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A statistically minded gamer has crunched the numbers and reinforced aegis beats a hood for psychic defense.

http://warhamsandwich.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/psychic-defenses/

Runes of Witnessing

Flavius Infernus wrote:Runes of Witnessing

He has them in the mix. Clearly a winner; why aren't they more common?

Too bad said number cruncher does not understand how a psychic hood works.

Caster Ld = Defender is a 48% chance not a 52% chance. Hood d6+Ld has to beat defender's Ld+d6; equaling allows the power to be cast.

So, yes Reinforced Aegis is better than a psychic hood, and Reinforced Aegis+Hood is far better than either alone.

Also a rune weapon is slightly better than a hood.

Kommissar Kel wrote:Too bad said number cruncher does not understand how a psychic hood works.

Caster Ld = Defender is a 48% chance not a 52% chance. Hood d6+Ld has to beat defender's Ld+d6; equaling allows the power to be cast.

So, yes Reinforced Aegis is better than a psychic hood, and Reinforced Aegis+Hood is far better than either alone.

Also a rune weapon is slightly better than a hood.

Hi Kel,

I'm not sure where you are getting the 52% figure from, or how you calculated the 48%. My calculation was that for equal Ld the Hood has a 42% chance of nullifying as 15 of the 36 possible ways the rolloff could happen result in the defender beating the attacker, can you clarify where you think I went wrong?


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olympia wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:Runes of Witnessing

He has them in the mix. Clearly a winner; why aren't they more common?

I think they aren't a must have, since the Ld of eldar psykers is already high enough that the benefit is marginal. If farseers were Ld 7 then they'd be mandatory!

Not to mention other psychic powers that don't set off aegis (or reinforced aegis) for example take null zone, etc a psychic hood would be very useful then :-P

CaptainJay wrote:Not to mention other powers 'not setting off aegis (or reinforced aegis)', take null zone for example, a psychic hood would be very useful then :-P

Yeah, it's worth noting that my analysis does assume that any/all of the defenses can be used!

[quote=]-[arlequin]
Hi Kel,

I'm not sure where you are getting the 52% figure from, or how you calculated the 48%. My calculation was that for equal Ld the Hood has a 42% chance of nullifying as 15 of the 36 possible ways the rolloff could happen result in the defender beating the attacker, can you clarify where you think I went wrong?

Still not sure where that 52% figure you speak of is coming from? (I assume you are getting the 48 by subtracting 52 from 100)

are we in agreement that the odds of 'hooding' on equal Ld is 42%? or do you have a different figure?




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olympia wrote:A statistically minded gamer has crunched the numbers and reinforced aegis beats a hood for psychic defense.

Worth noting that I didn't actually say that, the value of the hood depends on the relative Ld values and can be better or worse than reinforced aegis. The comparison I did was between reinforced Aegis and a Rune Priest against an LD10 psyker.

Thanks for the table Harlequin. I appreciate that you did the math and then presented us with a nice, neat table. I like the math-hammer, but I like it a hell of a lot more when the author doesn't make me do the math with him. So, thanks for the summation! (It doesn't do me a lot of good personally, since the Hood is my only option, but at least now I know what my odds are.)

Reinforced Aegis wins!

olympia wrote:Reinforced Aegis wins!

Reinforced aegis can be a pain to each psyker but its range is rather limited, while the hood's range is twice as long.

wuestenfux wrote:

olympia wrote:Reinforced Aegis wins!

Reinforced aegis can be a pain to each psyker but its range is rather limited, while the hood's range is twice as long.

Agreed. The temptation with GK rifle dreads is to keep them at range, but I'm thinking it's not a bad idea to move at least one up with the rest of the GK units. Having recently suffered through many living lightnings, murderous hurricane, and JoTWW attacks that is what I'll probably be doing.

olympia wrote:

wuestenfux wrote:

olympia wrote:Reinforced Aegis wins!

Reinforced aegis can be a pain to each psyker but its range is rather limited, while the hood's range is twice as long.

Agreed. The temptation with GK rifle dreads is to keep them at range, but I'm thinking it's not a bad idea to move at least one up with the rest of the GK units. Having recently suffered through many living lightnings, murderous hurricane, and JoTWW attacks that is what I'll probably be doing.

In fact, one Dread should be taken to the front ranks with some GK unit(s). I'd be inclined to make this Dread venerable since the enemy will definitely target it asap.

Jimsolo wrote:Thanks for the table Harlequin. I appreciate that you did the math and then presented us with a nice, neat table. I like the math-hammer, but I like it a hell of a lot more when the author doesn't make me do the math with him. So, thanks for the summation! (It doesn't do me a lot of good personally, since the Hood is my only option, but at least now I know what my odds are.)

Yeah, my earliest posts contain more 'working through' the problem, but I later realised that nobody really cares about that and it's more interesting to talk about effects and outcomes than underlying mathematics. My plan is to create a set of reference materials for players when wanting to know the odds of something without having to do the heavy lifting.

Great read, thanks for posting!

olympia wrote:He has them in the mix. Clearly a winner; why aren't they more common?

Every Eldar army I see (including mine) has them. (edit : Got warding and witnessing confused)

Oh, as an added bonus, the runes of warding also cause perils of the warp on a roll of 12+ when adding the 3 dice. That added bonus I think pushes them above reinforced aegis IMHO.

On runes of witnessing -- I use Eldrad and he comes with them. I find that basically never having to worry about failing a psychic test to be very worthwhile.

Nice work. You do however do one error. Since you calculate the chance of getting a power of with the Type 1 defences in order for it to be truly comparative you should also factor in the chance of getting the power of with the type two defences.

For instance Ld 10 Hood vs ld 10 Caster

11/12 (chance of rolling equal or under 10 on 2d6) * 21/36 = 0,5347222...
So with the same LD you have a ~53,4% chance of getting your power through a Hood.

tedurur wrote:Nice work. You do however do one error. Since you calculate the chance of getting a power of with the Type 1 defences in order for it to be truly comparative you should also factor in the chance of getting the power of with the type two defences.

For instance Ld 10 Hood vs ld 10 Caster

11/12 (chance of rolling equal or under 10 on 2d6) * 21/36 = 0,5347222...
So with the same LD you have a ~53,4% chance of getting your power through a Hood.

I wouldn't say it's an error as I noted my assumption that the power goes off, and when it comes to the specific calculation of the Lash Prince I do take it into account. But I concede that it does make it harder for people to make meaningful comparisons between type 1 and type 2. A similar point was raised at OnTheStep and what I'm proposing is to do an end-to-end calculation for Ld10, 9 and 8 for both types and put them into one ubertable.

Reinforced Aegis can't stop Fortune, Null Zone, or Fortitude. It can't be better until it works against those.

DarknessEternal wrote:Reinforced Aegis can't stop Fortune, Null Zone, or Fortitude. It can't be better until it works against those.

This is a good point. There are multiple psychic powers that deal with buffing/teleporting the target instead of damaging the target.

DarknessEternal wrote:Reinforced Aegis can't stop Fortune, Null Zone, or Fortitude. It can't be better until it works against those.

Tip of the iceberg.

Eldar Guide + Fortune

GK Fortitude, Hammer hand, Might of Titan, the quickening, sanctuary

BA Unleash rage, shield of sang, sword of sang, wings of sang

Nids Catalyst, onslaught

I don't factor in reinforced Aegis since it does nothing to stop my Daemon Prince unleash Warp Time, and then proceed to roflstomp it into the ground.

Njal plus wolf tail > Both of them.
Malys and Kharn are better but only on the squad they are in and only those that targets the squad.

Better late than never. As promised, I did up the tables for the end-to-end calculations for the psychic defenses. That is, I incorporated the odds of the psychic test as well as the odds of (say) the rune priest 4plussing it.

For those interested, here it is.