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So when GW declared that they were removing D strength and it could go beyond 10, why didn't they take the liberty to rewrite some stat lines? It seems like they still wanted to keep toughness within 10, even though things can always wound on 6s.

So imo this seemed like a prime example to change things.
Make a guardsmen profile and go from there. Eldar are faster, marines stronger and tougher, plague marines tougher than that.

Then once all the infantry/equivilents are finished move to a basic vehicle, which should have higher stats than most infantry barring the outliers/unique units.

In my mind this should also open up the opportunity for anti vehicle weapons to be used for such purposes. But I suppose making vehicles have larger toughness values, anti vehicle weapons need to have a higher strength to reliably wound these vehicles may just end up being used on other units. So to counter this I'd give anti vehicle weapons a more or less "reverse poison" mechanic. But even this opens up equal complications.

Anyway what are your guys thoughts, should GW just have taken the time to rewrite stats and build from the ground up?

S/T 5 marines would have been potentially intreasting yeah.

 fraser1191 wrote:

Anyway what are your guys thoughts, should GW just have taken the time to rewrite stats and build from the ground up?

GW should stop limiting themselves to a d6, first off.

But yeah, if they're expanding - or are open to expanding - toughness with "always on 6" then there's opportunity for things to creep upwards.

A human and a very strong human could have different strength values? Without one of them being as strong as a meganob?

They could have done lots of stuff. They could have changed close combat so there was usually a winner and loser, instead of one side attaxking anx failing and the other side attacking and failing.

They probably kept it this way to keep it simple, this is what we're all used to and keeping the numbers at a cap does lose some freedom of variability but this isn't an RPG.

Infantryman wrote:GW should stop limiting themselves to a d6, first off.

Why? Will everybody be happy when they're carting round a tub of every type of dice?

pelicaniforce wrote:They could have changed close combat so there was usually a winner and loser, instead of one side attaxking anx failing and the other side attacking and failing.

I feel like you have never played 8th ed.

I think one issue which is hindering the game at this point; flat to-hit rolls instead of WS/BS stats. I know a lot of people didn't like the old BS table, converting, reducing from 7, etc. However, this worked very well in 2nd edition - the last edition to have real to-hit modifiers, and it worked for a reason.

Even with the artificial cap of BS 10 at the time, it allowed "supreme" models (Chapter Masters and the like) to actually well exceed a flat 2+ to hit. As we all know you can translate a flat to-hit roll to the old BS scale, but only a bit.

BS 3 = 4+ to hit
BS 4 = 3+ to hit
BS 5 = 2+ to hit
...but then it stops. 2+ to hit is as good as it gets, correct? Wrong.

In the older system (as clunky as it was), Space Marine Veterans had a BS of 5, so they'd hit on a 2+ (same with Terminators back then). However, a supreme character might have a BS of 6, 7, or 8. This meant that even with -1, -2 etc. to hit...that character would still be hitting on a 2+, where the BS 5 Veteran marines would actually be losing capability.

I do think in this edition it would be very fitting for that older system to still be in place (unfortunately). A Primarch with a BS of 9 or 10 would simply ignore penalties to hit until they stacked to -4, -5 etc. This wouldn't play much into basic troops, but I think it's a "zone" that they lost when they went to the flat to-hit rolls.

Also, I think for simplicity sake, they could have kept the WS scale, but converted it to the simple "Wound" scale they use now, with the exact same table. Above? 3+ Equal? 4+ Below? 5+, etc. It would have kept the balance of the old system with a much faster/easier chart.

All just personal opinions, but I think, sadly, the old way would have been a bit more useful in this edition.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Infantryman wrote:GW should stop limiting themselves to a d6, first off.

Why? Will everybody be happy when they're carting round a tub of every type of dice?

The D6 has a super narrow band of a viable curve for modifiers. The difference between 3+ and 2+ and 5+ and 6+ is so extreme that its very hard to introduce anything other than a single +/-1 option without either forcing everything to be 4+ or having some significant breaks. Anything that can +/-2 will almost certainly shatter the system unless its a very intentional self modifying design.

Ultimately you just end up without much ability to present a varied statline as you attempt to balance your game. Of notable competitive systems; you can see this happen very quickly with Guild Ball; where defensive stats once regularly varied form 2+ to 6+ but over time the developers have learned they can really only make 3+/4+ models, with 2+/5+ models requiring some very careful offsets to make work.

 LunarSol wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

Infantryman wrote:GW should stop limiting themselves to a d6, first off.

Why? Will everybody be happy when they're carting round a tub of every type of dice?

The D6 has a super narrow band of a viable curve for modifiers. The difference between 3+ and 2+ and 5+ and 6+ is so extreme that its very hard to introduce anything other than a single +/-1 option without either forcing everything to be 4+ or having some significant breaks. Anything that can +/-2 will almost certainly shatter the system unless its a very intentional self modifying design.

Ultimately you just end up without much ability to present a varied statline as you attempt to balance your game. Of notable competitive systems; you can see this happen very quickly with Guild Ball; where defensive stats once regularly varied form 2+ to 6+ but over time the developers have learned they can really only make 3+/4+ models, with 2+/5+ models requiring some very careful offsets to make work.

I will note here that a similar problem presents itself in xd6 systems; Warmachine has a wider range of stats and stackable modifiers (consider: Stormwall (ARM 19) can stack Arcane Shield (+3 ARM) and Stryker feat (+5 ARM) for ARM 27 for a turn and make itself nigh-undamageable by anything up to and including a heavy warjack) because a) things that ignore or strip modifiers exist, and b) while your damage roll is usually 2d6+POW there are plenty of effects that straight-up add extra dice to the roll (consider in the extreme case Butcher1; he has a POW 16 weapon with Weapon Master (additional damage die), can feat for another additional damage die on all attacks for a turn, add Fury (+3 POW), and boost on top of that for POW 19 rolling five dice, for an average damage roll of 36.5 (9.5 damage per attack into a fully armour-buffed colossal).)

However: Godslayer uses an offensive stat + 2d6 v. defensive stat approach that is quite similar to Warmachine's, but it doesn't have a core mechanic (or indeed any mechanics) centering around rolling additional dice, which means that stats still exist in a very narrow range (a 5 in an offensive stat is pretty poor, an 8 is godly) and modifiers are still usually +1.

I would assert that the issues you're describing are not the product of a 1d6 system; rather they're a product of GW's many attacks/few hit points structure where durability is the product of making it improbable that you'll take damage rather than making it take more attacks to kill you (an attack in Warmachine can be extremely reliable (a rifleman with RAT 6 standing still to aim (+2) is going to hit a Khador warjack (DEF 10) on anything other than a roll of double 1s, and with a POW 11 rifle will even do damage to its ARM 20 on a roll of 10 on 2d6 (6/36, or the same as the odds of getting a 6 on 1d6, but he's also doing 1-3 damage to a unit with 34 health, and with a reasonably-average range of 10" he's getting no more than two shots before the warjack gets in his face and chops his head off), and of a system where being in position to make an attack is a fairly hassle-free process (if I deploy a Basilisk on the table it can shoot everything on the table no matter what anyone does, Deep Strike means a lot of units can always get a full round of shooting off against something (not necessarily an optimal target, but something)).

The other problem that flattens the range of stats is the list-building freedom GW has been pushing; back in 3rd-5th you were locked to a single Codex (with the exception of the Inquisition) and one type of detachment that required Troops and didn't allow superheavies, in an environment where 1,500pts was 'normal'. The result felt a lot more like the Reinforced Platoon out of Bolt Action where spamming was more difficult (not impossible, however) and there was a fairly predictable ratio of hard targets to soft targets in most games. With the advent of GW's "take whatever" phase starting with allies, flyers, and Escalation in 6e, and continuing on into the present, the game has to be written such that an arbitrary limited selection of units makes a reasonable (not necessarily effective/efficient, but at least somewhat usable) TAC list, which means that the statlines get pretty normalized.

Going for "it's the d6's fault" is a popular explanation, but it's also an oversimplification that ignores a number of other design principles that restrict how widely statlines can vary. I'd also suggest that given the examples of 30k, LotR, and historical wargames (I'm thinking of Bolt Action because that's the one I'm most familiar with, but it's far from the only example) which take what is functionally the same army list and introduce minor variations that end up giving the whole thing a wildly different character that a wide range of different statlines/modifiers isn't hugely necessary to differentiate armies.

Every system definitely has its limits. As variable as Warmachine is, I think even +2 stretches the combat engine to the breaking point unless its properly conditions like a once per game effect or only good against range or something. MK2 was basically defined by warjack irrelevance that for all of the obvious fixes in MK3 are probably less important than the overall reduction of "+3 damage x10 attacks = +30 damage = dead 30 HP model" in the game.

I don't think you fix 40k by switching to D10's or anything, but I do think the D6 limits the ways you can fix 40k. That's really all I'm saying.

+2 in Warmachine works more because it's a thing that exists roughly equally on offense and on defense, plus the degrees-of-success situation (the damage roll isn't pass/fail, how much you beat their armour by determines how much damage you deal).

I do agree that there are things you can't do within the constraints of the three-rolls 1d6 pass/fail structure, but I think there are still a lot of ways to make 40k better within the constraints of its dice system (damage overhauls, army composition, that kind of thing) that people are ignoring in favour of screaming about how crap d6s are.