Transhuman + Armoured Resilience?

[Reskin]

Can transhuman physiology be combined with the Grey Knight dominos psychic power Armoured resilience which is -1 to wound roll?

 

Effectively making a target 5's and 6's to wound. 

Edited November 7, 2020 by Reskin

[Skywrath]

No, I tried that in my tournament over in Brisbane, big no (surprised I didn't get red flagged for this). Their logic for this is that transhuman is not a spell, and it's a strategem, which means it overwrites the spell. Bit of a mental musing, but the pattern is that the strategem effect has priority over the spell effect, it seems. 

[Reskin]

But where was their reasoning from? What evidence did they provide from the BRB or FAQ's to validate their claim?

I haven't attempted this yet, I want to make sure I have my ducks in a row, which is to say, I want solid ground to stand on before I make this claim. But the combo did occur to me.
And I just wondered if anyone else has similar experiences?

[Reskin]

In fact, lets play this out in the sequence that it has to happen on the board.

GK player has to go first for his psychic power to be applied.

 

GK Turn 1 Psychic phase: Successfully manifests Armoured resilience onto a target.

GK turn 1 ends.

>>>

Opponent Turn 1 shooting phase.
-declare target (in this case its the target with armoured resilience on it)

-GK players uses Transhuman physiology.

 

Now at this point, I'll quote the stratagem from RoTD.

 

When resolving an attack against that unit, an unmodified wound roll of 1-3 always fails, irrespective of any abilities that the model making the attack may have.

 

This part is simple, and pretty straight forward, regardless of any powers, you have as the attacker, your wound rolls of 1-3 fail.

This says nothing about what I as the defending GK player can use. Nor does is say anything about the wound rolls of 4-6 that it can or cant be modified.

And this also helps the attacker, because of exploding 6's. A lot of units get that ability in some form. And this means they would still apply without hinderance.

My point is, that the wound roll of a 4, can still be modified by me as the defender. Therefore armoured resilience gives a -1 to wound, so naturally that becomes 5's and 6's and 4's = nothing.

Edited November 7, 2020 by Reskin

[Skywrath]

Read the second part of my sentence. It's not written per se, it's more implied. Based of my limited understanding of the game's history, I believe strategems always took precedence over the spell. Not to mention, I was playing against time that day, and the judges decision was final, without explaining it, so I didn't have the time to ask why.

 

In a purely logical sense, you would think that that wounding on 5's would be something that could be described as broken. Even with GW's atrocious record of rules balancing, I think they would be aware of that. 

[Reskin]

I'm not having a go at you. I just want clearly defined rules.

Wounding on 5's isn't broken? Lot's of units wound on 5's against certain things. Even as far as wounding on 6's only.

My argument is this. The stratagem doesn't explicitly stop me as the defender from further modifying the remaining options to wound my targeted unit.

 

However,

 

It explicitly stops the attacker from wounding me on a 1-3 or modifying those wounds.

[Rogue]

For the sake of arguement, let's assume I'm shooting at your Grey Knights with a weapon that wounds on 2s.

 

Transhuman only works on unmodified rolls of 1, 2 or 3. Unmodified being key. So from my initial wounding roll, all the 2s and 3s that should wound are ignored.

 

I also roll some 4s. Armoured Resilience reduces those to 3s; but 3s still wound you. They're not covered by Transhuman, because that only affects unmodified rolls.

 

So in this example, the only effect Resilience would have would be stopping 2s wounding you, but Transhuman is already doing that.

 

The same would apply if the shooting weapon wounded on 3s (4s modify to 3 and still wound), and if it wounded on 4s why would you bother with Transhuman anyway. In short, I don't think these rules will combine as you want them to.

Edited November 7, 2020 by Rogue

[Reskin]

All good rogue, you kinda got armoured resilience mixed up. You are thinking its +1 to wound If I read your statement correctly.

I worked it though with my mate, and essentially You can't use the -1 to wound with transhuman to essentially only be wounded on 5's and 6's.

Which I am ok with, because I seen the possibility, and I just wanted to hash out the case in point.

So in essence, transhuman has the most effect at reducing incoming dmg when its 2's to wound, its reducing 15% of the dmg when they naturally needed 3's to wound.

 

In the specific examples we used, it was str 6 weapon shooting at T4 models. Both transhuman and armoured resilience psychic power ended up getting the same result.

And armoured resilience cant further modify transhuman

[Rogue]

No, I get Armoured Resilience - I guess my explanation wasn't all that clear. 

 

What I was trying to point out is that Transhuman only works on unmodified rolls or 1, 2 or 3. So if Armoured Resilience reduces a roll of a 4 down to a 3, Transhuman has no effect because this is now a modified roll.

 

In your game, with S6 vs T4, you'd usually wound on 3+. With Transhuman, the 3s won't count. But the 4s will, even with Armoured Resilience, because you modify 4 by -1, making them 3s - these 3s still wound, and aren't ignored by Transhuman (because it's now a modified 3).

 

But like you say, you got there already, so you don't need my example anyway.

[Reskin]

What are you saying?

 

 

 

In your game, with S6 vs T4, you'd usually wound on 3+. With Transhuman, the 3s won't count. But the 4s will, even with Armoured Resilience, because you modify 4 by -1, making them 3s - these 3s still wound, and aren't ignored by Transhuman (because it's now a modified 3).

 

But like you say, you got there already, so you don't need my example anyway.

 

Wounding on 4's naturally, with a debuff of -1 to wound makes the target trying to wound me needing 5's.... not 3's.

Hence my previous statement.

 

But its all good, cheers for the help we got there in the end.

[Rogue]

Right - I think I get where you're coming from now. You're talking in 'gamer shorthand', whereas I'm talking in maths, which is why we're talking past each other.

 

Shorthand makes sense in a game situation. I say "I'm wounding you on 3s"; you say "I'm minus one to wound"; I say "Fine, wounding you on 4s". And we both understand what's going on - any threes that I roll won't count as wounds, because of the minus one. 

 

Here's the problem: I'm still wounding you on a score of 3. This is because the modifier applies to the score on the dice, not the number I need to roll. Imagine that I roll a handful of dice and get the following results:

 

1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6

 

Without any modifiers, I'd discard the 1s and the 2, and wound with the rest (for 9 wounds). But with the modifier, all of the dice scores are reduced by one (because it's a -1 modifier). So now my modified scores are

 

0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5

 

I still discard the modified 1s and 2s (and the 0s), and I still wound on 3s. It's just that the dice showing 4 now count as 3 (because -1). Suddenly I'm reduced to causing 6 wounds instead of 9.

 

 

Normally, this makes no difference, and it's way easier to just say "Wounding on 4s". But it does matter when asking about the interaction of different abilities and stratagems, as you did in the opening post. In shorthand, we could reduce Transhuman to "You now need 4s to wound"; couple that with Resilience and it's an easy jump to "And now it's 5s to wound". But it's still wrong.

 

Take that set of dice rolls again: 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6 (needing 3s to wound). Transhuman means that any unmodified 1s, 2s or 3s can be ignored. Which leaves us with 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6. Now we apply Resilience, which modifies those remaining rolls to 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5. But neither Transhuman or Resilience change the fact that S6 weapons wound T4 models on a 3+. So all of the modified dice still wound, because none of them have dropped below 3. (And Transhuman no longer matters, because now we're talking about modified 3s, which aren't covered by Transhuman.)

 

Maybe this only makes sense to me. And if you can reach the same conclusion via shorthand, then great. In the end, understanding the underlying maths isn't the important thing - I just find it interesting to play around with this stuff. So thanks for bringing up the question.

[BluejayJunior]

Good job Rogue!
That is a very detailed, accurate, easy to understand description of how the two rules interact. 

[Reskin]

Yeah, in the end, my mate who is way smerter then me, explained the second part of your breakdown.

 

And for everyone's benefit. I will direct you all to page 220 of the BRB.

 

Chapter 2. Wound Roll. Look at the table.

 

Is the Strength GREATER than the Toughness                    D6 Result Required = 3+

 

The way Armoured resilience works it takes that 3+ to wound and after the dice are rolled, -1 to the result, being 4's. Which Transhuman already did but in another way.

 

In theory, Transhuman is best used for weapons wounding on 2's. And armoured resilience on 3's or higher. Giving that you cant stack wound modifiers more than -1.

 

Transhuman basically circumvents that rule. By essentially taking away 2/5ths of the potential wound rolls. As results of 1's always fail.

[Kallas]

The way Armoured resilience works it takes that 3+ to wound and after the dice are rolled, -1 to the result, being 4's. Which Transhuman already did but in another way.

 

The important distinction here is that:

• Transhuman checks once you have rerolled any dice that need to be rolled, but before any +/- modifiers are added to the wound roll (eg, Armoured Resilience and Veterans of the Long War).
• Armoured Resilience applies after Transhuman has checked the unmodified, rerolled wound roll.

An example: a Strength 6 shot goes in against a Toughness 4 Paladin with both Transhuman and Armoured Resilience.

1. It hits (roll irrelevant for this.)
2. It rolls a 4 to wound.
3. Transhuman checks, but it's an unmodified wound of 4+, so Transhuman doesn't stop it.
4. Armoured Resilience kicks in and applies a -1 to wound, bringing that down to a 3.
5. Since S6 > T4, it needs a 3 or more to wound, and since this has already gone past the Transhuman 'check', this is a successful wound.
6. Roll a saving throw, deal damage, etc.

If we run this example again:

1. It hits (roll irrelevant for this.)
2. It rolls a 5 to wound.
3. Transhuman checks, but it's an unmodified wound of 4+, so Transhuman doesn't stop it.
4. Armoured Resilience kicks in and applies a -1 to wound, bringing that down to a 4.
5. Since S6 > T4, it needs a 3 or more to wound, and since this has already gone past the Transhuman 'check', this is a successful wound.
6. Roll a saving throw, deal damage, etc.

 

Point being: Transhuman + Armoured Resilience cannot make something "5s and 6s to wound" because they are working on fundamentally different (unmodified and modified) on the same roll.

 

The main time TP and AR will combine is when you have triggered AR against something powerful (eg, Lascannons, Meltas, whatever) and then the opponent switches to bring high ROF mid/low S weapons to bear on the TP/AR target, where they would normally wound on a 4+ or worse.