My friend and I were talking about this recently and we were purely wondering how far this would alter the game. I mean all the rules are built around the concept that you are usually rolling 1D6 or a series of D6.

Though by changing it to D8s, would this provide more opportunity? Make diverse units? Bring in many different levels of armor?

Though how would this effect the wound system? Would you simply just add 2 to everything, or how could you alter it?

In my thinking going to D8s, D10s, or what have you opens up a lot of potential of new things to do, but for the most part you should be prepared to be creating an entirely different game and your own set of rules.

I was wondering what everyone else thought?

The obvious difference is the way Fight works. Now, when you roll your attack dice there is about 17% chance that the result is a tie and the winner will be decided by comparing F. On a d8 the chance drops to 12.5 %, and although it doesn't look much, it is a huge difference in practice, meaning that luck and ganging up will have a greater effect compared to the Fight stat, which in turn will benefit low F cheap points cost armies.

Wounding is based on probabilities too, so you would have to rewrite it when the base number changes. Since you seem to be interested in adding more complexity to the S/D combo, rewriting the whole wounding system would probably work better for you.

-- Pasi

I was wondering if units rolling a D8 over a D6 would have more an advantage or not.

Really, when my friend and I were discussing it, I liked how it would apply to shoot value. You could have a much larger range of archer levels. 4 would be the new 3, though you can still go down to 3 and 2.

It looks like I would have to rewrite the wound chart, though I am unsure exactly how without completely messing it all up.

I had a similar thought when using the SBG rules to illustrate the rules of probability to my 12 year daughter (see, all those minis do have an educational value).

I agree with valpas that using D8 to resolve fights will change the balance of play somewhat, but not sure it would drastically alter pay.

However, with the wound chart though there is (I believe) the opportunity to make things a bit more sophisticated. For example, if a D20 was used instead then the probability of inflicting a wound could increase in increments of 5%. Suppose all strength and defence values were roughly three times higher than they were currently, and the wound chart gave a minimum number to roll on a D20 equal to 11 plus the-amount-by-which-loser’s-defence-exceeds-winner’s-strength (with minimum of 5 and maximum of 20).

For example suppose Goblin X and Dwarf Y currently have S/D values of 4/6 and 4/9 respectively. With the current wound chart using a D6, X has an 8% chance of wounding Y. Suppose instead that their S/D value were 12/16 and 12/19 respectively. Now with the modified table and a D20, X has a 15% chance of wounding Y. Under modified rules, for every point reduction in Y’s defence, X’s chance of wounding him increase by 5%. For example, if Y had defence of 17 then X’s chance of taking a wound increase to 25%.

Come on people let’s make Games Workshop sit up and take note! Start the revolution to reinstate the D20:
“What do we want? -”
“- Finecast D20s at £5 each”
“When do we want it? -”
“- NOW!”

That would make wounding extremely annoying. I find the current D6 rules fine.

_________________
"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

You are about the gazillionth person to suggest this and like all the others it won't get anywhere. Can you imagine the work you would have to do to change all the profiles, points, rules and charts to achieve very little, if anything. And apart from that, you would have to spend a fair few £$'s on more dice.

As one of those gazillion I keep hoping someone will come up with an elegant way to inject more nuance yet retain the simplicity.

I seriously doubt that the game will become better by adding more features or complexity into it. But my hat is off to the gazillion people who are willing to take the chance. At least it's a good exercise in probability math and teaches you a thing or two about the current game mechanics.

The great thing about the wound chart is that a player with minimal experience can keep the commonly used parts entirely in his head without having to do any calculations or checking the actual chart. That speeds up things enormously when you end up rolling hundreds of strikes in a 50 models per side game. On a 10 model Battle Company I could bear having more variability but for anything bigger, speed through abstraction is of the essence. So I suggest you take some subset of the game (like rangers of Ithilien vs haradrim) and aim for small games before sitting down and writing new rules for everything.

-- Pasi

I can't remember who mentioned it, but someone said that having the roll to win a fight work on FV + D6 might be an idea.

So Elf Warrior A rolls a 4, adds it to his FV5, and gets a 9. Uruk Hai B rolls a 4, adds it to his FV4 and gets and gets an 8. In the event of a tie, FV works as it does normally - highest wins.

_________________
Namarie

Or a Balrog gets a 1 and auto beats everything with Fight less than 6. I think that would make elves way too good and goblins really useless.

_________________
"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

This is where you'd need to shift to a d12 so that goblins have a chance. But the main barrier will always be: now you have to go through every profile and recost it.

I'm almost stunned that the current system works as well as it does.

Exactly, it works well enough as it is.

_________________
"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

I figured some people have mentioned this before, hence why I thought I'd bring up the topic! To get other people's insight in ideas.

Though I am not trying to change the system for everyone else.... And if I decide that I like the idea I have plenty of time to re-stat, for those that are concerned it would take too long.



If it was just straight altered to a D12, do you know what other ramifications might be involved? Beyond altering everyone's point value?

Fight value is another thing that my friend and I always try to figure out. It works great as it is, but we like to have a bit less randomness to the game. We have tried to add the "difference" of people's fight value to the higher's roll, but that just turned out to be way too powerful.
(Ex. Dave the Uruk's fight value is 4, Ken the Human is 2, Dave adds +2 to win his fights because of the difference)

Elliodoc, moving it to D20 seems interesting. Though do you know the actual math or mechanics behind the wound chart? I feel like that prevents me from figuring out a different wound chart(That is as accurate as possible)

I think D12 + Fight score would not alter the mechanics of gameplay at all. One alternative I've seen mentioned is D12 + Fight + 1 per extra warrior. This gives a gang of goblins their due, but adds more math to each fight which kills the gameplay IMHO...

Altering the point value is a big deal that will consume your life until you give up...trust me I tried rebalancing the profiles so they fit more with the books than the movies (where Numenor kicks *** and Men beat Orcs:
http://lotr-bythebook.wikispaces.com/Introduction
), but I don't get to play the normal game enough, who has time to playtest?



I think the randomness is one of the things that makes the game work. By reducing randomness you increase certainty, reduce tactics, increase formulaic armies, increase boredom.

I think it comes from more of a battle company approach. As that is what my friend and I have moved towards. (My fiancee also gets involved when it is small numbers) So I think we get more into the character aspect of the game.

Thus we really look towards ways to make some things a little less random. Though this is just our personal preference

Though this D12 looks like a good way to give us a compromise between the randomness and skill of unit. D12+Fight=Score that is.

An idea that I've been playing around with is using D10s. The model with the highest Fight value works out their attacks first. They roll a D10 for each attack that they have, and try to roll under their Strength value, if they succeed the opponent must roll under his Defense to "save" the wound. If the opponent is still alive, he then works out his attacks. I haven't played with it a lot, but I've done a couple of games, and it seems to work with basic troops. I haven't really tried it with some of the bigger characters/monsters.

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Respectfully,
Jonathan

Do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly

Battle Companies