Well this is slightly silly: Even if the likelyhood of it succeeding is smally, this is going to be increadibly frustrating whenever a lucky shot just annihilates an important target cuz it does stupid amounts of damage. Hell, even ignoring the lucky high-damaging shots which will oneshot nearly anything; even the average damage output against a behemoth is high, with its average damage it'l kill plenty of behemoths in two hits. Seems high, what is going to be the weakness that's supposed to be the balancing factor here?
it's a single shot weapon that does about 6 damage on average shure it can spike higher or not 5+ has never been a good metric. it also can't benefit from the factions MW rule as it has no damage characteristic. also it's going to be a sharp drop off if you have any -s to hit or wound
it also has to hit in the first place. this isn't a ability that just goes off it's a attack with a wonk damage value
How come it would ignore the MW rule? The wording says that the damage characteristic is equal to 2 +1 for every 5+.
a bit of math. if this thing has a 2/2/-3/ attack profile(very generous it's probably going to be more 3/2/-2) it will have a 31% chance to do nothing against a 4+save a 42% chance with a 3+ and a 54% chance against a 2+. this things not going to be all that dangerous.
Especially when bearing in mind that most of the targets you want to aim it at will opt to proc AOD and be on a 2+ before rend.
Unless it gets multiple shots, which makes it more reliable, and makes the potential damage spikes higher.
The issue isn't how much damage it puts out on average. The issue is that it's a wonky rule that's bound to be frustrating cuz whenever it does hit it can oneshot (or at least severly maim) literally anything. And needs at most 3 hits to kill any target even with "average" damage (even SoB will be suffering 1/3th of their health/shot, and anything with 12 wounds or less will suffer 1/2 against an average attack, and 3 or less will be oneshot by "average" attacks). Given that it's a ranged unit, this all comes with very little risk. On top of that, they'l probably have decent range given that the regular crossbows already have 24" as well. So it makes me really curious what exactly the drawback is going to be here. Cuz simply limiting the volume of attacks and giving it say 1/3/2/-2 for its attacks does not seem anywhere near enough. Especially since you can simply bring 2-3 of them and have them focus fire. The only thing I can can really think of is making them so expensive they're not worthwhile, but that'd require quite and excessive price due to their potential and if nothing else due to how reliably they can oneshot important support heroes like skink priests and starpriests. And given how important those are as force multipliers that can be worthwhile even at a high pointcost.
no it can't. the likelihood of this one shoting anything big is incredibly small. 1/59,049 for a 12 wound monster 1/4,782,969 for 16 and 1/387,420,489 for 20 . this is basicaly a horde killer that works on big monsters. provided it hits yes. but as showed above and as i will go into latter hitting is the problem. well it has several draw backs. first it does next to nothing againsed anything that isn't eleat or a hero. 1 or 2 wound models will laugh at this thing seconded lets take 3 units at 1/3/2/-2 like you pointed out put them at 150 points (the same range as most arti). and see how they do againsed a 3+ save 12 wound monster that costs 300. so if he is hit flat footed by all three and has no defensive buffs up(not at all likely) then the 3 of them have a 25% chance of doing 0 damage 44% chance of 1 shot hitting leaving him about half health a 26% chance of 2 hitting and having a 68% chance of killing him. thats not great and it's the best they can do. if we say the hero got all out defense off it drops to 38% chance to do nothing 43% chance to hit once and a 17% chance of 2 hitting. With THREE GUYS let alone if they go againsed something that has mystic shield up or has a 2+. this thing looks dangerous but isn't. it works like a horde breaker and we don't mind them.
Well, on average a successful attack inflicts 6 dam to a 12 wounds monster, which is far from bad in a meta that is growing around monsters. I'd say it's an excellent ranged weapon, as psychologically it pushes you to burn a precious cp for "all out defense" against a single attack.
yes but that requires a successful attack. and we have seen that is in no way a done deal. even when we give them some of the best attack stats in the game. this thing will not be as good as the stats im using.
That's a total of 163%, that can't be right. It basicly has none of the drawbacks the hordebreakers actually have though. Horde breakers have only one viable target. Making them irrelevant against a lot of opponents. A horde-breaker becomes progressivly less effective as you kill the horde, as it's based on current-size, not max size. Horde-breakers generally don't have a minimum value, making them absolute garbage in their worst case scenarios. This has has multiple viable targets against which it is at least decently effective (any hero, elite multi-wound units, behemoths). Which makes it usefull against literally every single army as everyone is going to field at least some of these, and usually multiple. It never loses effectiveness, no matter how wounded the target is (as it's based on maximum wounds, not on current wounds left) This has a minimum value, guaranteeing it at least does something vaguely usefull even in the worst case scenario. Everything that keeps hordebreakers in check is missing here. At least mechanicly speaking. The only obvious tuning-knobs they have left is to either make the unit very expensive, which isn't a great way of tuning, or to make his hit/wound values extremely bad, which will just futher accentuate the whole "well this is stupid, I got killed by a lucky shot that did ridiculous amounts of damage"-aspect. Anyway tl;dr: it isn't necessarily OP, but as it stands 1) it's not going to be fun to see your behemoths and heroes lose 1/3th or more of their HP after a single lucky hit. and 2) The moment these are even remotely cost-effecient you'l probably see them quite commonly because they don't really have any mechanical drawback.