Strength vs Toughness: Electric Boogaloo 2

[Beliman]

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everybody!

Let's open a annual chat: after the first 3.0 tomes, and looking at other games (even GW ones), what do you think about another layer of complexity?
I’m talking again about Strength vs Toughness/ Strength vs Resistance. The utility of this mechanic is clear, make all units a bit more different and unique just using their own stats/profiles.

For a full analysis, @Enoby made an awesome job a few years ago (worth a read, believe me):

 So, what do you think about something like this?

 

[PJetski]

Before 3rd edition I was against adding S/T because the core gameplay was simple and complexity came from unit interactions and battleplans, so adding more complexity to the warscrolls and interactions seemed like a bad idea.

3rd edition has changed that up quite a bit... the core rules are not simple, and complexity from units is reduced. In 3rd ed in particular they decided to focus on save bonuses, which has a non-linear increase in effective health. A unit with a 2+ save is much more durable than a unit with a 3+. When your only defensive stats are Wounds, Save, and maybe a Ward then you end up with units that are very similar. Similarly with Accuracy (hit*wound), Rend, and Volume (Attacks * damage), there just aren't many stats so it can spiral out of control easily.

A simple S/T chart like in 40k does would make the game more complex by definition, but given the state of the game I dont think its a big ask.

So I'm all for it. I think there a high number of benefits

• more thematically appropriate gameplay (eg. wounding a grot vs wounding a bastiladon should be different)
• carving out better unit niches for better internal battletome balance
• making units more durable without just giving them more wounds or a better save
• reducing the power of save stacking by adding more defensive stats

In general adding S/T would make units (but especially MONSTERS) more durable, so I think it would be appropriate to properly cap save bonuses at +1 like we cap Hit/Wound rolls.

I started working on adding S/T to every model in the game. So far I've done Stormcast, Seraphon, and Fyreslayers, will be adding more whenever I find the time

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tc78FjCeHSsxVzGAMvGDp5QuK1k9bqR4L3ZHsCtGVwI/edit?usp=sharing

[Maddpainting]

Do we really need to talk about this again? GW isn't going to change to it for AoS anytime soon if ever. 

[Noserenda]

Only played a few games of 3 but really have not missed S&T at all

[Fairbanks]

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

what do you think about another layer of complexity?

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

I’m talking again about Strength vs Toughness/ Strength vs Resistance. The utility of this mechanic is clear, make all units a bit more different and unique just using their own stats/profiles.

So, what do you think about something like this?

A lot of the missing realism got solved by having more wounds on models.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Fairbanks

[Kadeton]

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

The utility of this mechanic is clear, make all units a bit more different and unique just using their own stats/profiles.

I don't understand why this is a desirable goal. Variation in stats is not what makes a game interesting. If the aim is to have differentiation between units, give those units different special abilities which reflect their lore and let them do things that other units can't.

[PJetski]

12 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

I don't understand why this is a desirable goal. Variation in stats is not what makes a game interesting. If the aim is to have differentiation between units, give those units different special abilities which reflect their lore and let them do things that other units can't.

I would argue that it is much easier to understand and remember how stats work than it is to remember more abilities. Special rules are more interesting but more complex.

If we are looking to reduce complexity, stats are better than special rules. 

 

[yukishiro1]

While I agree that in theory it allows for more meaningful differentiation than we have now, GW has gone precisely in the opposite direction with the proliferation of MWs on 6s, which completely ignore the defensive design sequence entirely. So this horse seems well and truly dead by this point. 

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

19 minutes ago, PJetski said:

I would argue that it is much easier to understand and remember how stats work than it is to remember more abilities. Special rules are more interesting but more complex.

If we are looking to reduce complexity, stats are better than special rules.

If we want to reduce complexity, why would we add more stats?

There are two directions the game could go in with any given change to the core rules: more varied (an increase in complexity) or more streamlined (a decrease in complexity). You can't have it both ways. Adding Strength and Toughness is going for the "more varied" option, but in a way that's extremely limited and dull compared to other forms of complexity that could be added instead.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Maddpainting said:

Do we really need to talk about this again? GW isn't going to change to it for AoS anytime soon if ever. 

No, you don't need to talk about that if you don't want. Nobody will force you to write here!!!
Btw, this post will not change anything,. It's just to have some fun talking about our favorite and expensive hobby, and maybe even learn something new!! 

46 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

I don't understand why this is a desirable goal. Variation in stats is not what makes a game interesting. If the aim is to have differentiation between units, give those units different special abilities which reflect their lore and let them do things that other units can't.

That's a really good question. I was one of the dudes that didn't want anything to do with SvsT, but after 3.0 and reading Orruks and SCE warscrolls, I'm thinking again and again about exactly the same thing:

Dual-wielding Liberators.
Why someone want to use them over sword+board? Not sure, but maybe S vs T (even some profile tweaks) could be the answer.
Having a 110 p battleline unite that can threaten 20 Goblins, Zombies or even Orruks will change the persepctive of just having a "hammer" unit to do all the work. I don't know how this could be accomplished, but it could help other similar units like Prosecutors.

Btw,  @PJetski  is doing an awesome work (just read SCE discussion)!! I'm going to use your S and T list to just see what happens. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Beliman

[PJetski]

14 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

If we want to reduce complexity, why would we add more stats?

There are two directions the game could go in with any given change to the core rules: more varied (an increase in complexity) or more streamlined (a decrease in complexity). You can't have it both ways. Adding Strength and Toughness is going for the "more varied" option, but in a way that's extremely limited and dull compared to other forms of complexity that could be added instead.

Why did you suggest adding special rules? We are not trying to reduce complexity. We are trying to solve other perceived problems while keeping complexity minimized.

[Kadeton]

46 minutes ago, Beliman said:

That's a really good question. I was one of the dudes that didn't want anything to do with SvsT, but after 3.0 and reading Orruks and SCE warscrolls, I'm thinking again and again about exactly the same thing:

Dual-wielding Liberators.
Why someone want to use them over sword+board? Not sure, but maybe S vs T (and maybe some profile tweaks) could be the answer.
Having a 110 p battleline unite that can threaten 20 Goblins, Zombies or even Orruks will change the persepctive of just having a "hammer" unit to do all the work. I don't know how this could be accomplished, but it could help other similar units like Prosecutors.

Ah, that's probably the sort of thing where we're just coming at from totally different perspectives that probably won't find common ground. I don't think any unit warscroll should have weapon profiles or stats that change based on the way the models are built. The Deathrattle Skeletons' Ancient Blade or Spear is a great example of this being done right, IMO - do what you want with your models, they all get the same in-game profile regardless.

The above goes double for Stormcast; if I ruled the world, they would have multiple warscrolls combined into single units with a single weapon profile, let alone any distinction between weapons on any given unit. Liberators with paired weapons? More like delete Liberators, Vindictors, Vanquishers, and Sequitors entirely, and use any of those models to make a unit of Redeemers, who all wield heavens-wrought weapons with the same profile.

Anyway, I'll leave you to the discussion - this probably isn't the topic for me.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Kadeton

[Kadeton]

6 minutes ago, PJetski said:

Why did you suggest adding special rules? We are not trying to reduce complexity. We are trying to solve other perceived problems while keeping complexity minimized.

Making units "more different and unique" is adding complexity. If your intent is to add complexity, you shouldn't be trying to keep it minimized - you'll just end up shooting yourself in the foot. You should instead look at doing something which actually achieves your primary goal, and then determine whether you are prepared to accept the additional complexity that the adequate solution requires.

In this case, I would regard S/T as an inadequate solution to the "perceived problem" of insufficient unit variety. Those numbers don't add sufficient interest or gameplay to make units genuinely feel different and unique. (Simply playing 40K for a bit will make this deficiency pretty obvious.) You need a better solution - varied special abilities are one possibility in that space, so I used it as an example.

If there are other perceived problems that S/T is intended to address, they're not stated in the original post.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I feel what I am about to write is going to be a bit of a rant. I usually try to be fair, charitable and objective as much as possible, but I fear the following will be thoroughly tinged with my irrational dislike for strength/toughness.

I can say without exaggeration that if strength/toughness was added to Age of Sigmar, I'd probably quit the game. Not because it would be too complex for me, but because in my mind it's the worst kind of legacy mechanic and adding it into a modern game like AoS would be like adding THAC0 back into DnD. It's the kind of clunky 80s design that adds a bunch of cognitive load to a game in the worst way, making you compare charts (I never want to have to look up a chart for any part of regular play in a tabletop game ever again) or do head math other than simple addition or subtraction every time you want to do a really basic thing, figure out wheter you hit a guy or not. It also further obfuscates how good a unit is in an already sometimes kinda intransparent game, by making the damage a unit does dependent on the stats of the target in yet another way. Is strength 5 good? Is toughness 7? Who knows! Better learn all the match ups before you can start making semi-informed decisions.

And what is the payoff of all this clunk? It's this notion of "wouldn't it be neat if a goblin couldn't wound a dragon" which in my mind is driven by simulationist desires that don't actually result in games that are more fun or interesting. Who cares about hit and wound values, those are just abstract numbers anyway. I have no problem that accepting that a giant and skeleton can both wound on a 3+, those numbers mean nothing in isolation. The actual effects on the table are what is really impotant. And AoS already has the tools to deliver satisfying results on that front with hit, wound, rend and damage, if they were just being used properly.

The only reason people want strength/toughness is because they are used to it from 40k. If the system didn't exist there, nobody would think it'd be worth adding to any other game.

EDIT: I got so worked up about bad 80s design that I hit submit too early.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Dogmantra]

This is something I've thought about, and while I think that S/T is a system that would add a bit of variety, I think it's doing a disservice to both 40k and AoS to straight up port the S/T mechanic over.

I'm assuming here that attack profiles have a "power budget", that is to say a certain amount of power that a single attack profile can have that's distributed among the various stats. I doubt that the designers have a specific codified formula for this, but there are general guidelines that seem fairly obvious. Your average joe cannon fodder troop has something like a 1/4+/3+/-/1 attack, but you could move some numbers around and get 1/3+/4+/-/1 or 1/4+/4+/-1/1 and they're about the same power level. At the same power budget, different attacks will do roughly the same thing against every kind of unit (e.g. a 3+/4+ attack will have pretty much the same effect as a 4+/3+ in every situation). The one exception is rend which can be "wasted" but is rarely wasted because it doesn't often go past -3, and most saves are 5+ or better, so if your power budget has gone towards having very high rend at the exclusion of good to-hit or to-wound stats, the attack will be weaker against poor saves than an attack of a similar power budget. The effect of this is diminished a bit though, because as the game currently is, rend seems to scale with power budget in general, there aren't that many attacks with 5+/5+/-4/1 damage profiles for instance, usually if they have strong rend they have strong other stats too. This essentially means that attacks don't really have "roles" like they do in 40k, an attack with average damage X will do that damage against basically anything and it will scale in the same way vs every save.

40k uses the S/T system and no damage spill to create roles for attacks. Partly this is due to the mechanics: for instance high damage attacks are only useful against models with more than 1 wound, a single high damage attack will only ever remove one model. It's also I think partly due to better use of the power budget to create interesting tradeoffs. Higher strength and damage usually means fewer attacks, which pushes attacks towards different roles: good against single tough targets, and good against large less tough groups. There are also other various ways of wasting stats, no damage spill I already mentioned, but invulnerable saves (which are never worsened beyond a certain point) mean the rend equivalent is wasted far more frequently. This creates a situation where the best attacks to hit different models with are different, whereas in AoS they are usually the same. This is a bit more interesting and what I think people mean when they say "unit variety" -- they don't mean that there are actual differences between the numbers, AoS has plenty of that (see: SCE having 76 warscrolls), they mean that the numbers are meaningfully different.

However, I said that I think porting the S/T system from 40k would be doing a disservice to both games and I mean it. I don't think it's a perfect system by any means, and I also think that it's good that AoS and 40k feel different to play despite sharing a lot of similarities. Ideally what I would like from a change to the core attack system are the following characteristics:

• A high ratio of meaningful decisions to complexity. This doesn't mean eliminating complexity, it just means eliminating unnecessary complexity (e.g. remembering which units have a 3+/4+ and which have a 4+/3+ when that doesn't change how they're used)
• Meaningful trade-offs in weapon & unit stats that create more roles
• Different from 40k

I have two thoughts on what could be done for a hypothetical 4th edition to move in this direction, but I'll preface by saying that I actually rather like 3rd ed AoS as it is and I'm very much a proponent of playing things how they are and trying to work within the system. This is more of an interesting design exercise for me than anything else, rather than trying to fix the game.

Thought 1: More types of special abilities, more conditional special abilities, and more consistent special abilities.

There are already the seeds of "roles" within the game. There are several abilities that roll dice equal to the wounds characteristic of the target and deal MWs on 6s, which are clearly tooled to deal with high-wound single models, and likewise with dice for each model in the unit being for killing hordes. MWs on 6s to hit/wound are theoretically good for dealing with strong saves (if paired with otherwise crappy to-hit and wound) because they bypass the save. Hunter-type abilities are also fairly common (e.g. reroll 1s to hit vs HEROES), if a bit uninteresting. On the defensive side, bouncing MWs back on saves is effectively a way of making lots of little attacks riskier than one or two big attacks.

The thing is, I just want them to take it further.

More types of special abilities
Most special abilities are taken from a limited palette of options. +1s, rerolls, and triggers to deal MWs are probably the most common. There's plenty of room for others though, the inverse like -1s and forced rerolls already exist, they just aren't very common. You could also include things like "a to-hit roll of 3 or less against this model always fails to hit". Variable number attacks based on wounds characteristic, number of models. "This weapon's to-wound characteristic is equal to the unmodified save value of the target". I'm not saying to overload the types because...

More conditional special abilities
Combining a decent variety of special abilities with a decent variety of conditions would lead to some nice specialisations. We already have things like anti-MONSTER and anti-HERO abilities. There are also anti-horde abilities. Conditions really come in two types, hard conditions (like, +1 to hit against MONSTERS) and soft conditions, like rolling dice equal to the wounds characteristic. I think most special attack and defense abilities should be conditional. Triggers are already sort of conditional, but I think MWs on 6s could be a ton more interesting if it was just against a specific role. Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows do 2MWs on a 6 to hit, and at the moment they get spammed and double shoot whatever the most valuable thing is. What if they only did those MWs on lone HEROES? That would imo be a bit more interesting and give them a niche. They'd still be fairly good against other stuff, they'd just be specialised to take out heroes. Taking them is now a commitment to trying to find an opening to get a good shot on a hero. So far I've only talked about conditions based on stuff that already exists in the game. This option would already take a substantial rewrite of every warscroll, why not throw some more arbitrary keywords about and base some conditions on that: have anti-mounted weapons, anti-elite weapons etc.

More consistent special abilities
This one is much more straightforward. Just standardise wording on stuff. I'd even say have keywords for common effects, like how wards were standardised with 3rd ed. E.g. "Monster hunter" could simply mean +1 damage vs monsters or stuff like that. This will make things much easier to remember.

Thought 2: two saves.

This one is much simpler but does require a pass across all the warscrolls. Just split the current single "save" into two different saves, something like Armour Save and Willpower Save. Some attacks target armour save, some attacks target willpower save. Some models have strong armour, weak willpower, some vice versa, some have strong both but very low wounds, some have weak both but high wounds or a strong ward. Stuff like that.
 

 

Anyway, I've spent way too long writing this and can't be bothered to write any more, but yeah I think the core concept of solidifying roles for units a bit more is cool, I would just prefer a different way from porting in strength & toughness.

[Neverchosen]

I say drop strength and toughness from 40k. I am not a fan of mechanics that demand that I be familiar with the stats of my opponents units. But with that in mind I would much rather Strength and toughness than Weapon Skill and Initiative 

[NauticalSoup]

5 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

While I agree that in theory it allows for more meaningful differentiation than we have now, GW has gone precisely in the opposite direction with the proliferation of MWs on 6s, which completely ignore the defensive design sequence entirely. So this horse seems well and truly dead by this point. 

 

This. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, not without nuking Sigmar entirely like they did to WHFB and Warhammer 7th. 

Incidentally I think it could be better, but it's not worth the amount of effort it would take, and it's not even on the top 100 things that need to change about Sigmar.

[Bosskelot]

S/T would really result in 0 extra added complexity in terms of the actual moment to moment gameplay as you already have the wound roll. It adds 0 extra steps and people afraid that "oh no I have to remember my opponents stats!!!!" are just being deliberately hysterical. It's no different from a unit with a high save or save bonuses, or one that gets modifiers to its wound rolls or one that does MW's on 6's. It is also far less complicated than the glut of command abilities and warscroll abilities that exist as potential gotcha moments if you have no advance knowledge of them.

Does this mean it automatically should be added in? I'm not entirely sure and there are a lot of games which have flattened statlines that still contain lots of tactical depth (KOW being a good example). But those games also have other mechanics going on that make up for the shortfall in the very bland and deliberately reduced-down unit statlines. I'm not sure that design really works in AOS though. The flattening of defensive profiles leads to a large degree of homogenization and blandness across a lot of different units and it requires players to make fewer interesting choices and decisions during listbuilding and during moment-to-moment gameplay. It's why spam was/is so prevalent in armybuilding because you literally don't require other types of damage dealer units to deal with different problems. Find the universally mathematically strongest one and it is equally as good into everything, so just run that.*

(*This is also partly still an issue because of the mission design too and it's disappointing how the core rules of 3.0 haven't really changed much in how people construct armies and how they sort of win games.)

[pnkdth]

There is the aspect of certain units being clearly favoured and the meta will ensure most armies gets locked in the choices they can make. This will happen regardless to varied degrees but I'd argue S/T becomes yet another layer in limiting players.

I remember elven armies in WHFB appearing incredibly weak and it felt really strange to use elven warriors as chaff units or bait. As in, why is my centuries old sword master who's honed in skill over the course of decades having an issue to wound this goblin? Stepping away from S/T has allowed AoS to represent different units achieving their brand of death and destruction not just in sheer force but also represent skill and equipment. Some use superior skill, some are a devious, others use brute force.

So while S/T can add a superficial layer of identity I think the way AoS does makes it easier to simply balance units around quality of hits/wounds, rend, and number of attacks. In my ideal world, they'd purge the vast majority of MW inflicting attacks and put more rending attacks in the game. It would have a very similar effect to S/T and allow more room for quantity versus quality attacks.

[Maddpainting]

On 12/23/2021 at 10:16 AM, Beliman said:

No, you don't need to talk about that if you don't want. Nobody will force you to write here!!!
Btw, this post will not change anything,. It's just to have some fun talking about our favorite and expensive hobby, and maybe even learn something new!! 

That's a really good question. I was one of the dudes that didn't want anything to do with SvsT, but after 3.0 and reading Orruks and SCE warscrolls, I'm thinking again and again about exactly the same thing:

Dual-wielding Liberators.
Why someone want to use them over sword+board? Not sure, but maybe S vs T (even some profile tweaks) could be the answer.
Having a 110 p battleline unite that can threaten 20 Goblins, Zombies or even Orruks will change the persepctive of just having a "hammer" unit to do all the work. I don't know how this could be accomplished, but it could help other similar units like Prosecutors.

Btw,  @PJetski  is doing an awesome work (just read SCE discussion)!! I'm going to use your S and T list to just see what happens. 

My points was, everything has already been said in the other post, nothing enough changed from 2nd to 3rd to matter. 

[Beliman]

32 minutes ago, Maddpainting said:

My points was, everything has already been said in the other post, nothing enough changed from 2nd to 3rd to matter. 

Maybe. But that post was 2 years old. There are a lot of other new members in this forum, and people had enough time to play a lot other games like warcry or 9th to see how S vs T work.

Btw, it's just another thing to tall about.

[NinthMusketeer]

I am a firm no. I have played both 40k and AoS a good bit, and honestly it doesn't make the gameplay more fun. There are a lot of things it could do in theory, but in practice it only adds depth in edge cases of very low str vs very high tough. 40k needs that to represent tanks and anti-tank weapons (whether it does so effectively is another matter) but in a setting like AoS it simply isn't a factor often enough to warrant all the extra rules & stat content.

Any arguments surrounding balance are probably good in theory but moot in practice; while GW is making a good effort at improving they are still truly awful at balancing even the simplified blocks of AoS.

Yet the biggest factor for me, as a community organizer, is simplicity. It is easier to explain and attract new players with the current layout. AoS needs that, as it does not have the megalithic popularity to draw in players by social gravity like 40k does.

[Greybeard86]

On 12/24/2021 at 10:19 AM, Bosskelot said:

 The flattening of defensive profiles leads to a large degree of homogenization and blandness across a lot of different units and it requires players to make fewer interesting choices and decisions during listbuilding and during moment-to-moment gameplay. It's why spam was/is so prevalent in armybuilding because you literally don't require other types of damage dealer units to deal with different problems. Find the universally mathematically strongest one and it is equally as good into everything, so just run that.*

Pretty much this.

While in principle it would be possible to distinguish unit roles enough so that spam wouldn't be desirable just with the current stats, in practice it isn't the case.

On 12/23/2021 at 6:42 PM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 It's this notion of "wouldn't it be neat if a goblin couldn't wound a dragon" which in my mind is driven by simulationist desires that don't actually result in games that are more fun or interesting. Who cares about hit and wound values, those are just abstract numbers anyway.

Again, there are many ways to represent this without adding S/T, but somehow GW doesn't seem to know how to do it properly. Which leads to a less nuanced gameplay, for my taste.

S/T makes it far easier to create unit roles (anti-horde, anti-heavy as a parallel to AP/AT), so that's why many (myself included) advocate for it. However, beyond the specific way in which it is added, the key question is whether one wants such unit differentiation or not.

To draw an analogy to video games: do we want to be able to shoot the tank down with rifles (command and conquer), or do we want to require (close combat series) specialized AT (bullets bounce off tanks)?

Once this fundamental question is answered, then we can look into how that can be achieved (how many stats do we need in the spreadsheet, game mechanics).

[Beliman]

After some tests dones (using @PJetski link, 40k profiles and some tweaks here and there), I think that S vs T is just another part of the puzzle:

• Some God-like units become extremely good unless they have rare profiles for such units (strength 3, low number of attacks, low dmg, 4+ thoughness, etc...).
• Ranged units or specialist ranged units (artillery) become a bit weird with only S vs T values. They need some tweaks to become relevant, or need a direct nerf to not be obnoxious (btw, I like X2 S vs monsters).
• Units that have +1 wound (+1Str?) become really powerful vs some other units. Mainly S6 attacks that wound on a 2+ rolls vs 50% of all the units in the game. It can get a lot  worst with...
• ... units that have high number of attacks or high damage (or a mix of both).
• There are a lot of mechanics that contradict S vs T. Mortal Wounds on hit are one of the the most powerful tools that bypass this mechanic (and there are A LOT of MW on hit, being a KO, it was a surprise to see how many are there...).
• Rend needs to be tweaked for some profiles, and Imho, I think high dmg profiles too.
• Specialist attacks with low number of attacks need a lot better Strength. Ex.: 1 attack with S6 that has a bonus dmg for Monsters is just meh with all monsters being T6 or better...

Btw, some units become a lot better with S vs T:

• Small Monsters like Cygors & Ghorgon become really good with T6 or crazy with T7. That means that only elite units like Retributors or charging units with +1Str can wound them on a roll of 4+ (or better) even if they have a really meh save (5+).
• Units with T5 , multi-wound, multi-model and good save are really, really powerful. 
• Units with bonus to charge (+1 to wound) or some stacking buffs are crazy good if they can hit S6 or S8. If you deny the charge, they become really diferent (and that's awesome to play with and against them!).
• High save, High Toughness units that can heal... shouldn't be allowed. Unless there are a lot of S8 sources for cheap units.

I'm still testing a lot more but it's really interesting (and refreshing) to play with this kind of stuff. It's easy to tweak some numbers and restart match to see how diferent some units can become.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Beliman
Grammar

[Greybeard86]

2 hours ago, Beliman said:

I'm still testing a lot more but it's really interesting (and refreshing) to play with this kind of stuff. It's easy to tweak some numbers and restart match to see how diferent some units can become.

But why? What would be the goal of adding S/T?