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One of my main concerns with 40K is speeding up play - I was wondering if anyone has tried dice rolling tables. Dealing with 100 or so Ork mob attacks takes a while. In fact, an ork turn in Apoc can take a big chunk of your afternoon.

Essentially you have tables for large numbers of dice rolled at a certain probability of success - a 2+ table, 3+ table, etc. Across the top you have some number of rolls (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc.) Down the side you have a single die roll that yields a bell curve of successes (maybe on a D10 to give a bit more variation). Sure, you would never have all 50 attacks somehow fail, but there isn't any significant chance of that anyway

Example (I haven't calculated the Bell curve, so don't yell at me probability guys).

4+ Success

D10 roll 50 Dice 60 Dice
1 14 Successes 17
2 18 Successes 23
3 21
4 23
5 25
6 27
7 30
8 34
9 38
Well, I kind of messed that up, but you get the idea. You roll the left overs at the same time on normal dice.

I'd be willing to try it, but before I reinvent the wheel, I wonder if anyone has seen this already done and has a link? Not that thrilled at doing the math if someone else already has. I know there are dice apps, but I think this might be faster.

Honestly, if it's taking that much time, you'd be better off with an appropriate random number generator; the internet is full of such. There, at least, the potential for improbable (but possible) results remains.

As a Tyranid player, I like this idea a lot. Having a computer handy isn't always feasible or fun. Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone having done this before, but I encourage you to try!

http://assaultdice.com/

GW has an app for that.

Not everyone has an iPhone.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Not everyone has an iPhone.

It's out for Android as well - http://ow.ly/YJfW3 (not sure why they haven't updated their page)

Not everyone has a smartphone, either!

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Not everyone has a smartphone, either!

Fair, but according to a recent survey (linked below so nobody thinks I'm making this up), 68% of American adults have smart phones. That number raises to between 86 and 87% if you look at the age range between 18 and 49. That's better than the chance you'll hit with BS 5. I'll take those odds. My comment stands as good advice to most people who play this game.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/technology-device-ownership-2015/

The apps I've seen online (and I'm in the 32% without a smart phone here) don't seem super fast -in other words you don't just punch in (3+ - 68) and it rolls 68 dice and tells you how many many you how many rolled 3+. Assault dice seems to want you to sort of keep track of your units, which seems impractical though neat in theory.

While I'm all for speeding up play, I'm not for tables like this. Like it was mentioned above, this takes out the reason you have dice in the first place. Like the time I made 18 3+ Invul saves on a unit of Zoanthropes in 1 shooting phase - or on the opposite end, the time I rolled 3 hits on 36 shots from Devourer 'gants. These make up some of the epic stories that come from playing this game and should not be removed.

Basically what you are proposing is what battletech uses for weapons that fire multiple shots. They have a Cluster table. Roll to see if the weapon hits, then roll on the cluster table to see how many individual shots land. Would be interesting and could make certain guns in the game a little more effective. (For example, sisters of battle exocrist tank )

I don't know about other people but there is a kind of sadistic pleasure in watching your opponent cry as you roll for hundreds of attacks.
One of the few reasons that I occasionally take hordes of bezerkers when playing my imperial guard friend.

Well, it wouldn't be a requirement. If you want to roll all your attacks d6 by d6, go for it. It'd just be nice to have a table to speed things up if so desired.

I wouldn't do it for assault phase. I'd use it for shooting phase. Maybe create a new sub-type of weapons called "Cluster X." Cluster weapons always hit on a 4+. Then you roll on the cluster table. X is the column you reference and your d6 roll results is on the side of the chart. This give you the number of hits the cluster weapon did. Then roll to wound as normal.

For example:

Cluster Bomb str 6 ap 4 Heavy X, Cluster 6,bomb.

Order of operations:
Bombing run to see if the bomb hits.
Roll on cluster table
Roll to wound

X