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I want to alter the dice mechanic from a binary check to an interactive one in regards to attacking and saving. I'd like Success-based D6's to be the harbinger of this change. Main goal is to make different types of units feel... different. Right now you've got blobs and elites, and everyone rides around in metal boxes. I'd like maybe there to be an effective use for a 5man tac squad or massing lasguns - that isn't to say I don't want the obviously more efficient options to stop being obviously more efficient - I would just like it if your Eldar non-Dragon Aspect Warriors could do something outside of camping that turn 5 objective in a waveskimmer.

The way I want to do it is by making battle resolution more obvious. Shooting 30 rapidfire lasguns into a combat-squad of marines will probably kill it - 30 hits, 20 saves (25 if in cover) in the save pool - it's a guaranteed massacre.

Compared to the old mechanic where 30 hits and then 10 of those actually wound and then only 4 of those actually kill a model - with cover being useless if they've got it, and the remaining marine pretty much automatically passes his morale - and now he puts around uselessly for the rest of the game before being pinged by a bored guard-player's 12 remaining big guns at the bottom of turn 6.

tl;dr - Not quite rocket tag, but it'd be nice if combat was consistently more effective than a couple crack addicts with pocket knives.

Proposal for a Success-Based game. Give it a read over, it's fairly scatterbrained at the moment, but it should work quite well as an overhaul. I can slap out an army-list or two using this fairly quickly, as the changes are pretty intuitive to make. Still working on how AV is affected - I want to make Vehicles more immune to small things, but at the same time, I don't want your average rhino to become a godly huddle factory for your 2 marines with meltas or plasma. WE'LL SEE!

Goals of the change: Make models feel more like individuals. It should Increase the power of both lots of guns, and of highly skilled models - while allowing elite statlines like space marines to remain a powerful force through virtue of good armour and good guns.

Mechanics: Success-Based - 4+ on a D6.The current stats will remain - WS through to Sv - but many will be increased or altered - there will be no cap, as it's unnecessary.

Primary Change: Attacks, Weapon Profile, Ld, and Sv all use dice pools now, with the value being the dice pool. Groups of models with the same stats and same weapon all roll together as usual, giving us our pool..

Ranged Attacking: Each Success is a hit; Your opponent allocates the hit, and then you subtract the opponent's toughness from the weapon's strength. Each success against an enemy whose toughness is within 2 of your weapons' strength is wounded. Models with toughness 3 or more less than your weapons' strength take double wounds. (Example, 4 successes with a S6 Weapon against a T4-8 group is 4 wounds - 4 successes with an S6 weapon against a T3 group is 8 wounds! ). The opponent rolls his combined save pool for each wounds group, (Sv minus Weapon AP = number of dice), modifying his success rate based on any special rules - but usually still 4+. Being in Cover grants a you a Cover Save - The Cover Save is normally a 1-dice pool that can't be negated by regular means (A weapon's AP profile) - Stealth, Great cover like fortresses, and Going to Ground both lower your Success Target by 1, cumulatively. Crappy cover or blast weapons might increase, or negate it!

Leadership will be tiered from 1 up, as a dice pool; Any single Success passes the morale test. Stubborn will lower the Success Target to 3+, and make it so that no other negative changes can affect the number of dice in your Leadership Dice Pool - though you might still have your Success Target changed!

Fearless will lower the Success Target to 2+, and make it so that no other negative changes can affect the Success Target - though you might still have your dice pool lowered to 1!

Thus, Fearless and Stubborn now very effectively stack, while Fearless alone might suffer from being required to roll many leaderships against a low dice pool, or Stubborn alone might be force to roll against a high success target.

No Retreat! rules are removed for now, though they might be introduced later, altered. For example, it might be "make a number of saves for each Leadership die denied to your pool by combat results!"


A firing example -
Example: 5 Space Marines fire Bolters at 10 Guardsmen. Space Marines will be BS 3 (we'll get to that later - The BS is the Success Target for shooting!), and bolters will have a dice pool of 2 - rapid fire for 4 - so 20 dice are rolled, with 3 criticals! (also get to that later) 14 Successes happen, = 14 wounds - plus 3 criticals (exploding) ends up at 17 Wounds!

The Guardsmen are Sv:1, but the weapons are AP:1 - No dice are in the Guardsmens' save pool. However, 6 of the guardsmen are in area terrain! The models in cover each have a Cover Save pool of 1; They go to ground, to pass the save on 3+; they receive 4 successes! Still, the rest of the Guardsmen are removed - each having taken 2 wounds! The squad is pinned and awaiting morale - They have a Leadership Dice Pool of 2 - The Sergeant had 3, and they would normally use his, but he is dead - For now, they still pass their morale, but the Marines are closing in for the kill...


Some other key changes:

Critical Hits: A Critical Hit is a roll of 6 during an action with a Critical Hit effect. The Critical Hit effects will be listed in the Special section of a weapon profile, and some common ones will be listed in the big rulebook. For example - any guardsman with a lasgun will tell you to aim for the Marine not wearing a helmet - but getting through his helmeted buddies is a challenge! For lasguns, a critical hit guarantees a wound!



Ranged Weapons: Changes will be made, include altering rate of fire, critical rules, strength, and AP values. Most importantly, the Rate of Fire will dictated the maximum number of models that may be affected by each gun, no matter how many wounds result from its successes. This is to prevent Anti-vehicle weapons, like meltaguns, from killing multiples of enemies with a single shot! At S10 AP6, up to 2 marines could be killed each success! However, since dice pools are rolled together, the benefit of the doubt goes to the firer - Wounds from 3 1-shot weapons being fired together must be allocated on up to 3 models, even if only one of them would have wounded when fired separately.

Example: 2 Marines rapidfire their Plasma Guns (base fire rate of 2) at a unit of Necron Warriors for 8 shots - the Warriors take 6 wounds, but get to allocate them all on just 4 models.
Example 2: A sqaud of 10 Fire Dragons empties their meltas into a trio of carnifex; 6 successes, no armour saves - S10 vs T6 = 12 wounds that decimate the squad - Those poor carnies D:


Rapidfire will mean its fires double its Rate of Fire at half range, but may otherwise fire normally - this will still prevent assaults, however.
Assault will remain as is - move and fire and do all your kinky things with it.
Heavy will receive a small buff - Its rate of fire will be 1 on the move.

Most high-S weapons will be remaining at low rate of fire. Most low-S weapons will be receiving a rate of fire buff, or a critical hit effect, or both! This is because there's supposed to be a transition from weak units, to elite units, to heavy units, and a differentiation from powerful antitank guns and lawn-mowing infantry devastators. We don't want massed Lascannons spearing off multiple marines with each success left and right, and we also don't want the Assault cannon being the anti-vehicle weapon of choice that it is right now! As it is, many popular weapons will feel much 'better'



Statline: Weapons Strength and AP values, models' toughness, Attack, and Sv values:

Starting with MEQ, as it's the most important statline, balance and meta-wise.

BS and WS are now the Success Target for Range and Melee respectively - they'll both be 3. A Strength and Toughness of 4; many weapons simply can't handle the Power Armour and altered marine physique. Leadership 3, with Sergeant 4. Attacks will be 4, and their save pool will be 4. Literally, 4's across the board, with Bolters at S4 AP1 Rapidfire (2) Exploding. Exploding is a critical effect that pops a small blast, using the weapons' S and AP, on the model of your choice in the target.

This provides us with a base statline. Humans like Guard will be WS4 and BS 4, with S3 T3, A2 Ld 2(3sgt) Save 1. Lasguns will be S3 AP- Rapidfire (2) Wounding. Wounding is a critical effect that adds 1 wound to the total.

Close Combat stays the same, except the target for success will be 4 plus the difference of your WS - Enemy WS. WS 3 vs WS 4 - 3's hit on 3, 4's hit on 5. 6's always hit, 1's always miss. This means that your powerful character will almost always wound, say, a guardsman, while Fire Warriors will have an even harder time keeping up with the speed and training of an Eldar or Marine. Critical Successes in Close Combat are based on the model and the weapon it uses. Strength vs Toughness works the same way as at Range - if within 2, a success is a wound. If over by 3, 2 wounds. Again, the number of models affected is limited to the number of attacks.

Resolving Combat - If you lost combat, roll your Leadership Dice pool and subtract your casualties. If the result is less than the units' success requirements (4 in most cases, 3 if stubborn, 2 if fearless), move on to the sweeping advance. I'll work out No Reatreat! rules in a bit.

More firing Examples, to show how the dice pool is limited:
So! Say the Guard got the drop on the marines at 12 inches with their lasguns; 40 shots, 20 successes; Since there's no AP, all 5 marines have their full dice pools - 4 each. Each success negates a wound, and there are 20 dice to roll - things are looking grim!

But now 3 Autocannons fire in at Heavy 2 from afar! With 6 shots at 4+ for success, 3 of them happen! At S7, that's 9 wounds to be saved on up to 6 models. Since there are only 5 models, we'll put 7 on the regulars and 2 on the sergeant. At AP2, each poor marine gets only 2 dice for their pool! The sergeant makes his 2 saves against 2 wounds, and his one failure offs him. The Marines' pool is 8 - 4 successes means 3 wound still gets through! Ouch!

Assault Example -

5 Marines rush 10 Guardsmen - assault moves and grenades and things like that haven't been altered, and are fairly fine as-is for now.

Marine Statline - 4's across w/ WS3

Guard statline - WS4 BS4 S3 T3 W1 I3 A2(3) Ld2(3) sv1 the Brackets being Sergeant.

Marines hit - they toss out 20 D6's at 3+ success, getting 14. 4S - 3T = 1 Wound per success; the guardsmen make 14 Saves on a dice pool of 10 - uh oh! 4 die, and 5 successes are rolled - one on the sergeant - 5 more die! The lonely sergeant strikes back, - 5+ for success seeming grim, but he has 4 attacks due to his weapons. Lucky, he has 2 successes, with one of them a 6! unfortunately, the marine that takes it has 4 dice to succeed upon...

Leadership is 3d6 - 9, for a 3. This is too low to succeed, and the lone sergeant is swept off the table!


Changes this system could incorporate: Multiple saves - invulnerable dice aren't removed from your pool by normal means, cover dice aren't removed from your pool by normal means. Templates and blasts ignore cover dice, or lower its chance of saving.

No one but you will care about this.

You'd be better off writing a new game than trying to make 40k use these rules.

AND THAT'S A-O-K WITH ME.

I have no idea what the hell i just read but I'l get back to you when i can stop thinking of the word "no".

I would never use these rule changes but hey try em as house rules and see how they go.

......wut

chrisrawr wrote:I want to alter the dice mechanic from a binary check to an interactive one in regards to attacking and saving.

In current 40k:
Attacking player rolls to hit.
Attacking player rolls to wound.
Defending player rolls save.

In your proposal:
Attacking player rolls to hit.
Defending player rolls saves.

There's still the same amount of interactivity involved, but now the model's toughness matters less, and models get more saves. I don't think "more interactive" is supposed to mean "More opportunities for both players to roll dice without choices".

Now, I want to like this, I really do. I've played some more complicated wargames of the more historical nature which try and emulate combat realistically (for a wargame anyways), but what you proposed is overly cumbersome and not a little confusing.

I'm not sure if its your wording, or just the system, but I had a hard time just getting through it, and I barely understand what the real change is. I think I got what Solkan got out of it, and I can't say I'm a fan.

If you alter one aspect of the game, you'd have to alter the rest of the game - including stats - to keep balance. The idea is noble, but I think its too complicated and seems like it would imbalance the game in ways that you can't foresee.

Mostly my wording and the fact that altering it toward a true successes system would entail literally overhauling everything. All I've done here is swap some stats around and increase them so that games are more decisive.

It's close - Attacking player rolls his dice pool of hits, and defending player rolls his dice pool for saves. If there's more hits than saves, you might be out of luck anyways. If there's more saves than hits, you might not do anything even with a pile of guns. As I said, it really makes battles more decisive, and makes bigger squads much more of a force on the field.

Yes, I want to take toughness more or less out of the game - I'd prefer a few scales of 'toughness' (5-7 at most) and a few scales of guns to go with them, with the lowest scales being rocks and bows - almost non-present - followed by blackpowder muskets like the kroot rifles, then lasguns and stubbers, then bolt weapons and sluggas, then pulse weapons and most super power xenos pewpew guns, then autocannons and assault cannons and most heavy weapons, then artillery, then the big guns SORT OF THING. This way you can have your orks and kroot rub off at each other, but a musket leveled at a space marine or the rear of a futuretank isn't going to really make much difference, even in numbers.

I might take up the suggestion to just move this into a 40kthemed game on its own, on my own, as I don't know diddly squat about IP laws and am also too poor to engage in any sort of legal battles should they arise - in which case, this is not the board for it.

For now, the best I can do is propose that we remove the roll to wound, replacing it with dice pools for saves, and use a 5-toughness block (-2 to +2) as what normal wounds are dealt on, as well as increasing the rate of fire of most weapons and swapping rapidfire to half range = double shots but can shoot on the move as normal.

chrisrawr wrote:Mostly my wording and the fact that altering it toward a true successes system would entail literally overhauling everything. All I've done here is swap some stats around and increase them so that games are more decisive.

It's close - Attacking player rolls his dice pool of hits, and defending player rolls his dice pool for saves. If there's more hits than saves, you might be out of luck anyways. If there's more saves than hits, you might not do anything even with a pile of guns. As I said, it really makes battles more decisive, and makes bigger squads much more of a force on the field.

Yes, I want to take toughness more or less out of the game - I'd prefer a few scales of 'toughness' (5-7 at most) and a few scales of guns to go with them, with the lowest scales being rocks and bows - almost non-present - followed by blackpowder muskets like the kroot rifles, then lasguns and stubbers, then bolt weapons and sluggas, then pulse weapons and most super power xenos pewpew guns, then autocannons and assault cannons and most heavy weapons, then artillery, then the big guns SORT OF THING. This way you can have your orks and kroot rub off at each other, but a musket leveled at a space marine or the rear of a futuretank isn't going to really make much difference, even in numbers.

I might take up the suggestion to just move this into a 40kthemed game on its own, on my own, as I don't know diddly squat about IP laws and am also too poor to engage in any sort of legal battles should they arise - in which case, this is not the board for it.

For now, the best I can do is propose that we remove the roll to wound, replacing it with dice pools for saves, and use a 5-toughness block (-2 to +2) as what normal wounds are dealt on, as well as increasing the rate of fire of most weapons and swapping rapidfire to half range = double shots but can shoot on the move as normal.

So basically you want to turn 40k into HeroClix?

Never played Heroclix. How is it?

The issue with your suggestions are that they radically change stats and point costs of units. Thus, you would need to change point costs of pretty much all units in the game, and then change some special rules.

While it may work, you just rewrote 40k, keeping some of the names of stats but changing what they mean. AKA, its a different game.

I came up with a hit point system for skirmish-sized games (like kill team). Its simplier and less dice dependant than 40k, BUT you keep stats virtually on the same level.

Hits work the same as they do now, aka roll to hit normally.

How hit points work--simply take your models toughness and double it. That is your hit points. If you have multiple wounds, multiply your hitpoints by your wounds.

Take your armor save, and multiply your hitpoints by the armor save value. This becomes your armor points. You lose armor points before you lose your hit points.

Armor conversions
6+=20%
5+=50%
4+=100%
3+=200%
2+=500%

Damage of a weapon is simply its strength. If the AP is enough to penetrate armor, multiply the damage to the armor points by the armor value, and deal an additional amount of damage right to the models hit points equal to its strength, as the weapon blows a hole right through the armor.

How it pans out:
A space marine has t4, so 8 hp, and 3+ armor, so 16 armor points.

He is hit by an ork shoota. A shoota is s4, so deals 4 damage per hit. The ap of 6 does not penetrate armor, so its just 4 damage to the armor. A space marine would take 4 hits to get through the armor and an additional 2 hits to kill, adding up to 24 damage total, or 6 shoota hits.

In the current game, a shoota needs to hit twice to wound once (wounds on a 4) and wound 3 times to get through armor (saves on a 3+) meaning 6 hits total to expect to kill one marine. As you can see, you expect the same number of hits from a shoota to kill a space marine whether you use my hit point system or the regular game, and the only dice you have to roll are the to-hit dice.

Still......wut
i am really not getting this

DevianID wrote:The issue with your suggestions are that they radically change stats and point costs of units. Thus, you would need to change point costs of pretty much all units in the game, and then change some special rules.

While it may work, you just rewrote 40k, keeping some of the names of stats but changing what they mean. AKA, its a different game.

I came up with a hit point system for skirmish-sized games (like kill team). Its simplier and less dice dependant than 40k, BUT you keep stats virtually on the same level.

Hits work the same as they do now, aka roll to hit normally.

How hit points work--simply take your models toughness and double it. That is your hit points. If you have multiple wounds, multiply your hitpoints by your wounds.

Take your armor save, and multiply your hitpoints by the armor save value. This becomes your armor points. You lose armor points before you lose your hit points.

Armor conversions
6+=20%
5+=50%
4+=100%
3+=200%
2+=500%

Damage of a weapon is simply its strength. If the AP is enough to penetrate armor, multiply the damage to the armor points by the armor value, and deal an additional amount of damage right to the models hit points equal to its strength, as the weapon blows a hole right through the armor.

How it pans out:
A space marine has t4, so 8 hp, and 3+ armor, so 16 armor points.

He is hit by an ork shoota. A shoota is s4, so deals 4 damage per hit. The ap of 6 does not penetrate armor, so its just 4 damage to the armor. A space marine would take 4 hits to get through the armor and an additional 2 hits to kill, adding up to 24 damage total, or 6 shoota hits.

In the current game, a shoota needs to hit twice to wound once (wounds on a 4) and wound 3 times to get through armor (saves on a 3+) meaning 6 hits total to expect to kill one marine. As you can see, you expect the same number of hits from a shoota to kill a space marine whether you use my hit point system or the regular game, and the only dice you have to roll are the to-hit dice.

Might have to nick this idea for our kill team games. We've been looking for a fun new system to toy with. That plus the system of taking turns by phases and we'll be all set for a fun new game.

So you want to simplify the game by making it more complex?

I sort of get what you're going for, more like the LOTR game mechanic... but it's just confusing. Twenty minutes into it, I'm not sure what you're going for.

It's to complex for large model count armies, it's more like Space Crusade or D&D style rules.

Trying to work out which of your 45 Marines are on what percentage of their 16 armour points? Too much effort for too little reward. Games would take days.

It's why you only use those rules for stuff like kill teams. games where there are only like 7 models on the board for each team.

Right. You have 10 unique marines, and your army list has 10 names and 16 bubbles next to their armor and 8 next to their hit points.

In skirmish style 40k, each model should be awesome anyway, and you should know each one. I am thinking the old kill team rules here. As for armor %, its all worked out ahead of time--no real math involved.

It does get annoying for orks, because with only a 20% armor 'tshirt' save, plus more models than most, you end up with 8 HP and 1.6, rounded to 2, armor points. In a 200 point game you could have 30 of the suckers. At that point, I recommend d10's next to each wounded ork, as modeling 30 identifiably unique orks is really tricky when 26 of them have the exact same weapons. Anything other than hordes of orks or gants though, the HP system for skirmish really works well.

Also, its a blast to represent 'Boss' characters with the HP system. For example, something like a broodlord has t5 and 3 wounds, so 30 HP, and 4+ armor, so 60 armor points. Normally its 3 bolters to wound, 9 to get past 3 wounds, and 18 to get past armor. With 90 hp and armor combined, its 22.5 bolters. So the broodlord is only slightly tougher versus bolters in the HP system.

If you want to destroy balance in a skirmish game, Mephiston is a monster, with t6, 5 wounds thats 60 HP, and with a 2+ armor save that 300 armor points. In normal 40k, it takes 6 bolters to wound, 30 to kill, and 180 bolter hits to get past armor. With 360 armor points, and the high toughness rule (if your toughness is 2 points or more higher than strength of the weapon, then damage is halved as you shrug off the 'relatively' minor damage--this replaces how some weapons can never hurt really tough creatures) it takes 180 bolter hits (reduced to s2 due to the high toughness rule) to deal 360 total damage to mephiston.