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Just a couple of ideas to speed up game play and lessen the randomness of more costly weapons somewhat:

1.) Weapons with a Strength value that is more than double the target's toughness wound on a 1+.

The thinking here being that high strength weapons are a big investment, and it can be a bit of a feelbad when your daemon prince fails to kill a single dire avenger off of an objective because his to-wound dice came up 1's. The opposing argument, to my mind, is that miraculously surviving said daemon prince is comically amusing.

2.) Having a little trouble with the exact wording, but basically, the idea is that you can opt to "focus fire" with one of the weapon profiles in a unit when it shoots or fights. So for instance, you might choose to focus fire with a unit's lasguns or bolters. When you focus fire, all models with that weapon must shoot at the same target. Instead of rolling to wound, generate a single automatic wound with the weapon's AP and Damage (but not any special rules) for every 6 hits (rounding down) that you landed.


The idea here being that it's annoying to take the time to fish for 6s with a bunch of models trying to tickle the last few wounds off knight or what have you. So to speed up the game a bit, you basically just take the statistical average number of wounds that you should generate. Because you discard the remainder number of hits, focusing fire like this is basically only a good idea when you have a unit large enough to reliably generate at least 6 hits, that only wounds on 6's normally, and which has no access to to-wound buffs of some variety. So it's basically for things like gaunts and guardsmen and boyz trying to bring down T7 and 8 (in the case of the boyz) stuff.

So you made Imperial Guard even better. Congrats.

A lot of the time all your weapons are focused on the same target anyway. Bad idea.

ALSO your first idea sucks because 1s should usually fail without rerolls. Auto success should be extremely rare.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So you made Imperial Guard even better. Congrats.

Err, how? The first rule applies to everyone and hurts IG more than average because at T3 they're going to see more 1+ wound rolls than a T4 army, while the second rule just replaces rolling for a 6+ with getting slightly below the statistical average. If you compare damage over a sufficiently large number of attacks then the second rule is exactly identical to RAW in results.

ALSO your first idea sucks because 1s should usually fail without rerolls. Auto success should be extremely rare.

Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

 Peregrine wrote:
Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

To quote Gary Gygax

“Someone once criticized the concept of the saving throw as ridiculous. Could a man chained to a rock, they asked, save himself from a blast of red dragon’s breath? Why not? I replied. Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds a crevice in which to shield his or her body, or succeeds in finding some way to be free of the fetters. Why not?”

 Peregrine wrote:

Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

Agreed. But lets give our guardsman a tiny, tiny chance of survival. If the strength of the weapon is over twice as much as toughness a 1 should be re-rolled. If its another 1, then he was blessed by the emperor and walks away without a scratch.

 Peregrine wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So you made Imperial Guard even better. Congrats.

Err, how? The first rule applies to everyone and hurts IG more than average because at T3 they're going to see more 1+ wound rolls than a T4 army, while the second rule just replaces rolling for a 6+ with getting slightly below the statistical average. If you compare damage over a sufficiently large number of attacks then the second rule is exactly identical to RAW in results.

ALSO your first idea sucks because 1s should usually fail without rerolls. Auto success should be extremely rare.

Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

Yep. That pretty much sums up my response to this one. Unless I'm missing something, 1 auto wound for every 6 hits is technically slightly worse for something like guard. It just saves a bunch of time fishing for sixes at the cost of removing the chance for an especially lucky or unlucky result.

The 1 in 6 chance of Roboute Guilliman failing to splatter a cultist across the pavement basically posits that the very expensive primarch, both by mechanical virtue of being a large investment compared to the cultist and by fluff virtue of being a gosh dang primary should probably be able to take out that cultist. Or swap the names to "Abaddon" and a "guardsman" or whatever if you feel your anti-primarch sentiments kicking in, whatever.

Sure, when my opponent flubs his roll and my lone guardian manages to not be wiped out the volley of disintegrator fire or when a unit of shining spears fail to kill the lone remaining gretchin in a squad, it's kind of funny. However, it's also a bit of a suspension of disbelief challenger/eyebrow raiser. And I"m not arguing "realism" here. When that cultist doesn't get splattered by Guilliman, it raises questions and just kind of seems unfluffy. Did Guilliman just not even swing at the guy even though the cultist's continued existence means that the ultramarines have failed their mission (i.e. obsec won the cultist's player the game).

Auto-wounding when your strength is sufficiently high isn't a hill I'm willing to die on. It just seems that a shadowsword flubbing to-wound rolls against a land speeder is both frustrating and arguably unfluffy. So I thought I'd ask why the assumption is made that there must be a chance that the to-wound roll is failed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

To quote Gary Gygax

“Someone once criticized the concept of the saving throw as ridiculous. Could a man chained to a rock, they asked, save himself from a blast of red dragon’s breath? Why not? I replied. Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds a crevice in which to shield his or her body, or succeeds in finding some way to be free of the fetters. Why not?”

Counterpoint: D&D is a cooperative game in which the goal is typically for the players to succeed (albeit with the potential for setbacks and complications). The DM is there to challenge the players rather than to defeat them. In 40k, both players are there to defeat each other. Obviously you're still there to facilitate a mutual good time, but you're generally making an earnest effort to win the mission. So when one player has invested in a 700 point dragon and the other has invested in a 50 point dude with a sword and the dragon's player has taken steps to chain that sword dude to a boulder, the dragon player might reasonably be irked when the sword dude ignores his vastly greater points investment because the luck imps made him roll a 1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 p5freak wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

Agreed. But lets give our guardsman a tiny, tiny chance of survival. If the strength of the weapon is over twice as much as toughness a 1 should be re-rolled. If its another 1, then he was blessed by the emperor and walks away without a scratch.

I'm not a fan of that purely because it would result in game slowdown and add extra rolling. But aside form that, I'm not opposed to the concept. Having a guardsman survive 1 in every 6 accurate lascannon shots aimed at him (I know, I know, it's an abstraction) is too common. Having him survive 1 in 36 lascannon shots or 1 in 216 or whatever gives that one-in-a-million chance, but it also slows the game down.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Why? Why is a 1/6 chance of failure so important? Why should a guardsman have a 1/6 chance of surviving a direct hit from a titan's main gun?

To quote Gary Gygax

“Someone once criticized the concept of the saving throw as ridiculous. Could a man chained to a rock, they asked, save himself from a blast of red dragon’s breath? Why not? I replied. Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds a crevice in which to shield his or her body, or succeeds in finding some way to be free of the fetters. Why not?”

Counterpoint: D&D is a cooperative game in which the goal is typically for the players to succeed (albeit with the potential for setbacks and complications). The DM is there to challenge the players rather than to defeat them. In 40k, both players are there to defeat each other. Obviously you're still there to facilitate a mutual good time, but you're generally making an earnest effort to win the mission. So when one player has invested in a 700 point dragon and the other has invested in a 50 point dude with a sword and the dragon's player has taken steps to chain that sword dude to a boulder, the dragon player might reasonably be irked when the sword dude ignores his vastly greater points investment because the luck imps made him roll a 1.

Counter counter point. Games like 40k are telling a story every time. The best games leave the players walking away talking about their lucky 1s and 6s and how they turned the tide or kept the game going or whatever. GW themselves tell you to forge the narrative. There is no narrative when it's automatic. There is no chance, the players are not interacting. It's just 1 player pointing a thing in a direction and the other player having no options and no chances.

I have had the thought that auto wounds and the inability to wound should be based on triple values instead of double.

So str3 cannot wound T9+, and S9 auto wounds T3.

My other thought is damage carrying to over to a single extra model if strength triples toughness, so big lasers can kill kill a couple guys if they hit.

If you think space marines don't like genestealer cults now, these rules would seal the deal. I've had a stunning number of 1s against marines while using my rocksaws, and frankly it's fine with me, it's a game, guarantees take half the fun out of it(yes I'm aware of euro games, no I don't care for them).