Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It's just my opinion that the game has outgrown the D6 system. Stats are confined to math that can be resolved with a D6. Str v. T.

Swapping to D10's or D12's would add granularity that could resolve trying to compare a super human in the best armour available to an ork with a tshirt.

bfdhud wrote:
It's just my opinion that the game has outgrown the D6 system. Stats are confined to math that can be resolved with a D6. Str v. T.

Swapping to D10's or D12's would add granularity that could resolve trying to compare a super human in the best armour available to an ork with a tshirt.

Which i can agree with IF they condense profiles from per model to per unit ala apocalypse. The availability of larger dice in quantities we would need with the current profile set up is not good.

 Lance845 wrote:
This. Anti tank weapons in the past were all single shot weapons. When the terminators invul save made that single shot a crap shoot spamming cheaper many shots was more effective. This is an issue unrelated to the number of wounds they have. Its related to the way the weapons work with stat lines and mechanics that are 40 years old.

One of the side effects of handing out strong invulns like candy is that it devalues high-power weapons and incentivizes high-volume mid-strength weapons.

We're seeing the same exact issue in 8th/9th despite the completely different AP system simply because GW has not learned the implications of their stat model.

bfdhud wrote:
It's just my opinion that the game has outgrown the D6 system. Stats are confined to math that can be resolved with a D6. Str v. T.

Swapping to D10's or D12's would add granularity that could resolve trying to compare a super human in the best armour available to an ork with a tshirt.

I've played plenty of non-GW games that substantially differentiated troops without needing to use dice other than D6s. If a wargame wants me to break out the D12s so it can model 8% increments in armor effectiveness but has no modeling whatsoever of communications, intelligence, reconnaissance, armor facing, cohesion, or even the effects of range on gunfire, it is going down the wrong path as far as differentiating units.

If anything, higher granularity is more relevant to role-playing games or smaller-scale skirmish games, where variances in individual equipment are much more important. It's also great for large-scale games to reduce the number of distinct rolls required, so that complex stats can be boiled down into fewer rolls with more granular modifiers.

Apocalypse is a good reference point there because it doesn't use D12s to add more granularity to individual unit stats than exists in 40K; it uses them to reduce the amount of rolling required. Instead of having separate stats for strength, AP, and damage, they're all baked into a single D12 value for anti-infantry and another for anti-vehicle, and you only roll a couple of dice at a time. Then the game uses D12s for armor saves, but every two hits consolidates into a single D6 roll, so again it drastically reduces the number of rolls needed.

I would sooner french kiss a wasp nest than play a 40K variant where my 50pt Infantry Squads are each throwing 40+ D12s to resolve an attack. At the scale where we're deploying skyscraper-sized machines and fielding strategic artillery, the difference in physical toughness between a Space Marine and an Ork really does not matter, nor does the difference in armor protection between a Space Marine and a Sister of Battle. A battalion commander doesn't, and shouldn't, care about those things.

^As Catbarf says regarding d6s. D6s are plenty fine.

bfdhud wrote:
It's just my opinion that the game has outgrown the D6 system. Stats are confined to math that can be resolved with a D6. Str v. T.

Swapping to D10's or D12's would add granularity that could resolve trying to compare a super human in the best armour available to an ork with a tshirt.

I actually think D8 would be a smoother transition as you don't have to bump as much in terms of stats BUT it offers a decent amount of granularity to offer stacking of modifiers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^As Catbarf says regarding d6s. D6s are plenty fine.

They're really not. D6 offers super little granularity.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
They're really not. D6 offers super little granularity.

Having 3-5 separate rolls involving 8 different statistics with at least 4 different types of conditional buff available for each roll just to determine the outcome of a single shooting attack provides plenty of granularity.

Diving into rivet-counting levels of granularity on individual rolls and mistaking it for game depth is bad design. Especially in a system that has reached a scale where subtle differences between stat values really don't (and shouldn't) matter to the big picture.

Edit: I mean, most of the time when people complain about lack of granularity, it's a fluff complaint, not a functional/gameplay one. Narratively, people expect a Space Marine to be mechanically more accurate than an Astra Militarum Veteran just out of principle. Functionally, a BS3+ Marine with a bolter, Bolter Discipline, and Doctrines is still a significantly better shooter than a BS3+ vet with a lasgun. We don't need a D12 system where the Marine can finally be properly represented as 8% more accurate than the Veteran to accomplish the desired effect.

Yeah, remember that 40k is a game where you play on a 42" wide board with 48" being a not-unusual range value for a weapon, and that weapon is exactly as effective firing at a model 1.01" away as it is firing at a model 48" away.

We've got I think A LITTLE BIT of room for adjustment before we need to change the kind of dice we use.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, something that made me laugh so much about Infinity when I first decided to give it a shot is that my buddy was talking up so hard how much more granular it was because it used D20s instead of D6s, and how much better that was, but there were SO MANY instances where Infinity basically just defaulted to "+/-3" on the D20 roll to make sure some penalty or bonus or whatever felt like it had some kind of effect.

....that's pretty darn close to _+/- 1/6. It's almost like, as in DnD, a +1 on a roll of a D20 doesn't feel like enough of a bonus to actually be satisfying.

 catbarf wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
They're really not. D6 offers super little granularity.

Having 3-5 separate rolls involving 8 different statistics with at least 4 different types of conditional buff available for each roll just to determine the outcome of a single shooting attack provides plenty of granularity.

Diving into rivet-counting levels of granularity on individual rolls and mistaking it for game depth is bad design. Especially in a system that has reached a scale where subtle differences between stat values really don't (and shouldn't) matter to the big picture.

Edit: I mean, most of the time when people complain about lack of granularity, it's a fluff complaint, not a functional/gameplay one. Narratively, people expect a Space Marine to be mechanically more accurate than an Astra Militarum Veteran just out of principle. Functionally, a BS3+ Marine with a bolter, Bolter Discipline, and Doctrines is still a significantly better shooter than a BS3+ vet with a lasgun. We don't need a D12 system where the Marine can finally be properly represented as 8% more accurate than the Veteran to accomplish the desired effect.

You literally just described bloat of rules for the Marine when we should be against bloat.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
They're really not. D6 offers super little granularity.

Having 3-5 separate rolls involving 8 different statistics with at least 4 different types of conditional buff available for each roll just to determine the outcome of a single shooting attack provides plenty of granularity.

Diving into rivet-counting levels of granularity on individual rolls and mistaking it for game depth is bad design. Especially in a system that has reached a scale where subtle differences between stat values really don't (and shouldn't) matter to the big picture.

Edit: I mean, most of the time when people complain about lack of granularity, it's a fluff complaint, not a functional/gameplay one. Narratively, people expect a Space Marine to be mechanically more accurate than an Astra Militarum Veteran just out of principle. Functionally, a BS3+ Marine with a bolter, Bolter Discipline, and Doctrines is still a significantly better shooter than a BS3+ vet with a lasgun. We don't need a D12 system where the Marine can finally be properly represented as 8% more accurate than the Veteran to accomplish the desired effect.

You literally just described bloat of rules for the Marine when we should be against bloat.

They did not, those are merely the normal core blocks of the game as it stands. Dice modification as a mechanic is fine. A fundamental problem a lot of folks have in grasping dice games is that the shape of the randomizer is pretty much irrelevant beyond the quickness and transparency of probability calculations off the top of your head. If the designer wants a thing to happen 5 % of the time, you can twist any type of dice to produce that. A D6 is the most commonly found and easiest to use die (packs well, is easy to read, rolls well etc.) on Earth which fits its purpose in a game where you need to roll a lot of them AND it can be squeezed to produce a ton of mathematical tricks 40k doesn't even use. Beyond a broader range of basic results, there is nothing inherently better in other polyhedrons you couldn't get out of the humble D6. Most importantly, simply changing to such a broader range wouldn't do much good for the game in terms of adding depth or decision making, because then you'd just be using slightly modified probabilities for the exact same decisions that you made in the previous version.

And as has been noted above, there are piles of games that can produce interesting gameplay with the D6's just fine. Interesting mechanics aren't about the numbers, but the interactions and the decisions that lead into said numbers at the table. A coin flip is a fine mechanic for conflict resolution, if the gameplay that leads into that coin flip has already been meaningful and thought provoking. A coin flip, a D100 roll-off, a pool of dozen D20's or a bucket of every single Platonic solid with numbers on them aren't anything of note by themselves if the decisions attached to said throws aren't interesting already.

Aren't they also the cheapest to make, so you can hike the price much higher for a bigger return too?

Karol wrote:
Aren't they also the cheapest to make, so you can hike the price much higher for a bigger return too?

In theory. 'Custom dice' are more about the collectible factor than anything else.
For gameplay, nothing stops anyone from buying and using cheap dice- a bag of 50 16mm dice from Chessex is about $29. Their sets of 12 are $4 to $7 depending on the type. (Opaque being cheaper than translucent).
People wildly overpay for GW dice because they want to. And if you've bought starter sets over the years, you just have packs of dice laying around.

When I said the lethality of the game is too damn high waaaaaay back in 8th, I didn't think that durability should go up to meet it.

I thought that lethality should come down.

Durability increasing to meet lethality has several significant taxes on actual game execution. For example, I can envision a game where a single Terminator dyes to unit X, which has 30 shots, and a game where a single Terminator dyes to Unit X again, but this time with 300 shots. Those games are equal, in that Unit X kills a single terminator with all its shots, but they are obviously very different to actually play. Lethality should've come down, rather than durability going up.

 Sherrypie wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
They're really not. D6 offers super little granularity.

Having 3-5 separate rolls involving 8 different statistics with at least 4 different types of conditional buff available for each roll just to determine the outcome of a single shooting attack provides plenty of granularity.

Diving into rivet-counting levels of granularity on individual rolls and mistaking it for game depth is bad design. Especially in a system that has reached a scale where subtle differences between stat values really don't (and shouldn't) matter to the big picture.

Edit: I mean, most of the time when people complain about lack of granularity, it's a fluff complaint, not a functional/gameplay one. Narratively, people expect a Space Marine to be mechanically more accurate than an Astra Militarum Veteran just out of principle. Functionally, a BS3+ Marine with a bolter, Bolter Discipline, and Doctrines is still a significantly better shooter than a BS3+ vet with a lasgun. We don't need a D12 system where the Marine can finally be properly represented as 8% more accurate than the Veteran to accomplish the desired effect.

You literally just described bloat of rules for the Marine when we should be against bloat.

They did not, those are merely the normal core blocks of the game as it stands. Dice modification as a mechanic is fine. A fundamental problem a lot of folks have in grasping dice games is that the shape of the randomizer is pretty much irrelevant beyond the quickness and transparency of probability calculations off the top of your head. If the designer wants a thing to happen 5 % of the time, you can twist any type of dice to produce that. A D6 is the most commonly found and easiest to use die (packs well, is easy to read, rolls well etc.) on Earth which fits its purpose in a game where you need to roll a lot of them AND it can be squeezed to produce a ton of mathematical tricks 40k doesn't even use. Beyond a broader range of basic results, there is nothing inherently better in other polyhedrons you couldn't get out of the humble D6. Most importantly, simply changing to such a broader range wouldn't do much good for the game in terms of adding depth or decision making, because then you'd just be using slightly modified probabilities for the exact same decisions that you made in the previous version.

And as has been noted above, there are piles of games that can produce interesting gameplay with the D6's just fine. Interesting mechanics aren't about the numbers, but the interactions and the decisions that lead into said numbers at the table. A coin flip is a fine mechanic for conflict resolution, if the gameplay that leads into that coin flip has already been meaningful and thought provoking. A coin flip, a D100 roll-off, a pool of dozen D20's or a bucket of every single Platonic solid with numbers on them aren't anything of note by themselves if the decisions attached to said throws aren't interesting already.

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

Also D8s roll fine and aren't expensive. That argument is bad and you should feel bad for attempting it. Look at these for example:
https://www.amazon.com/Jili-Online-Polyhedral-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/B072KKMW72/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=eight+sided+dice&qid=1602691425&sprefix=eight+sid&sr=8-7
A set of 10 is less than $5. So for $20-25 you get 50 which is about the max you need anyway. Bam, problem solved, and that wasn't me trying to bargain hunt either.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You literally just described bloat of rules for the Marine when we should be against bloat.

I may not like the current mechanism of representing Marine fire superiority, but functionally it illustrates the point that a Tactical can be significantly more powerful than a Veteran without needing further granularity to the statlines.

It's not like going to a D8 system so that Marines can hit on 3+ while Vets hit on 4+ would suddenly obviate the need for those bloated rules. They exist for coarse adjustment, not the fine-tuning that higher granularity can theoretically provide.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
They're really not. D6 offers super little granularity.

Having 3-5 separate rolls involving 8 different statistics with at least 4 different types of conditional buff available for each roll just to determine the outcome of a single shooting attack provides plenty of granularity.

Diving into rivet-counting levels of granularity on individual rolls and mistaking it for game depth is bad design. Especially in a system that has reached a scale where subtle differences between stat values really don't (and shouldn't) matter to the big picture.

Edit: I mean, most of the time when people complain about lack of granularity, it's a fluff complaint, not a functional/gameplay one. Narratively, people expect a Space Marine to be mechanically more accurate than an Astra Militarum Veteran just out of principle. Functionally, a BS3+ Marine with a bolter, Bolter Discipline, and Doctrines is still a significantly better shooter than a BS3+ vet with a lasgun. We don't need a D12 system where the Marine can finally be properly represented as 8% more accurate than the Veteran to accomplish the desired effect.

You literally just described bloat of rules for the Marine when we should be against bloat.

They did not, those are merely the normal core blocks of the game as it stands. Dice modification as a mechanic is fine. A fundamental problem a lot of folks have in grasping dice games is that the shape of the randomizer is pretty much irrelevant beyond the quickness and transparency of probability calculations off the top of your head. If the designer wants a thing to happen 5 % of the time, you can twist any type of dice to produce that. A D6 is the most commonly found and easiest to use die (packs well, is easy to read, rolls well etc.) on Earth which fits its purpose in a game where you need to roll a lot of them AND it can be squeezed to produce a ton of mathematical tricks 40k doesn't even use. Beyond a broader range of basic results, there is nothing inherently better in other polyhedrons you couldn't get out of the humble D6. Most importantly, simply changing to such a broader range wouldn't do much good for the game in terms of adding depth or decision making, because then you'd just be using slightly modified probabilities for the exact same decisions that you made in the previous version.

And as has been noted above, there are piles of games that can produce interesting gameplay with the D6's just fine. Interesting mechanics aren't about the numbers, but the interactions and the decisions that lead into said numbers at the table. A coin flip is a fine mechanic for conflict resolution, if the gameplay that leads into that coin flip has already been meaningful and thought provoking. A coin flip, a D100 roll-off, a pool of dozen D20's or a bucket of every single Platonic solid with numbers on them aren't anything of note by themselves if the decisions attached to said throws aren't interesting already.

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

Also D8s roll fine and aren't expensive. That argument is bad and you should feel bad for attempting it. Look at these for example:
https://www.amazon.com/Jili-Online-Polyhedral-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/B072KKMW72/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=eight+sided+dice&qid=1602691425&sprefix=eight+sid&sr=8-7
A set of 10 is less than $5. So for $20-25 you get 50 which is about the max you need anyway. Bam, problem solved, and that wasn't me trying to bargain hunt either.

Dude, most of those rules you just quoted have nothing to do with the topic of dice mechanics, BD and SA just increase their number. What catbarf was talking about there was that the argument for the limited granularity of a D6 is utterly silly because the interesting bit, one attack sequence from start to finish, already has so many connecting mechanics from a spread of unit characteristics to dice modifiers to rerolls to whatever special rules various weapons have that the spread of distinct results is way wider than you'd ever need for it to be (many games do fine with a fraction of the probability space of 40k's sequencing). Changing the size of the die itself has nothing relevant to add to that when the granularity is already pretty dang high as a whole, if not at the moment of a singular die roll.

I also never said a thing about the price, because that is a nonfactor. If you like the other polyhedral forms aesthetically better than cubes, more power to you, but they aren't inherently mechanically any better or create any better play. all of that comes from the interactions in the mechanics. Lack of granularity is not a problem in the framework currently used.

Shock Assault is bloat - 90% of the time its +1 A for Marines - so just add it on to the stats.

I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Shock Assault is bloat - 90% of the time its +1 A for Marines - so just add it on to the stats.

But then they would actually have to price marines correctly and that would make them mad.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Shock Assault is bloat - 90% of the time its +1 A for Marines - so just add it on to the stats.

But then they would actually have to price marines correctly and that would make them mad.

You mean primaris, no reason to be Mad at tacs or csm .

Not Online!!! wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Shock Assault is bloat - 90% of the time its +1 A for Marines - so just add it on to the stats.

But then they would actually have to price marines correctly and that would make them mad.

You mean primaris, no reason to be Mad at tacs or csm .

Yes because Primaris melee is such a huge issue LOL


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

It's actually all related. When you're piling rules on top of rules to create depth, there was a problem with the initial system to begin with. The D6 was already limiting even in 4th! Bolters just stopped wounding after T6. Lasguns already couldn't touch T5 basically. The vehicle system has always been poorly handled. Fast forward several editions and we have an absolutely awful wounding system because of not only is the design team trying to create a simple system (yet failing at it because, you guessed it, bloat) but it scales absolutely horrible.

The point is simple and it's that the D6 just doesn't work for what people want out of the game.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

It's actually all related. When you're piling rules on top of rules to create depth, there was a problem with the initial system to begin with. The D6 was already limiting even in 4th! Bolters just stopped wounding after T6. Lasguns already couldn't touch T5 basically. The vehicle system has always been poorly handled. Fast forward several editions and we have an absolutely awful wounding system because of not only is the design team trying to create a simple system (yet failing at it because, you guessed it, bloat) but it scales absolutely horrible.

The point is simple and it's that the D6 just doesn't work for what people want out of the game.

30 bolters isn't designing for "depth", it's designing to sell product. Same with supplements.

And you're incorrect about wounding in 4th, Lasguns wounded up to T6 and Bolters up to T7. Also, it was fine. Arguably that gave more depth than the current paradigm.

You're argument is basically saying that ANY special rules mean that the underlying system is broken, which is just a poor argument on the face of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with special rules, the art is just in how/why they are applied. A unit getting an extra shot at 24" when standing still isn't breaking the bank, design wise, and it's certainly not some kind of proof that rolling D10s is in any way necessary.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

How is it bloat when everyone knows that most marine guns are going to have an assault, rapid fire and heavy version. And some stuff is just stupid like having a separate gravis captin and a gravis captin with a new gun, but I doubt that this makes people confused somehow.

Karol wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

How is it bloat when everyone knows that most marine guns are going to have an assault, rapid fire and heavy version. And some stuff is just stupid like having a separate gravis captin and a gravis captin with a new gun, but I doubt that this makes people confused somehow.

Because having 30 guns with overlapping roles is totally unnecessary. You're looking at variations of a S4 anti-infantry weapon, which produce minor variations in result when firing at a target. You could probably cut it down to six weapons and achieve the same gameplay results to about 90%.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Karol wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

How is it bloat when everyone knows that most marine guns are going to have an assault, rapid fire and heavy version. And some stuff is just stupid like having a separate gravis captin and a gravis captin with a new gun, but I doubt that this makes people confused somehow.

Because having 30 guns with overlapping roles is totally unnecessary. You're looking at variations of a S4 anti-infantry weapon, which produce minor variations in result when firing at a target. You could probably cut it down to six weapons and achieve the same gameplay results to about 90%.

Agreed - the current Marine dex has four entire pages in small print devoted to just weapon stats - twice as much as the original Rogue Trader list for the entire universe.

I personally like the detail of per model stats and overlapping weapons. Sure it's unnecessary duplication, but it adds a level of detail to the game that matches the lore.

Brother Castor wrote:
I personally like the detail of per model stats and overlapping weapons. Sure it's unnecessary duplication, but it adds a level of detail to the game that matches the lore.

I'm not saying one can't enjoy the extra detail, I'm just saying it's unnecessary bloat from a design perspective. It's also another area of the game where the resolution of detail for Marines is turned waaay up over everybody else.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

It's actually all related. When you're piling rules on top of rules to create depth, there was a problem with the initial system to begin with. The D6 was already limiting even in 4th! Bolters just stopped wounding after T6. Lasguns already couldn't touch T5 basically. The vehicle system has always been poorly handled. Fast forward several editions and we have an absolutely awful wounding system because of not only is the design team trying to create a simple system (yet failing at it because, you guessed it, bloat) but it scales absolutely horrible.

The point is simple and it's that the D6 just doesn't work for what people want out of the game.

30 bolters isn't designing for "depth", it's designing to sell product. Same with supplements.

And you're incorrect about wounding in 4th, Lasguns wounded up to T6 and Bolters up to T7. Also, it was fine. Arguably that gave more depth than the current paradigm.

You're argument is basically saying that ANY special rules mean that the underlying system is broken, which is just a poor argument on the face of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with special rules, the art is just in how/why they are applied. A unit getting an extra shot at 24" when standing still isn't breaking the bank, design wise, and it's certainly not some kind of proof that rolling D10s is in any way necessary.

Amazing, Slayer's arguments of "them all being related" are just gripes about separate issues absolutely unrelated to his conclusion on the dice. That's impressive, honestly.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
It's actually all related. When you're piling rules on top of rules to create depth, there was a problem with the initial system to begin with. The D6 was already limiting even in 4th! Bolters just stopped wounding after T6. Lasguns already couldn't touch T5 basically. The vehicle system has always been poorly handled. Fast forward several editions and we have an absolutely awful wounding system because of not only is the design team trying to create a simple system (yet failing at it because, you guessed it, bloat) but it scales absolutely horrible.

If the real fix for the wounding system was to switch to a D12 so that we could allow bolters to wound T8 on a roll of 12... Then we could just bring back 6/4+ (IE roll a 6 followed by a 4+) to get the same probability on a D6. Clunky? Sure. More clunky to add a re-roll to a very niche scenario than to use D12s for all core mechanics? Absolutely not.

Like I said, I don't particularly like the execution of special rules as the answer for Marines. But ditch doctrines, turn Bolter Discipline into a single bonus shot at all ranges, and just bake Shock Assault into the profiles as +1A all the time, and now that's down to just one thematic special rule providing the requisite combat boost.

And in any case, special rules are not synonymous with bloat. Good designers produce simple systems with special rules where needed to achieve the desired impact. A simplistic system that relies on tons of special rules to provide depth and a complex system with numerous granular checks to resolve basic actions are both examples of bad design. 40K is somewhere leaning towards the worst of both worlds; advocating more granularity, more detail, more complex stat ranges to sub in for special rules is just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Get the game to where you don't need 8 different stats and 3-5 dice rolls just to resolve a basic shooting attack, and then we can talk about more granular die types as a mechanic. See: Apocalypse.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
the D6 just doesn't work for what people want out of the game.

Yeah, well, GW could release 10th Edition with every model having just an Attack stat and a Defense stat and resolving combat with D20s and a million special rules, and people would argue that the real problem is not using a D100 so that we can have the granularity to really represent the differences between troop types.

40K players have this odd tendency to zero in on chrome rather than assess design space more broadly; we want the Toughness stat to properly reflect that Marines are exactly 4.5% tougher than Orks, but the fact that a Nurgling three miles away is no harder to hit than a Titan looming over you doesn't seem to bother anyone. It's apparently a problem that a bolt shell's miniscule likelihood of incapacitating a tank in one shot wasn't accurately simulated, but having a horde of unruly Orks operate in lock-step unison with hive-mind level coordination is just fine. In short: If you have issues with the design space of the game, there are bigger fish to fry than the stat model.

As another reference point: Check out the Starship Troopers system by Andy Chambers. That system uses the interplay of different die types, additive bonuses, and multipliers to create a granular combat system without requiring more than two die rolls to execute a basic attack. It uses simple unit profiles, but the core mechanics have depth, with a lot of 'hooks' into which a curated set of special rules can interact.

Karol wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I was going to say something, but catbarf and Sherrypie are 100% on top of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you talking about? Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault, and Doctrines are THE definition of bloat LOL.

A: It's like you didn't even read what was being argued (or didn't understand it)

B: 30 types of bolter and 9 codex supplements are far worse bloat offenders than Bolter Discipline, Shock Assault and Doctrines.

How is it bloat when everyone knows that most marine guns are going to have an assault, rapid fire and heavy version. And some stuff is just stupid like having a separate gravis captin and a gravis captin with a new gun, but I doubt that this makes people confused somehow.

The number of different bolter weapons in the marine arsenal currently is equivalent to the total number of different ranged weapons used by the Tau.

You know, the faction that's existed since 3rd, and only used ranged weapons.

1/2 of those have been added to the game since the advent of 8th edition.

The definition of "rules bloat" I would put forth would be "rules added to the game that do not increase the decision making required to play the game, or rules for units that do not fulfil some new role required by a faction.

Scouts, Reivers, Infiltrators and Inceptors for example, all existing and fulfilling the exact same role idea of infiltration troops armed with anti-infantry weaponry that grab objectives or harass enemy units early.

They simply don't all need to exist, and 3/4 of them were added basically one on top of another.

The result of this is pretty obvious: rather than fixing the glaring issues with Reivers, GW released inceptors and infiltrators, and then because nobody was jumping ship from Scouts, and they didnt want to deal with the tantrum from their army of uberwhales when they - god forbid - replaced a marine option, they gave scouts worse rules to encourage the switch.

GW's been doing this for years. GW did this TO YOU.

1) GW adds new, unnecessary new marine thing to encourage whales to buy thing
2) Interest in new unneccessary marine thing reduces over time because it doesn't really fulfil a new role in the game beyond "more marines" and GW has already released 3 new unnecessary marine things
3) GW leaves thing in the game because getting rid of anything gets the marine players' panties in a twist but obviously doesn't spend a ton of time or energy on it because they're busy selling the new unnecessary marine thing
4) uninformed new customers deadend into the hobby by accidentally buying the old unnecessary marine thing, like you did, and then get frustrated because having minimum-effort rules is frustrating.

GW has made "human powerfantasy dudes in big space armor who are more elite than those OTHER armies" with some contrived cheap lore justification for years and years and years and editions upon editions, and every time they do, they shower the new one with a little bit of love and attention and then they slowly CRAM their rules further and further into the pile, grinding whatever distinguished them slowly into increasingly generic marine mush to clear out that design space so they can use it again for whatever 'new' thing they want to make.

It's telling that the Eldar get new Howling Banshee sculpts that replace the old models but preserve the old rules, but Space Marines get Eliminators to replace scout snipers (but they don't replace scout snipers).