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So I've been messing around with my pet project in my signature, and I've been contemplating randomness. I'm really, REALLY curious to hear some thoughts on how you guys think randomness improves WHFB and where it detracts from it.

It's a fine line, and a tricky question.

Being a wargame, and using dice to determine what happens, WHFB (or any other wargame) is inherently random. As I've said many times, being the best general in the world still won't win you games if the dice don't go your way at all. The best generals simply skew the odds in their favour so that they're less likely to feel the effects of bad luck, or, if they do, they have a back up plan.

To that extent, adding in a random mechanic or random table here or there is not an issue. Things like the Winds of Magic and Miscast Table are just fine. It also helps that, fluff-wise, Magic is a random force, so it makes sense that dabbling with it can often cause random effects. Also, you don't want everything to be certain. Back when charge ranges were fixed, there was very little an army with inferior movement could do, save for hoping the opponent is a bad estimator. A 15" charge by a Dwarf unit is very unlikely, but not impossible. If I position my cavalry 15" from a Dwarf block, I'm fairly safe, but not completely safe. Weighing up this risk vs reward is what the game is about, and part of what makes it enjoyable, to me, at least. I tried to get one of my close friends, an avid chess player, into the hobby once but after a few games, he disliked the fact that everything was uncertain. Inherent randomness isn't for everyone, but I like it.

That said, there is the aforementioned fine line. Chess is a completely skill based game and, outside of external circumstances (like your opponent feeling a little under the weather), there's no luck involved. That relationship is inversely proportional. The more randomness you add, the less skill is needed to win the game. Currently, WHFB strikes a good balance between the two but you have to be wary with adding in more randomness. A player should have control over what his troops do. How they perform is up to the dice, of course, but if you start adding random restrictions on whether a unit can move, shoot at a certain target or anything like that, it gets annoying. That's why I don't agree with the Reign of Chaos and, to a lesser extent, Animosity. The chance of having your General randomly disappear is also a little random. Further to the RoC, I don't think randomness should ever work both ways. That's why I don't like the new 40k Perils of the Warp table. There's a chance your Psyker will die, but there's a chance he'll gain a host of beneficial special rules as well. Having your troops flee on a 4+ is fine, but don't let them have +1 attack and a 4+ Ward on a roll of 1-3.

There's still luck involved in chess. Who is white, and thus who goes first. It has been shown that white wins slightly more often than black.

But dice are realistic in war games because luck exists in the world.

There are literally countless examples of people living when they shouldn't have or dying when they shouldn't have. If combat was deterministic there would be no boxing matches, you could just look at the relevant stats and know who will win.

Luck that you cannot come back from (or that is incredibly hard to come back from) is where it gets too much. Especially if it's one huge roll.

Like say seize the initiative in 40k. While I'd say it is ok, it's REALLY skirting the edge. That one roll can, in some cases, completely determine the game.

If I'm lucky and shoot out 8 of 10 guys in a unit instead of 4 out of 10 like the statistics would have suggested I would, then that's "fun" luck.

If the game starts with one roll where if I roll a 1 on a D100, I get three times the points you do, then that's not fun. That just means I have a 1% chance of ruining the game.

We tend to agree to randomness to come into play if it appropriately simulates the conditions you are portraying like hitting a target. It is to promote having contingency plans if things do not go as planned.

What tends to take the fun out of a game is when dice rolls are pretty much universally applied in everything rather than actual decisions made by the player (or decisions allowed on the condition of the roll going your way). It is bad for the soul when you realize that most decisions you make have little impact compared to the dice rolls.

A great example is say a difficult terrain roll for a tank: I so much as touch woods and I have a 1 in 6 chance of getting permanently stuck. Yes, I could spend points and get a blade on the front and then only have a 1 in 36 chance of getting stuck, just silly for a vehicle that is designed for "difficult terrain" to have such high odds of getting stuck.

I like X-wing where most of the play is performed with non-variable decisions and only comes down to dice rolls when hitting (or preventing the hit) of the target. It gives more ownership to strategy of the player rather than just being lucky.

I agree that some randomness can create those "fun luck" moments when you manage to beat the odds and achieve more than you should have. Randomness does have it's place for all of us with a bit of gambling in our blood. This would be the bit "good for the soul".

Randomness where on Turn 2 half my army instantly goes 'poof' just because I rolled double 1's for my Magic phase is plain stupid.
Or losing half your army's save, or zapping your opponent's Lv4 wizard and then stomping them with a 12 dice magic phase... Not much fun for either player when a badly implemented & half-arsed table decides the game.

Randomness that prevents me from actively equipping my characters in any meaningful way other than, "default to epic-win weapon that everyone hates and grumbles about being plainly OP" is equally stupid.

It all depends on what you want from the game.

If speaking from a competitive point of view, the less randomness is involved the better.

If speaking from a casual point of view...well...I'm playing G&O

Great responses, thank you!

What I'm getting overall is that "Uncertainty in the actual combat" is good, but uncertainty in GETTING to the combat is bad. Generally speaking. It's kind of like the old saying of how plans never survive contact with the enemy. Needing contingency plans is also a huge point, I think. That creates a really great dynamic, and it's something I personally enjoy from WHFB.

(edit)

Or I suppose I should rephrase. It's good when you can influence what sort of luck you need, and bad when you need to rely on luck in the first place.

I think some armies or some builds within armies should be more consistent and other should be more random.

An army like Bretonnia which relies on maneuver and force of arms should be on the consistent side. Their infantry and cavalry should be worth their points pretty much always. Unusually bad luck might lose a winnable combat but generally they're going to be consistent. This should appeal to a certain kind of commander. Some units may be impetuous and some units might have bad morale, but that's a known quality and manageable.

An army like Vampire Counts or Chaos should be a bit more random. You're relying on magic and a small number of heroes to do a lot of winning. Vampire and Chaos units should be somewhat over costed to balance the fact that sometimes your heroes will enter god mode and wipe out entire units through their super human power. Other times they'll perform more average. They'll rarely perform badly however. They should be designed to random from average to amazing and you pay for that chance.

On the other hands Orcs and Skaven should be random in the opposite way. You're relying on war machines, magic, and block combat resolution to do a lot of your winning. So your units should be over powered for their points but with potential drawbacks. Animosity and catastrophic war machine failures are what make these armies fun. Yeah your Skaven have machine guns and on the face of it that seems really good, but they'll probably lose control from the recoil and dump a burst into their own unit or blatantly explode and kill everything in the area. Or yeah Orcs have really strong units but they'll probably be busy fighting each other rather than you. Its just their nature.

So I think randomness and consistency is fine as long as its built into the point costs properly. Some units will be consistent and should be costed appropriately. Some units might be a bit weak for their points or a bargain depending on how you roll. Other units will be a great deal or a complete waste of points depending on how you roll. Its a major factor in how you relate and choose an army.

Hmm. To answer this I shall quote greater minds than mine:

The outcome corresponds less to expectations in war than in any other case whatsoever.
- Livy

To a good general luck is important.
- Livy

In war we must always leave room for strokes of fortune, and accidents that cannot be foreseen.
- Polybius

Adversity reveals the genius of a general; good fortune conceals it
- Horace

It is a bad plan that cannot be altered.
- Pulibius Syrus

The die is cast
- Gaius Julius Caesar

All of which would make sound ridiculously well read if they weren't nicked from the loading screens of Rome: Total War.

Still, the point they make is that the mark of a good general is the ability to prepare for adversity and react to it decisively, and also to exploit good fortune to the fullest extent.
To compare the skills needed to play Warhammer and Chess isn't terribly useful. Chess strategies can be learnt and memorised- after all there are only so many ways a player can move in chess but Warhammer has near infinite variety. This is not to say that chess players lack skill, but the skills used are different.

I finish with one more quote from R:TW (if only cos I like it):

The wise man speaks because he has something to say, the fool because he has to say something
- Aristotle

As soon as I saw those posts I knew they were from the holiest of total war games.

There have been times when pure luck has caused ridiculous situations in warfare. Sometimes one hundred men can hold off several thousands and vice versa. WHFB should have some luck.

However, there are times when the makes you go WTF! Like when a massive unit of heavily armed horsemen fail a 10 inch charge. It's when the luck becomes unpredictable that it starts to effect the game.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
An army like Bretonnia which relies on maneuver and force of arms should be on the consistent side. Their infantry and cavalry should be worth their points pretty much always.

This would of course be incredibly unfair.

The only way you can have largely variable forms of luck is if you make the variables result in greater swings on the positive. By your example, Bretonnian troops, if they were least susceptible to luck, should be the worst units in the game. If they can get to combat and maneuver and avoid more dice rolls, then they should be lousy compared to everyone else. That's just game balance. For instance it SHOULD go something like this in terms of random variability power ranks:

DoC
-10----------+10

O&G
-7-------+7

Empire
-5-----+5

Bretonnian
-3---+3

If you want to have consistent that's fine, but everyone needs to average out. Right now, I don't think they do. High variability isn't paying off so people don't use them.

Edit: and when I say that, I mean they shy away from units that are more random. People still play DoC and O&G but they often don't take lots of Animosity units. If they're using magic they try and mitigate the # of random rolls and get their Lords to have the spells they want. DoC Lords aren't rolling all their abilities on the Gift charts. Stuff like that. The negative effects are there, but the positive isn't.

The above post made me want to grab the O&G and run a entire army with animosity problems...thanks for that

 Aben Zin wrote:
Hmm. To answer this I shall quote greater minds than mine:

The outcome corresponds less to expectations in war than in any other case whatsoever.
- Livy

To a good general luck is important.
- Livy

In war we must always leave room for strokes of fortune, and accidents that cannot be foreseen.
- Polybius

Adversity reveals the genius of a general; good fortune conceals it
- Horace

It is a bad plan that cannot be altered.
- Pulibius Syrus

The die is cast
- Gaius Julius Caesar

All of which would make sound ridiculously well read if they weren't nicked from the loading screens of Rome: Total War.

Still, the point they make is that the mark of a good general is the ability to prepare for adversity and react to it decisively, and also to exploit good fortune to the fullest extent.
To compare the skills needed to play Warhammer and Chess isn't terribly useful. Chess strategies can be learnt and memorised- after all there are only so many ways a player can move in chess but Warhammer has near infinite variety. This is not to say that chess players lack skill, but the skills used are different.

I finish with one more quote from R:TW (if only cos I like it):

The wise man speaks because he has something to say, the fool because he has to say something
- Aristotle

While we're in a quoting mood, here's one from the Art of War.

While heeding the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules. According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one's plans.

Ah now I need to quote:

Good luck happens when preparedness meets opportunity - Bret Harte (good choice for here)

Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words; This is good luck - Buddha (More life than gaming...)

Good luck is often with the man who doesn't include it in his plans - William Shakespeare

It's hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you've earned. - Frank A Clark

The only good luck many great men ever had was being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck. - Channing Pollock

The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act. - Barbara Sher

A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow. - Gen George S. Patton

A Purple Heart just proves that were you smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive. - Anon

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.- Douglas MacArthur

You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it. - Jimmy Dean

It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it. - Baltasar Gracian

My favorite:

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't. - Lucille Ball

The difficulty we are trying to identify is when there is so much randomness "opportunity" is few and far between.