Eddtheman wrote:Before they announced 8th Edition my group was tinkering with a
D10 system for
40k that was pretty similar to what you are suggesting. I think a "roll and compare" system is quicker and more intuitive than what we have now.
I think the system you're working on is more complicated than it needs to be. Just make the evasion stat high enough that there is no additional math beyond stat+
D10=target number. An average model would have a
BS of 4 and an evasion of 10, so average shooting needs a 6 on a
D10. Apply the same standards to strength, toughness and armor.
So an average model would hit 40% of the time putting his effective ballistic skill somewhere between a guardsman and an ork? Not that there's necessarily a problem with that, but in a vacuum, that change would mean firearms become a lot less effective.
@Boniface:
A couple of thoughts:
* I'm not easily wrapping my head around the math involved, so you would definitely want to put together a chart people could reference under your system.
* The
d10/
d12 thing gets proposed pretty often around here, and there are a lot of issues with it that don't seem (to me) to get addressed most of the time. The first issue might be considered a minor one in an age of digital dice rollers, but the logistics of
d10s and
d12s can create some legitimate problems. It's more difficult to get a your hands on a ton of them at once, both financially and literally. They are arguably more difficult to read at a glance.
Looking past that, the "bang for your buck" tends to be pretty low when talking about changing dice sizes. You would basically have to rewrite every mechanic and every unit entry in the game to make them compatible with the new dice, which is no small feat. You could use shortcuts like simply multiplying stats by 1.5, but then you're not taking advantage of the granularity of stats. Which is a real consideration because granularity of statlines is really the only thing that switching to a
d10 or
d12 gives you in a vacuum. Currently, a marine hits about 67% of the time. In a
d10 system, you could give him a
BS of 6 or 7 to allow him to hit 60% or 70% of the time, meaning that for every 100 bolter shots you fire, you'll only make a difference of either 7 less hits or 3 more hits. So basically, you're talking about doing a ton of work, convincing your group to learn and use your new system, and the only real advantage to it is that you can fiddle with the average capabilities of a unit by a handful of percentage points.
So not to be a downer, but it might be a good idea to identify what exactly you're trying to accomplish with your changes and go from there. If your goal is to adjust the accuracy of marines by 3%-7%, go for it, but you might decide it's not worth the effort.
If you want to play around with die sizes, consider changes that let alter the way the dice work. For instance, resolving 1d6 rolls (like initiative tests or what have you) with
2d6 rolls instead means that your average roll will gravitate closer to the middle (7). As a result, you'd be less likely to get really high or really low rolls. Or you could replace model-by-model rolls with abstracted "squad rolls". For instance, shooting attacks might be resolved using a d100 (two
d10s with one being the 10's digit) and adding modifiers based on the size of the squad, the strength of their weapons, etc. The advantage here is that it lets you guarantee a minimum amount of performance (a 30 boy squad of orks has no chance of missing entirely because you'd have flat modifiers on top of the initial roll), and it reduces the number of dice you would physically need to roll.
Stuff like that. What's your goal in using larger dice?
