Here I will explain how the spreadsheet works. Again, if you'd just like points, feel free to use the post above and / or the spreadsheet and ignore all this. If you have actual feedback, I'd love to hear it.
Here’s how the spreadsheet works: rather than just adding all the numbers together or using wounds or whatever, I’ve actually figured out a way to determine an “actual” amount of probability using fairly basic math principles. If you find errors or issues, please let me know so that I can correct them. For Wounds, instead of making each Wound a point, I figured out the “effective” number of Wounds by looking at the Save of the model and comparing it to the Wounds. You can see the actual formulas on the spreadsheet, at any time. But basically, if you have a 4+ save, you are saving “statistically” half the time. Now I know that the dice don’t actually end up that way. We all have bad, bad dice from time to time, but “statistically” that’s how it should go. So if my model has 10 Wounds and a 4+ Save, to kill that model, statistically, the enemy will have to wound it 20 times. I hope that makes sense. So that model, for it’s Wounds/Saves value has a calculated cost of 20.
Next we do basically the reverse calculations for Melee/Ranged attacks. If a model does 20 Attacks, and Hits on a 4+, then statistically it will hit on 10 of those attacks. Next for to Wound, let’s say it has a 4+ again. Then it will Wound on half again, down to 5 Wounds, on average. Now let’s look at the actual damage. If the model does 1 damage per attack, then just use the 5 as points value to add to our Wounds/Saves calc. If it does 2 damage per attack, then double it. And so on. That’s the basics.
Here’s the other/more complicated stuff: What about Rending/Range/etc.? I’ve factored in Rending by multiplying it by the amount of Damage the attack does since, I would argue that each Damage is “better” if it Rends. If the Rend is -2, then this becomes a multiplier. If it is 1, then it just adds in the damage again. For Range on Melee I just added in the number. If it is a 1, that attack costs 1 point. If it’s a 3, that’s three more points. We can debate whether or not this too should be a multiplier. My thoughts are that if you are playing a huge horde army, a high Melee range may actually change the outcome of some attacks, but I think that it will most of the time be fairly negligible. Debate this below/with me, by all means. As for Ranged attacks, I’ve assumed (rightly or wrongly) an average range of 12. So when you type in the Ranged value of the attack, that number is divided by 12 and then used as a multiplier. If the range of the attack is 24, then it doubles the cost of that attack because that’s a huge range. If the range is only 8, then it will cut the cost of that attack by 25%. I realize that 12 may not be the average range, but as long as the value we pick is used consistently across the board to determine ranged attack points cost, then it should all be balanced equally. The only quest is whether or not this is balancing out ranged versus melee. Here’s my answer to that: most Ranged units have a (crappy) melee attack too, so that unit is going to cost more than a unit that only has Melee. Therefore, an all melee army can take more models than an all ranged army, which should push the player to play with a more balanced army, a mix of both, than all one or the other. But you can do whatever you like. You’ll quickly see that units that have lots of attacks cost more points because they have the potential to do more damage. Duh, right!
For Movement values, I did the same thing as with Ranged attacks only I chose an “average” value of 5. Again, this is a guess, really, but it should balance fairly well. Models with high move, cost more. Models with low move, cost less.
You will note that Cavalry units, due to high move/armor/attacks tend to cost a lot of points. However, they also are amazingly effective on the battlefield, so I believe this is what balance is all about.
What about Bravery? Bravery, until we see some sort of Fear/Bravery test coming up is effectively useless for single model units, so in order to show this, if the minimum unit size is 1 model, the Bravery cost is 1 point per model (hence if you can take 5 of them, then it costs 5 points total, but if it is just a single model always then it is just one point, so it does still scale for units that have minimum size of 1). If the minimum unit size is higher than 1, I do this calculation: Bravery divided by Minimum unit size equals points cost per model. In this way, we see that a unit with 10 Bravery and 10 models is still only paying 1 point per model for Bravery, whereas a unit with only 5 models is paying 2 points. Why is that? That’s not balanced, right? Actually, it really is because that smaller unit is benefiting more from that high Bravery value than the larger unit. If the small unit isn’t wiped out in an attack, let’s say two models survive, then we take the Bravery of 10 and subtract 3 (because three models died) and get a value of 7, which means, that unit will not lose models due to Battleshock unless there is some special rule/ability that messes with their Bravery. They are effectively immune to Battleshock. Same scenario only with the larger unit: let’s say 7 models out of our 10 man unit get destroyed. Now we have an effective Bravery of 3, and potentially are going to lose models on our Battleshock roll. What’s the point? Well, taking more models in either situation is beneficial, but this balances out what models are more likely to remain on the table due to auto-passing Battleshock than not. Many units only pay 1 point per model for Bravery, but some (Daemons!) pay more since they are highly unlikely to fail.
Additional small points: What about
D6/D3/Monster damage Tables/Etc.? For the dice rolls, I just used the average. So on
D6, the average is technically 3.5, so that’s the number I input. For D3, it’s 1.5. Again these are statistical methods and in practice not always accurate, but we have to try something, right? Also, don't input any negative numbers for Rending. If it is a Rend of - 2, just type in 2.
For Monster damage tables, at first I started running numbers for the whole table and concluding the average amount that that value would often be, and then I threw my hands in the air and asked just what the hell I was trying to do here, really? I mean, if I bring a Bloodthirster to the table, I’m not bringing it for the value of what it can do when it’s about to die. I’m bringing it to stomp face when it is still near full strength. So I just used the fully healed stats in all of those tables. You can debate whether or not this is fair. In all honesty, in all the games I’ve played so far, I would be more likely to increase the points of most of the Monster models than decrease them, so using the best values is actually doing just that. This is also the reason for the 10 points additional cost per Monster. I would also do 10 points for Warmachines, but I haven’t gotten to any of those yet. And again, I’m play testing when I can, but I want to give this to the community so that we all can play test this and determine if this does in fact balance the game somewhat (at least better than the Wounds/Models method).
So what about Abilities and Magic? This is where things get funky. If an Ability is really good, such as re-roll all failed saves, I suggest we make that expensive, like 10 points, because that effectively doubles the amount of wounds that model has. Likewise, if it is re-roll all failed hit/wound rolls, that’s effectively doubling the models attack value/damage output. For most Abilities though I made them cost 1 to 3 points based upon how “good” I thought they were. For single model units, this “arbitrary” system needs work. If the Ability or Magic does damage, I calculated it just like an Attack and typed in the number. So if it takes a 7 to cast (on two dice that’s effectively 50% To Hit, right?) and does
D6 Mortal Wounds, I assume that half the time you will be doing 3.5 Mortal Wounds (which I think is a Rend of 5, effectively). Am I over-costing this? Maybe. We can debate it. Mortal Wounds though are pretty hardcore, so they should cost more. In the end, I just want the abilities to be balance, so if a unit has re-roll all 1’s to Hit and another unit has that same type of ability in another Faction, it should cost the same. Again, for large model count units, these costs are absorbed because I divided the cost per minimum model size. For single model units, though, the cost is exactly what we type in for the ability cost. This is the ONLY part of this system that involves us not just typing in the exact stat from the WarScroll. This is the ONLY part, therefore, that is in anyway based upon opinion. For large units, again, it basically is negligible. So feel free to debate how much a spell or ability on a Hero should cost, by all means. This will require some balancing act too.
Also, I tried to keep single model units to whole numbers that were multiples of 5. In other words, if my method calculated that a Bloodthirster model should be 133 points, I pushed that up to 135. If it told me that a Great Unclean One is 101 points, I dropped that to 100. This just seems way easier to balance out the points cost of an army than to have that one extra point lingering there preventing you from taking another model or something silly like that.
If a unit had multiple weapons options, I wrote the Weapon in under Custom and made two separate entries for the unit. For instance, say you could run that unit with Axes or Blades. I put in Axes first and only used that attack value to calculate points. Then for the next entry I used the Blades. While I still have LOTS of models/units/WarScrolls to enter, so far the cost difference has been negligible. So let me give
GW at least this much credit: they have balanced the individual choices of models fairly well so far, in my opinion, against themselves. If there is the option for a special weapon for every five models, or something like that, I calculated the cost of that single model with the special weapon. So far, these models tend to cost 2-3 points more than their regular counterparts.
Finally, as for Battalions, I would just take the models as there “normal” points cost from the spreadsheet and assume that, as in
40k, the bonuses are free as long as you take all the appropriate models. I feel like most of the Battalions/collections of models are fairly balanced by forcing you to take certain models that maybe you would not normally use. Debate this at your leisure. :-D
I think I have explained everything, but if you have any questions, please look over the spreadsheet and contact me here via
PM or in this thread. I hope that you all find this helpful. And again, if you are not into math, just put in the numbers in the spreadsheet and use the cost per model that’s shown there. Even if you completely leave out abilities and magic, as long as you make Heros/Monsters/Wizards/Warmachines cost 10 points more, I think this will be fairly balanced, again, at least way better than using just Wounds/Model count to play games. Hope this helps.
Peace out,
CoruptCopy
P.S. Updates to follow as often as I can. But please keep in mind, I have a day job and no one is paying me to design this game. Hint! Hint!
GW, if you need a game designer, get in touch. :-p
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and I forgot to mention that based upon this beta version of the spreadsheet the Age of Sigmar starter box is pretty balanced. The Sigmarites only have like 40 more points that the Khorne Bloodbound. And since both armies are in the 300 point range, that's really pretty close. So I would support the claim that the box set armies are pretty balanced against each other. I hope future sets will be well balanced too. :-D Again, I love this game. Just think a points system would help us make sure we aren't crushing one another by accident or on purpose.
I also think that
GW statement about only taking so many Warscrolls and heroes and monsters is pretty solid too. Take that and add in this point system and I'm hoping we have a balanced and fun skirmish game that we can play using these fantastic models.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So I've scoured the Interwebs to see if anyone is interested in my points system and if anyone else is doing anything like this, and I've found a group who are using nearly the exact same calculations as me only their points values are roughly doubled. If you've read how my spreadsheet calculates points based off percentage to do damage and to save wounds, then theirs does basically the same thing too. Since they appear to already have people play testing theirs and have already put out beta rules for every army (which I have gone over and so far they seem to match my own findings only roughly doubled costs for everything), I am planning on discontinuing my spreadsheet in order to begin play testing theirs. Here's a link to their site which contains a suggested rules tweak document, that mostly "fixes" summoning, as well as point costs for every army:
http://ageofwargamers.blogspot.com/
The
AoS stuff is under PPC Comp and Lists (PPC standing for Project Points Cost). You can download everything for free. They are looking for feedback and playtesters, so if you thought my idea had any merit, I highly suggest you help play test their system as it uses similar math to determine a points value that isn't speculative. Their main thread is on Dakka in this exact same forum, so I should have read theirs first before even posting this. So apologies for that.
I'm looking forward to playtesting some more of the PPC tomorrow. So far so good. If anyone really wants to use my spreadsheet, feel free to continue to do so, but know that unless there's support for it, I'm discontinuing my work on it, though you still have the resources to input stats and use it as much as you like.
Thanks for any comments so far and in the future. Hope you'll all join me in playtesting the PPC and keeping Age of Sigmar alive and well!
Blood for the Blood God!
CoruptCopy
