AoS My Biggest Issue with AoS

A knight in armor (something a 3+ save) can handle a storm of arrows (a bunch of no rend attacks) unless he gets "unlucky" (fails his relatively good save). The armor piecing comes out (rend) and kills the knights better (because now their save sucks) but kills peasants the same as the other arrows because the increase rend doesnt matter as much on no armor peasants.

3 types of attacks
Low Rend Low Damage -> good against peasants (low armor low wound), bad against knights (high armor low wound) and monsters (high/average armor high wound)
High Rend Low Damage -> good against peasants and knights, better against monsters
High Rend High Damage -> good against everything

That feels pretty right to me. Why doesnt it feel right to you?

Didn't work for knights, dunno why it wouuld work for gargants.

You can't just say "x points gives me x effective wounds so its the same" without taking into context those that those points also pay for all of the other magmadroth rules. Wounds are only half the equation.

Behemoths do not have a survival issue in age of sigmar anymore than anything else does. They have an objective issue. You can make behemoths more "realistic" with changes that work within aos's existing systems. You can make them better by letting them count for more models on objectives.

Regardless, just my opinion. I'd suggest playing 40k if you want a strength and toughness system. I don't, so I play a system without it. You clearly have a problem with age of sigmar's basic systems. Seems like you should be playing a game that aligns with your desires.

 

it seems to me one of those problems that is a bit misdiagnosed. The issue isn't a toughness strength issue. its a war scrolls issue.
A big carnosaur jaw having the same rend and wounding roll as a Saurus club. Armour saves not really making sense matching the unit etc.
Even within a factions own battle tome you find things that don't make sense (salamanders have a 4+? why?)

 

To kill an exalted hero you need about 10 effective wounds (not counting any support, artifacts, allegiance abilities etc.)
10 effective wounds leaves a horde of skaven largely intact....

Fluff-wise, an exalted hero is an unstoppable juggernaut of war blessed by the dark gods wearing magical armour, a clanrat is about the weakest and most poorly equiped warrior imagineable who'd flee at the first oppertunity he'd get if he's not absolutly certain of victory.

The effort that it takes to kill an exalted hero should be far greater than the effort it takes to kill a mere 10 of the worst trained, most poorly equiped, worst organised, and least motivated soldiers in existence....

Eh, yes I can. 40K screws it up by making the bandwith of strength & thoughness be too large as well as jumping through that bandwidth rather rapidly. And in doing so it becomes too common for low thoughness to face relative high strength. If you don't make the same mistakes they make when implementing the system that you literally get the system, but without those issues.

E.g. the reason thoughness 3 is garbage is because strength 6+ weapons are so common even basic infantry units can bring some strength 6 weapons. The obvious solution would be to have strength 6+ weapons be so ridiculously common....

Provided both are similar units (e.g. a sturdy behemoth and a sturdy horde unit) the same amount of points should buy you similar, survivability. Not the exact same, but it should be similar. Especially if the units are similar (e.g. a "average" behemoth and a "average" line-unit, or a "defensive" behemoth and a "defensive" line-unit should perform similarly if you invest the same amount of points). However 230 points of skaven is a little over twice the effective wounds a magmadroth has, that's rather a large discrepancy.

Well yeah, the lack of a str/thoughness mechanic (or something comparable) has resulted in the powerfull anti-tank/armour weapons being able to completly rip apart anything less sturdy. And "weak" attacks that rely on volume, like hurricane crossbows, shoot just as many shots at behemoths as at hordes resulting in behemoths being cut down rather rapidly because they simply cannot deal with a sustained barrage. So yeah, behemoths aren't the only one with this issue. It is however very noticeable with them because you only get to bring 1 of them, and since 1 only has 10-15 wounds that's not a whole lot when compared to the hordes of cannonfodder who come 40 at a time.

One of the main causes for this, imho, is the lack of a strength/thoughness mechanic (or something comparable). There simply aren't enough variables to really distinguish the different units. When all you have to (badly) represent the idea of anti-armour is rend a carnosaur simply cannot distinguish itself that much from a saurus club without becoming unbalanced.

 

i not so sure though. if rend 2 and 3+ armour was used more often i think it would make a big difference if applied in the right places. same with wound rolls

 

@Canas we seem to be in disagreement over if strength and toughness provides less options for army construction, or more. Your assertion as to why strength toughness doesn't work in 40k is not the reality of the situation, and i would argue this system has created more army construction issues in 40k than solutions.

If gargants had toughness 8, it would make list construction with limited access to "tank killing" weapons problematic. You specifically went at great lengths in the SOB thread to say their high wounds would cause single target magic issues but this causes the same issue just for another list archetype.

You can't have it both ways. Stength and toughness is a problem in 40k because it easily invalidates huge chunks of armies. T3 is a death sentence not because s6 is too good but because it makes all weapons too good against them. It makes it so whole armies are wounding you on 3s or better, always.

Same reason why spamming t8 vehicles was good for a while. It simple made it impossible for armies to deal with you that had less access to high strength guns. Or it made armies that did have access to it way too strong. It creates more rock/paper/scissor matchups, not less. It creates a scenario where you are forced to the extremes. An army with half horde killing weapons and half tank killing weapons can't beat the tank army and can't beat the horde army because its effective damage is halved against either.

Edit: softened some language.

 

So give them the corresponding tank killing weapons, through whatever means are appropriate. Any given lists needs to have a healthy spread of various weapons. And yeah, if you bring only anti-horde weapons you'l struggle against single entity units, obviously. My main gripe with the gargants with respect to magic is that magic just doesn't have any real anti-single-entity spells causing magic to be limited to general-purpose spells which tend to max out at D3 damage, which is simply insufficient against 35 wounds. Hence why stuff like stellar tempest & the purple sun exists to actually do a significant amount of damage against a horde of 40 bodies. If we had similar spells dedicated against single entity targets this would not be a concern.

Of course one can always be of the opinion magic should be a (largely) anti-horde mechanic, at which point yeah a magic based list would always suck against something like the gargants. But I'd say that magic, as it is currently set up, should be able to provide spells against both hordes and single entity targets.

Which is my point, if T3 is taken as the point of reference then armies shouldn't be filled with S4 or higher weapons, let alone S6 or higher weapons. Those weapons would need to be relativly rare (or come with some absolutly ridiculous trade-off) if T3 is what you give your basic unit.

Same goes for thoughness, if an average weapon is say S3, then T8 should not be spammable either. An army of T8 tanks facing an army of S3 small arms is just as problematic as T3 soldiers trying to survive S6+ weaponry.

Like I said, the spread of thoughness and strength values in 40K is simply far too big, especially when the basis of their Str/Thoughness mechanic is a simple formula were you only need double the strength to get a 2+ (or defensively, double the thoughness to get a 6+). And doubling a T3 (or S3) isn't exactly hard. Keep those values closer together, keep outliers rare and expensive, instead of allowing entire armies worth of tanks. Do that and you've already solved most of the issues 40K faces surrounding its strength/thoughness mechanic.

Also, possibly consider capping the values on a 3+ and 5+. It'd still allow a S10 weapon to shine, hitting most things on a 3+, but at least the T3 will no longer have to worry about anything worse than a 3+ now. And similarly, that T8 tank will no longer be nearly unkillable against certain opponents, but it'l still be noticeably sturdier than most others.

Alternativly, move the range to something that gives you more freedom; e.g. instead of using 1-20 use 11-30, it's far more difficult to double a S13 than it is to double a S3, giving you a bit more wiggleroom to distinguish units without immeadiatly causing the outliers to be stuck facing 2+'s and 6+'s against everything.

Hell you could even just alter the formula, change

• double strength = 2+
• higher strength = 3+
• equal = 4+
• lower strength = 5+
• half strength = 6+

Into

• difference more than 3 & double strength = 2+
• difference more than 1 = 3+
• difference less than 1 = 4+
• difference more than 1 = 5+
• difference more than 3 & half strength = 6+

And suddenly T3 units perform vastly better because now it takes at least a S5 weapon to get a 3+ and a S7 to get a 2+.

There's plenty of ways to tweak it to avoid the issues 40K has. The most important of which being to set reasonable limits, instead of allowing a wide spread of values & army builds.

Again, it doesn't need to be the exact same. It should however be similar, especially if both of the units are supposed to fullfill similar roles e.g. frontline fighter. Obviously it's fine for say a relativly squishy backline support unit to have less effective wounds than an equal amount of points of frontline fighter.

 

@Canas I would argue every suggestion you've made causes other issues.

You can't say "then there shouldn't be spammable t8" without dealing with how knights as an army function. You can't say "s6 or higher weaponary should be rare" without SEVERELY restricting the armies people can bring on the table, which sounds like exactly what you want. Which again, raises a whole host of new concerns.

Strength and toughness as implemented in 40k (which was the ops original assertion) solves no issues that aos currently faces. Your argument, as it exists in your most recent post, is not at all an argument for strength and toughness but an argument for a combat system with no flaws.

If thats a realistic option, of course i want it. As of now, I don't think it is.


Also, magic does have strong single target damage and i have no idea why you seem to keep saying that it doesnt. A spell that does d6 mortal wounds is more dangerous to a carnosaur than a unit of skinks, using the very same example you used earlier (does a unit of 40 skinks care if they lose d6 models? no.) A gargant is sure as shit going to worry about losing d6 wounds when the whole army is already going to be pretty wound light. Yes, the damage doesn't degrade but its also not that good to begin with. 480 points of almost anything is going to do more damage than a gargant. If it retains that damage for a little bit longer, that seems like a good thing because otherwise it would be a useless model with no purpose at all.

Feel free to PM me if you want to continue, i've made my point and don't want to continue to clog up the thread.

 

Random slightly off-topic comment, but it'd sure be nice if we actually had a 1d6 damage spell, lol!

 

yup, though if they do start making those common I'd like a caveat to prevent that from oneshotting say starpriests. Only do that D6 damage if the target has say 10+ wounds on a single entity (or is a horde, then it's fine too )

Well yeah, I'd probably be of the opinion Knights should not be an independent army and simply play a role as an occasional massive behemoth in other armies.

Well yeah, 40K is currently designed around the notion that S6+ isn't rare. Obviously changing 40K so that S6+ is rare would have consequences. Fortunatly since we'd be introducing this system into AoS from scratch, we could control if S6+ would be common or not without too many issues.

I'd disagree, my argument is to implement a strength & toughness mechanic but to avoid the mistakes 40K made (e.g. too large a spread of values, making it too likely for the extremes to face eachother). That is not the same as a combat system with no flaws.

To give a more precise summary of my argument though, cuz ultimatly a strength & thoughness mechanic isn't the only solution, I'd be in favour of the following:

• A general mechanic that determines the offensive stats of a given unit/weapon dynamicly based on its target (e.g. a strength vs. thoughness mechanic to determine wound roll values) on top of the static offensive stats we have now (e.g. to hit, number of attacks, damage, rend) & static defense mechanics (e.g. wounds, save rolls, ward saves).

strength/thoughness is not the only option for that, but I do think it's the cleanest option to use as a core for the rules, occasionally suplemented with rules based on keywords or other special rules. The main reason I think keywords don't work as the core is because you're going to have a lot of combinations of keywords (infantry, cavalry, light/medium/heavy armour, monster, hero, behemoth etc.) , which will quickly get very messy. A similar issue arrises when you use special rules, like for the stegadon's flamers, that'd quickly result in a lot of rule bloat. Whereas strength/thoughness can be a relativly clean general core without much bloat (assuming you stick to some predefined rules of course, like I mentioned earlier).

D6 damage spells are far and few between though, most factions are limited to the occasional unreliable mechanic like purple sun or maybe a super powered endless spell in the right realm. With only a few factions having a faction specific (endless) spell that pumps out D6 wounds. As far as I can remember at least.

Which is one of the reasons I don't like the gargants as a concept. Either their degradation needs to be less generous, which would make the gargants fairly terrible. Or you leave the opponent in the situation where nothing he does matters all that much unless it results in a killing blow. Or you up their starting stats so it can drop further before reaching the minimum value they have now, resulting in gargants being ridiculously powerfull at max health. None of those are good situations.

Meh, its not like we're going off topic, but fine

 

If your heavy magic list is struggling with Gargants, how are you dealing with Stonehorns that are significantly faster and got a 5+ ward save ontop? It is not exactly the same amount of effective wounds, but it isnt super far off, especially since you can easily face 4+ Stonehorns plus change. At least with Gargants they cant screen their big guys or screen their backend to prevent deepstrikes without investing a ton of points. You seem really afraid of Gargants for some reason, despite largely being regarded as a non-competitive and a "fun hobby" army.

I also dont think there is anything wrong with certain armies/lists punishing one specific playstyle to sorta force you into a more all-around list.

 

Stonehorns have ~19 effective wounds against mortal wounds. That's a fairly significant difference with the gargants 35. And most importantly, it's still low enough that ~6-7 spells will kill it, or at least leave it nearly dead at which point you can kill them with whatever other units are supporting your wizards. Essentially its possible to kill one per turn with your wizards + some minor support, while the rest of your army delays the other stonehorns and shaves off a wound here and there, making them easier to kill the next turn.

Against Gargants this doesn't really work since you're not even going to come close to taking 1 down with magic (or at least our magic) in a single turn. And a screen shaving off 2-3 wounds out of 35 isn't exactly very significant, so the bits and pieces of damage your supporting units end up doing doesn't help the wizards out as much either.

I expect them to be frustrating to deal with precisly in the non-competitive scene. Which the first battlereports coming out with them seem to support so far.

Imho, a magic-centric should be a fairly all-round list, seeing as magic is a fairly general tool. But currently there simply aren't a whole lot of spells intended for use against big single entity units. Which was fine as the general purpose spells worked well enough with their D3 damage as long as large single-entity units were mostly limited to 10-15 wounds (and possibly a ward save). But with 35 wounds we kind of need dedicated anti-single-entity spells for this to work again, just like how we needed stuff like stellar tempest for magic to be relevant against hordes of 30+ models.

 

Its not the same amount of wounds, but considering their speed and how they can very easily clear screens to pile further towards your important stuff, I'd argue its significantly harder to face Stonehorns than Gargants. The fact Gargants cant really clear screens (their impact hits is a joke compared to high roll charge Stonehorns) means you essentially have much more time to deal with Gargants than Stonehorns.

You also arent factoring in their pretty impressive healing from the Mawpot that covers almost the entire board and will nullify your first round of chip damage. If stuff dies nearby they can do it again etc. Gargants have no healing beside a couple of kinda meh traits/artefacts.

You just arent killing Stonehorns with your magic list, assuming you are playing Seraphon. If 3 Stonehorns are all perfectly within range, it still takes Kroak 4 rounds of not failing a single Celestial Deliverance and rolling perfectly average to kill them on his own. What else do you have in your "magic heavy list"? Its pretty much just Comet's Call ontop of this and maybe a couple of endless spells that do tickle damage against the Stonehorns. We just dont have the casters for a viable "magic centric" list. Pretty much all the lore spells are support stuff and the same for the warscroll spells.

I havent seen any real battle reports yet of the Gargants. The only ones have been to showcase how Gargants work, so obviously they will be biased. There is simply so much more stuff in the game that 1) Deals massively more damage 2) Got tons more mobility 3) Way more durable and almost impossible to shift off objectives.

I could see Gargants proving to be trouble at a level where people just put random stuff in their lists and dont care at all about buffs. They are probably pretty good compared to other stuff that is essentially "naked" buff wise.

 

Totally fair, i'm just not looking to discuss a total wish listing scenario as I personally don't think there's a whole lot of validity in that discussion.

My argument was always that the strength and toughness system in 40k does not solve any problems aos suffers from, and in fact would cause more problems with examples. You don't really seem to disagree with that point because your rebuttal is "yeah, just do it better." That last part brings a whole lot of subjectivity that (in my opinion) is beyond the scope of the original question and my original answer.

We're arguing two different points, because its no longer about a strength and toughness system but about overarching game design.

 

- Kroak on his own puts out on average about 7 mortal wounds.
- Geminids adds another 2
- Quicksilver Swords adds another 2
- Pendulum adds another 3.5
- Fiery convection adds another 2 on average before his next hero phase (and potentially kills an entire stonehorn on its own if you get very lucky)

On average this already puts you on 16.5 mortal wounds which will almost outright kill a stonehorn, even with his ward saves. Your other stuff should be able to chip off those last few wounds. If you get lucky the spells will already be enough and your other stuff can move on immeadiatly. If you get super lucky you might even kill 2 stonehorns, but that requires near perfect rolls.

As for a list:
- Kroak
- Slann
- 2 starpriest
- Bound pendulum
- Bound geminids
- Bound quicksilver swords
- Bound balewind (or a normal balewind if you want to save some points)
- 2x 40 skinks
- 8x 10 skinks

Exactly 2000 points.

Skinks for screens, big blocks of skinks for some supportive firepower. Feel free to swap some of the endless spells around or swap out one of the starpriests. Also the 1000 or so points spend on skinks can be spend on whatever else you'd prefer to be your screens. Focus down the stonehorns one by one. Any collatoral damage on other stonehorns is great, especially if it's only 1-2 damage, because he's unlikely to waste his pot on healing only 1-2 damage even if it makes it significantly easier to kill the next stonehorn.

minor sidenote, Kroak should take only 3 rounds to kill one on his own if he rolls average damage results (but succeeds all his casts, this includes comet call).

Fair enough.

 

I find most people state realism is the biggest issue that would be fixed by a S/T table. My question to that is, why a S/T table? Why not more wounds, better armor (saves), abilities, or whatever?

Asides from realism (which is more of a stylistic problem), what mechanical problem are we trying to solve in AoS with a S/T table?

 

Distinguish between different types of weapons to allow for say a specialised anti-tank weapon that isn't just as effective at killing hordes (or vice versa).

Of course there's some other options as well, for example using special rules like how stegadon's flamers work, but imho special rules like that are not sufficient to really cover all cases without creating a giant mess.

 

We sort of have this though, don't we? Rend, damage, better wounds, spill over damage? I don't see why we need a new mechanic that will not only consume game time but create new problems as @Putzfrau mentioned.

 

No because basicly all attacks are static in AoS. Very few have dynamic stats based on the target you use them against, and this dynamic nature is what you need to really distinguish the different types of specialised weapons.We have some mechanics that are probably intended to be dynamic, but ultimatly don't succeed (like rend) because they end up just being a static modifier which has the exact same value regardless of the target.

Taking rend as an example of a static rule:

• 1 point of rend always increase the amount of succesfull attacks by ~16% compared to not having that rend, regardless of what kind of save your target has.

On the other hand an example of a dynamic rule:

• Stellar tempest giving you X dice depending on the target you cast it on. In the best case scenario this allows it to be 600% more effective than in the worst case.

Now of course we could simply introduce more special rules, but introducing a special rule for nearly every attack is obviously going to be a mess.
A strength versus thoughness mechanic would be an excellent dynamic rule to function as the core to distinguish different types of weapons, without needing to introduce a giant bloat of rules as it's just 1 new rule which, imho, really shouldn't be that difficult or timeconsuming. Of course special rules can always be added on top of that to further distinguish things.

 

Rend does accomplish the anti-tank method though. Better rend works through the save, and better damage attacks makes for high impact attacks. And through your example of stellar tempest, we have rules that target waves (Kroxigor spanking paddle). and even rules on warscrolls that do bonus to hit vs units of certain wound size, for example, Carnosaur does +1 to hit vs target unit with a wound characteristic of 7 or less. But again, what mechanical problem are we trying to solve? We already have modifiers for anti-tank, horde clearing, etc. Or is it a stylistic problem we're trying to solve, ie, tougher/more realistic monsters? Because if it's a case of, "why can gobbo stab draggo", maybe woundflation needs to impact behemoths more in AoS?

I don't think we need new modifiers in a game where weapons already have four modifiers, abilities from warscrolls, and an opponent save (with potential FNP, mystic shield, or any other reroll save modifier). I'd much rather work this into generic abilities like we already see them doing (for example, Terror giving -1 bravery to all units with 3". It's generic enough to get the job done). Also, despite S/T being one mechanic, it will be time consuming (maybe not necessarily difficult) in a game that can already go for 2-3 hours on a 2k game.

 

It doesn't accomplish the anti-tank method because it has the exact same value regardless of target. -1 Rend provides just as much extra damage when targeting a 2+ save as when targetting a 5+ save. It is a static improvement to the attack independent of target.

Essentially all rend accomplishes is that you have a more powerfull attack. And of course a more powerfull attack is going to do more damage against a tanky target. But crucially, it also does more damage against a squishy target.

A proper anti-tank mechanic would only be more powerfull against a tank. It would be a dynamic improvement to the attack dependent on the target.

These are indeed better rules that are dynamic. However, these are special rules specific to this 1 specific attack or model; exceptions. There is no core mechanic to allow for dynamic attacks in general. The lack of a core mechanic for dynamic stats has two major downsides

1. Certain models end up having attacks (or defenses) that are simply good against everything, because they just rely on raw static stats and raw stats work against everyone. This limits the possible counters to just something with even more raw stats. As opposed to sending a specialised counter who is simply good against this particular type of unit.
   
   
2. Without dynamic stats, there's relativly little to distinguish units with, especially when they're similar-ish or when you can't tweak a stat too much without creating balance problems. Resulting in some stats being weirdly similar (e.g. saurus guard and warriors both having a 4+ save, or a carnosaur's jaws having the same rend as a puny saurus club). It also means that when you do try to distinguish units it quickly gets overwhelming (e.g. for fully buffed hearthguard to be properly tanky they have been given re-rollable 3+ saves with a ward save on top, which compared to the average save of 4/5+ most other units have, and which can't even be improved that much with buffs in most cases, is insanely powerfull)

Both of these are things that can be improved with dynamic stats.

What's also important to note is that without a core mechanic all we have are special rules, which again are supposed to be exceptions, and if we want to rely on those to create dynamic stats that's possible, but we're quickly going to get a lot of rulebloat and imho it'd be more complicated and annoying than a strength/thoughness mechanic.

Obviously special rules will always have a place to supplement the core mechanic, but I don't think they can be the core mechanic themselves.

Most of those modifiers are static independent from a given matchup. And imho, we need dynamic modifiers based on the matchup.