapon against everyone, not a weapon with a specialized role against some specific targets that you need to engage them with. Whereas if you're playing against Orks with a squad of Meganobs then getting your plasma guns into range of them (rather than Sluggas) is now important.
I agree that those are all factors that create decision points for the game, but I'd counter it by suggesting that choosing to skew your list by save value, or trying to architect into your list methods of mitigating the potential for skew, those are both other rewarding (imo) decision making points of the game.
The proposition to force armies into fielding different save brackets can actually cut down on the decision making potential, since now multiple armies will become more homogenous when considered as a whole.
I also think one of the benefits of the FOC was to use as a lever to adjust the potential for skew on a per-army basis.
Hellebore wrote: 12 wounds on guardsmen sees all 12 die from AP5, but still 8 die from AP-. That's not nothing but it's certainly not a fun experience.
12 wounds?
27 shots if they are standing outside of cover. 41 shots in cover or otherwise getting to roll their armour save. 300+ points of marines to kill 60 points of guard.
Sure but by that argument starcannon spam is not a problem because it also costs a fortune to kill marines - 5 guardians + starcannon = 90pts x 6 troops for 540pts to generate 12 shots at BS4+ S6, so hitting 6 times, wounding 5 times.
That's 540pts to kill 75pts of marines.
Or 3 warwalkers at 300pts with twin starcannons each, same deal, 300pts to kill 75pts of marines. MSU spam costs almost 2x as much as a single WW unit, but it was historically considered the most problematic.
Again, this is only ever seen through the lens of marines losing their armour as a problem, when everyone else just had to deal with losing their armour as par for the course. If you don't like marines losing their armour then you should understand why no one else enjoyed being on the receiving end of a game where 95% of the weapons ignored your armour from the get go.
And why the save itself offered enough failure that AP really didn't need to be a thing.
Again, this is only ever seen through the lens of marines losing their armour as a problem, when everyone else just had to deal with losing their armour as par for the course. If you don't like marines losing their armour then you should understand why no one else enjoyed being on the receiving end of a game where 95% of the weapons ignored your armour from the get go.
And why the save itself offered enough failure that AP really didn't need to be a thing.
This is the problem with taking everything separately. Marines losing their save is a problem because Marines are built and priced around that save. Armies that get next to no save are built and priced around that mechanic. Though that's another example of implementation more than system framework. The difference between AP5 and -2 Armor Pen for an army built on 5+ isn't much. The implementation problem was how common AP5 was. The implementation problem was how common AP3 became. The systemic problem was how little 2+ cared about AP3.
I personally didn't mind losing my armor save, you just got used to it, at least I did on my Death Korps army.
It did highlight how much of a jump 4+ was, however, when AP 5 was *this* common. My Krieg's elites always surprised me with how more survivable they felt, same with the Scions.
This is, of course, not taking cover into account, but to me it felt like the jump from 5+ to 4+ was much more than just a better roll
Again, this is only ever seen through the lens of marines losing their armour as a problem, when everyone else just had to deal with losing their armour as par for the course. If you don't like marines losing their armour then you should understand why no one else enjoyed being on the receiving end of a game where 95% of the weapons ignored your armour from the get go.
And why the save itself offered enough failure that AP really didn't need to be a thing.
This is the problem with taking everything separately. Marines losing their save is a problem because Marines are built and priced around that save. Armies that get next to no save are built and priced around that mechanic. Though that's another example of implementation more than system framework. The difference between AP5 and -2 Armor Pen for an army built on 5+ isn't much. The implementation problem was how common AP5 was. The implementation problem was how common AP3 became. The systemic problem was how little 2+ cared about AP3.
But by that logic, armies that have weapons that ignore marine armour are also built and priced with those, so there's no problem with ignoring them. IE the argument that 'everything was balanced by points' applies to everything and thus any argument is negated.
And if starcannons are unbalanced because they weren't pointed correctly because marines lost their saves too much, well I have a bone to pick with the idea that a marine is pointed correctly when it costs only 7pts more than a guardian and has every stat improved....
The inherent problem was the system was a binary one and that included high value saves. If an army can maximise its ability to ignore their opponent's saves, it doesn't matter what that save is. So either you artificially constrain APs so that each army can confidently face exactly the ratio of ignoring saves to taking them, or you remove the system. Because there is no way to balance 'elite armour that costs points but can be ignored' from 'crap armour that's cheap and is ignored alot' without applying some kind of constraint.
IE marines will only ever be able to face an enemy that can ignore 20% of their saves, guard 40%. That is built into their cost.
Or to put it another way, the nature of the AP system makes it impossible to actually balance with points - AP4 is 100% valuable against Sv4+ and 0% valuable against Sv3+. To balance these you would need different points values depending on the army you fight, because of how effective that weapon is against it. This is true for all rules to an extent but is extremely stark with binary choices. Against marines AP5 is worth nothing, against guard it's highly valuable. But you don't balance AP5 with points as if their enemy was always guard, because marines would be too expensive. A tactical marine might be worth 15pts against other marines but 18pts against guard because of how effective their gun is at killing them.
This is why, whether it's good or not, ASM are a superior way to go in comparison between the two because they allow for better points balance due to the sliding scale.
JNAProductions wrote: AP-1 increases damage by 20% against a 6+.
It increases damage by 100% against a 2+.
That’s not balanced either.
12 wounds against 6+ save with -1ASM is 12 wounds, vs 10 without. 12 wounds against 2+ save with -1ASM is 4 wounds vs 2 without. The amount of damage increased linearly, the % is entirely relative. What is the importance of the relative percentage? Each unit lost 2 additional wounds beyond what they would have normally.
I'd be fascinated to see a set of rules that enable you to model everything in relative percentages, rather than flat lines.... that's not really how those numbers work unless you're using normalising curves.
And who said the effect had to be equal - S8 doesn't scale linearly against T4-7 either. We're talking points cost balance. In that instance, the sliding scale of effectiveness means each pip of armour increase doesn't cost a linear amount, but reduces equal to the effectiveness.
Hellebore wrote: A tactical marine might be worth 15pts against other marines but 18pts against guard because of how effective their gun is at killing them.
You're going to find this type of "imbalance" exists regardless of your AP system, especially as units with more specialized roles are under scrutiny. Howling Banshees are going to be worth more points against Terminators in 2nd ed (using the Sv mod system), than against Guardsmen, right?
And if this sort of skewed comparison isn't happening, you've gone and designed some pretty bland unit relationships, imo.
Re: "I have a bone to pick with the idea that a marine is pointed correctly when it costs only 7pts more than a guardian and has every stat improved...." There's a point in 3rd, tactically, where those naked 8 point models definitely outshine the naked 15 point Marines, and it's in a close range firefight where the units have to move to engage each other, particularly if there's cover involved. But also those Guardians could bring a Starcannon and those Marine players will start throwing hissy fits.
Again, this is only ever seen through the lens of marines losing their armour as a problem, when everyone else just had to deal with losing their armour as par for the course. If you don't like marines losing their armour then you should understand why no one else enjoyed being on the receiving end of a game where 95% of the weapons ignored your armour from the get go.
And why the save itself offered enough failure that AP really didn't need to be a thing.
This is the problem with taking everything separately. Marines losing their save is a problem because Marines are built and priced around that save. Armies that get next to no save are built and priced around that mechanic. Though that's another example of implementation more than system framework. The difference between AP5 and -2 Armor Pen for an army built on 5+ isn't much. The implementation problem was how common AP5 was. The implementation problem was how common AP3 became. The systemic problem was how little 2+ cared about AP3.
But by that logic, armies that have weapons that ignore marine armour are also built and priced with those, so there's no problem with ignoring them. IE the argument that 'everything was balanced by points' applies to everything and thus any argument is negated.
Armies, not units. It wasn't the Star Cannon, and it wasn't the Missile Launcher. It was the Star Cannons, and the missile launchers, and the this and the that. Same as AP5 everywhere with a much shorter road to the tipping point. Marines aren't really priced to lose 10+ models a turn - on the other hand Orks and Guard are somewhat priced to lose 20ish models a turn.
And if starcannons are unbalanced because they weren't pointed correctly because marines lost their saves too much, well I have a bone to pick with the idea that a marine is pointed correctly when it costs only 7pts more than a guardian and has every stat improved....
The inherent problem was the system was a binary one and that included high value saves. If an army can maximise its ability to ignore their opponent's saves, it doesn't matter what that save is. So either you artificially constrain APs so that each army can confidently face exactly the ratio of ignoring saves to taking them, or you remove the system. Because there is no way to balance 'elite armour that costs points but can be ignored' from 'crap armour that's cheap and is ignored alot' without applying some kind of constraint.
IE marines will only ever be able to face an enemy that can ignore 20% of their saves, guard 40%. That is built into their cost.
Or to put it another way, the nature of the AP system makes it impossible to actually balance with points - AP4 is 100% valuable against Sv4+ and 0% valuable against Sv3+. To balance these you would need different points values depending on the army you fight, because of how effective that weapon is against it. This is true for all rules to an extent but is extremely stark with binary choices. Against marines AP5 is worth nothing, against guard it's highly valuable. But you don't balance AP5 with points as if their enemy was always guard, because marines would be too expensive. A tactical marine might be worth 15pts against other marines but 18pts against guard because of how effective their gun is at killing them.
This is why, whether it's good or not, ASM are a superior way to go in comparison between the two because they allow for better points balance due to the sliding scale.
Even the current system is flawed - They've learned a little (Just about everything is less AP than it used to be Krak went from AP3 to -2 AKA AP5. Plasma is also -2/-3 vs AP2. Even the Lascannon went from AP2 to -3. Bolters are -, but so are Lasguns. Bolt Rifles are -1 but its still too easy to use "Anti-Tank" as anti-Infantry. Plus they didn't really make the man-portable anti-tank anti-tanky enough. Combine that with too much emphasis on AP vs To Hit and/or To Wound and that's the flaw. Man Portable Anti-Tank should absolutely immolate a tank. It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile.
I agree that those are all factors that create decision points for the game, but I'd counter it by suggesting that choosing to skew your list by save value, or trying to architect into your list methods of mitigating the potential for skew, those are both other rewarding (imo) decision making points of the game.
The proposition to force armies into fielding different save brackets can actually cut down on the decision making potential, since now multiple armies will become more homogenous when considered as a whole.
I also think one of the benefits of the FOC was to use as a lever to adjust the potential for skew on a per-army basis.
Homogeneity tends to increase decision making potential. Chess has more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe.
But that aside, I don't believe skew has ever been considered rewarding decision potential. Powerful sure, but rewarding? Nah.
I agree that those are all factors that create decision points for the game, but I'd counter it by suggesting that choosing to skew your list by save value, or trying to architect into your list methods of mitigating the potential for skew, those are both other rewarding (imo) decision making points of the game.
The proposition to force armies into fielding different save brackets can actually cut down on the decision making potential, since now multiple armies will become more homogenous when considered as a whole.
I also think one of the benefits of the FOC was to use as a lever to adjust the potential for skew on a per-army basis.
Homogeneity tends to increase decision making potential. Chess has more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe.
But that aside, I don't believe skew has ever been considered rewarding decision potential. Powerful sure, but rewarding? Nah.
I don't follow with the chess example. 40k will have more possibilities than chess because it has more variables.
I definitely have seen people enjoy their skew armies. And I've definitely enjoyed playing against them as they can offer a fresh or unexpected challenge. I recall fondly a player who showed up at our club with a 140+ model Ork army that was hard as **** to contend with, but trying to deal with it was a blast.
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Hellebore wrote: Totally agree, it's just that scaled binary systems like ap are worse for it so the imbalance is more obvious.
I genuinely think that the balance is actually more subtle.
Which sounds like a flippant or obnoxious thing to say, but I think it's actually the case.
Hellebore wrote: Sure but by that argument starcannon spam is not a problem because it also costs a fortune to kill marines
Marines shooting guardsmen with bolters were doing so trying to push through a screen to get to a meaningful target after spending one or more turns getting into rapid fire range, and frankly even at AP5 you were almost always better off charging just because of how inefficient it was to chew through the guardsmen with small arms.
Two 3e war walkers could on average take out an entire 3e terminator squad with their first shots on turn 1. Two units of two would wipe an entire ten man assault, devastator, or tactical squad off the board upgrades and all if they weren't in cover.
And to be fair that wasn't all that far off the target lethality of 3e - GWs initial solution wasn't to buff power armour or nerf eldar, just to give terminators a 5++ to curb the extreme edge cases of efficiency. Units were supposed to die when shot at with the right weapon and trade inefficiently when shot at with the wrong weapon.
The starcannon was just too efficient at the end of the day. Same with the old 6pt plasma guns.
Breton wrote: Bolt Rifles are -1 but its still too easy to use "Anti-Tank" as anti-Infantry. Plus they didn't really make the man-portable anti-tank anti-tanky enough. Combine that with too much emphasis on AP vs To Hit and/or To Wound and that's the flaw. Man Portable Anti-Tank should absolutely immolate a tank. It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile.
Man portable anti-tank should obliterate infantry. An anti-tank rocket or missile is way more effective against infantry than it is against a tank. The only thing acting in the infantry's favour is how dispersed they are. I've seen way too many body parts flying through the air to convince me otherwise.
Hellebore wrote: A 5+ save already incorporates it's lack of protection into its low value, AP5 is just additional punishment for no good reason.
In the context of early oldhammer the AP5 weapons were notably the domain of elite units like marines, crons, eldar, stormtroopers, etc.
Whereas horde units like guard, orks, gaunts were firing AP6 or AP- and would grant saves to their peer opponents.
That's not really relevant to the mechanic though. Armour was a form of protection, having half your factions ignore the armour of half your other factions in the name of being 'elite' is terrible design.
They had plenty of other means of showing their eliteness - BSWS, armour, Ld. All show eliteness.
The game would have been much better if they dropped AP entirely. Trying playing 3rd ed with no AP, relying on Strength and shots to kill things. 5+ saves kill your opponents by their fail rate, you don't need to ignore them for them to fail.
I think what you might be circling with this discussion and with your thread in Proposed Rules is that there's kind of a bit of redundancy between the to-wound roll and the save roll. They're both kind of trying to represent how likely a given hit is to do meaningful damage, with armor being a little bit more specific in what exactly it represents. I could see a world where we do something like:
* Get rid of armor saves. Invulns and such would probably still exist but would be the exception rather than the norm.
* The Save stat becomes the Armor stat and is usually a value between 0 and 2. So wyches and gaunts have a 0. Marines probably have a 1. Termies probably have a 2. This number is what you subtract from Wound rolls made against the unit. So an S4 bolter shooting at a marine (T4) would normally need a 4+ to wound. But Armored 1 makes that a 5+ instead.
* AP sticks around but also generally has a value between 0 and 2. AP reduces the value of a target's Armored rule. So an Ineferno Bolter (S4, AP1) would wound that a marine on a 4+. And S4 AP2 weapon would *also* wound a marine on a 4+ because it's just reducing the value of the Armor stat; armor-piercing rounds aren't more effective against guys wearing t-shirts just because they punch through those literal shirts more easily.
* Then we increase Wounds on everything game-wide to compensate for the new math.
So the intended end result is that you get rid of some of the quirky math that comes with the AP system(s), reduce rolling, and you'll generally be doing a more steady stream of damage into target units. That is, every successful wound roll will be removing hit points; you'll just have more hitpoints to get through. Which I feel is pretty consistent with how armor is often described in 40k; lasguns slowly chipping away at ceramite and degrading the protection it offers until they can finally start hitting something vital (removing the last hitpoint.)
You could change things to a very cinematic feel, by returning the old AV of vehicles and applying them to everyone, this also removes toughness (You can give multiple wounds to units to show toughness).
The weakest armor on a vehicle was 10, so you could male a Terminator 9, which meant a bolter needs to roll a 5 to glance, 6 to Penetrate.
Lasguns need 6s to glance.
Glancing Hits cause 1 wound, Direct Hits cause 2.
Weapons that typically had very powerful AP, now have rending.
Hellebore wrote: Sure but by that argument starcannon spam is not a problem because it also costs a fortune to kill marines
Marines shooting guardsmen with bolters were doing so trying to push through a screen to get to a meaningful target after spending one or more turns getting into rapid fire range, and frankly even at AP5 you were almost always better off charging just because of how inefficient it was to chew through the guardsmen with small arms.
Two 3e war walkers could on average take out an entire 3e terminator squad with their first shots on turn 1. Two units of two would wipe an entire ten man assault, devastator, or tactical squad off the board upgrades and all if they weren't in cover.
And to be fair that wasn't all that far off the target lethality of 3e - GWs initial solution wasn't to buff power armour or nerf eldar, just to give terminators a 5++ to curb the extreme edge cases of efficiency. Units were supposed to die when shot at with the right weapon and trade inefficiently when shot at with the wrong weapon.
The starcannon was just too efficient at the end of the day. Same with the old 6pt plasma guns.
Appropriately GW’s solution on both the starcannons end and the terminators end was ultimately the same - reduce damage by 1/3 (5++ for terminators, going from 3 to 2 shots for starcannons).
Breton wrote: Bolt Rifles are -1 but its still too easy to use "Anti-Tank" as anti-Infantry. Plus they didn't really make the man-portable anti-tank anti-tanky enough. Combine that with too much emphasis on AP vs To Hit and/or To Wound and that's the flaw. Man Portable Anti-Tank should absolutely immolate a tank. It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile.
Man portable anti-tank should obliterate infantry. An anti-tank rocket or missile is way more effective against infantry than it is against a tank. The only thing acting in the infantry's favour is how dispersed they are. I've seen way too many body parts flying through the air to convince me otherwise.
Pretty sure that's part of what I just said? Man Portable Anti-Tank doesn't really immolate a tank anymore. Krak, Melta and so on until you get to Lascanon are probable too weak. But at the same time shooting the big guns at the little dude should miss by a country mile?
Lathe Biosas wrote: You could change things to a very cinematic feel, by returning the old AV of vehicles and applying them to everyone, this also removes toughness (You can give multiple wounds to units to show toughness).
The weakest armor on a vehicle was 10, so you could male a Terminator 9, which meant a bolter needs to roll a 5 to glance, 6 to Penetrate.
Lasguns need 6s to glance.
Glancing Hits cause 1 wound, Direct Hits cause 2.
Weapons that typically had very powerful AP, now have rending.
Well, that would mean rending is no longer ever useful against the vast majority of non-monster/vehicle units. Assuming a lasgun was still something like strength 3, you'd be able to wound up to T8 without needing rend. But assuming we're talking about bringing back a single AV value per datasheet and not like, armor facings, this would essentially just be a new to-wound chart without the ability to have a given strength wound multiple T values on the same number. That is, S4 would always be better at wounding T5 than T6, for better or worse.
Not necessarily shutting the idea down, but it's kind of just an alternate to-wound chart. Not sure it really addresses the AP issue at all.
Breton wrote: Bolt Rifles are -1 but its still too easy to use "Anti-Tank" as anti-Infantry. Plus they didn't really make the man-portable anti-tank anti-tanky enough. Combine that with too much emphasis on AP vs To Hit and/or To Wound and that's the flaw. Man Portable Anti-Tank should absolutely immolate a tank. It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile.
Man portable anti-tank should obliterate infantry. An anti-tank rocket or missile is way more effective against infantry than it is against a tank. The only thing acting in the infantry's favour is how dispersed they are. I've seen way too many body parts flying through the air to convince me otherwise.
Pretty sure that's part of what I just said? Man Portable Anti-Tank doesn't really immolate a tank anymore. Krak, Melta and so on until you get to Lascanon are probable too weak. But at the same time shooting the big guns at the little dude should miss by a country mile?
I don't think we need to make meltaguns and lascannons particularly bad at hitting the little dudes. The limitation there is usually just rate of fire. A meltagun pointed at a guardsman will vaporize that guardsman effortlessly. But you've "wasted" your weapon slot or (in previous editions) your army points to kill a single guardsman instead of pointing that gun at a tank or taking a different gun that would have killed several guardsmen.
But I definitely agree that meltaguns and such should be better at hurting vehicles. If GW *really* wants to avoid wargear costs, they could just change the melta rule to a strength boost or to-wound bonus instead of a damage boost. I'd be okay with meltaguns not one-shotting a rhino so long as they're able to *consistently hurt* the rhino. Like, an S12 D3 meltagun would be pretty okay.
Fundamentally flawed all or nothing save system, big time. AP3 or better were the only meaningful weapon APs. You could get shot with a Multimelta BUT you were behind a piece of wood so you get a 4+ save, wtf? So my gun can melt through tanks but your marine happens to be behind some waving grass giving it a 4+ save ignoring your weapons profile that you paid for. With it being modifier based, cover starts being able to be factored in and the granularity gave more space for play. I'll never go back to the lazy feels bad of that all or nothing system.
Gibblets wrote: Fundamentally flawed all or nothing save system, big time. AP3 or better were the only meaningful weapon APs. You could get shot with a Multimelta BUT you were behind a piece of wood so you get a 4+ save, wtf? So my gun can melt through tanks but your marine happens to be behind some waving grass giving it a 4+ save ignoring your weapons profile that you paid for. With it being modifier based, cover starts being able to be factored in and the granularity gave more space for play. I'll never go back to the lazy feels bad of that all or nothing system.
Well, to play devil's advocate, cover saves were kind of implied to be largely about making it harder to draw a bead on your target. So it's not that the meltagun couldn't get through a tree. It's that your target dashed behind a tree as you pulled the trigger, but you didn't realize he'd actually dived into some bushes while he was out of your line of sight. So the tree is vaporized, and the marine would have been as well... if he were still standing there. That's why flamers ignored cover saves back in the day. The flames were hitting the tree, the space behind the tree, and the bushes near the tree all at once.
The thing that always got me about the old AP system was that good AP just wasn't even a factor if it wasn't good *enough* AP. So a krak missile (AP3) can cut through power armor like a knife through warm butter. But all that armor piercing power is exactly as effective as a lasgun or a cultist's naked fist agains slightly thicker/sturdier power armor (artificer armor, 2+). And a heavy flamer was so devastating (AP4) that dire avengers (Sv4+) may as well not be wearing armor at all, but their striking scorpion friends (sv3+) have a good chance of being completely unscathed by it.
It just feels better in general to know that the AP you're paying for is being factored into the equation. Ditto your armor saves. Maybe an AP-2 weapon isn't completely bypassing marine armor, but it's getting through a lot more easily than some random cultist punch would be. And conversely, that marine may not be getting his full 3+ save vs that AP-2 weapon, but he's getting a much better save than a gaunt would be. One player paid for good AP, and it's doing something. The other player paid for good armor, and it's doing something.
The thing that always got me about the old AP system was that good AP just wasn't even a factor if it wasn't good *enough* AP. So a krak missile (AP3) can cut through power armor like a knife through warm butter. But all that armor piercing power is exactly as effective as a lasgun or a cultist's naked fist agains slightly thicker/sturdier power armor (artificer armor, 2+). And a heavy flamer was so devastating (AP4) that dire avengers (Sv4+) may as well not be wearing armor at all, but their striking scorpion friends (sv3+) have a good chance of being completely unscathed by it.
As a fan of that system I definitely agree that this is the best critique against it.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+. In the all-or-nothing system, the prevalence of Marines made AP3 a magic breakpoint. In the modifier system, a single step better halves your incoming damage, a single step worse increases it by 50%.
Linear modifiers on individual dice have outsized impact in this environment that would not be nearly as problematic if the baseline was 4+ or 5+. Or simply folded into a more generic defensive stat, because the modeled distinction between Toughness, Wounds, and Save is now entirely arbitrary and in practice T and Sv are largely redundant to one another.
Are you sure about that?
It is my understanding that in a typical Warhammer game system, when it comes to shooting, the most prescious stat (after the amount of shots a weapon fires) is the to-hit roll number, followed by toughness, followed by save. This being because the dice pools are resolved in the shoot-wound-save order, and whichever comes first affects the amount of dice that get to the next stage the most.
Or is this because to wound roll values are dictated by the S-vs-T table, in which 1 pip +/- is not as significant as in the other two stages, which modulate linearly?
Order doesn't matter. Going from hitting on 5+ to hitting on 3+ doubles your damage. Forcing the target to save on 5+ instead of 3+ also doubles your damage. Same effect.
The reason the bonus to hit is more valuable is because going from hitting on 5+ to 3+ always doubles your damage output, while an extra two points of AP gets you nothing if the target has no armor to begin with.
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+. In the all-or-nothing system, the prevalence of Marines made AP3 a magic breakpoint. In the modifier system, a single step better halves your incoming damage, a single step worse increases it by 50%.
Linear modifiers on individual dice have outsized impact in this environment that would not be nearly as problematic if the baseline was 4+ or 5+. Or simply folded into a more generic defensive stat, because the modeled distinction between Toughness, Wounds, and Save is now entirely arbitrary and in practice T and Sv are largely redundant to one another.
Are you sure about that?
It is my understanding that in a typical Warhammer game system, when it comes to shooting, the most prescious stat (after the amount of shots a weapon fires) is the to-hit roll number, followed by toughness, followed by save. This being because the dice pools are resolved in the shoot-wound-save order, and whichever comes first affects the amount of dice that get to the next stage the most.
Or is this because to wound roll values are dictated by the S-vs-T table, in which 1 pip +/- is not as significant as in the other two stages, which modulate linearly?
Order doesn't matter. Going from hitting on 5+ to hitting on 3+ doubles your damage. Forcing the target to save on 5+ instead of 3+ also doubles your damage. Same effect.
The reason the bonus to hit is more valuable is because going from hitting on 5+ to 3+ always doubles your damage output, while an extra two points of AP gets you nothing if the target has no armor to begin with.
This. And I believe that certain special rules (sustained hits) can make the order matter. But typically the order doesn't actually matter. Which is one of the reasons people can pitch that suggestion I hate of rolling saves before wound rolls. Mathematically, it doesn't change anything.
Breton wrote: Bolt Rifles are -1 but its still too easy to use "Anti-Tank" as anti-Infantry. Plus they didn't really make the man-portable anti-tank anti-tanky enough. Combine that with too much emphasis on AP vs To Hit and/or To Wound and that's the flaw. Man Portable Anti-Tank should absolutely immolate a tank. It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile.
Man portable anti-tank should obliterate infantry. An anti-tank rocket or missile is way more effective against infantry than it is against a tank. The only thing acting in the infantry's favour is how dispersed they are. I've seen way too many body parts flying through the air to convince me otherwise.
Pretty sure that's part of what I just said? Man Portable Anti-Tank doesn't really immolate a tank anymore. Krak, Melta and so on until you get to Lascanon are probable too weak. But at the same time shooting the big guns at the little dude should miss by a country mile?
I interpreted "It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile." to mean an anti-tank weapon should be bad against infantry, which I disagree with.
A lascannon should have no problem hitting and killing a grot. But you wasted your lascannon shot on a grot.
I'm not super familiar with current 40K, but I think you should be able to kill or cripple a tank (leman russ, predator) with one good hit from an anti-tank weapon, and at least chip away a decent number of wounds.
Gibblets wrote: Fundamentally flawed all or nothing save system, big time. AP3 or better were the only meaningful weapon APs. You could get shot with a Multimelta BUT you were behind a piece of wood so you get a 4+ save, wtf? So my gun can melt through tanks but your marine happens to be behind some waving grass giving it a 4+ save ignoring your weapons profile that you paid for. With it being modifier based, cover starts being able to be factored in and the granularity gave more space for play. I'll never go back to the lazy feels bad of that all or nothing system.
Well, to play devil's advocate, cover saves were kind of implied to be largely about making it harder to draw a bead on your target. So it's not that the meltagun couldn't get through a tree. It's that your target dashed behind a tree as you pulled the trigger, but you didn't realize he'd actually dived into some bushes while he was out of your line of sight. So the tree is vaporized, and the marine would have been as well... if he were still standing there. That's why flamers ignored cover saves back in the day. The flames were hitting the tree, the space behind the tree, and the bushes near the tree all at once.
I understand that reasoning and had discussions about that in years gone. To me it would've (and still would be) been better represented as a BS modifier rather then a different type of save. Bushes, fences -1BS. Trees, concrete walls, trenches -2BS. Then there was the demon army of all invulns and FnPs complicating the AP/Cover system.
I interpreted "It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile." to mean an anti-tank weapon should be bad against infantry, which I disagree with.
A lascannon should have no problem hitting and killing a grot. But you wasted your lascannon shot on a grot.
I'm not super familiar with current 40K, but I think you should be able to kill or cripple a tank (leman russ, predator) with one good hit from an anti-tank weapon, and at least chip away a decent number of wounds.
Nah you interpreted it mostly correctly, we probably just disagree. If Creed gets hit by a lascanon, he should absolutely turn into steaming red mist. It should just be next to impossible to hit a man sized dude with something calibrated to shoot at giant Metal Bawkses. The trade off for supercharging the lasgun into a canon should be low accuracy against something as flighty as a human on foot.
I interpreted "It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile." to mean an anti-tank weapon should be bad against infantry, which I disagree with.
A lascannon should have no problem hitting and killing a grot. But you wasted your lascannon shot on a grot.
I'm not super familiar with current 40K, but I think you should be able to kill or cripple a tank (leman russ, predator) with one good hit from an anti-tank weapon, and at least chip away a decent number of wounds.
Nah you interpreted it mostly correctly, we probably just disagree. If Creed gets hit by a lascanon, he should absolutely turn into steaming red mist. It should just be next to impossible to hit a man sized dude with something calibrated to shoot at giant Metal Bawkses. The trade off for supercharging the lasgun into a canon should be low accuracy against something as flighty as a human on foot.
I mean, one of the longstanding issues with 40k is that BS is a static stat. Yes, there are strats, auras and such that can modify it. But the point is that it is only ever modified by specific abilities.
It is never modified by the target or the range. So shooting a Land Raider at point-blank range is exactly as hard as shooting a Gretchin on the other side of the board, behind a forest and some ruins, with only his left elbow exposed.
If BS was matched with a target's Defence stat, and perhaps also affected by range (e.g. -1 to hit over half range), then it serve much more of a purpose and also give GW more levers to pull.
I interpreted "It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile." to mean an anti-tank weapon should be bad against infantry, which I disagree with.
A lascannon should have no problem hitting and killing a grot. But you wasted your lascannon shot on a grot.
I'm not super familiar with current 40K, but I think you should be able to kill or cripple a tank (leman russ, predator) with one good hit from an anti-tank weapon, and at least chip away a decent number of wounds.
Nah you interpreted it mostly correctly, we probably just disagree. If Creed gets hit by a lascanon, he should absolutely turn into steaming red mist. It should just be next to impossible to hit a man sized dude with something calibrated to shoot at giant Metal Bawkses. The trade off for supercharging the lasgun into a canon should be low accuracy against something as flighty as a human on foot.
I mean, one of the longstanding issues with 40k is that BS is a static stat. Yes, there are strats, auras and such that can modify it. But the point is that it is only ever modified by specific abilities.
It is never modified by the target or the range. So shooting a Land Raider at point-blank range is exactly as hard as shooting a Gretchin on the other side of the board, behind a forest and some ruins, with only his left elbow exposed.
If BS was matched with a target's Defence stat, and perhaps also affected by range (e.g. -1 to hit over half range), then it serve much more of a purpose and also give GW more levers to pull.
In the past it was modified by range. And yeah, I also think all the rolls should be contested which gives a lot more "range" on a D6. BS vs Initiative, WS vs WS, S v T, A vs AP. This lets Aeldari be hard to hit but (relatively) less likely to save to make them of similar durability just in a different more fluffy way. The Aircraft rules, and Vehicle changes even pave the way for the concept.
Insectum7 wrote: I definitely have seen people enjoy their skew armies. And I've definitely enjoyed playing against them as they can offer a fresh or unexpected challenge. I recall fondly a player who showed up at our club with a 140+ model Ork army that was hard as **** to contend with, but trying to deal with it was a blast.
And on the other hand of the game, having to deal with 2+/5++ Paladin death star skew wasn't what I would call a blast.
But still taking your preference for skew into account, that is still limited by the issue saves are mostly faction bound. A Space Marine player cannot skew into light infantry as pretty much all Space Marines are 3+ or 2+ armor save aside of scouts. Orks have a similar issue with only meganobz having a 2+ and I don't recall them having access to 3+ saves.
And having to buy an entirely new army just to play a different type of armour save doesn't seem what I would call a rewarding choice.
Gibblets wrote:
I understand that reasoning and had discussions about that in years gone. To me it would've (and still would be) been better represented as a BS modifier rather then a different type of save. Bushes, fences -1BS. Trees, concrete walls, trenches -2BS. Then there was the demon army of all invulns and FnPs complicating the AP/Cover system.
Well, -1 BS under the old AP system would mean that it just doesn't make as big a difference as a 4+ cover save. Using the old all or nothing AP system, killing 10 guardsmen with bolters if cover was -1 to-hit instead of a 4+ save means you need:
10 wounds > 15 hits > 30 bolter attacks
Whereas having a 4+ cover save instead of -1 to-hit means you need
And then if you grant larger to-hit penalties, you quickly get into those wonky issues of orks hitting on 7+, BS4+ units fishing for 6s against marines, etc. Heck, you kind of run into the marine issue even with -1 to-hit. Because you'd be landing fewer hits, but the attacks that did wound were still running into an unmodifiable 3+ save.
But I get how a to-hit penalty would be more intuitive.
I interpreted "It should also miss that single solitary dude over there by a country mile." to mean an anti-tank weapon should be bad against infantry, which I disagree with.
A lascannon should have no problem hitting and killing a grot. But you wasted your lascannon shot on a grot.
I'm not super familiar with current 40K, but I think you should be able to kill or cripple a tank (leman russ, predator) with one good hit from an anti-tank weapon, and at least chip away a decent number of wounds.
Nah you interpreted it mostly correctly, we probably just disagree. If Creed gets hit by a lascanon, he should absolutely turn into steaming red mist. It should just be next to impossible to hit a man sized dude with something calibrated to shoot at giant Metal Bawkses. The trade off for supercharging the lasgun into a canon should be low accuracy against something as flighty as a human on foot.
Respectfully, that's not how lascannons have ever really been depicted though. The trade-off isn't that their scopes or accuracy are bad. It's that the weapon is big, heavy, less available, and has a lower rate of fire. So it's not that aiming at a human-sized target is difficult. It's that you generally want to spend some time bracing the weapon before lining up that shot (Heavy rule) and that pointing the lascannon at some dude means you're pointing one of your army's few guns capable of scaring a tank at a lowly human.
And on the flip side of that, Creed has generally been protected by a crowd of bodies hanging out with him (character attachment/targeting rules) if not by cover itself. So you should have fewer opportunities to line that shot up with the lascannon in the first place. Because while it isn't a particularly inaccurate weapon, it's also not a sniper rifle.
And all of this is way more true for something like a meltagun. A meltagun is a short-ranged weapon. You can only be so bad at firing it. If you're standing a few yard away from Creed, the meltagun isn't going to buck in your hands and refuse to aim straight.
I mean, one of the longstanding issues with 40k is that BS is a static stat. Yes, there are strats, auras and such that can modify it. But the point is that it is only ever modified by specific abilities.
It is never modified by the target or the range. So shooting a Land Raider at point-blank range is exactly as hard as shooting a Gretchin on the other side of the board, behind a forest and some ruins, with only his left elbow exposed.
If BS was matched with a target's Defence stat, and perhaps also affected by range (e.g. -1 to hit over half range), then it serve much more of a purpose and also give GW more levers to pull.
I'd be all for working range and other factors into the game more. We sorta kinda have a nod to this in the form of the rapid fire rule (guns are more effective up close; less effective further away), but I could see GW taking it a few steps farther. Minimum range requirements for sniper rifles and artillery. Soft terrain like forests and fog clouds making units untargetable outside of X inches. Spotter units to offset some of those defenses. Etc.I feel like there's a lot of design realestate for getting rid of random Letha Hit type buffs and replacing them with more interesting rules that play into range, positioning, and trade-offs.
Insectum7 wrote: I definitely have seen people enjoy their skew armies. And I've definitely enjoyed playing against them as they can offer a fresh or unexpected challenge. I recall fondly a player who showed up at our club with a 140+ model Ork army that was hard as **** to contend with, but trying to deal with it was a blast.
And on the other hand of the game, having to deal with 2+/5++ Paladin death star skew wasn't what I would call a blast.
I don't know, I'd say it can be pretty fun - particularly if your army has a lot of models.
Green Tide or Infantry Guard would make for an especially fun quality vs. quantity game.
A.T. wrote:
Two 3e war walkers could on average take out an entire 3e terminator squad with their first shots on turn 1. Two units of two would wipe an entire ten man assault, devastator, or tactical squad off the board upgrades and all if they weren't in cover.
.
A 5 man devestator squad with 4 plasma cannons could do that for less points though and more reliably with bs4.
Insectum7 wrote:
I genuinely think that the balance is actually more subtle.
Which sounds like a flippant or obnoxious thing to say, but I think it's actually the case.
More than open to that being the case, I just don't really see examples of it.
A -1asm applies a 16% armour reduction to all targets ( which has different relative effects depending on the base save, although that should be factored into the relative cost of the armour.
AP applies a 0% armour reduction - until it applies a 100% armour reduction.
One is easier to cost out and balance than the other. AP applying haphazardly makes it virtually impossible to accurately value, because it's going to be a probabilistic value rather than a flat Universal one. Ie AP 5 only works on sv5 so it's value is based on how often it will actually encounter that, which is an abstract probabilistic value. ASM will apply to whatever it hits, making it a simple tangible measure.
Hellebore wrote: A 5 man devestator squad with 4 plasma cannons could do that for less points though and more reliably with bs4.
Around about the same cost for 5 marines or two walkers IIRC. It didn't help that they were twinlinked up on the front of every wave serpent for pennies as well.
A different era - I remember when taking a whole inquisitor retinue for just one plasma cannon was not unreasonable. Fast forward to the end of 7th and you had things like the war convocation giving you a free plasma cannon with every 10pt servitor.
What was considered 'broken' shifted quite a bit over the editions considering that just having 4 heavy support slots was serious business, the slight edge in trading out units.
Hellebore wrote: AP applying haphazardly makes it virtually impossible to accurately value, because it's going to be a probabilistic value rather than a flat Universal one. Ie AP 5 only works on sv5 so it's value is based on how often it will actually encounter that, which is an abstract probabilistic value. ASM will apply to whatever it hits, making it a simple tangible measure.
I'd say that's as much a feature as it is a bug. ASMs being much easier to quantify, and applying more 'universally', has resulted in diminished importance of weapon-target pairing and more options written off at the listbuilding stage through the dull application of mathhammer. We've clearly seen that it's easy to crunch the numbers and determine that a medium-strength medium-AP weapon is good against pretty much everything (see: Disintegrator spam), whereas the AP system being much harder to numerically deconstruct meant listbuilding was based more on heuristics, and there was more reason to mix high-volume low-AP and low-volume high-AP to address differing breakpoints.
In any case, we have ample evidence that GW can't accurately value units or upgrades to begin with so I don't really buy that the ASM system is more conducive to balance. It all gets hammered out through playtesting and community feedback anyways.
I wouldn't say that the inability for your players to understand the working of your mechanics is a feature personally.
And that obfuscation acting as a game play improver only works if the base game is balanced to allow it. Otherwise the game is broken and no one can figure out the maths of why (which itself is imo a bigger incentive for gw...).
But it's clear throughout the life of the 3rd Ed system that ap was never balanced properly and required continual changing, and the race to lowest ap combo was seen as the quickest way around the opaqueness. If you have ap2 then the maths doesn't matter.
You may not understand the maths of ap, but in an all or nothing system you understand where the best bang for buck is, at ap2.
And when the majority of the game is sv3+ and 2+ armies/models you need ap2 to exist, which inevitably saw the run end there very quickly.
So in the end, 3+ save armies suffered the exact same problems every other army had always suffered, but only then was ap considered a problem.
A problem which ultimately couldn't be solved because the game was mostly 3+ vs 3+ and the people complaining about losing their saves also wanted to remove their opponent's,
And thus the great space marine ourobouros of "not tough enough vs guns are too good" began.
Insectum7 wrote: I definitely have seen people enjoy their skew armies. And I've definitely enjoyed playing against them as they can offer a fresh or unexpected challenge. I recall fondly a player who showed up at our club with a 140+ model Ork army that was hard as **** to contend with, but trying to deal with it was a blast.
And on the other hand of the game, having to deal with 2+/5++ Paladin death star skew wasn't what I would call a blast.
But still taking your preference for skew into account, that is still limited by the issue saves are mostly faction bound. A Space Marine player cannot skew into light infantry as pretty much all Space Marines are 3+ or 2+ armor save aside of scouts. Orks have a similar issue with only meganobz having a 2+ and I don't recall them having access to 3+ saves.
And having to buy an entirely new army just to play a different type of armour save doesn't seem what I would call a rewarding choice.
Those Paladin squads weren't unfun because of their save, but because of the wound mechanics of 5th ed, iirc. I don't remember anyone finding all Deathwing lists particularly hard to deal with.
But to your last point, hard disagree. Different factions should have their different limitations. That's a core part of army identity/design.
A.T. wrote:
Two 3e war walkers could on average take out an entire 3e terminator squad with their first shots on turn 1. Two units of two would wipe an entire ten man assault, devastator, or tactical squad off the board upgrades and all if they weren't in cover.
.
A 5 man devestator squad with 4 plasma cannons could do that for less points though and more reliably with bs4.
Easy defense against the Plasma Cannon is to space out your models so the templates only hit one each. The Plasma Cannons couldn't move and fire like the WW either. Nor could they benefit from Guide or Doom.
Insectum7 wrote:
I genuinely think that the balance is actually more subtle.
Which sounds like a flippant or obnoxious thing to say, but I think it's actually the case.
More than open to that being the case, I just don't really see examples of it.
A -1asm applies a 16% armour reduction to all targets ( which has different relative effects depending on the base save, although that should be factored into the relative cost of the armour.
AP applies a 0% armour reduction - until it applies a 100% armour reduction.
One is easier to cost out and balance than the other. AP applying haphazardly makes it virtually impossible to accurately value, because it's going to be a probabilistic value rather than a flat Universal one. Ie AP 5 only works on sv5 so it's value is based on how often it will actually encounter that, which is an abstract probabilistic value. ASM will apply to whatever it hits, making it a simple tangible measure.
The hard AP system makes differentiation between models and weapons more defined. The balancing comes from the greater army structure, availability and pricing of the various units. Those are definitely levers of balance, but they're much harder to quantify than per the usual "points spent vs points of damage taken" shorthand math which is a common tool for examining balance. Army vs army balance is what the game is(was) after, rather than strict unit vs. unit.
This is an inadequate post to really dig in to it. Travelling with kids atm. Focus ain't good!
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Hellebore wrote: I wouldn't say that the inability for your players to understand the working of your mechanics is a feature personally.
Agreed, and it's a fair critique. I thought it worked quite well, but explaining it to new players was always interesting because there are very unintuitive aspects to it.
Hellebore wrote: I wouldn't say that the inability for your players to understand the working of your mechanics is a feature personally.
And that obfuscation acting as a game play improver only works if the base game is balanced to allow it. Otherwise the game is broken and no one can figure out the maths of why (which itself is imo a bigger incentive for gw...).
There's no obfuscation. The mechanic was easy to understand, even if it wasn't immediately intuitive.
It just had depth beyond 'plug it into Excel and see what's mathematically optimal'; tactical considerations that could not be easily reduced to spreadsheet math, and required some thought about how different elements of your army would deal with different threats.
That's a good thing to have in a wargame. It allows for debate, pros and cons, varied playstyles- not just right choices and wrong ones.
Hellebore wrote: You may not understand the maths of ap, but in an all or nothing system you understand where the best bang for buck is, at ap2.
And when the majority of the game is sv3+ and 2+ armies/models you need ap2 to exist, which inevitably saw the run end there very quickly.
So in the end, 3+ save armies suffered the exact same problems every other army had always suffered, but only then was ap considered a problem.
If you played 3rd Ed, decided that AP2 was the way to go, and took lascannons on everything that could carry them, I'd bet money you lost more games than you won.
For starters, it was wasted firepower against infantry hordes or even armies with lots of light vehicles, where that single shot (and only if you stayed stationary) was overkill. Even against more balanced armies, it meant a ton of points tied up in expensive single-shot weapons with limited ideal targets. AP2 was powerful and you paid for it accordingly, making units like quad-lascannon Devastator squads into juicy targets.
It was the proliferation of cheap AP3 in 5th Ed that started to cause problems for the AP system when combined with the natural AP3/Sv3+ breakpoint created by the real-world predominance of power armor factions. Prior to that, the trade-off between volume of fire and high AP made it difficult to spam Marine-busting weapons, so tailoring for a Marine-heavy meta was difficult.
If you played 3rd Ed, decided that AP2 was the way to go, and took lascannons on everything that could carry them, I'd bet money you lost more games than you won.
For starters, it was wasted firepower against infantry hordes or even armies with lots of light vehicles, where that single shot (and only if you stayed stationary) was overkill. Even against more balanced armies, it meant a ton of points tied up in expensive single-shot weapons with limited ideal targets. AP2 was powerful and you paid for it accordingly, making units like quad-lascannon Devastator squads into juicy targets.
It was the proliferation of cheap AP3 in 5th Ed that started to cause problems for the AP system when combined with the natural AP3/Sv3+ breakpoint created by the real-world predominance of power armor factions. Prior to that, the trade-off between volume of fire and high AP made it difficult to spam Marine-busting weapons, so tailoring for a Marine-heavy meta was difficult.
Sort of this - at a certain point it was easier to take on 2+ with a thousand flashlights and spam AP3 at the 3+
RustyNumber wrote: So when do we crack into the "D6 is a gak base for a wargame" debate? Absolutely loving these in depth (and polite!) grognard discussions! I'll admit from a fluff standpoint flashlights being able to do anything to a tank is gak, as is flamethrowers being able to harm a SM.
The vast majority of wargames published in the history of wargaming have used D6s. I can name you plenty of modern systems that use D6s and have no need for other dice. D6s are fine.
40K's problem is implementation, and one of the factors directly relevant to this thread is GW making the baseline average profile one that saves on a 3+. In the all-or-nothing system, the prevalence of Marines made AP3 a magic breakpoint. In the modifier system, a single step better halves your incoming damage, a single step worse increases it by 50%.
Linear modifiers on individual dice have outsized impact in this environment that would not be nearly as problematic if the baseline was 4+ or 5+. Or simply folded into a more generic defensive stat, because the modeled distinction between Toughness, Wounds, and Save is now entirely arbitrary and in practice T and Sv are largely redundant to one another.
Are you sure about that?
It is my understanding that in a typical Warhammer game system, when it comes to shooting, the most prescious stat (after the amount of shots a weapon fires) is the to-hit roll number, followed by toughness, followed by save. This being because the dice pools are resolved in the shoot-wound-save order, and whichever comes first affects the amount of dice that get to the next stage the most.
Or is this because to wound roll values are dictated by the S-vs-T table, in which 1 pip +/- is not as significant as in the other two stages, which modulate linearly?
Order doesn't matter. Going from hitting on 5+ to hitting on 3+ doubles your damage. Forcing the target to save on 5+ instead of 3+ also doubles your damage. Same effect.
The reason the bonus to hit is more valuable is because going from hitting on 5+ to 3+ always doubles your damage output, while an extra two points of AP gets you nothing if the target has no armor to begin with.
So, you are saying that 6+/2+/6+ shoot/wound/save would result in as much successfull kills as 4+/4+/4+ IRL? Maybe thats what statistical math would tell you, but its not what seems to happen IRL when the die touch the table.. (note these numbers are probably off but you should get what I'm trying to say here)
So, you are saying that 6+/2+/6+ shoot/wound/save would result in as much successfull kills as 4+/4+/4+ IRL? Maybe thats what statistical math would tell you, but its not what seems to happen IRL when the die touch the table.. (note these numbers are probably off but you should get what I'm trying to say here)
You ask about real life experiences, but in real life I can't say I've seen either of those scenarios very often.
I am just trying to wrap my head around the probabilities of staggered diceroll mechanics. It goes against common sense that if you have a process of elimination, where each stage drops unqualifying attempts, that it would not matter if the first trials were more difficult, and the later ones easier, than the other way round..
tauist wrote: So, you are saying that 6+/2+/6+ shoot/wound/save would result in as much successfull kills as 4+/4+/4+ IRL? Maybe thats what statistical math would tell you, but its not what seems to happen IRL when the die touch the table.. (note these numbers are probably off but you should get what I'm trying to say here)
First option means that 1/6 * 5/6 * 5/6 shots will generate a wound - or 25/216 shots (11.57%).
Second option is (1/2)^3, or 1/8, which would translate to 12.5%.
Not exactly equivalent, but pretty close.
The bit that always throws me when talking about this is the Save roll, as you have to remember that you don't want that roll to succeed. So if you're shuffling that top equation around, a 6+ save is equivalent to a 2+ to-hit/wound (as 1/6 fail in each case).
The key thing to remember is that these calculations give you an expected value, which is effectively the average value over many rolls. What you see on the table is the individual outcome of one batch of rolls, which is likely to vary from the expected value to some degree.
tauist wrote: I am just trying to wrap my head around the probabilities of staggered diceroll mechanics. It goes against common sense that if you have a process of elimination, where each stage drops unqualifying attempts, that it would not matter if the first trials were more difficult, and the later ones easier, than the other way round..
It's worth noting this is only true is all dice rolls lead to the same result.
It is important to factor in cause and effect (i.e. 3e rending was more powerful than 5e rending because it happened a step earlier and eliminated two rather than one subsequent rolls), where one roll can mean more than one thing (i.e. saves and invulnerable saves), and where decisions such as rerolls and wound allocation occur (i.e. choosing who has to make a save vs choosing who suffers a wound).
But to your last point, hard disagree. Different factions should have their different limitations. That's a core part of army identity/design.
It is an extremely flawed way to implement army identity/design as it always ends in have/have not balance issues that are impossible to resolve.
And that issue is further worsened with such a strong system like AP as it turns the game into a question of if you have good AP and saves or you have not.
The hard AP system makes differentiation between models and weapons more defined. The balancing comes from the greater army structure, availability and pricing of the various units. Those are definitely levers of balance, but they're much harder to quantify than per the usual "points spent vs points of damage taken" shorthand math which is a common tool for examining balance. Army vs army balance is what the game is(was) after, rather than strict unit vs. unit.
Unit vs unit is necessary for internal balance. If you see an unit or wargear that is mostly forgotten and lack of army diversity within a faction, you need to get into unit vs unit to figure why.
But to your last point, hard disagree. Different factions should have their different limitations. That's a core part of army identity/design.
It is an extremely flawed way to implement army identity/design as it always ends in have/have not balance issues that are impossible to resolve.
And that issue is further worsened with such a strong system like AP as it turns the game into a question of if you have good AP and saves or you have not.
The hard AP system makes differentiation between models and weapons more defined. The balancing comes from the greater army structure, availability and pricing of the various units. Those are definitely levers of balance, but they're much harder to quantify than per the usual "points spent vs points of damage taken" shorthand math which is a common tool for examining balance. Army vs army balance is what the game is(was) after, rather than strict unit vs. unit.
Unit vs unit is necessary for internal balance. If you see an unit or wargear that is mostly forgotten and lack of army diversity within a faction, you need to get into unit vs unit to figure why.
^Unit v unit is necessary for internal balance, but not external balance. Army v army is the only thing that matters in external balance.
Have/have nots is fine when balancing armies. Effectiveness isn't about having the same tools that every other army has, but about being able to counter what other armies can field in some way, even if it's not direct or obvious.
Have/have nots is fine when balancing armies. Effectiveness isn't about having the same tools that every other army has, but about being able to counter what other armies can field in some way, even if it's not direct or obvious.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say GW spent a lot of time making sure each army had at least one "hole". Some have-not weakness(es) was as much a part of their identity as their have(s). Marines not having chaff, Guard not having Power Armor, Orks not having high LD or shooting accuracy to go with their volume and on and on. The allure was mixing and matching strengths and weaknesses in your own faction choices
Tyran wrote: And that issue is further worsened with such a strong system like AP as it turns the game into a question of if you have good AP and saves or you have not.
Something that was quite noticeable in earlier editions was how much of an advantage you could get by knowing what your opponent was and tailoring to them compared to making an all-comers list.
But you could also skew yourself into a terrible loss, when the cost of the skew was high enough. 6pt plasma guns in 3e were no risk and all reward, 15pt plasma guns in 5th were not just more points but one less meltagun for transports or flamer against the high dug-in cover saves of chaff, a worse return against the fare more frequent invurnerable saves, etc.
In the 5e marine book plasma guns were a pro and con kind of choice, and so were starcannons at that point. Immediately sabotaged by the guard book but the possibility for balance was there to be grasped.
I'm not saying it is a system that impossible to balance.
But when you combine it with a meta that is overwhelmingly Marine, with a faction design built around the haves and have nots, and with some rules that synergize very strongly with AP like large blasts; it does some come quite close to being near impossible to balance.
Seems like a non sequitur to me. Did leafblower Guard in 5th suffer for lack of 3+ saves as they dominated tournaments? Have you never seen a reasonably balanced game where different factions have different capabilities and limitations?
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tauist wrote: I am just trying to wrap my head around the probabilities of staggered diceroll mechanics. It goes against common sense that if you have a process of elimination, where each stage drops unqualifying attempts, that it would not matter if the first trials were more difficult, and the later ones easier, than the other way round..
I bake 40 cookies. My mom takes 1/2 of the cookies. I now have 20 cookies. You take 3/4 of what remains. I have 5 cookies.
I bake 40 cookies. My mom takes 3/4 of the cookies. I now have 10 cookies. You take 1/2 of what remains. I have 5 cookies.
It doesn't matter what order you apply the downselections in.
catbarf wrote: Seems like a non sequitur to me. Did leafblower Guard in 5th suffer for lack of 3+ saves as they dominated tournaments? Have you never seen a reasonably balanced game where different factions have different capabilities and limitations?
Well rather the reverse, Leafblower dominated because they had more AP3 firepower than any other army and that let them counter the all-pervasive MEQs. Plus large blasts weren't bad against hordes in a pinch.
(Leafblower was a defense-skew as well but it was in form of AV12 vehicles, not an armor save.)
Orkeosaurus wrote: Well rather the reverse, Leafblower dominated because they had more AP3 firepower than any other army and that let them counter the all-pervasive MEQs. Plus large blasts weren't bad against hordes in a pinch.
For reference - as a lot of people won't know what leafblower was.
5e guard, immediately after Cruddace had chopped down prices, upped weapon availability, allowed multiple heavy units in single slots, moved elite and fast units into troops and turned chimeras into discount pillboxes.
2500pts in an era where a 'normal' game would be around 1750 due to many factions not being able to spend efficiently into the higher points (limited slots, no ability to double and triple up like guard).
~d3+9 blasts when most factions were capped at 3. No armour saves, all toughness 3, reliant on the newly harder to kill vehicles and 5es high (4++) cover saves, and simply being too cheap to trade out.
Typical composition:
-two command squads with 6 plasma guns, feel no pain, chimeras, and the ability to screw with reserves and drop orbital barrages (the only AP3 weapon in the list)
-allied inquisitor to intercept reserves, psyker squad in chimera (another pieplate blast)
-cheap infantry and special weapon infantry with flamers and heavy weapons (autocannon or mortars), more chimeras - the list could build something of a wall against the hordes and just flame out of it
-veteran (but still dirt cheap) infantry with meltaguns, more chimeras, and demolition charges more powerful than heavy artillery because Cruddace
-medusas - more large blasts this time strength 10 AP2
-manticore - more strength 10 large blasts
-valkyries - more more large blasts, this time chaff clearers
-and finally multiple hydras as they ignored cover saves for fast moving vehicles (bikes) allowing them to beat up on some key xenos troop units
Most common save: 5+, most common weapon AP: 4 (but also more than twice as many strength 8-10 AP2 large blasts than anyone else could field)
~70-ish infantry, ~17 vehicles.
The high points level alone hampered a lot of older lists, the force org chart was built to limit how many stones and scissors you could bring to your paper/scissors/stones game and guard turned every slot into a squadron while handing out mobility and hand-held artillery for peanuts. The dozen or so forward vehicle hulls were just tough enough to shrug off the hand to hand and small arms of factions without grenades creating a wall and subsequently difficult terrain between the armies and the whole thing just shelled you off the board by being cheaper and better armed than every other book.
In an era of codex creep that saw such munchkins as the 5e Grey Knights the guard book managed to stay top tier as just the second release of the edition.
catbarf wrote: Seems like a non sequitur to me. Did leafblower Guard in 5th suffer for lack of 3+ saves as they dominated tournaments? Have you never seen a reasonably balanced game where different factions have different capabilities and limitations?
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tauist wrote: I am just trying to wrap my head around the probabilities of staggered diceroll mechanics. It goes against common sense that if you have a process of elimination, where each stage drops unqualifying attempts, that it would not matter if the first trials were more difficult, and the later ones easier, than the other way round..
I bake 40 cookies. My mom takes 1/2 of the cookies. I now have 20 cookies. You take 3/4 of what remains. I have 5 cookies.
I bake 40 cookies. My mom takes 3/4 of the cookies. I now have 10 cookies. You take 1/2 of what remains. I have 5 cookies.
It doesn't matter what order you apply the downselections in.
yeah, that's cookies. but does this take into account that the chance of 6+ with 6 die is only 42%, not 100%? ie. the amount of die affect non-linearly the probabilities of each step..
That's a different issue. It is a real balance issue that makes low reliability units like Orks even worse in practice than in paper, but doesn't has much to do with the order of operations.
catbarf wrote: Seems like a non sequitur to me. Did leafblower Guard in 5th suffer for lack of 3+ saves as they dominated tournaments? Have you never seen a reasonably balanced game where different factions have different capabilities and limitations?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
tauist wrote: I am just trying to wrap my head around the probabilities of staggered diceroll mechanics. It goes against common sense that if you have a process of elimination, where each stage drops unqualifying attempts, that it would not matter if the first trials were more difficult, and the later ones easier, than the other way round..
I bake 40 cookies. My mom takes 1/2 of the cookies. I now have 20 cookies. You take 3/4 of what remains. I have 5 cookies.
I bake 40 cookies. My mom takes 3/4 of the cookies. I now have 10 cookies. You take 1/2 of what remains. I have 5 cookies.
It doesn't matter what order you apply the downselections in.
yeah, that's cookies. but does this take into account that the chance of 6+ with 6 die is only 42%, not 100%? ie. the amount of die directly affect the probabilities of each step..
Just trying to make sure I've internalized this correctly
The expected value does yes, it’s a sum of all the possible outcomes multiplied by their likelihood.
There are other measures of how ‘swingy’ something is such as the standard deviation.
If anyone has any links pointing to indepth tutorial on how to properly calculate these sort of things, warts and all, I'd appreciate it. I should have paid more attention to long math at school instead of daydreaming about playing Epic Space Marine hehehe!
Tyran wrote: That's a different issue. It is a real balance issue that makes low reliability units like Orks even worse in practice than in paper, but doesn't has much to do with the order of operations.
Not necessarily worse but yes, more swingy.
But average mathhammer (I.E. I hit on 3s, wound on 3s, and they get a 5+ save = 2/3*2/3*2/3=8/27) has always been just about good enough, since you are mostly interested in comparisons.
Because its not really about units - or indeed about armies. Its about points. If my 200 point unit is considerably better than your 200 point unit, I have an advantage. If my 2000 point army is considerably better than your 2000 point army, I have an advantage. I'm "effectively" playing with more points than you are - so I have an advantage.
And this in turn why points don't have to be perfect - and you don't need to agonize over the value of bolt pistols vs las pistols on characters. Take the best army in the game - and say it has to leave a two units behind. Take the worst army and say they can get 2 extra units. There's been some moments when the game is so uninteractive it perhaps wouldn't matter - but odds are you'd have a much closer game. In part because a 4 unit swing should make it much easier for the weaker army to play objectives if nothing else.
3rd-7th had more janky rules that perhaps made estimating the value of a unit for its points compared with the rest of 40k for its points harder. But I'm not really convinced it felt that way if you were steeped in the game.
For example "on paper" Dissie Ravagers should have been okay in 7th - as you'd think 9 S5 AP2 shots were quite lethal even without rerolling 1s to hit and wound. Unfortunately you had the defensive profile of a 35 point Rhino (worse actually, because of Open Topped) so you died if anything half sensible looked at you funny. Sure you could take Night Shields and hope your opponent shot you through cover - but its unlikely to be an issue for deep striking suicide melta.
Leafblower was busted because at the time it brought an unprecedented level of firepower for the points - and especially if it went first, just deleted armies. But this isn't really any more profound than Orks and Ad Mech doing so in early 9th edition (or frankly about half the armies in 9th without L-shaped ruins everywhere given some slightly above average dice.)
In terms of the probability chat, for first order mathhammer you are concerned with averages for comparison. If for example my unit "averages" out to a 40% points return on a shooting phase (and it will go higher or lower any time I roll the actual dice) versus a range of targets - while your unit only averages out to a 25% points return, then my unit is almost certainly better, with some caveats. And if you build a whole list on that basis, odds are your whole army will end up being better.
The second order stuff is more useful for trying to calculate the odds of something happening.
So for example the odds of rolling one 6 or more on 6 dice is 1-(5/6^6). Which is about 2/3rds. You can in turn use this sort of logic to calculate what your chances are for say unit X to kill unit Y by shooting. If you have say an 85% chance, you can feel fairly confident - and let down by dice if you fail. If however its only a 50% chance, then you may want to gamble (or have to given what else has happened on the table) - but its probably sensible to allocate another unit to potentially help out the first and ensure the kill.
This is where you can argue there's some value in units that have greater interactivity - for example with longer range on their guns. So to use the above - if the second unit sent to help the first only has 6" ranged weapons - and the first unit successfully destroys its target, they now may have nothing to shoot at and have wasted a shooting phase. Whereas if they have say 30" guns they can hit a lot of the table - and therefore keep their options open if other units roll well or roll badly. But arguably in turn the objectives of modern editions have somewhat undermined the benefits of range, since you need to gravitate towards the objectives - so odds are there will be something to shoot unless you are turtling in your deployment zone or everything nearby is already dead.
3rd-7th had more janky rules that perhaps made estimating the value of a unit for its points compared with the rest of 40k for its points harder. But I'm not really convinced it felt that way if you were steeped in the game.
That's probably true for 3rd and 4th. I'm doubtful it remained true during 5th and it certainly wasn't true anymore durin 6th and 7th that were peak uninteractive rules.
Even during 3rd/3.5 when I started collecting properly it felt janky. Fleet of Foot being a 'patch' rule because they didn't include a movement stat so they had to have a special rule to represent moving faster, and another for moving slower.
Tyran wrote: ... Get a book in probability and statistics?
It is a whole academic subject on itself, which is probably half the reason GW sucks at balance as they don't want to hire actual mathematicians.
It's not a bad idea per se, but I am basically only interested in learning how to calculate odds for D6 rolls of specific number of die, against specific staggered tests, in the most accuracy possible. There are so many books in my "to study" list already, ranging from electronics engineering and acoustics to programming, that I'd prefer to keep things super focused on this subject instead of having to learn about the subject in lenght
Tyran wrote: ... Get a book in probability and statistics?
It is a whole academic subject on itself, which is probably half the reason GW sucks at balance as they don't want to hire actual mathematicians.
It's not a bad idea per se, but I am basically only interested in learning how to calculate odds for D6 rolls of specific number of die, against specific staggered tests, in the most accuracy possible. There are so many books in my "to study" list already, ranging from electronics engineering and acoustics to programming, that I'd prefer to keep things super focused on this subject instead of having to learn about the subject in lenght
Then I'd keep it simple and focus on the average outcome. You can't predict the future but it gives you an expected result. To keep it really basic:
For calculating odds:
6+ = 1/6 = 17%, or 0.17
5+ = 2/6 = 33%, or 0.33
4+ = 3/6 = 50%, or 0.5
3+ = 4/6 = 67%, or 0.67
2+ = 5/6 = 83%, or 0.83
1+ = 6/6 = 100%, or 1.0
Use this when mathing out what happens when unit x attacks unit y. You group all shots for the same weapons together.
Say I have 10 conscripts with lasguns in rapid fire range, and one has a plasma gun. They're shooting some termagants (T3, sv 6+, 1 wound).
9 conscripts with lasguns have 18 shots in rapid fire range, hit on 5+ and wound T3 targets on a 4+ (some of these stats may be off, doesn't matter).
Grab a calculator; we'll have to multiply number of shots with roll to hit, roll to wound and save to find out what happens. You'll need to use the 0.XX numbers provided above corresponding to the required dice roll as input. You'll also have to invert the target's armor save. A 6+ save means the opponent has a 6+ (1/6, 0.17) chance of passing the save, but we're interested in the 5/6 chance of them failing the save! So:
18 shots x 5+ (to hit) x 4+ (to wound) x 2+ (5/6 chance to bypass the save)
Looking at the table above that gives us the following input for the calculator:
18 x 0.33 x 0.5 x 0.83
If you hit enter that should give 2.5.
The plasma gunner shoots too (s7 and enough ap to ignore the 6+ save)
2 shots x 5+ to hit x 2+ to wound x 6/6 (100% success rate; there's no save left to invert!)
Translates to
2 x 0.33 x .83 x 1
The result is 0.55
Add the 2.5 from the lasguns and the conscripts kill a total of 3.05 gaunts. Round this up or down to the closest whole number (but only in the final step!) to get a ballpark expected result. So 3 in this case.
Note that this is the average result. You can roll ten dice and have them all come up as 1, it happens, but if you made the same roll 100 times the average result is what you'd see most of the time.
It's best to assign some "overkill" to protect against poor rolls, so if you want to kill 3 termagants you might assign enough extra lasgunners from another squad to kill a 4th gant. This reduces the odds of the dice gods screwing you over.
This can get more convoluted with gw's love for rerolls, partial rerolls, more rerolls, modifiers and whatnot, but this is the base of it all.
They showed you the most basic average mathhammer. If you want more detailed stats, I suggest looking at https://anydice.com/ that will allow you to really calculate all shorts of percentages of rolls and results.
So is there a way to do a "hybrid" system? Something like binary but with the possibility of reducing the enemy save by 1 from certain weapons/circumstances? I certainly can see why -1AP on a heavy rifle makes sense against a guardsmen but is ludicrous against a leman russ, in terms of using the current AP system.
I've only ever played a game system once that didn't have the shot-at player rolling saves (Xenos Rampant I think it was) and I can certainly see why they are a thing. It's just much more boring when the enemy rolls two dice then you have to remove models. Getting to participate in a roll is better.
RustyNumber wrote: So is there a way to do a "hybrid" system? Something like binary but with the possibility of reducing the enemy save by 1 from certain weapons/circumstances?
I've only ever played a game system once that didn't have the shot-at player rolling saves (Xenos Rampant I think it was) and I can certainly see why they are a thing. It's just much more boring when the enemy rolls two dice then you have to remove models. Getting to participate in a roll is better.
There have been a few ideas discussed over the years.
One that comes up a lot is:
AP < Sv = Full save
AP = Sv = -1 to save
AP > Sv = No save
RustyNumber wrote: So is there a way to do a "hybrid" system? Something like binary but with the possibility of reducing the enemy save by 1 from certain weapons/circumstances? I certainly can see why -1AP on a heavy rifle makes sense against a guardsmen but is ludicrous against a leman russ, in terms of using the current AP system.
I've only ever played a game system once that didn't have the shot-at player rolling saves (Xenos Rampant I think it was) and I can certainly see why they are a thing. It's just much more boring when the enemy rolls two dice then you have to remove models. Getting to participate in a roll is better.
JNAProductions wrote: I prefer the binary system to the modifier system. Is that nostalgia talking? Probably.
That said! I do think modifiers have a place even in the binary system. Make a rule, High Impact [X] or whatever you want to call it. X is a penalty applied to armor save rolls made against this weapon.
So a Heavy 3 S5 AP4 Heavy Bolter hitting on a 3+ does 4/9ths a wound to MEQ. A Heavy 2 S7 AP4 High Impact [1] hitting on a 3+ Autocannon does 5/9ths.
A Power Weapon (which I am fine being a generic profile-Axes, Swords, and Mauls don't REALLY need differentiation) could be S:User or S:+1 AP3 High Impact [1].
I think the natural solution is to move the whole system to D10 rather than D6, up armor values so there's more of a spread between a space marine, a terminator, a guardsman, and an eldar guardian. Then you can up the AP value of specific weapons and have it actually mean something. Provides more granularity but also more flexibility for designers. Will it happen? Nope, but I think its something to consider. We also said they'd never move from Hull Points to wounds and I think that has really refreshed the game immensely for vehicles.
RustyNumber wrote: So is there a way to do a "hybrid" system? Something like binary but with the possibility of reducing the enemy save by 1 from certain weapons/circumstances?
Rending kind of did. Of every four wounds inflicted against a marine by a weapon like an assault cannon (S6 AP4 rending) you would get three 3+ saves and one non-save (2 wounds), rather than four 4+ saves (2 wounds).
Lot of other circumstances where those numbers don't match the -1 save mod of course, and even that example is only accurate with mid edition rending and not 3e rending (on hit rather than on wound).
There were also the Ork Choppas which just reduced any save better than 4 to 4, which was brutal. Marines got reduced to 4+, but so did Terminator 2+s. Those Boyz were proper scary.
Insectum7 wrote: There were also the Ork Choppas which just reduced any save better than 4 to 4, which was brutal. Marines got reduced to 4+, but so did Terminator 2+s. Those Boyz were proper scary.
That I find rather weird.
It's cool, but that'd feel more at home on some esoteric weapon rather than Choppas.
Insectum7 wrote: There were also the Ork Choppas which just reduced any save better than 4 to 4, which was brutal. Marines got reduced to 4+, but so did Terminator 2+s. Those Boyz were proper scary.
That I find rather weird.
It's cool, but that'd feel more at home on some esoteric weapon rather than Choppas.
At the time, orks were S3 (and stayed S3 for quite a while). The choppa rule offset that somewhat. Still, even on the charge 20 slugga boyz would hit marines 40 times, wound ~16 times and kill 5-6. With choppas they killed 8.
To avoid the jankiness of terminators it probably could have been a -1 to save, rather than a flat value.
blockade23 wrote: I think the natural solution is to move the whole system to D10 rather than D6, up armor values so there's more of a spread between a space marine, a terminator, a guardsman, and an eldar guardian. Then you can up the AP value of specific weapons and have it actually mean something. Provides more granularity but also more flexibility for designers. Will it happen? Nope, but I think its something to consider. We also said they'd never move from Hull Points to wounds and I think that has really refreshed the game immensely for vehicles.
Insectum7 wrote: There were also the Ork Choppas which just reduced any save better than 4 to 4, which was brutal. Marines got reduced to 4+, but so did Terminator 2+s. Those Boyz were proper scary.
That I find rather weird.
It's cool, but that'd feel more at home on some esoteric weapon rather than Choppas.
At the time, orks were S3 (and stayed S3 for quite a while). The choppa rule offset that somewhat. Still, even on the charge 20 slugga boyz would hit marines 40 times, wound ~16 times and kill 5-6. With choppas they killed 8.
To avoid the jankiness of terminators it probably could have been a -1 to save, rather than a flat value.
I don't question whether or not it was EFFECTIVE-because I get the mechanical idea.
It just feels narratively weird, that's all. Was there an explanation for why it was so?
I think just because they were big and heavy. As likely to smash as to chop.
The philosophy of 3rd ed mechanics was all about effective design rather than narrative. Space Marines recieving no benefit from cover against small arms is the prime example. Shuriken Catapults becoming short ranged, but having Assault so the wielders were free to maneuvre and Assault with no loss to firepower is another. No split-fire for Heavy weapons, forcing hard choices, etc.
Tyran wrote: ... Get a book in probability and statistics?
It is a whole academic subject on itself, which is probably half the reason GW sucks at balance as they don't want to hire actual mathematicians.
It's not a bad idea per se, but I am basically only interested in learning how to calculate odds for D6 rolls of specific number of die, against specific staggered tests, in the most accuracy possible. There are so many books in my "to study" list already, ranging from electronics engineering and acoustics to programming, that I'd prefer to keep things super focused on this subject instead of having to learn about the subject in lenght
Then I'd keep it simple and focus on the average outcome. You can't predict the future but it gives you an expected result. To keep it really basic:
For calculating odds:
6+ = 1/6 = 17%, or 0.17
5+ = 2/6 = 33%, or 0.33
4+ = 3/6 = 50%, or 0.5
3+ = 4/6 = 67%, or 0.67
2+ = 5/6 = 83%, or 0.83
1+ = 6/6 = 100%, or 1.0
Use this when mathing out what happens when unit x attacks unit y. You group all shots for the same weapons together.
Say I have 10 conscripts with lasguns in rapid fire range, and one has a plasma gun. They're shooting some termagants (T3, sv 6+, 1 wound).
9 conscripts with lasguns have 18 shots in rapid fire range, hit on 5+ and wound T3 targets on a 4+ (some of these stats may be off, doesn't matter).
Grab a calculator; we'll have to multiply number of shots with roll to hit, roll to wound and save to find out what happens. You'll need to use the 0.XX numbers provided above corresponding to the required dice roll as input. You'll also have to invert the target's armor save. A 6+ save means the opponent has a 6+ (1/6, 0.17) chance of passing the save, but we're interested in the 5/6 chance of them failing the save! So:
18 shots x 5+ (to hit) x 4+ (to wound) x 2+ (5/6 chance to bypass the save)
Looking at the table above that gives us the following input for the calculator:
18 x 0.33 x 0.5 x 0.83
If you hit enter that should give 2.5.
The plasma gunner shoots too (s7 and enough ap to ignore the 6+ save)
2 shots x 5+ to hit x 2+ to wound x 6/6 (100% success rate; there's no save left to invert!)
Translates to
2 x 0.33 x .83 x 1
The result is 0.55
Add the 2.5 from the lasguns and the conscripts kill a total of 3.05 gaunts. Round this up or down to the closest whole number (but only in the final step!) to get a ballpark expected result. So 3 in this case.
Note that this is the average result. You can roll ten dice and have them all come up as 1, it happens, but if you made the same roll 100 times the average result is what you'd see most of the time.
It's best to assign some "overkill" to protect against poor rolls, so if you want to kill 3 termagants you might assign enough extra lasgunners from another squad to kill a 4th gant. This reduces the odds of the dice gods screwing you over.
This can get more convoluted with gw's love for rerolls, partial rerolls, more rerolls, modifiers and whatnot, but this is the base of it all.
I appreciate you writing all that out for me, but the "simplified" method of calculating odds is not enough to satisfy my curiousity. I want to see how the odds change when the amount of die change, in order to gain insight into how much "dice power" weights the outcomes towards succcess/failure, and the simplified system just doesnt account for that.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
alextroy wrote: They showed you the most basic average mathhammer. If you want more detailed stats, I suggest looking at https://anydice.com/ that will allow you to really calculate all shorts of percentages of rolls and results.
Tyran wrote: ... Get a book in probability and statistics?
It is a whole academic subject on itself, which is probably half the reason GW sucks at balance as they don't want to hire actual mathematicians.
It's not a bad idea per se, but I am basically only interested in learning how to calculate odds for D6 rolls of specific number of die, against specific staggered tests, in the most accuracy possible. There are so many books in my "to study" list already, ranging from electronics engineering and acoustics to programming, that I'd prefer to keep things super focused on this subject instead of having to learn about the subject in lenght
Then I'd keep it simple and focus on the average outcome. You can't predict the future but it gives you an expected result. To keep it really basic:
For calculating odds:
6+ = 1/6 = 17%, or 0.17
5+ = 2/6 = 33%, or 0.33
4+ = 3/6 = 50%, or 0.5
3+ = 4/6 = 67%, or 0.67
2+ = 5/6 = 83%, or 0.83
1+ = 6/6 = 100%, or 1.0
Use this when mathing out what happens when unit x attacks unit y. You group all shots for the same weapons together.
Say I have 10 conscripts with lasguns in rapid fire range, and one has a plasma gun. They're shooting some termagants (T3, sv 6+, 1 wound).
9 conscripts with lasguns have 18 shots in rapid fire range, hit on 5+ and wound T3 targets on a 4+ (some of these stats may be off, doesn't matter).
Grab a calculator; we'll have to multiply number of shots with roll to hit, roll to wound and save to find out what happens. You'll need to use the 0.XX numbers provided above corresponding to the required dice roll as input. You'll also have to invert the target's armor save. A 6+ save means the opponent has a 6+ (1/6, 0.17) chance of passing the save, but we're interested in the 5/6 chance of them failing the save! So:
18 shots x 5+ (to hit) x 4+ (to wound) x 2+ (5/6 chance to bypass the save)
Looking at the table above that gives us the following input for the calculator:
18 x 0.33 x 0.5 x 0.83
If you hit enter that should give 2.5.
The plasma gunner shoots too (s7 and enough ap to ignore the 6+ save)
2 shots x 5+ to hit x 2+ to wound x 6/6 (100% success rate; there's no save left to invert!)
Translates to
2 x 0.33 x .83 x 1
The result is 0.55
Add the 2.5 from the lasguns and the conscripts kill a total of 3.05 gaunts. Round this up or down to the closest whole number (but only in the final step!) to get a ballpark expected result. So 3 in this case.
Note that this is the average result. You can roll ten dice and have them all come up as 1, it happens, but if you made the same roll 100 times the average result is what you'd see most of the time.
It's best to assign some "overkill" to protect against poor rolls, so if you want to kill 3 termagants you might assign enough extra lasgunners from another squad to kill a 4th gant. This reduces the odds of the dice gods screwing you over.
This can get more convoluted with gw's love for rerolls, partial rerolls, more rerolls, modifiers and whatnot, but this is the base of it all.
I appreciate you writing all that out for me, but the "simplified" method of calculating odds is not enough to satisfy my curiousity. I want to see how the odds change when the amount of die change, in order to gain insight into how much "dice power" weights the outcomes towards succcess/failure, and the simplified system just doesnt account for that.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
alextroy wrote: They showed you the most basic average mathhammer. If you want more detailed stats, I suggest looking at https://anydice.com/ that will allow you to really calculate all shorts of percentages of rolls and results.
Thank you! I'll take a look.
Ah, yeah then a dice roller like the one alextroy linked is the better fit. Have fun mathhammering
JNAProductions wrote: It's cool, but that'd feel more at home on some esoteric weapon rather than Choppas.
Chaos 3.5 had it as well as a 1pt upgrade to chainswords on khorne units.
Replaced in both cases with furious charge in later editions.
A number of rules got more or less inclusive over the editions - rending lost its 'ignore wound roll' ability making it less effective against monsters, poison gained an added effect against low toughness creatures rather than being only good against monsters, sniper changed to use the firers BS score, etc.
I appreciate you writing all that out for me, but the "simplified" method of calculating odds is not enough to satisfy my curiousity. I want to see how the odds change when the amount of die change, in order to gain insight into how much "dice power" weights the outcomes towards succcess/failure, and the simplified system just doesnt account for that.
As in you want to know how the bell curve changes based on how many dice are being rolled? As previously mentioned, I think you want to look into "standards of deviation."
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blockade23 wrote: I think the natural solution is to move the whole system to D10 rather than D6, up armor values so there's more of a spread between a space marine, a terminator, a guardsman, and an eldar guardian. Then you can up the AP value of specific weapons and have it actually mean something. Provides more granularity but also more flexibility for designers. Will it happen? Nope, but I think its something to consider. We also said they'd never move from Hull Points to wounds and I think that has really refreshed the game immensely for vehicles.
This is a common suggestion, but it ultimately doesn't really do much except give you more granularity. So let's say you double the die size of 40k to d12. Now you can have a +1 to-hit be a ~8.3% boost to the chances of a given to-hit roll succeeding instead of a ~16.7% chance. Any even-numbered modifier is the same % change as a modifier on a d6 (that is, +4 on a d12 is the equivalent of +2 on a d6). Any odd-numbered modifier on a d12 is only ~8% off of a value you could already land on using a d6. So unless you think the magic ingredient missing to fix the AP system is that extra 8% of granularity, this change doesn't accomplish much. That is, a shuriken catapult at AP-1 could go from making a marine fail a save 50% of the time to merely making them fail their save about %42 of the time.
And in exchange for that small boost in granularity, you have to make everyone throw out their d6s and go source an equal number of d12s. Which would be a pain for a number of small reasons.
That said, where the added granularity could help is just in the "feel" of certain rules. For instance, we could probably go back to having stacking to-hit modifiers without the math getting too crazy too fast. Functionally, the overall value of an odd number on a d12 would only be about an 8% difference from an even number, but you could have barrel rolls and cover and the enemy moving before shooting a heavy weapon all be factored into that roll without making marines hit on 6+ and guardsmen on 7+.
I think stacking negative modifiers could still work as long as there are potential stacking positive modifiers, and a reintroduction of the 7+ rol potential. (Roll a D6 and on a 6 you get a chance to roll a 7 on a 4+). Or even adjust everyon'es BS downward by a point .
I just waded through more math than my sophomore year to get here.
Is this system salvageable? Do you think we're getting another overhaul in 11th edition? Or will it just continue as is (flaws and all) until at least 12th edition?
Lathe Biosas wrote: I just waded through more math than my sophomore year to get here.
Is this system salvageable? Do you think we're getting another overhaul in 11th edition? Or will it just continue as is (flaws and all) until at least 12th edition?
It's hard to know, GW has a very opaque process. We know that they like to change things to drive sales, but how much they will change, or in what way is up in the air.
Their current paradigm is very competitive balance orientated, so I would assume they will stick with trying to keep it balanced. As per my previous comments I believe the ASM system is easier to balance than AP, so I would assume they will retain it.
But stranger things have happened, so it's not really a given.
I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to streamline rules further by removing toughness for example and relying on Saves and Wounds. Roll to hit vs roll to save is faster to resolve and can mostly be balanced (ASM generally relates to Strength, wounds often relates to toughness, so they are pretty good proxies).
From the thread? We’ve had a suggestion or two on how to improve it. But the consensus seems to be it’s just a poor substitute for armour save modifiers.
Consider, the difference between S4, AP5 and S4, AP4 is less than S4, -1 and S4 -2 in all anti-infantry spheres.
I suppose they could but that's a weird one I've never liked. Your normal dude wounds everything from a grot to a dragon on a 4+ seems janky.
This would drop it entirely, you just roll to hit and your opponent rolls to save. Saves would increase and ASM would become the main proxy for strength.
The number of attacks a weapon does would also be reduced - currently they offset the extra dice roll for Strength vs Toughnes. The more failure points the more dice you need to balance out success vs failure.
Yes, everything has a largely fixed to wound and to hit.
But, as Damage is “splash” damage? Big hitters really do feel like big hitters. And due to typically high wounds and at least a confident save, don’t feel like Glass Cannons.
Not sure what the consensus is, and politely, I don’t care. But it works for me.
I will concede applying that to 40K may, for the community, be a change too far. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad system (I genuinely don’t think it is). But like the change from 2nd Ed Space Marine to Epic 40K? Your player base wants to feel like they’re still playing the same basic system.
Yes, everything has a largely fixed to wound and to hit.
But, as Damage is “splash” damage? Big hitters really do feel like big hitters. And due to typically high wounds and at least a confident save, don’t feel like Glass Cannons.
Not sure what the consensus is, and politely, I don’t care. But it works for me.
I will concede applying that to 40K may, for the community, be a change too far. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad system (I genuinely don’t think it is). But like the change from 2nd Ed Space Marine to Epic 40K? Your player base wants to feel like they’re still playing the same basic system.
It wouldn’t be a big deal to me if the system was more focused. If the biggest target is an ogre and the smallest a Grot, wounding on a fixed number feels more reasonable than when the upper end is a GUO.
To continue your example? Mathematically the GUO can, and most likely will, kerbstomp the weedy lirrul Grots. And rightly so.
But. If the dice gods decide it’d be a good laugh? There’s a chance I’ll roll drastically under average for my GUO, and the Grots will just mob me to death.
Now, I get that whether that’s an enjoyable sequence of events is a matter of opinion, and may depend entirely upon who’s on the receiving end of that particular kicking.
And yes, it’s an entirely different Risk and Reward attitude required.
But there’s already a certain form of that in 40K, where a Grot Blaster* could wound a Warlord Titan. It’s incredibly unlikely, sure. But for me? Teensy tiny chance is always going to be more satisfying than “rules say no”.
Now I’m not endorsing the adoption of the AoS approach for 40K. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be entirely mad about it, because AoS works beyond simple roll to hit, roll to wound, to differentiate units.
*you thought I was gonna say Lasgun, didn’t you. But I didn’t. Point to me. Probably.
I am partial to the comparative roll for a range of reasons:
It allows a d6 to function at full range and uses it to compare rather than an absolute value that inevitably leads to minimum values. With comparisons you can't ever run out of room on the dice.
That comparison allows for the roleplay thematics of the units being better and worse than one another, without trying to differentiate between two units with WS2+. In the current paradigm there are basically 4 hit stats, 2+, 3+, 4+, 5+. Using fixed values means all units must differentiate between those 4. With comparison you have a limitless range, because it only matters if your opponent is better, worse or equal to you.
So IMO comparison mechanics supply range, balance and theme making them superior to using static dice rolls for stats.
And that's why I won't ever really like the AoS wound mechanics.
It's also why I would prefer that 40k went back to WS vs WS and even added BS vs I or equivalent.
Your marines can be BS4-8 without it causing any balance issues when it compares to another stat.
Yes, everything has a largely fixed to wound and to hit.
But, as Damage is “splash” damage? Big hitters really do feel like big hitters. And due to typically high wounds and at least a confident save, don’t feel like Glass Cannons.
Not sure what the consensus is, and politely, I don’t care. But it works for me.
I will concede applying that to 40K may, for the community, be a change too far. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad system (I genuinely don’t think it is). But like the change from 2nd Ed Space Marine to Epic 40K? Your player base wants to feel like they’re still playing the same basic system.
There are a couple of key differences that would probably make the AoS approach not work great for 40k. The main one being the amount of shooting. 40k has guns all over the place. Big ones, small ones, high rate of fire and low. Having SvsT comparisons and damage that doesn't carry over between models makes it possible for something like a meltagun or lascannon to be good against something like a tank but inefficient against a horde of termagants. Under the AoS appraoch, meltaguns and lascannons would become anti-horde weapons as well as anti-tank weapons.
If you want to do away with some of the weirdness of AP but make damage dealing a more steady process (rather than a swingy all or nothing one), you could probably get rid of either the save or wound roll and turn high toughness or good saves into a modifier to whichever roll you keep, and then bump up wounds accordingly.
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Hellebore wrote: I am partial to the comparative roll for a range of reasons:
It allows a d6 to function at full range and uses it to compare rather than an absolute value that inevitably leads to minimum values. With comparisons you can't ever run out of room on the dice.
That comparison allows for the roleplay thematics of the units being better and worse than one another, without trying to differentiate between two units with WS2+. In the current paradigm there are basically 4 hit stats, 2+, 3+, 4+, 5+. Using fixed values means all units must differentiate between those 4. With comparison you have a limitless range, because it only matters if your opponent is better, worse or equal to you.
So IMO comparison mechanics supply range, balance and theme making them superior to using static dice rolls for stats.
And that's why I won't ever really like the AoS wound mechanics.
It's also why I would prefer that 40k went back to WS vs WS and even added BS vs I or equivalent.
Your marines can be BS4-8 without it causing any balance issues when it compares to another stat.
I like the idea of compared rolls. The tricky part comes when dealing with orks and eldar in the same system. If eldar are so fast that their Init or Evasion or whatever stat is higher than a human's, and if orks are the opposite, then you're basically looking at everyone having +1 or +2 to-hit vs orks compared to most other armies. Which immediately presents some design challenges. How tough or cheap do you have to make an ork boy when guardsmen are hitting them on 3+ and marines are hitting them on 2+?
I also am not a proponent of BS-vs-I type resolutions, unless we go and change everyone's stats en masse to account for such mechanics. Besides, if GW added it, wouldnt take long until they introduced some Stratagems which allows a unit to ignore high I penalties for their shooting.. and we'd be back at square one but now everyone auto-takes such strats.
What I'd like to propose instead, would be something comparable to the conceal/engage mechanics of KillTeam. Give a unit the ability to avoid getting shot altogether, and introduce serious drawbacks to when its used. If implemented elegantly, you could also force a unit to resort to concealment, call it "supression" or whatever (and only give supression ability to specialists etc).. This would give re-emphasis on solid positioning and present new tactical challenges to both players. Everyone shooting everyone off the table is just so boring..
tauist wrote: Give a unit the ability to avoid getting shot altogether, and introduce serious drawbacks to when its used. If implemented elegantly, you could also force a unit to resort to concealment, call it "supression" or whatever (and only give supression ability to specialists etc).. This would give re-emphasis on solid positioning and present new tactical challenges to both players. Everyone shooting everyone off the table is just so boring.
There was the option to go to ground (and pinning, its forced variant).
Didn't stop you getting shot, and the 6++ was too weak to use voluntarily out of cover. In cover it could make units incredibly difficult to remove (3+)
It was a little half-baked in 5th as intervening units granted 4+ cover to anyone behind them and there was no target priority so use of it wasn't particularly tactical. Almost every in-use example was either a troops choice bunkering down or a character caught out in the open and crossing their fingers.
I think the issue you have is "verisimilitude rules" and "outcome rules".
I think 40k's issue is partly that it wants to do both. So unit/weapon stats are meant to somehow simulate reality. A boltgun should be S4 to the Lasgun's S3 because this somehow means something in the 40k universe. A Marine should be 4s more or less across the board to a Guardsman's 3s.
But arguably you don't need any of this. The stats are not there to represent power as per an RPG - they are instead just a mechanism for giving varied outputs when units attack each other. So Space Marines shooting into Guardsmen, Marines or a Rhino should do so roughly so much damage - with dice providing a curve.
You might want dimensionality to this - but its only really worth it if the game allows for it.
So you can for example make Eldar "hard to kill" because they have some high dodge stat that effects hitting them. While Orks are "hard to kill" because they are tough so difficult to wound. And Marines are "hard to kill" because they have solid armour saves.
But... so what? I mean unless you are going to have guns which interact with these stat lines - does it matter? If you want the same result of hosing them down with S4 AP- they could all have the same stat line. But now you have weird scaling. Flamers would be good into Eldar because they always hit - ignoring that "dodge stat". Plasma is good into Marines because it penetrates the armour. Assault Cannons or something (idk) would be good into Orks because they have high strength.
If you are worried about "verisimilitude" over all you might like that. I've tuned my army's loadout to destroy yours, so it should destroy yours. (cue the complaints of Marines vs cheap/undercosted AP3 for 20 years). But if you are concerned about outcomes in a game as a game, you might not want that. Because you don't really want it to be reduced down to rock/paper/scissors. Counters, if there are any, should be much softer - or produced by in-game decisions/actions, rather than X counters Y counters Z at the list building stage.
Basically your RPG-head might dislike that a goblin has the same odds of hitting and wounded a Dragon as another goblin. But mechanically it can work fine - and you can potentially produce a "more balanced game", where variable armies can all win games.
tauist wrote: I also am not a proponent of BS-vs-I type resolutions, unless we go and change everyone's stats en masse to account for such mechanics. Besides, if GW added it, wouldnt take long until they introduced some Stratagems which allows a unit to ignore high I penalties for their shooting.. and we'd be back at square one but now everyone auto-takes such strats.
Well, you'd obviously have to update everyone's stats given that there is no initiative stat or its equivalent. And generally any kind of sweeping change is going to involve a lot of tweaking and rebalancing. I'm also not sure a hypothetical strat (which would hypothetically only impact a single unit per turn) is really a strong reason to drop an idea. That said...
What I'd like to propose instead, would be something comparable to the conceal/engage mechanics of KillTeam. Give a unit the ability to avoid getting shot altogether, and introduce serious drawbacks to when its used. If implemented elegantly, you could also force a unit to resort to concealment, call it "supression" or whatever (and only give supression ability to specialists etc).. This would give re-emphasis on solid positioning and present new tactical challenges to both players. Everyone shooting everyone off the table is just so boring..
... I agree that some kind of positioning/concealment-related mechanic could be a viable way to go. I think it was earlier in this thread that I pitched leaning into things like minimum distances for long-ranged and artillery weapons, cover that makes you untargetable outside of X", spotters, etc. On a game of 40k's scale, we probably don't want to make a bunch of units straight up untouchable each turn, but some mechanics that break up the threat ranges of various units could be interesting and help the game a lot.
I'm picturing short-ranged units running up on artillery so that the artillery can't shoot at them, instead needing some bodyguards to come save them. Stealth specialists taking the Hide action to be untargetable by distant enemies as they approach. Cover granting something like lone op to distant units, and then other units deploying on top of tall terrain to negate that protection, or spotter units moving close to do the same. Basically just make it so that 2,000 points of army aren't all turning their guns on one or two targets each turn; at least, not without investing in the right positioning and support units to do so.
Tyel wrote: I think the issue you have is "verisimilitude rules" and "outcome rules".
I would argue that the verisimilitude rules are in fact one of the reasons 40k has maintained its industry position and popularity. The RPG aspects immerse the players in the game, connecting them to it in a way that chess doesn't, or any one of the thousands of abstract historicals out there.
In fact, the current issues with 10th ed are the increasing disconnect between these two factors, leaning more towards the abstract outcome. Which, for a game with rich and storied background, disconnecting that from the game is not a great idea.
The personal connection that people get through this immersion is one of the reasons people stick with the setting. 40k was never a competitive poker game, it was an ecosystem in a rich setting. When GW described 'The HobbyTM' they weren't wrong.
If you turn the game into poker, then you lose the aspects that keep your customers invested. Professional players that buy armies from painters to play games are not a normal GW customer, so making a game that caters to play and forget game players is IMO not a great idea.
^ I've enjoyed playing One Page Rules not-40k-please-don't-sue for a while but it absolutely does start to boil down to this issue. In the name of simplicity and balance all the forces really do feel very samey after you've played for a while. Fine for use as a proxy-game to use with another IP but I think as a brand new TT gamer it'd really hurt the feeling of My Guys being different to Your Guys when the units and rules are almost identical.
The question of how to make different types of defenses feel different comes down to how the ruleset executes those differences. 40K has never really executed all the possibilities very well, generally using only 2 or 3 of them. By them, I mean:
Hit - How hard is it to hit the target
Hurt - How hard is it for that hit to cause significant damage
Resist - Can the target resist your attempt to hurt them
Persevere - Can your target survive the damage delivered
40K has mostly used static Hit values on ranged attacks, abandoned the idea of some targets being harder to Hit in melee (but only because relative skill), and tacked on the occasional negative hit modifier here and there. This is a wasted defense area in 40K.
40K has long used Strength Vs Toughness to reflect how hard it is to Hurt a target.
40K has tried two different methods on Resist, both based around the Armor Save.
40K has always had Wounds on models to reflect their ability to Persevere against damage delivered. They have also used Feel No Pain in this same area.
While it would be harder, it would be ideal to use all these options in a game a varied as 40K. Properly executed, you could have hard to hit Aeldari, hard to wound Orks, and very resistant Space Marines.
As an interesting aside, GW actually abandoned rolling to Hurt in Kill Team. It is Roll to Hit, Target Saves, then Damage is applied (with some FNP and damage reduction/ignoring here and there). Models just have more wounds so that small arms never kill with just one Hit (attacks are always 3 or more dice with Saves being 3 dice barring special rules to reduce that). This actually works very well for gameplay.
Back when initiative was a thing it gave an edge to Eldar and other “fast” units. Survivability by getting your hits in first. IIRC they could also run fast enough for a to-hit penalty for shooting when that was still a thing.
Gave them a lot of flavor. If you could hit them, they crumpled. But landing the shot was not easy.
- 1, Shooting at a rapid moving target. If the target moved between 10 and 20 inches in its last movement phase.
This was FAQ’s to explain 10-20 inches in a relatively straight line. So no running 5” out of cover 5” back in, you cheeky monkey.
So yes, even the most basic Eldar Infantry, when running, got a -1 to hit modifier.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And on Alextroy’s post, I kind of like that they’re exploring unit survivabiltiy with armour granting more wounds, higher toughness etc.
Not to say they’ve got the formula right, but it’s a good thing to explore.
Nevelon wrote: IIRC they could also run fast enough for a to-hit penalty for shooting when that was still a thing.
It would have made an interesting addition to the old fleet of foot rule that any unit that possesses it gained a 5+ cover save when they run.
My memories of 2nd edition and necromunda were that modifiers were fine until they started stacking up and you had to reach for the 7+ to hit table for your BS4 and 5 models, or on the flip side were ignored due to stacked bonuses and auto-hits. Also why plasma cannons were ultimately the best necromunda weapon for the late game - target the barricade, not the model hidden behind it.
With their then unique and potent loadout of Assault Cannon and Heavy Bolter, they also got an additional -1 to Hit when moving (maxed at -3, which was plenty) and ignored the to Hit penalty for their own speed.
Altogether on a Skimmer, they could zip across the table, fearing little firepower, whilst having the capacity to delete an enemy unit a turn with decent reliability.
Then came the dark times. Then came 3rd Ed. Where everyone else got our unique toys, and we got…..a 6+ invulernable.
alextroy wrote: Hit - How hard is it to hit the target
Hurt - How hard is it for that hit to cause significant damage
Resist - Can the target resist your attempt to hurt them
Persevere - Can your target survive the damage delivered
That's just restating how 40K does it, but there's nothing saying those are the only levers you can use. You could just as easily model the engagement process like this:
Spot- How hard is it to see the target
Aim- How hard is it to engage the target with the current weapon
Hit- Can the target evade the attack
Damage- Is the target incapacitated by the hit
Instead of one roll to hit and then three redundant hair-splitting checks for damage, it's the reverse. There's no single objectively correct way to model any of this; as a designer you choose what level of abstraction you need in each mechanic and what design levers you want to model.
In any case, it's worth noting that 40K historically didn't commonly use all these checks anyways, because it followed a general paradigm of humanoid units only having one wound. Toughness was the stat used to determine innate durability, with armor saves reflecting external protection, and the all-or-nothing save system (which could not be combined with cover) meant that these stats functioned very differently. The expansion of defensive profiles making multi-wound infantry commonplace (with a Damage stat in turn) has created a clunky redundancy between Toughness and Wounds as a measure of innate durability, while the save modifier system gives a couple points of AP the same sort of general utility as high S.
To the point of verisimilitude, it's difficult to say what is objectively being modeled with any of these stats anymore. What the hell does it mean when a meltagun only damages a tank on a 5+, but slices right through the armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? What determines whether a piece of armor boosts your T, W, or Sv? A lot of people enjoy rolling dice to 'see what happens', but this isn't a simulation by any means.
Kill Team dumping one of those checks is a nod towards more modern design, paring down the amount of rolling to downselect across broadly redundant attributes. Armor save reflects a dude's armor, number of wounds reflects how hard he is to kill. You still get the fun as the attacker of seeing if your shot hits, and as the defender getting to see if you resist taking damage. You just aren't rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling some more to get there.
The thing that makes OPR repetitive is that it goes so far in the direction of simplification that there isn't much left, not that escaping clunky 1980s wargame design means inevitable blandness.
I still urge caution on a wholesale change to such core mechanics.
Such a change is why Epic 40,000 was poorly received. Whilst BFG showed those mechanics are actually pretty good, It Just Wasn’t Epic Scale. And as such, player numbers dropped, as it didn’t feel like the same game.
For coming up 40 years now? 40K has relied on WS, BS, S, T, W A, and Ld. And for most of it (I think?) M and I.
This has meant someone returning to the game will find the stat lines instantly recognisable.
For instance, I know a 2+ BS is the same as BS5. I know that the higher the T, the more resistant my unit is to small arms, but that I’ll still need to be wary of Heavy Weapons.
AoS did eventually pull it off, despite being a pretty radical departure. But that’s because the same mechanics are largely there - roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. They just have different names and layout.
If a returning player can handle the replacement of WS charts with a flat roll, the replacement of S-v-T charts with a comparative system, the change from all-or-nothing AP to AP modifiers, the change in cover from a separate save to just a +1, the whole can of worms that is stratagems, the complete removal of the FOC, the addition of a damage stat, the loss of templates, the introduction of subfactions with free bonuses, the removal of costs for wargear, the removal of vehicles rules altogether, and the removal of morale and its replacement with Battleshock...
...I think declaring any part of the game mechanics to be sacrosanct, immutable, written in stone, is just silly.
AoS did eventually pull it off, despite being a pretty radical departure. But that’s because the same mechanics are largely there - roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. They just have different names and layout.
AoS is the worst implementation tbh, it requiring 2 rolls is so unneeded IMO. If your unit on average forces 30% of its attacks as saves on any unit in the game, whats the point in splitting it in a two step sequence?
catbarf wrote: If a returning player can handle the replacement of WS charts with a flat roll, the replacement of S-v-T charts with a comparative system, the change from all-or-nothing AP to AP modifiers, the change in cover from a separate save to just a +1, the whole can of worms that is stratagems, the complete removal of the FOC, the addition of a damage stat, the loss of templates, the introduction of subfactions with free bonuses, the removal of costs for wargear, the removal of vehicles rules altogether, and the removal of morale and its replacement with Battleshock...
...I think declaring any part of the game mechanics to be sacrosanct, immutable, written in stone, is just silly.
I didn’t say they’re sacrosanct. Indeed in urging caution, I offered an example of when a major, root and branch change failed (Epic 40,000), and when it succeeded (AoS).
catbarf wrote: In any case, it's worth noting that 40K historically didn't commonly use all these checks anyways, because it followed a general paradigm of humanoid units only having one wound. Toughness was the stat used to determine innate durability, with armor saves reflecting external protection, and the all-or-nothing save system (which could not be combined with cover) meant that these stats functioned very differently. The expansion of defensive profiles making multi-wound infantry commonplace (with a Damage stat in turn) has created a clunky redundancy between Toughness and Wounds as a measure of innate durability, while the save modifier system gives a couple points of AP the same sort of general utility as high S.
To the point of verisimilitude, it's difficult to say what is objectively being modeled with any of these stats anymore. What the hell does it mean when a meltagun only damages a tank on a 5+, but slices right through the armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? What determines whether a piece of armor boosts your T, W, or Sv? A lot of people enjoy rolling dice to 'see what happens', but this isn't a simulation by any means.
If you hit some Nurgle guy with a missile you need to roll "to wound", then he rolls "to use armor", then you roll the "damage", then he rolls to "not feel pain", and that determines how close he is to being killed which needs to be marked on the model with tokens.
AoS did eventually pull it off, despite being a pretty radical departure. But that’s because the same mechanics are largely there - roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. They just have different names and layout.
AoS is the worst implementation tbh, it requiring 2 rolls is so unneeded IMO. If your unit on average forces 30% of its attacks as saves on any unit in the game, whats the point in splitting it in a two step sequence?
Not to defend the system, but 2 rolls instead of one allows you to gain more granularity when using a d6. It also allows you multiple levers to adjust that number during play through temporary or status-based effects.
catbarf wrote: In any case, it's worth noting that 40K historically didn't commonly use all these checks anyways, because it followed a general paradigm of humanoid units only having one wound. Toughness was the stat used to determine innate durability, with armor saves reflecting external protection, and the all-or-nothing save system (which could not be combined with cover) meant that these stats functioned very differently. The expansion of defensive profiles making multi-wound infantry commonplace (with a Damage stat in turn) has created a clunky redundancy between Toughness and Wounds as a measure of innate durability, while the save modifier system gives a couple points of AP the same sort of general utility as high S.
To the point of verisimilitude, it's difficult to say what is objectively being modeled with any of these stats anymore. What the hell does it mean when a meltagun only damages a tank on a 5+, but slices right through the armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? What determines whether a piece of armor boosts your T, W, or Sv? A lot of people enjoy rolling dice to 'see what happens', but this isn't a simulation by any means.
If you hit some Nurgle guy with a missile you need to roll "to wound", then he rolls "to use armor", then you roll the "damage", then he rolls to "not feel pain", and that determines how close he is to being killed which needs to be marked on the model with tokens.
It has gotten pretty absurd there.
Part of the reason being that each check is a binary pass/fail with no impact on successive checks- which is also why I don't really buy that 40K's approach is particularly good for storytelling/narrative/verisimilitude. Cool, you rolled a 6 to hit, a great shot! Except unless you have a kludged-on special rule, it doesn't mean anything, you just proceed to the next roll in the sequence. How well you shoot does not affect how likely you are to find a weak spot in the armor. How well your attack wounded the target has no bearing on how much damage it actually does. Et cetera.
Meanwhile in, say, Dream Pod 9's Silhouette system, the margin-of-success mechanic means a really skilled sniper is not only more likely to hit, but also if he scores really well on an attack can do a lot of damage (boom, headshot). Or since it's an opposed roll, a unit that relies on speed for defense can get movement bonuses to its defensive roll, making it much more likely to avoid hits or just suffer grazing blows. It's quicker, cleaner, and a heck of a lot more conducive to narrative than running through the full attack resolution sequence only to negate it at the end via a dodge save represented as an invuln.
There are tons of ways that these mechanics have been iterated upon since the 1980s, both for games intended for quick resolution and ones intended for narrative play.
alextroy wrote: Not to defend the system, but 2 rolls instead of one allows you to gain more granularity when using a d6. It also allows you multiple levers to adjust that number during play through temporary or status-based effects.
It comes down to whether you want all these levers - and to a degree whether 40k is a game where rolling dice "is" the fun of it.
As catbarf has said - the whole process of "I shoot that unit", now lets roll to hit - picking out 6s because they explode but rerolling 1s, and then lets roll to wound, idk, rerolling everything, and then my opponent rolls to save, and maybe they'll burn a Command reroll on that, and then maybe they get FNPs... feels a bit redundant when we only want to determine damage.
Do you find fun in that, or do you want to go "I have my Marines shoot those Orks. Now get on with it dice randomizer AI, tell me how many models are removed so we can get onto my next decision"?
There are potentially neater ways of getting to the same conclusion of "A unit of Marines should inflict +/- so many wounds when shooting into unit X, Y or Z".
Imagine say a squad-based game where Marines inflict "D3+3 wounds" on whatever they shoot modified by a single save roll. It would probably be a bit too simplistic (and maybe abstract). But it could be made to work.
Whether it would be as memorable/grabbing... I can't say. I feel 40k's "fluff/lore" is kind of independent of the game itself. This and the success in video games is why you have plenty of people who'll watch videos on the setting/story but have never rolled a dice in anger.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: From the thread? We’ve had a suggestion or two on how to improve it. But the consensus seems to be it’s just a poor substitute for armour save modifiers.
Consider, the difference between S4, AP5 and S4, AP4 is less than S4, -1 and S4 -2 in all anti-infantry spheres.
I'd be curious what a hybrid system looks like. Say AP5 is -2 ASM - so the hybrid system would be AP5 and anything that has better than a 5+ gets -1ASM AP4 (equivalent to -3 divided in half to 1.5) would give power armor a -1 or -2 depending on if its a strong AP4 or a Squeaker AP4 that kind of thing.
Tyel wrote: As catbarf has said - the whole process of "I shoot that unit", now lets roll to hit - picking out 6s because they explode but rerolling 1s, and then lets roll to wound, idk, rerolling everything, and then my opponent rolls to save, and maybe they'll burn a Command reroll on that, and then maybe they get FNPs... feels a bit redundant when we only want to determine damage.
Do you find fun in that, or do you want to go "I have my Marines shoot those Orks. Now get on with it dice randomizer AI, tell me how many models are removed so we can get onto my next decision"?
I think that's a false dichotomy. I enjoy the process of rolling dice with my buddies; if I didn't want that we'd be playing a PC game. But I don't want to roll dice for its own sake, I want the rolls to matter, to be individually significant, to tell us the results of our decisions- that's what makes it fun.
When my basic Guardsmen shooting at my buddy's basic Marines has me rolling an average of sixty god damn dice for each model removed from the table, I'm not having fun. When I throw dozens of dice to painstakingly determine whether I hit the target and then whether I damaged the target only for it to be negated by a dodge invuln (turns out I never hit to begin with!), I'm not having fun. When I'm considering skipping shooting with entire units because the effects aren't worth the time it takes to resolve, I'm not having fun.
A game can have you roll dice to determine outcomes, with just enough spice and chrome to forge an emergent narrative from the dice, without descending into this Yahtzee bs hell.
catbarf wrote: In any case, it's worth noting that 40K historically didn't commonly use all these checks anyways, because it followed a general paradigm of humanoid units only having one wound. Toughness was the stat used to determine innate durability, with armor saves reflecting external protection, and the all-or-nothing save system (which could not be combined with cover) meant that these stats functioned very differently. The expansion of defensive profiles making multi-wound infantry commonplace (with a Damage stat in turn) has created a clunky redundancy between Toughness and Wounds as a measure of innate durability, while the save modifier system gives a couple points of AP the same sort of general utility as high S.
To the point of verisimilitude, it's difficult to say what is objectively being modeled with any of these stats anymore. What the hell does it mean when a meltagun only damages a tank on a 5+, but slices right through the armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? What determines whether a piece of armor boosts your T, W, or Sv? A lot of people enjoy rolling dice to 'see what happens', but this isn't a simulation by any means.
If you hit some Nurgle guy with a missile you need to roll "to wound", then he rolls "to use armor", then you roll the "damage", then he rolls to "not feel pain", and that determines how close he is to being killed which needs to be marked on the model with tokens.
It has gotten pretty absurd there.
Part of the reason being that each check is a binary pass/fail with no impact on successive checks- which is also why I don't really buy that 40K's approach is particularly good for storytelling/narrative/verisimilitude. Cool, you rolled a 6 to hit, a great shot! Except unless you have a kludged-on special rule, it doesn't mean anything, you just proceed to the next roll in the sequence. How well you shoot does not affect how likely you are to find a weak spot in the armor. How well your attack wounded the target has no bearing on how much damage it actually does. Et cetera.
Meanwhile in, say, Dream Pod 9's Silhouette system, the margin-of-success mechanic means a really skilled sniper is not only more likely to hit, but also if he scores really well on an attack can do a lot of damage (boom, headshot). Or since it's an opposed roll, a unit that relies on speed for defense can get movement bonuses to its defensive roll, making it much more likely to avoid hits or just suffer grazing blows. It's quicker, cleaner, and a heck of a lot more conducive to narrative than running through the full attack resolution sequence only to negate it at the end via a dodge save represented as an invuln.
There are tons of ways that these mechanics have been iterated upon since the 1980s, both for games intended for quick resolution and ones intended for narrative play.
While I love the idea, my immediate thought is that having the dice roll effect further rolls is that it would make rolling for large units pretty cumbersome, which is something that 40k should try to avoid.
When 40k has gone that route it usually negated a further roll, removing dice from the following dice pool. Like autowound on 6s or AP-4 on 6s (which removes a save roll in most cases).
Tyel wrote: Now get on with it dice randomizer AI, tell me how many models are removed so we can get onto my next decision"?
When you both know the approximate odds the dice can be fun - seeing the improbable come up as the bloodthirster fumbles all of its rolls against the last standing grot, etc.
Auto-rollers and too many levels of rerolls and bonuses start to move away from that IMHO. The more layers the less invested you are going to be in any one of them unless there is some form of choice (the wound allocation minigame in 5th was terribly balanced but did allow a limited kind of model wagering for example).
Definitely a no to computerised dice from me as well.
I like rolling dice. I like bucking the odds. Me getting risky by shooting bolt pistols from a knackered Assault Squad up the arse of a tank, and taking it out has won me more games than it’s lost. Especially if I match that initial “well, you’ve a single hull point, so it’s not an impossible task” with “and my two Lascannons are quite nicely placed to shoot something else suitable for their attentions”.
When you play that way against a habitual number cruncher*, you can really upset their predictions. Because they just don’t think you’ll take that literal long shot. And they really don’t expect it to work. But as Wizards have calculated, one in a million chances crop up nine out of ten times.
*This is not a slight against that approach to the game. Certainly that can really help in the modern game where you’ve buffs, re-rolls and tweaks to apply.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I like rolling dice. I like bucking the odds. Me getting risky by shooting bolt pistols from a knackered Assault Squad up the arse of a tank, and taking it out has won me more games than it’s lost. Especially if I match that initial “well, you’ve a single hull point, so it’s not an impossible task” with “and my two Lascannons are quite nicely placed to shoot something else suitable for their attentions”.
This is a side effect of GW's focus on the game as one of individual models instead of units. There is no reason why a unit of 20 Guardsmen needs to roll 60+ dice when attacking. That is caused by each model needing to have individual dice assigned to it because a Lasgun is Rapid Fire 1 with an additional attack from an order which then have to be saved by individual models to determine who lives and dies.
You could easily replace this model focus with a unit focus that could answer multiple variables by instead saying this unit has X attacks while that unit has Y attacks. All attacks Hit on a 3+, then do a S vs T Wound roll that causes 1 Damage to the unit. There could be attacks that cause multiple damage, but only to "large" models (much bigger than Human, Vehicles and Monsters) since those are overkill when used on today's 1 Wound models.
Insectum7 wrote: While I love the idea, my immediate thought is that having the dice roll effect further rolls is that it would make rolling for large units pretty cumbersome, which is something that 40k should try to avoid.
When 40k has gone that route it usually negated a further roll, removing dice from the following dice pool. Like autowound on 6s or AP-4 on 6s (which removes a save roll in most cases).
Margin of success is a concept that can be implemented a variety of ways. In the Silhouette system, there aren't further rolls. You roll a number of dice depending on your shooter's skill and take the highest. The target rolls to dodge, and also takes the highest. If your score is higher, you take the amount you hit by (say, you rolled a 6 and they rolled a 2, so your margin of success is 4) and multiply it by your weapon's damage value. Compare the result to the target's armor, and the degree to which your damage exceeds their armor determines the outcome. The way it works as an opposed roll makes it unsuitable to a unit-vs-unit buckets-of-dice approach, but it resolves the attack with just one roll from each player with intuitive narrative and a bunch of levers for the designer to adjust outcomes.
A more 40K-esque example is the Starship Troopers system that Andy Chambers developed after leaving GW, and it's more similar to the examples you gave. You roll firepower dice determined by your weapon(s), and any that meet the target's Hit value force them to take an armor save, but if you score the Kill value they're eliminated outright. So an attack for an entire squad might be that I throw nine D6s for assault rifles and a D10+2 for a grenade launcher or whatever, we count up the number of Hits and Kills, he takes a save for each Hit, and then removes a model for each failure and 'flinches' a model back an inch for each successful save. The entire shooting attack only requires one roll from the attacker and one from the defender. Essentially, it's just changing the binary failure/success into a trinary failure/success/super-success, expanding the range of outcomes.
There are plenty of other ways to do it, those are just a few examples off the top of my head. The point is that making a sequence of independent binary checks (with a gakload of special rules tacked on when the binary checks prove insufficient) isn't the only way to do things, even if it is the corner that GW has backed themselves into.
Insectum7 wrote: While I love the idea, my immediate thought is that having the dice roll effect further rolls is that it would make rolling for large units pretty cumbersome, which is something that 40k should try to avoid.
When 40k has gone that route it usually negated a further roll, removing dice from the following dice pool. Like autowound on 6s or AP-4 on 6s (which removes a save roll in most cases).
Margin of success is a concept that can be implemented a variety of ways. In the Silhouette system, there aren't further rolls. You roll a number of dice depending on your shooter's skill and take the highest. The target rolls to dodge, and also takes the highest. If your score is higher, you take the amount you hit by (say, you rolled a 6 and they rolled a 2, so your margin of success is 4) and multiply it by your weapon's damage value. Compare the result to the target's armor, and the degree to which your damage exceeds their armor determines the outcome. The way it works as an opposed roll makes it unsuitable to a unit-vs-unit buckets-of-dice approach, but it resolves the attack with just one roll from each player with intuitive narrative and a bunch of levers for the designer to adjust outcomes.
A more 40K-esque example is the Starship Troopers system that Andy Chambers developed after leaving GW, and it's more similar to the examples you gave. You roll firepower dice determined by your weapon(s), and any that meet the target's Hit value force them to take an armor save, but if you score the Kill value they're eliminated outright. So an attack for an entire squad might be that I throw nine D6s for assault rifles and a D10+2 for a grenade launcher or whatever, we count up the number of Hits and Kills, he takes a save for each Hit, and then removes a model for each failure and 'flinches' a model back an inch for each successful save. The entire shooting attack only requires one roll from the attacker and one from the defender. Essentially, it's just changing the binary failure/success into a trinary failure/success/super-success, expanding the range of outcomes.
There are plenty of other ways to do it, those are just a few examples off the top of my head. The point is that making a sequence of independent binary checks (with a gakload of special rules tacked on when the binary checks prove insufficient) isn't the only way to do things, even if it is the corner that GW has backed themselves into.
Good examples, and I agree with your general sentiment, catbarf. Currently, the attack resolution mechanics don't really work as a tool for telling a story or creating cinematic moments. Or rather, they only do that in the abstract. I can sort of abstractly say, "these guys get an order from their boss telling them to pull off a special tactical maneuver. When the dust clears, they took out half the enemy squad in a single volley." But everything that happens between declaring the shooting and the last save being rolled is kind of just an abstract blur. Sometimes things feel more cinematic when I'm down to like, the last couple models in a squad or I'm seeing how long an archon's shadow field holds out before being overloaded, but mostly it's just the dice rollign equivalent of anime action lines; yelling > dramatic close-ups of something implying fighting happened > camera pans out to show the result of the fighting.
So with all that in mind, I'm definitely open to an alternative attack resolution mechanic, and I'd love to see some pitches to that effect in the Proposed Rules section. I think people have a hard time with that sort of thing though because
A.) It's such a major change that you basically have to be doing an edition change/system overhaul's worth of work to pull it off.
B.) You have to decide how abstract you're going to be. If you don't care to represent the individual impact of having a lone plasma gun in a tactical squad or the difference that having a meltagun instead of a plasma gun makes, you can make some very simple, very abstract mechanics for resolving the whole squad's attacks at once. If you want to represent those special weapons a bit more, you can still probably come up with something faster, cleaner and more interesting than what we have now, but it's tempting to just kind of shuffle existing mechanics without making a significant difference.
C.) It's easy to end up changing the game's lethality level by messing with the attack resolution process, and that comes with its own complications.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I like rolling dice. I like bucking the odds. Me getting risky by shooting bolt pistols from a knackered Assault Squad up the arse of a tank, and taking it out has won me more games than it’s lost. Especially if I match that initial “well, you’ve a single hull point, so it’s not an impossible task” with “and my two Lascannons are quite nicely placed to shoot something else suitable for their attentions”.
This is a side effect of GW's focus on the game as one of individual models instead of units. There is no reason why a unit of 20 Guardsmen needs to roll 60+ dice when attacking. That is caused by each model needing to have individual dice assigned to it because a Lasgun is Rapid Fire 1 with an additional attack from an order which then have to be saved by individual models to determine who lives and dies.
You could easily replace this model focus with a unit focus that could answer multiple variables by instead saying this unit has X attacks while that unit has Y attacks. All attacks Hit on a 3+, then do a S vs T Wound roll that causes 1 Damage to the unit. There could be attacks that cause multiple damage, but only to "large" models (much bigger than Human, Vehicles and Monsters) since those are overkill when used on today's 1 Wound models.
Trouble there, is you get WHFB Syndrome.
There, you fought in blocks of infantry and cavalry. Of those, only the front rank fought for the most part. So, if I’ve a 6 wide, 4 deep block? Only six of 24 models are taking direct part in the battle. The others provided a combat resolution bonus for each rank, up to 3.
Now that’s a time honoured system, but was born in a far smaller scale, where outside of grubby little Gobbos, having maximum rank bonus and beyond was really rare. But as time went on and the scale of the battles and its constituent units increased? It meant spending ever more money and time on models which, more than ever, were Just Fancy Markers. And it got so extreme, it hacked folk off that so little of their army really did anything beyond look nice.
It’s also why Epic 40,000 didn’t appeal to me at all. 1st and 2nd Ed Space Marine? Every unit in my army had its own shots, and from its stats, slightly different reliable applications. Epic 40,000? Oh well you add up all the firepower, consult the chart and roll that many dice, less each blast marker you’re carrying around on that unit. The target for a success was defined by the target. Infantry might need a 4+, Light/Medium tanks a 5+, and chunky boys a 6+
Now, Epic 40,000 wasn’t an inherently bad system. It worked really well in BFG after all. But, and crucially? It Wasn’t Epic. At all. The experience was too far removed from what made Epic Scale popular in the first place.
So, whilst I see where you’re coming from, and my argument isn’t “what an ‘orrible system”? It’s not 40K. And you need to be careful making that significant a change. After all, that lone Guardsman, the sole survivor of their Platoon, putting a lasbolt through the eye of an already mauled Abaddon The Despoiler, and plinking off his last wound? That’s the 40K experience, at least for me. Every model can be the hero, when every model plays its own role in resolving the battle.
I agree. Playing 5th with mates and having one last Tau drone survive and kill a Terminator in close combat, have the Guardsman sgt pistol you nearly forgot about do the final wound on an enemy big bad... that's the fun pointy end of the dice-bucket system.
I'm about to start learning 10th and wylds comment voices my concerns - all the minor +/-/rerolls from a myriad of different sources that is trying to make units feel unique just looks naff. Even things like tyranid hormogaunts being able to r,eact-move, I understand it makes for a varied unit but it doesn't really make too much sense in the grand scheme of things, same as Guard and their blanket bonus when firing at the same type of unit they are. It's the sort or special rule that used to be on only really elite or unique models.
AoS did eventually pull it off, despite being a pretty radical departure. But that’s because the same mechanics are largely there - roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. They just have different names and layout.
AoS is the worst implementation tbh, it requiring 2 rolls is so unneeded IMO. If your unit on average forces 30% of its attacks as saves on any unit in the game, whats the point in splitting it in a two step sequence?
Not to defend the system, but 2 rolls instead of one allows you to gain more granularity when using a d6. It also allows you multiple levers to adjust that number during play through temporary or status-based effects.
The last bit sounds like using special rules to emulate what was done previously with just comparing stats.
Raises the design path of having penetration 0-4 (etc) weapons and armour 0-4 - where in order to inflict a wound to your target you either allocate a single sufficiently high penetration wound or a number of lesser penetration wounds equal to the targets armour... but you lose the other players interaction in the phase by doing so.
To be fair? Much as I loved, and still love, 2nd Edition? It was exceptionally clunky once you got above say 1,500-2,000 points. And so the slimming down of 3rd Ed was required. I just think they went much too far. And AP is my main bugbear.
Not having to use turning templates for vehicles? Better. Not having three speeds, and only being able to shift up or down one? Fine. Losing the vehicle location based damage? I’d prefer to have kept it, but then 3rd Edition did see a distinct increase in the number of tanks, so probably fair enough.
But AP just removed a lot of subtlety and design wiggle room.
I really like 3e-5e but I think the AP system was a poor solution to the problems they were trying to solve and really obviously showed the game was designed with Marines in mind and the rest as an afterthought.
I think some sort of one roll defense system works better - whether it's rolling to save after kills like on One Page Rules or rolling to kill after modifying defense with armour like in LOTR SBG. The hit, wound, save sequence is kinda clunky and I'm not convinced it's adding much.
Da Boss wrote: ... and really obviously showed the game was designed with Marines in mind and the rest as an afterthought.
Why?
Units like orks and guardsmen got to make saving throws in 3e sometimes, unlike 2e. And many weapons that previously allowed power armour saves now ignored it entirely.
What did go in favour of the marines is that power armour actually granted a 3+ save whereas in 2nd it was 4+ or 5+ against anti-chaff weapons like lasguns, flamethrowers, frag grenades, and even civilians with clubs.
Things like Choppas reducing 3+ and 2+ saves but doing nothing to any other kind of save is the sort of thing I'm thinking of when I say the edition was designed with marines in mind as the default.
I don’t know I agree it was designed with Marines in mind as such. Rather I think the AP system just so naturally favoured any army with good saves due to its over simplicity, it required pretty unsubtle adjustment, like the aforementioned Choppa rule.
Which as said, was great and kinda background cool (Orks may not be ninjas, but they really know how to fight and where your weak points are entirely by instinct), but still felt wonky.
Choppas reducing saves to 4+ wasn't a 3rd-ed-on-release thing. That was either the '3.5ed' trial assault rules, or 4th ed, I forget which. I do think it was kind of a clunky solution to the problem- just as HH2.0's various ways that weapons interact with the AP system via special rules are clunky and kludgy.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Rather I think the AP system just so naturally favoured any army with good saves due to its over simplicity
Honestly, I don't think that's the case. Sure, you didn't have heavy bolters or autocannons reducing that 3+ at all, but 8th/9th allowing Marines to bump up to 2+ in cover, or still get saves against things like plasma guns, was pretty forgiving to high-save armies. Low-save armies could get cover bonuses that could not be negated, while heavily armored armies only received cover benefits against heavy weapons. It was a very different paradigm, but I wouldn't say it favored armies with good saves.
I still maintain that the all-or-nothing AP system would have worked well if this wasn't a MEQ-dominated game ecosystem. The prevalence of 3+ instead created an obvious and necessary breakpoint to meet, and is why we ended up with stuff like the choppa rule.
I think it would have worked better if there was an intermediate weapon class between basic CCWs and power weapons that instead forced re-rolls of successful armor saves. Reducing a 3+ save's chance of success from 67% to 44% is broadly in line with the choppa rule, without having disproportionate effect on 2+ saves and no effect on 5+ or worse.
Da Boss wrote: Things like Choppas reducing 3+ and 2+ saves but doing nothing to any other kind of save is the sort of thing I'm thinking of when I say the edition was designed with marines in mind as the default.
Choppas were just mundane close combat weapons when 3rd was launched (ah - ninjaed)
Without modifiers in the game options for a 'minor' power weapon that sat between full save and no save were limited but not marine specific - there were CSM, necrons, sisters, eldar, tyranid MCs after their codex, the incoming tau, the orks themselves, and even dark eldar in spots.
The got replaced in later editions for orks and khorne with furious charge, as well as various +1/+2 strength melee weapons. Increased lethality for all... if perhaps a little too much at times due to instant death.
Pretty sure GW said in a White Dwarf outlining their thinking that Ork players had complained (not unreasonably) that it felt bad they spent all game jogging across the table being shot, only to get into combat and typically strike second due to crap initiative - and then so often basic boyz did almost nothing to 3+ save Marines anyway. So they brought in rules to ameliorate these problems.
I'm sort of happy with the idea that 40k is designed for Marines - or rather GW can never make up their mine how Marines are meant to work. Because they can either be very lethal (for the points) - but in that case they have to be fragile (for the points). Or they can be disproportionately tough - but then they need to be relatively pillowfisted. GW (and Marine players) have never quite been happy with this dilemma - and as a result the rules have pivoted this way and that, making Marines obviously OP or a bit rubbish.
Raises the design path of having penetration 0-4 (etc) weapons and armour 0-4 - where in order to inflict a wound to your target you either allocate a single sufficiently high penetration wound or a number of lesser penetration wounds equal to the targets armour... but you lose the other players interaction in the phase by doing so.
Cool, always interesting to hear what designers are thinking. I once got to ask him about Starship Troopers 1st edition and he couldn't remember the shooting rules for that...
Tyel wrote: I think it was in the 3rd edition Ork Codex.
Codex Orks 3rd edition said:
Choppa
Beloved of Ork Nobz in particular, choppas are usually immense axe-like weapons or brutal cleavers. Choppas frequently have a chainsaw edge to make them extra rippy when it comes to chopping through armour. In close combat choppas limit the saving throw of an enemy model can have to 4+ at best. So, for example, if a Space Marine in power armour or Terminator armour were hit and wounded by and Ork with a choppa they would have to roll a 4 or more to make their saving throw.
The save remains as a feature that rick Priestley preferred where the owner got to try and save his own dudes.
It makes the opponent more of a participant in the game rather than observing their opponent removing their guys.
This is especially true in igougo40k where an entire turn of your opponent doing nothing while you wipe out models would be very boring.
But there is merit in your game involving both sides throughout, regardless of the mechanism. Efficient rules are just one part of the over all experience
Hellebore wrote: It makes the opponent more of a participant in the game rather than observing their opponent removing their guys.
I wonder if changing rolls to wound (attacking player) into rolls to resist (defending player) would improve that.
Same S vs T roll, same odds but it feels like a saving throw.
On the one hand good for guard who at least get to do something when shot, on the other hand potential for 'feels bad' on the attacker as they watch round after round of stacked saves from toughness, armour, feel no pain, and wound allocation whittle down their shooting attack from 20 hits to half a wound.
Hellebore wrote: It makes the opponent more of a participant in the game rather than observing their opponent removing their guys.
I wonder if changing rolls to wound (attacking player) into rolls to resist (defending player) would improve that.
Same S vs T roll, same odds but it feels like a saving throw.
On the one hand good for guard who at least get to do something when shot, on the other hand potential for 'feels bad' on the attacker as they watch round after round of stacked saves from toughness, armour, feel no pain, and wound allocation whittle down their shooting attack from 20 hits to half a wound.
Interesting thought. Only problem I see is that, assuming not much else changes, being the ones to roll the to-wound/resist roll means that now it's your own dice rolls that causes something like dev wounds to trigger.
Which, obviously you'd need to make sure your opponent knows when they need to set aside specific dice in that case, and also it might feel worse to be "responsible" for rolling a bunch of "crit fails" than just having your opponent's crit successes happen to you?
I would prefer to see actual interactivity in the game mechanics, rather than wallpaper over 30+ minute stretches of non-interaction by forcing the inactive player to mechanically resolve an outcome with no input of their own.
catbarf wrote: I would prefer to see actual interactivity in the game mechanics, rather than wallpaper over 30+ minute stretches of non-interaction by forcing the inactive player to mechanically resolve an outcome with no input of their own.
The 5e wound allocation game wasn't all that well received though, and playing the cards and command point combos were not the most new player friendly system.
I guess as long as it is turned based the best approach might just be to make it all faster.
catbarf wrote: I would prefer to see actual interactivity in the game mechanics, rather than wallpaper over 30+ minute stretches of non-interaction by forcing the inactive player to mechanically resolve an outcome with no input of their own.
The 5e wound allocation game wasn't all that well received though, and playing the cards and command point combos were not the most new player friendly system.
I guess as long as it is turned based the best approach might just be to make it all faster.
Yeah. I think there might be some merit to just making turns fast enough that you don't mind being less active for a bit. There are definitely tons of viable ways to keep the defending player engaged during the attacking player's attacks, but at some point, it's possible to basically just end adding unnecessary busy work to create the illussion of interesting engagement.
I kind of miss Jink/ go to ground. It kept me watching the unfolding situation on the table. The order in which my opponent shot unit X at unit Y could change whether or not I'd want to jink with a certain unit, and the choice of jinking both gave me a sense of control/active defense while also lowering the overall lethality of my army and speeding it up too (the jinking unit wouldn't shooting next turn).
Maybe a simple non-stratagem-based reaction system would be a decent fit. Give people the option to hug cover or do a barrel roll or counter-attack (read: open themselves up to taking more damage in exchange for a chance to hurt the enemy back at the end of the phase), etc. Once a unit has reacted, that reaction is locked in. So the defending player is constantly making meaningful, interesting decisions, but those reactiosn are quick and easy to resolve and don't need a whole subsystem to pull off.
If you like saves, then a single defense roll incorporating toughness and save, like One Page Rules does it, gives you the save roll in fewer steps.
I'm not massively opposed to having multi-step processes, because they do allow for granularity, but having switched to OPR a few years ago I didn't feel I was losing much with the unified roll, it still felt like 40K to me.
I'm also not opposed to save mods, but as others have suggested it should be relatively toned down. Basic guns should generally not have save mod, it should be limited to guns with a hefty firepower.
But I also don't mind Marines not being invulnerable to small arms, because I've always thought that was silly and an over-exaggeration of the background, especially in the novels. Terminators are the ones that wade through small arms, Marines are just a lot tougher than other troops. But that ship is long sailed.
Edit to add: I've got a lot of nostalgia for the 3e version of the game and if I was gonna oldhammer it'd probably be the 3e to 5e versions I'd look at, but I always felt the way armour was done was poor. Probably rubbed in especially by me being an Ork player and being constantly reminded that my Boyz will never get a save unless they are in cover, and if they are in cover, they're probably moving slowly which means no assault. Constantly squeezed between those two choices made for interesting gameplay, but there were plenty of times where I felt very tired of it. It was clear from the commentaries at the time that they wanted Marines to get out of cover and play aggressively, which is why they made the cover saves generally worse than Marine armour, another example of them designing around Marines imo.
Da Boss wrote: It was clear from the commentaries at the time that they wanted Marines to get out of cover and play aggressively, which is why they made the cover saves generally worse than Marine armour, another example of them designing around Marines imo.
When they upped the cover saves in 5th it just made 4+ armour feel worthless.
Half of that was how easy it was to get though - I don't know if you remember/have seen the tyranid checkerboard formation? (alternating models from two units in one pile so that both groups are obscured by the other).
Cover was certainly designed around marines, specifically to get marines out of cover because it didn't benefit them anymore. But then starcannons, battlecannons, plasmaguns and so on saw marines right back into cover and transport vehicles with the rest.
That's because Marines define the metagame, so everyone brings whatever weapon in that edition is most effective against them and most points efficient.
I had fair success just playing horde orks because it meant those were mostly wasted points, but small arms still made mincemeat of mobs without careful play.
Maybe a simple non-stratagem-based reaction system would be a decent fit. Give people the option to hug cover or do a barrel roll or counter-attack (read: open themselves up to taking more damage in exchange for a chance to hurt the enemy back at the end of the phase), etc. Once a unit has reacted, that reaction is locked in. So the defending player is constantly making meaningful, interesting decisions, but those reactiosn are quick and easy to resolve and don't need a whole subsystem to pull off.
Reaction systems , the way GW makes almost always end bad. Because they are either limited , only very specific armis/unit types can jink or worse it is like in HH, where shoting reactions mean one of your units can eat ( realisticaly more like 2-3 units) being shot three times by the same unit within the same turn cycle (their turn, your turn with reaction and then on over watch). This ends with shoting being very focused on being outside of LoS or having special rules that let you break the game (can't be shot at for a turn, can move and shot, mathemathicly hard to kill through stacking multi wounds&FnP etc).
Reactions are great for skirmish systems, because they both kill the boredom of not having anything to do on opponent turn and create tactical options. some weapon options could be not optimal on active turns, but very nice in reactions. But in a system where you have tens of models we already saw it ends. JSJ, fire and fade , mists aren't very liked by the opponent of armies that have them. Plus because of the leathality in the game, they turn any non clock game in to a measuring all ranges fiesta.
Wyldhunt wrote: Maybe a simple non-stratagem-based reaction system would be a decent fit. Give people the option to hug cover or do a barrel roll or counter-attack
Go to ground - as oldhammer
Give ground - fall back d6", or init based, after taking heavy weapon fire only, with a compulsory regroup next round. A drawback to ATSKNF and fearless units being unable to use it.
Zeal... 4e Templars had a defensive attack ability but there wasn't any drawback to it when it was optional.
Generally not reacting was the counter-attack option as you got your turn next. Being able to dodge back from charges or small arms or getting overwatch on the round after you had already shot always felt like getting two bites at the cherry - especially when tau started with their supporting fire triple dip overwatch in 6th.
Overwatch as a reaction when you had given up your prior turn for it worked better IMO. 2e had the problem of it being something that could be triggered at any time rather than only when attacked so you could put your whole army onto overwatch and then take your entire shooting phase as and when models stepped out of cover or whenever else you wanted with no real drawback.
Wyldhunt wrote: Maybe a simple non-stratagem-based reaction system would be a decent fit. Give people the option to hug cover or do a barrel roll or counter-attack
Go to ground - as oldhammer
Give ground - fall back d6", or init based, after taking heavy weapon fire only, with a compulsory regroup next round. A drawback to ATSKNF and fearless units being unable to use it.
Zeal... 4e Templars had a defensive attack ability but there wasn't any drawback to it when it was optional.
Generally not reacting was the counter-attack option as you got your turn next. Being able to dodge back from charges or small arms or getting overwatch on the round after you had already shot always felt like getting two bites at the cherry - especially when tau started with their supporting fire triple dip overwatch in 6th.
Overwatch as a reaction when you had given up your prior turn for it worked better IMO. 2e had the problem of it being something that could be triggered at any time rather than only when attacked so you could put your whole army onto overwatch and then take your entire shooting phase as and when models stepped out of cover or whenever else you wanted with no real drawback.
I could see something like the above working.
Give Ground would basically be the new necron Star Shatter reaction move. Basically, you have to let your opponent shoot you (and resolve those attacks) before you activate it, but then you can defensively try to hide behind some terrain. So it's less protective (in some ways) than JSJ, but it can still save your bacon. If doing this made you give up the following turn's shooting/charges/actions, it could be an interesting decision for keeping a unit alive after they poked their heads out to fight.
Not sure about Zeal. I was kind of picturing something like a shoot-on-death mechanic similar to hellblasters, but declaring you're using it means the enemy adds +1 to wound rolls while resolving their attacks for the rest of the phase or something. Sort of a "go down swinging" option. But simply *not* reacting and getting to do your turn normally probably works too.
Putting your whole army on overwatch could be an issue, although one with counterplay. If you've played the 40k Battle Sector game, you can stick your whole army on overwatch, but then they automatically spend that overwatch on whatever the first thing to come into range is. So if you have a bunch of lascannon heavy weapons guys on OW, they can eaisly end up wasting it against that first wave of gretchen instead of saving it for the deff dread stomping up behind them. Translating something like that to 40k, it would potentially add a bit of value to your cheap canon fodder units. Like, Thousand Sons might want to invest in some cheap cultists instead of extra flamer rubrics if they can force their opponent to waste shooting on the cheap guys.
But I'm just spitballing. Generally I've been playing with the idea of ditching stratagems in favor of army-wide rules and "maneuvers," and reactions kind of tie into that.
Alternatively, we could alter the turn strucutre to not be IGoUGo, but that is its own can of worms and well-trod ground.
A.T. wrote:The 5e wound allocation game wasn't all that well received though, and playing the cards and command point combos were not the most new player friendly system.
Karol wrote:Reaction systems , the way GW makes almost always end bad.
The implication that the only options are 'how GW does it now' or 'how GW has done it before' is as tiring as ever.
I was thinking more along the lines of some flavor of alternating activation, phased activation (a la MESBG), or a reaction system along the lines of Dust, Infinity, or SST. Either reduce the duration of a single activation impulse before the pendulum swings back to the other player, or make the other player 'reactive' rather than 'inactive'.
Or if you have to keep pure IGOUGO, then yeah, speed up the turns so it isn't no-go-ahead-I'm-just-making-a-sandwich levels of downtime. And don't pretend that giving the other guy brainless busywork constitutes 'engagement'. You want IGOUGO, you can have IGOUGO, just don't make it tedious to play on the assumption that I'm six years old and getting to throw dice every couple minutes is enough to keep me entertained.
Wyldhunt wrote: I kind of miss Jink/ go to ground. It kept me watching the unfolding situation on the table. The order in which my opponent shot unit X at unit Y could change whether or not I'd want to jink with a certain unit, and the choice of jinking both gave me a sense of control/active defense while also lowering the overall lethality of my army and speeding it up too (the jinking unit wouldn't shooting next turn).
As a point of reference, Battlefleet Gothic is a GW game that is mostly IGOUGO (ordnance moves in both turns, but that's fairly minor), but any time you come under attack, you have the option to attempt to Brace For Impact, which gives you a 4+ save against all damage- outright cutting damage sustained in half- but comes at some pretty hefty costs to what that ship can do in the next turn. It means that as the inactive player, you still are paying attention to what's going on and weighing the risks. It also means that combat is normally resolved by the player making the attacks, unless Brace for Impact is invoked, and then the defender gets a save.
Beats the heck out of adding a dice handoff to every single attack for... no reason, except to make the other guy feel like he's involved in what is still a one-sided mechanic.
Or if you have to keep pure IGOUGO, then yeah, speed up the turns so it isn't no-go-ahead-I'm-just-making-a-sandwich levels of downtime. And don't pretend that giving the other guy brainless busywork constitutes 'engagement'. You want IGOUGO, you can have IGOUGO, just don't make it tedious to play on the assumption that I'm six years old and getting to throw dice every couple minutes is enough to keep me entertained.
FWIW, I play a fair bit of 1k and 1500 point games, and the downtime definitely chafes less in those smaller games. So simply speeding up player turns a bit might do a fair bit to help the issue.
As a point of reference, Battlefleet Gothic is a GW game that is mostly IGOUGO (ordnance moves in both turns, but that's fairly minor), but any time you come under attack, you have the option to attempt to Brace For Impact, which gives you a 4+ save against all damage- outright cutting damage sustained in half- but comes at some pretty hefty costs to what that ship can do in the next turn. It means that as the inactive player, you still are paying attention to what's going on and weighing the risks. It also means that combat is normally resolved by the player making the attacks, unless Brace for Impact is invoked, and then the defender gets a save.
Beats the heck out of adding a dice handoff to every single attack for... no reason, except to make the other guy feel like he's involved in what is still a one-sided mechanic.
Yeah, I think a mechanic that captures that same feeling would work pretty well. Jink kind of did that for me. But of course, now that units generally have armor saves if not invuln saves means that just giving everything an X+ save when they give up their shooting the following turn is less of a one-size-fits-all solution than it used to be.
I will say that the dice handoff probably make a bit of sense. I have enough trouble getting my opponent to remember something like a to-hit or to-wound penalty sometimes. If they were also in charge of remembering my saves and knowing which one was better to use, I imagine there would be non-zero number of innocent mistakes as a result of them simply not knowing my units as well as I know my units.
catbarf wrote:... any time you come under attack, you have the option to attempt to Brace For Impact, which gives you a 4+ save against all damage- outright cutting damage sustained in half- but comes at some pretty hefty costs to what that ship can do in the next turn.
Go to ground. Unfortunately it was a small benefit and a harsh penalty on active units while being a significant boost for inactive units dug in on objectives. A little less punitive in 6th/7th.
catbarf wrote:... any time you come under attack, you have the option to attempt to Brace For Impact, which gives you a 4+ save against all damage- outright cutting damage sustained in half- but comes at some pretty hefty costs to what that ship can do in the next turn.
Go to ground. Unfortunately it was a small benefit and a harsh penalty on active units while being a significant boost for inactive units dug in on objectives. A little less punitive in 6th/7th.
Sure. But as catbarf mentioned earlier, we don't have to do things exactly the same way as before. Brace for Impact and Jink are both examples of reaction mechanics that feel good to use and worked pretty well in their day.
Nomeny wrote: What I don't get is why Andy Chambers didn't go for something like WS vs WS or S vs T, so it was AP vs AV.
I did exactly that and it's worked perfectly.
E.g. -1 save mod and 3+ save = AP4 and AR4. It makes introducing armour better than 2+ save extremely easy, and allows you to model weapons with bad penetration as well.
I also converted 2nd edition 40K to play with alternate unit activation and no phases and it really didn't take much. No one missed not rolling armour saves.
I honestly hate unit reactions and all the extra out of phase extra action special rules I see in current 40K. It's as though the more you are getting pounded the more actions you get to take, while an un-threatened unit with a great vantage point shoots once and watches.
2nd edition overwatch is something I heard many complaints about but never saw a problem with. I mostly heard people complain about it in retrospect after the launch of 3rd edition; something for people to denigrate the previous editions rules over. Same with the AP system vs armour saves. GW staff would use it as a selling point; your Marines get their full save!
Any armour save shortcomings of 2nd edition were with calibration, not with the mechanic. While binary AP as a mechanic is inherently unbalanceable.
Oktoglokk wrote: 2nd edition overwatch is something I heard many complaints about but never saw a problem with. I mostly heard people complain about it in retrospect after the launch of 3rd edition; something for people to denigrate the previous editions rules over.
Keeping in mind that I was 10-12 years old, I remember it being a problem once people "discovered it".
"I'll put this unit in hard cover on overwatch."
"Okay... well I don't want to get shot, and if I run forward and shoot you I'm getting so many negatives to hit I'll probably do nothing. So I'll also bunker down and go into overwatch."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Well this doesn't seem great."
Arguably resolved by having big LOS-blocking terrain pieces to break up firing lines (the more things change etc) - but tables often didn't have that sort of terrain. So despite only having a 90 degree firing arc you could just mow stuff down that tried to cross no man's land. Which didn't feel very fun.
Tyel wrote: Keeping in mind that I was 10-12 years old, I remember it being a problem once people "discovered it".
"I'll put this unit in hard cover on overwatch."
"Okay... well I don't want to get shot, and if I run forward and shoot you I'm getting so many negatives to hit I'll probably do nothing. So I'll also bunker down and go into overwatch."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Well this doesn't seem great."
Arguably resolved by having big LOS-blocking terrain pieces to break up firing lines (the more things change etc) - but tables often didn't have that sort of terrain. So despite only having a 90 degree firing arc you could just mow stuff down that tried to cross no man's land. Which didn't feel very fun.
It was better in Necromunda.
The official motto back then was "The more terrain the better the game!"
The corollary to 'I can't move/attack you without getting shot at' is why the heck should you be able to?
I set up my unit in cover with a good field of fire and forgo my turn to be able to shoot in response to your actions - I see nothing wrong with that.
The main complaint was that this made for static games but I really never saw that. Yes it blocked avenues of unmolested movement but that was the point!
You have line of sight blocking terrain, you have fast units to close with the enemy, you have armoured units to take a chance against heavy weapons fire, you have high ballistic skill units and templates to snipe and blast units out of hard cover.
I don't really sympathise with not having enough terrain either. If you don't have enough you stack books on your table - I don't know if people read any more but people tended to have plenty of books in the '90s. Or use tin cans or rocks from the garden or smash a polystyrene box - half my 30+ year old terrain is smashed polystyrene.
The lack of terrain on the table is an issue/feature of current 40K I rarely consider - I still think of things in terms of 2nd edition terrain density.
I don't expect that armies should perform equally in different terrain densities. Some would benefit, some would suffer.
Encouraging less terrain would be a great way to sell more marines in the binary AP paradigm though.
Wyldhunt wrote:Sure. But as catbarf mentioned earlier, we don't have to do things exactly the same way as before. Brace for Impact and Jink are both examples of reaction mechanics that feel good to use and worked pretty well in their day.
Right, the reason I bring up BFI as a comparison is because it is significant and game-wide. It gives your ships a flat 4+ save against all damage, and any ship or squadron can do it. When you have that choice available, you pay close attention during your opponent's shooting phase, weighing whether it's worth reducing your shooting by half next turn and losing out on special orders. It's a constantly present tactical consideration.
Go To Ground wasn't significant in the same way- a +1 to your save at the cost of doing nothing for a turn is highly punishing, something you'd only use in exceptional circumstances, like having a unit camping an objective. Since it isn't worth doing most of the time, it isn't a strong tactical consideration.
Whereas Jink giving you a flat save (at the cost of then hitting on 6s) was a significant ability, but limited only to certain units. No jetbikes, flyers, or skimmers? No jink. Similarly, while HH2.0 has a reaction mechanic, it being limited to one unit at a time limits its utility and has some weird consequences (eg big units react far more often than small ones).
A strong reaction mechanic is one that is actually worth doing, and applies to any unit, giving you additional capability in your opponent's turn. But there's more to it than that, because...
Tyel wrote:
Oktoglokk wrote: 2nd edition overwatch is something I heard many complaints about but never saw a problem with. I mostly heard people complain about it in retrospect after the launch of 3rd edition; something for people to denigrate the previous editions rules over.
Keeping in mind that I was 10-12 years old, I remember it being a problem once people "discovered it".
"I'll put this unit in hard cover on overwatch."
"Okay... well I don't want to get shot, and if I run forward and shoot you I'm getting so many negatives to hit I'll probably do nothing. So I'll also bunker down and go into overwatch."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Well this doesn't seem great."
Arguably resolved by having big LOS-blocking terrain pieces to break up firing lines (the more things change etc) - but tables often didn't have that sort of terrain. So despite only having a 90 degree firing arc you could just mow stuff down that tried to cross no man's land. Which didn't feel very fun.
It was better in Necromunda.
...A big part of the issue was that Overwatch often didn't involve any sort of tradeoff; if you were in a good defensive position but had no LOS, you'd just go on overwatch. The enemy pops up, you take your free shot at -1 to hit, then he gets to shoot, and then it's your turn again and you can shoot again with no penalty. If, instead, overwatch meant not getting to shoot on your next turn, that'd be a much harder decision- you'd be essentially taking a -1 to hit penalty to shift your shooting to before the enemy shoots. In some systems I've seen this mechanic defined as 'hasty fire' or similar.
A good reaction system is one that gives you either situational benefits (like going to ground) or the chance to do something now (like overwatch fire) at the cost of reduced capability later; it sets up a tension where you have to balance responding to your opponent against losing initiative, getting stuck just reacting to an enemy that's gotten inside your OODA loop. The 2nd Ed overwatch mechanic was instead sacrificing capability now to do something later, which is a subtle but important distinction.
Now, the 2nd Ed style overwatch is reasonably realistic in asserting that a defender with a clear field of fire and time to prepare has a strong advantage. But for a wargame, you need either strong incentive for one side to just eat the overwatch (eg, a scenario where the attacker has more points but a hard time limit), or a mechanic to shut down overwatch by suppressing the defenders (hello, indirect fires). Otherwise you get the much-derided stalemate of 2nd where neither side is willing to step out and get shot, but also there's no other option for dealing with it.
catbarf wrote: Right, the reason I bring up BFI as a comparison is because it is significant and game-wide. It gives your ships a flat 4+ save against all damage, and any ship or squadron can do it. When you have that choice available, you pay close attention during your opponent's shooting phase, weighing whether it's worth reducing your shooting by half next turn and losing out on special orders. It's a constantly present tactical consideration.
I'd agree that having these things be universal is important - because it becomes a feature you build the game around.
GW have this habit of thinking up some new ability - and handing it to one unit (or faction). Since it amends the game's rules it then turns out to be almost impossible to value properly.
Jink is a great example of how not to do these abilities for that reason. (I accept "7th was broken" can't be the explanation for everything - but it was.)
Really though it comes down to what you want your game to simulate. I feel a major issue in 40k is that the game is so short (in terms of turns/actions) that anything that takes multiple turns to do is often not practical.
So for example say you are hunkered down in overwatch.
So I need to bring my "indirect fires/overwatch breaking unit" across the table (potentially a turn).
It then needs to shoot at full effect to break your overwatch (another turn).
Finally my other unit(s) can safely sprint across no-mans land and either inflict significant damage with close range shooting or assault (a third turn).
And potentially that's only breaking into your first line, as opposed to the more juicy stuff behind.
You can obviously speed things up by giving units lots of movement and range. Having opponents deploy very close to each other. Have no/fewer modifiers to shooting (you could argue this has happened every edition for decades by now) and long charge distances etc. But all that brings its own issues as we've seen. Suddenly overwatch stops being an issue because you can just zoom to the other side of the board and delete whatever you like.
Wyldhunt wrote: Brace for Impact and Jink are both examples of reaction mechanics that feel good to use and worked pretty well in their day.
What are your thoughts on 5e jink(turbo boost) vs 7e jink?
7e was reactive, give up your next shooting phase to get an immediate 4+ cover save.
5e was proactive, give up your current shooting/assault phase and make a minimum move to set yourself up for the next round.
I kind of preferred the proactive version myself, but then 7e did have a stronger emphasis on stuff entering the board that you had to react to rather than units in place that you were playing against.
Tyel wrote: I feel a major issue in 40k is that the game is so short (in terms of turns/actions) that anything that takes multiple turns to do is often not practical.
Totally valid, but IMO the issue there isn't the turn count per se. It's more the extremely limited number of interaction points that comes from 40K's strict phase-based IGOUGO.
In an AA system, you could have a unit go on overwatch, get hit with indirect fire, and then get bypassed by the unit it was trying to guard against, all in the same turn. Even within an IGOUGO paradigm, if you picked a unit and resolved all its activity for the turn before moving on to the next, you could still sequence your actions- unit A shoots to remove overwatch, unit B moves in. Individual units might not be doing any more on any given turn, but freeform sequencing allows for more complex coordination that doesn't take multiple turns to resolve basic fire and maneuver. But nobody wants to sit there and get wombo-comboed, so throw in a reaction system as discussed, and oh hey, look at that, a dynamic and interactive wargame that doesn't feel like it's from the 80s.
And yeah, obviously, we're getting at some more fundamental issues than the AP system or who rolls your dice... but I don't think the issues that are being brought up are self-contained problems with simple fixes, either; more surface-level manifestations of deeper issues.
Wyldhunt wrote: Brace for Impact and Jink are both examples of reaction mechanics that feel good to use and worked pretty well in their day.
What are your thoughts on 5e jink(turbo boost) vs 7e jink?
7e was reactive, give up your next shooting phase to get an immediate 4+ cover save.
5e was proactive, give up your current shooting/assault phase and make a minimum move to set yourself up for the next round.
I kind of preferred the proactive version myself, but then 7e did have a stronger emphasis on stuff entering the board that you had to react to rather than units in place that you were playing against.
I liked both in their time but probably preferred Jink to flatout/turboboost saves.
Flatout saves required you to actually move fast, which made it feel like you zooming across the battlefield while enemies failed to track you. In contrast, jink felt more like you were doing a barrel roll while basically staying still.
Jink being reactive meant that you could use it even on turn 1. So my dark eldar raiders weren't just caught sitting still if my opponent won the roll-off to go first; they were on their way to the enemy and could dodge to the side if the enemy fire started getting close. It also generally felt better to know that you were giving up your shooting because you were actively being shot at. Proactively going flat out to keep your tanks alive was usually something you did not because you wanted to but because you had to. Like, the whole 5e cliche of eldar flying in circles all game and then parking on an objective at the end was true, but it was born from a sense that our tanks didn't shoot well enough to reliably do damage (they hit on 4+ at the time), so the safe bet was to spend all game keeping your 4+ cover save active.
I think the best version of this might have been 7th edition corsairs, where they had invuln (cover?) saves that got better based on how fast your vehicles moved, with flatout and deepstriking offering the best saves. It created a meaningful trade-off between slowing down to shoot more (and stay in a better position) or moving farther/faster to keep your defenses up.
Wyldhunt wrote: ...but it was born from a sense that our tanks didn't shoot well enough to reliably do damage (they hit on 4+ at the time), so the safe bet was to spend all game keeping your 4+ cover save active
Serpents hit on 4+, falcons on 3+.
And the warp hunter automatically - 125pts for an AP2 extended range template or mid-range barrage d-cannon. I think it may have been 115 in the initial release, could you have imagined that thing having been released a few years earlier under 4e skimmer rules...?
But yes not being able to count as moving in the first turn was a problem was a problem for some units. Smoke launchers were like that too - first turn barrages would have been quite a bit less deadly (and deployment quite a bit faster) if you could have put your transports front and centre under a smokescreen when going second.
I think my dislike of the reactive jink compared to turbo boost was the same as the need for it. 40k had an increasing number of units that would just arrive on the board and unload with no counter play except for reactions like jink... then again those same units would get to unload and also get the full benefits of jinking, aircraft never had to pick between making an attack run that left them vulnerable or flying evasively onto the battlefield.
Jink and cover saves in general were 'patches' for the game lacking (and not wanting to add) modifiers for hit rolls/armour etc. Special rules to add for a deficiency in the core concept, making something more complex rather than less because of the downsizing of game mechanics.
