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Thought on a possible way to reduce the number of dice rolled.

A player may declare a group of identically equipped models within 2" of each other and/or part of the same unit will act as one. Instead of rolling individually roll for a single model in the group - that result counts for all members of the group.

This roll may not be re-rolled for any reason

A maximum of ten models may be grouped together in each narrow salvo

e.g. 30 orks are fighting in combat, with extra attacks from the choppa and unit size, so four attacks each. The Ork player groups them into groups of ten, each group of ten rolls four dice and counts as if all models rolled the same. I.e. roll 12 dice, not 120.

For shooting and close combat groups that attack together must also roll to wound together, the target player is under no obligation to roll saves together

this does provide some tactical advantages and disadvantages to the player:
- if one or two hits is as good as none but a large number is useful this is a way to get a result that matters or nothing
- you run the risk of a significantly higher variability in your results
- its faster
- you can't re-roll anything

Um...no.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Um...no.

Any particular reason? thinking being this is optional not mandatory as a way to get through a large number of dice rolls where the end result is reasonably predictable just on the law of averages while shaking the predictability up a bit

I would agree with the post before you.

This just takes out the part of 40k that makes 40k. Sure you might find it silly and inconvenient for someone to roll 120 dice to kill a single unit.

But the person rolling said 120 dice is getting the satisfaction of having his opponent watch him roll those dice

So, I have 30 Ork Boyz.

I roll 10 of them at once-that's 4 dice, hitting on a 2+ with a Banner. Let's say I'm facing an Imperial Knight.

There are four sets of rolls:
2+ to-hit (assuming a WAAAGH Banner)
6+ to-wound
3+ to save

Normally, the odds of getting 4 wounds is about 10%. 9 wounds is one percent of one percent, or one in ten thousand. Anything more is even less.

With this, the odds of doing 10 wounds with those 10 Boyz is just over 17%.
They have a 1.21% chance of doing 20 wounds.

Or, in other words, these 30 Boyz...

Have an over 1/10 (a 10.4% chance) to do 20 wounds, and a 1.59% chance of gibbing even a Dominous class knight.

As compared to normal, when they have...

A one percent of one percent chance of doing 16 wounds.

So yeah. No.

30 boyz hitting a knight... yeah why not, never managed it but what the heck

individual dice
go with 4 attacks each, so 120 attacks (we ignore the nob as you'd always roll individually), will go with the 2+ to hit (never managed that either but again what the heck), 83.33% chance of each attack hitting: 100 hits. 6+ to wound, a 16.67% chance, so 16.67 wounds. Knight has a 3+ save, so 33.33% unsaved for about 5.5 actual wounds. number of dice make that reasonably predictable for the hits and wounds, the saves are more variable as there are not all that many actual wounds.

Ok rolling in batches
we have three batches, so look at each at once, 10 boys, so 4 attacks - each counting as 10, so roughly 3.5 "hits", 10.4 "hits" over the batches, each counting as ten - this is so far fractionally above the single dice roll, but a lot more variable. each of those "hits" has the same 16.67% chance of a "wound" - so about 1.73 on average, giving the knight likely either 10 or 20 saves to make, with a chance of none, saves are individual unless the knight player is gambling. so likely either 3.3 or 6.6 actual wounds, not vastly different, the chances of them getting 20 wounds is remarkably low given that means the knight failing all 20 saves and the boy getting 20 in the first place.

When you look at the bias between getting 10 or 20 wounds to make the results of 3.3 or 6.6 are not vastly out of line with 5.5. they should get on average, and given thats a bit swingy.

you save a fair bit of time and trouble with dice not landing flat, rolling under things etc, and in return get more or less the same result.

The main benefit is where 10 or 20 unsaved wounds (in this example) are basically the same (e.g. the knight has say 10 left), but scoring 9 is as good as scoring none. Though to be honest if the roll is that critical roll them individually anyway.

Specifically not proposing to roll the saves this way, or that this is mandatory, if you like rolling a lot of dice to minimal actual effect fill your boots, not proposing to try and stop you.

Just proposing that say a blob or 30 boyz attacking something bit where the majority of the attacks do nothing anyway can be resolved somewhat faster then you can move on.

It comes into its own when those 30 boys are hitting say 10 Guardsmen, the outcome is pretty much the same - as in its pretty predictable, but why bother wasting the time?

Ahh well, just an idea

I would worry about damage spikes resulting weapons with special rules triggered by rolling certain numbers. Haywire blaster scourges do okay average dmage, but rolling them al together so that 1/6th of my hits turns into a critical mortal wounds hit dramatically changes how they function. 5 sniper rifles is meh, but 5 sniper rifles with a 1-in-6 chance of a hit turning into 5 mortal wounds is different. Shuriken weapons too, to a lesser extent. Basically, a clever person could use damage spikes (rather than averages) to do more meaningful damage here and there to increase their overall efficiency. A scourge squad with 4 blasters, for instance, that gets a single wound through has a 1 in 6 chance of doing 24 damage by itself.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I would worry about damage spikes resulting weapons with special rules triggered by rolling certain numbers. Haywire blaster scourges do okay average dmage, but rolling them al together so that 1/6th of my hits turns into a critical mortal wounds hit dramatically changes how they function. 5 sniper rifles is meh, but 5 sniper rifles with a 1-in-6 chance of a hit turning into 5 mortal wounds is different. Shuriken weapons too, to a lesser extent. Basically, a clever person could use damage spikes (rather than averages) to do more meaningful damage here and there to increase their overall efficiency. A scourge squad with 4 blasters, for instance, that gets a single wound through has a 1 in 6 chance of doing 24 damage by itself.

Didn’t think of that, you could roll round it but better to say no to such weapons using this, it’s aimed at being a quick way to roll dice