Inspiring Presence - Bad for the game?

[PJetski]

Is inspiring presence allowing units to completely ignore battleshock bad for the game? There are loads of cool bravery effects that will never be viable as long as armies can spend 1 command point to completely ignore them, and it seems like a weakness that horde armies should have to deal with rather than just trivially ignore.

Some suggestions I have heard for tweaking the ability:

• Change the battleshock roll to a 1
• Only the general can use it
• Reduce the result of battleshock by 10
• Only usable once per game

What do you think?

[willange]

I'm not sure it's "bad" for the game.  At this point, there are a ton of useful things you can do with command points, so it's still pretty costly having to sink command points into inspiring presence.  

I don't like to think of my bravery mechanics as "not working" when my opponent uses inspiring presence.  To me, that's just working as intended.  I burned off their command points that they could have used elsewhere.

[TheCovenLord]

I do not think it is bad for the game. In moderation. However, the amount of free battleshock immunity effects, abilities, bonuses to leadership in extremely large hordes and the copious nature of Command Points currently make it a problem.

I also think it should be the first command ability to cost 2 CP.  Currently there is no point in including negative modifiers to leadership in the cost of any spells or abilities as it effectively does nothing barring an opponents mistake. You cannot realistically plan on creating a situation where you can make use of battleshock or modifiers to battleshock as any hero can inspiring a massive, hard to kill horde whose theoretical weakness is leadership.

 

As for the guy above me. There is no effect given by CP more important than keeping your models alive/tying up enemies for another turn/blocking charge lanes/forcing combats. Inspiring does it all just by keeping models around.

 

A suggestion for a fix? 

 

1 CP = +3 Leadership to a unit. As recommended by Miniwargaming. Do not particularly enjoy their content but this struck me as a good fix. Also simulating more powerful leadership to retain discipline after heavier and heavier losses.

Edited August 21, 2019 by TheCovenLord

[PJetski]

42 minutes ago, willange said:

I'm not sure it's "bad" for the game.  At this point, there are a ton of useful things you can do with command points, so it's still pretty costly having to sink command points into inspiring presence.  

I think part of the problem is that the armies that tend to care most about ignoring battleshock results (Gitz & Skaven) have ways to generate copious amounts of command points and don't generally rely on using command points for offense like other armies normally would, so they end up almost always having extra command points to use for inspiring presence.

[amysrevenge]

I posted something like this, some time ago, and didn't get many people agreeing with me.  But I agree. 

I think that battleshock immunity is too easy and common.

I'm not saying there should be no immunity ever, but I think it should have a larger opportunity cost, or be available in fewer circumstances, or something.  I don't have a nailed down solution, I have only identified what I think is a problem.

The issue is that there aren't that many "automatics" in AoS.  There aren't many abilities that let you automatically charge, or automatically cast a spell, or automatically hit or wound.  There are a handful for some of these, but they are few and far between.  And yet everyone can trivially automatically pass battleshock.

Someone up-thread suggested a similar item to the Run command ability - spend a CP to turn a battleshock result into 1 (might be a tricky balance with the daemon units that do crazy stuff on a 1).  That's not bad.  Might be too far of a nerf?  I don't know.

[PensivePanther]

I dont think the problem is inspiring presence. I think the problem is battleshock is a joke to most armies. Several armies just ignore it and a baffling number of hordes are near immune to it. My ogors cry sweet tears.

[Belper]

I think bravery as a whole works best as a mechanic that you have to expend resources to ignore.

 

Losing huge chunks of your forces in with no recourse feels awful. Having it there as a boogieman you have to build your list around is just a better way to deal with it, in my opinion.

[darkspear]

Glass hammer armies need it a lot.  Without inspiring presence, the meta will fall on elite resilient armies with few models .

Besides it is not indefinite as it burns through CP meaning less CP are available to buff attacks.

[Landohammer]

I am mildly annoyed by it. But there are much more problematic uses for a single CP (cough cough Death) However the larger problem in general is the ability for many armies to ignore it altogether.

This particularly hurts me as a Sylvaneth player, since a large part of my army focuses on bravery debuffs. 

[Mutton]

The problem with Battleshock is twofold. Firstly, CP is too abundant in some armies, often armies that don't need them. Armies like Gitz NEED a CP machine to keep any of their units on the battlefield for more than a turn, but other armies, like Slaanesh, can harvest absurd amounts of CP, so even when they do need to worry about battleshock, it's no biggy to throw a handful of Inspiring Presence around. I really don't like how battalions give you an extra CP, it only adds to the inflation problem.

And speaking of daemons, there are a wide number of armies and units that simply don't care much or at all about battleshock. Daemons, Undead, Lizards...all with standardized Bravery 10 makes it nigh impossible for it to be a concern for them. Then you have units like Skaven where, bizarrely, most of their units are immune to battleshock because of numerous abilities from heroes. Skaven...the most cowardly race in the universe, rarely worry about bravery.

So we have an abundance of CP's and a plethora of factions that ignore battleshock for most intents and purposes. Changing Inspiring Presence to not auto-pass Bravery tests would only hurt the factions that need it the most and wouldn't affect the armies who already have no issues with it.

[Frowny]

I don't really see why all of death and demons need bravery ten. Makes them nearly immune just ok that. Maybe the slaughter of their allies tears at the bonds that keep them reanimated or summoned or whatever. Just give them normal values for bravery. It's an abstraction anyway. 

 

[PensivePanther]

18 minutes ago, Frowny said:

I don't really see why all of death and demons need bravery ten. Makes them nearly immune just ok that. Maybe the slaughter of their allies tears at the bonds that keep them reanimated or summoned or whatever. Just give them normal values for bravery. It's an abstraction anyway. 

 

This is very reminiscent of how undead instability worked in old warhammer fantasy. Once the undead heroes were defeated the rest of the army started to take battleshock type damage every round until they withered away. I remember it being very evocative watching the opponent's force degrade after you finally managed to take out that big nasty hero. 

On a somewhat related note, miniwargaming has started a "How to fix Age of Sigmar" series. They brushed upon this topic in their "Are hordes too powerful" video. An amusing alternative they proposed was turning inspiring presence into something that just adds a bonus to a units bravery as opposed to making them immune to battleshock. The idea being this would effectively protect more elite units from suffering those feel-bad battleshock losses while still allowing horde type units to get crushed (albeit slightly less so). It was an interesting suggestion!

[zilberfrid]

Deletion due to battleshock simply feels awful. Now a unit running off and needing a hero to chase after them sounds a lot better.

The list I build is largely immune to battleshock, because the mechanic as ruled in AoS is awful.

[jackmcmahon]

No

[Dead Scribe]

Most people I talk with feel battleshock should be eliminated entirely because its a negative play experience when your models run away, and there are just so many ways to ignore it anyway that its kind of useless.

[Dead Scribe]

On a somewhat related note, miniwargaming has started a "How to fix Age of Sigmar" series.

I didn't realize they had such a series.  I'm sure that has gone well with the community lol.

[Blightzkrieg]

3 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

 

 

I didn't realize they had such a series.  I'm sure that has gone well with the community lol.

I read the title of Episode 3 and it felt like watching someone step on a landmine 💀

But in all seriousness I think it's a good series, I've quite enjoyed it. 

[Eldarain]

Both games have done a poor job of handling morale. One of the larger downsides to horde units in both games is supposed to be morale but there are far too many abilities that mitigate/ignore it. Most egregiously a core ability available to all factions.

 

What really makes it a design flaw is that in both games the most horde based factions have more access to these abilities than the more elite armies.

 

This has inversed the intended function and made morale more devastating to elite factions pushing those armies to an MSU playstyle further weakening them by the loss of economies of scale benefits (spells, Warlord Traits, Command Traits) that buff one target getting far more value out of the larger safer investment.

[Jamopower]

IMO Morale (and command) should be one of the key attributes in a wargame. It's after all the reason for which the wars and battles are actually won in a real life.

 

The way it was handled in 40k (pre 8th) and WHFB is the worst. Both had extensive rules for psychology, but essentially if your army was subject to them, it was a liability that in the worst case made the army not worth playing at all.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Jamopower

[Planar]

I am not sure if its bad for the game but it is certainly bad for Nighthaunt  NH is a really thematic army designed to a large extend around the concept of being scary and demoralising to fight against. It was a great concept but the current state of the game with common high bravery stats and abudance of inspiring presence nullified all NH mechanics aiming on bravery.

Furthermore I agree with whatstated above. Morale should be a way to deal with hoard non-elite armies armies . At the moment this is not the case as such  armies appear to have abudant CP to never have to deal with battleshock.

It seems that only my Brutes have to fear battleshock at the moment 😂

Having said all these, I personally don't feel IP is game braking or deeply problematic. Far from it. I believe it could be improved but even if it doesn't I wouldnt worry too much about it.

[XReN]

I sort of agree with @willange on that one, if brevery debuffs cause opponent to spend CPs than they give you value, but at the same time it does nothing against abilities that don't require CPs, like Skaven auras, King's Ghouls battalion, ect. Whille a player still pays something for that, it's not CPs. 

I'd like to see  some changes made into IP and every similar ability, based on number of casualties, like when unit is reduced to 50% of it's starting strenght than those abilities make you count bravery roll as 1 instead of ignoring the check, once unit is reduced to 25% of it's starting strenght it can no longer benefit from those abilities.

[Beliman]

All phases should be really important (and I mean, REALLY important). It opens a lot of creative ways to expand the game.

If there is some type of "legal" mechanics that makes you ignore/inmune to one of the phases, in the long run it could be really problematic. 

[Lucur]

As a current meta thing, IP doesn't do that much, as any army vulnerable to battleshock has other means to negate battle shock (looking at you, Verminlord Warpseer!).

I don't like the "nope" feel of it, imo there should be a roll or a scaling effect of some sort involved, instead of an autopass. Reroll seems to weak, a fixed number seems to arbitrary, changing the roll to a 1 is the most compelling proposal i've heard so far (and shouldn't trigger abilities like daemons getting models back, because it's not an unmodified roll. Those rules are worded that way, right? RIGHT??? ^^). Maybe ignore battleshock on a 4+ or some such could work.

[DarrinTheOccult]

3 hours ago, Lucur said:

As a current meta thing, IP doesn't do that much, as any army vulnerable to battleshock has other means to negate battle shock (looking at you, Verminlord Warpseer!).

I don't like the "nope" feel of it, imo there should be a roll or a scaling effect of some sort involved, instead of an autopass. Reroll seems to weak, a fixed number seems to arbitrary, changing the roll to a 1 is the most compelling proposal i've heard so far (and shouldn't trigger abilities like daemons getting models back, because it's not an unmodified roll. Those rules are worded that way, right? RIGHT??? ^^). Maybe ignore battleshock on a 4+ or some such could work.

In fact both daemon abilities would be triggered: the one that adds more daemons and the one that makes the foe repeat battleshock tests of 1. 

I also think that the change the roll to 1 thing would work better, but IMO they should add a rule that specifies that none abilities could be triggered for the purposes of IP

[Knight Scáthach of Fimm]

I think Inspiring Presence should let a unit use the Hero's Bravery characteristic. Then a Hero's Bravery actually matters for once.