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Many players use Mathammer to determine the effectiveness of a unit or army build, myself included. Would you actually play a game of 40K using the average results of a given roll instead? To-hits, wounds, armor/cover saves, Ld tests, random movement, scatter distance, etc. would use the average of 3.5 rounded up to 4 on a single die, or 7 on 2d. The only roll necessary would be scatter direction, IIRC. While it takes the random - and in my opinion, the fun - element out of the game, do you think it would make for an interesting alternate play concept? Do you think it would require more or less strategy/tactical thinking to play this way?

You would also need to roll Ld checks, and some Char. checks

It would be a lot more deterministic, and a lot of weapons would lose effectiveness.

For example, knowing that a glancing hit will only ever stun a vehicle, and that an autocannon can never hurt a dreadnought (7+4 < 12) changes the game dramatically.

Also, without leadership modifiers for shooting in 5ed, no unit will ever break from shooting, or be pinned (without a modifier).

Sometimes, the strength of an attack isn't in the result rolls, it's the amount of results you get to hope for. A unit of marines can rapid-fire a landspeeder and expect to land 2 glancing hits on it, simply because they're firing 20 shots. If you only ever assume the average result, the bolter cannot hurt the land speeder at all.

Not a fan.

well, the question becomes where do you draw the line... an autocannon has a 1/6 chance of penetrating a dreadnought.

so it stands to reason if you hit a dread with 6 autocannon shots you should penetrate it. what do you do, use "hit counters" or something like that to mark how close you are to penetrating something?

There is a clear and defined difference between probabilities and statistics.

Probabilities involve the likelihood of future events, whereas statistics evaluate what happened.

In the case of Warhammer, the dice rolls are rarely large enough to produce statistical averages in a single dice roll. Furthermore, you rarely see statistical averages throughout the entirety of the game. Plus, on top of that, the very nature of rolling three times to determine the outcome of a single event makes the deviation so large that even using exact probabilities (I'm thinking binomial functions here) are incredibly complex. To approximate the three dice rolls into a single probability by making a priori assumptions about the results, and make judgment on that is fairly effective, but still not perfect.

an autocannon has a 1/6 chance of penetrating a dreadnought, so it stands to reason if you hit a dread with 6 autocannon shots you should penetrate it.

In a statistical world, yes. In a game, this is completely untrue. The above statement should be, "If an autocannon has a 1/6 chance of penetrating a dreadnought, it has a statistical average of one penetrating shot every 6 hits, but only a 2/3 chance of penetrating with just six hits."

In my play, much of the strategy is built around the concept of probabilities, not averages. I don't think, "How many shots do I need to average three kills against a squad?" Instead, I think, "How many shots do I need to have an 80% chance of killing three members in that squad." There is a very distinct difference.

Also, there is a lot of synergy that would be missing from the game if all you needed were statistical averages. Overall, I don't think it would be a very fun game. Fairness very often does not lead to fun-ness, in my opinion. Not to dreail the topic, but it is one of the reasons I quit WoW.

Even if you work out the procedural issues with using a deterministic result (pens, leadership etc), the game loses a lot of its tactical depth because the tactical depth of the game isn't provided by the mechanics of the rules.

The tactical depth is from the on the fly adjustments that a general has to make to compensate from "random" events. If you remove that element, I can simply optimize my actions in a turn at the beginning and I'll never have to worry about killing too many to be out of assault range or a host of other "gambles" we make in every game.

To me a game of completely normalized results does little but allow you to summarize how a long series of games might play out. That is good from a play testing and build design point of view, but not a whole lot of fun for actual games.

Later,
WR

To be blunt, no.

A good part of the fun in playing games for me is the element of chance. Trukks luckily running over fexes. Warbosses being beaten up by scouts. That kind of thing. Mind you, it would make the game quite a bit more tactical, more centred around tactics than the occaisional lucky roll.

We did once, but not with any models. We were brainstorming ideas for our Tau Codex so we made two lists (in our heads), worked out the basic layout of the terrain, and then worked out the averages of what would happen turn by turn. We actually played two games this way.

Final result was that we saw that some of our Tau ideas were quite over powered.


As far as a normal game? Sounds pretty dull. Rolling dice is fun.

In my opinion there's a better way of doing low luck games.

Every time you have 6 dice to roll pretend you get one of each result. Any remainders get rolled normally.

For example, if you have 20 shots that hit on a 3+. You'd get 12 automatic hits for the first 18 rolls and then you would roll the last two dice regularly.

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Final result was that we saw that some of our Tau ideas were quite over powered.


As far as a normal game? Sounds pretty dull. Rolling dice is fun.

Do share.

This would work if you convert the To Hit chances into percentage tables.

(I made up the figures I don't know if they are correct.)

E.g. S4 weapon and BS3 vs T3 target with Sv5 = 16% chance of a kill.

10 figures firing = 160% which is 1 kill plus 60% chance of a second.

I could see some fun in playing a game using the average results of an an action, but not the average result of each dice.

If all single dice roll 4 then my Marines get twenty wounds when the rapid fire there Bolters into the oncoming horde. Said horde is also going to fail all there 5+ cover save and die...

However taking the average result of my Bolters as being 7 Wounds. Then either rolling saves normally or taking average casualties could certainly make for a quicker 40k game and might be nice once in a while. I think there would still need to be some random elements especially Vehicle damage.

That concept's been used in other miniature games in the past. Say each of your models may have a .15 chance to kill the target, and you have 10 models attacking. Add 'em all up for a total of 1.5 kills. One dead enemy model and a 50% chance of killing a second. Works best for "like" units since it gets pretty fiddly to try to deal with lots of different "toughnesses". I recall seeing it more on the historical (or "low fantasy") side of the house where, with a few exceptions, a human's a human's a human.

Leads, in general to a far more predictable game. But not always, as others have noted, a more "fun" one.

'Course in practice, if you roll enough dice you actually end up with something pretty close to the type of results you'd expect from the above. But Warhammer is full of those critical "anything but a 1" moments...

Vale,

JohnS

Even if I roll 5x 1s and 2s for my storm shielded assault terminators invul save, I still think its better than actually calculating it.

I think its really useful to see what each unit can do and what equipment options are best versus different targets.

But playing an entire game like this is a big no-no in my book. When trying out my new units (pre game) i tend to sit at my desk just hurling 100s of dice around to see how it would go, and how far off the average I land

And take away the extremely fun and cool moments that happen in a game, like when a LC Captain rolls three 6's to kill a wounded hive tyrant outright in close combat? Dice help make the game better by keeping the situations random and forcing people to adapt.

Part of the game's balance is in the random chance. If mathhammer were true, noone would ever take terminators because all you have to do is wound them 12 times and you kill 40 points or more of models, wound them 24 times and you killed more than half the squad!

40K is basically a skirmish game. Luck should play a much greater part than it does in a battle involving thousands of troops.