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I think it's pretty well costed at 2CP as a reactive stratagem, most defensive stratagems that cost 1CP have to be used without knowing whether the target unit is getting shot at all.

Tyel wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

 harlokin wrote:
I wonder what they'll do with Lightning Fast Reactions.

I'm guessing they'll leave it as is. You can't stack it on Alaitoc anymore but there are plenty of things that aren't Alaitoc.

You are probably right, but at 2 CP it makes it fairly useless/niche. I mainly use it to protect the Venom carrying all my HQs.

Can use it on a raider.

The very optimistic - perhaps too optimistic - is that having taken away the ability to stack, it can be a 1 CP stratagem.
Which obviously doesn't change the power - but makes it more of an auto-use each turn sort of thing.

I agree. 2CP per turn is too much to bleed just for that though. If the cost doesn't drop, I suspect my HQs will spend a great deal of time in reserves, where they will contribute about as much as they do on the board

Spoletta wrote:


They both get the same bonus with rr1.

A marine will hit 16,66% more attacks. The accuracy goes from 66% to 77%. 7/6 of the original value.

An ork will hit 16,66% more attacks. An ork goes from 33% to to 39%. 7/6 of the original value.

The BS of the models doesn't count in the least.

That's why in theory rr1 are a more manageable mechanic than straight modifiers. It doesn't matter who you are, you get the same bonus.

The drawback is that it takes more time to resolve than a straight modifier.

BS matters a ton as it determines which of the 1s that you reroll can hit.

Also ratios are the same, but ratios do not represent the raw value.

If I have a 10" pie and I increase it by 7/6 it is now 11.7"
If I have a 5" pie and I increase it by 7/6 it is now 5.8"

One of those pies got much bigger than the other one.

Or am I missing something?

Reroll 1s is much more valuable for better ballistic skill. That's undeniable.

Yeah, space marines already benefit more from reroll 1s than most people, they don't need to get a full reroll aura too because they're GW's posterboys. Allowing full rerolls when -to hit is capped at -1 is just silly.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
BS matters a ton as it determines which of the 1s that you reroll can hit.

Also ratios are the same, but ratios do not represent the raw value.

If I have a 10" pie and I increase it by 7/6 it is now 11.7"
If I have a 5" pie and I increase it by 7/6 it is now 5.8"

One of those pies got much bigger than the other one.

Or am I missing something?

A pie analogy is bad because area increases proportionally to the square of diameter, so it's a non-equivalent comparison.

What you're missing is that it's a flat percentage increase regardless of starting BS.

Let's say we have a unit of BS5+ troops (maybe Orks) that will do 6 wounds on average. And we have an equivalently-costed BS3+ unit (maybe Marines) that gets half as many shots, so it also does 6 wounds on average.

Give them each a re-roll 1s ability, and they both go up by 17%, to 7 wounds on average. The BS3+ unit doesn't benefit more; they both increase in firepower by the same percentage. While it's true that the BS3+ unit is more likely to turn a re-roll into a successful hit, it's exactly the same likelihood as they were to hit in the first place, so all the other balancing factors (in this case, number of shots) still apply equally.

However, if we give them a re-roll all fails ability, then they don't behave the same way, because now the likelihood of the re-roll being invoked is different for the two units. The BS5+ unit goes up by 67% to 10 wounds on average, while the BS3+ unit goes up by 33% to 8 wounds on average.

The basic summary is:
-Flat modifiers (+1/-1) help/hurt low-accuracy models more than high-accuracy ones.
-Re-roll 1s affects everybody equally.
-Re-roll all helps low-accuracy models more than high-accuracy ones.

It may not be intuitive, but this is why many game companies pay good money for designers with an understanding of probability.

Why is it silly? The modifier cap on To-Hit actually regularizes the value of full re-rolls. The value of the full re-roll is easier to estimate if there are only three possible BS values for a unit.

What we really need to hope is that GW finally realizes how valuable re-rolls are and increases the points value of units that give re-roll bubbles. Add 35 points to the base value of all types of Space Marine Captains and suddenly it won't feel so bad.

Sad Panda here, I like the idea but wanted the cap to be related to where the mod came from, so no matter what you do you never get more than a -1, no matter what the enemy does never provides more than a -1 and no matter the terrain/situation never more than a -1 (or plus one obviously)

so max is +/-3, but hard to force

 alextroy wrote:
Why is it silly? The modifier cap on To-Hit actually regularizes the value of full re-rolls. The value of the full re-roll is easier to estimate if there are only three possible BS values for a unit.

What we really need to hope is that GW finally realizes how valuable re-rolls are and increases the points value of units that give re-roll bubbles. Add 35 points to the base value of all types of Space Marine Captains and suddenly it won't feel so bad.

Realistically, Space Marine Captains don't need point hikes.
They need 0-1 limits per Detachments. Same as the one Tau Commanders got...except the difference is that Marines have Lieutenants to bulk up their required HQ slots if necessary.

To clarify on my previous post- this doesn't mean that all 're-roll 1s' abilities should have equivalent cost regardless of context.

For instance, getting re-roll 1s on a unit of 10 Gretchin is significantly less useful than getting re-roll 1s on a unit of 10 Primaris, because the delta between the starting and ending values is greater (ie: turning 1 wound into 2 wounds is much less useful than turning 10 wounds into 20) even though it's the same proportional benefit, so in the context of things like Stratagems that has to be taken into account.

For aura abilities, the points value of the aura scales proportionally to how much value of units can benefit; so if a Guard character needs a 12" aura to cover 500pts of Guard, that's roughly equivalent value to a Marine character needing a 6" aura to cover 500pts of Marines (in either case, you are buffing 500pts of troops to have the firepower of 583pts of troops).

So this can get really difficult to balance on a game-wide level; but on a per-unit level it holds true that a re-roll 1s ability increases damage output by 17%, whether you're applying it to a 30pt unit of Grots or a 300pt unit of Marines.

Marines don't actually get more out of their re-rolls than other armies do. What makes Marines problematic is more that they have such easy and widesprad access to re-rolls, on top of firepower that is already pretty damn powerful to begin with. Most armies only get a re-roll 1s to hit here and there, usually from expensive characters with auras too small to cover a significant part of the army. Marines can cheaply get full re-rolls to hit on top of re-rolling 1s to wound and easily cram a thousand points into the bubble, with basically no strings attached.

 alextroy wrote:
Why is it silly? The modifier cap on To-Hit actually regularizes the value of full re-rolls. The value of the full re-roll is easier to estimate if there are only three possible BS values for a unit.

What we really need to hope is that GW finally realizes how valuable re-rolls are and increases the points value of units that give re-roll bubbles. Add 35 points to the base value of all types of Space Marine Captains and suddenly it won't feel so bad.

Because it means people with full rerolls always hit at least 75% of the time no matter what. There's very little granularity there, and it feels bad to be on the receiving end of too. You start to wonder what the point of even rolling to hit it is if you're guaranteed to hit 3/4 of the time, and 88% of the time against most stuff.

Armies have all these strats and rules aimed at making the hit roll actually difficult, and yet the most played army just effectively ignores all of it and hits 3/4 of the time no matter what. That's not fun gameplay.

Meh

yukishiro1 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Why is it silly? The modifier cap on To-Hit actually regularizes the value of full re-rolls. The value of the full re-roll is easier to estimate if there are only three possible BS values for a unit.

What we really need to hope is that GW finally realizes how valuable re-rolls are and increases the points value of units that give re-roll bubbles. Add 35 points to the base value of all types of Space Marine Captains and suddenly it won't feel so bad.

Because it means people with full rerolls always hit at least 75% of the time no matter what. There's very little granularity there, and it feels bad to be on the receiving end of too. You start to wonder what the point of even rolling to hit it is if you're guaranteed to hit 3/4 of the time, and 88% of the time against most stuff.

Armies have all these strats and rules aimed at making the hit roll actually difficult, and yet the most played army just effectively ignores all of it and hits 3/4 of the time no matter what. That's not fun gameplay.

It would be a huge overhaul for the game, but I would personally be completely fine with rescaling the game to put basic human/Ork/Tau BS at 5+, most armies at 4+, and the really elite things at 3+, with 2+ being extremely rare.

As it stands, having everything clustered around 3+ with re-rolls, with penalties capped at -1, makes for very little actual variety.

 catbarf wrote:
Marines don't actually get more out of their re-rolls than other armies do. What makes Marines problematic is more that they have such easy and widesprad access to re-rolls, on top of firepower that is already pretty damn powerful to begin with. Most armies only get a re-roll 1s to hit here and there, usually from expensive characters with auras too small to cover a significant part of the army. Marines can cheaply get full re-rolls to hit on top of re-rolling 1s to wound and easily cram a thousand points into the bubble, with basically no strings attached.

*How much you can get under an aura* matters a bit - but in practice, I think the issue is more whether an intercessor's shooting/survival/movement is fairly priced at say 17 points (or 20) - versus say a guardsman's shooting/survival/movement being worth 4/? points. In context of all the buffs etc.

Reroll 1s are the same for everyone - much like 6+++ saves are the same for everyone. But if something is too cheap to begin with, further buffs will serve to magnify that fact. If my units performs like 120% points of yours, and we both get a 17% buff, I'm going to benefit from it more than you.

The problem with Marines is that they got so many buffs in a relatively short period of time, its a gordian knot to decide which should be toned down. If you raise the points of everything, its fine that everything gets a Chapter Master/lieutenant bubble. But it also makes Marine armies quite one-dimensional, and so they will suck without such buffs.

The simplest way is to scrap Chapter Master, or make it cost 75 points or something in addition to the CP. But I can't see it happening.

 catbarf wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
BS matters a ton as it determines which of the 1s that you reroll can hit.

Also ratios are the same, but ratios do not represent the raw value.

If I have a 10" pie and I increase it by 7/6 it is now 11.7"
If I have a 5" pie and I increase it by 7/6 it is now 5.8"

One of those pies got much bigger than the other one.

Or am I missing something?

A pie analogy is bad because area increases proportionally to the square of diameter, so it's a non-equivalent comparison.

What you're missing is that it's a flat percentage increase regardless of starting BS.

Let's say we have a unit of BS5+ troops (maybe Orks) that will do 6 wounds on average. And we have an equivalently-costed BS3+ unit (maybe Marines) that gets half as many shots, so it also does 6 wounds on average.

Give them each a re-roll 1s ability, and they both go up by 17%, to 7 wounds on average. The BS3+ unit doesn't benefit more; they both increase in firepower by the same percentage. While it's true that the BS3+ unit is more likely to turn a re-roll into a successful hit, it's exactly the same likelihood as they were to hit in the first place, so all the other balancing factors (in this case, number of shots) still apply equally.

However, if we give them a re-roll all fails ability, then they don't behave the same way, because now the likelihood of the re-roll being invoked is different for the two units. The BS5+ unit goes up by 67% to 10 wounds on average, while the BS3+ unit goes up by 33% to 8 wounds on average.

The basic summary is:
-Flat modifiers (+1/-1) help/hurt low-accuracy models more than high-accuracy ones.
-Re-roll 1s affects everybody equally.
-Re-roll all helps low-accuracy models more than high-accuracy ones.

It may not be intuitive, but this is why many game companies pay good money for designers with an understanding of probability.

Thanks for explaining it better than I did.

I thought that the knowledge of probabilities and how rerolls affect them was common knowledge, but I was wrong...

That analysis is not quite correct.

BS 3+ reroll 1s yields 2/36 more of an increase in absolute hits than BS 5+ rerolls 1s. Relative increase is not the game-relevant stat. Absolute hits is.
as

Martel732 wrote:
That analysis is not quite correct.

BS 3+ reroll 1s yields 2/36 more of an increase in absolute hits than BS 5+ rerolls 1s. Relative increase is not the game-relevant stat. Absolute hits is.
as

Absolute yields doesn't tell you anything.

Relative gain is what you have to look at.

Assume that you have 2 units. Both cost 200 points.

Unit A shoots 45 shots at BS3+

Unit B shoots 90 shots at BS5+

In normal condtions, both units have identical firepower and will hit 30 shots.

Now apply an rr1 to both of them.

The first one now rerolls 7,5 dices. 5 hit and has now scored 35 hits.

The second one rerolls 15 dices. 5 hit and has now scored 35 hits.


As you can see, the effect is the same. Assuming that you apply them to comparable units, both the relative and absolute gains are identical.


BS is useless when looking at rr1.

The same is true for Strenght with rr1 to wound.

Obviously if you compare the effect of a Captain applied to 30 intercessors and the effect of Bad Moons applied to a Grot, you will get the same relative gain and drastically different absolute gains.

That's why you cannot assess a buff in terms of absolute gains, because you are "polluting" you analysis with external factors that have nothing to do with it.

Don't use twice as many shots for Unit B. That's not telling us what we want to know.

For a given unit A with BS 3+, irrespective of price, gets more out of reroll one than unit B with BS 5+ in a one model vs one model comparison.

And absolute increase is what I care about, not relative.

Martel732 wrote:
Don't use twice as many shots for Unit B. That's not telling us what we want to know.

For a given unit A with BS 3+, irrespective of price, gets more out of reroll one than unit B with BS 5+ in a one model vs one model comparison.

And absolute increase is what I care about, not relative.

You may have missed this until now, but there's a thing called "Point cost" in this game.

Two models with the same number of shots and different BS have a different point cost.

This may come as a shocking revelation, but if you apply a buff to a unit which cost more points, you are more likely to get a bigger benefit from that buff.

If you want to discuss the effects of a buff, you do it applying it to comparable base values.

You don't get to say "Buff A is better than buff", if you applied the buff A to a 1500 point deathstar and the buff B to a lone termagant.

Apples to apples.
Oranges to oranges.

Your absolute increase calculation is worthless because it completely ignores the value of the unit and number of shots it has.

The absolute gain on a landraider crusader is higher than it is on a unit of bolter scouts, simply because having more points affected by re-rolls is better than having less points affected by re-rolls.
BS is irrelevant to the effectiveness of re-rolling ones, only number of hits per points spent is.

The idea of a cap is a good one, but this feels bluntly implemented to be honest. I think the following would be a much better resolution:

"When determining to hit modifiers, both yourself and your opponent can contribute no more than -1 or +1 to hit."

Short and simple... This would make it possible to stack -2 to hit, if your opponent wsa hard to hit, and you made it harder to hit him by advancing with assault, moving infantry with heavy, shooting through dense, being debuffed, etc.

As the rule now stands the game just lost a lot of design space relevance.

Starting off by ignoring points costs for a second...

Unit A - BS 3+, 36 shots
Unit B - BS 5+, 36 shots

Assuming an even distribution of results, and a RR1 effect...

Unit A - 24 hits, 6 shots to reroll, 6 shots can't be rerolled. 50% of misses get rerolled, adding a further 4 hits. Total of 28 hits. 4/12 misses converted to hits, or 1/3.
Unit B - 12 hits, 6 shots to reroll, 18 shots can't be rerolled. 25% of misses get rerolled, causing 2 more hits. Total of 14 hits. 2/24 missed converted to hits, or 1/12.

We can see that a RR1 aura has half the effect on Unit B, as it only gets to reroll 25% of its misses instead of 50%. Overall unit accuracy remains proportional to its BS, as you'd expect (A is twice as accurate as B).

+ + +

The problem with then trying to factor points costs in is that a unit's points cost factors in more than just its shooting acumen. Resiliency (in theory, anyway), melee potential, mobility, etc.

Even if we allow for theoretical units where their points costs scales only based on shooting ability, you'll see different benefits - even if the models in unit A cost twice as much as unit B, they'll still see four times the benefit in terms of the proportion of misses turned into hits.

 grouchoben wrote:
The idea of a cap is a good one, but this feels bluntly implemented to be honest. I think the following would be a much better resolution:

"When determining to hit modifiers, both yourself and your opponent can contribute no more than -1 or +1 to hit."

Short and simple... This would make it possible to stack -2 to hit, if your opponent wsa hard to hit, and you made it harder to hit him by advancing with assault, moving infantry with heavy, shooting through dense, being debuffed, etc.

As the rule now stands the game just lost a lot of design space relevance.

what Grouch done said

plus Id suspect gw ran the numbers as above and then chose the path of least resistance (as a meeny CHE once shooted all their metal monkeigh bawxs)

Not really sure how to express this in words.

A reroll 1s to hit gives you, on average, 7/6 more hits than you would have got. Its a flat increase for all units. So the issue is how *good* your shooting is per point before this buff is applied. Obviously if you can have 36 BS 3+ shots for X points, its going to benefit more from the buff than 36 BS 5+ shots for X points - because its twice as good to begin with.

There is possibly an argument in second order mathhammer that higher absolute probabilities are good in themselves, because it makes the game more predictable - and when you are essentially betting on dice rolls, predictability is a virtue all its own.

So for example, lets say you really needed 5 hits on a target. theoretically 6 attacks hitting on 2s, should get you 5, in the same as 15 attacks hitting on 5s should get you 5. (Keeping it simple to avoid additional stats of wounding/armour saves etc).
But the odds of getting anything but 4/5/6 hits on the first is really quite low - whereas I think (too lazy to calculate it out on Saturday morning) the second has much bigger tails.
By way of a quick example - the odds of rolling 15 1-4s is 0.22% whereas the odds of rolling 6 1s is 0.0021%. Both incredibly unlikely to the point it will probably never happen - but one is a hundred times more likely than the other.

So with those 15 dice hitting on 5+ you might get lucky and get loads of hits - but that may not be useful due to overkill - but you also might get unlucky, and not get your 5 hits. So that enemy unit survives, can shoot you next turn, can claim objective points, can cost you the game etc.

This is partly what makes Marines so powerful. The odds are in your favour - you should usually get what you expect. You much less frequently have to rethink turns because the dice refuse to cooperate. Whereas say with Ork shooting, the dice can be really with you one game and not with you the next.

You can just shrug that off for individual games, but if army power is determined by winning GTs, its going to have a negative effect.

Doesn't the game have more -1 to hit, then +1 to hit with the rules armies have right now. That seems to me like most rolls are going to be done at -1 most of the times, at least as far as shoting goes.

Karol wrote:
Doesn't the game have more -1 to hit, then +1 to hit with the rules armies have right now. That seems to me like most rolls are going to be done at -1 most of the times, at least as far as shoting goes.

This might end up the case, if so I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, IMHO the game is too deadly at present, especially shooting.

Aash wrote:

Karol wrote:
Doesn't the game have more -1 to hit, then +1 to hit with the rules armies have right now. That seems to me like most rolls are going to be done at -1 most of the times, at least as far as shoting goes.

This might end up the case, if so I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, IMHO the game is too deadly at present, especially shooting.

KT is like that, and it works.

Spoletta wrote:

Aash wrote:

Karol wrote:
Doesn't the game have more -1 to hit, then +1 to hit with the rules armies have right now. That seems to me like most rolls are going to be done at -1 most of the times, at least as far as shoting goes.

This might end up the case, if so I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, IMHO the game is too deadly at present, especially shooting.

KT is like that, and it works.

Yeah, with Kill Team' very common obscuring rules and "long range" effect on weaponry, shooting at long range isn't particularly reliable without some specific skills (sniper, demolitions, comms), which, coupled with the high terrain density and smaller tables, promotes close combat and close range shooting strongly (as well as how there's a 50/50 chance that a shot probably won't even kill you outright).

Tyel wrote:
Not really sure how to express this in words.

A reroll 1s to hit gives you, on average, 7/6 more hits than you would have got. Its a flat increase for all units. So the issue is how *good* your shooting is per point before this buff is applied. Obviously if you can have 36 BS 3+ shots for X points, its going to benefit more from the buff than 36 BS 5+ shots for X points - because its twice as good to begin with.

There is possibly an argument in second order mathhammer that higher absolute probabilities are good in themselves, because it makes the game more predictable - and when you are essentially betting on dice rolls, predictability is a virtue all its own.

So for example, lets say you really needed 5 hits on a target. theoretically 6 attacks hitting on 2s, should get you 5, in the same as 15 attacks hitting on 5s should get you 5. (Keeping it simple to avoid additional stats of wounding/armour saves etc).
But the odds of getting anything but 4/5/6 hits on the first is really quite low - whereas I think (too lazy to calculate it out on Saturday morning) the second has much bigger tails.
By way of a quick example - the odds of rolling 15 1-4s is 0.22% whereas the odds of rolling 6 1s is 0.0021%. Both incredibly unlikely to the point it will probably never happen - but one is a hundred times more likely than the other.

So with those 15 dice hitting on 5+ you might get lucky and get loads of hits - but that may not be useful due to overkill - but you also might get unlucky, and not get your 5 hits. So that enemy unit survives, can shoot you next turn, can claim objective points, can cost you the game etc.

This is partly what makes Marines so powerful. The odds are in your favour - you should usually get what you expect. You much less frequently have to rethink turns because the dice refuse to cooperate. Whereas say with Ork shooting, the dice can be really with you one game and not with you the next.

You can just shrug that off for individual games, but if army power is determined by winning GTs, its going to have a negative effect.

This is part of the issue,
Part 2 is it's not just Reroll1's with Marines is Every hit, followed by Reroll 1 to wound. It's a stacked bonus.

Saying Reroll Aura's is fine based on the way no-one plays marines is rather pointless as When people are complaining about rerolls it's 9 times out of 10 Marines.

Not to mention adding a -1 to hit vrs Reroll 1 at BS4 vrs -1 to hit vrs BS3+ with full rerolls as thats the reality for most armies compaired to marine's it's contributing to poor balance.

The third and final issue as has been touched on but brushed aside is how many points of units can marines leverage their aura against vrs how many points of units can other armies leverage it against.

All of these factors contribue with marines each model avaraging 4 dice per model, Agressors Repulsors etc jack the avarages a lot.

To making it feel like Marine players do nothing but throw dice, throw them again and again and again and demolish half your army.

The math is part of it, but it's the weekend and I can't be bothered to do it all right now, but 2 repulsors and 3 units of agressors being able to reroll all hits and 1's to wound is a stupid increase in damage caused.

The points if you had to buy aditional units to make up the short fall compaired to the cost of a CM & LT I'm certain is in the CM < being less points.

That was not the point.

We are talking about rerolling as concept, which we have mathematically demonstrated that in some cases is fine (rr1 hit and wound), in some case is not (rr hits) in some cases it is utter dumb (rr wounds).

Obviously once you go into actual application of a concept, you can screw it. That's like saying that Termagants can get Lascannons for 1 point, so single shot high damage weapons are dumb game design.

Rerolls are fine, handing them that easily is not. Also, they are not actually handed "easily" at the moment, there is just ONE source of them which is problematic, the CM stratagem. Everything else is actually fine.