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See title.

A Great Unclean One has a 6+ Feel No Pain and 20 Wounds.
On average, that's the same as having 24 Wounds and no FNP.

I would be 100% fine changing them to no a FNP, 24 Wound statline. But this is also a case where that 6+ can be attempted a minimum of 20 times before death.

What about a 5+ FNP and a W2 model? That's, on average, the same as W3 with no FNP. But in practice it's pretty different, since you've still got a close to 50% chance of dying to 2 damage.

By having it seperate it acts as another lever that can be modified/added/tweaked. Having a leader add FNP to a squad is a lot cleaner then worrying about who’s he joins, what the wounds would be etc. Or a strat that adds 9t for a phase. Or things that modify dice rolls/re-rolls/etc.

It also exists for interactive time in the IGOYGO environment. Like armor saves it gives the reactive player something that feels like play on the opponent’s turn. Sure, it’s just executing a check, but it’s player involvement.

It makes for narrative moments when our fickle little 6-sided friends get spicy. We chuck a LOT of dice, so see the streaks. I’m sure every last one of us has a story where we made an unreasonable amount of saves, survived near-certain death, and triumphed. And we remember that time and look back on it fondly. Not that we don’t remember staggering away from a nasty scrap on our last wound, but ti’s not quite the same.

I definitely agree that Leaders should give a FNP instead of extra wounds, as should anything temporary (Strats, Enhancements, etc.).

But I'm a little iffier on using FNP as just a way to interact in your opponent's turn. You can't even use a Stratagem to reroll a FNP, so it's literally just busywork.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I definitely agree that Leaders should give a FNP instead of extra wounds, as should anything temporary (Strats, Enhancements, etc.).

But I'm a little iffier on using FNP as just a way to interact in your opponent's turn. You can't even use a Stratagem to reroll a FNP, so it's literally just busywork.

IIRC from a designer commentary from way back that’s why the defender makes the armor saves. It would be quicker for the attacker to roll hits, pick up the ones that did, roll those for wounds, amd then pick up the successes and check for armor. Instead of having the defender dig up the right number of dice. Gives you something to do besides just remove casualties. Less game mechanic optimization and more player experience/psychology.

Would it be faster to just add more wounds most of the time? Yes. But IMHO it would also make the game less interesting and engaging.

I get that GW is very fond of excessive dice rolling for no real return. And see your point about FNP. I just personally think what it adds is worth the time. YMMV.

I feel like you should give a unit more Wound when you want consistency, and you give them FNP when you want drama.

Not sure if pox walkers have FNP these days, but the whole zombie toughness thing is a decent example of where I could see FNP working well. A humble lasgun shot could very well be enough to take out a pox walker. But then again, sometimes those gosh darn plague zombies just keep moving when they shouldn't. A FNP roll raises the survivability of the squad, sure, but it also creates some uncertainty as to whether or not "mere" lasguns or bolters would be enough to finish the job. And conversely, FNP has counterplay in the form of higher damage weapons (read: overkill). A 1W FNP5+++ model might shrug off a bolter, but their chances of shrugging a D2 heavy bolter attack are significantly worse.

So for horde units, FNPs are sort of like invulns, but with more counterplay.

FNPs are also just easier to slap onto something as a defensive buff than fiddling around with a temporary wounds mechanic would be.

For something like a GUO, I kind of feel like a flat Wound increase would work better. Because there's already enough variability in the amount of damage put out by things like lascannons, and you already get that "dramatic" moment from an invuln save versus such attacks. FNP on a model like that ends up feeling more like "damage reduction" than anything.

I see where you’re coming from mathematically. And I don’t exactly disagree upping wounds and ditching FNP might remove further dice rolls.

But? FNP is the unknown quantity. Statisically it might be the equivalent of four more wounds. But in practice, it’s possible however unlikely they might find a weakness and exploit it that the FNP comes in clutch time and time again.

So I can never be entirely sure a given volley of firepower will take out the target. Only takes a little bit of jamminess for the owning player to roll above average on sixes, allowing the GUO to charge in their next turn and duff up one of my units.

And so yes it’s swingy, but it adds risk and further consideration, which I for one appreciate and enjoy.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But? FNP is the unknown quantity. Statisically it might be the equivalent of four more wounds. But in practice, it’s possible however unlikely they might find a weakness and exploit it that the FNP comes in clutch time and time again.

I think part of the difference to me is that the more wounds a model has, the stronger the bell curve and also the more spread out the attacks that eventually kill him might be. So Feel No Pain on a W2 model is dramatic. Will this attack be enough to finish him off? Will he eat at least one more shot thus helping to keep his squad alive long enough and in large enough numbers to still be a menace? Will that W4 character manage to hang in there to return some attacks in melee?

But on something like a GUO, the benefits of the FNP are more spread out across all 20 of their base wounds. You can still get a dramatic "will he survive against this final attack" moment, but it's kind of watered down by the ocean of other attacks that maybe rolled above or below average (and are more likely to have landed somewhere close to average because of the bell curve). He didn't survive that last lascannon attack because he made some feel no pains against that attack specifically; he survived that last lascannon attack because he made a handful of successful FNPs thirty minutes ago during your opponent's previous shooting phase, and it left his health bar high enough to survive now.

I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well. Basically, models with lower numbers of Wounds are less susceptible to the bell curve and thus those FNP rolls can be more dramatic. A single FNP roll deciding whether or not a space marine sticks around feels very different from 20 FNP rolls deciding whether a GUO sticks around a little longer.

This is why the subfaction rule sthat gave FNP6+ to vehicles in 8th/9th tended to be kind of boring. There was technically that statistical outlier chance that your dreadnaught would go around making all his 6+ FNPs like a badass, but 99% of the time a 6+++ just translates to 1 extra wound per 6 wounds on the unit. Which on a vehicle, might not actually matter because they're frequently being targeted by high Damage weapons that are likely to overkill them. It doesn't matter if your chimera effectively had 2 more wounds if the lascannon that killed it did 3+ more damage than it needed to.

But also, I feel like FNP mostly exists as a buff you can slap on units when increasing their wounds would be messy. Want death company to feel more durable but don't want to give them a 50% health boost by increasing their W to 3? Give them a 5+++ or 6+++ or whatever they have these days.

I think I follow you.

But for me, FNP is fully intended as a way to potentially toughen up a model. Even when it’s already got a fat stack of wounds, your opponent can never be sure just how much it’s going to soak.

Let’s say I pull off a perfect shot with D D6+3 shot. I hits, I wounds, you fails your save, and I roll a 6. Without FNP, that’s a comfortable 9 wounds off you. But, with FNP? It could be anywhere from 0-9, with varying degrees of likelihood. And it only takes a couple of such instance during a game to see the FNP beneficiary last way longer than it might look.

If we just give it the 4 extra wounds to carry the original subject? Well now I know I only need 3 such Perfect Shots to pop that boil.

I’m still incentivised as an opponent to hit you with the biggest gun or hitty stick I have, because typically they’re most likely to do some damage in the first place, and means your FNP is having to work a lot harder to mitigate, as again they typically do multiple damage.

If I’m especially keen to see your GUO cast into the warp? I’m likely to also look for sources of D re-rolls or boosts etc, because I again want to reduce the likelihood of your FNP spoiling my fun.

And so more than just having more wounds? FNP shifts my approach, as I have to account for it, and run the risk that at a critical moment, all the sixes in the world decide I smell, and so gang up on me.

On paper, more wounds + no FNP = less wounds + FNP, but in reality it depends on what army you are talking about.

The regeneration themed armies (Necrons and anything Nurgle) will always prefer to have less wounds + FNP, as regenerating wounds that can be in turn saved by a FNP roll is much more valuable, and a big part of playing those armies is managing how much damage you can tank on key units and still come back to combat effectiveness.

For the non-regen armies though, it wouldn't hurt to streamline things a bit outside of epic heroes.

Anything with more than 6 wounds should probably just get more wounds instead of FNP. Once you're up to 12+ wounds it really is just another dice roll getting int he way of the game.

For smaller models I see the point of a FNP. Even a 6+ with W2 messes with damage allocation from D2 weapons, which does add something to the game, I think.

Slipspace wrote:

For smaller models I see the point of a FNP. Even a 6+ with W2 messes with damage allocation from D2 weapons, which does add something to the game, I think.

Models with 2-3 wounds and FNP is definitely the most mechanically interesting design space.

Outside of 2-3 wound models FNP just gives a unit an "unnaturally tough" feel. Considering how GW is currently not putting FNP everywhere like they used to, I don't mind it on large models, even it statistically is identical to just adding more wounds.