What if we changed d6 rolls to X+d3

[Eevika]

So as a Gloomspite player I have dealt a lot with the randomness of d6 rolls and have seen how they work in the game. Now let's be honest here randomness is fun but its also bad Gitz is not really a competitive army and when It's played competitively really none or few of the models with a lot of randomness are considered. 

So my proposition to this problem would be changing Attack, Damage and Move rolls of d6 to X+D3

• For example a Dankhold Troggboss who gets all attacks trough the enemy armor would can deal 4-24 damage thats an absolutely massive amount of variation in damage and you cant really rely on him to do anything. If we change that to 2+d3 his range would be 12-20 here we still have randomness but we also have a minimum damage output thats right for a 270 point model a Vermin Lord Corruptor deals 14 damage if all go trough with only his melee he still has a lot more ways to deal damage and is only 10 points more. 
• A second example is something like the Boingrot Bounderz move 2d6 so you can move 2-12" no one in a competitive scene would play this because movement is so important in the current state of the game if you changed it to 2x2+d3 again we would have a range of 6-10 again we have randomness but we still keep some level expectation for their performance.

I think some rolls like running and charging are just fine as d6 rolls but I personally think randomness on warscrolls could be reduced to make the game healthier. 
 

 

[Panzer]

That's the nature of the game. The smaller you make the dice the less relevant the dice roll becomes. At some point you could just leave dice away for good but then you wouldn't get to see many awesome (and unlikely) things happen on the table. Also not everyone is a competetive player. Many casual players love stuff like the Boingrot Bounderz.
Ultimately Warhammer is a dice game and the randomness is part of its charm. Not everywhere randomness is a good thing, but for the most part it's not an issue.

 EDIT: Though it's kinda funny that you suggest something like that when the 40k side is talking about how much better it would be if we'd use 1d10 to cover a bigger range of results instead ... and the 40k community is by far the more competetively minded one compared to AoS. ^^ 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Panzer

[Eevika]

2 minutes ago, Panzer said:

That's the nature of the game. The smaller you make the dice the less relevant the dice roll becomes. At some point you could just leave dice away for good but then you wouldn't get to see many awesome (and unlikely) things happen on the table. Also not everyone is a competetive player. Many casual players love stuff like the Boingrot Bounderz.
Ultimately Warhammer is a dice game and the randomness is part of its charm. Not everywhere randomness is a good thing, but for the most part it's not an issue.

Well we have a lot of dice rolls already Im suggesting just changing ones that are mostly a solid number to start with. Im not taking away charge, run, hit, wound, save, after save... rolls just lessening the impact of massive randomness on warscrolls that make the units very bad.

[Tenshi]

That randomness is part of the game. It's part of what makes goblins or skavens "fun".
And ideally, the fact that they're random, should be taken into account when costing the units.

And personally, I dislike d3s because I always have the feeling that I only roll 1s & 2s. 😅

[zilberfrid]

D3 has an average of 2, d6 an average of 3.5. With 2+d3, you average 4. Of course this sounds appetizing.

I agree with others that the randomness is part of the game, and unpredictability is part of the Gitz deal.

[XReN]

We already have such things in 40k and that is a bit I'd like to see implemented in AoS. Also a rework of charge rolls to something like a D6+Move (I recognise that it have to be deeper than that due to how quickly it will become umbalanced with move characteristics of 10+) would be nice.  

[Eevika]

17 minutes ago, Tenshi said:

That randomness is part of the game. It's part of what makes goblins or skavens "fun".
And ideally, the fact that they're random, should be taken into account when costing the units.

And personally, I dislike d3s because I always have the feeling that I only roll 1s & 2s. 😅

The randomness is a part of the game but it should not remove entire armies from competitive gaming. 

3 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

D3 has an average of 2, d6 an average of 3.5. With 2+d3, you average 4. Of course this sounds appetizing.

I agree with others that the randomness is part of the game, and unpredictability is part of the Gitz deal.

Its not just about a higher avarage its about keeping the highs and lows closer together and making stuff more consistent while keeping an element of randomness. Did you read my post?

[zilberfrid]

4 minutes ago, Eevika said:

The randomness is a part of the game but it should not remove entire armies from competitive gaming. 

Its not just about a higher avarage its about keeping the highs and lows closer together and making stuff more consistent while keeping an element of randomness. Did you read my post?

You are proposing to x+d3, which would come out in 1.5 + d3 to get the same average, which would be clumsy. Getting more reliability should not be also giving a power boost, so 2+d3 is out. Now 1+d3 would give more reliability at the cost of worse averages, but that's not your proposal.

Edited September 16, 2019 by zilberfrid

[Stroke]

This post screams "I bought models that looked cool and had no idea how they played and now I want you to change my toys so I can play them how I want, forgot all the other night goblin players who enjoy the army and were not surprised by the "randomness" and enjoy it"  do some homework on the rules before you buy an army is the best advise if your concerned with it being competitive. I think you MIGHT be the ONLY gloomspite player that's surprised/upset they aren't super competitive.

[Panzer]

I mean back in fantasy the 'run' and charge was just doubling the units move characteristics (and you weren't allowed to premeasure things) instead of rolling a dice, however the movement phase was veeeeery different and much more game deciding back then.

[Charleston]

It shall be concidered what roll you want to change into what direction.

Use X+D3 for a move effect and it would have a quite low impact. On Damage X+D3 would be huge.

If you want to have a stable avergae value, use 2 dice instead of one. 2D3 rolls on average get you more 3-4 results but you also can´t roll a 1. Perfect for this massive monster you have that shall not be biting with D1 but shall be also somewhere around 3-4 dmg. Thats also why charges are great at 2D6. Althrough still beeing a roll by chance, you can assume that 6" charge as possible in most* cases

 

*yeah, most, so exactly never when you need it

Edited September 16, 2019 by Charleston

[PlasticCraic]

I think this a good idea @Eevika

While it's true that unpredictability comes with the territory for Grots, the question is what is the correct level.  You could be way more or way less predictable than you are currently - there is no binary switch from current level of diciness to perfect predictability.

The main units burdened by extreme randomness in their key characteristics are the Dankhold Trogboss, Gargants of all kinds, Boingrot Bounders and Fanatics.  The fact is you rarely see these units in Competitive lists, and when you do, they generally do badly.  On the rare occassions that Gloomspite does well, it is based around control Grots + buffed magic.

The fact that these "fun" units are chronically under-represented and underperforming should tell you that the current level of baked-in variability is too far along the sliding scale.  It's too much risk for too little reward.

I think your suggestion is therefore a sensible way to smooth out the bumps a little, and make those units less hamstrung.  In a world where a KOS does a straight 5 damage, a Dankhold Trogboss doing say 2 + D3 is in no way overpowered or overly predictable.  You're still paying the "fun" tax for playing Gloomspite, it's just slightly less crippling.

[Eevika]

13 hours ago, Stroke said:

This post screams "I bought models that looked cool and had no idea how they played and now I want you to change my toys so I can play them how I want, forgot all the other night goblin players who enjoy the army and were not surprised by the "randomness" and enjoy it"  do some homework on the rules before you buy an army is the best advise if your concerned with it being competitive. I think you MIGHT be the ONLY gloomspite player that's surprised/upset they aren't super competitive.

I knew exactly what I was doing I had 2,5k of Moonclan before the new book even came... I dont understand why people defend GW when they clearly cant write balanced stuff. A lot of Gitz players I know are getting burned out becouse if you want to win you have to play extremely boring lists of Magic and Stabbas. Im not asking for Gitz to be the best army. God my proposed change would never do that it would just make it that more units saw the light of day on a tournament table.

[DantePQ]

Terrible idea that are a lot of players doing good with Gitz but Gitz are what they are an army with huge randomness. People love Gitz and some of them habe awesome results with them at tournaments. They are far from being uncompetitive

Whats more competitive scene is in awesome place - look at LGT results - 13 different factions in Top25.

Edited September 17, 2019 by DantePQ

[Eevika]

23 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

Terrible idea that are a lot of players doing good with Gitz but Gitz are what they are an army with huge randomness. People love Gitz and some of them habe awesome results with them at tournaments. They are far from being uncompetitive

Whats more competitive scene is in awesome place - look at LGT results - 13 different factions in Top25.

Everyone I know just seems to hate the competitive Gitz list as it has 0 randomness and only plays reliable units. I want to see more randomness on the tables 

[DantePQ]

It doesnt work like this you can’t have a cake and eat it too. 

Competitve lists are all about reliability not randomness thats why lists with huge randomness dont make it far in tournaments and thats their charm I guess. You cant have both and you need any reliability you can get to make it far in tournaments. Changing rules because you want randomness but yout dont really want it is terrible idea. 

[Weazel]

Well you can always have your Troggboss do straight up 6 damage via trait if you really want him to hit like a truck. But that's going to cost you a few CPs along the way which has the potential of being a Very Bad Thing.

As much as I love my Gitz even in their current state, I don't think a slight decrease in variance of certain stats would really break the game nor make Gitz overpowered. A value range of 2-12 in an absolutely key stat (Boingrot Bounders movement) is a bit too much. I already own a horde army (in 40k) so not really going to spam Stabbas any time soon.

[PlasticCraic]

Plenty of the top armies have a degree of unpredictability: exploding 6s is the flavour of the month.  What makes something like Daemonettes (for example) viable despite that unpredictability is:

1) It is manageable unpredictability.  In the case of Daemonettes you are managing it by throwing buckets of dice to smooth out the bumps.  Sometimes you will roll way over, sometimes way under, but most of the time it will come within a range, so that makes them attractive in a competitive dice game.

2) Given their base Warscroll, Allegiance Abilities and available Batallions, Daemonettes are already quite good.  Exploding 6s just lifts them up another notch.  

So manageable unpredictability, and baseline good / upside better, is absolutely an achievable goal.

OP's suggestion is another way of achieving both of those things, and would be a good way to retain a level of diciness while making units baseline viable.

Edited September 17, 2019 by PlasticCraic

[Eevika]

47 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

It doesnt work like this you can’t have a cake and eat it too. 

Competitve lists are all about reliability not randomness thats why lists with huge randomness dont make it far in tournaments and thats their charm I guess. You cant have both and you need any reliability you can get to make it far in tournaments. Changing rules because you want randomness but yout dont really want it is terrible idea. 

Why cant you have both? It would still be worse than the top lists?

[XReN]

Also, about rules that makes D6 more reliable in 40k - some, not many, but some units have the rule that "a roll of 1 or 2 counts as 3", so your min damage is 3 and max damage is 6.

[RuneBrush]

I can see where you're coming from - it was always one niggle I had about the Skull Canon too as it could feel like you went from the sublime to the ridiculous.  As a general rule of thumb, when writing a competitive list people always strive to remove the random elements from their units - re-rolls, + to hit etc, all contribute to lowering that random component.  For quite a bit of the Gloomspite book though you don't have many options to temper that randomness which results in some units not being included in competitive lists (at least for people looking to place high).  They also suffer as they don't roll a lot of dice - rolling 10 D6 is going to give you a more average result than rolling one D6.

Personally I think that randomness adds to the flavour of Gloomspite.  I do agree that the Troggboss should probably have a more reliable "low-end", but I do think it's worth bearing in mind that AoS isn't just about competitive gaming.  I've a couple of friends who have recently started playing Gloomspite and they're actually having a lot more fun (and doing pretty well) in comparison to their regular armies.

+++ MOD HAT +++

On a more serious note, there have been a few comments that haven't come across very well - please read what you've typed before submitting it.   The first post is a member expressing some legitimate worries they have for their army, telling them they picked the wrong army isn't particularly helpful...

[Lucur]

I'm pretty much on the fence about this matter. In general, i think it would be healthy for the game if it had more nuance than a d6, say a d10 or d12, to give more room for differentiating armies and characters' skill. Eg it makes no sense for a Stormcast to have the same save as a Greatsword, gamewise a 5+ would be too weak and a 3+ across the board for SCE would be bonkers.

Then again for damage rolls i absolutely despise the swingy rolls. The aforementioned rule from 40k (d6, but minimum 3) is pretty much the most elegant way besides fixed numbers.

[Tenshi]

I'm a fan of d8s and d10s as they allow for more design space in the stats, and with d10s it's way easier to calculate the percentage chance. But I don't think GW will ever use anything but d6 in on of their "core" games.

The best option would be to use 2d6 as a base, if you want to make it less random. So for abilities that make 1d6 damage, changing that to 2d3 would be a good compromise.

[8bit_Jesus]

17 hours ago, Stroke said:

This post screams "I bought models that looked cool and had no idea how they played and now I want you to change my toys so I can play them how I want, forgot all the other night goblin players who enjoy the army and were not surprised by the "randomness" and enjoy it"  do some homework on the rules before you buy an army is the best advise if your concerned with it being competitive. I think you MIGHT be the ONLY gloomspite player that's surprised/upset they aren't super competitive.

Absolutely this. I've got a 50% win rate in my escalation league, and I've enjoyed nearly every game. They're fun, frustratingly so at times, like when your Troggboss eats his own artefact after the first 4+ FNP roll. I do envy some factions (looking at you Slaanesh, with your guaranteed movement!) but they're still fun, you just have to work harder to win. I think any faction that has bouncing rubber dice can't be expected to by super competitive. 

[8bit_Jesus]

3 hours ago, Weazel said:

Well you can always have your Troggboss do straight up 6 damage via trait if you really want him to hit like a truck. But that's going to cost you a few CPs along the way which has the potential of being a Very Bad Thing.

As much as I love my Gitz even in their current state, I don't think a slight decrease in variance of certain stats would really break the game nor make Gitz overpowered. A value range of 2-12 in an absolutely key stat (Boingrot Bounders movement) is a bit too much. I already own a horde army (in 40k) so not really going to spam Stabbas any time soon.

How do you give him a flat 6 damage...? I've only just started using trolls, and in my firs two games, he was amazing and squished everything in sight, the second game I whiffed everything, and then he died

Edited September 17, 2019 by 8bit_Jesus
added extra text