AoS My Biggest Issue with AoS

After playing a lot of 40k, I've looked back to AoS and started to notice one glaring thing that I really detest is the lack of Strength and Toughness. The 40k system works really well, and adds another layer of complexity that makes the game so much more interesting. With the flat wounding system of AoS be it 3+ or 4+ it just feels bland, especially when something like some skinny aelves with small knives can slice through the thick hide of a carnosaur or bastiladon it really breaks immersion. Ideally what would be changed is a strength and toughness system gets added back but I don't know how realistic this is.

So I leave this question to you guys, do you think strength and toughness would improve AoS?

 

Yes

 

This a contentious topic for sure. For me personally, there are already a lot of rules for doing damage to a model (and not doing damage) and I don't think we need anymore. Fantasy had a s/t table and by 8th edition people thought it was an overly complicated system and they blew up the world.

While it is possible to introduce the s/t table we already have hit rolls, wound rolls, saves, ward saves, and any of those (minus ward saves) can be rerolled. Games already can be pretty long and I believe a s/t table would just start to become bloat at that point.

 

Yes.

 

From a newer wargamer perspective every time i look at the the S/T system in 40k something just doesn't click, it seems overly complex to have these variable wound values that your calculating each attack with a new weapon even though i know its a quick and easy system in 8th and 9th. N3 and N4 Infinity having you adding and substracting changing armour values but maybe because there is less to keep track in a 15 model wargame its not as bad. I kinda agree with the sentiment that AOS might need a little extra something to make tougher units feel tougher and not just constantly giving them invulerable or 1/2+ saves but i think the simplicity of wound rolls is a major boon.

 

No, because you can get the same (but better) effect with a few warscroll updates. Monsters get "when struck by an infantry unit subract 1 to wound" etc.

Strength and toughness makes too many things in 40k either irrelevant or too good, with almost no in between. Toughness 3 is way too often a complete death sentence.

 

Personally I like the idea of it, but I think it would overcomplicate things. AoS has notoriously bad warscroll writing from everything I've heard and seen, especially for monsters, and I think that's the area where they should focus on improving. I think giving monsters/behemoths bonuses to save vs. infantry units and foot heroes would make sense.

 

Doesn't even need to be a keyword, can just be an ability like Terror from the Carnosaur warscroll. Other units have the exact same ability (including the new Gargants) so you get consistency across the board (you could get the same for the core rules, but I'm not sure if we want to go down the road if specific rules for keywords that are buried in the book)

Armored:

Subtract 1 from enemy would rolls that target this model.

Armor-piercing:
If attacking an model with the armored ability, add one to wound roles targeting that model.

Could probably be better worded but yeah, there you go.

Edit: an issue with this is that not all attacks from a model should be considered armor piercing. Example: carno bite could be armor piercing but maybe not the sunbolt gauntlet.

Doesn't rend cover this though?

 

Simple -1 to-wound against behemoths could be a good start. AoS would need a complete reset at this point, if they go for s/t at this point. Fixed wound rolls don't feel immersive, but, on the other hand, behemoths are still tough to kill in aos. It is just a matter of save/wounds and special rules.

 

I prefer the simpler system we have now. I played Fantasy like 15 years ago and I remember it being ass having to ask your opponent what his toughness was and then match it with your strength, then look at the table and figure out what you had to roll. Its a lot smoother to learn your warscrolls currently and know that your dudes hit on X and wound on Y.

There are multiple ways of making monsters tougher, such as Scaly Skin, simply more wounds, ward save, high save etc. The Troggoth Hag got -1 to be hit. They could implement being -1 to wound.

Overall I think the current simpler system is good. It is easier to dive into for new people - They essentially dont have to worry about your guys, only their own. It also makes the game faster for more experienced players.

 

I’m agreeing with @Lizerd on this one, Strength and Toughness would make the game more realistic (a puny Night Goblin shouldn’t be able to wound a mighty Magmadroth as easily as he can wound an equally-puny Clanrat), and it doesn’t even have to be a return to Fantasy and old 40K Strength vs Toughness charts, it can be in the style of new 40K where Toughness over double Strength requires 6s to wound, Toughness less than half Strength requires 2s to wound e.t.c, as that’s pretty easy to remember.

 

it would also do a lot to help with the horde eleat/monster disparity at the moment more attacks is just always better. and ya new S/T is not hard or even take that long to do each turn it wouldn't slow the game down much

 

But isnt this somewhat represented by the fact that the clanrat dies where as it is only a scratch to the magmadroth considering he lost like 1/15 of his wounds? You have the saying of "death by a thousand cuts" afterall.

 

I think ultimatly you're going to struggle to keep the rules consistent & clean without a mechanic like str/thoughnes. The issue with "gain a bonus/malus against keyword X" type mechanics is that you're still going to run into problems whenever the keyword ends up being too broad or too specific.

E.g. chaos chosen should be better armoured and more protected than say clanrats. Both however are infantry. On the other hand chaos chosen and chaos knights might be equally armoured, yet one is infantry the other cavalry. So if you'd want to ensure this works based on keywords you quickly create a giant mess.

imho, ultimatly a table like in lotr, or basic comparison like in 40K, is still the cleanest method. At least for 99% of these cases. It can always be further specialised with keywords to for example have pikes have bonusses against cavalry or something along those lines. In fact a combination of bonusses based on keywords and a basic comparison like in modern 40K might be the best of both worlds.

Imho the issue isn't so much that magmadroth isn't sturdier than a single clanrat, it's that it becomes far too difficult to distinguish between anti-tank & anti-horde weapons (and their corresponding counters). It should be the case that an anti-horde weapon is wasted against a magmadroth, and similarly an anti-tank weapon shouldn't achieve much against a horde of skaven. But as it stands there is no real difference beyond personal preference between say a monster hunter cannon with a 1/3+/3+/-/10 attack or an anti infantry volley gun with 10/3+/3+/-/1 attacks being used against either of these targets. Despite these two weapons supposedly being created for vastly different purposes.

Similarly, a magmadroth with a 4+ save apparently is just as sturdy as a liberator with a 4+ save and both have a 50% chance for a cannonball to the face to just deflect of their armour.

Another issue is of course that clanrats come in units of 40, whereas behemoths (or elite units) don't. Which can result in the effective wounds of the super armoured unit somehow still being lower, which can lead to weird situations where a behemoth gets taken down (or be significantly wounded) by some mild covering fire that'd barely hinder that horde of naked lunatics cuz they have enough bodies to take the losses.

 

Which is beautifully solved by armor and wound count.

Doesnt at all address the clear problems with strength and toughness present in 40k.

Rend. Number of attacks. Abilities that give you reroll hits or more attacks when fighting large units. Also a cannonball SHOULD kill 10 rats and a strength/toughness situation wouldn't change that AT ALL. The cannonball would still wound the rats on a low number, and still remove 10. You'd have to change how damage spills over to stop that.

Yeah, makes sense.

Again, makes sense.

I'm just not sure what problem strength/toughness is intended to address. If this change would be done to make behemoths better, just look at 40k. For a vast, vast majority of 8th (and seems to be the case in 9th) you simply don't take tanks/behemoth style units because they evaporate.

If strength and toughness solved this problem you'd see more tanks in 40k and you don't. They've completely redone the tank rules several times to try and make them more impactful, and the only time they've ever been successful is when they've either been free (old battle company) or stacked with so many extra rules they become unkillable (early knights).

The biggest issues currently facing monsters/behemoths in AOS is that they only count on 1 model for objectives. If they rolled out the mawtribes rule to all monsters, you'd instantly see them on the table more. Also, damage spillover is the biggest reason why "horde killers" and "tank killers" have no differentiation.

If strength and toughness is intended to make weapons have more accurate targets you'll also have to target damage spill over as thats the biggest reason why its just as helpful to shoot a horde as a monster with a high damage weapon.

If it's just intended to make something like a clanrat hurting archaon "feel more realistic" it seems like an extremely convoluted way to do that, and it'll ultimately just open up more problems than it solves.

All IMO anyways. I'm pretty resistant to bringing more of 40k into Age of Sigmar as i tend to think Sigmar has more right than 40k.

 

Is it because you want this kind of customization when building your list? I honestly dont feel the need for that at all. Lets say when I field 40 Skinks - I dont really care if the Boltspitters might technically be better against hordes with bad saves vs javelins that technically could be made stronger (with this S/T system) against Behemoths or high save targets. I really dont see the appeal to this and it isnt a problem I face. I dont play 40K but I can tell that people care ALOT about what weapon loadout they have on their tanks etc. I dont care about it.

In my mind there is much more to the "toughness" of a dude than just his armor save. The amount of wounds is factored in and potentially ward saves.

I think Stormcast is a bad example though because it has been an issue for a long time that they were considered super tanky but as AoS progressed onwards a 4+ save just isnt that great anymore. DoK and Fyreslayers are also examples of where warscrolls and the looks of the models just dont match.

 

Disagree, unless you make the differences in wound count much more pronounced. Right now the difference is only significant when you compare individual models. The moment you compare it to a unit, even a MSU, behemoths are often not all that much sturdier anymore. And since we play with units, not individual models, this is the relevant comparison. And that's ignoring that the behemoth is also a hell of a lot more expensive than most MSU.

A msu of clanrats has more effective wounds than 1 Magmadroth (both unsupported). The cheapest magmadroth costs 230 points, 230 points worth of clanrat has about double the effective wounds. As a unit the magmadroth is significantly squishier, even though as an individual model he might be sturdier.

As far as I know the "clear problems" are:

1) people find it confusing

and

2) 40K has managed to mess up the str and thoughness values to the point where a thoughness below X is worthless and above Y too good.

As far as adressing those go:
1) I find a non-issue. You're playing a wargame, doing the basic comparison that modern 40K uses should not confuse you.

As for 2) that's mostly a matter of establishing some basic design principles and not screwing that up. Not an inherent flaw to str v.s. thoughness systems. Personally I like the LOTR one where you never wound on better than a 3+, but weak attacks quite quickly lose power against strong defenses eventually just flat out becoming useless. This ensures anti-tank weapons are needed to deal with high armour, without making them crush any and all opposition instantly while at the same time a high volume of low strength attacks can be used as anti-horde weapons without them ever threatening tanks. Anyway, the tl;dr on this point is basicly just "don't screw it up"

Anything else you'd want adressed?

Both of these do not make any real distinction between the targets they fight and thus are useless to distinguish between different types of weapons.
Rend was clearly intended to give this distinction, but it falls flat since it gives the exact same relative increase; 1 point of rend always decreases the amount of succesfull saves by ~16% relative to not having that rend. Regardless of if you start with a save of 1+ or a save of 5+, you'l now be failing 16% more saves due to that 1 point of rend.

This is better, but much like keywords ultimatly has limited uses before it gets confusing or messy. You got units of 20+ bodies of both hearthguard & clanrats. One of these is still supposed to be massivly better protected than the other. Yet your weapons is just as effective against either of them provided there's enough bodies to reach the cut-off point.

I'd want it for 2 reasons;
1) I like it as it makes sense in my mind. It also allows for some customisation & personalisation which I like and currently miss.

2) I believe it'd significantly improve balance of weapons by allowing you to make weapons that are anti-tank, but that don't also wipe out hordes (and vice-versa). As mentioned before stuff like rend is just as effective at ripping apart clanrats as it is magmadroths. Similarly weak weapons with a high volume of power, like skinks with blowpipes, are just as dangerous to clanrats as to the magmadroths.

3) I believe it'd significantly improve balance of weapons by allowing you increase defenses without needing to increase their saves wounds or giving another ward save. A great example of this are the gargants. They need their 35 wounds otherwise they're simply going to be mowed down. But 35 wounds is so high that it ends up invalidating a lot of magic spells because the damage spells deal against single-entity units simply isn't very significant if that single entity has 35 wounds. A str/thoughness mechanic could've allowed the gargants to be fine with say 15-20 wounds, at which point magic starts doing reasonable damage again.

To an extend yes, wounds are relevant. Essentially the important bit are effective wounds. However, this only really holds up in AoS when you compare models. A MSU of clanrats shouldn't be comparable in terms of effective wounds to a magmadroth. Now obviously you can make the magmadroth sturdier by giving him absurd saves, rerolls and wardsaves, but that creates other issues where these tanky units become unkilleable for certain factions.

The best way of explaining I can think of is to look at historical armour. A knight in full plate can basicly walk through a storm of arrows and not really care (unless he gets really unlucky). That same storm of arrows can kill hundreds of unarmoured peasants. It isn't until you bring out the extremely heavy warbows with specialised armour piecing arrows that the knight has to start worrying. Point being, anything capable of slaying that knight can slay hundreds of peasants.

And that's something you basicly don't see in AoS, something capable of slaying a heavily armoured chaos champion, or some giant behemoth can struggle to kill a unit of clanrats.

AoS in general does not do a particularly good job at having the looks of units match their survivability, unfortunatly.