"Battleshock needs an overhaul" discussion

[albionsangel]

I just wanted to jump in because a couple of people half mentioned the 40k Morale tests. 

So, lets talk about 8th edition Morale. In the morale phase, units that took damage that turn had to make a leadership test. 1d6 + slain models that were killed this turn, try to roll lower than the maximum leadership score in the unit (units often had a commander with +1 leadership). For each point this roll exceeds the leadership score, remove a model. From the sound of it, this is kinda like AoS Battleshock (though I dont know, I am new to all this!). I dont know if this is true in AoS, but many, many armies also had ways of forcing immediate morale checks, either causing models to flee, or forcing mortal wounds, or some other debuff. Because of this, EVERYONE ran MSU (usually 5 model squads for most units). Why risk losing 6 models and then failing morale by a lot. Unfortunately, that hit hoard armies really hard, as 40k also has upper limits on the number of units you can take. Tyranids, Orks, even my own Drukhari to a degree, suffered from MSU (though good Drukhari players made it up in other ways, and dominated early 8th, until some nerfs came in). 

9th changed things. As has been insinuated, instead of loads of models fleeing, what happens now is you still roll 1d6+slain, and try to get under leadership, but if failed, this only causes a single model to flee. However, in addition to that, if the test is failed, you then roll 1d6 for EVERY MODEL in the squad, and unmodified rolls of 1 cause another model to flee. This is... better for hoards, though the bigger the unit, the more likely it is to roll at least one 1. In addition to this, a new general rule came in, capping buffs to stats at +/- 1. So army abilities that buffed Ld scores cant stack, but also debuffs cant stack. This is great for some armies and trash for others, but it probably helps moral as it prevents cheese by debuffing the Ld of an army into the ground, then forcing morale checks.

Thats all not bad. Its certainly the right direction for trying to get hoards back, while simultaneously keeping morale very simple and easy to understand. I think, from the sound of it, it would work well for AoS big units, especially if there was some sort of buff for being over 50% (perhaps the secondary rolls that cause models to flee on natural 1s only occurs at <50%? Or even below a certain model count, so Hoards are actually protected longer than MSU?)

But, for 40k, what with one hand GW giveth, with the other GW taketh away. They also brought back vehicles shooting in melee combat (which, I mean, ok, but some vehicles had high damage and many shots BECAUSE locking them down in melee was the counter balance!), and Blast weapons, only instead of templates (I miss templates), variable-shot weapons simply hit a minimum amount of times vs units over a certain size (so a gun that shoots 2d6 shots normally, shoots a minimum 2d6 minimum 3 times vs units with 6+ models, and max times vs units with 12+ models), thus ensuring we are also running MSU for 9th. 

Still, they like AoS players more, so heres hoping!

[Lior'Lec]

     Little threadocancy here as I’m sitting around bored waiting for the storm to pass; this is just bored musings and completely untested so please take these ideas with a grain of salt. 
     Units make a bravery roll immediately if they suffer more (unsaved, just to be clear) wounds than their bravery value (possibly make this half bravery). If the unit fails they just fall back 3” (reverse pile in) rather than losing models (and during the combat phase happens before the unit can strike back). During the battleshock phase any units that fell back make a standard battleshock roll and rather than losing models equal to the difference you lose wounds with any leftover “damage” dropped. This means there is no real change when effecting horde units (plus they’ll get bonuses below) while giving elite units a little more protection.

     Abilities that negate battleshock instead add +2 to the unit’s bravery. All leaders gain a passive aura ability that lets units wholly within 6” use their bravery. Any unit with 20+ models receive +1 to bravery, and +2 at 40+ models. However units also suffer a -1 penalty if half the original unit has been killed. This would result in a net 0 modifier if a horde Has 20 models but started with 40 models so it may not work.

     Behemoths and large monsters gain a “fearsome” keyword which gives a -1 or -2 to enemy bravery within melee range (and also acts as a penalty to charge rolls when charging the unit). A mechanically identical keyword (“Horrifying”?) also exists and is applied to undead, demons, and other traditionally scary units. A unit can have both keywords and their effects stack. Units that are traditionally known as monster slayers have a counter keyword which negates the effects of “fearsome” while horrifying has it’s own similar keyword (stoic?). Units with fearsome and horrifying keywords have their penalties doubled against enemy units who they charged this turn. 
     These ideas may be completely broken, idk, feel free to tear them apart, improve them, or just ignore.

[Feii]

morale mechanics are bad in both Aos and 40K. 

[Joseph Mackay]

Too many armies have ways to ignore battleshock, and too many units/armies are pointed based on their modifiers to bravery and/or abilities that trigger off battleshock tests or bravery.

remove immunity to battleshock. I really don’t care if Death *should* never run away, it ruins the game when stuff is pointed to factor in abilities that are then just ignored by half the armies in the game. There are a lot of things in the game that *should* do this or that but don’t

[SleeperAgent]

As someone who plays Nighthaunt a LOT, I sure hope they remove any and all abilities to give immunity to battleshock. Maybe in their next book one of the rules will be "enemy models cannot benefit from inspiring presence and their bravery cannot be raised in any way".

[Liquidsteel]

I'd like to maybe see an addition to battleshock, so that whenever you immune the battleshock via inspiring presence or similar, the unit suffers -1 to hit for the rest of the battle.

 

Gives a trade off.

 

Obviously if the unit is fearless / immune for lore reasons then it doesn't apply.

[Beastmaster]

I wonder why they don’t use the rules for retreating for that. Every model failing its roll must retreat and run and may not charge again yada yada. Much more immersive and tactically interesting than just taking some more models off the table.

Edit: Ah, I see. Unit cohesion. On the other hand, this would be a way to make Bravery worth something with single model units.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Beastmaster

[OkayestDM]

21 minutes ago, Beastmaster said:

I wonder why they don’t use the rules for retreating for that. Every model failing its roll must retreat and run and may not charge again yada yada. Much more immersive and tactically interesting than just taking some more models off the table.

Edit: Ah, I see. Unit cohesion. On the other hand, this would be a way to make Bravery worth something with single model units.

Of course, you could add a rule that if a unit that is out of cohesion fails a battle shock test, you must remove models until the unit is back in cohesion before it makes its retreat move.

Great way to simulate troops being cut down or routing during the retreat. 

Then just make sure that each army has or is given a way to select and remove individual models in combat.

[Popisdead]

I agree.  It feels like the few dings you can build into an army like with Drycha and Spite Revs makes 0 difference.  

Maybe the change in AoS 3.0 that will likely end up mimicking 9th ed 40k will have a significant difference.  

It is funny as when it was LD 10 daemon back in the day that felt like immunity.  Now it's just you'll always see it.

[Badlander86]

Why not just change the terminology for certain factions? Mind you I am basing this off what I have seen in Warhammer Total War. You have "Bravery", you have "Freshness (Untouched, tired, very tired, etc)", you have "Binding" for the Undead factions.

 

Lets say for the sake of simplicity, we leave out the Freshness aspect. Instead of Bravery for Undead factions, you give them a Binding rating which should not be 10 but lets say for a horde, we top it at 8 "Binding". The same rules for Bravery and Binding checks apply, you roll a dice after combats are done, you see how many models are lost, you calculate the difference to see if it passes the Binding test. Since most Undead armies are dependent on Heroes for buffs nearby, you can even give them a passive +2 to Binding for any units within a certain bubble (effectively making them Binding 10). The idea being moment a hero dies, their corporeal tether on the Mortal realm weakens. This way it gets around the arguments "well if they are undead, they cant get scared cause they're already dead". A simple naming change and a retweak of the numbers is all it takes. 

 

Same with say the current Mega-Gargants, who technically will never run off the battlefield. You could still have it as "bravery" but say if it takes a total of 10 wounds in a turn, its bravery drops to certain levels and you have to take a Bravery test. You could logic it as the Gargant taking so much damage that it's having second thoughts about running amok 

[JackStreicher]

On 10/13/2020 at 9:28 PM, Popisdead said:

It is funny as when it was LD 10 daemon back in the day that felt like immunity.  Now it's just you'll always see it.

The mortality in AoS is WAY higher than it was in WHF. That‘s also a reason why you rarely see any unit champion or small hero to perform heroically VS all odds ^^

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

18 minutes ago, Badlander86 said:

Why not just change the terminology for certain factions? Mind you I am basing this off what I have seen in Warhammer Total War. You have "Bravery", you have "Freshness (Untouched, tired, very tired, etc)", you have "Binding" for the Undead factions.

I never played Warhammer Fantasy, but I believe that how Total War handles psychology comes from the rules of that game. At least, I am pretty sure that undead used to be immune to psychology and crumble when their support heroes died. I think the reason AoS backed away from that was just to have a more simple universal system. In general, I think avoiding system bloat is a desireable thing, so not sure I would want to have a different system for undead than mortal armies. Having them be battleshock immune is fine. Having them take regular battleshock and just have high bravery is fine, too. Renaming the system and then just having it do the same thing seems kind of confusing.

Legions of Nagash already has a system like you describe where undead get worse if they don't have a hero around, by the way. It's just not connected to bravery in AoS. Killing a hero in LoN removes passive healing, a 6+ aftersave and in some cases other bonuses from your standard undead troops.

[Charleston]

Some Points on Bravery and Battleshock from my experience:

1. Bravery has such a low impact that many players in my playgroup forget it exists.
2. It gets negated by spending a CP. As you can spam Command Abilities, you can spam Inspiring Presence, thus making your Army immune to BS
3. It feels like the Rule is so far off from what one would expect it to be, that it often feels strange in the game. It reads like a rule that helps you to break and overcome thoose big blobbs of horde. Instead in all Games it had impact it were small elite units like Chaos Knights, Mournfang Riders or Troggoth that lost models to it as the big chunks of horde had always CP to save them planned in.
4. Warscrolls, Artifacts and Spells that Affect bravery are often an automatical pass, at least in my local meta. It often just feels bad to even concider thoose rules. It´s nice StD have several -1 Bravery effects, but...who really cares about them? Especially as most spells or artifacts that care for bravery don´t stack with the modifiers. It feels always like a dead rule on the Warscroll.

All in all bravery and battleshock feel annoing in many points. It has potential to become an important part of the game, but currently...it doesn´t feel that way

[MitGas]

I'd like to see Bravery buffs (or negating battleshock) only for elite units. As it stands, many of them are worse than huge blobs of - in theory - worse fighters. Might be realistic as it's hard to be outnumbered even as a kung-fu master or something but it takes away from the epic feeling they gun for. This would be a fitting fix as it feels strange to see Gobbos for example  not caring about BS all too much and easily murder supposed elites.

[Popisdead]

On 10/19/2020 at 1:46 AM, JackStreicher said:

The mortality in AoS is WAY higher than it was in WHF. That‘s also a reason why you rarely see any unit champion or small hero to perform heroically VS all odds ^^

I meant 5 years ago.  When AoS first dropped.  LD 10 was significant.  

[JackStreicher]

9 hours ago, Popisdead said:

I meant 5 years ago.  When AoS first dropped.  LD 10 was significant.  

As was 4+, 3+,-,1 ^^

Edited October 21, 2020 by JackStreicher

[OkayestDM]

Here's a thought. 

Alter bravery so it has a value of 1-6, like hit, wound, and save rolls. (Maybe up to 8 to allow for bravery debuff builds, and/or maybe keep the +1 for every 10 models.)

Every battle shock phase, if a unit lost any models that turn, it rolls a die for each model lost. Every roll that is equal to or exceeds the units bravery value results in a model fleeing.

Change Inspiring Presence to allow you to reroll the dice rather than auto pass.

This would be far more elite friendly (rolling fewer dice against a higher bravery value means you should loose fewer models) but still give options for armies that depend on hordes to mitigate losses where it matters (though not avoid them entirely.)

Basically draw inspiration from the new 40k system, but with added AoS flair. 

[Scurvydog]

A Major issues with bravery is both that it is wildly inconsistent across armies, but also that it causes entire models to flee, making it just about impossible to balance.

I play a lot of armies, but really have issues with bravery in my brute heavy ironjawz with their pitiful 6 bravery. Same goes for Stormcast with just 7, even the elite paladins and dracothian guards only got 7, so if they face even a unit of skeleton horsemen with a -1 bravery banner, losing 1 model already puts them at risk of en entire 120 points concussor running! In the same scenario not even a clanrat would flee due to all the modifiers.

Multiple wounds harder to kill models are really hard to balance like this, if a bunch of rockgut troggoths lack a hero and CP nearby, killing 2 of a 6 man unit and having a -1 bravery banner, could see a couple more of the unit running away, which snowballs far more than the killing 8 clanrats from a similar costed unit.

All in all this makes for a bad mechanic, it is not balanced at all between unit types or battletomes and the inspiring presence also completely messes up this balance, if you also consider how easy some armies generate CP while others have to make very hard decisions with very few CP.

As has sort of been suggested, changing this to some sort of battle attrition might work better, where damage is used instead of models, which could even bleed into monsters to represent them being overwhelmed and dragged down etc. Monsters and elites should then have a "bravery" that was high enough to take this into account, while infantry could start out lower but then benefit from command groups and numbers, as a result a zombie dragon would be roughly as prone to taking additional damage as a 30 man unit of skeletons taking the same amount of damage. 

I hope this aspect of the game receives a major review for any potential 3rd edition at least, and either makes it important for most units, having those crazy brave things truly be special, or entirely get rid of it, potentially for something entirely different, to represent the units grit, exhaustion and will to fight.

[Doko]

My problem is how bravery have been done in aos.

 

Ld problems must be a problem for hordes and not for elite armys.

But in aos is the oposite,hordes have huge bonus to ld and almost every horde army have something to do them inmune to ld while elite armys have poor ld and nothing to avoid it(out of inspiring presence)

 

Per example how is posible that armys that were almost imposible to faill one ld as dwarfs now flee so easy vs clasical flee armys as skavens???

 

To me,every inmune to moral must go away and horde armys must get a penalty and not a bonus,rigth now aos is all about hordes and free sumon, remove the reduction of points to full units and the bonus to hordes ld and inmunes ld would help to this

[Chaos Shepard]

I do not agree with the bravery is worse for elite army's. The base mechanics of the bravery system favor elite units over horde units. Lets say we have two units, one that has 1 wound models and a unit that has 4 wound models, and lets say they both have the same bravery of 6. Now lets say the elite unit lose one guy and then rolled a 6 and lost another. I always hear how much that unfairly hurts the elite unit but that unit had to suffer 4 wounds and roll a 6 for that to happen. The 1 wound unit after taking 4 wounds would effectively have there bravery reduced by 4 meaning that on a roll of a 6 they would effectively lose 4 models or 4 wounds as well, but on top of that they would also lose 3 on a roll of a 5, 2 on a roll of a 4, and 1 on a roll of a 3 where the elite unit will lose nothing. I am not done, what happens when the unit loses 5, 6, or 7 wounds. Well the elite unit stays the same, in-fact rolling a 6 is even less impact full as you will already be losing an injured model, take 7 wounds roll a 6 lose 1 wound. Its only after 8 wounds can the elite unit possibly lose more wounds, but it would still only tie with the loses that the max amount of loses the 1 wound unit has taken. Now this is a very striped down example. For example most elite units will have better bravery but it also doesn't include any kind of horde bonus either which is at best a 3+(not counting Scaven).

I would also like to dispel any myth that hordes generally have better bravery than elite units. If you mostly play against death and demons I can see how you may come to that conclusion. Believe me, I play Beast of Chaos and have to work around Bravery 4. I have had so many 10 man units just evaporate after losing 4 models. Don't get me wrong, I do generally agree that there should be some form of over hall to battleshock, but it always pains me when someone's only suggestion is to remove Inspiring Presence.  I do think general immunity should be more limited and harder to come by, but I also feel it should be less stacked against horde infantry. Mirroring other people's statement, I would like to see battleshock resemble the current system in 40k. Then Inspiring Presence could be moved to a once per game ability while other abilities like Beast of Chaos Herdstone could instead give all Beast of Chaso Bravery 10 while within range. 

[zilberfrid]

At this point, I feel that removing the bravery mechanic alltogether isn't a bad idea for AoS 3.

I don't make lists where I don't have immunity to it for at least a good part of the game, because I think it's awful.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

8 hours ago, Chaos Shepard said:

I do not agree with the bravery is worse for elite army's. The base mechanics of the bravery system favor elite units over horde units.

I just checked the math for bravery 7 and 1, 2, 3, and 4 wounds. You are absolutely right: A higher wound count strictly means fewer models and fewer wounds lost to battleshock. So if battleshock is especially bad for elite armies, it's not because of the basic mechanics.

There are still a few ways it might end up hitting elite units harder. If elite units have a lower bravery on average that could make a difference. I don't think that's the case, but I think that horde armies generally have access to better battleshock mitigation, battleshock immunity and sometimes high bravery (Death, Demons).

Another thing to look at could be average points lost to battleshock. I looked at Darkshards, Vulkite Berserkers, Orruk Brutes and Ogor Ironguts as a sample of representative units, and Darkshards were clearly the worst for points lost to battleshock. All others were about equal, but Ogors looked the worst.

I believe the impression that battleshock disproportionally hurts elites has to come from the fact that hordes get better mitigation rules. The more basic mechanics don't support the idea at all. So maybe the fix to make it feel as intended would be to make the battleshock mitigation of horde armies more interactable. Close range mitigation (+bravery or battleshock immunity) auras from heroes seem like the best implementation, because it's simulationistically satisfying: You take out the heroes and the troops rout more easily. It also gives you a clear path to breaking hordes.

I think the occasional battleshock immunity can still stay. For undead, it makes sense that it's one of the distinguishing features of their mindless horde. But other armies like skaven should probably not have easy access to it. I also believe that inspiring presence can stay. People always complain that battleshock has no impact on games, but that's not entirely true. It has the impact of draining command points for basically all armies that rely on inspring presence, which is big.  Although I can also see why people just want it to play out more often.