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Eldar practice a highly mobile form of warfare and thus should have any defensive buff linked to exactly that. they should not be given a buff that allows them to park on a location and dig in (I'm talking in general obviously eldar units specificly intended for that should be designed to be good at that)


Eldar most certainly shouldn't be turned into "Space Marines with pointy ears"

That's really unfortunate in a game there requires protecting static locations. But I guess we'll see what GW comes up with.

BrianDavion wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Banshees have *never* been efficient at killing elite infantry. Even back in 5th they were averaging 5 meq kills on the charge (30 attacks, hitting on 4s wounding on 5s ignoring armor), which is just "ok", considering that it's going to take one or two turns to get into combat against those Marines and they can't be swept due to ATSKNF.

Which highlights a interesting thing about Eldar. I think they might be the oldest army in the game who has had glaring design flaws for like 90% of their existence with no tweaks or rules revamps to address them. You CANNOT be a anti-elite muncher with just strength 3 and 3 attacks on the charge. In order for a melee unit to be good in this game they MUST have either a high volume of attacks or very high and accurate strength. Yet addition after addition games workshop has looked at these girls and thought to themselves that they are basic profile is fine, and that cavalier attitude extends to large swaths of the codex.

The designers need to do a lot of soul-searching and decide what the actual philosophy of the faction on the tabletop should be, and then they need to do a rewrite basically from the ground up. Take the Avatar as he is now and throw it in the trash, take banshees as they are now and just throw them in the trash. These kinds of units need a revamp.

the problem is banshees are a choppy unit that is expected to walk up the board. as I said the problem isn't defences it's delivery.

a second wound isn't going to magicly make them any better.

Where did I say a single thing about wounds or defenses.

There's a real friction between people's expectations, the actual lore (of which i only know 2nd hand), what GW thinks works, and then what is actually mechanically good on the tabletop.

I personally think the -1 hit cap has killed any real evasion based strategy but i guess there's always codex abilities to break that rule.

ERJAK wrote:

The big problem here is that it would be WILDLY more powerful than Miracle dice, especially at the end of games.

How would it be more powerful? How would it be any different from Miracle dice even at the end of the game? The mechanic of Miracle dice and this idea for Prophecy dice is to swing things at a critical moment. Miracle dice can accomplish that yet I don't think anyone is screaming about how the very concept of Miracle dice is overpowered.

Firing something at an enemy that must go down? Use Miracle dice to guarantee a hit, a to-wound, or better Damage. Conversely this idea of Prophecy dice could only be used to guarantee a failed save roll. There are still multiple other stages where things could fail. If anything the Prophecy dice would be more defensive oriented, since they could be used to make the enemy fail to-hit, to-wound, or reduce Damage rolls. Defensively oriented prophecy sounds more like Eldar due to the focus on trying to avoid Eldar casualties.

Iracundus wrote:
How would it be more powerful? How would it be any different from Miracle dice even at the end of the game? The mechanic of Miracle dice and this idea for Prophecy dice is to swing things at a critical moment. Miracle dice can accomplish that yet I don't think anyone is screaming about how the very concept of Miracle dice is overpowered.

Well, it's fundamentally a different mechanic with different implications. For example, it magnifies the power of abilities that cause your opponent to only succeed on high values- if your opponent needs a 5 or 6 to hit you, it's trivial to make lascannons miss.

Obviously miracle dice can allow you to hit if your opponent puts you in that situation, but that's more punishing them than something you can consistently exploit. Miracle dice either allow you to mitigate bad odds to a degree, or further guarantee good odds, but these proposed prophecy dice would allow you to magnify bad odds for your opponent into impossible odds- at least, until the dice run out.

And hey, maybe that's not a bad design. But it requires care.

 catbarf wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
How would it be more powerful? How would it be any different from Miracle dice even at the end of the game? The mechanic of Miracle dice and this idea for Prophecy dice is to swing things at a critical moment. Miracle dice can accomplish that yet I don't think anyone is screaming about how the very concept of Miracle dice is overpowered.

Well, it's fundamentally a different mechanic with different implications. For example, it magnifies the power of abilities that cause your opponent to only succeed on high values- if your opponent needs a 5 or 6 to hit you, it's trivial to make lascannons miss.

Obviously miracle dice can allow you to hit if your opponent puts you in that situation, but that's more punishing them than something you can consistently exploit. Miracle dice either allow you to mitigate bad odds to a degree, or further guarantee good odds, but these proposed prophecy dice would allow you to magnify bad odds for your opponent into impossible odds- at least, until the dice run out.

And hey, maybe that's not a bad design. But it requires care.

this, also there's a huge differance in feel from impacting YOUR roll and impacting another players.

BrianDavion wrote:
Eldar practice a highly mobile form of warfare and thus should have any defensive buff linked to exactly that. they should not be given a buff that allows them to park on a location and dig in (I'm talking in general obviously eldar units specificly intended for that should be designed to be good at that)


Eldar most certainly shouldn't be turned into "Space Marines with pointy ears"

This. If you want to give eldar a defensive boost, there are tons of existing canonical eldar traits that could facilitate this. Off the top of my head they have...

* Psykers bending fate and guiding them to avoid the worst danger.
* Superhuman levels of speed and agility.
* Wuxia movie levels of martial arts training that takes advantage of the aforementioned speed and agility.
* Bizarre tech like banshee masks and warp jump generators designed to make them harder to hit.

So if you want to make eldar more survivable, you have tons of ways to do it. Retconning personal forcefields onto every aspect warrior is really clunky, especially when you have so many other excuses to give them a defensive mechanic. Even if the powers that be decided the only viable way to buff them was to give them bonus wounds or whatever, you'd still probably be better off fluffing it abstractly as "luck combined with grace combined with plot armor" rather than deciding they've all actually had energy shields the whole time.

But giving them bonus wounds via forcefields is pretty low on the list of ways I'd like to see their survivability buffed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:

this, also there's a huge differance in feel from impacting YOUR roll and impacting another players.

Agreed on this point too. While it's annoying to have my bright lance shot negated by an Act of Faith, I'd be way more annoyed to be told that my bright lance failed to wound my opponent's T3 target because they spend a "fate die" or whatever.

Wyldhunt wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:

this, also there's a huge differance in feel from impacting YOUR roll and impacting another players.

Agreed on this point too. While it's annoying to have my bright lance shot negated by an Act of Faith, I'd be way more annoyed to be told that my bright lance failed to wound my opponent's T3 target because they spend a "fate die" or whatever.

Either way the attack gets to the point where it has a 1/6 chance of failing, and it does. The end result is the same. There is no difference. The fate/prophecy die has not done any better than the Miracle die.

You impact the other player's rolls all the time in the game, from to-hit modifiers, to-wound modifiers, armor save modifiers or things like debuffs to Strength. Have a big enough armor save modifier for example and you are essentially making them auto-fail their roll.

So far I have yet to see any actual proof that this proposed mechanic would be any more overpowered than Miracle dice. "Feelings" don't matter when it comes to the math. Again like Miracle dice, if only one roll per phase is allowed, then the solution is to flood the person with choices so they have to make hard decisions about which rolls to influence.

I think that is more in keeping with the Eldar theme of small elite focused on smaller scale combat, just like the martial arts Aspects themselves, and struggling with being outnumbgered. Just as Aspects and in the lore, Phoenix Lords, struggled with the hordes of the enemy despite individually outskilling them, an Eldar might be able to avoid a single sniper shot but if there is an incoming bullet rain then in avoiding one bad fate they may simply step into another. It's a microcosm of what the Eldar as a faction face on the galactic scale.

Iracundus wrote:

So far I have yet to see any actual proof that this proposed mechanic would be any more overpowered than Miracle dice. "Feelings" don't matter when it comes to the math. Again like Miracle dice, if only one roll per phase is allowed, then the solution is to flood the person with choices so they have to make hard decisions about which rolls to influence.

Feelings do matter when it comes to game design even if they don't impact the math. Even if the end result is similar, the two experiences "feel" different. One is mildly annoying but feels like your opponent buffing himself (something that we're pretty accustomed to in 40k) whereas your opponent forcing you to fail at something just... feels bad. Like he reached over and rolled your dice for you.

And to split hairs, I'd argue that watching an opponent autopass a save with a miracle die is a more annoying experience than watching them auto-pass a to-wound roll for similar reasons. One feels like your opponent bolstering his own efforts while the other feels like he's causing your own efforts to auto-fail.

Just a weird thought - Eldar speed/mobility and the likes of shimmershields have always been a narrative about how hard it is to hit the Eldar.

We have invulnerability saves that lock the Armor save so it can never be worse than a certain number.

What if Eldar could be given an ability (preferably limited to coming from an Exarch, Warlock or Aspects) that limit the "To Hit" can never be improved past a certain point for them. Say, opponent can never get better than a 4+ to hit them (in Ranged combat) or similar?

Certainly not something to give to the entire army, but possibly use it to protect vital units against being shot before they act or have reached melee?

I think feelings unfortunately have been the biggest impediment to the eldar as a faction.

that is, the feelings of everyone else playing against them. people don't like being tricked, and so the the general gimmick of the eldar automatically puts them at a feelings disadvantage.

This is IMO why the eldar are called cheesy and broken edition after edition, when you generally find it's just one combo, or a spam list that's actually broken. But because it's effective and its tricky and sneaky and buffy, it feeds into the negative feelings players have against the eldar in the first place.

You don't get the negativity the eldar have received for 20+ years with the drukhari, because despite being the same race, their warfare is still fairly straight up. They attack and die and kill.


It's pretty obvious that no one wants to play an army and lose to underhanded tactics - they all want to lose to being punched or shot.

And thus the current game is HEAVILY built around just taking hits and dishing them out.


Feelings are imo the greatest reason the eldar have struggled for so long.

Do you then object to armor save modifiers? Because that can essentially force the opponent's armor save roll to auto-fail.

The feelings bit is a logical fallacy. When it comes to design, the important part about the balancing is in the math and interactions. Lot of GW's past failings have been for example due to bad costing of units. A common mistake they made is overcosting units based on the extreme ends of variable or conditional effects, rather than the average or expected value, perhaps again because then the effect "felt" powerful.

The Eldar have also always been in the background described as frustrating to fight, so perhaps even that annoyance is in-character, so long as the mechanics can be made to balance out in the end mathematically. In the past the Eldar used the mechanic of high to-hit modifiers to make them extremely hard to hit. Certainly that could be argued to be frustrating for their opponents, but nonetheless it was used. The hard part is in making it balanced, not about the actual idea of to-hit modifiers in and of themselves.

One could also argue good saves are frustrating for those armies with a relative shortage of good AP or armor save modifiers. Nonetheless there isn't any real argument that good armor saves cannot be a good idea to use. Pretty much any mechanic that raises the bar for success for the opponent can be argued to be frustrating.

The difference is that instead of raising the bar on a wide scale for individual units, the idea of prophecy/fate dice would dictate the roll of only a few rolls, just as Miracle dice do. Wide vs. tall effect. The limiting factor aside from the hard limit of for example 1 die per phase only, would be the limited number of dice vs the far more numerous rolls that a player might be tempted to use them on, same as with SoB and Miracle dice.

A lot of the ways that you could use to represent Eldar's ability to avoid damage have been deemed toxic and problematic by the community and GW games design, so that's why people suggest more straightforward survivability buffs.

Wound rolls of 1-3 always failing, 1+/4++/6+++ saves on 3 wound models, full heals, rezzes every turn and maybe throw in some -1 damage in somewhere is deemed perfectly acceptable to modern 40k players. But a unit getting a -2 to be hit is unreasonable apparently.

 Bosskelot wrote:
A lot of the ways that you could use to represent Eldar's ability to avoid damage have been deemed toxic and problematic by the community and GW games design, so that's why people suggest more straightforward survivability buffs.

Wound rolls of 1-3 always failing, 1+/4++/6+++ saves on 3 wound models, full heals, rezzes every turn and maybe throw in some -1 damage in somewhere is deemed perfectly acceptable to modern 40k players. But a unit getting a -2 to be hit is unreasonable apparently.

-2 already impacts low BS armies exponentially.
The other are "fixed" impact comparatively.

Fwiw i agree with you insofar that -1 should atleast stack with selfinflicted-1s and that full rezzing for anything not necron or a plague zombie is nonsense.

Stormonu wrote:Just a weird thought - Eldar speed/mobility and the likes of shimmershields have always been a narrative about how hard it is to hit the Eldar.

We have invulnerability saves that lock the Armor save so it can never be worse than a certain number.

What if Eldar could be given an ability (preferably limited to coming from an Exarch, Warlock or Aspects) that limit the "To Hit" can never be improved past a certain point for them. Say, opponent can never get better than a 4+ to hit them (in Ranged combat) or similar?

Certainly not something to give to the entire army, but possibly use it to protect vital units against being shot before they act or have reached melee?

So Transhuman Physiology, but applied to the to-hit roll instead of the to-wound roll? We've had that pitched in the Proposed Rules section a few times. I don't like it because it impacts factions differently. Say you make the cap "never hit on better than on a 4+." You'd be debuffing marines, sure, but you'd be having zero impact on fire warriors and guardsmen whom you'd expect to be, if anything, more impacted by eldar trickery than marines, skitarii, etc.

A mechanic to negate enemy buffs might be interesting though. So the more your opponent has invested into buff mechanics, the more they've wasted. Prooobably a feels-bad mechanic, but worth mulling over.

Iracundus wrote:Do you then object to armor save modifiers? Because that can essentially force the opponent's armor save roll to auto-fail.

Armor Penetration is a mechanic that all factions have access to. If my opponent ignores my save with a plasma gun, I can turn around and return the favor with a star cannon or bright lance. By comparison, a special, "You fail because prophecies," mechanic feels super duper special butt pull lacking meaningful counterplay.

The feelings bit is a logical fallacy. When it comes to design, the important part about the balancing is in the math and interactions.

Disagree. While balance is about math, game design is about the end user experience. And the psychology attached to the math is a big part of that. In basketball, we could subtract points every time a basket is scored rather than adding them and then announce the team with the lowest score the winner. But we don't do that because going into the negatives feels worse than accumulating those feels-good reward points. Let's say my army has a mechanic that lets me reroll a die once per phase when I perform action X. Now in one version of the rules, action X is me giving you a piece of candy. In another version of the rules, action X is me punching you in the kidney. The math behind that reroll is the same either way. Which experience do you, as my opponent, want to have?

The Eldar have also always been in the background described as frustrating to fight, so perhaps even that annoyance is in-character, so long as the mechanics can be made to balance out in the end mathematically. In the past the Eldar used the mechanic of high to-hit modifiers to make them extremely hard to hit. Certainly that could be argued to be frustrating for their opponents, but nonetheless it was used. The hard part is in making it balanced, not about the actual idea of to-hit modifiers in and of themselves.

"It's what my character would do," doesn't fly in tabletop RPGs, and it doesn't make for a good argument in war games either. If your faction is miserable to play against, it's a poorly designed faction.

One could also argue good saves are frustrating for those armies with a relative shortage of good AP or armor save modifiers. Nonetheless there isn't any real argument that good armor saves cannot be a good idea to use. Pretty much any mechanic that raises the bar for success for the opponent can be argued to be frustrating.

What you're describing is basically a form of skew list, and skew lists are absolutely frustrating to play against and probably bad for game design. However, 40k is pretty good about sprinkling a lot of armor-reducing options throughout various factions in the game, so good armour saves aren't really a big issue at the moment.

Some armies can ignore or otherwise bypass invulnerables. Not all armies can do so, so it lacks meaningful counterplay by your logic. However these abilities remain relatively rare so I haven't seen too much complaining about such things so far. Same would go for something like prophecy dice, just like Miracle dice. They not meant to be common enough to just fling around. Actually the counterplay is as I already said in a previous post, flood them with rolls so they cannot affect them all.

Both the balance and the game design revolve around the math. Feelings do not and should not come into it because feelings can lead to things like what GW has done before: miscosting something due to the "feeling" it is a powerful effect when really something was trash. Imposing fixed "always fail on a 1-3" is just a lesser version of causing the opponent's roll to fail. There is no reason that already used mechanic should be fine, yet a rarer auto-fail shouldn't be just as there are already rare auto-fails of invulnerable saves. Debuffs to S and T are influencing an opponent's rolls, so why are those fine then but dictating one die is not?

The "punching in the kidney" thing is a strawman argument. The underlying premise, that those 2 situations are equivalent, is false. They are not equivalent in the same way that the bright lance failure to cause damage is.

This is like the same thing that happens with Blue in Magic the Gathering. Just because they are not focused around a conventional slugfest of creatures or direct damage, but instead focus on misdirection, paralysis, and control, some people complain. The issue is about whether it is balanced, not whether Blue's style should exist at all, and Blue remains a valid choice despite the complaints of these people that want a conventional fight. Seriously these complaints sound like "Stop dodging and stand still so I can hit you!". It sounds almost like anything other than standing there and taking it on the jaw is not acceptable. Of course the Eldar are not going to play the same game of trading blows where they would be at a disadvantage. Of course they will try and trip you up, and of course they will try to set the stage ahead of time so that you will already be at a disadvantage.

The issue is 9th edition mechanics do not give much room to maneuver. To-hit modifiers are capped (unless this somehow gets lifted or bent by an Eldar Codex), Initiative is gone even though Movement returned. The entire Eldar statline is based around basically baseline human+1, which is what it was when 40K started. That means T3 W1. Higher Wounds in all editions of 40K have been shown to basically reflect "toughness" or will to keep going, rather than agility or dodges. This would also create odd interactions with things like inflicting MW. Why should dodging and agility make a difference against the often supernatural effects that cause MW such as Nurgle diseases?

These kinds of odd mechanic limitations are not new. I have many years ago even argued the psychic power Fortune from 3rd edition onwards did not make logical sense. It is meant to be the psyker warning the target of incoming attacks so they can dodge or block, yet this results in a re-roll of armor save rather than any kind of dodge or to-hit modifier to the attack.
One kind of mechanic I remember from Apocalypse, at least the first edition of it, was the enemy fires at an Eldar unit. The Eldar unit plays this strategem equivalent, revealing that the target had been all illusionary so all the shots were wasted, and the unit is revealed/redeployed in a new location. Frustrating? I could see that. However with the bucketfuls of dice being thrown around, even that was not necessarily overpowered. Again quantity to overcome quality.

Iracundus wrote:
The feelings bit is a logical fallacy.

Why?

This isn't a philosophical debate, it's a game people play for fun. If a particular mechanic negatively impacts the experience of players then that it not a fallacy.

Indeed, I would argue that fun and experience matter vastly more than balance.

Not that balance is unimportant but it's vastly better to have a game that's unbalanced but still fun than a game that's balanced but unfun.

In the former, people will play the game but complain about the balance. In the latter, people will praise the balance but then play something else instead.

Negating (i.e. auto-fail) invulnerable saves can be argued to negatively affect the experience of those players that have the invulnerable save since they don't get to use something they paid points for. Negating armor saves (again auto-fail) can also be argued to negatively affect the experience of players with good armor saves. Pretty much any mechanic that affects the other side's rolls or stats to their detriment can be argued to have a negative experience. If going by not potentially affecting the other player's experience then there would be no such things as debuffs, negative modifiers, or anything else like that.

The whole issue has also drifted. The original critique about the proposal of a prophecy dice mechanic was that it would be too "overpowered", especially in late game. Yet despite that claim, there has been no proof to show this to actually be the case beyond some nebulous "it hurts my feelings". Indeed the only specific concrete example and comparison given, showed that a bright lance or lascannon being stopped by an Act of Faith Miracle 6++ save is the same as it being stopped by a forced fail 1 on a to-wound roll. Both required the same expenditure of a limited resource (1 die) to negate an attack that had a 1/6 chance of failure. Same investment for the same result. Where is the "overpowered" in that? Anyone have any other specific examples to actually examine and number crunch? Attempt to prove the claim if it has any merit.

I have even pointed out that if it is a matter of affecting the opponent rolls, it is more defensive oriented than the more offensive oriented Miracle dice options at least when it comes to the actual fighting. Adding some effective durability to the fragile Eldar through this means would hardly be game breaking and is in keeping with Eldar goals to keep their own casualties down. The only directly offensive use of such a mechanic would be causing the opponent to fail saves, as compared to the auto hit, auto wound, maximize Damage abilities of Acts of Faith.

Iracundus wrote:
Negating (i.e. auto-fail) invulnerable saves can be argued to negatively affect the experience of those players that have the invulnerable save since they don't get to use something they paid points for. Negating armor saves (again auto-fail) can also be argued to negatively affect the experience of players with good armor saves. Pretty much any mechanic that affects the other side's rolls or stats to their detriment can be argued to have a negative experience. If going by not potentially affecting the other player's experience then there would be no such things as debuffs, negative modifiers, or anything else like that.

The whole issue has also drifted. The original critique about the proposal of a prophecy dice mechanic was that it would be too "overpowered", especially in late game. Yet despite that claim, there has been no proof to show this to actually be the case beyond some nebulous "it hurts my feelings". Indeed the only specific concrete example and comparison given, showed that a bright lance or lascannon being stopped by an Act of Faith Miracle 6++ save is the same as it being stopped by a forced fail 1 on a to-wound roll. Both required the same expenditure of a limited resource (1 die) to negate an attack that had a 1/6 chance of failure. Same investment for the same result. Where is the "overpowered" in that? Anyone have any other specific examples to actually examine and number crunch? Attempt to prove the claim if it has any merit.

I have even pointed out that if it is a matter of affecting the opponent rolls, it is more defensive oriented than the more offensive oriented Miracle dice options at least when it comes to the actual fighting. Adding some effective durability to the fragile Eldar through this means would hardly be game breaking and is in keeping with Eldar goals to keep their own casualties down. The only directly offensive use of such a mechanic would be causing the opponent to fail saves, as compared to the auto hit, auto wound, maximize Damage abilities of Acts of Faith.

It's pretty clear now though that GW doesn't charge for invulns. That's part of the problem with invulns, actually.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bosskelot wrote:
A lot of the ways that you could use to represent Eldar's ability to avoid damage have been deemed toxic and problematic by the community and GW games design, so that's why people suggest more straightforward survivability buffs.

Wound rolls of 1-3 always failing, 1+/4++/6+++ saves on 3 wound models, full heals, rezzes every turn and maybe throw in some -1 damage in somewhere is deemed perfectly acceptable to modern 40k players. But a unit getting a -2 to be hit is unreasonable apparently.

Yes, because its more "feels bad" than the rest of that stuff. To drive the point home, playing vs DG is pretty miserable as well.

At least with force fields, the opponent gets to make numbers go down on their turn instead of doing nothing at all. "I dodge everything" just isn't going to fly. This is another area where the game must diverge from the fluff tremendously I think.

Iracundus wrote:
Negating (i.e. auto-fail) invulnerable saves can be argued to negatively affect the experience of those players that have the invulnerable save since they don't get to use something they paid points for.

Sure. I imagine that's why, aside from Mortal Wounds, effects that negate Invulnerable Saves are very rare.

Iracundus wrote:
Negating armor saves (again auto-fail) can also be argued to negatively affect the experience of players with good armor saves. Pretty much any mechanic that affects the other side's rolls or stats to their detriment can be argued to have a negative experience. If going by not potentially affecting the other player's experience then there would be no such things as debuffs, negative modifiers, or anything else like that.

The difference between the mechanics you're talking about and the mechanic you want to implement is one of agency.

There is a difference between having, say, a unit in the enemy army that can ignore invulnerable saves (which can be strategised around) and the opponent just being able to make you fail any save at any time with any weapon.

Even if you manage to balance it, it will never be a fun experience for the player on the receiving end of this ability. Indeed, it might not even be fun for the Eldar player, because they know that they're using a feel-bad ability but they also know that they basically have to use it every game because some genius decided to make it their army's core mechanic.

Vipoid has beaten me to every response I was going to make.

Basically, there seem to be at least a few of us who think your prophecy dice mechanic sounds pretty unfun to play against. But hey, maybe we're wrong. You are, of course, free to pitch the idea to your gaming buddies. Ask your opponent for permission to make him auto-fail one roll a turn as a streamlined version. See how he reacts to the pitch and ask him how auto-failing a roll every turn improved his experience.

There is no difference in "agency" compared to Miracle dice. A guaranteed success at a to-wound at any time bypasses the protection of a high Toughness in the target for example. It is as "agency removing" as bypassing invulnerable saves without a roll. Yet Miracle dice are now a core mechanic of the SoB and are used in every game, regardless of whether a player feels bad at seeing their opponent guarantee a 6++ save that blocks a high Damage attack.

It is possible to form strategies around players having these kinds of dice pools so I do not agree that there is no possible agency. As I have already mentioned, the key is to present so many possible rolls that they cannot influence all of them and have to make choices. If someone wants to hoard their Miracle dice for one unit's guaranteed hit, guaranteed to-wound, guaranteed maximum Damage, that's that many fewer dice available elsewhere.

It seems it is the possibility of forcing an opponent to fail a save that has you concerned. Failing one save in a phase is such a big deal? Remember that if it is a matter of affecting opponent dice, that means the to-hit, to-wound, and Damage dice cannot be affected. And yes after all that if there is one shot that gets through, then what of it? It is similar to Miracle dice affecting that pivotal attack to make it wound or deal devastating Damage.

Also note that if like Miracle dice these dice are rolled, there is not even a guarantee that you will get rolls that are useful just as not all Miracle dice are useful. It would take getting a 1 to be able to get that lascannon 2+ to-wound to fail for example. If you end up with any other dice rolls, they are useless for that specific purpose. So it is not even a guaranteed auto-fail per turn.

Basically, there seem to be at least a few of us who think your prophecy dice mechanic sounds pretty unfun to play against. But hey, maybe we're wrong. You are, of course, free to pitch the idea to your gaming buddies. Ask your opponent for permission to make him auto-fail one roll a turn as a streamlined version. See how he reacts to the pitch and ask him how auto-failing a roll every turn improved his experience.

And what if the response afterwards is "Yeah, that was very Eldar-like and I didn't mind it at all." Then what? Would that indicate perhaps there is merit to the idea? You are arguing and projecting your own personal views onto other players or groups. Just because you have feelings one way does not mean you speak for everyone else or can assume everyone would dislike it or that it would never be fun or acceptable. I am not claiming for myself that this idea is the best thing since sliced bread, but that it is an idea and it seems people are dismissing it out of hand without actually giving it any thought. Right now over and over again it seems no actual proof beyond just fuzzy "I feel feelings", without any rational reason or proof against the idea beyond that.

Iracundus wrote:

Basically, there seem to be at least a few of us who think your prophecy dice mechanic sounds pretty unfun to play against. But hey, maybe we're wrong. You are, of course, free to pitch the idea to your gaming buddies. Ask your opponent for permission to make him auto-fail one roll a turn as a streamlined version. See how he reacts to the pitch and ask him how auto-failing a roll every turn improved his experience.

And what if the response afterwards is "Yeah, that was very Eldar-like and I didn't mind it at all." Then what? Would that indicate perhaps there is merit to the idea?

Yes. It would. We just see some on-paper concerns with the idea.

You are arguing and projecting your own personal views onto other players or groups. Just because you have feelings one way does not mean you speak for everyone else or can assume everyone would dislike it.

As I said, there are several of us in this thread that are pointing out why the mechanic raises some red flags for us. I don't claim to speak for everyone, but you have more than one person right here telling you this idea doesn't sound appealing.

I am not claiming for myself that this idea is the best thing since sliced bread, but that it is an idea and it seems people are dismissing it out of hand without actually giving it any thought. Right now over and over again it seems to be just about fuzzy "feelings" without any rational reason or proof against the idea.

You are pitching us a pizza topped with orange slices and and chocolate mints. It doesn't sound appetizing. We're picturing that flavor combination in our heads and not liking what we project the pizza to taste like. But none of us have actually had orange-and-mint-chocolate pizza, so it's hypothetically possible that it's actually a great set of toppings for a pizza. Pineapple ham pizza was surprisingly good. Still, there are at least a few of us who are reluctant to take a bite of pizza this weird-sounding pizza.

Well I aired this idea before and at least one other person found the idea Eldar-like and potentially workable, though he called the dice by another name and his example is a rather profligate use of dice to reduce a Devastator squad volley to just scratching the paint:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ircandus’ “dill weed dice” idea is great.

It’s very, very Eldar, precisely because it’s frustrating for your opponent. Especially if it’s perhaps extended to enemy Damage rolls, or “one per phase of rolling”

Imagine this....your opponent isn’t very good at the game so has chosen a unit of 4 Devastators with 4 Lascannons. Or indeed Chaos Havocs with the same. He declares their target as say...a Wraithknight, one that’s bearing down and about to kick snot out of something he doesn’t want the snot kicked out of.

The Eldar player is having none of this, and has three dill weed Dice to play with. Each of this can change a roll to a 1 or a 6 (because 6 can mean failed morale).

The Lascannons open up. Three natural hits, and one natural miss. dill weed Dice is used, reducing it to two hits.

Bah, say the Lascannons. But at least both wound. Yay! Oh, wait. dill weed Dice turn that to a single Wounding hit.

Wraithknight fails its save. The final dill weed Dice ensures that’s only for 1 point of damage.

Now, if the DD are rendered as a finite resource (either a set amount at the start of the game, or so many a turn, and a Farseer lets you carry some over turn to turn), the skill comes from appropriate usage. Certainly they shouldn’t be abundant as such, at least not without specifically structuring your army in that way.

I am sure that if in the past someone had tried to propose the idea of Miracle dice, some people would have screamed bloody murder. "What!? You get to choose the roll and make auto-successes! Ludcrious! Overpowered! It removes risk of failure and makes it unfun for the opponent!" Yet now people seem to accept the idea as just how SoB function and play around and in anticipation of that mechanic.

Again, I'm sure some players could deal with this fate dice concept, but this is well-trod ground in terms of behavioral psychology. It's your agency versus their agency. Miracle dice don't take away their agency, that was your dice roll.

Honestly, I doubt GW knows about behavioral psychology, I could see them implementing this rule . But I think it would be very unpopular. Plus, I agree with what others have said; it doesn't really matter what the rule is to represent Eldar toughness, people will whine and complain about it even where they wouldn't for Marines or other armies. So heh, we are probably screwed either way in that regard.

I won't say whether prophecy dice are feel bad or over powered.

But I will remind people, as a Sisters player, how deep you have to go to add a mechanic like Miracle dice to an army, It isn't just the Miracle dice rule.

Three out of six Orders have traits that manipulate MD; many relics and WL traits interact with MD; some units have special MD generation or manipulation as datacard abilities; there is equipment that manipulates MD.

Without discussing whether or not the effect of the change would be positive or negative, I think it should be obvious that the changes would be extensive, and lead to an entirely new army.

I'm not sure that's what's called for.

And it still doesn't change the fact that you're left with weedy, fast humans that have armor equivalent of the imperial guard and rely on magic dice to pull things off, when in lore they're remnants of the most powerful empire since the Old Ones, who can fire black holes and have jet-fighter speed tanks.

Cronch wrote:
And it still doesn't change the fact that you're left with weedy, fast humans that have armor equivalent of the imperial guard and rely on magic dice to pull things off, when in lore they're remnants of the most powerful empire since the Old Ones, who can fire black holes and have jet-fighter speed tanks.

Hate to break it to you but Eldar haven't had the theme really of technological supremacy ever since the Necrons were introduced and took that crown. Yes, the Eldar can still call themselves advanced but their advanced tech is now more warp tech related stuff like D-cannons. Anti-grav isn't so special now that Primaris tanks and Custodes jetbikes have it as well.

That's part of the problem of erosion of theme or what the Craftworld Eldar are supposed to be about. Originally yes the Eldar were meant to be tech, speed, and eldritch psychic race back in 2nd edition. The Tau took the theme or niche of being long range tech based shooting. Necrons took the whole super science indistinguishable from magic. Dark Eldar took the speed thing even further with faster jetbikes and open topped anti-grav skiff transports. About the only thing the Craftworlds have left is psychic powers and warp/psychic tech like D-cannons. Even then, most of their unique psychic powers are buffing their own units or debuffing enemy units, rather than the more flashy stuff other factions have gotten, so it may lack that "Wow!" factor.

The whole Craftworld Eldar faction is left a bit rudderless when it comes to a theme.

And Speesh Marine dun stole guide and doom so space elf wizarding is mehh bar MW barrages