Modding Age of Sigmar to play like 40k 8th

[Flutterbat]

Though I like my fantasy stuff way too much to completely let it go for 40k, I find the 8th edition rules to be absolutely fantastic. At least in my opinion, they strike a great balance between accessibility and depth.

I've seen people switch up AoS's rules to great effect, from skirmish rules (before we got a book for them) to cooperative rules, I've seen a lot of creative new ways to play that I've found work surprisingly well. So I thought I'd set about making Age of Sigmar play like 40k's 8th edition.

Even at a glance, it seems like a herculean task that'll require changing warscrolls on a case by case basis to make it all work. I'd likely have to start by using some of 40k's datasheets (that's their warscrolls) as a starting point and tweaking things to accommodate what is (in theory) a more melee-centric game that doesn't make a distinction between pistol/heavy/generic ranged weapons--then look to WHFB rules for a bit of guidance on what to do with gear/weapon options that no longer have a point value in AoS. 

Before I even get started on this, I figured I'd ask... Has anyone already taken a crack at this or given it some thought? If so, did you run into any particular issues I should keep in mind or work on? Any pitfalls to watch out for?

Any advice at all is very much appreciated.

[flemingmma]

Pick one hero and one unit for two factions, start there and work up

[Envyus]

Honestly the game are already similar. You just need to change a few things.

[Killax]

I've given it quite some thoughts. In general I think the basic core rule line of 40K is very good and indeed very similar to AoS.
- On the other side I believe that generating more CP with having acces to cheap choices is a flaw in 40K's system.
- In addition I believe that the way the character protection rule works out in 40K is a flaw in it's system aswell.

What I would like to test in AoS that is indeed very much inspired by 40K. This would be something like:
- Scrap Battalions alltogether and look at their ability effect and implement those as AoS Stratagems (costed 1/2/3 in terms of power).
- Scrap Detachment designs for 40K and simply start with 3CP adding another 3 for every 1000 points. Leading to 9CP per game, instead of having swarms with 12 and Stormcast with 6 (translated to 40K).
- Implement character protection rule as a "Look out Sir!" but slightly different. When shot at and have that model within 3" of another unit roll a D6, on a 1,2 the shot hits the model, on a 3+ the shot hits the unit instead.
- Implement Stand and Fire rule for units (Overwatch) with Missle Attacks and prefent using Missle Attacks on any other unit when an enemy unit is 3" near them. So you can shoot still but only against the closest enemy basically. 
- Reduce the costs of Missle Attack units a little. 

Other than that both systems work fine as is. I do hope that GW will adress their 40K character rule and CP rule. Because it's currently shaping the meta to a party of cheap characters protected with cheap units obtaining brickloads of CP in the process. There is no real room for elites there unless it has acces to a ton of plasma/melta/flamer and Stratagem to boost that.

[Lucio]

There's really not a huge difference between the two, 40k units are a little smaller and have a lot more ranged options.

The real change in gameplay comes about via the types of units, not the rules themselves.

Where we might benefit, is picking up the idea of Command Points, though in keeping with the fantasy setting, having your hero choices generate points, more powerful commanders needing more units or certain types of units alongside them

 

[DantePQ]

I like Battalions especially know when they're fairly costed. 

I wouldn't like AoS to be Wh40k copy in terms of Stratagems, let Wh40k to have Stratagems and AoS Battalions as well as army creation is much healthier in AoS. 

What I like in terms of rules 

- small character targeting rules like in Wh40k would be awesome

- normal turn sequence as double turn is one of the worst mechanics for me in AoS

- I would love Mission Cards in AoS as I am not a big fan of AoS scenarios and cards enable to set up even ordinary Pitched Battle fast and it's not bloodbath.

- rule that charging units attacks first in CC would be also quite nice. 

Those 4 things I would love in AoS  in my estimation those would make AoS even better in fact much better game. 

 

[CoreCommander]

Check Primo Victoria out - it has character protection (on 2 levels - from shooting and joining them in a unit) , alternative activation, formation (as in model formation) bonuses, rules for shooting into combat, better morale, facing rules and so much more all gathered in 16 pages and not too cluttered with details. It is IMO infinitely better than AoS while still feeling like AoS because of the warscrolls.

[SeanMaguire1991]

I'm strongly in favor of any rules that protect characters from sniping by enemy shooting units (you have no idea how infuriating that gets especially against Skyfires and warmachines like the Plagueclaw). 

[Flutterbat]

8 hours ago, CoreCommander said:

Check Primo Victoria out - it has character protection (on 2 levels - from shooting and joining them in a unit) , alternative activation, formation (as in model formation) bonuses, rules for shooting into combat, better morale, facing rules and so much more all gathered in 16 pages and not too cluttered with details. It is IMO infinitely better than AoS while still feeling like AoS because of the warscrolls.

Thanks for sharing that, I hadn't seen it!

And thanks, everyone else. A lot of good points here.

I've been incredibly bogged down with work,  so all I've been able to do was crack open a codex, a battletome, and an army book for the same army (chaos demons) and have a look at GW's take on putting the same concept in three different ways.

Some observations so far:

There's a significant correlation between the stats demons were given in WHFB 8ed and 40k 8ed. It seems kinda obvious now that I'm a little less sleepy, but it made me realize the old "3 strength/toughness represents an average human" concept still holds true in 40k 8ed.

This means a good place to start is to take a datasheet like, say, the one from an infantry squad (imperial guardsmen) and just say it's a freeguild guard/archer/handgunner unit, then change things to implement the freeguild dudes' abilities and fantasy flavor, swapping out weapon/gear options for the appropriate fantasy ones. Obviously some things would just be dropped altogether rather than replaced. A freeguild unit doesn't have anything that correlates to frag grenades, heavy weapons teams, and so on.

This goes for entire unit types too. Aside from KO, AoS doesn't have transports and largely features monsters rather than vehicles. Bikes/jetbikes aren't a thing in AoS either, cavalry would just correlate to the limited examples of cavalry that appear in 40k--like bloodcrushers and thunderwolf cavalry (those are friggin Space Marines on giant friggin wolves, for those who don't know). As Lucio said above, part of the fantasy flavor would come from the types of units that are available--having just infantry/cavalry/monsters/a few war machines instead of also having bikes/transports/a large variety of war machines.

Some other patterns I observed comparing 40k and AoS are that, almost across the board, units in 40k  have a better save (by 1 degree, so a 6+ would be a 5+) and infantry move 1 extra inch . Slowpokes like plaguebearers move at 5" instead of 4", average human speed is 6" instead of 5", faster beings like eldar/elves/daemonettes move at 7" instead of 6". Exceptionally fast creatures moving on foot like skinks/wardances/howling banshees seem to remain at 8" in both games. Another thing is that multi-wound models usually seem to have 1 less wound than what their fantasy counterparts would; a generic freeguild general has 5 wounds whereas an Astra Militarum commander has just 4--Ogres have 4 wounds, whereas Ogryns have 3. Though I still think it's easier to just borrow the appropriate datasheets and modify them, it's still useful to keep these patterns in mind for when something doesn't seem to have a good equivalent.

I realize I've only been looking at warscrolls/datasheets and not any other rules and factors, that's because my goal is to basically play the 40k 8ed rules but with all of Age of Sigmar's fantasy flavor and themes. That way you have all the combat rules some of us enjoy from 40k but in a fantasy setting.  I should've probably titled the thread "Porting AoS Warscrolls to 40k 8ed," weird as that sounds. It's not quite just using fantasy models as "counts as" in a 40k game, it's going a little bit further by porting their various abilities and keeping their flavor.

[Flutterbat]

I spent more time fiddling with the formatting than giving a whole lot of thought to any balance issues in this, but here's a rough little "port" of a Freeguild Guard unit using an Infantry Unit as a starting point.

I'm not sure whether these should actually be listed as wargear, but I did it anyway because why not.

Balance concerns aside (which I'll get to in a moment), the basic process here  just involves watching out for the details that work or are treated differently in 40k. A big one is that every unit in 40k is just assumed to have a generic melee weapon along with its other gear, which simply does 1 damage, has no AP, and uses the model's raw strength; a lot of rank-and-file models have only this generic weapon. In AoS, however, every unit has a very specific melee weapon. A lot of them are very generic, but, mechanically (as in concerning the rules behind it), a spear still functions a little differently than a sword or a halberd or a hammer and so on. Generally only purchased weapon options are distinguished like that in 40k, but when porting over AoS units, I think each weapon has to be differentiated to some degree no matter how generic it is, even if some of them have to be made wargear options rather than freebies--otherwise that melee-centric fantasy feel is lost in translation. None of this is new though, since that granularity of paying for shields, spears, halberds, etc. for your units was, of course, a thing before AoS.

This is where the issue of balance starts to come into play. Though both games share a lot of concepts, those concepts (like multi-wound attacks or mortal wounds) don't necessarily have the same value. For example, multi-damage wounds in AoS can kill a model in a unit and then have any leftover damage allocated to other models, potentially wounding/killing several models. In 40k, if a single multi-damage wound kills a model in a unit and there's damage left over, that extra damage is lost. Mortal wounds bypass save rolls in both games, but in 40k they have the added effect of circumventing the multi-wound rule I just mentioned, allowing a multi-damage mortal wound (what a mouthful) to wound/kill more than one model. I'm not, by any means, a competitive player, so this bit about figuring out the value of one effect in 40k as opposed to AoS will be a bit of a struggle.

 

[Wailslake]

I've actually done the opposite and made a rules modification set to change 8th edition 40k to a more AoS like experience!

[wayniac]

On 1/28/2018 at 6:54 AM, CoreCommander said:

Check Primo Victoria out - it has character protection (on 2 levels - from shooting and joining them in a unit) , alternative activation, formation (as in model formation) bonuses, rules for shooting into combat, better morale, facing rules and so much more all gathered in 16 pages and not too cluttered with details. It is IMO infinitely better than AoS while still feeling like AoS because of the warscrolls.

The hilarious thing here is the guy who wrote that, auticus, was banned from here for being too critical/negative about GW's direction they were taking AOS and pointing out flaws in their logic.  And yet this guy wrote one of the first pre-General's Handbook comps (and it was way better than SCGT/GH from what I saw).  Just an amusing anecdote.

[CoreCommander]

5 hours ago, wayniac said:

The hilarious thing here is the guy who wrote that, auticus, was banned from here for being too critical/negative about GW's direction they were taking AOS and pointing out flaws in their logic.  And yet this guy wrote one of the first pre-General's Handbook comps (and it was way better than SCGT/GH from what I saw).  Just an amusing anecdote.

I know. It is ironic really... We can drag on this topic here or on dakka, but I kind of already know what we'd say 'cause we're basically on the same mind.  I leave the matter as it is - whoever is interested can still check his system - like him or not  

[SeanMaguire1991]

I like those profiles although I don't think the SB and M would have different stat line. The reroll 1's for Spears is a bit odd though.

Would have thought Halberds would give extra Strength thats how they worked before

[Flutterbat]

3 hours ago, SeanMaguire1991 said:

I like those profiles although I don't think the SB and M would have different stat line. The reroll 1's for Spears is a bit odd though.

Would have thought Halberds would give extra Strength thats how they worked before

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for!

Yeah, the reroll 1's for the spears is weird; it was just something I threw in there to make sure they were all different while I mulled over the extra range spears are usually given because melee weapons in 40k 8ed all just have the same range. The rules for picking melee targets, which essentially establish the range of melee weapons in general, are as follows:

Quote

To target an enemy unit, the attacking model must either be within 1" of that unit, or within 1" of another model from its own unit that is itself within 1" of that enemy unit. This represents the unit fighting in two ranks.

I've seen spears and spear-like weapons lumped into that catch-all melee category that hits 1" away. The only precedent I've seen showing melee weapons with a range are some whips and flails used by larger models (like big demons) which are sometimes given a range of 6" or so and treated as ranged assault weapons that can be shot in melee like pistols can. But now that you bring that up, I should've just gone with the extra range, I doubt it'll really break anything. So yeah, they should just have an ability along the lines of "models  may target units up to 2" away when attacking with spears."

You're right about the halberds too, my first instinct was to stick with the AoS rules (where they get -1 rend/AP) but I could just as easily follow the old WHFB rulebook and give them extra strength.

About the movement allowance...on one hand, there's the fact that weapons coming from AoS have shorter ranges, which supports leaving movement allowances the same--on the other hand, even though most ranged weapons can't be used in melee, units trying to close the gap and reach melee range have to contend with overwatch fire as they try to charge. Not to mention other factors I'm more than likely overlooking. I'm leaning more towards adopting 40k's slightly higher movement values, but I could definitely be wrong in my reasoning.

After taking a better look at things, saves do look like they should be left alone like you say.

Here's the datasheet with these changes implemented.

And a first draft on a Freeguild General. I just did the options they get on foot to keep it simple for now.

I don't really play Free Peoples (I just figured getting that "average human" profile down would be useful) so I took a shot at a saurus warrior datasheet.

I noticed daemon datasheets fall somewhere between WHFB and AoS, so I tried to do the same here by combining elements from both versions. The "parry bonus" from using a hand weapon and shield (which I gave the freeguild guard since they also get it in AoS) didn't quite feel right here, so I gave the clubs +1 strength, staying closer to AoS where they get a better to-wound chance. I kinda just baked their shield into the base save roll without making it an ability since what stardrake shields give is sorta like very flimsy invulnerable save but not quite and I'm not sure how much of an invuln save it should really equate to yet.