Strength vs Toughness: Electric Boogaloo 2

[Beliman]

25 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

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

For me, to have some fun.

[PJetski]

Thanks for the testing @Beliman. Obviously just adding S/T will cause all kinds of issues to the current state of the game, notably that MONSTERS become incredibly tough, especially 3+ save MONSTERS - even with capping Save bonuses at +1 they become a lot more difficult to take down against most kinds of attacks. Every army will need some way to get high strength weapons in order to deal with them, and many units will need their points adjusted.

This is a massive overhaul to the game that would require "Index" type warscroll books to be printed to update every unit in the game. This is the kind of thing you would see during the launch of a new edition.

In the past I have proposed a more elegant solution:

1. Attack rolls against MONSTERS have -1 to wound rolls. MONSTER units ignore this penalty when attacking.

2. Some units will have the HUNTER keyword. Units with HUNTER ignore the the -1 to wound penalty when attacking a MONSTER.

This is the easiest way to implement a S/T-type system in AOS. It also creates a lot of design space for future rules and interactions.

[Dogmantra]

Very good point made by a friend when I brought this topic up for discussion: she says that S/T may be better suited to 40k as there is a lot more shooting and ranged attacks, so it's easier to direct the right kind of force where it's needed. Deployment, positioning, and mobility are still important, but because the primary assumed method of dealing damage is shooting, it is less likely that your anti-toughness attacks will be stuck across the table from where they're needed and unable to contribute. In AoS where ranges are typically a bit shorter and charges are required to even have a go at dealing damage for the majority of units, it might be the case that higher mobility allows you to completely outmanouevre the units with the required strength to overcome your tougher models.

[major_owned]

As well as ‘to hit’ and ‘to wound’ roll, having ‘to be hit’ and ‘to be wounded’ modifiers could achieve the same thing and be much simpler to do?

So you’re average human would be a 0 modifier but someone who’s defending and skilled in combat would have a -1 modifier to the roll to hit, someone tougher would have a -1 modifier to be wounded. The larger the minus modifier the harder to hit or the tougher the target. 

This way you get that differentiation when a stormcast hits a snotling vs a dragon, but the maths is still simple.

And there’s room for interesting new rules i.e poison weapons ignore ‘to be wounded’ modifiers 

[NinthMusketeer]

11 hours ago, Beliman said:

For me, to have some fun.

While I do not feel changing AoS to S/T is a good idea, I think a community project to create house rules for it is. Optional supplement has a very different vibe to mandatory change.

Edited December 28, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[Beliman]

23 hours ago, Dogmantra said:

Very good point made by a friend when I brought this topic up for discussion: she says that S/T may be better suited to 40k as there is a lot more shooting and ranged attacks, so it's easier to direct the right kind of force where it's needed. Deployment, positioning, and mobility are still important, but because the primary assumed method of dealing damage is shooting, it is less likely that your anti-toughness attacks will be stuck across the table from where they're needed and unable to contribute. In AoS where ranges are typically a bit shorter and charges are required to even have a go at dealing damage for the majority of units, it might be the case that higher mobility allows you to completely outmanouevre the units with the required strength to overcome your tougher models.

Really good point. Nobody wants to deal with 7th edition Knights (40k) again. The main reason for that to happens is because the game has relatively high values for Toughness (or AV) and armies doesn't have enough Strength to deal with them.

Ex.: Half the units in the whole game are S3 profiles but some monsters/god-like units are T9. In other words, half the units in the game can only wound this monsters on a roll of 6. If for whatever reason a S10 profile is not common enough for ALL armies, that means that one good alpha strike that remove exactly that S10 unit can turn the game in to something teddious to play.

I've tried lowering max-values so the diference between lower and higher tier units are not big enough to have the same problems (tier names are from War30k). Example:

• VEQ: Vermin Equivalent. Goblins/skavens/gnoblars/nurglings/skinks/etc... S2/ T2
• HEQ: Human Equivalent. Humans/elfs/dwarfs/mortals/ goats/etc.. S3/ T3
• LEQ: Liberator Equivalent. Liberators/Chaos Warriors/Ogres/Saurus/etc... S4/ T4
• PEQ: Paladin Equilvalent. Anihilators, Paladins, Varanguard, Trolls, etc... S5/ T5
• BEQ: Behemoth/Monster Equivalent. Ironclad, Archaon, Allarielle, etc... S6/ T6

VEQ and HEQ are going to wound BEQ units on a roll of 6. But  anything that gives +1 to Strength (charge bonus, CAs, Strength in numbers, Two-handed Weapons/special weapons, etc...) to HEQ will improve a lot their wound rolls:  wounding LEQ on a rolls of 4+ and BEQ on a rolls of 5+. 

It worked and it was fun to play with, but imho, it had some problems too. With this system, only VEQ, HEQ and LEQ are the ones that completely use STR buffs. HEQ units with two-handed weapons (S4) can reach S5 with just one buff. Wounding LEQ on rolls of 3, having double/triple the models (and attacks) with small bases. In other words HEQ are better than LEQ unless I tweak their profiles (hit rolls and rend/damage).

Another thing that I've tried is changing some Special Weapon profiles (Ex.: Grand Weapons/ Aethercannons/ etc...) with +1 STR and +1 rend and then changing some basic bonus like charge (Ex.: remove mw on a charge for a bonus to hit, STR or rend). The game had much more lethality just by using mounted units (yep, I've used prosecutors!) or monsters with more than 8" movement (run+charge was really crazy). But it felt good to use some chaff to block charges.

Edit: With coherency rules, +1 atk on charge is a big buff for LEQ/PEQ units. They can remove lower tier units stacking charge + any other rend, dmg or hit roll buffs. 

Edited December 28, 2021 by Beliman
Grammar

[KrispyXIV]

It'd be a whole lot easier to have units that are exceptionally tough (high toughness) have special rule that says "-1 to wound me" and units that are exceptionally not tough have a "+1 to wound me", and leave everything else as is than add strength and toughness to every single warscroll.  

Strength is already "factored in" to wound values at that point, and all that really matters is the relative ability to wound a target... 

But seriously, given the AoS communities massive hypocrisy on wanting models to be survivable, I wouldn't touch this if I were GW.  

People wanted more survivable models in 3e, so they left saves as being a stacking modifier so players could interact with model survival and keep things alive - and apparently everyone hates it? (I dont).  

I suspect any change - like adding toughness values - that results in some models becoming even tougher would end up being similarly loathed no matter how much people appear to want it now.  

[NinthMusketeer]

I like the save vs rend stacking dynamic, with a cap to make sure things don't get out of hand. Keeps rend - relevant as well.

[Beliman]

15 hours ago, KrispyXIV said:

People wanted more survivable models in 3e, so they left saves as being a stacking modifier so players could interact with model survival and keep things alive - and apparently everyone hates it? (I dont).  

I can't talk for others, but that's not true for me.

I don't need an inmortal 20 wounds giant-behemoth with 3+/5++ that heals 3D6 every turn. But I still want more survivable units and heroes: I want my 5 wounds heroe, veteran of thousand battles (that's not true, but tssssh!! people don't know that...) to challenge an evil battlemage (yeah, something about taxes and aether-gold) on the last turn. But believe me, that's one of the most dificult things to accomplish in the entire game!!

Even if this arguments seems to be superficially the same, each player has their own opinion that may be slightly diferent.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Beliman
Grammar