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This is a passing thought, so I apologize if I don't articulate it very well. 40k has a lot of random charts. I'm not a fan of most of these random charts. At worst, the charts are full of undesirable results that lead to feel-bad moments when you, for instance, roll +1 Initiative for your wych drug. At best, the chart has a lot of solid possible results, but the fact that they're random still prevents you from making meaningful choices or representing your army's fluff. I'm looking at you, daemonic gifts.

So, as an abstract concept, how would everyone feel about replacing a good swathe of the charts out there and replacing them with some variety of resource? This could be anything from regular army-building points (buying a warlord trait, for instance, rather than rolling for it) or introducing an expendable resource similar to blood tithe points.

So for a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples:

CULT AMBUSH
The cult ambush might be replaced by "stealth tokens." You start with a pool of stealth tokens based on the units you're bringing to the table. Most vehicles would be too clunky and obvious to provide any stealth tokens, most infantry units would provide a single stealth token, and "planners" like your HQ choices might provide additional stealth tokens. Throughout the game, you can spend stealth tokens to pay for results that were formerly on the cult ambush chart. You'd still have the option to arrive via normal-ish infiltrate for free, but you could also spend one or two stealth tokens to infiltrate closer, shoot twice after infiltrating, etc. Ambushing the turn you arrive would take more stealth tokens meaning you could guarantee a few ambushes, but at the cost of some of your flexibility. Stealth tokens could be earned during the game by returning to shadows, succesfully murdering enemy units the turn you arrive, etc.

WYCH DRUGS
The dealers of Comorragh understand supply and demand, and it isn't cheap to keep your gladiators supplied with the good stuff. Before deployment, you gain a pool of intoxicant points. You gain 1 token for having at least 1 "cult" unit in your army (basically any unit with the combat drugs rule), 1 token for having a succubus as your warlord, and 1 token if at least half the non-vehicle units in your army are "cult" units. Crummier drugs cost 1 token each, and better drugs cost 2 each. So splashing in wyches only gets you one crummy drug for all your cult units, but you have control over which drug it is. Bringing a succubus (not normally a popular choice) and/or playing a wych-themed army rewards your theme by unlocking better drugs and/or letting you take multiple drugs. You could possibly expand this by having an intoxicant point-related warlord trait or detachment rule.


Your thoughts? What I like about this concept (other than satisfying my absurd passion for counters and sub-systems) is that it replaces sometimes-thematic-sometimes-annoying random rolls with meaningful choices. Rather than going, "Oh look! I rolled a six on my cult ambush table! My warlord must be cunning!" you can instead actually use a bit of strategy and cunning in how you spend and earn your tokens. I feel there's also room to use similar sub-systems for a variety of other units (lictors with cult ambush stealth tokens, anyone?), but that might warrant a different discussion thread.

TLDR; Warp Storm table is lame, but Blood Tithe is cool. Agree or disagree?

It's a good idea. But it'll be a lot of work.

I'll be following this thread with interest. Hope you come up with coolness!

This seems like a good idea. One can still have some degree of randomness within the available choices if the choice represented is something random and chaotic within the lore, but less getting screwed over for no reason seems good.

The thing about the randomness is that all too often the random tables are stuffed with terrible results to balance out the chance of rolling the grotesquely overpowered result. Any system to remove tables is going to have to involve a drastic redesign of the stuff on the random tables (e.g. with Combat Drugs nobody is ever going to touch any of the other results when they can just have +T all game every game).

I think this is (in theory) a ready good alternative. It would work well on psychic powers too, stopping you ending up with your T3 Guard support psyker getting stuck with close range or CC powers that he'd die before every getting a chance to use.

Things that should still have some randomness (chaos) maybe reduce to a D3 list after choosing a category. Using Daemons as an example maybe you pick either wargear, combat, Psychic or Leader and then roll a D3 for what you get eg +1S, +1A, or +1I for the combat list

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The thing about the randomness is that all too often the random tables are stuffed with terrible results to balance out the chance of rolling the grotesquely overpowered result. Any system to remove tables is going to have to involve a drastic redesign of the stuff on the random tables (e.g. with Combat Drugs nobody is ever going to touch any of the other results when they can just have +T all game every game).

Well, I think the key things with something like combat drugs are...
A.) You could potentially have +1 Toughness and something else if you had enough intoxicant points to spend.
B.) +T is better than +1 Attack, but is it better than +1 Attack and +1 Strength for the same investment of resources?

So as it's come up in conversation, let's take a look at what we might do with the combat drugs mechanic. Maybe something like...

COMBAT DRUGS:
Before deployment, gain 1 intoxicant point for each of the following:
* Having at least one unit with the combat drugs rule in your army.
* At least half the units in your army have the combat drugs rule.
* Your warlord is a succubus.
* You have such and such warlord trait that grants +1 intoxicant point
* Your warlord is from the super special wych cult detachment that grants +1 intoxicant point as its detachment bonus.

So you can easily get 3ish intoxicant points in vanilla dark eldar army, but you can also easily up it to about 4 or 5 if you're building a wych-centric list.

Before deploying any units, the dark eldar player may spend intoxicant points to purchase combat drugs. All units in the army with the combat drugs rule benefit from any combat drugs purchased.

1 Point Drugs:
* +3" to movement when moving or charging.
* +1 to FNP rolls.
* +1 WS
* +1 Attacks

2 Point Drugs:
* +1 Strength
* +1 Toughness
* +1 to invulnerable and jink saves

So if I only have two intoxicant points, I can still guarantee I get the ability to punch harder, dodge better, or boost my Toughness. Alternatively, I could boost both my attacks and weapon skill and potentially actually land quite a few more hits against a WS4 enemy than normal. Even if I only have one point, I can still guarantee I get the best cheap drug for the situation I'm in. If I get a bunch of points, I can have a bunch of minor drugs, or I can get one or two major drugs with some minor ones to synergize with. So some possible combos I might go for would include...

*I'm doing a reaver-heavy army, so I go with +1 Toughness, +1 to jinks, and maybe the movement boost so that I'm harder to kill and can get more hammer of wraths off on the charge.

*I want my wyches to focus on tarpitting, so I go for a bonus to invulnerable saves and some combination of Toughness and/or FNP. Suddenly, my wyches are about as good (possibly even better) at tarpitting as they were in previous books. Heck, a bunch of cheap 3+ invul saves can potentially even tarpit a knight for a while if it doesn't get lucky on its stomps!

*I want to actually kill things with my cult units. I grab +1 Attack, +1 Strength, and maybe +1 WS if I"m facing a meq army (so I'm hitting on 3s against things I was previously hitting on 4s). My humble wych model is now making 4 attacks, hitting on 3s against most things at strength 4 (5 if furious charge is active). Hellions are potentially hitting at strength 6.

Granted, this is a power boost overall, but most wych units kind of need it. What do you think?

I take a full wych elf list with reavers and get 10-15 tokens and over power everything. Why would I choose to take any other models within a DE list

Under their proposed rules, max you can get is 5, and that requires a certain Warlord Trait. Good, but hardly overpowering.

Nothing in there of any maximum and getting an army of 2+ jinxing bikes with +3 movement and charging and T5 is rather a scary thought.

 rawne2510 wrote:
Nothing in there of any maximum and getting an army of 2+ jinxing bikes with +3 movement and charging and T5 is rather a scary thought.

Ravenwing? Because they've got that, with twin-linked plasma.

Edit: And there are only five ways to gain a single point each. Read his post carefully.

Edit II: Relevant text:

COMBAT DRUGS:
Before deployment, gain 1 intoxicant point for each of the following:
* Having at least one unit with the combat drugs rule in your army.
* At least half the units in your army have the combat drugs rule.
* Your warlord is a succubus.
* You have such and such warlord trait that grants +1 intoxicant point
* Your warlord is from the super special wych cult detachment that grants +1 intoxicant point as its detachment bonus.

missed the wording at least 1. read as 1 per unit. My bad

 rawne2510 wrote:
missed the wording at least 1. read as 1 per unit. My bad

So yeah. Not so bad.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 rawne2510 wrote:
Nothing in there of any maximum and getting an army of 2+ jinxing bikes with +3 movement and charging and T5 is rather a scary thought.

Ravenwing? Because they've got that, with twin-linked plasma.

Ravenwing (only their knights get 2+) don´t scare me when they charge in. Reavers are evil if they get to choose their buffs

True, but Reavers don't get rerolls on their Jinks. 3+ rerollable is better than a 2+, and 4+ rerollable is almost as good.

That is true but I am charging turn 1 and have a 2+ for any overwatch. they will get in and they will hurt

Assuming your opponent deploys 24" inches away, you've got a 15" move and a 2d6+3" charge, average 25". Just barely making it in. However, against an opponent who knows what he's doing, they won't have anything worth charging at the front of their DZ, so...

Edit: Also, you ONLY have movement and cover buffs, in that case. No other buffs.

Edit II: Wait, Reavers are skilled rider, aren't they? So you have 2 drug points left over.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Assuming your opponent deploys 24" inches away, you've got a 15" move and a 2d6+3" charge, average 25". Just barely making it in. However, against an opponent who knows what he's doing, they won't have anything worth charging at the front of their DZ, so...

Edit: Also, you ONLY have movement and cover buffs, in that case. No other buffs.

Edit II: Wait, Reavers are skilled rider, aren't they? So you have 2 drug points left over.

Jink is 4+ skilled rider +1 drugs +1

Yeah. What do Reavers do in CC? I don't own the DE Codex.

With an effective 30" range i guess people may look to setup 26"+ which will reduce their effecting shooting ability unless you are eldar (dirty scatt bikes).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
huge number of rending HoW attacks. think seekers on steroids. not quite seeker chariots

25" range average. 15" move, average 10" charge. 30" is their MAX threat range, but not likely.

worded badly by me i mean they have effectively a 30" threat range. didn't mean it to read as effective

On the topic of Combat Drugs, I always felt that the randomness was a good idea as it reflected the lore, but I agree it was far too random to be useful.

The simple suggestion I would make to fix Combat Drugs is allow the player to roll twice on the charge (re-rolling dupes) and being able to choose one of the two results. It's not perfect, but it at least reflects the lore while giving you at least some choice in the results.

 rawne2510 wrote:
worded badly by me i mean they have effectively a 30" threat range. didn't mean it to read as effective

I'm honestly not all that worried about a potential 30" turn 1 charge. We're seeing more and more options these days that make early charges doable, so it's not exactly a game changer. Plus, it's pretty easy to avoid getting charged on turn 1 by these hypothetical reavers. If the dark eldar player deploys first, his opponent can just make sure his units are 31" away from said reavers. If the dark eldar player deploys second, you just deploy 6" away from your deployment edge to make sure they don't come after you in the event that the dark eldar player seizes.

If the bonus to jink saves is too much of an issue, it can be removed (making that particular drug more of a non-reaver option) or be limited to only kicking in if the reavers turbo boosted in the previous turn (meaning you're trading your offense for really good defense).

So with that in mind and with the initial confusion about how you generate drug points cleaned up, how does this system grab you? Keep in mind that wych armies aren't exactly in vogue these days. Getting a bunch of drug points means playing an army that is a bit underpowered before the new drug rules are applied.


@JNAProductions: Your thoughts on the system as written?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marik Law wrote:
On the topic of Combat Drugs, I always felt that the randomness was a good idea as it reflected the lore, but I agree it was far too random to be useful.

The simple suggestion I would make to fix Combat Drugs is allow the player to roll twice on the charge (re-rolling dupes) and being able to choose one of the two results. It's not perfect, but it at least reflects the lore while giving you at least some choice in the results.

I'm not a fan of the randomness for several reasons myself. In my mind, a wych cult represents a sufficiently affluent (and hedonistic) organization to be able to have more than one brand of drug in stock. After all, they use the things in the arena all the time. Combat drugs are the paper clips of the true kin arenas.

Your suggestion would be an improvement on the current rules. I also like simply removing the 3 worst results from the drug table, letting wyches take multiple drugs as some sort of wargear or detachment bonus, or simply making each drug purchasable with army points. But we could have (and have had) entire threads dedicated to what to do about wyches. I'd like to keep this thread more focused on replacing random charts in general rather than the drug table specifically.

I think I'd need to own the DE Codex to be sure, but I think it's at least functional enough to playtest-and probably pretty well at that.

I think it's too much set up personally.
I'd prefer just paying points for what you get, perhaps a slight reduction in the basic unit cost too allow the equivalent of the average roll for free.

Personally the more I can get done prior to starting a game the better, and the less extra notes the better.

Although actually come to think of it you would know all your tokens whilst list building, so perhaps it isn't such a bad plan?

I rather like it, actually. I might be willing to give it a shot here soonish if I can convince some of the duderini at my shop to give it a whirl.

You mentioned the Warp Storm table, so let me see what I can do with that.

For each god represented in your list: +1 Warp Charge (Max of 4)
Taking a Daemonic Incursion: +1 Warp Charge
Greater Daemon is your Warlord: +1 Warp Charge

Hrm... Should almost certainly be more, but bugger me if I can think of anything else. Any ideas?

And then, costs on the table!

Everyone takes a Daemonic Instability test: -2 (As in, you get two more points)
One Daemon takes a test on 3d6: -1
-1 Invuln to all daemons: -1
Roll on the following table: 0

Pick from the above table: 1
+1 Invuln to all daemons: 2
Psyker possession: 2
Summoned from the Warp: 3

To GW, rolling dice = excitement. That's the issue here.

Martel, do you have anything constructive to contribute? Like an analysis of the Combat Drug chart, an analysis of my Warp Storm chart, or any suggestions for what more to add to my Warp Storm chart?

Just making an observation as to where I think the problem originates from. I think the warp storm table should just be taken out, and combat drugs should have a static bonus based off time of injection.