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Hey guys,

I'm writing a ruleset and codices based on a D10 and I want to hear your opinion about a rule, which makes you roll less dice:
"If, at any point, you have to roll 10 dice or more, you may instead declare that for each full 10 dice, the results are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Roll the rest of the dice normally".

So if an Astra Militarum player have to roll 53 to hit dice (in this case +6 for a Guardsman), he may roll 3 dice and add the result to 5 times 6+ (25) getting a final result of 25, 26, 27 or 28 hits.

Afterwards, he could use the rule again when making the to wound rolls.

The same rule could be used for a D6 system of course.

Alternatively, the rule could only be used in a game, only if both players agree.

This makes no sense and seems completely unnecessary.

This takes away the swinginess and inherent randomness of rolling dice. Yes averages are a thing, but they're not a rule. Things naturally deviate.

Sometimes you need the reality check of Custodes flubbing all of their attacks and orks hitting all of their shooting attacks.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Sometimes you need the reality check of Custodes flubbing all of their attacks and orks hitting all of their shooting attacks.

I'm not quite sure what you mean with this sentence, but mostly the rule is meant for horde players, who sigh and dread, when they have to roll their dice. I think people mention this subject quite often.

And you could decide yourself how many 10s of dices, you get the "auto-result" from: From the example above, you could "auto-resolve" 20/30 dice and roll the remaining 33/23 normally.

Chaospling wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Sometimes you need the reality check of Custodes flubbing all of their attacks and orks hitting all of their shooting attacks.

I'm not quite sure what you mean with this sentence, but mostly the rule is meant for horde players, who sigh and dread, when they have to roll their dice. I think people mention this subject quite often.

And you could decide yourself how many 10s of dices, you get the "auto-result" from: From the example above, you could "auto-resolve" 20/30 dice and roll the remaining 33/23 normally.

Think you're over-generalising here. I've met plenty of players who play hordes because they like rolling handfuls of dice at a time. This whole mentality of "we need to speed the game up even more, so get rid of this mechanic" needs to end.

I can see, that you posted again Valkyrie. Save your time - after your first and completely unconstructive and arrogant post, I've put you on the Ignore List. Have a good day.

Rolling loads of dice is a large part of the fun, as an Ork player. Especially when shooting, as you're always looking to see if you beat the odds - and so is your opponent. It's all well and good saying "those 20 orks with shootas will average 20 hits, 10 wounds...", but the opponent is also aware that there are 60 dice being rolled at them, and those 10 wounds could creep up to 15, or even 20, and that's still only 1/3 of their potential making it through!

Speeding up by auto-averaging the dice would remove the fun, I feel.


Now, you could consider using a d100 in the mix instead.

EG:

"When rolling dice, if you have 10 dice to roll, you can instead elect to roll a d100. The required roll is multiplied by 10, but if it succeeds, all 10 of the rolls are considered to succeed.
As an example: If you are rolling 13 dice, and needing a 6+, you can instead opt to roll a d100 and 3d10. The d10 need a 6+ to succeed once; the d100 needs a 60+ to succeed 10 times."

Which I now realise is the equivalent of just saying "this d10 counts as 10", and massively skews the averages.


On a side note, I've seen a lot of people ignoring others on here for what I consider very small slights. I can understand ignoring people who repeatedly make posts you find upsetting or offensive, but it seems people are cutting down the feedback they recieve from all future subjects based on whether they are agreed with or not, which is liable to cause confirmation bias - you can't be wrong if you silence everyone who says so.

If this just the way people are these days? Or have I just been noticing it more?

@some-bloke:
Regarding "Ignoring". Actually I started a post and wrote something like "But if it doesn't makes sense to you or you didn't understand my intention with the rule, why don't you ask me..." but I've tried that before with people in here, who didn't want to have a relaxed chat like you would, if you were face to face with a friend, and I didn't get anywhere with it.

So I will not and should not take my time to educate some guy on how to have an open and interesting discussion.

Look what you did; you replied politely and explained yourself thoroughly. AND you did something which very few actually are capable of: the idea which didn't agree with, you "build on top of that". Most people, when they are at work or whatever, when there's an idea, they don't like, they discard it and end the discussion. Companies are paying big money for workshops which help people to think, act and communicate constructively and evolve ideas, which they didn't come up with themselves.

And so, if I get a response like I did by Valkyrie, he'll be ignored, so I don't fall into a trap and start a fight with him. There are plenty of other decent guys in here, so I'm sure, I'll get something - you already gave me a great response!

Regarding the rule:
Funny that you like to roll that many dice. Actually I haven't had a problem with it myself either, but I just read about it so many times, that I thought, that I would work on the problem. It would be interesting to hear if horde players, who really are tired of rolling dice, what they think about such a rule.

In Chaospling's defense, Valkyrie totally rained on his parade, even though the math in his rule suggestion was completely lost on me.
And I have seen people complain over and over about 40k being bogged down by having to roll buckets of d6's, and GW apparently pushing for more dice rolls because they think it's what players want. I think those complaints were all on BOLS or Spikey Bits though, not here.

Personally I don't mind rolling lots of dice. I have a ton of tiny dice and a tray to roll them. My brother also 3D printed this castle tower that you drop dice through and they pacinko through it and roll out the bottom.
Also, I like that my Piranha shoots a dozen dice with its burst cannon and two gun drones. I love that Piranha. And my Broadside missile-boat. And my Stormsurge.

All that aside, I'd understand wanting to just take the average for half of 50+ dice rolls and roll the other half. Maybe the guardsmen are shooting in that civil war formation where they just shoot straight forward.

 kingpbjames wrote:
In Chaospling's defense, Valkyrie totally rained on his parade, even though the math in his rule suggestion was completely lost on me.
And I have seen people complain over and over about 40k being bogged down by having to roll buckets of d6's, and GW apparently pushing for more dice rolls because they think it's what players want. I think those complaints were all on BOLS or Spikey Bits though, not here.

Personally I don't mind rolling lots of dice. I have a ton of tiny dice and a tray to roll them. My brother also 3D printed this castle tower that you drop dice through and they pacinko through it and roll out the bottom.
Also, I like that my Piranha shoots a dozen dice with its burst cannon and two gun drones. I love that Piranha. And my Broadside missile-boat. And my Stormsurge.

All that aside, I'd understand wanting to just take the average for half of 50+ dice rolls and roll the other half. Maybe the guardsmen are shooting in that civil war formation where they just shoot straight forward.

Nice going of your brother - tell him that his next project should be an advanced castle tower: the dice drop out in six different areas according to the rolls

Actually I'm only on this forum and last time I fell over the subject was in the "Enough with the stats creeping" thread.

About the math, if we go by the D6 system and you don't want to roll, lets say, 18 to hit dice; you could utilise this rule and (in this example let's say you need 3+ = 2/3) roll no dice as 6 goes into 18 three times and auto-resolve, and so get 2/3 * 18 = 12 succesful hits.

Of course 18 dice are manageable, but 40+ dice gets tricky, can take time etc. etc.

Chaospling wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Sometimes you need the reality check of Custodes flubbing all of their attacks and orks hitting all of their shooting attacks.

I'm not quite sure what you mean with this sentence, but mostly the rule is meant for horde players, who sigh and dread, when they have to roll their dice. I think people mention this subject quite often.

And you could decide yourself how many 10s of dices, you get the "auto-result" from: From the example above, you could "auto-resolve" 20/30 dice and roll the remaining 33/23 normally.

What I'm saying is "outliers matter". If everything is rolling essentially the average, then I may as well play chess or rock, paper, scissors instead of a dice game.

Using averages is fine for theory crafting, but sometimes that unit is going to miss all of its attacks despite the odds, and sometimes it's going to hit every attack.

Just get a dice roller app you and your regular opponents are happy with if you want to speed up rolling bucketloads of dice.

A few years ago, I basically pitched the d6 version of this proposal, but only on lasgun shots. (At least, I think I kept it restricted to lasgun shots).

The idea being that rolling a million lasgun shots tended to take a lot of time for not much effect, but also lasguns (at the time) didn't really have big, swingy outlier results within a reasonable standards of deviation. Or put another way, a krak missile occassionally getting lucky and one-shotting a venom is worth rolling for, but a lasgun volley one-shotting a landraider is not.

So basically, I think the core of the idea has merit, but I'd only put it on certain units or weapons. Also, there's probably a preferable solution that involves lowering some of the hyper defense and hyper offense in the game and the sheer number of dice being rolled as a result.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
What I'm saying is "outliers matter".

But why? Why is an event with a 0.0000000000000001% chance to happen something that needs to be accounted for in the rules? Why isn't 1-10 dice worth of RNG plus a flat average result sufficient RNG to accomplish the relevant game design goals?

To put this into context, you have a 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005.5% chance of rolling a hit on all 120 attacks made by a 30-man conscript squad with FRFSRF within 12". You are about about one octillion times more likely to win the lottery with the purchase of a single ticket. Or, to put it a different way, your odds of 120 hits are worse than the odds of winning six consecutive powerball lotteries with a single ticket for each.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
What I'm saying is "outliers matter".

But why? Why is an event with a 0.0000000000000001% chance to happen something that needs to be accounted for in the rules? Why isn't 1-10 dice worth of RNG plus a flat average result sufficient RNG to accomplish the relevant game design goals?

The thing is, your proposal as I understand it doesn't differentiate between a tiny outlier and a relatively common one. As I said above, the chance that 10 lasguns will kill a landraider in a single volley isn't an outlier worth worrying about, but the chance that a krak missile rolls a 6 for damage and one-shots a venom is. And similarly, the chances that my Phoenix Lord will fail 2 saves and die instead of just 1 save and live can have a big impact on the game. My opponent would like me to roll to see if I die. I would be better off taking the average and guaranteeing that I live.

Which is why I suggest making the proposed rule limited to specific weapons or situations. Some rolling in 40k can be summed up as an average without too much fuss, but some shouldn't be.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
The thing is, your proposal as I understand it doesn't differentiate between a tiny outlier and a relatively common one. As I said above, the chance that 10 lasguns will kill a landraider in a single volley isn't an outlier worth worrying about, but the chance that a krak missile rolls a 6 for damage and one-shots a venom is.

Not my proposal, I'm just disputing the idea that all outliers need to be considered. But in this case the rule wouldn't apply to the krak missile. It only rolls one die so it would fall well short of the 10 dice threshold to activate an auto-average and you would roll normally.

And similarly, the chances that my Phoenix Lord will fail 2 saves and die instead of just 1 save and live can have a big impact on the game. My opponent would like me to roll to see if I die. I would be better off taking the average and guaranteeing that I live.

But this only matters if you take one example in a vacuum. Let's say it's 6 dice for the auto-average (since who knows what save the unit would have in a D10 system like OP proposes), and you have 6 saves to make. If you roll normally you have a 26% chance of taking 2+ wounds and a 33% chance of taking zero wounds. By invoking the automatic average you forfeit your 33% chance of avoiding damage entirely in exchange for avoiding the less likely scenario where you take multiple wounds. This only matters in the rare edge case where you have exactly 6 saves to make (since if you have 7+ you increase your chances of taking 2+ wounds on the entire batch by auto-averaging the first six), exactly two wounds left on the model, no other incoming attacks for the rest of the game, and a relevant reason to need the unit to survive. So yes, in this very specific end-of-game edge case you would gain a significant benefit from the rule but it's such a rare event that it's well worth it to greatly reduce the amount of dice rolling in the rest of the game.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
The thing is, your proposal as I understand it doesn't differentiate between a tiny outlier and a relatively common one. As I said above, the chance that 10 lasguns will kill a landraider in a single volley isn't an outlier worth worrying about, but the chance that a krak missile rolls a 6 for damage and one-shots a venom is.

Not my proposal, I'm just disputing the idea that all outliers need to be considered. But in this case the rule wouldn't apply to the krak missile. It only rolls one die so it would fall well short of the 10 dice threshold to activate an auto-average and you would roll normally.

Fair point. I was picturing the rule in the context of the d6 variant as switching over to d10s is a whole other can of worms. While you're right that I won't generally be rolling 6+ damage rolls for weapons with random damage, I'm not sure it's that unusual either. Off the top of my head, I run squads of 3 guided war walkers with 2 missile launchers each pretty often. It's not super uncommon for me to land all their hits and wounds (especially if their target is Doomed). So in a scenario like that, It's probably better to roll out the damage dice than get a guaranteed average. Especially if the average is enough to kill the target but a slightly unlucky roll isn't.

And similarly, the chances that my Phoenix Lord will fail 2 saves and die instead of just 1 save and live can have a big impact on the game. My opponent would like me to roll to see if I die. I would be better off taking the average and guaranteeing that I live.

But this only matters if you take one example in a vacuum. Let's say it's 6 dice for the auto-average (since who knows what save the unit would have in a D10 system like OP proposes), and you have 6 saves to make. If you roll normally you have a 26% chance of taking 2+ wounds and a 33% chance of taking zero wounds. By invoking the automatic average you forfeit your 33% chance of avoiding damage entirely in exchange for avoiding the less likely scenario where you take multiple wounds. This only matters in the rare edge case where you have exactly 6 saves to make (since if you have 7+ you increase your chances of taking 2+ wounds on the entire batch by auto-averaging the first six), exactly two wounds left on the model, no other incoming attacks for the rest of the game, and a relevant reason to need the unit to survive. So yes, in this very specific end-of-game edge case you would gain a significant benefit from the rule but it's such a rare event that it's well worth it to greatly reduce the amount of dice rolling in the rest of the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're making the situation more specific than it needs to be. Maybe the attacks hitting my phoenix lord do more than 1 damage meaning my current Wounds could be anywhere from 3-6. Maybe I don't need to survive to the end of the game; I just know that surviving through the end of this Fight phase will let the Phoenix Lord do something significant on my coming turn. Maybe I don't even need the PL to survive the current phase; I just want to tank this last batch of plasma shots because then my opponent will be stuck trying to finish me off with lasguns that they'd rather point at squishier targets. Maybe I'm just trying to stay above 3 Wounds so that my Chosen of Khaine damage cap rule will keep you from killing me in the Fight phase. I feel like there are plenty of situations where taking the average could work to my advantage. But admittedly, I might be overlooking something mathematical.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
So in a scenario like that, It's probably better to roll out the damage dice than get a guaranteed average. Especially if the average is enough to kill the target but a slightly unlucky roll isn't.

You mean the other way around? If you have six unsaved krak missile wounds go through then the fixed average result would be 21 damage, enough to kill most targets and cripple the LoW with 22+ wounds. And in a situation where the average kills the target but a slightly unlucky roll doesn't you'd obviously take the average, not roll normally.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're making the situation more specific than it needs to be.

Perhaps a bit, but you're still looking at edge cases. In the normal scenario what matters is average wounds over time. Getting one unsaved wound out of two isn't a failure, it's halfway to success and makes the job easier for the next attacks. And from an average value point of view you're getting no real benefit here. You eliminate the chance of taking 2+ wounds but also eliminate the chance of taking zero wounds. You're only coming out ahead when you get into an edge case where average value is replaced by an all-or-nothing attack where your opponent is down to their last attempt, or at least their last attempt without paying a high price to try again. There just aren't many cases where zero wounds is no better than one wound for the defender and the only thing that matters is not taking two or more wounds.

And yeah, in those edge cases you'll get an advantage. But IMO having that advantage, an advantage that can happen to either player, is an acceptable trade for the significant time savings you get every time a unit with a lot of attacks acts.

I appreciate this discussion and please don't let me stop you, but some of your arguments make me think, you haven't understood the rule entirely...

In my first example, which, with 53 dice, is quite extreme, the results was narrowed down to 25 to 28, which, in that case still is 80% of all the combinations.

Now, with fewer dice and utilising this rule to the full will of course lower the percentage of possible combinations even more, but what matters to me are the tactical decisions not rolling dice; the rule could be implemented, and a player could choose not to use it, because she's hoping for an outlier - she could be lucky to get that result, get unlucky and get the opposite result or she would get the same result, as if she had utilised the rule.

For me, this just gives players more control and another layer to the game, which is quite exciting in my opinion - we're not even close to discard the dice altogether.

Chaospling wrote:
I can see, that you posted again Valkyrie. Save your time - after your first and completely unconstructive and arrogant post, I've put you on the Ignore List. Have a good day.

Looks like you and I seem to disagree on what arrogance is. I simply stated the idea didn't make sense and seemed unnecessary. Sorry to burst your bubble.

This is a stupid idea so go ahead and throw me on the same list as Valk. Why not skip rolling dice completely and just use the average value except for armor saves? It would save even more time and give the same result as your "solution". I also don't think rolling too many dice has even been a problem since 7th.

Toofast wrote:
Why not skip rolling dice completely and just use the average value except for armor saves?

How would that work?

If you're redesigning the whole system why not simply write the rules so they don't require rolling buckets of dice. GW has this stupid fascination with a 1:1 ratio between models and dice but there's no need to stick to that.

I'd also advise against using D10s if you're planning to roll more than a few at a time. It's surprising how cumbersome it is to read numbers from multiple dice at a time.

Slipspace wrote:
If you're redesigning the whole system why not simply write the rules so they don't require rolling buckets of dice. GW has this stupid fascination with a 1:1 ratio between models and dice but there's no need to stick to that.

I'd also advise against using D10s if you're planning to roll more than a few at a time. It's surprising how cumbersome it is to read numbers from multiple dice at a time.

Because one of my goals was to keep an "original/official 40k vibe" so players would still feel, that they played a Games Workshop product.

I completely hear you about the 1:1 ratio between models and dice! Isn't Bolt Action using such a design?

Alas, the rulebook is done, so the D10 is not going to change...

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
So in a scenario like that, It's probably better to roll out the damage dice than get a guaranteed average. Especially if the average is enough to kill the target but a slightly unlucky roll isn't.

You mean the other way around? If you have six unsaved krak missile wounds go through then the fixed average result would be 21 damage, enough to kill most targets and cripple the LoW with 22+ wounds. And in a situation where the average kills the target but a slightly unlucky roll doesn't you'd obviously take the average, not roll normally.

Sorry. "Better" was a poor choice of words. I meant "better for gameplay," for exactly the reasons you've spelled out. I think having the uncertainty as to whether those missiles will wipe their target out or just leave it low on health are good for the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're making the situation more specific than it needs to be.

Perhaps a bit, but you're still looking at edge cases. In the normal scenario what matters is average wounds over time. Getting one unsaved wound out of two isn't a failure, it's halfway to success and makes the job easier for the next attacks. And from an average value point of view you're getting no real benefit here. You eliminate the chance of taking 2+ wounds but also eliminate the chance of taking zero wounds. You're only coming out ahead when you get into an edge case where average value is replaced by an all-or-nothing attack where your opponent is down to their last attempt, or at least their last attempt without paying a high price to try again. There just aren't many cases where zero wounds is no better than one wound for the defender and the only thing that matters is not taking two or more wounds.

And yeah, in those edge cases you'll get an advantage. But IMO having that advantage, an advantage that can happen to either player, is an acceptable trade for the significant time savings you get every time a unit with a lot of attacks acts.

Respectfully, I still feel like you're undervaluing being able to keep a key unit alive for one more phase or one more turn. Maybe it's because I usually play squishy aeldari, but I often assume that my units are about to get wiped out. If my fire dragons jog out of a wave serpent and kill an expensive target, said dragons are usually on my opponent's to-do list the next turn. So I don't put a ton of value in the possibility of getting lucky and keeping the unit alive for the rest of the game, but I do put value on managing to have a couple of fusion guns left to to bother another expensive target. So if my choices are to guarantee I'll still have the unit vs gambling on not having it, then I think I'd often take the sure thing.

You're right that the enemy still having attacks left to make does make the average less appealing, but it's also pretty common for those remaining attacks to be less scary. If I can make sure your plasmaguns don't finish off my wraith guard, I feel pretty good about surviving the lasguns you still have in the vicinity. It doesn't seem like it would be super rare to prefer the average, and it does seem like the times where you'd want to take the average over a random result could be kind of annoying for your opponent. So I don't feel good about making the rule available to every batch of six or more dice.

Chaospling wrote:I appreciate this discussion and please don't let me stop you, but some of your arguments make me think, you haven't understood the rule entirely...

In my first example, which, with 53 dice, is quite extreme, the results was narrowed down to 25 to 28, which, in that case still is 80% of all the combinations.

Now, with fewer dice and utilising this rule to the full will of course lower the percentage of possible combinations even more, but what matters to me are the tactical decisions not rolling dice; the rule could be implemented, and a player could choose not to use it, because she's hoping for an outlier - she could be lucky to get that result, get unlucky and get the opposite result or she would get the same result, as if she had utilised the rule.

For me, this just gives players more control and another layer to the game, which is quite exciting in my opinion - we're not even close to discard the dice altogether.

Sure. I think I follow. Basically, my argument boils down to the idea that removing randomness during clutch rolls takes some of the drama and potentially interesting situations out of the game. If taking the guaranteed average happens to be the smarter but less interesting move, then you're functionally discouraging people from doing the interesting thing.

Which is why I think this rule works better when limited to the less-likely-to-be-interesting rolls that tend to involve a lot of dice. Like making a million lasgun attacks.

Toofast wrote:
I also don't think rolling too many dice has even been a problem since 7th.

30-man conscript squad says hi.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I think having the uncertainty as to whether those missiles will wipe their target out or just leave it low on health are good for the game.

You have a 99% chance of doing at least 12 damage (killing the majority of vehicle targets) by rolling normally and a 99.8% chance of at least 10 damage (killing any light vehicle and bracketing normal vehicles to their worst stats). Is a 1% chance of failure really important enough to bother with?

Respectfully, I still feel like you're undervaluing being able to keep a key unit alive for one more phase or one more turn. Maybe it's because I usually play squishy aeldari, but I often assume that my units are about to get wiped out. If my fire dragons jog out of a wave serpent and kill an expensive target, said dragons are usually on my opponent's to-do list the next turn. So I don't put a ton of value in the possibility of getting lucky and keeping the unit alive for the rest of the game, but I do put value on managing to have a couple of fusion guns left to to bother another expensive target. So if my choices are to guarantee I'll still have the unit vs gambling on not having it, then I think I'd often take the sure thing.

That's definitely not a scenario where the all-or-nothing analysis is appropriate. Fire dragons are a unit with several discrete pieces and clear intermediate levels of value. A unit with one melta gun is a much weaker threat than a five-man squad. So yes, if you use a fixed average result you can guarantee that at least some of the squad survives but only by guaranteeing that some of the squad dies. Positive and negative outliers are both removed and you're left with a nice predictable decline in the unit's ability with every attack. And remember that your opponent can do the same, protecting themselves against the outliers on the offensive side and ensuring that your unit takes at least some losses.

And sure, take the predictability over the RNG. Most people would. But you're not gaining much of an advantage from it. Removing both positive and negative outliers balances out in this scenario and the benefit to you is almost entirely psychological.

You're right that the enemy still having attacks left to make does make the average less appealing, but it's also pretty common for those remaining attacks to be less scary. If I can make sure your plasmaguns don't finish off my wraith guard, I feel pretty good about surviving the lasguns you still have in the vicinity. It doesn't seem like it would be super rare to prefer the average, and it does seem like the times where you'd want to take the average over a random result could be kind of annoying for your opponent. So I don't feel good about making the rule available to every batch of six or more dice.

That's another scenario where it isn't all or nothing. You can make sure the plasma guns don't roll better than average and finish off the unit entirely, but only at the cost of making sure they don't roll worse than average and leave you with a full-strength unit facing the lasguns. There is still clear value in doing partial damage with the plasma so you gain very little by forcing it to the average outcome.

The only reason the end of game scenario provides significant value is that it's the last remaining attack and there's no value in partial damage. If the attack does one wound it is no better than doing zero wounds, only two or more matters because there is no follow up attack to try to take the final wound. But in both of these cases there's clear value to partial success. You may psychologically feel better or worse about certain results or threats but it's very clear that, for the attacker, killing one model is better than killing zero models.

The thing is, the chance of making an unlikely number of saves doesn't have the same value as the chance of failing an unlikely number of my saves. Maybe I don't need all my dragons/wraiths for the next turn; I just need enough of them to go try and finish off an enemy vehicle. Or maybe we're talking about an obsec unit, and I need a single body to go steal an objective.

There are definitely times where I find myself going, "Okay, this should work out as long as I don't flub a bunch of saves and lose this unit." And in those scenarios, I'd be tempted to take the average.

But I feel like we're starting to talk in circles and/or something is just going over my head. So I should probably bow out of the discussion for now.

Edit: or here's a better analogy outside of 40k:

In football taking a knee is a minimum-risk play. You forfeit any chance of advancing the ball and improving your scoring chances to all but guarantee that you do not have a fumble and turn the ball over to the other team. You will only run this minimum-risk play in a very specific endgame scenario: you have a lead, you have possession of the ball, and there is so little time left in the game that as long as you do not turn the ball over time will expire before the other team will gain possession and have a chance to score. IOW, all you need to do is avoid the worst possible catastrophic outcome and you are guaranteed to win the game. Otherwise you don't take a knee. If there's more time left in the game the other team will get the ball back and have a chance to score, since taking a knee guarantees a minimum result. You can't run out more than two minutes of clock and you can't score. And if there's significantly more time left in the game you don't even know that wasting time is a good play, you might find yourself in a position at the end of the game where time is running out and the other team has the lead. The play exists and is used but it's definitely an edge-case scenario.

What you're describing is the 40k equivalent of being up 21-15 with one minute left in the game. Yes, in that case you will obviously do the 40k equivalent of taking a knee and sacrifice any above-average dice results as long as you guarantee that you don't roll nothing but 1s and fluke dice your way into a loss. But it's rare to find a scenario where you're sure that running out the clock without disaster is all that matters, most of the time improving your overall game state is the goal and a fixed average does nothing for that.

(And the rules even exist for very similar reasons! Having a 40 second play clock allows the edge case of taking a knee at the end of the game but it's worth it because it prevents teams from spending 5 minutes resting between plays and making the game take all day. Having fixed averages enables some edge case advantages but it's worth it because it speeds up a lot of other dice rolling.)

 Wyldhunt wrote:
There are definitely times where I find myself going, "Okay, this should work out as long as I don't flub a bunch of saves and lose this unit." And in those scenarios, I'd be tempted to take the average.

Sure. There are lots of times where you'd take the advantage. Less RNG is usually appealing, unless you believe you're a significantly lower-skill player (or have a weaker army) and your only chance of victory is to RNG yourself some above-average results and steal a win. But the thing I think you're missing is that most of the time there is no net advantage. You will take fixed averages almost every time you can, so will your opponent. It's only in a few edge case scenarios where you come out of that exchange with a net advantage

Or, to use your fire dragon example, considering saves against incoming fire:

A bad roll leaves you with enough models to have a 25% chance of destroying the second enemy tank next turn.

An average roll leaves you with enough models to have a 50% chance of destroying the second enemy tank next turn.

An good roll leaves you with enough models to have a 75% chance of destroying the second enemy tank next turn.

By setting a fixed average you automatically get the middle result. You avoid dropping your chances for the following turn to 25% but you also forfeit the roughly equal chance of increasing it to 75%. And your opponent makes the same decision with their hit and wound rolls, picking a consistent average instead of RNG. Neither of you gains any net advantage by including the fixed average rule in your game. The only time you would gain a net average is if you have something like this:

A bad roll leaves you with enough models to have a 25% chance of destroying the second enemy tank next turn.

An average roll leaves you with enough models to have a 50% chance of destroying the second enemy tank next turn.

An good roll leaves you with enough models to have a 50% chance of destroying the second enemy tank next turn.

There, because average and good are equivalent outcomes, you can gain by automatically taking the average. You lose nothing by forfeiting the good roll (since it is no better than the average result) and gain by avoiding the bad roll. But these scenarios are very rare. Most of the time there is a spectrum of desirability from bad to good and eliminating both ends of the bell curve is symmetrical.

You guys are way overthinking this! This was all the OP said:

I want to hear your opinion about a rule, which makes you roll less dice

And then he gave 50 dice as an example. His point is to save time on excessive dice rolls by a cutoff and average the rest. For example if you have to roll 60 dice for 30 conscripts rapidfiring lasguns, roll half and average the other half. I don't think he was advocating giving players the option to remove the game of chance all together.

However, I feel like it would take my friends and i longer to calculate and argue over averages then just toss dice and pick out the misses.

Or just use a dice roller app if you don't want to roll that many dice.

Honestly, it's a dice game, if you don't want to roll dice then Warhammer might not be for you.

kingpbjames wrote:You guys are way overthinking this! This was all the OP said:

I want to hear your opinion about a rule, which makes you roll less dice

And then he gave 50 dice as an example. His point is to save time on excessive dice rolls by a cutoff and average the rest. For example if you have to roll 60 dice for 30 conscripts rapidfiring lasguns, roll half and average the other half. I don't think he was advocating giving players the option to remove the game of chance all together.

However, I feel like it would take my friends and i longer to calculate and argue over averages then just toss dice and pick out the misses.

That's fair. To clarify, I'm generally in favor of the rule. I'm just drilling down into whether it should be applied to everything or only in specific circumstances. I'm just quibbling over details, basically.

Afrodactyl wrote:Or just use a dice roller app if you don't want to roll that many dice.

Honestly, it's a dice game, if you don't want to roll dice then Warhammer might not be for you.

Nah. You're coming off as disingenuous. It's quite a leap to say someone should give up the game entirely just because they find it a bit annoying to resolve especially large dice pools. And no one benefits from escalating things like that.

A dice app is a good suggestion though.