Why are Hit Rolls and Wound Rolls separate?

[Revlid]

As the title says: what's the point of having separate hit and wound rolls? Why not just have a single attack roll, like in Warcry (one attack roll, modified by Strength/Toughness), or Underworlds (one attack roll, opposed by one defense roll), or just keep the same system but remove the wound roll (one attack roll, then a saving throw).

Both the hit roll and the wound roll work the exact same way – roll a D6, apply modifiers, compare it to the value on the unit's warscroll. They both have the exact same effect – if the hit/wound roll is a failure, the attack fails and nothing happens, and if the hit/wound roll is a success, the attack proceeds to the next step of resolution. Why bother making them into two separate rolls?

In games like Warhammer 40,000, I can understand having a distinction, because the Hit Roll represents a particular model's accuracy, modified by external factors like range, and a Wound Roll represents a particular weapon's strength, opposed to the target's toughness. Two models with very different accuracy can use the same weapon with the same Strength, and two models with the same accuracy can use different weapons with different Strength. And, because the two rolls work differently (flat roll versus target-sensitive roll), it actually makes a difference to how you use a model when an attack has high Strength but low accuracy, or vice-versa.

In Age of Sigmar, that's not the case. Hit rolls and wound rolls are both specified in the profile for each attack. 20 attacks that hit on 3+ and wound on 5+ are identical to 20 attacks that hit on 5+ and wound on 3+, regardless of the attacker or their target. Modifiers can have different outcomes; +1 to wound is slightly more effective on a 3+/5+ attack than a 5+/3+ attack, but that's about it, and many such modifiers are keyed directly to units (and therefore attacks) anyway. Rend and Saving Throws (and to an extent, Damage and Wounds) serve the exact same role that Strength and Toughness "used" to – models that are particularly hard to kill just have high Saving Throws (and/or Wounds), and models are particularly strong just have high Rend (and/or Damage).

So why does the wound roll even exist?

[Lord Krungharr]

Ummmm….hmmmm….  Maybe it's so the attacker doesn't have to reference the enemy's stats as much?  With so many models and units in AoS that could get cumbersome to always be asking and checking what the enemy's stats are to modify your own single attack roll?   It's sometimes hard to hear over the tables in rooms full of people talking across at each other.

That's all I can think of right now.  How very zen I feel now, the dice are falling in the Citadel Woods but am I there to hear it?  

[zilberfrid]

I think the modifiers are a large thing.

A +1 to hit is worth more on a 5/3 unit. A +1 to wound more on a 3/5 one. This makes choosing heroes and their bonusses to match the inits a big thing.

[Myzyrael]

Indeed an interesting question you raise. When I read the title I didn’t think of the issues you raised but the comparison to Warcry and 40k makes for an interesting discussion. 
 

Two separate values for hit and wound might try to mimic real life values of monsters. So strong but “dumb” trolls(e.g., 4+ 2+)  hit less good than mighty heroes that are trained (2+ 4+). 
 

More rolls mean more time spent rolling dice. This could be an important factor for players as it might increase the immersion and tension in close situations and make for interesting stories. I often picture my Troops when something unexpected happens, like two hits out of 12 when 6 were expected. Did the enemies hide too good? 
 

it might create a feeling of more diverse armies, like old orcs only hitting on fours versus trained fighters like stormcasts. 
 

Overall, I personally slightly prefer the S/T system of 40k as it allows for more choices and lets me feel the power of my weapons or the toughness of my troops, especially in different matchups. Strong weapons feel even stronger. 
On a sidenote I also prefer the damage in 40k that doesn’t spill over. 

[Kasper]

Hit roll is accuracy, and just because you hit someone doesnt mean you hurt them; thats where wounding comes into play. 

Im pretty sure they threw away the 40k board because it is much easier to memorize your unit’s warscroll and remember that your dude hits on 4’s, no matter what hes hitting. Obviously there are some modifiers to this, but it makes it easier for new folks tbh.

[Lord Krungharr]

43 minutes ago, Myzyrael said:

it might create a feeling of more diverse armies, like old orcs only hitting on fours versus trained fighters like stormcasts. 

 

Overall, I personally slightly prefer the S/T system of 40k as it allows for more choices and lets me feel the power of my weapons or the toughness of my troops, especially in different matchups. Strong weapons feel even stronger. 

On a sidenote I also prefer the damage in 40k that doesn’t spill over. 

I agree, the diversity feeling is there.  I tried Kings of War, though it was an older edition, maybe the 1st? and those units all had waaaay too simplified everything, and the enemy didn't get saves or have to do anything in response.  Super bland feeling.

For the spillover, I think it's got pros and cons.  I like the idea that one model can be super good at cutting through 3 enemies, like those old samurai sword tests cutting through multiple cadavers.  But limiting spill over might be a good idea, except that perhaps monsters or units with certain keywords can spill over....but that could get hairy to keep track of.

[Revlid]

 

41 minutes ago, Kasper said:

Hit roll is accuracy, and just because you hit someone doesnt mean you hurt them; thats where wounding comes into play. 

Im pretty sure they threw away the 40k board because it is much easier to memorize your unit’s warscroll and remember that your dude hits on 4’s, no matter what hes hitting. Obviously there are some modifiers to this, but it makes it easier for new folks tbh.

But in that case, what's the difference between the wound roll and the save roll? One represents you being strong enough to wound your opponent, the other represents your opponent being tough enough to shrug off your attack? It's the same thing. And why would a Grot Stabba find it just as easy to wound a Zombie Dragon as a Skaven Clanrat? The answer is that it doesn't. That's what the saving throw represents. The wound roll is pointless.

Also, you have to reference the other player's warscroll anyway, for the saving throw and rending. You could just cut out the wound roll and it'd be no more complicated.

 

1 hour ago, zilberfrid said:

I think the modifiers are a large thing.

A +1 to hit is worth more on a 5/3 unit. A +1 to wound more on a 3/5 one. This makes choosing heroes and their bonusses to match the inits a big thing.

Perhaps, but:

1. There are relatively few warscrolls with a high disparity in hit/wound targets to begin with. Grots have 4+/4+. Assassins and Troggoths both have 3+/3+. If there even is a unit with a 3+/5+ or 5+/3+ split, I've not encountered it.
2. Even if such a setup were to exist, the effect is relatively minor. 100 attacks with 5+/3+ or 3+/5+ would yield 22 wounds vs 22 wounds. With +1 to wound, that's 28 wounds vs 33 wounds. +5 wounds total across 100 attacks. It's a difference, sure, but not a massive one – and an even harder one to exploit. The Aura of Khorne has a slightly stronger effect on Marauders with Axes than Marauders with Flails, so keep that in mind, I guess?

Edited February 20, 2020 by Revlid

[Euphanism]

Mechanically, it allows for game rules to interact with more facets of the game. Therefore allowing for different types of modifications, which gives the rules writers more options when developing stats. 

Honestly though it does mean less reliance on your opponent. Any combat attack usually results in you telling them how many saves to roll with a modifier. I think the 'strength' of the attack is represented more in the Rend.

[Kramer]

If it helps the reason that the designers decided against a strength vs toughness system for AoS was to simplify thing according to their own communications. 

the result of which was that everything could kill everything. Survivability now comes from abilities. That’s was so much less so in the beginning. 
So even the bigger things died to the small things. Because your damage output was the same against everything. 

so that’s the context as far as I know. And from that starting point, and like you’ve said yourself, two values just gives a different spread of outcomes than with just one dice roll. 

and as said above the abilities probably add to it as well. -1 to hit with an Unmodified roll afterward vs -1  to your one dice roll. 

Also you asked for big difference between wound and hit. Top of mind: celesta ballist has a 5+ 3+, hellstorm rocket battery as well, there’re probably more but currently messing about with a cities list so this is recent for me 😂

And can I just add one more but reading your comments this doesn’t work for you. But for me it’s also immersion. Darkling covens executioners that do mortal wounds on the to hit, feels different to me than chaos chosen that do/did mortals on the to wound. It’s skill vs brute force. And the models and lore represent that. It allows for warscrolls and abilities to differentiate themselves from each other. Very much worth it for me. 

[Kasper]

@Revlid Save roll and wound roll is not the same. Wound is partly strength - Look at a Cygor from Beasts of Chaos. It throws a huge rock - Unlikely to hit the opponent due to bad accuracy (4+), but if it does, the rock is heavy and will likely hurt ya (2+ wound), now it also makes sense a dress or some weak shield is not gonna shrug off being by a rock (-2 rend). 

Save roll is completely different and represents how well equipped the unit is. Shields and armor will have better save than someone wearing a robe, hence a  better time avoiding damage.

[Mutton]

The simplest answer is that "to hit" and "to wound" have been around since the beginning, but when they decided AoS was going to be the more accessible of their two wargames, it meant removing things like WS vs WS and S vs T. I'm no math man, but I'd also wager having two separate rolls helps to even out value distribution, i.e., if we only had a single hit roll, we might see greater spikes or failures in each batch. How many times have we rolled spectacularly to hit, only to even out the score on our to wound roll, or vice versa?

Edited February 20, 2020 by Mutton

[willange]

There's no mechanical reason that they have to be separate.  Really, they're both a measure of the attacker's likelihood to damage you, while saves are the defender's likelihood to shrug off that damage.  So you could (in theory, though not easily) re-work all AoS warscrolls to condense "to hit" and "to wound" down into "to damage" and mathematically things would be largely the same (especially if you simultaneously moved to d10 or d12 rolls).  

However, the hit and wound system can be and is leveraged in a number of cool and interesting ways to give players more ways to influence the outcome of an attack.  I'll give a few examples below:

1.  Assume my attack profile is 3+ to hit and 5+ to wound.  If I have the ability to give myself re-rollable 1s to hit OR re-rollable 1s  to wound, which should I take?  To hit, obviously, since that re-roll will be more likely to produce a result than the wound roll would be.
 Nope!  Those are actually the same.

2.  A number of buffs and de-buffs affect only 1 roll or the other and limits stacking of certain effects.  If my attack profile is 3+ to hit and  5+ to wound, my opponent only benefits from reducing my wound rolls by 1, not 2 since 6s will always succeed.
3.  Likewise, if my to-hit profile is 3+, then I can only really benefit from having +1 to-hit once (unless the opponent hits me with a -1 to-hit, in which case +2 would be nice).  Basically it forces you to care about units that specifically give +to-wound AND +to-hit as opposed to all units granting +to-damage being equal.

Bonus: D6s are much cheaper for players to obtain as opposed to D10s or D12s.  The problem with D6 though is you only really have a few values you can assign to the dice, so by using the D6 twice (once to wound and once to hit) you expand your range of values to a point where it's similar to D10s and D12s without the cost.  This system also avoids the "bell curve" probability of the 2D6 roll.

Edited February 21, 2020 by willange

[Túrbóbelja]

I love the to hit and to wound system. 

I used to play 40k in 5th, 6th and 7th edition and trying to get new people into the hobby was abysmal. In theory and for the first small games the players liked the reality of the system immensely.  " Are you saying my Gaunts literally cannot hurt that Tank? No matter how many swarm it?...Yes sir. " But after adding in units, playing larger games and dare I say it..multiplayer games. The endless comparing WS tables and Strength vs Toughness became a chore, especially if you were the player with most ingame knowledge.

[Revlid]

3 hours ago, Kasper said:

@Revlid Save roll and wound roll is not the same. Wound is partly strength - Look at a Cygor from Beasts of Chaos. It throws a huge rock - Unlikely to hit the opponent due to bad accuracy (4+), but if it does, the rock is heavy and will likely hurt ya (2+ wound), now it also makes sense a dress or some weak shield is not gonna shrug off being by a rock (-2 rend). 

Okay, sure, wound roll is how likely you are to hurt something after you hit it.

So a Grot Stabba can wound a Nurgling on a 4+, and an Orruk on a 4+, and an Ogor on a 4+, and a Gargant on a 4+, and a Steam Tank on 4+.

So a Grot Stabba finds it just as hard or easy to hurt each of these after they hit it, right? Does that make sense?

3 hours ago, Kasper said:

Save roll is completely different and represents how well equipped the unit is. Shields and armor will have better save than someone wearing a robe, hence a  better time avoiding damage.

No, because fighters that are practically naked, like Gargants, Bullgors, Vulkite Berserkers, and Crypt Horrors all have 5+ saves. This isn't because they have good shields, thick armour, or even natural scaly skin or magical defenses; it's just because they're meant to be harder to hurt when you hit them than something with a 6+ or 7+ save. They're less squishy than average, so they have a good Save. And if you want to be better at hurting them, you need Rend.

The only difference between a Grot Stabba's chances of injuring a Giant Rat and their chances of injuring a Steam Tank is in the Saving Throw.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Revlid

[Morglum Ironhide]

Because time travel doesn't exist?

This game was written before all of those new games mentioned, and based on rules that have been around for years. Just always how it was been done...

[OkayestDM]

I don't have a reference to confirm it, but I've heard it said that when Warhammer was first conceived, they wanted to use percentile dice (2d10, representing the numerical range from 1-100) to determine combat success.

The d10 wasn't widely used at the time and so an alternative was devised using the far more commonplace D6 to approximate the results. Thus the 3 tiered hit/wound/save mechanic was born.

Since then GW has discovered the breadth of tactical options inherent in the 3tiered system and the rest, as they say, is history.

[Revlid]

1 minute ago, Morglum Ironhide said:

Because time travel doesn't exist?

This game was written before all of those new games mentioned, and based on rules that have been around for years. Just always how it was been done...

...there is, as far as I'm aware, no other Games Workshop game that uses a pre-set Wound Roll. They all either fold Hit and Wound into a general Attack Roll (Warcry, Underworlds), or have a Wound Roll based on comparing two opposed traits (Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda, Warhammer Fantasy, Mordheim, Kill Team). The closest equivalent is Apocalypse, which a) still has two different target numbers for vehicles and models, b)  does weird stuff with saving throws, c) came out in mid-2019.

Age of Sigmar is the first and only game to have players make two identical rolls, one immediately after the other. The grandfather clause does not apply.

[novembermike]

1 hour ago, willange said:

1.  Assume my attack profile is 3+ to hit and 5+ to wound.  If I have the ability to give myself re-rollable 1s to hit OR re-rollable 1s  to wound, which should I take?  To hit, obviously, since that re-roll will be more likely to produce a result than the wound roll would be.
 

This is a misconception. They're both identical.

[willange]

22 minutes ago, novembermike said:

This is a misconception. They're both identical.

You're right, I wasn't thinking that example through!  I'll edit that out of my post to not confuse anyone

 

[Revlid]

4 hours ago, Euphanism said:

Mechanically, it allows for game rules to interact with more facets of the game. Therefore allowing for different types of modifications, which gives the rules writers more options when developing stats. 

2 hours ago, Mutton said:

I'm no math man, but I'd also wager having two separate rolls helps to even out value distribution, i.e., if we only had a single hit roll, we might see greater spikes or failures in each batch. How many times have we rolled spectacularly to hit, only to even out the score on our to wound roll, or vice versa?

These two are the most persuasive arguments in the thread, honestly. I can totally accept the idea that rolling two dice, regardless of what they're supposed to represent, means the designers have a wider spread of probabilities to work with; it takes you from 6 possible odds of "success" to 14 possible odds of "success", before you start looking at different kinds of re-rolls.

I'm not wholly convinced it's worthwhile, though, considering that (for example) 2 attacks at 4+/4+ is almost identical to 3 attacks at 6+. It feels like more interesting things could be done to get that kind of delineation other than just "roll it twice", as seen in other games GW is putting out.

[SleeperAgent]

The wound roll exists to smooth things out. Things like exploding 6's would be insane without it.

And knowing your own stats is FAR SUPERIOR to having to constantly ask your opponents for numbers of their stats. Bring on 9th edition with ws/bs and wounding/damaging skill GW. Trash the strength and toughness system.

[Galas]

It is just to have more room for variety. They can't reduce things much more without making the armies soo similar.

[Fairbanks]

Because at the time of the modern wargame’s release, d6 were ‘ordinary’, and every other die was not. 

[Maddpainting]

accuracy and strength are to different things 

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, Revlid said:

...there is, as far as I'm aware, no other Games Workshop game that uses a pre-set Wound Roll. They all either fold Hit and Wound into a general Attack Roll (Warcry, Underworlds), or have a Wound Roll based on comparing two opposed traits (Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda, Warhammer Fantasy, Mordheim, Kill Team). The closest equivalent is Apocalypse, which a) still has two different target numbers for vehicles and models, b)  does weird stuff with saving throws, c) came out in mid-2019.

Age of Sigmar is the first and only game to have players make two identical rolls, one immediately after the other. The grandfather clause does not apply.

So there are two other systems.

• One older than AoS, which needs more communication with the other player (Kill team may not be older, but it's useful to make it the same as 40k),
• One newer than AoS, which didn't exist when the rules were written, and which is for a different scale of game.

Now GW may have concluded that the wound roll is a bad idea and thus decided to make the newer games different, but honestly, it feels rather smooth, and does fluff in some skill vs power as well as giving more tactical options.