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I think that 40K should start using D10's. It would be easier to adjust the scale and diversity of the game's weapons, stats, armor values, to what they should actually be. Take the "what would make you take a hvy bolter thread" lots of people think boosting it strength will help; however the jump from STR 5 to 6 in 40k now is huge. Same for AV of vehicles and toughness's and such.

Can you think of pros or cons to this move other then rewriting the stats of the books to match the D10 system?

Can you think of examples of item, models,and stats that would be great for this change?

There is no con other than rewriting everything. Heavy bolters can be given a role, along with every other non-scatterlaser in the Imperial arsenal.

How do think i would affect things like armor saves?

Use the same system for simplicity but armor now ranges from 2+ to 10+. This opens up so many more possibilities.

I would like to custom a codex to this. see if it looks good and post it Maybe marines or gaurd

 btgrimaldus wrote:
I would like to custom a codex to this. see if it looks good and post it Maybe marines or gaurd

Marines would be boring. A better example would be Eldar. Scorpions can have 4+ armor, fire dragons 5+, banshees 6+, etc. You can have REAL variation. Bladestorm confers AP 3, not AP 2.

That's what I was thinking also. However w need to find that line between these ar tough and the are weak and these are balanced. Would marines be S/T 5 or 6 or what

 btgrimaldus wrote:
That's what I was thinking also. However w need to find that line between these ar tough and the are weak and these are balanced. Would marines be S/T 5 or 6 or what

We'd have to get a spreadsheet of all possible units and then assign out S and T to get the proper rankings. I suspect that marines would end up at S5/T5. Now we can give Eldar like init 7,8, and 9 to represent their crazy agility.

Well the alternative ruleset I'm creating uses D10s and the first codices will be Black Templars, Astra Militarum and Eldar. It's a joy to create bigger differences using D10s.

Bolters can actually be distinct from shuriken weapons, instead of strictly worse.

I like D6s over D10s, simply due to portabiility/ease of availability.

Understood, but it makes for a gak game. I'd be happy to lose those who won't switch.

I'd love the idea of using d10s. To me this would remove the need for most of the special rules which people complain overly complicate and slow down the game. (On a side note I hate how some movies are given a rating out of 5 stars, pretty much lumping all good/great films at the same level, there's just not enough disparity)
I will use the op's example of the heavy bolter, it should be better than it currently is, but without adding a special rule (rend for example) it jumps too much by moving it up just one place on the d6 based strength scale.

Huron black heart wrote:
I'd love the idea of using d10s. To me this would remove the need for most of the special rules which people complain overly complicate and slow down the game. (On a side note I hate how some movies are given a rating out of 5 stars, pretty much lumping all good/great films at the same level, there's just not enough disparity)
I will use the op's example of the heavy bolter, it should be better than it currently is, but without adding a special rule (rend for example) it jumps too much by moving it up just one place on the d6 based strength scale.

Exactly. We could still have special rules, of course, but there wouldn't be as many band-aid ones like grav. I would gak can grav myself.

If you are rolling 1 or 2 dice for the resolution.Like in many skirmish games then using a D10, D12 or D20 is practical.

However, rolling 20+ dice at a time., D10s are not that practical, in terms of rolling or reading the results.
(Ork players tend to roll lots of dice BTW. )

Lets see how 40k uses the D6 and see if we can improve it.

To hit usually only 3+4+or 5+ in assault.(Only 3 options.)
And usually 2+3+4+5+ for shooting.(Only 4 options.)

To wound usually (2+3+4+5+6+)

To save usually 2+3+4+5+6+, with all or nothing AP system.
So best case scenario 4 x 5 x 5= 100 possible results from the basic rules .

However if we used opposed values in the same chart for all parts of the combat resolution.(Not just to hit in assault or to wound,)
And use a universal chart like this with extended results on a D6.A for active player stat,O for opposing player stat.

A/O 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1....,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7.n,n
2....3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.7.n.
3....3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.7.
4....2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.7.
5....2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.6.
6....1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.6.
7....1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5.5.
8....d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4.5
9....d.d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.4
10..d.d.d.1.1.2.2.3.3.4.

7= roll 6s and halve the number of successes.(Sames as rolling 6+ followed by a 4+ without the additional dice rolling.)
n= no effect
d = automatic double success.

This gives us 9 possible results at each stage of the resolution.That gives over 400 different possible proportional results.
All from a humble D6 .

I would prefer to look at using the D6s rolls in 40k in more effective ways than changing dice size.(Everyone has loads of D6s, not many people want to buy 30+ D10.)

To be honest, I see it as a no brainer. Adding the ability to diversify the skills of each unit within an army without adding countless special rules.
Unfortunately it seems like changing from a 6 sided dice to a 10 sided dice is too heretical for some. I'd best keep an eye out for the inquisition

I played a game that used many, many D10s. It was fine. If I'm rewriting things, I'm not improving the D6, I'm moving on.

I can't see how rolling and reading a d10 is any different to a d6, aside from the fact people won't have loads of them to begin with. This of course would change in time

Huron black heart wrote:
I can't see how rolling and reading a d10 is any different to a d6, aside from the fact people won't have loads of them to begin with. This of course would change in time

You can buy tubes from Chessex for very little. It's not an issue in a game where a codex costs 50 bucks.

Yeah plus sizes of the dice can vary, but yes whether D6 or D10 rolling a crap ton of dice sucks, i know from guard lasgun shots.


I think my favorite aspect to this would be the AV of vehicle. Think about it you could have higher armor values for things that are supposed to be like fortresses (landraiders) and balance out transports like the DE raiders and Rhinos, oh and the Chimera. I would fix the messed up DMG chart that they have out now..... UGH

FFG's RPGs use a d10/d100 system. I'd suggested looking at the stats they use as a guideline for stats like S, T, etcs.

@Lanrak: I get your logic but that can be applied as well to D10s which gives so lovely many possibilities.

It's basically rating things 1-10 lol so how strong would a marine be on a scale 1-10 i think 5

 EnTyme wrote:
FFG's RPGs use a d10/d100 system. I'd suggested looking at the stats they use as a guideline for stats like S, T, etcs.

This was my thought. While I would like the extra diversity in stats, I'm of the opinion that that many d10s would be rather unwieldy. Sure, no single part of using d10s over d6s is that big a deal, but when you look at each die being slightly harder to read at a glance, slightly harder to gather up in your hand, and slightly easier to cock on terrain and then realize that you're going to be running into those issues every time you make a batch of to-hit rolls or armor saves, it all sort of adds up to be a bit problematic.

So rather than rolling huge dice pools, rolling a pair of d10s to basically run off of a d100 percentile system starts to look appealing. But then calculating things like degrees of success can be a minor pain, and abstracting everything to increments of about 5% starts to look more attractive. So maybe a single-roll d20-based system where you get bonuses based on the number of guys attacking would work better. But both the percentile and d20 systems would require some fairly expansive reworks of the core mechanics.

So the problem in my mind is that d10s are too clunky if you're working with a large dice pool, but my preferred rewrites would basically require a complete reinvention of the wheel.

@Wyldhunt: I agree 100% - those small issues are actual very important and those of us who will try to introduce a ruleset using D10, should do well to remember these issues because they can really hurt the experience - especially the first few times it's tried out.
Though there are ways to address these issues to some point. First, many would call the nearest Commissar over if some rolled their dice directly on the battle board - use a box or something.
Second, use dice which are easy to read and not all those smart dice with beautiful colours.
I don't know if smaller ten-sided dice are produced but I don't think there's a big difference between normal sizes of six- and ten-sided dice.

HI folks.
The only issues with using a direct swap out of D6s for D10s in 40k, is purely due to physical differences.

D6s are cubes and as such have large surface areas of contact.So lots can be picked up easily.
They usually use the same pattern of dots on the faces for fast recognition.

D10s have much smaller areas of contact , so they are harder to handle quickly.
And they have numbers on the faces that can cause some recognition issues,depending on angle of viewing. Eg 2 and 5, 6 and 9 7 and 1.

This just slows the process of playing down quite a bit in actual practice.

That is why in general games that need to roll lots of dice at once use D6, and other games that roll much fewer dice for resolution tend to use the other larger dice sizes.

Most player blame the size of the dice for the awful lack of proportional results in 40k.Where in actual fact it is the restrictive and binary way the rules are written that is to blame.

EG fixed success on 3+, to hit any sized target anywhere in range in the open.
So a Monolith 2" away , is just as easily hit as a Ratling Sniper 36" away.

Where as if the target had a Stealth value to oppose BS on a chart, we could get the sort of varied results players expect.

@Wyldhunt.
Just from experience, IF the game is using 6mm to 15mm minatures on a 'infantry base' to depict infantry units.
So the player perception is focused on UNITS, then they are happy to roll a single D20 or D100 for detailed unit resolution.

However, when using 28mm minatures players seem to want to roll for each model.

This is why 40k is unique and such a complete git to write new rules for.

We can agree to disagree, then. The d6 is absolutely at the root of the problem.

Switch to D10's, but have unit-wide rolls for basic weapons and saves. Apply a bonus to rolls based on the number of remaining models (or have a unit wound pool/nerve that wipes out the unit in one go when depleted as in KoW).

Then you are only rolling a couple of D10 per unit per action/reaction.

If you are going to do that, (which I'm fine with), use 2D10 bell curves to determine outcomes.

Or 3d6, and play GURPS.