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Hear me out - I'm just curious about this. I have a feeling the title alone might make some die hards balk.

I haven't played TT in a long while, but I was just wondering about the idea for a diceless 40k game. I'm sure there are a great deal of ways you could actually cut this, but right now I was thinking about doing all your rolls by way of your rolls' expected 'probabilities'. This would draw upon your armies' stats as well as your enemies'. It's also worth mentioning that smartphone apps would be amazing for this. For instance, say you have a squad of 10 guardsmen all with lasguns, and want to hit something that would require a 4+ to be hit (standard). Why not just say that if chances are you'll kill 2 enemies, why not just kill two enemies instead of having that range from the crazy 0 to 10? I know there's fun in that, but it seems that normally you would want something somewhat more predictable/have positioning matter more/be more tactical, etc.

I've found some links about some folks that have had similar ideas (not on dakkadakka, for some reason):

http://forums.tauonline.org/house-rules/69962-game-variant-diceless-40k.html

http://www.ageofstrife.com/40k-rules-development/diceless-40k-t4237.html

http://www.hermite.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/diceless.pdf

Does anyone have experience with this, or thoughts on it? I'm just curious to pick the minds of the dakkadakka community on the subject

I'm sure if you found enough like-minded people you could do something like this. That's true for just about anything.

However, for me, it takes all of the randomness out of the game.

Yes it's crazy that a high BS unit can miss every single shot that they fire in a round, but maybe the particular opposing enemy unit had an absurd amount of luck or happened to find the perfect piece of cover that blocked every shot.

Also consider that a low BS unit can have a streak of luck. Or maybe, that low BS unit has a lot of momentum and a morale boost from other nearby fights that his fellows are winning. Momentum and morale are very real things.

At the end of the day, stats are stats. If we based everything solely off of statistics, no underdog would ever win the Superbowl or the Stanley Cup. Everything would go as expected and life would be boring.

That being said, I do despise the days when my rolls aren't there.

Take 40k and remove any tension and drama, and that's what you get with this.

I don't like it.

I agree, this makes the game a simulator for maths than anything else really. If I wanted that, I'd just type boobs into a calculator a bunch of times, it would be about as fun.

The most memorable events in war, sports, gambling, everything, are when someone beats the odds. No matter what some statisticians try and tell you, most things in life are somewhat to very unpredictable and scientifically, the more specific you get, the less predicative you can be. Are you sure that Marine would hit his target this time? He usually does, but you won't know until he pulls that trigger...

In my opinion, having something always perform as it is mathematically "supposed to" is both boring and less representative of what might actually transpire on a battlefield (please please, I am not trying to say that 40K should or does in any way shape or form resemble a real battlefield).

However, there is a particular strain of human being that thrives on data, the predictable, and the controllable. To these master number-crunchers and cosmos subordinators, I could see the appeal of playing with units that experience "standard" performance.

Almost-diceless 40K: Roll a D6 for each action 3 and 4 are "Average." 1 and 2 are a standard deviation lower, 5 and 6 are a standard deviation higher. All actions are now resolved on such D3 rolls.

Purple Saturday wrote:
The most memorable events in war, sports, gambling, everything, are when someone beats the odds. No matter what some statisticians try and tell you, most things in life are somewhat to very unpredictable and scientifically, the more specific you get, the less predicative you can be. Are you sure that Marine would hit his target this time? He usually does, but you won't know until he pulls that trigger...

In my opinion, having something always perform as it is mathematically "supposed to" is both boring and less representative of what might actually transpire on a battlefield (please please, I am not trying to say that 40K should or does in any way shape or form resemble a real battlefield).

However, there is a particular strain of human being that thrives on data, the predictable, and the controllable. To these master number-crunchers and cosmos subordinators, I could see the appeal of playing with units that experience "standard" performance.

Are there people out there that would attack you for suggesting that 40k TT should or does in any way shape or form resemble a real battlefield? O.o

It's a whole thing, tangential, and I didn't want to derail into an argument of "In these modern warfare days, X soldier with Y equipment and training can always blah blah blah."

I've gotten in way too many arguments with people who feel like 40k should "reflect the realities" of modern war.

So here is where this falls apart, in cases where you have one guy with a weapon with one shot. It works great for those 10 guardsman (rapid fire hit 10 times wound against t4 ~3 times, marines save 2, 1 model dies (even then I am rounding down on the to wounds as it is actually 3.33333). But what happens when that one marine with a melta gun shoots at a land raider within 6". So he hits 2/3rds of the time, glances 5/36 times, and pens 21/36' (how do you decide when he glances/ pens? Do you remove glances and just have pens? Lets do that just for kicks even then he pens 52/108 = 13/27 tha of the time or slightly below 50%. How,do you work this does he pen for every 2nd shot since he is slightly worse than 50%. You would need a solution for rounding. Throw in what happens when he does pen, how do you decide what happens, the average result is 5.5 so did you immobilize the vehicle or blow it up.....

Most people will not like this idea I mean rolling dice is one of the greatest parts of the hobby we're all dice junkies get that twitch in your hand when you haven't played for a month imagine how fun it would be to sit down with your opponent and do some math and figure probabilities xD.

rolling dice is one of the greatest parts of the hobby we're all dice junkies

To take away the randomness from the rolling of dice would kill the whole game. How many stories have you got of your troops making that shot when they needed to, or flunking horrible when they had it in the bag.

As for figuring probabilities we all do that when we write our lists. I figure (100% chance) i take an earthshaker artillery carriage (GO KRIEG!), I figure (100% chance) i will be shooting it at a squad of marines, I figure (83% chance) that it wounds them, and then (100% chance) they die from no armour save allowed for AP 3.

Break that down into whatever you want, you see it in most posts. Hit 2/3 times, takes saves 5/6 times. 30 shots at BS 3 = 15 hits, 15 str 3 hits on toughness 4 = 6 wounds

and I don't know about you guys but it takes me a while to write a list i am happy with.

If you took that to the table and tried averages it would make the game so much longer to work them out.

I think he means just put all the dice rolling on a computer. My friend made a program that essentially just rolled the dice for us then told us how many hit, wounded, etc. When you have to roll 40 dice because your unit of seekers just got into combat with something, you tend to not look at all of that counting, and god forbid you have re-rolls. It wouldn't be bad, you just wouldn't be throwing literal handfuls of dice at the table.

 McNinja wrote:
I think he means just put all the dice rolling on a computer. My friend made a program that essentially just rolled the dice for us then told us how many hit, wounded, etc. When you have to roll 40 dice because your unit of seekers just got into combat with something, you tend to not look at all of that counting, and god forbid you have re-rolls. It wouldn't be bad, you just wouldn't be throwing literal handfuls of dice at the table.

No, he meant take them out and go off stats. So if you need to roll a 6 you have a ~%16 chance of doing so, etc.

Just using a computer dice program instead of dice doesn't do any better than dice when you get down to it, I've played plenty of computer games that operate off dice for CBT and you still get the weirdness.

This would just make 40k a huge game of rock-paper-scissors.

 chrisrawr wrote:
Almost-diceless 40K: Roll a D6 for each action 3 and 4 are "Average." 1 and 2 are a standard deviation lower, 5 and 6 are a standard deviation higher. All actions are now resolved on such D3 rolls.

IF you do it then use this.

All this will do is make the game 100% predictable, and it just becomes an exercise in moving models about.

For any pro players, the game is already 100% predictable, because all lists are redundancy-based or alpha-strike based. Seriously.

Thats still not a 100% predictable game. 50/50 at best.

The dice can always screw you.

 chrisrawr wrote:
For any pro players, the game is already 100% predictable, because all lists are redundancy-based or alpha-strike based. Seriously.

I find this so easy to believe that its just not funny. Especially the alpha strike part - "feth skill when I can win 50% of my games by rolling first turn" (or worse for armies with crazy seize the INT)

 chrisrawr wrote:
For any pro players, the game is already 100% predictable, because all lists are redundancy-based or alpha-strike based. Seriously.

I'm actually a bit out of the loop, lol - what do you mean by these exactly? I'm curious.

Don't like this idea at all, it would just promote math-hammer play.

Do you know what promotes math hammer play?
The focus on strategic list building over tactical play.Especially when they then hide the lack of tactical depth with lots of 'fun randomness'.(tm)

But that is what happens when the focus is on 'selling the toy soldiers' short term , not the long term game play.

Anyhow I digress, I originaly thought the OP wanted to replace the dice rolling with a deck of cards/action pointsto determine activation/actions per turn.(As used in other games.)

 Netsurfer733 wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
For any pro players, the game is already 100% predictable, because all lists are redundancy-based or alpha-strike based. Seriously.

I'm actually a bit out of the loop, lol - what do you mean by these exactly? I'm curious.

Redundancy is bringing enough of the required instance to account for sways in probability and enemy action. Alpha strike, is ensuring your first turn strike cripples your enemy beyond what they can reasonably recover from. At least thats what i see it to mean.