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If you're moving to an alternate system, and leaving D6 behind, it should be for D10. They offer enough granularity and the percentages are cleaner. (70 shots of overwatch expects 7 hits. Simple.)

Also D6s lose some granularity when you have 1s always fail. They should abandon this rule, some models should have 1+ ballistic skill, or weapon skill. Especially with all of this minus to hit floating around.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I think a restructuring of the game from the ground up should use d10, but shoving d10s into 8th would be dumb.

Agreed

Accessibility of D6 for the win. It's the smart choice.

D10 is great, but the game doesn't need it, and rolling a lot of them will be awkward. No need.

I have d10s that are as small as a lot of d6s that I see being used on the table. Rolling one die as opposed to another is purely a matter of the physical size of the die and has nothing to do with how many sides it has.

Well with the chess clock nonsense most people will just use apps to roll dice anyway.

personally had the thought, which I doubt was unique, about using a percentile system using D12.

dice numbered 0-9 and then the other two with a tick and a cross.

"but you cannot roll multiple percentile dice!" goes the cry.

bat pucky, of course you can.

I have say 30 ork boyz attacking something, as you do, so 90 attacks (example only!), needing say a 65% result so 0-65

I roll 90 of the D12 (as I would roll 90 D6 now)

any that are a 0-5 are a success, so put to one side, any that are a 7-9 are a failure, discard, re-roll the remainder, any that are a 0-5 are a success, put with the others, any that are a 6+ discard.

You then have the tick and cross, these can be considered as "success" and "fail" regardless of the number, or used in different ways.

so say my orks were shooting, and thanks to modifiers needs a -10%.. so roll the dice, discard anything except a tick, now perhaps roll again, now needing a tick or a 0.

if you have a 110% chance, the cross still fails

you now have a very flexible system that doesn't mean more dice, and the D12 is nicer to roll than a D10, plus you get the auto hit/miss result as a "free" bonus without having to specifically write rules around how scores cannot go outside 0-99.

Then bring in D4, D6, D8, D10, D12 (actual ones) and D20 for damage effects and you can avoid a lot of the predictability of rolling huge numbers of dice for things.

Plus can change how multiple weapons 'stack'. maybe a pair of hits that each do 1d6 damage instead of becoming 2d6 go to D8+2 to remove the bell curve


Automatically Appended Next Post:
would also note personally that if you are writing a game where your players could end up rolling 90+ dice on a regular basis, you are doing it wrong - at that point you may as well use a statistical look up table.

better to note that say you roll the first ten dice, then for every full ten after that you roll one dice and count it as ten hits or ten misses.

so 90 attacks becomes roll ten dice normally, then 8 more, each counting as ten (18, not 90), that gives you your hits, proceed as before for wounds - its slightly slower if you actually have 90 dice, but its faster if you were rolling in batches anyway.


Also saw that dice app today.. sweet gork thats a faff, just enter the number of dice, the success point and click "go" and have it give you a result

D10, minimum. D12 could be used as a simplicity stopgap; D20 might be ideal for maximum granularity.

D6; +1 = +16.667%
D12 +1 = 8.33%

Also, they need to increase points costs by a multiple of 10 or so, at minimum - this allows you to get more granular with points costs; you can get a 30 (3), 35 (3.5), 40 (4) instead of just 3, 4.

It would do wonders for the health of the game.

Also, people objecting about having to buy more dice, but not about "plastic crack". You can easily spend $200+, and that doesn't even give you a complete army - that's just a starter box, rule book, and codex. In my 5second google search, I saw a pack of 100 d10 for $15.

You all would really rather play a worse game, than have to buy some new dice (which are 1-5% of what you've spent on the game, at most)? Penny wise, pound foolish; as they say.

What's worse is that you're not only wasting money, but time - and you can never get time back; not now, at least.

 Elbows wrote:
You can do plenty with D6's...but the real struggle is game size, and game scope - not the dice.

Also buying any other dice is super simple and cheap, so I've never understood "buying dice is hard!' nonsense.

'

You seem to get the concept of 'strawman arguments' pretty okay.

Basic reading comprehension needs some work though.

Also, with regards to rolling dice, you could implement a "Volley Rule"; which could be used with to-hit/wound/armor saves, etc:

Calculate total number of dice that need to be rolled, before rolling for them.
For every 10 dice to rolled, 1 auto-succeeds (hits, wounds, etc).
This increases by +1 for each set of 10 thereafter;
Subtract the number of "auto-successes" from the amount of dice that are rolled.

So...

30 Shots
First 10, 1 auto-hits.
Second 10, 2 auto-hit.
Third 10, 3 auto-hit.
--That reduces you to rolling 24 dice, instead of 30.

90 Shots
1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9
45 auto-hit, leaving 45 more to be rolled.

This mechanic could apply to every set of dice that need to be rolled; so if enough shots hit, a few would auto-wound, then depending on the number of wounds, a few would automatically pass their armor saves.

Edit: In hindsight, this doesn't take into account "to-hit" modifiers; which could either represent a flat -X to each step of the calculations above (so a -1 to hit target, being shot at by 30 shots would yield the following number of auto-passes instead; 0...1...2 (instead of 1...2...3)). Alternatively, with that much dakka, modifying the calculation may be unnecessary; you should expect SOME amount of ammo to hit its target, at that high volume of fire.

D12 has the advantage of being able to be slotted in with the game as it stands.

fe40k wrote:
D10, minimum. D12 could be used as a simplicity stopgap; D20 might be ideal for maximum granularity.

D6; +1 = +16.667%
D12 +1 = 8.33%

Also, they need to increase points costs by a multiple of 10 or so, at minimum - this allows you to get more granular with points costs; you can get a 30 (3), 35 (3.5), 40 (4) instead of just 3, 4.

It would do wonders for the health of the game.

Also, people objecting about having to buy more dice, but not about "plastic crack". You can easily spend $200+, and that doesn't even give you a complete army - that's just a starter box, rule book, and codex. In my 5second google search, I saw a pack of 100 d10 for $15.

You all would really rather play a worse game, than have to buy some new dice (which are 1-5% of what you've spent on the game, at most)? Penny wise, pound foolish; as they say.

What's worse is that you're not only wasting money, but time - and you can never get time back; not now, at least.

None of the changes you suggest do anything and your ideas are bad.

What does that increased granularity add to the game? You're not meaningfully changing anything, the game would function exactly the same except is would be much more annoying to play. Literally the only thing you're doing is making it harder to parse out hits and wounds for no real benefit. 'Oh, gee golly willickers batman, I'm so glad we made guardsman hit on a 9 in a d12 system instead of a 5 in a D6. It's not a totally irrelevant difference at all!' You've given 0 thought to this idea and are at best parroting someone you heard one time because you thought the word 'granularity' sounded smart.

And D20s would be straight up idiotic without changing the way every other aspect of the game works.

Why do you need more granularity of points? Is the difference between a conscript and an orc really that big of a deal to you? And why is 10x the right number? Why not 8x? or 12x? or 20x? or 100x? Do you really think GW would do anything with the more granular points? Do you imagine the game would be more balanced? Are you that delusional? Why not make everyone say all their unit names backwards at the start of every turn or they have to do 3 cartwheels and sing 'mary had a little lamb' Since we're making meaningless changes for the sake of nothing.

And since buying dice isn't that big of a deal, you're cool buying for everyone who plays 40k right? I mean since it's so inconsequential.

ERJAK wrote:
What does that increased granularity add to the game? You're not meaningfully changing anything, the game would function exactly the same except is would be much more annoying to play. Literally the only thing you're doing is making it harder to parse out hits and wounds for no real benefit. 'Oh, gee golly willickers batman, I'm so glad we made guardsman hit on a 9 in a d12 system instead of a 5 in a D6. It's not a totally irrelevant difference at all!' You've given 0 thought to this idea and are at best parroting someone you heard one time because you thought the word 'granularity' sounded smart.

It halves the potency of negative modifiers, making Eldar stacking -5 not totally insurmountable.

I'm not convinced the game requires more sides to the dice. -1 to hit as an army trait is too strong. Paying for it, and having 1 unit that provides it based on a radius, is fine.

Also, -1 to hit should cap at -2. There is no earthly reason for it to go to -3 or higher.

I guess coming from D&D long before 40k, I have no problem with different dice types, or even different dice types working in tandem. That said, just slotting in a d10 or d20 without building the game system around it will end in disaster. But for a theoretical 40k 9th that has been built with it in mind? I could see it working well.

ERJAK wrote:

fe40k wrote:
D10, minimum. D12 could be used as a simplicity stopgap; D20 might be ideal for maximum granularity.

D6; +1 = +16.667%
D12 +1 = 8.33%

Also, they need to increase points costs by a multiple of 10 or so, at minimum - this allows you to get more granular with points costs; you can get a 30 (3), 35 (3.5), 40 (4) instead of just 3, 4.

It would do wonders for the health of the game.

Also, people objecting about having to buy more dice, but not about "plastic crack". You can easily spend $200+, and that doesn't even give you a complete army - that's just a starter box, rule book, and codex. In my 5second google search, I saw a pack of 100 d10 for $15.

You all would really rather play a worse game, than have to buy some new dice (which are 1-5% of what you've spent on the game, at most)? Penny wise, pound foolish; as they say.

What's worse is that you're not only wasting money, but time - and you can never get time back; not now, at least.

None of the changes you suggest do anything and your ideas are bad.

What does that increased granularity add to the game? You're not meaningfully changing anything, the game would function exactly the same except is would be much more annoying to play. Literally the only thing you're doing is making it harder to parse out hits and wounds for no real benefit. 'Oh, gee golly willickers batman, I'm so glad we made guardsman hit on a 9 in a d12 system instead of a 5 in a D6. It's not a totally irrelevant difference at all!' You've given 0 thought to this idea and are at best parroting someone you heard one time because you thought the word 'granularity' sounded smart.

And D20s would be straight up idiotic without changing the way every other aspect of the game works.

Why do you need more granularity of points? Is the difference between a conscript and an orc really that big of a deal to you? And why is 10x the right number? Why not 8x? or 12x? or 20x? or 100x? Do you really think GW would do anything with the more granular points? Do you imagine the game would be more balanced? Are you that delusional? Why not make everyone say all their unit names backwards at the start of every turn or they have to do 3 cartwheels and sing 'mary had a little lamb' Since we're making meaningless changes for the sake of nothing.

And since buying dice isn't that big of a deal, you're cool buying for everyone who plays 40k right? I mean since it's so inconsequential.

The granularity makes it so that things can be rebalanced more easily without wildly swinging its actual or perceived value. Especially in the lower end of the spectrum, a 3 or 4 point unit going up by a single point is a 20-25% increase in its cost. The x10 comes about because its the simplest math, it could be x(whatever) - the main thing though is that same 3 or 4 point unit, if they are 30 or 40 points, means if 3 is too low and 4 is too high, you can rejigger it more easily. Unit X is worth 32 points and Unit Y is worth 38 for example. This doesn't help as much with units that are already expensive, but it would help the lower value models be pointed more accurately.

Scaled up dice also leaves a much wider variety of skill levels. Orks hit on 5+ on d6, translates to 9+ on a d12 - Guardsmen hitting on a 4+ translates to 7+. Say GW wants to give an Ork unit a better than the average Ork Ballistics Skill, while still keeping its accuracy worse than a Guardsman - in the d6 system, that cannot really be done, on a d12, they can slap that unit with an 8+ BS and have it.

All that said, as I stated from the start, the system would need to be built around this from the ground up. You can't just slap "use d10s or d12s instead of d6s now ok bye!" onto the game.

Marmatag wrote:I'm not convinced the game requires more sides to the dice. -1 to hit as an army trait is too strong. Paying for it, and having 1 unit that provides it based on a radius, is fine.

Also, -1 to hit should cap at -2. There is no earthly reason for it to go to -3 or higher.

Agreed. I personally think it should go a step further - a cap of -1 from opponent's modifiers, and then indirect fire is the exception to that cap, making a max of -2 to hit in those cases.

I've long felt D10 or 12 would be the way to go, most stats run 1-10 but the differentiation between those stats is not always super meaningful. Right now S 5 wounds T 3 and 4 exactly the same, in a more granular system it could be different, modifiers also become much less powerful.

As to the mention of more granular points I would point you to conscripts va guardsman. They had no design space in which to balance between the 2 units having higher points allows for such granularity to exist. Right now with points being so low things frequently go from too good, to trash with very small adjustments to their points.

I think the D6 is fine. I would like to see 40k use D10s out of curiosity, but I think stat lines need to be redesigned.

For instance: why are sisters and a guardsmen the same toughness?
I said this before. I would redesign the game from the ground up starting with the guardsmen

dosiere wrote:
I would be down for literally any other system that requires fewer dice being rolled, re rolled, rolled, re rolled, modifers applied to the dice rolls (seriosuly, wth) instead of the target numbers, etc...

I'd estimate somewhere between 40-60% of our games are just mind numbing dice rolling over and over again right now. I can't believe as a 20+ year veteran of tabletop games I'm saying this but... Im burnt out on it.

Switch to Infinity. 5 D20s is all you will EVER need. Plus everything is a to-hit then an armor roll that's it.

 fraser1191 wrote:
I think the D6 is fine. I would like to see 40k use D10s out of curiosity, but I think stat lines need to be redesigned.

For instance: why are sisters and a guardsmen the same toughness?
I said this before. I would redesign the game from the ground up starting with the guardsmen

Well, under the armor, Battle Sisters are still human. On a d6 scale where 3 = average human and 4 = 7' tall superhuman mutant, there isn't much room to spare for slightly above or below average. If 40k were bumped to a bigger scale, I can see slight differences appear to do this differentiation, but for the most part humans should be all around one number.

And yeah, I agree with you, for better or worse the Guardsman is the baseline human - start there, and then go down the rabbit hole to figure out Space Marines, Eldar, etc once the baseline is firmly established.

It doesnt have to be a universial die. There is no reason certain units couldnt throw saves on a d10 or 12 while others still use a d6. Maybe termies use a d10 save system and a d6 bs system. Tanks could use a d12. It doesnt have to be d6 or nothing.

I wouldnt mind picking up different dice for different units or even for different elements on the same statline.

ERJAK wrote:

fe40k wrote:
D10, minimum. D12 could be used as a simplicity stopgap; D20 might be ideal for maximum granularity.

D6; +1 = +16.667%
D12 +1 = 8.33%

Also, they need to increase points costs by a multiple of 10 or so, at minimum - this allows you to get more granular with points costs; you can get a 30 (3), 35 (3.5), 40 (4) instead of just 3, 4.

It would do wonders for the health of the game.

Also, people objecting about having to buy more dice, but not about "plastic crack". You can easily spend $200+, and that doesn't even give you a complete army - that's just a starter box, rule book, and codex. In my 5second google search, I saw a pack of 100 d10 for $15.

You all would really rather play a worse game, than have to buy some new dice (which are 1-5% of what you've spent on the game, at most)? Penny wise, pound foolish; as they say.

What's worse is that you're not only wasting money, but time - and you can never get time back; not now, at least.

None of the changes you suggest do anything and your ideas are bad.

What does that increased granularity add to the game? You're not meaningfully changing anything, the game would function exactly the same except is would be much more annoying to play. Literally the only thing you're doing is making it harder to parse out hits and wounds for no real benefit. 'Oh, gee golly willickers batman, I'm so glad we made guardsman hit on a 9 in a d12 system instead of a 5 in a D6. It's not a totally irrelevant difference at all!' You've given 0 thought to this idea and are at best parroting someone you heard one time because you thought the word 'granularity' sounded smart.

And D20s would be straight up idiotic without changing the way every other aspect of the game works.

Why do you need more granularity of points? Is the difference between a conscript and an orc really that big of a deal to you? And why is 10x the right number? Why not 8x? or 12x? or 20x? or 100x? Do you really think GW would do anything with the more granular points? Do you imagine the game would be more balanced? Are you that delusional? Why not make everyone say all their unit names backwards at the start of every turn or they have to do 3 cartwheels and sing 'mary had a little lamb' Since we're making meaningless changes for the sake of nothing.

And since buying dice isn't that big of a deal, you're cool buying for everyone who plays 40k right? I mean since it's so inconsequential.

Your post is bad and you should feel bad about it. I get the feeling you just don't understand what he's saying at all or you cannot articulate a counter argument.

As has been stated, spreading the possible numbers out and changing the ranges in stats and points costs gives more flexibility to show differences in units.

Increasing the Dice value to 10 or 12 opens a TON of shortcuts to rerolling, specifically all the Re-roll-1's. For example, D6 - 3+ rerolling 1's goes from 67% success to 75%. If you use a d12, that goes from 5+ to 4+. The effect is more or less the same for D6 - 4+ reroll 1's. 50% to 58 percent changes a d12 from 7+ to 6+ (within 0.04 / 12). You could replace reroll 1's in a d6 based system with +1 to hit on a d12.

Similarly, reroll all misses very closely translates to +3 on a d12. (quick edit there...)


GW currently uses a 1 always fails, to the best of my knowledge. That leaves 5 increments (2, 3, 4, 5, 6+) to differentiate effectiveness between a Lasgun and a Dreadnought CCW. If changed to a d10, for example, you have 9 increments between 2 and 10+. 11 increments if you allow auto passes and fails. It makes stat values between 3 and 11 single pip relevant, if you use a d10. It also gives a very predictable and easy to estimate bonus between each pip, ie 10%. If something should be a little better at something, but not a lot, then 10% is a fundamentally easy increment to work with. Guardsmen have T 3, Orks have T4, Marines have T5, Deathguard and Death Company lose FNP, and instead become T6.

A lasgun wounds a T3 Creature on 6+, if we stick with a 50% success for the sake of argument. 7+ vs Orks, 8+ vs Marines, 9+ vs Death Guard (4% better than current rate vs T6, wounding on 6+) and can then wound T7 on a 10+, auto-fail vs T8.

Bolter moves up to S4, maybe 5 if we want to put Marines as having an "Elite" standard issue weapon. Every pip becomes relevant again, and we can get rid of the re-roll 1's as the go-to for "They're a little bit better at something" than everyone else.

If Orks are "bumped" to 7+ to hit with shooting on a d10 (40% success) then a -2 has the same impact (within 4%) as -1 has to hit on a d6 system... and still leaves them with 20% to hit instead of 17%. Even -3 leaves them with a 10% hit chance, whereas -2 gives them 0% hit chance right now.


Personally, I'd like to see Armour Saves rolled into Toughness, to bypass the Armour Save factor. The only mechanic I begrudge Warmachine is the use of 2d6 for attacks. I like the spread, and the stats lover in me enjoys the probability curve... but d10 or d12 would make it easy to nudge the rules into unit vs unit combat, instead of model vs model.

kurhanik wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
I think the D6 is fine. I would like to see 40k use D10s out of curiosity, but I think stat lines need to be redesigned.

For instance: why are sisters and a guardsmen the same toughness?
I said this before. I would redesign the game from the ground up starting with the guardsmen

Well, under the armor, Battle Sisters are still human. On a d6 scale where 3 = average human and 4 = 7' tall superhuman mutant, there isn't much room to spare for slightly above or below average. If 40k were bumped to a bigger scale, I can see slight differences appear to do this differentiation, but for the most part humans should be all around one number.

The thing is that that armour is powered, and gives a sister much better strength than an unarmoured human. She might not be able to effortlessly bench press a car like a Space Marine could, but she could easily toss another human across the room with one hand, for example.

I think that moving to a D10 system of stats and rolls would definitely help to diversify statlines and potentially develop more diverse gameplay roles and styles through that. It really is silly that 90+% of all infantry in the game end up falling under a 3 or a 4 for their core stats, for example. However, moves would also have to be made to streamline the way the systems work so that less dice have to be rolled.

It's very hard to include modifiers in a D6 system because its very easy to break the curve on a D6. Small modifiers are generally better than binary abilities, making it fairly hard to do much with a D6 system. The limits of the usable band are 3/4/5+ which means if you want to include modifiers you're basically running the band of 4+/-1. You can technically use 2+ and 6+ but they're just significant probability changes that getting there via an ability that alters the stat almost certainly breaks the model one way or the other.

Current GW use 5 possibilities from 7 possible of a d6
Changing to a D10, they will use 9 or less out of 11

Keeping d6 but change the damage chart to +/-2 with auto wound/hit and miss and adding mortal wounds and double hits for +4 would give more diversity than just changing the dice

also a space marine profile of 5 and using the full scale of 1-10 for stats would bring more than such a change

So with my line of thinking, you would use the guardsmen as your benchmark. Then basically sisters have power armour so they would be S4,T4, 3+Sv. Basically current marines. Then a marine scout would be S4, T4, 4+Sv. Finally a marine would have S5, T5, 3+Sv.

Now this is a huge change in the current system, but like I said this is what I would change. Again this is just if there was a total redesign of the game, weapons would need to be adjusted, but I'm not sure how I would set up vehicles. I suppose a LR would be T10 so marines still wound on 6s if the current wound "chart" is used.

And the more I think about it the more I'm liking the D10 idea, you could give veterans increased stats without it being a massive boost like going from 3 to 2. But I'd have to see a marine profile mocked up along with all the other typical units you see.

 Marmatag wrote:
If you're moving to an alternate system, and leaving D6 behind, it should be for D10. They offer enough granularity and the percentages are cleaner. (70 shots of overwatch expects 7 hits. Simple.)

Also D6s lose some granularity when you have 1s always fail. They should abandon this rule, some models should have 1+ ballistic skill, or weapon skill. Especially with all of this minus to hit floating around.

Absolutely 1s should always fail, there should always be a chance of missing. To go further, 6s should always pass.

I do like the idea though for some models to have a 1+ BS/WS. 1s will still fail but you can then effectively ignore the -1 to hit and still hit on 2's. (same principle with saves. Models should be able to go to 1+/0+ sv etc. )

 fraser1191 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Fafnir wrote:

kurhanik wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
I think the D6 is fine. I would like to see 40k use D10s out of curiosity, but I think stat lines need to be redesigned.

For instance: why are sisters and a guardsmen the same toughness?
I said this before. I would redesign the game from the ground up starting with the guardsmen

Well, under the armor, Battle Sisters are still human. On a d6 scale where 3 = average human and 4 = 7' tall superhuman mutant, there isn't much room to spare for slightly above or below average. If 40k were bumped to a bigger scale, I can see slight differences appear to do this differentiation, but for the most part humans should be all around one number.

The thing is that that armour is powered, and gives a sister much better strength than an unarmoured human. She might not be able to effortlessly bench press a car like a Space Marine could, but she could easily toss another human across the room with one hand, for example.

I think that moving to a D10 system of stats and rolls would definitely help to diversify statlines and potentially develop more diverse gameplay roles and styles through that. It really is silly that 90+% of all infantry in the game end up falling under a 3 or a 4 for their core stats, for example. However, moves would also have to be made to streamline the way the systems work so that less dice have to be rolled.

So with my line of thinking, you would use the guardsmen as your benchmark. Then basically sisters have power armour so they would be S4,T4, 3+Sv. Basically current marines. Then a marine scout would be S4, T4, 4+Sv. Finally a marine would have S5, T5, 3+Sv.

Now this is a huge change in the current system, but like I said this is what I would change. Again this is just if there was a total redesign of the game, weapons would need to be adjusted, but I'm not sure how I would set up vehicles. I suppose a LR would be T10 so marines still wound on 6s if the current wound "chart" is used.

And the more I think about it the more I'm liking the D10 idea, you could give veterans increased stats without it being a massive boost like going from 3 to 2. But I'd have to see a marine profile mocked up along with all the other typical units you see.

I have a similar line of philosophy. For the betterment of the game, it can go in one of two directions for stat profiles. Either one similar to that which you've described above using D10s, or if GW should continue to insist on the D6, one more in line with Age of Sigmar, removing strength and toughness entirely. In this latter line of thinking, since GW seems to have a very poor grasp on balancing stat lines with function, best to remove these troublesome elements entirely so that weapons might be designed around their specific utility.

Something like this:

Bolt Rifle
Rapid Fire 1 R30"/4+/AP-1/D1 (this weapon fires 3 shots instead of 2 when within half-range)
Plasma Rifle (regular)
Rapid Fire 1 R24"/3+/AP-3/D1
Plasma Rifle (overcharge)
Rapid Fire 1 R24"/3+/AP-4/D2 (on a hit roll of a 1, the wielder is killed after all shots have been resolved)
Melta Gun
Assault 1 R12"/2+/AP-4/Dd6 (when within half-range, roll 2d6 and use the highest for damage)

 fraser1191 wrote:
I think the D6 is fine. I would like to see 40k use D10s out of curiosity, but I think stat lines need to be redesigned.

For instance: why are sisters and a guardsmen the same toughness?
I said this before. I would redesign the game from the ground up starting with the guardsmen

IIRC 40k started out with the basic human as a 5 point model (same as WHFB actually), everything scaled up from there.

Problem is they scaled up too fast and have no idea how to price durability into the game.

e.g. a model with a Plasma gun gets the cost of the gun based on the models skill with using it, which doesn't matter if they won't live long enough to fire it

 greatbigtree wrote:
Increasing the Dice value to 10 or 12 opens a TON of shortcuts to rerolling, specifically all the Re-roll-1's. For example, D6 - 3+ rerolling 1's goes from 67% success to 75%. If you use a d12, that goes from 5+ to 4+. The effect is more or less the same for D6 - 4+ reroll 1's. 50% to 58 percent changes a d12 from 7+ to 6+ (within 0.04 / 12). You could replace reroll 1's in a d6 based system with +1 to hit on a d12.

Similarly, reroll all misses very closely translates to +3 on a d12. (quick edit there...)


GW currently uses a 1 always fails, to the best of my knowledge. That leaves 5 increments (2, 3, 4, 5, 6+) to differentiate effectiveness between a Lasgun and a Dreadnought CCW. If changed to a d10, for example, you have 9 increments between 2 and 10+. 11 increments if you allow auto passes and fails. It makes stat values between 3 and 11 single pip relevant, if you use a d10. It also gives a very predictable and easy to estimate bonus between each pip, ie 10%. If something should be a little better at something, but not a lot, then 10% is a fundamentally easy increment to work with. Guardsmen have T 3, Orks have T4, Marines have T5, Deathguard and Death Company lose FNP, and instead become T6.

A lasgun wounds a T3 Creature on 6+, if we stick with a 50% success for the sake of argument. 7+ vs Orks, 8+ vs Marines, 9+ vs Death Guard (4% better than current rate vs T6, wounding on 6+) and can then wound T7 on a 10+, auto-fail vs T8.

Bolter moves up to S4, maybe 5 if we want to put Marines as having an "Elite" standard issue weapon. Every pip becomes relevant again, and we can get rid of the re-roll 1's as the go-to for "They're a little bit better at something" than everyone else.

If Orks are "bumped" to 7+ to hit with shooting on a d10 (40% success) then a -2 has the same impact (within 4%) as -1 has to hit on a d6 system... and still leaves them with 20% to hit instead of 17%. Even -3 leaves them with a 10% hit chance, whereas -2 gives them 0% hit chance right now.


Personally, I'd like to see Armour Saves rolled into Toughness, to bypass the Armour Save factor. The only mechanic I begrudge Warmachine is the use of 2d6 for attacks. I like the spread, and the stats lover in me enjoys the probability curve... but d10 or d12 would make it easy to nudge the rules into unit vs unit combat, instead of model vs model.

This.

Hell, you could aggregate averages of double shots, triple shots, re-rolls, etc into a single roll; instead of getting double shots within X", you could make it a +2 to hit within X inches, +1 to wound, etc - you could also grant weapons even further modifiers to armor saves (say, -6 instead of -4 for High AP weapons) if within X".

At the end of the day, the math for average wounds could remain the same (or as close as the designers would like), but you would only be rolling a single die per shot - this would greatly speed up the game, and address issues over time. You could even trade in the re-roll X to additionally be a simple +Y modifier (and units with a crap ton of attacks, or really quality attacks, could actually get re-rolls of the dice, or even a second die itself (or both! if you're the ultra-elites).

There's simply so much that you can't do with a d6, because +/-1 is such a large percentage.

I agree. The alternative is what we have now which is just a headache inducing jumble of modifiers, re rolls, quasi re rolls, multiple stats measuring what could easily be the same thing if the possible ranges were higher, etc...

It’s the same problem I ran into trying to make a bolt action ruleset for 40k. The d6 (especially in that system) just isn’t enough. So instead of adding layers and layers of stuff we just went to a d8. It’s enough for us, but if we used bigger stuff like LoW I think d10 or even d12 would be needed.