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I recently started thinking of how a match of 40k plays currently, and the thought has dawned on me that I think the game currently has too many dice rolls with all the layers of rolling and rerolling. I think the pacing of the game has suffered from the current game design. I love rolling dice! The feeling of grabbing a fistfull of dice, rolling and then translating that into moving or removing models is satisfying in itself. But as it stands now it can easily be very tedious.

(if blast, roll for amount of shots)
roll to hit->
pick out the ones and reroll those. or figure out how modifiers allow you to reroll some of the misses
roll to wound->
potential rerolls (looking at you guilliman...)
roll armour saves or invulnerable saves.
then some units have some kind of disgustingly resiliance that has to be rolled individually for multi damage weapon so that wounds don't spill over. these abilities can stack...

All the while people stop at every stage to ponder if they want to use some strategem at that stage. All of this can leave to a lot of fiddly dice picking and the game slows to a halt.
I think one of the more satisfying weapons to use are the flamers. As they skip rolls to hit, using them are more fast paced and instantly rewarding or terrifying as you roll that or for amount of hits. I wish more weapons or the game as a whole followed that filosophy. Maybe all the reroll abilities could be replaced by modifiers instead?

Disregarding game balance, would the game be better or worse if all rerolls (even the strategem) was removed? Or would hit->wound->save be too non granular using d6's to make units feel any different from each other?

I wouldn't mind one bit if 40k used a different dice system and went with hit -> save with modifiers.

Plus, remove every single random shot and damage profile and replace it with a fixed value.

I think as long as you dont have some overthinking slow play zombie as an opponent, rerolling actually speeds a game up. The more hit dice that succeed, the more wounds that are dished out. Less models means less dice over time. A match actually would last far longer without rerolls, even if individual turns were marginally shorter. But in my experience rerolling takes no time at all. Measure your reroll source to the unit, pick up all the fails, reroll them.

I have always thought that the to wound roll should be removed. If you were hit by a lascannon, how could you not be wounded ?

 godardc wrote:
I have always thought that the to wound roll should be removed. If you were hit by a lascannon, how could you not be wounded ?

Hit in the finger. Or ear. Or toe. Or hair.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 godardc wrote:
I have always thought that the to wound roll should be removed. If you were hit by a lascannon, how could you not be wounded ?

Hit in the finger. Or ear. Or toe. Or hair.

Tis but a scratch!

Lascannon to the knee?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 godardc wrote:
I have always thought that the to wound roll should be removed. If you were hit by a lascannon, how could you not be wounded ?

Hit in the finger. Or ear. Or toe. Or hair.

As comical as an image that is, I think the idea behind a hit -> save system is that the hit represents a wounding hit, and the save is then the armour/shield/dodge/t-shirt/extreme muscle flexing that can stop or mitigate the damage.

Was always kind of funny when players would flub their wound roll againt my IG in melee with their badass warlords and captains.

 godardc wrote:
I have always thought that the to wound roll should be removed. If you were hit by a lascannon, how could you not be wounded ?

Rock vs warlord.

 vaklor4 wrote:
I think as long as you dont have some overthinking slow play zombie as an opponent, rerolling actually speeds a game up. The more hit dice that succeed, the more wounds that are dished out. Less models means less dice over time. A match actually would last far longer without rerolls, even if individual turns were marginally shorter. But in my experience rerolling takes no time at all. Measure your reroll source to the unit, pick up all the fails, reroll them.

Ok, I could see how increased kills would speed the game up as models are removed faster. but the layers of rolls applies not only to attacks, but also to defence. Feel no pain equivalent is an example of this.

So if we have added layers of rolling both for attacking and making our units survivable, there won't be more units dying of, it just cancels out.

Could not the increased efficiency from rerolls come from an increased hit roll instead? Cadians for example could be bs3+ with the orders instead of rerolls. roughy same game effect, but less rolling. Surely that would play faster?

Agree 100%. I personally hate re-rolling as a mechanic...in any game. Maybe slightly acceptable in a small skirmish game as a one-off talent for someone. I think it's a lazy and crap mechanic and really wish it wasn't present.

Sadly it is a HUGE GW mechanic (one of the only ones they employ). I still enjoy 8th, but if I was given a choice --- yes re-rolls would be eliminated.

I suppose I'm okay with them from the CP standpoint. For that minor clutch roll, paying a valuable resource for them - that's about the extent of it.

Problem with no rerolls means d6 system is way too nongradient. There's already too narrow variety in odds. No rerolls worse. For that to work game really needs to go away from d6. But that's not going to happpen

I disagree - you just need different mechanics. I'd be fine going away from a D6, but there are other solutions. This is also where the change of the BS/WS is perhaps a mistake. Take for instance 2nd edition where you had people with BS of 10. Well that means that even after multiple negative modifiers -- the best of the units would still hit on a 2+, where a BS5 unit would only hit on a 2+ with no modifiers.

It would still have only 5 possible success results. Too littve

tneva82 wrote:
Problem with no rerolls means d6 system is way too nongradient. There's already too narrow variety in odds. No rerolls worse. For that to work game really needs to go away from d6. But that's not going to happpen

Can you give me one example though where rerolls helps define the identity of a unit or an army in a fair way though?

Take AM cadians for example again. when they have an officer barking at them and they stand still they become more accurate than space marines (who are the epitome of genetically modified, trained since birth cyborg warriors). I'm not feeling it...

or how does reroll charge range define orks more than +1 or 2 charge range would do?

how is reroll 1 on invulnerable saves for magnus make him more of a primarch than some extra wounds on his profile would?

How is disguisting resilient more thematic than say +1 toughness or some better armour save?

As I think on all of these reroll abilities, it feels like they could have been designed using other techniques that keeps the theme of the rule/unit but doesn't slow down the game.

Overwatch! So many dice, so little effect. Add a chapter master and it gets silly. I had to charge a repulsor next to a chapter master and lieutenant that's 6 weapon systems with multiple dice (some variable) rerolling all non 6s to hit and 1s to wound before I even knew if i'd succeeded the charge. they dealt very little.

On that note it helps if a unit has a homogeneous weapons profile. Shooting three different petty missile systems one at a time is dull. Or T'au, a handfull of units shooting loads of dice even without reroll still probably won't come to much.

I agree that hit and wound are the same concept and that wound and armor are the same concept. So one of them could take a hike if the dice weren't so small.

Gitdakka wrote:
I recently started thinking of how a match of 40k plays currently, and the thought has dawned on me that I think the game currently has too many dice rolls with all the layers of rolling and rerolling. I think the pacing of the game has suffered from the current game design. I love rolling dice! The feeling of grabbing a fistfull of dice, rolling and then translating that into moving or removing models is satisfying in itself. But as it stands now it can easily be very tedious.

(if blast, roll for amount of shots)
roll to hit->
pick out the ones and reroll those. or figure out how modifiers allow you to reroll some of the misses
roll to wound->
potential rerolls (looking at you guilliman...)
roll armour saves or invulnerable saves.
then some units have some kind of disgustingly resiliance that has to be rolled individually for multi damage weapon so that wounds don't spill over. these abilities can stack...

All the while people stop at every stage to ponder if they want to use some strategem at that stage. All of this can leave to a lot of fiddly dice picking and the game slows to a halt.
I think one of the more satisfying weapons to use are the flamers. As they skip rolls to hit, using them are more fast paced and instantly rewarding or terrifying as you roll that or for amount of hits. I wish more weapons or the game as a whole followed that filosophy. Maybe all the reroll abilities could be replaced by modifiers instead?

Disregarding game balance, would the game be better or worse if all rerolls (even the strategem) was removed? Or would hit->wound->save be too non granular using d6's to make units feel any different from each other?

Yeah im not feeling any joy about the gameplay of 40k anymore. The rules are just so dull and gameplay so boring and tedious with all the special rules, special cases and stratagem mayhem aside from absurd amount of dice, rolls and rerolls and added special rolls.

Disregarding balancing issues and what not, merging hit/wound rolls would be a good start at least to speed up the game.

Stratagems should be at least limited to only a few, selected before a game.

Reduce the amount of rerolls. Reduce it a lot.

Do away with IGOUGO, keep both players in the game all game long.

If you want to speed up dice rolls, I recommend downloading the GW dice app. So quick, user friendly and smashes through multiple rolls in seconds.

 Hollow wrote:
If you want to speed up dice rolls, I recommend downloading the GW dice app. So quick, user friendly and smashes through multiple rolls in seconds.

And that's how you enter the wonderful world of "True Random Numbers".

M.

I'm really not a fan of bubblehammer and a recent video battle-report highlighted it.

It was IG v Death guard, 2k points. IG had the Relic of Lost cadia, not sure the exact name of it. But the one that allows re-rolls of 1 to wound and hit within 12", or full re-rolls if you're playing Chaos.

DG Got turn one and killed one of the russes and wounded a chimera.

IG then spend about 40 minutes (That's post editing time) deciding what to shoot, then re-rolling ALL of it. Including 2 punishers, that were firing twice, re-rolling both to hit and wound. That's about 120-140 dice thrown there, including re-rolls. That's just two tanks.

Movement certainly isn't faster, but with how modifiers work and the sheer amount of re-rolls about I wouldn't say the game is any faster at all.

Part of the problem is the shift of 40k from skirmishy/platoon level to Company plus Mech support level, individual D6 rolls stop making sense at that point, add in re-rolls and everything hurts everything on a 6 and even the math-hammer adverse can figure 'moar dices' is nearly always the correct answer, there isn't really any viable fix as GW won't give up D6's

I think rerolls are there to scale the shooting ability in a more granular way. A +/-1 is always 16.6% in-/decrease, while a reroll 1 for BS3+ for example increases hit chance from 66.6% to 77.7%. Blame it on the d6 system, would they use d10 or d12, rerolls would be less sensible where a modifier by one or two wouldn't be that big a difference but still enough to care.

It would be faster and easier if someone wrote a dice roller specifically for 40k. There are a lot of mobile dice rollers, but none I've seen that are made just for 40k.

I could code one fairly easily myself and i know the random functions have more dependable randomness than cheap-o dice which may or may not have bubbles and not-perfectly-rounded beveled edges.

The interface would be pretty simple and could be compressed down to 1 number input and 3-4 clicks to resolve a full combat.

The issue i forsee is people not trusting the randomness though, or opponents not trusting it, esp when you inevitably roll really good or really bad repeatedly. Personally, knowing how the numbers work, I trust them more than I do dice - even casino dice that are specifically made to be more random.


Update: made a quick and sloppy dice roller. Basically you can finish a whole attack sequence in about 2 seconds if you know what you're doing. I put in rerolling 1's, but it wouldn't be real difficult to add other things like re-rolling misses, roll log, etc. I just finished painting some admech bases with Martian Ironearth and stopped when it was dry.

http://www.psynauticgames.com/testroller/

(requires unity plugin and is ugly and confusing at first, but i just wanted to see if I could do it. (probably only works on browsers, not mobile)

It's too easy to program digital RNG with favorable odds. Some players can get touchy over the differences between rounded or straight edged dice let alone a programmable RNG.

GHQ Micronaughts goes the right way about this, use a D20 and a lookup table.

Roll the dice, along the top find the column for the number you rolled with any modifiers applied, now find the column for the number of actions (shots, wounds, whatever), the intersection is the number of successes.

20 gene stealers in close combat rolling to hit using Hive Fleet Hydra? 1 dice roll

SirWeeble wrote:
It would be faster and easier if someone wrote a dice roller specifically for 40k. There are a lot of mobile dice rollers, but none I've seen that are made just for 40k.

You aren't looking hard enough. There is an official 40k one from GW.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
It's too easy to program digital RNG with favorable odds. Some players can get touchy over the differences between rounded or straight edged dice let alone a programmable RNG.

It's also easy to float dice and use the slanted ones, which is more conceivable than a programmer purposely slanting their program that ideally would be used for both player's rolls to speed up the game. If a program allows you to roll enough dice, it would be easy to check if it's slanted. You can't exactly sit there and check the opponents possibly tilted dice over 100k or 1 million rolls. Any program that doesn't allow for that kind of integrity check just shouldn't be used.

I think people look for reasons to not use rollers because they like the anticipation of dice rolls. Hitting a button to find out 2 guys die is anti-climatic.

The only GW official roller i see is from 2016. Is there a newer one that doesn't insist on fancy graphical 3d dice rolling?

SirWeeble wrote:
It would be faster and easier if someone wrote a dice roller specifically for 40k. There are a lot of mobile dice rollers, but none I've seen that are made just for 40k.

I could code one fairly easily myself and i know the random functions have more dependable randomness than cheap-o dice which may or may not have bubbles and not-perfectly-rounded beveled edges.

The interface would be pretty simple and could be compressed down to 1 number input and 3-4 clicks to resolve a full combat.

The issue i forsee is people not trusting the randomness though, or opponents not trusting it, esp when you inevitably roll really good or really bad repeatedly. Personally, knowing how the numbers work, I trust them more than I do dice - even casino dice that are specifically made to be more random.


Update: made a quick and sloppy dice roller. Basically you can finish a whole attack sequence in about 2 seconds if you know what you're doing. I put in rerolling 1's, but it wouldn't be real difficult to add other things like re-rolling misses, roll log, etc. I just finished painting some admech bases with Martian Ironearth and stopped when it was dry.

http://www.psynauticgames.com/testroller/

(requires unity plugin and is ugly and confusing at first, but i just wanted to see if I could do it. (probably only works on browsers, not mobile)

Up for a code review on that?

M.

Up for a code review on that?

M.

https://pastebin.com/NgTLutAg

Sure. It's pretty sloppy, but if you want to look at it, go for it. I don't really have much intention of doing much more with it though, unless I get bored. It's kind of neat to have for math-hammer though, esp since I can put 1,000,000 rolls into it.

SirWeeble wrote:

Up for a code review on that?

M.

https://pastebin.com/NgTLutAg

Sure. It's pretty sloppy, but if you want to look at it, go for it. I don't really have much intention of doing much more with it though, unless I get bored. It's kind of neat to have for math-hammer though, esp since I can put 1,000,000 rolls into it.

Hm. At the high level it looks fine enough (I haven't used your actual application). Unity does not have anything approaching True Random, though. At least, to my understanding of it. Have you run just some dice simulations to see if you can dredge up some bias?

M.