AoS My Biggest Issue with AoS

I know I said I was done, but I just wanted to say that a high strength weapon would have the same problem.

Also, an anti tank weapon should be stronger against a squishy target, by definition. Think about real life. Anything you'd want to shoot a tank with would obliterate a person, it would just be inefficient. You don't have this type of inefficiencies in aos because of damage spillover, not strength and toughness.

 

Those inefficiencies are indeed an important part of it as well, and damage spillover is also something I would like to have changed in AOS. But even without that there's other aspects that can be tweaked and can be used to create (in)efficiencies. Simply put, having a mix of dynamic stats and static stats would allow us to tweak the dynamic stats so you perform well against a specific type of unit, while you can tweak the static stats to ensure it's general performance. Precisely because it allows us to introduce inefficiencies in the static stats that can be balanced out with very efficient dynamic stats or vice versa; very efficient static stats balanced out with bad dynamic stats.

As a quick illustration, using 40K's strength/thoughness mechanic and not using any other inefficiencies because I stick to 1 damage so damage overflow isn't an issue, let's say we have a weapon with the following stats:

• 10 attacks
• 5+ to hit
• 4 strength
• 1 damage

If we want to improve its effect against T5 and higher, but without also improving its effect against T4 or lower we could change this into the following:

• 5 attacks
• 4+ to hit
• 7 strength
• 1 damage

It now does signficantly better against T5 & higher (only dropping of at T14, but like I've said before, there needs to be a limit to how wide a range you use, so for sake of argument I'm limiting it to T10 for now) , while performing worse against T1-T4

Damage done against a save of - for the 2 variants I've put up above:




Anyway, point being, a mix of dynamic & static stats allow you to target specific types of opponents with your attacks and improve your efficiency against those without immeadiatly improving your efficiency against others.

 

Great points @Canas

You should include rerolls and other buffs into your calculations, because those tend to overly benefit high number of attacks which further complicates things.

It's just not a real cut and dry issue, you know? Even in your example, the difference is at most .7. Is that type of minutia really worth all the trouble (and in this case the trouble isn't just adding a S/T system, but also recalculating every attack from the ground up in context with every other attack, buff, and enemy warscroll in the game)?

And that's assuming all those changes are actually done well. I think when we move out of hypothetical land, you'd find that implementing that level of change across the entire game would provide a much higher variance for errors (as we see and have seen in 40k), and if done perfectly only creates minor benefits in fringe cases.

While I think your theoretical examples and thoughts would definitely create a more dynamic system, I think the reality of it would be much different due to the things i've described. It also creates a more complicated basis when moving forward. Adding new command abilities, warscrolls, armies, and weapon profiles would be an even more arduous and imbalacing problem than it already is.

Edit - TLDR: I think ultimately we agree. A dynamic system done perfectly would be awesome. It also raises even more problems if done poorly.

 

Yup, buffs in general are also a factor that complicate it, and could be used to further accentuate the roll of certain weapons. Creating buffs that benefit specific archetypes of weapons would be key (e.g. a buff that is most beneficial when you have a high volume of attacks vs. a buff that benefits a few powerfull attacks more)

In this particular example the differences isn't too great, and for say a MSU of saurus warriors it's probably not all that relevant. However we also have buffed up deathstar nonsense & horrific monsters that rip apart entire units, which can pump out ridiculous amounts of damage. For those it becomes much more relevant.

As for it being complicated. Honestly I'd expect it to not be too different. But then again, I am assuming the designers already look at how everything interacts when they introduce a new command ability/unit/whatever in a fairly efficient manner. And have some spreadsheets ready with all existing units where you can very easily play around with values to see what happens if you give a unit +1 to hit or something. A dynamic system like this would simply add some collumns in your spreadsheet. It shouldn't make things super complicated. The main chunk of work would be creating the initial system, but any significant overhaul would have that, so imho that's a non-issue unless you're of the opinion that AoS is essentially perfect

But then again, might be overestimating how prepared the designers are. For all we know they do all their math on the back of a wet napkin in a pub while drunk. At which point a dynamic system would make it a lot more complicated

 

Or could very well be underestimating how complicated/time consuming the process would be It's unfair to take a tiny fraction of what the game designers take into account and assume that's indicative of the work it would need to take everything into account. I think you're overly minimizing these concerns. In this scenario, the devil is in the details and I dont think we can say something as simply as "add some columns in your spreadsheet." If it was that easy, why aren't they already doing it?

I also don't think its necessarily "complicated" just open for more points of failure. A more dynamic system like this has more working parts and would by its very definition be more open to problems. Any long experience with GW should tell you that more points for failure seems to just be an open invitation to more failure.

I will say, its become extremely obvious in your recent examples that you don't want a strength and toughness system but a more dynamic combat system. In my opinion, that's just a fundamentally different conversation than the one started by the OP and not something I necessarily disagree with in theory.

 

O a game-designers entire job is complicated enough, just saying that changing from a system with purely static core stats to a system with some dynamic stats should not result in unmanageable complexity. For example, I'd assume designers maintain a basic tool to be able to play around with stats, similar to the screenshot of the spreadsheet I posted previously comparing a hypothetical str 5 and Str 4 attack. That spreadsheet is only mildly more complex than the same spreadsheet but comparing static to-wound values.

As for why they don't do it; I'm fairly certain I saw a white dwarf article or something at some point where they stated that AoS was intended to be more user friendly & easier to pick up compared to 40K, WFB and even LOTR. They deemed Str/thoughness to be too "complex" because it involved looking up values in a external table (or doing basic maths in the case of 40K). So they just gave static values so new players could just look at a warscroll and completly understand what it does without needing an external table. Imho, they kinda threw the baby out with the bathwater by doing this. WFB and 40K did indeed have a lot of complexity that scared of newcomers (LOTR less so imho, but that game in general seems somewhat simpler). But strength/thoughness was not what made things complicated, what made things complicated was having 89732 different possible loadouts for 1 unit, and that's without even taking into account possible (de)buffs.

Possibly, honestly it doesn't seem like a particularly complex system. But then again, I might simply be more accepting of complexity than others

Meh, a strength/thoughness system first and greatest purpose, imho, is to provide a dynamic combat system. So I'd say it's the same discussion, imho it doesn't particularly matter if you make the to-wound value dynamic using strength/thoughness or use some other variant to make say the to-hit value dynamic, ultimatly you're doing the same thing.

 

The problem is that once that knight gets into melee, that stops being true. Also, specialized anti-armour arrows/bolts or guns will deal with a knight nearly as effectively as they'll deal with a peasant at short range. In melee, 5 peasants with pointy sticks will probably take down an armoured foot knight; fighting multiple foes is, in reality, an extremely difficult proposition, even if they aren't well trained. The knight might be able to kill a couple, but then he's on the ground, held down, and having his armour torn off or getting stabbed in the face. That just doesn't translate very well to a wargaming system like AoS (Though the Middle Earth SBG doesn't have such a problem, and other skirmish systems tend to be similarly better at dealing with such situations in a bit of a more "realistic" fashion). 10 knights will fair relatively better against 50 peasants than 1 against 5, but eventually, unless they can prevent themselves from getting surrounded (ex: by holding in a doorway; a situation where hordes are drastically worse as is in AoS), they'll fall. All it takes is getting split from the other 9 knights for a few seconds and they're done for.

Most missiles in AoS can be expected to have a reasonable shot of wounding. The ones that wouldn't, like goblin bows, already have poor hit/wound values and no rend.

The value of a variable "toughness" is effectively already covered by save and wound values and rend adds a variable stat during the wounding process.

There's also the problem that being effectively unable to wound things with some units due to too much variance in hit/wound/save values creating very binary rock-paper-scissors gameplay, which is bad. You don't want games to be decided before the armies are even put on the table because of what particular units were brought.

That was one of the biggest problems in both WHFB and 40k. It's much less of a problem in AoS than it has ever been in those two systems (It's still a problem, and was especially notable with pre-nerf petrifex, and other factions with access to very high re-rollable saves. In WHF with weapon skill, strength, and save values all being variable, it was possible to have units that the opponent just could not reasonably kill with anything their faction has access to. This was most notably a problem with the WoC Nurgle daemon prince and Tzeenth Chaos lord, 1+ armor save cavalry, etc... Cavalry having +1/+2 to save over infantry, instead of an extra wound, meant a much more binary experience - either the opponent had the strength/AP/magic to deal with it, and deleted your units, or they didn't, and couldn't kill your units; monsters having 6+ toughness with 5-6 wounds had the same problem. Opponent has a cannon? You wasted 200-400 points on that monster.

The reality is, enough clanrats should be able to drag anything down. It doesn't matter how tough, big, or well armoured you are when you're mobbed by 100 (or maybe 400) 4ft tall rats with weapons. A monster can't be aware of everything around it and isn't infinitely strong. A knight can't see behind him, and can't defend against everything. Some of those rats will land some solid hits, or grab onto that monster/knight to make it easier for their fellows to wound it.

Usually, when making a compromise between "realism" - which is often overstated, and way too complex for most TT systems, and gameplay, it's best to err on the side of better/more fluid gameplay, which is what AoS's system has done with regards to the wounding process. There's an argument to be made that missile units should do a bit less damage with shooting and be a bit better in melee as a general rule, and that damage output in general is too high/it's too difficult to make units flee, but that's a different discussion.

 

1) for the 100th time, the increadible spread 40K suffers from in terms of strength/thoughness values needs to be avoided cuz yeah that creates problems.

2) I never said a mob of clanrats shouldn't be able to overwhelm an armoured target. Eventually it gets too much and they will drag you down or find some gaps in your armour. However, that doesn't mean that a mob of clanrats should have just as easy a time scoring hits on a chaos champion in magical plate as they have scouring hits on halfnaked Namarti Thralls. Hence a dynamic stat system would improve things here.

3) Rend, wounds & save values are static & thus do not fullfill the function of thoughness in a dynamic stat system.

4) This has nothing in particular to do with realism, a dynamic stat system simply makes for a better game as it allows you to make dedicated counters that don't just rip apart everyone and everything because in a dynamic system you can tweak the stats to ensure they're only truly good against unit type X. Whereas in AoS 99% of damage dealers are effective against 99% of all targets because everything is static, so any tweak you do has the same effect against every possible target (with the exception of a handfull of units with special rules).

Also, a knight in full plate versus a handfull of unarmoured peasants with nothing more than pointy sticks will probably win in a fair fight (in an ambush they stand a slightly better chance). The peasants are uncoordinated, don't have any weapons that can really hurt the knight & don't have the slightest clue what they're doing. Their only hope would be for some of them to sacrifice themselves and hope the knights weapons gets stuck in their corpses so he's disarmed, and even then the remaining survivors still need to win a fistfight against someone in full plate before they can wrestle him to the ground and strip of some armour so they can actually hurt him. Not to mention that people tend to be hesitant to sacrifice themselves....
Now a handfull of men at arms with basic equipment and training, or better yet some specialised equipment like billhooks, already stand a much more realistic chance of taking down a knight in a 5v1 situation (or even a 2v1) cuz 1) they at least vaguely know what they're doing and 2) they have the weapons needed to hurt the knight without first needing to strip him.

 

Been playing 40K since 2007 with my Orks. Been playing Seraphon in AoS since 2018.

I vastly, vastly, prefer the static wound rolls in AoS to the Strength vs Toughness mechanic. I unquestionably think it's one of AoS's greatest strengths.

The strength/toughness mechanic introduces far too much potential into the system for players to game the fun right out of the game. In AoS, anything can potentially deal with anything else. I can make an army list and be reasonably certain that it will be able to take on any other army sitting across from me. To be sure, there are outliers, as in games that are complete one-sided stomps, but never have I been in a situation in AoS when I just straight up couldn't do squat to my opponent. There was always a way for me to interact with them.

In 40K, you can and do run up against lists where if you didn't bring enough high strength weaponry, you'll straight up lose. Knight armies remain a contentious topic in 40K but no-one batted an eye about Sons of Behemat showing up, because your opponent tossing down a handful of high wound models creates far fewer issues in AoS than 40K. Plenty of times I've taken one look at my opponent's army in 40K and known that I will lose. Never had that in AoS, and I don't play hyper-competitive lists. Hell, my current list has 90 Saurus Warriors, and I'm working on another 30 so I can field 120.

Give me static wound rolls any day of the week.