How I'd Redo Toughness/Wounds/Strength/Saves

[Antarius]

Well, I have a point. You don’t have to personally agree with it, nor am I trying to convince you that d12s are a bad idea. I am simply stating that this might well be a consideration for the game designers that is completely unrelated to whether you or I agree that d12s would be “objectively” better for the game.

Edited October 26, 2024 by Antarius

[gideon stargreave]

It would be infuriating to buy tonnes of d12/10/8 etc. it was bad enough in RT times. This is speaking as an RPG player with multiple sets of dice. 
 

there is quite a lot of work done about this, but tldr, as most people are used to d6 in childhood board games (not counting eurogames), rolling loads of D6 feels good 

[Valkyrion]

Needing to buy new/more dice isn't a good enough reason to rule out a D12 system, but I don't think the system needs it, rather it needs to make better use of the D6 and the maths/probability that it offers.

 

For example, given that AP is a negative modifier, there is no reason for a lack of 1+ saves. Well, there is a reason - immunity to AP0 - but it's not a good enough reason, IMO. 

Provided the designers can rein in their power creep tendencies, having your leaders or carnifex/land raider level models be immune to AP0 is neither game breaking nor immersion breaking.  

Between 1+ saves and the Invulnerable Save system you can adequately represent different levels of armour - primarchs have 1+/4++, land raiders have 1+, terminators have 2+/5++, predators have 2+ and so on.  Every vehicle in the game since time began has been immune to S3 anyway and most were functionally immune to S4 which is where AP0 traditionally lies, until 8th edition,  so it's not like immunity is radical idea.

 

Because the wound table as it stands is poorly designed, requiring increases/decreases of +1 or x2 to make any difference, the designers have to limit wound modifiers to +1/-1. Go back to the old chart which basically allowed you to wound things up to 3 point above your strength. That a lasgun wounds anything on 6+ means it comparable to S7 from 5th edition, and a simple +1 to wound makes it technically a lascannon. 

That way you can go back to rules that 'increase S or T by 1' instead of overly wordy rules that effectively mean the same thing but are technically different, so that same lasgun with +1S can now wound T3, T4 and T5 models easier and can damage T7.

 

Keep BS the same, but discard the maximum +1/-1 limit. Let 1's still fail, remove exploding sixes except in the ultra rare instances where it is merited, but allow your sneaky dudes to impose -3 hits again. 

Keep WS the same, I guess. I'm not a huge fan, but it's simple and effective and an abstract enough representation of melee.

Keep OC. 

 

Scrap the damage system. Everything does 1 wound to Infantry. Limit infantry to maximum of 2 wounds, leaders excepted, but S double T is instant death again. 

With vehicles, if the strength is higher than the toughness, it causes D6 wounds for each point of difference. So a S10 weapon hitting a T8 vehicle or monster would cause 2D6 wounds instead of 1, but that same weapon could only kill one infantry - tactical choices, find the right tool for the job instead of just top loading with average but plentiful jack of all trades weapons. 

 

All of these saturday afternoon ideas are ably supported by D6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Antarius]

2 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

For example, given that AP is a negative modifier, there is no reason for a lack of 1+ saves. Well, there is a reason - immunity to AP0 - but it's not a good enough reason, IMO. 

Provided the designers can rein in their power creep tendencies, having your leaders or carnifex/land raider level models be immune to AP0 is neither game breaking nor immersion breaking.  

Indeed. In fact I'd say it'd be much better, both game mechanics and immersion-wise, if they were!

I think we all know the answer to the question about reigning in power creep, though 

[HeadlessCross]

9 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

Needing to buy new/more dice isn't a good enough reason to rule out a D12 system, but I don't think the system needs it, rather it needs to make better use of the D6 and the maths/probability that it offers.

 

For example, given that AP is a negative modifier, there is no reason for a lack of 1+ saves. Well, there is a reason - immunity to AP0 - but it's not a good enough reason, IMO. 

Provided the designers can rein in their power creep tendencies, having your leaders or carnifex/land raider level models be immune to AP0 is neither game breaking nor immersion breaking.  

Between 1+ saves and the Invulnerable Save system you can adequately represent different levels of armour - primarchs have 1+/4++, land raiders have 1+, terminators have 2+/5++, predators have 2+ and so on.  Every vehicle in the game since time began has been immune to S3 anyway and most were functionally immune to S4 which is where AP0 traditionally lies, until 8th edition,  so it's not like immunity is radical idea.

 

Because the wound table as it stands is poorly designed, requiring increases/decreases of +1 or x2 to make any difference, the designers have to limit wound modifiers to +1/-1. Go back to the old chart which basically allowed you to wound things up to 3 point above your strength. That a lasgun wounds anything on 6+ means it comparable to S7 from 5th edition, and a simple +1 to wound makes it technically a lascannon. 

That way you can go back to rules that 'increase S or T by 1' instead of overly wordy rules that effectively mean the same thing but are technically different, so that same lasgun with +1S can now wound T3, T4 and T5 models easier and can damage T7.

 

Keep BS the same, but discard the maximum +1/-1 limit. Let 1's still fail, remove exploding sixes except in the ultra rare instances where it is merited, but allow your sneaky dudes to impose -3 hits again. 

Keep WS the same, I guess. I'm not a huge fan, but it's simple and effective and an abstract enough representation of melee.

Keep OC. 

 

Scrap the damage system. Everything does 1 wound to Infantry. Limit infantry to maximum of 2 wounds, leaders excepted, but S double T is instant death again. 

With vehicles, if the strength is higher than the toughness, it causes D6 wounds for each point of difference. So a S10 weapon hitting a T8 vehicle or monster would cause 2D6 wounds instead of 1, but that same weapon could only kill one infantry - tactical choices, find the right tool for the job instead of just top loading with average but plentiful jack of all trades weapons. 

 

All of these saturday afternoon ideas are ably supported by D6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rolls of 1 always fail literally solves that problem. 

[Evil Eye]

10 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

For example, given that AP is a negative modifier, there is no reason for a lack of 1+ saves.

I would agree actually, in fact I'd go a step further. Regardless of whether you go with the current modifier-based AP system or the 3rd-7th dynamic, 1+ being just a 2+ save that's more resistant to AP is a good way of doing super-tough things (Terminators etc). With the "1 always fails" caveat, a 1+ save with "ignores save" AP is less likely to be deleted by plasma weaponry, whilst with modifier-based AP, it means AP -1 effectively does nothing to the save.

 

I would sort of agree with the idea of it making certain things immune to small arms but there's a better solution to that; the oldschool toughness matrix where attacks under a certain strength cannot wound models over a certain toughness.

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

On 10/25/2024 at 12:31 PM, Xenith said:

I'm still not sure overall what the plan for tis is? Just to categorise/classify how defensive some units are, or to totally rework things? Or is the defence value to tweak things to hit a certain number for balance?

So the purpose of the Def Value is purely to track changes. I'm not saying the game should move to a single defence value. My goal here is to rebalance things as I think stats have been changed in isolation and we've lost nuance. I don't know how GW do their rules writing but sometimes I don't think they look at the wider game before making changes. 

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

On 10/26/2024 at 2:20 PM, Valkyrion said:

Because the wound table as it stands is poorly designed, requiring increases/decreases of +1 or x2 to make any difference, the designers have to limit wound modifiers to +1/-1. Go back to the old chart which basically allowed you to wound things up to 3 point above your strength. That a lasgun wounds anything on 6+ means it comparable to S7 from 5th edition, and a simple +1 to wound makes it technically a lascannon. 

That way you can go back to rules that 'increase S or T by 1' instead of overly wordy rules that effectively mean the same thing but are technically different, so that same lasgun with +1S can now wound T3, T4 and T5 models easier and can damage T7.

I agree with this. Howver I think I's just go with "Can't wound" for under half stregnth and "Instant Death" for over double. BUT to be devils advocate, 500 lasguns pointed at one Terminator would kill the terminator. So there needs to be a way to get that in the rules.

[apologist]

I think it's a clever idea to create an at-a-glance value to assess the relative durability of models, so thanks for taking the initiative.

 

Some interesting things to see in the comparison, and having a table of comparable models would allow tweaking to nudge things appropriately.

 

On the face of it, an ork boy (for example) stands out as about right to be less durable than a  power-armoured Space Marine and more than an Eldar Guardian... but it seems wrong to me that an ork should be that much tougher than an Eldar/human, and tougher than both squats and Necron warriors – but unit size, points and morale also feed into this.

 

That's not an 'anti-ork' thing, either. The same thing is true of Tyranid Warriors and Gravis Astartes; both more resilient than feels right to me.

 

Anyway, personal thoughts on specifics aside, the point is that it's an interesting way to assess; thank you.

[LameBeard]

So as an aside, the only GW game I remember shifting from D6s in a big way was Advanced Heroquest. It used D12s for combat. I’m sorry to say it was strangely unsatisfying after a while, it still didn’t feel granular enough and it felt like too much dice rolling with higher level characters. Of course this proves nothing - maybe D12 could have been implemented better. And this was a game just one step from an RPG. For mass battle games I think you will want to keep D6s, because rolling a lot of dice is part of what makes it fun for some people. I think the alternative is more abstraction so you work at the level of the squad rather than model. I am going to try “SquadHammer” which works on that principle, with 2D6 resolution.

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

Okay guys, I am back with this. I return with a goal to be clearer about what it is I am trying to do.

 

Firstly, I must apologise for not being clearer in my initial post. I can see now, on reflection, how I was not clear. The Defence Value was NOT meant to replace how current defensive stats. It was meant to be a way to, at a glance, see, understand, and quantify how tough or defensive a unit is.

 

That leads me to my next point. This work I've done is meant to mesh seamlessly with current 10th Ed. rules. So, staying with D6s only, and the current to-wound system (strength = toughness = 4s to wound).

 

So, I'm not wanting to change the core rules of the game. Why have I done this then? Well, there is an accepted notion that lore power scaling and tabletop power scaling are comically far apart. This is an attempt to bring them a little closer together. With my changes, lore and tabletop are still apart, but they're closer. I think, at least.

 

Another thing I should have done in the initial post was share all the work I've done; not just the defensive profiles. By sharing everything, you'll see the end point; point values. I'll also be sharing my stuff as images as the table formatting in the inital post really pulled the rug from under me, too.

 

Okay, here we go...

 

 

Now what is not included here are core abilities; Deep Strike, Infiltrators, Scouts x etc. I think they should carry a points value. Not much, but something. Perhaps, Currently in the actual ruels, an Intercessor is 16 points and an Infiltrator is 20. Their abilities should cancel each other out, meaning the only disparity lies with the core ability Infiltrators. Which means GW think that's worth 4 points. Now Infiltrators is equal to Deep Strike imo, which is in turn better than Scouts x, again imo. So should Deep Strike be 4 points and Scouts x 2?

 

I think that would actually overcost those abilities. Therefore I propose Infiltrators costs 2, Deep Strike costs 2 and Scouts costs 1. A Phobos marine should have infiltrators and scouts imo taking their ppm to 22. While a Terminator goes up to 27.

 

Let's discuss! 

[Valkyrion]

The trouble with this system is that not all things are created equal, which you acknowledged in the first post, and that incrementally increasing scores by 1 ignores what increasing the dice roll actually does.

So your termagants with 3+1+2+0+0 = 1.2. If they have a 6+ Invulnerable Save they become 3+1+2+1+0 = 1.4, but a 6+ Invulnerable Save is a HUGE step up from having none.

If those same termagants instead have a 4+ save then again their score increases to 1.4, but now they can save against AP-2 weapons whereas before they could not. 

 

I think you'd need to work out a formula that takes into account the 16.66% pip increase, and to try and work out the value of 0+1 as well as X+1. 

 

Taking armour as an example using the smallest numbers available;

if no save is 0, and 6+ is 1 (because 1 result on the dice works), 5+ is 3 (because 2 results on the dice work for you, plus 1 more than the first positive result),

4+ is 6 (3 dice rolls, 2 better than 6+, 1 better than 5+),

3+ is 10 (4 dice rolls, 3 better than 6+, 2 better than 5+, 1 better than 4+),

2+ is 15 (5 dice rolls, 4 better than 6, 3 better than 5, 2 better than 4, 1 better than 3).

 

Does that make sense? Trying to find a way to show how much better a 3+ save is than a 5+ save, because it isn't just '2 better' its more like four times better. 

 

Think of it like counting coins. If you have 5 coins and you add another coin, yeah you've got 6 coins but you might have increased the worth of those coins from 5p to £2.05p. 

 

I like what you've done and the reasoning behind it, and you've put a ton of work into it, so please don't be disheartened by my observations. 

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

24 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

The trouble with this system is that not all things are created equal, which you acknowledged in the first post, and that incrementally increasing scores by 1 ignores what increasing the dice roll actually does.

So your termagants with 3+1+2+0+0 = 1.2. If they have a 6+ Invulnerable Save they become 3+1+2+1+0 = 1.4, but a 6+ Invulnerable Save is a HUGE step up from having none.

If those same termagants instead have a 4+ save then again their score increases to 1.4, but now they can save against AP-2 weapons whereas before they could not. 

 

I think you'd need to work out a formula that takes into account the 16.66% pip increase, and to try and work out the value of 0+1 as well as X+1. 

 

Taking armour as an example using the smallest numbers available;

if no save is 0, and 6+ is 1 (because 1 result on the dice works), 5+ is 3 (because 2 results on the dice work for you, plus 1 more than the first positive result),

4+ is 6 (3 dice rolls, 2 better than 6+, 1 better than 5+),

3+ is 10 (4 dice rolls, 3 better than 6+, 2 better than 5+, 1 better than 4+),

2+ is 15 (5 dice rolls, 4 better than 6, 3 better than 5, 2 better than 4, 1 better than 3).

 

Does that make sense? Trying to find a way to show how much better a 3+ save is than a 5+ save, because it isn't just '2 better' its more like four times better. 

 

Think of it like counting coins. If you have 5 coins and you add another coin, yeah you've got 6 coins but you might have increased the worth of those coins from 5p to £2.05p. 

 

I like what you've done and the reasoning behind it, and you've put a ton of work into it, so please don't be disheartened by my observations. 

Thank you so much for your reply. I wasn't sure anyone would after the amount of time that had passed since the initial post. 

 

I get 100% your point and it is something I wanted to include in my, frankly, pretty basic formula. I think I'm fundamentally just not good enough at maths to take it to that next step.

 

This all came from a want to produce a slimmed down Space MArine codex that combined a load of datasheets. I came to the conclusion there should just be Battleline, Close Support, Fire Support and Veterans in each of the Mark X variants, then, Terminators. When I redid the Marine armour marks it made me think about the wider game. I may just go and finish that codex now and leave this all behind to those who are better at maths. Hopefully, they can then tell me what points cost my datasheets should be.

Edited Friday at 02:08 PM by ChapterMasterGodfrey