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I've been pondering the process of rolling dice for Warhammer; it feels like it's gotten bloated out of control, makes the game a lot slower at the table, and just ends up requiring us to roll more dice to get the same result.

Go back to older editions and you rolled to hit, to wound, sometimes saves (saves were all-or-nothing instead of a modifier and a lot less stuff had Invulnerable saves), and infrequently an FNP (it was less common and easier to ignore) against non-vehicle units, and to hit, to penetrate, sometimes a save (cover or invulnerable saves), and a damage table roll against vehicles. Attacks were usually two or three rolls, and very infrequently had rerolls.

Now we've got some random-attacks weapons, then hit, wound, save on pretty much all attacks, sometimes random damage, and broad-spectrum FNPs across whole armies, none of which can be ignored, and plenty of armies get rerolls on hits/wounds/both, so we end up needing four to five steps in the process all the time plus rerolls on one or two of them.

In the most extreme case I've got an opponent with an Ork army where he needs to roll to-hit rolls, to-hit rerolls, exploding hits rolls, exploding hits rerolls, and to wound rolls every time he fires a weapon before we even get to the other guy.

The basic problem with this whole process is that the more dice you roll the weaker the odds of any single die roll going through is; a unit with 'good' rolls on all their attacks (Tactical Marines shooting Guardsmen, for this example) have to roll a 3+, another 3+, and then the other guy gets his 5+, so you have a (2/3)^3=8/27 (~29.6%) chance of one shot killing a model. The reason they keep inflating shot counts is that each individual die gets worse and worse, and we end up with what feels like a screwed-up relationship between damage and durability where on average your stuff might live but because the other guy's rolling fifty attacks with a 10% chance of success instead of ten attacks with a 50% chance of success the dice barely have to spike to wipe way more than they should.

I feel like the only way to take a crack at this problem is to try and cut down on the number of steps you need to take to make an attack. The usual argument I hear against this is that if you didn't have stats for hit/wound/save you'd lose the ability to differentiate weapons from each other and armies would feel less characterful, but it also seems to me that the number of redundant statblocks floating around has gotten out of control and maybe we can preserve character between armies without also preserving all the bloat doing it GW's way has done.

Another possibility is moving steps of the process around. It might be interesting to give units with a lot of shots on crap BS a few shots on better BS, and address some of the complaints I've heard about the disproportionate effect modifiers have on units with widely varied BS, if we were to take the statline less literally.

I've been looking at the possibility of lifting some rules from Bolt Action/Gates of Antares, specifically the two-step attack process (to-hit is either 3+ or 4+ based on unit veterancy and is modified by cover and things, to-wound is die + penetration vs. target armour). Conceptually instead of needing to have range, type, ROF, strength, AP, damage, and special rules weapons would instead have range, type, penetration, and special rules; instead of toughness, wounds, save, special rules granting FNP, and special rules granting Invulnerable saves units would have armour and there would be a vehicle/monster damage table. Battering through tough units by chiseling down their wound counts would be replaced by some units being impossible to wound with some attacks. And I know this is controversial but a lot of redundant weapon profiles would be stuck together into one; you wouldn't get separate profiles for power axes, swords, mauls, lances, etc., for instance.

Thoughts?

Something I pitched a while back was converting armor saves into more wounds. So the humble tactical marine would never take saves, but he might have, say, 3 or 4 wounds instead of just 1. Invulnerable saves would generally turn into some sort of to-hit penalty or additional wounds.

The main ideas being:
* A marine seldom dies to a single lucky lasgun shot.
* A marine's armor and body do tend to break down over time as numerous lasgun shots take their toll.
* It feels better to see progress being made against an enemy than not. Even if there's a longer way to go before the enemy is killed.

Maybe that could help you out?

In general, I'm not opposed to ditching a lot of the extra rolling. While I'm not rushing to give up 6+ FNP on my drukhari, for instance, I do feel the drag every time I count out dice and fish for 6s only for it to not matter. Some scattered thoughts:

* Converting reroll buffs into flat modifiers could help a lot. Rather than granting rerolls to hit, a marine captain could grant a +1 to hit.

* Eliminating stats does remove design space, and some factions are already dangerously close to stealing one anothers' gimmicks. Rubric marines, plague marines,a nd necrons should all probably feel unique, for instance.

* Maybe FNP could be a one-time roll of sorts that happens at the end of a phase? Sort of like an oldschool WBB? Like, maybe you do an apothecary style roll at the end of the phase to regenerate lost models? Or just roll a d6 for each model slain in the unit and bring that model back within X" of surviving squad members on a 6+? If the unit got wiped, mark the position of the last guy to drop and respawn on his position? If enemies are too close to do this, then no respawning for you (subtle boost to melee units.)

More dice you roll, more it becomes normalized and more true to calculated probability though.

I don't think there's a lot wrong with the basic principle of hit-wound-penetrate. It's not too different from like Flames of War which is hit-penetrate-firepower to kill.

I'm definitely not big on the whole "degrading units, it take 14 lasgun hits to kill and X". I think things should die from one critical hit that breaks a weak point and deals a lethal effect. Also, like more than 1 wound for infantry is way more than there needs to be.


Were Katherine to go back to first principles, I'd probably instate:
Wound stat and damage stat is eliminated. It's unnecessary and doesn't represent anything tangible, useful, or meaningful. We have toughness for representing being big enough that a given shot just might not make something a casualty. Monstrous Creatures all become vehicles, they're not meaningfully different.
Return to old style s. vs. t. tables for wounding.
Return to the old style for infantry armor saves.

Vehicles are the question. I don't want to return the vehicle damage chart, and I want them to also have 2 tests to die [comparable with other units]. The old penetration system works, and I want the other roll to be another versus stat, but if we go to armorsave we end up with the problem of this edition where vehicles just basically don't get armor because anything that can wound the vehicle also has enough pen to erase it's armor. Something like Flames of War's Firepower test might work [A Lascannon might have a firepower of 5+, a Railgun of 3+].
Armor facings would be reduced to Flames of War style "Front 180/everywhere else" a Land Raider would be 14 to both, a Leman Russ 14/13, and a Predator 13/11. This should reduce arguments armor arc.

After that, limit re-rolls to just the command re-roll stratagem. Re-rolls are the biggest slow down this edition, and even just eliminating them would go a long way towards streamlining the game. Also, somewhat obviously, it changes the probabilities pretty drastically from what it used to be, and different armies benefit differently.

Blasts are the last question. I don't really also want to return to blast markers and scatter, but I don't also really like the multiple-d6 number of attacks for weapons. Perhaps return the template, but rather than rolling for scatter, count up the number of targets under the blast [with the hole worth 3 or 5 maybe], and that's the count of shots.

Thinking about unit stats. Wounds/model could be eliminated entirely (a la Bolt Action/Antares), major casualty of that would be peoples' beatstick super-epic commanders of doom. Multi-wound beatstick captains don't feel very wargame-like but do feel very 40k-like, not sure what to do about that problem.

Movement: I know it was irritating to need piles upon piles of special rules for "this unit moves slightly slower!"/"this unit moves slightly faster!" under 7e but I do also look at units with a Move stat 1" slower or faster than average and question whether it really matters. Anyone have strong opinions on having units with move 5", 6", and 7"?

WS/BS. How important is it really for these to be different? It felt like it could make some sense last edition with the comparative WS table, but the stat range is so much smaller this edition. Major cases of different WS/BS:
-Orks: I'd really like to give them weaker guns and better BS instead of good guns with crap BS to cut down on the number of times you're rolling a boatload of dice to resolve anything. Also if you cut out the "we have an army with across-the-board BS5+" problem it'd make to-hit mods fairer.
-Scions/Battle Sisters: Why do they need to have WS4+ and limited/weak melee attacks?
-Vehicles/Tau: I'd like to reinterpret "melee" to cover melee-range defensive shooting as well, which is sort of what things like pintle-mounted weapons are for; in that context it feels like it makes more sense to give Tau units/everyone's vehicles better "WS".

T/Sv and S/AP: I feel like these ought to become a single continuum because the stats are pretty closely related to each other. They vary some when we're talking about infantry (there are T3/- units and T3/3+ units, T4/6+ to T4/2+, for instance) but by the time you get to T5 everything's got a 4+, 3+, or 2+, and it narrows further until you get to the endless parade of T8/3+ vehicles.

Dice: I know I've said in the past that "make the dice bigger!" is a crap one-sentence fix to the game but sitting here thinking about combining T/Sv and S/AP like this it feels like it makes more sense. The other thing I'm thinking is that it makes "critical effects" (on a (maximum roll) do something) less dominant if it's, say, a 10 on a d10 instead of a 6 on a d6.

I wasn't sure about Flames of War's armour facing system but I've started picking up Team Yankee (same system, but WWIII) recently and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. It still opens up some problems when it comes to which way things on round/oval bases are 'facing' but I'm open to using it.

On blasts: I like Bolt Action/Gates of Antares random number of damage rolls per hit a lot better than 40k's random number of to-hit rolls per attack for a quick-roll structure that doesn't require squinting at blast templates.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:
...* Eliminating stats does remove design space, and some factions are already dangerously close to stealing one anothers' gimmicks. Rubric marines, plague marines,a nd necrons should all probably feel unique, for instance.

* Maybe FNP could be a one-time roll of sorts that happens at the end of a phase? Sort of like an oldschool WBB? Like, maybe you do an apothecary style roll at the end of the phase to regenerate lost models? Or just roll a d6 for each model slain in the unit and bring that model back within X" of surviving squad members on a 6+? If the unit got wiped, mark the position of the last guy to drop and respawn on his position? If enemies are too close to do this, then no respawning for you (subtle boost to melee units.)

True, but the question is whether it'd be possible to make units feel unique while also reducing the stat count. GW doesn't use the boundaries of the design space they've got. To pick on the examples you've given Rubricae and Plague Marines could theoretically both be "Space Marines +1" on the durability stats, but then Rubricae have slightly stronger rifles, more limited upgrade guns, worse melee stats, and whatever the sorcerer does, but Plague Marines would have a more normal Chaos Marine-esque arsenal and better melee weapons.

I've got a draft of a Warmachine-esque corpse token system for "reanimation protocols" to make the system work more like in Dawn of War where instead of the Necrons just standing up on their own you have Tomb Spyders/Ghost Arks collecting corpses and using them to reinforce units.

I think rolling dice is where most people interact with the game, so in some ways I think it's ok that we have more opportunities now to roll dice than we did in other editions. I remember playing this game where you could get locked in combat with no chance to wound and having to pull models because no armor save roll was available.

That being said, I do think the amount of rerolls across the board is annoying. Every faction it seems (may not be everyone) has some flavor of reroll to hit and exploding sixes. I agree I would like to see this disappear from the game or at least be much rarer.

I agree that the amount of rerolls available to armies has created opportunities to mitigate the weaknesses/superiority of different armies. The bs3 of a space marine is no longer that special because I can reroll my 4+ due to an aura.

I think the reroll has normalized the BS/WS across armies, while perhaps not being costed appropriately in points. If we want to keep it a D6 game, limiting the rerolls will be necessary to keep the armies meaningfully differentiated on WS and BS. Otherwise, the solution might be to go to D10s or 20s.

Armorwise, I wish we'd just chill with the amount of ap-1 weapons. I like the fact that you can actually take armor saves against high AP weapons, I don't want to see us return to the old days of AP weapons mean no save possibility in most cases. As a player it's more satisfying to have a shot at a 6+ save than to have my unit just die. I don't think the problem is that you can take armor saves, I think it's that there are too many ap-1 and 2 weapons. It really reduces the points value that should associated with armor. A solution is that we could make models cheaper, but that doesn't help with the time concerns.

Finally, the one roll I do see consistently slow down games is the damage roll. I wouldn't mind seeing flat damage being the norm, or again, much less common.

And finally, finally, I'd like to see us reduce the size of normal games. Maybe 2,000 is too high.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Thinking about unit stats. Wounds/model could be eliminated entirely (a la Bolt Action/Antares), major casualty of that would be peoples' beatstick super-epic commanders of doom. Multi-wound beatstick captains don't feel very wargame-like but do feel very 40k-like, not sure what to do about that problem.

Movement: I know it was irritating to need piles upon piles of special rules for "this unit moves slightly slower!"/"this unit moves slightly faster!" under 7e but I do also look at units with a Move stat 1" slower or faster than average and question whether it really matters. Anyone have strong opinions on having units with move 5", 6", and 7"?

WS/BS. How important is it really for these to be different? It felt like it could make some sense last edition with the comparative WS table, but the stat range is so much smaller this edition. Major cases of different WS/BS:
-Orks: I'd really like to give them weaker guns and better BS instead of good guns with crap BS to cut down on the number of times you're rolling a boatload of dice to resolve anything. Also if you cut out the "we have an army with across-the-board BS5+" problem it'd make to-hit mods fairer.
-Scions/Battle Sisters: Why do they need to have WS4+ and limited/weak melee attacks?
-Vehicles/Tau: I'd like to reinterpret "melee" to cover melee-range defensive shooting as well, which is sort of what things like pintle-mounted weapons are for; in that context it feels like it makes more sense to give Tau units/everyone's vehicles better "WS".

T/Sv and S/AP: I feel like these ought to become a single continuum because the stats are pretty closely related to each other. They vary some when we're talking about infantry (there are T3/- units and T3/3+ units, T4/6+ to T4/2+, for instance) but by the time you get to T5 everything's got a 4+, 3+, or 2+, and it narrows further until you get to the endless parade of T8/3+ vehicles.

Dice: I know I've said in the past that "make the dice bigger!" is a crap one-sentence fix to the game but sitting here thinking about combining T/Sv and S/AP like this it feels like it makes more sense. The other thing I'm thinking is that it makes "critical effects" (on a (maximum roll) do something) less dominant if it's, say, a 10 on a d10 instead of a 6 on a d6.

I wasn't sure about Flames of War's armour facing system but I've started picking up Team Yankee (same system, but WWIII) recently and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. It still opens up some problems when it comes to which way things on round/oval bases are 'facing' but I'm open to using it.

On blasts: I like Bolt Action/Gates of Antares random number of damage rolls per hit a lot better than 40k's random number of to-hit rolls per attack for a quick-roll structure that doesn't require squinting at blast templates.

I think WS/BS being different is fine.

The ability to have S, Ap, T, and Sv is well utilized at the infantry scale, but not well utilized at the vehicle scale since they just decided that vehicles would be T7 and T8 with a 3+ save. This is particularly bad because AT weapons are S8, 9, and 10 with AP2, 3, or 4, meaning that AT weapon basically see tanks the same way regardless of the weapon or the tank [apparently, whether a tank is small-arms proof is more significant for differentiating them than their proofness vs. AT]. Even tanks being T8 & T9 instead of T7 &T8 would have made a difference in making their stat differences relevant. And, of course, because all AT weapons also have high AP [because a weapon that can kill a Leman Russ will definitely make a mockery of Terminator or Power Armor, that would be stupid otherwise], vehicles don't ever get their armor so it doesn't matter.

I don't think we should go away at least from the old system at the infantry level. The old system has the advantage of heavy armor being worth more since half-penetrations aren't a thing, but the current system also means that what would have been no save before has a 1/3 greater chance of failing.

I definitely am not a fan of moving away form d6's. D6's are cheap, available, and easy to roll and read. It's not rolling a lot of d6's that's the problem, it's rolling and then re-rolling, then rolling and then re-rolling, and rolling and then re-rolling, and still not making a difference.


I'd definitely use Flames of War armor to return armor facings. Arguing about the 45 degree lines was a mess. Arguing about whether you're behind the front of the tank is much less of one, since it's overall easy to see most of the time. And you can argue that high-incidence shots on the side have good odds of ricochet anyway, so it's as reasonably well protected as the front.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lifeafter wrote:
I think rolling dice is where most people interact with the game, so in some ways I think it's ok that we have more opportunities now to roll dice than we did in other editions. I remember playing this game where you could get locked in combat with no chance to wound and having to pull models because no armor save roll was available.

That being said, I do think the amount of rerolls across the board is annoying. Every faction it seems (may not be everyone) has some flavor of reroll to hit and exploding sixes. I agree I would like to see this disappear from the game or at least be much rarer.

I agree that the amount of rerolls available to armies has created opportunities to mitigate the weaknesses/superiority of different armies. The bs3 of a space marine is no longer that special because I can reroll my 4+ due to an aura.

I think the reroll has normalized the BS/WS across armies, while perhaps not being costed appropriately in points. If we want to keep it a D6 game, limiting the rerolls will be necessary to keep the armies meaningfully differentiated on WS and BS. Otherwise, the solution might be to go to D10s or 20s.

Armorwise, I wish we'd just chill with the amount of ap-1 weapons. I like the fact that you can actually take armor saves against high AP weapons, I don't want to see us return to the old days of AP weapons mean no save possibility in most cases. As a player it's more satisfying to have a shot at a 6+ save than to have my unit just die. I don't think the problem is that you can take armor saves, I think it's that there are too many ap-1 and 2 weapons. It really reduces the points value that should associated with armor. A solution is that we could make models cheaper, but that doesn't help with the time concerns.

Finally, the one roll I do see consistently slow down games is the damage roll. I wouldn't mind seeing flat damage being the norm, or again, much less common.

And finally, finally, I'd like to see us reduce the size of normal games. Maybe 2,000 is too high.

The re-rolls actually increase the significance of the difference in Ballistic Skill. SM get vastly more out of re-rolls are vastly more than Orks do.

AP2 used to be AP3 and ignore most armor, you now get a 5+ versus it, so they're actually tougher than they used to be. AP1 [formerly AP4] is really the only weapon that got more lethal on average than it used to be.
Sv2+ is hit really bad, though, because AP2 was the realm of really uncommon, low fire rate, and for tank breaking, and a Battle Cannon partially penetrating a terminator when it didn't before sucks for the terminator.

I'd actually rather go back to the old system of armor though. Technically, armor was weaker, but it felt more powerful. Taking 5+ and 6+ saves sucks an is really feelsbad, even if you would have just removed them before. Mostly because it feels insignificant. [well, it is insignificant]

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I think WS/BS being different is fine.

It doesn't hurt, sure, but it also doesn't help. It feels like adding an extra lever on top of the weapon stats where when the designers want to make a unit crap in melee they give it S3, no melee weapon, and then weaker WS to make it triply pointless to make melee attacks. The third lever doesn't add anything to the process.

The ability to have S, Ap, T, and Sv is well utilized at the infantry scale, but not well utilized at the vehicle scale since they just decided that vehicles would be T7 and T8 with a 3+ save. This is particularly bad because AT weapons are S8, 9, and 10 with AP2, 3, or 4, meaning that AT weapon basically see tanks the same way regardless of the weapon or the tank [apparently, whether a tank is small-arms proof is more significant for differentiating them than their proofness vs. AT]. Even tanks being T8 & T9 instead of T7 &T8 would have made a difference in making their stat differences relevant. And, of course, because all AT weapons also have high AP [because a weapon that can kill a Leman Russ will definitely make a mockery of Terminator or Power Armor, that would be stupid otherwise], vehicles don't ever get their armor so it doesn't matter.

I don't think we should go away at least from the old system at the infantry level. The old system has the advantage of heavy armor being worth more since half-penetrations aren't a thing, but the current system also means that what would have been no save before has a 1/3 greater chance of failing.

Sure, but is 40k supposed to be a fiddly skirmish game where the precise differences between a boltgun, bolt rifle, auto bolt rifle, stalker bolt rifle, stalker boltgun, bolt pistol, storm bolter, twin boltgun, combi-bolter, assault bolt rifle, etc. are gone into in exhaustive detail or is it supposed to be a company-scale wargame where we're having a battle that might include infantry, tanks, and really big robots on the same table? On a skirmish scale discussing the variations between the 7.92x57mm Mauser, .30-06 Springfield, .303 British, and 7.62x54mmR cartridges is an interesting discussion, but if we're playing Bolt Action we call them all "rifle" and move on.

I definitely am not a fan of moving away form d6's. D6's are cheap, available, and easy to roll and read. It's not rolling a lot of d6's that's the problem, it's rolling and then re-rolling, then rolling and then re-rolling, and rolling and then re-rolling, and still not making a difference.

I raised the suggestion of d10s mostly because I find fishing for 6s on large numbers of d6s too reliable, I'm not that attached to the idea of d10s. Going from three-rolls to two-rolls we might be able to change the assumption that rifle infantry are all firing two shots all the time, which would make things like doing something with gauss flayers or shuriken weapons' pseudo-rending more possible.

The re-rolls actually increase the significance of the difference in Ballistic Skill. SM get vastly more out of re-rolls are vastly more than Orks do.

I agree with you when they're the same unit size. There are situations though where they're not. Orks have way more models. 30 orks shooting once jump from 10 hits to 16.6 hits with rerolls. 10 marines go from 6.6 hits to 8.8. Now, 30 marines add 6.6 hits with rerolls, but there's a huge cost difference.

I'm willing to admit I'm wrong on my perception of this. To me it feels more special when 30 marines hit 20 times and orks 10 than when marines hit 27 times and orks 17 because the six hits against marines are so much more valuable than the six hits against orks.

I'd actually rather go back to the old system of armor though. Technically, armor was weaker, but it felt more powerful. Taking 5+ and 6+ saves sucks an is really feelsbad, even if you would have just removed them before. Mostly because it feels insignificant. [well, it is insignificant]

I actually think I agree with you on this. If we pay a high points premium for 3+ or 2+, we should take the saves unmodified if we're able to save at all. There will be instances where we can't.

Throwing more ideas out there:

My major goal with reducing the game to first principles is to reduce the amount of cognitive steps required to resolve simple actions, like "I want to attack that thing". One step to accomplishing that, I think, is going to be reducing not just the amount of weapons in the game but the amount of weapons on a given unit.

At the moment a Tactical Squad could theoretically have boltguns, bolt pistols, frag grenades, krak grenades, a special weapon, a heavy weapon, an upgrade pistol or combi-weapon on the sergeant, and a melee upgrade weapon on the sergeant, which is cool for a skirmish game but ends up feeling like a lot of different statlines to need to process every time you want to make an attack.

Related to the problem of a huge number of different weapon stats is the problem of target priority. People hail being able to split fire in 8e as a positive step because it reduces the amount of wasted firepower off, say, a Tactical Squad wanting to shoot its missile launcher at a tank and its boltguns at an infantry squad in a different direction, but it also adds in a lot of extra middle-of-turn bookkeeping for some units when you need to declare what each of your 5-7 different weapon profiles are shooting at and remember what you said while you're going through the long process of actually resolving each of those attacks.

When it comes to infantry units a lot of historical wargames split off the heavy weapon team from the rifle section into a separate unit, which might be an answer to the target priority problem if you split up some squads that way. Vehicles are more problematic but my current thinking is that I might be able to clean some stuff up by combining different weapons into one "profile" instead of having a separate independently-targeted statblock for each physical barrel mounted on the model.

On turn order: I've experimented with the Kill Team-style turn order (player A move/player B move, alternating activations combat) and I'm thinking at this point that I'd like to cut the rules all the way back to a one-phase turn in the style of Bolt Action where a unit gets an "activation" that may include moving and attacking, or charging and fighting , or standing still and attacking, or something similar. I don't know if I'm going to be able to control number of units per army enough for simple alternating activations to work, and the Bolt Action dice-drawing system, while simple, is gameable by taking a bunch of really cheap units to make sure you draw your die and can fire your big heavy unit earlier in the turn.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Throwing more ideas out there:

My major goal with reducing the game to first principles is to reduce the amount of cognitive steps required to resolve simple actions, like "I want to attack that thing". One step to accomplishing that, I think, is going to be reducing not just the amount of weapons in the game but the amount of weapons on a given unit.

This doesn't work given where 40k started out at.

40k is at its heart a skirmish game that grew into what it is now if anything I'd push to scale the game back down pulling out the Warlords, Superheavies, and Fliers and bring the game back to where it was in late 4th or early 5th edition in terms of on table scale.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Throwing more ideas out there:

My major goal with reducing the game to first principles is to reduce the amount of cognitive steps required to resolve simple actions, like "I want to attack that thing". One step to accomplishing that, I think, is going to be reducing not just the amount of weapons in the game but the amount of weapons on a given unit.

This doesn't work given where 40k started out at.

40k is at its heart a skirmish game that grew into what it is now if anything I'd push to scale the game back down pulling out the Warlords, Superheavies, and Fliers and bring the game back to where it was in late 4th or early 5th edition in terms of on table scale.

A 40k skirmish game is a different project. Kill Team, Heralds of Ruin, Necromunda, whatever you'd want to go with. I'm talking about rules for the company-scale wargame we've got now here. We can talk about the small-scale skirmish format somewhere else.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A 40k skirmish game is a different project. Kill Team, Heralds of Ruin, Necromunda, whatever you'd want to go with. I'm talking about rules for the company-scale wargame we've got now here. We can talk about the small-scale skirmish format somewhere else.

Were 3rd and 4th edition 40k skirmish games?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A 40k skirmish game is a different project. Kill Team, Heralds of Ruin, Necromunda, whatever you'd want to go with. I'm talking about rules for the company-scale wargame we've got now here. We can talk about the small-scale skirmish format somewhere else.

Were 3rd and 4th edition 40k skirmish games?

40k's been in a weird in-between space for a long time. From what I've read of the rules RT and 2e were skirmish games, and 6e-now are trying more to be large wargames, I can't point you at a specific tipping point where the one gave way to the other in between those two. I think trying to be a bigger game is hurting it as a skirmish game (loss of customizability, irrelevance of infantry statlines in the face of spamming giant guns) and trying to be a skirmish game is hurting it as a wargame (stratagem/relic/WT bloat, profile bloat, weird character interactions), so I thought I might try and build a set of rules for playing 40k as a larger-scale wargame that isn't also trying to be a skirmish game.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A 40k skirmish game is a different project. Kill Team, Heralds of Ruin, Necromunda, whatever you'd want to go with. I'm talking about rules for the company-scale wargame we've got now here. We can talk about the small-scale skirmish format somewhere else.

Were 3rd and 4th edition 40k skirmish games?

40k's been in a weird in-between space for a long time. From what I've read of the rules RT and 2e were skirmish games, and 6e-now are trying more to be large wargames, I can't point you at a specific tipping point where the one gave way to the other in between those two. I think trying to be a bigger game is hurting it as a skirmish game (loss of customizability, irrelevance of infantry statlines in the face of spamming giant guns) and trying to be a skirmish game is hurting it as a wargame (stratagem/relic/WT bloat, profile bloat, weird character interactions), so I thought I might try and build a set of rules for playing 40k as a larger-scale wargame that isn't also trying to be a skirmish game.

Have you seen the current apocalypse rules? I think they have a lot in common with what you're trying to do.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A 40k skirmish game is a different project. Kill Team, Heralds of Ruin, Necromunda, whatever you'd want to go with. I'm talking about rules for the company-scale wargame we've got now here. We can talk about the small-scale skirmish format somewhere else.

Were 3rd and 4th edition 40k skirmish games?

40k's been in a weird in-between space for a long time. From what I've read of the rules RT and 2e were skirmish games, and 6e-now are trying more to be large wargames, I can't point you at a specific tipping point where the one gave way to the other in between those two. I think trying to be a bigger game is hurting it as a skirmish game (loss of customizability, irrelevance of infantry statlines in the face of spamming giant guns) and trying to be a skirmish game is hurting it as a wargame (stratagem/relic/WT bloat, profile bloat, weird character interactions), so I thought I might try and build a set of rules for playing 40k as a larger-scale wargame that isn't also trying to be a skirmish game.

Have you seen the current apocalypse rules? I think they have a lot in common with what you're trying to do.

I have, and have played with them, and dislike them intensely. They seem to have numbers assigned at random, are largely designed so that only superheavies actually do anything, run on the same uniqueness-problem non-scalable one-use-only special power design as current 40k with the cards, and the rules are so stripped back it takes longer to take all your models out of the box than it does to actually play the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On movement: On paper I like the idea of restricting some vehicles' ability to turn freely/move sideways, since it's a pretty straightforward way of making gameplay more cinematic, but it also risks unnecessarily nerfing forces that use wheeled/tracked vehicles and unfairly advantaging people with walkers/skimmers. Anyone have any opinions on that?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A 40k skirmish game is a different project. Kill Team, Heralds of Ruin, Necromunda, whatever you'd want to go with. I'm talking about rules for the company-scale wargame we've got now here. We can talk about the small-scale skirmish format somewhere else.

Were 3rd and 4th edition 40k skirmish games?

40k's been in a weird in-between space for a long time. From what I've read of the rules RT and 2e were skirmish games, and 6e-now are trying more to be large wargames, I can't point you at a specific tipping point where the one gave way to the other in between those two. I think trying to be a bigger game is hurting it as a skirmish game (loss of customizability, irrelevance of infantry statlines in the face of spamming giant guns) and trying to be a skirmish game is hurting it as a wargame (stratagem/relic/WT bloat, profile bloat, weird character interactions), so I thought I might try and build a set of rules for playing 40k as a larger-scale wargame that isn't also trying to be a skirmish game.

Have you seen the current apocalypse rules? I think they have a lot in common with what you're trying to do.

I have, and have played with them, and dislike them intensely. They seem to have numbers assigned at random, are largely designed so that only superheavies actually do anything, run on the same uniqueness-problem non-scalable one-use-only special power design as current 40k with the cards, and the rules are so stripped back it takes longer to take all your models out of the box than it does to actually play the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On movement: On paper I like the idea of restricting some vehicles' ability to turn freely/move sideways, since it's a pretty straightforward way of making gameplay more cinematic, but it also risks unnecessarily nerfing forces that use wheeled/tracked vehicles and unfairly advantaging people with walkers/skimmers. Anyone have any opinions on that?

Given that tracked tanks can turn about one track or even turn on point, why would that unfairly advantage walkers? Walkers can't turn any better than in place. Like honestly, if we implemented movement rules, I'd feel they'd advantage tracked and hovertanks and disadvantage walkers and wheeled vehicles

Also, I'd totally be up for introducing rules for different types of motive system:
Tracked Tank: Tracked tanks can move forwards and backwards and turn on point, or at least close enough to on-point to count. They have better armor than other tanks, because having the widest ground contact area and a low frontal profile allows them to support both more weight of armor over a smaller area. Tracked Tanks cannot cross obstacles, but are not slowed or hindered by difficult terrain. Tracked tanks also do not suffer firing on the move penalties, because they offer a more stable ride when moving and their high ground contact area allows them to stably fire heavier weapons by serving to naturally brace them. Tracked tanks are slower than other vehicles, but still appreciably faster than walking.

Hovertanks: Hovertanks are the lightest, but the fastest. They can cross all terrain without penalty, but also can't carry as much weight of armor because they need to use power to fly. They're still usually the second best well armored of the groups. Because they have no natural friction with the ground and are lighter, heavy weapon recoil severely affects them and they take moderate penalties for firing on the move. Gravitic Paneling is often redundant, and loss of a few panels doesn't compromise the vehicle's ability to move, and they thus resist immobilized results, but if they do become immobilized they crash and are destroyed instead. Some hovertanks can neutral steer, but some must move forward to turn if they use control surfaces instead of reaction control for steering. Hovertanks that can neutral steer can also move side-to-side, but more slowly than they move forwards.

Wheeled Vehicles: Wheeled vehicles are faster than tracked vehicles or walkers, but not as fast as hovertanks. They bog down in difficult terrain. However, they can resist immobilized results from damage, since they can drive missing wheels. They also have a bumpy ride, and take penalties for moving and firing. For the most part, wheeled vehicles function similarly to hovertanks but are worse but generally very cheap, and usually only have limited armor. Wheeled vehicles must be moving forwards to turn.

Walker: Walkers are either very slow if they have short legs, or reasonably fast if they have long ones. Walkers have a large profile to armor, lots of moving joints and weak spots, and a very small ground contact area and thus high ground pressure, making them generally poorly armored and armed compared to other vehicles since they can either be as heavy and have to distribute the limited weight they have to use over greater area. High ground pressure means they bog down easily in difficult terrain, more easily than any other vehicle, but they can step up and over small obstacles and holes that only hovertanks could cross. Walking makes for a very bumpy ride, hitting anything while moving is basically impossible. If a walker becomes immobilized, it falls over and is destroyed instead. Short legged walkers can usually neutral steer, but long legged ones need to move forward while turning.

Probably not really needed and superfluous, though.

Thought on psykers: One problem 40k and WHFB/AoS have always had with buff spells (since I've been playing, at least) is that if someone gets the first turn they get to whack everything when it doesn't have any of its spells up. It might be interesting to consider psychic powers as passive always-on things like the 4e Eldar Warlock powers, then implement a mechanism for turning them off via anti-psychic tools; it'd make them less random, you wouldn't need to track start of turn/start of battle round stuff as much, and it'd be easier to remember what was in play and what wasn't. Opinions?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Thought on psykers: One problem 40k and WHFB/AoS have always had with buff spells (since I've been playing, at least) is that if someone gets the first turn they get to whack everything when it doesn't have any of its spells up. It might be interesting to consider psychic powers as passive always-on things like the 4e Eldar Warlock powers, then implement a mechanism for turning them off via anti-psychic tools; it'd make them less random, you wouldn't need to track start of turn/start of battle round stuff as much, and it'd be easier to remember what was in play and what wasn't. Opinions?

OTOH, there's stuff like deciding which power you want to use, so I might smite one turn and use Sanctuary the next as I decide different units need Sanctuary.

I think that alternating phases would be a decent solution to getting psychic power online.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Thought on psykers: One problem 40k and WHFB/AoS have always had with buff spells (since I've been playing, at least) is that if someone gets the first turn they get to whack everything when it doesn't have any of its spells up. It might be interesting to consider psychic powers as passive always-on things like the 4e Eldar Warlock powers, then implement a mechanism for turning them off via anti-psychic tools; it'd make them less random, you wouldn't need to track start of turn/start of battle round stuff as much, and it'd be easier to remember what was in play and what wasn't. Opinions?

I really like this idea. It could be represented by auras and wargear without needing to introduce any new mechanics. It would also make it easier to represent technological equivalents for non psychic factions - tau, DE, necrons etc.

I’m not sure how best to represent deny the witch though, and as mentioned it would remove the ability to choose to activate a specific power so reduce tactical options.

A replacement for the current perils system could be introduced since there would be no more psychic tests. Maybe have psykers always take a Ld test every morale phase. If they pass, nothing happens, if they fail, they suffer a number of mortal wounds equal to however much they failed by. With appropriate special rules for units which can currently mitigate perils.

Kill the wound roll.

You make a hit roll based on Weapon Skill/Ballistic Skill. If you fail, nothing happens.

If you succeed, your opponent makes a save roll based on their Armour, modified by your Strength.

If the save roll fails, your weapon does Glancing damage. If the save roll succeeds, your weapon does Critical damage.

Add damage tokens equal to that damage to your target.

If the target has damage tokens equal to its Toughness, remove one model and all damage tokens.

This reduces the entire process to two rolls, while keeping outcomes relatively predictable, without losing any complexity at all. You can give Orks no Armour but high Toughness, and it means they're significantly more vulnerable to some weapons – those with high Critical Damage, which are good at shredding lightly armoured infantry – than others. You can give a Lasgun Strength 3, Damage 1/4, and give an Autogun Strength 4, Damage 1/3. You can give vehicles high Armour but low Toughness, with an ability to negate Glancing damage, and hark back to the old paradigm where monsters took a lot of hits reliably but could be worn down, while vehicles were functionally immune to small-arms fire but could be taken out with one good shot from an anti-tank weapon. You can make splinter weaponry into a weapons with high Critical damage, low Glancing damage, and low Strength – now it's horrifying against lightly armoured opponents, but plinks off power armour.

RevlidRas wrote:
Kill the wound roll.

You make a hit roll based on Weapon Skill/Ballistic Skill. If you fail, nothing happens.

If you succeed, your opponent makes a save roll based on their Armour, modified by your Strength.

If the save roll fails, your weapon does Glancing damage. If the save roll succeeds, your weapon does Critical damage.

Add damage tokens equal to that damage to your target.

If the target has damage tokens equal to its Toughness, remove one model and all damage tokens.

This reduces the entire process to two rolls, while keeping outcomes relatively predictable, without losing any complexity at all. You can give Orks no Armour but high Toughness, and it means they're significantly more vulnerable to some weapons – those with high Critical Damage, which are good at shredding lightly armoured infantry – than others. You can give a Lasgun Strength 3, Damage 1/4, and give an Autogun Strength 4, Damage 1/3. You can give vehicles high Armour but low Toughness, with an ability to negate Glancing damage, and hark back to the old paradigm where monsters took a lot of hits reliably but could be worn down, while vehicles were functionally immune to small-arms fire but could be taken out with one good shot from an anti-tank weapon. You can make splinter weaponry into a weapons with high Critical damage, low Glancing damage, and low Strength – now it's horrifying against lightly armoured opponents, but plinks off power armour.

I'd rather stick with wound rolls and do away with damage, though. I think Hit-Wound-Armor have a pretty adequate level of complexity and plays fairly fast, the matter is the re-rolls for days on everything.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

RevlidRas wrote:
Kill the wound roll.

You make a hit roll based on Weapon Skill/Ballistic Skill. If you fail, nothing happens.

If you succeed, your opponent makes a save roll based on their Armour, modified by your Strength.

If the save roll fails, your weapon does Glancing damage. If the save roll succeeds, your weapon does Critical damage.

Add damage tokens equal to that damage to your target.

If the target has damage tokens equal to its Toughness, remove one model and all damage tokens.

This reduces the entire process to two rolls, while keeping outcomes relatively predictable, without losing any complexity at all. You can give Orks no Armour but high Toughness, and it means they're significantly more vulnerable to some weapons – those with high Critical Damage, which are good at shredding lightly armoured infantry – than others. You can give a Lasgun Strength 3, Damage 1/4, and give an Autogun Strength 4, Damage 1/3. You can give vehicles high Armour but low Toughness, with an ability to negate Glancing damage, and hark back to the old paradigm where monsters took a lot of hits reliably but could be worn down, while vehicles were functionally immune to small-arms fire but could be taken out with one good shot from an anti-tank weapon. You can make splinter weaponry into a weapons with high Critical damage, low Glancing damage, and low Strength – now it's horrifying against lightly armoured opponents, but plinks off power armour.

I'd rather stick with wound rolls and do away with damage, though. I think Hit-Wound-Armor have a pretty adequate level of complexity and plays fairly fast, the matter is the re-rolls for days on everything.

The problem is that the rerolls are necessary because otherwise hit-wound-armor is so unreliable (3+-3+-5+, good rolls to hit and to wound followed by a poor save, is only about 30% pass rate) that you either need to stick the rerolls in to make it more reliable or you need to give everyone even more dice.

The reason 3e/4e didn't have all the rerolls or the fire rate bloat is that you could easily find yourself rolling only two dice, because AP ignored saves instead of modifying them.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I'd rather stick with wound rolls and do away with damage, though. I think Hit-Wound-Armor have a pretty adequate level of complexity and plays fairly fast, the matter is the re-rolls for days on everything.

My problem is that this current system means that stats are all much more interchangeable. BS/WS, Str, and AP used to do somewhat different things or function in different ways. WS doubled as defense, Str was important for penetrating Vehicles and could cause Instant Death, AP was binary rather than scaling. Now they're all much the same; a 16% shift in a series of three 1-in-6 chances that leaves every gun and defense feeling quite samey.

An Ork is tough and burly and can fight through grievous wounds, even though its armour is just scrap plates. A Stormtrooper is only human, but enjoys advanced carapace armour that can deflect enemy fire. Very different kinds of defense that would have needed different guns to combat in previous editions. In 8e, they're just... mostly about as tough. About the only time the Scions pull noticeably ahead is against raw S5 weaponry, because of a quirk in how wound rolls are calculated.

Making these three stats very different - so that WS/BS decides whether you hit (binary yes or no), Strength decides whether you penetrate or glance (effectively a multiplier on damage), and damage is guaranteed once you hit but varies based on the Strength vs Armour - means that despite the simplicity of the system, you can have some very different weapons with very clear niches and roles.