AoS Fixing Serephon

but only if your opponent is dumb enough to let you

 

that's fair i just find it's really hard for us because all of our stuff is so slow the thing's that can pincer a unit are rippers and skinks one of witch is just going to kill them and the other is not something you wan't to be using for this. the only time ive managed to pull it of is when a unit had my bastiladon surrounded for two turns before i got to them

 

that makes sense i don't tend to field either of those

 

Re-rolling 1's with a 3+ improves your odds from 66.66...% to 77.77...% this is a relative improvement of 16.67..%. because you re-roll 1 out of every 6 dice. The absolute improvement is 11.11..% because 2 out of 3 re-rolls succeed and 1/6* 2/3 = 1/9 = 11.111..%

Re-rolling 1's with a 6+ improves your odds from 16.66.. % tot 19.44..% this is again a relative improvement of 16.67..%. The absolute improvement is indeed only 2.77..%. Which again is equal to 1/6 * 1/6 = 1/36 = 2.77..%

Adding a re-roll of 1 to a D6 improves it's output by 16.66..% relativly to not having that re-roll. And obviously the better the baseline performance the greater the absolute gains.

In case you're wondering nearly every single other buff you can think of is better than re-rolling wound rolls of 1.

• I assume I don't have to explain that re-rolling all failed rolls is better (except in the case of a 2+ obviously..).
• Adding + 1 to the rolls is better (gives a 25% relative increase when going from a 3+ to a 2+, and a 100% relative increase when going from a 6+ to a 5+)
• Double damage on a 6+ is better (gives a relavite increase of 20% at a 2+ succes and again a 100% when having a base of a 6+ succes)
  
• Mortal wounds on a 6+ instead of regular damage is a relative increase of 20% against a 6+ save. Gets more valuable against better saves. And is again a bigger relative increase with a lower succesrate similar to how double damage on a 6+ is relativly speaking more effective when you have a poor succesrate as a larger chunk of your succeses will also benefit from the exploding dice.
• +1 attacks is better provided you get at least a relavite increase of 16.66% attacks. So provided your baseline is 5 attacks or worse, which most units have as a baseline, getting +1 attacks is better.

I think that's all the catagories of raw buff-effects we really have of the top of my head. And as you can see they all give better relative increase than a re-roll of 1. Obviously there's still a difference between having the buff on a wound-roll or on a hit-roll. And there's bonus effects that aren't direct raw number increases (e.g. lord of khornes insta-kill axe). But those are a tad more complicated to directly compare, and are usually not used for supporting buffs but are unique effects for a specific unit, so I'm leaving those out for the sake of simplicity.

Hence the oldblood's supporting power is minimal as he literally has the worst buff possible in addition to some fairly restrictive range requirments (really kinda curious why they went with a 3" bubble as opposed to just "buff a unit" or just a significantly larger bubble)

No it doesn't, a 4+ has a base succes of 50%, with re-rolling 1's it has a succesrate of 58.33%. Which is a relative increase of 16.66% and an absolute of 8.33% (which is 1/6 * 1/2 which is the chance of a re-roll multiplied by its succeschance). How did you end up with a 24% increase? I am so confused right now.

 

i don't know what your fascination with relative gains is we aren't looking at that we are looking at end results
yes it's the weekest buff you can get in a vacuum but in order of suggested re-rolling all of a stat is a very good buff reserved to rare occasions the astrolith gets it at the expense of having no combat ability and being 33% more expensive. +1 to any combat stat is the best buff in the game and as i sead above makes our heroes broken. double damage on a 6+ is also good we have easy acses to it in serpents staff and giving it to a faction like ours with so many buffs is broken that's how i got the above hero doing 30 damage a combat. giving mortal wounds to a 40 block of any thing is a bad idea maby only on the charge but not on a ability that can aply to 2 blocks of 40. all to hit bonuses are redundant. we have +1 to hit with the prayers you can stack them there we don't wan't more witch elves.
it's a fine balancing line between useless and broken and we have a lot of things to balance i don't want to invalidate thunder quake so i can't just give him re-roll wounds and and the others are all things i had to cut back on already or things we already have.

 

ok im a bit burned out with heroes lets fix a unit
Kroxigor 200 for 3
Move 8"
bravery 10
wounds 4
save 4+
a kroxigor can be armed with either a drake maul or a moon hammer
Drake bight maul 4 2" 4/3/-2/2
moon Hammer 4 2" 3/3/-/2
Vise like jaws 1 1 3/*/*/*

abilities
Energy transference unchanged
sweeping blows: when a Kroxigor attacks with a moon hammer raise it's attack stat by 1 for every 10 models in the target unit
vise like jaws: this attack does not make a wound role if it hits deal d3 mortals

 

Relative gains are what's important when balancing a support unit as that tells you what a support unit actually adds to the things he support. Absolute gains are irrelevant as those are completly dependent on context if they're weak or powerfull, whereas relative gains are context independent. An absolute gain of 10 can be asthonishingly good in one situation, and barely noticeable in another. A relative gain of a 100% is going to be noticeable in any situation.

Simply put, if the relative gains are too insignificant you'l never care about the hero. Your opponent needs to want to kill the support hero given the chance because he's a significant power multiplier. But if his relative gains are too little it's just gonna be easier and more efficient to kill whatever he's supporting and ignore the support hero until he no longer has anything left to support. To illustrate you want to kill our skink priests cuz they have powerfull support making whatever he supports significantly faster and sturdier, you want to kill an oldblood cuz you've already decimated the 40 man saurus horde he was supporting, and compared to that last handfull of strugglers he's a bigger threat...

Now of course, once you've determined the relative gain to be balanced you're going to have to look if there's any specific outliers in which the absolute values become too much. And how to deal with these outliers. But that's only going to be your second step when it concerns a support unit as the support he gives should, first and foremost, be significant. And re-rolls of 1 in an awkwardly sized little bublle on a slow hero are just too insignificant to become a "support" hero.

Compare it to other support heroes:
- Skink priest: reroll all saves, charges & runs, either on 1 target, or in an 18" bubble. Also prayers once we finally get those.
- Skink starpriest: double damage on a 6+, various spells, potentially prayers.
- SCE lord castelant: +1 to saves, saves heal on a 7+.
- Auric runemaster: a permanent debuff and has acces to prayers.
- Necromancer: heals 2 nearby units, can cause a unit to attack twice.

Those are proper support heroes. Their buffs have significant relative gains, or are permanent in the case of the runemaster's debuff. They have acces to multiple effects, that potentially synergize. And are able to affect multiple targets in a single turn. Within a far greater range. And before you point out that the oldblood is a better combatant than the skinks & necromancer, the runemaster and especially the castelant are capable combatants themselves. This is just looking at their warscrolls, and ignoring that for example the runemaster also procs the hearthguard's berserkers "duty unto death rule" or any potential other supportive abilities they get from battalions, artifacts etc (the SCE have an artifact or trait that give a bubble of +2 to saves for allies if he stands still in a turn, which on a castelant leads to a hilarious +3 healing on a 7+ save).

Do you see the difference between these support heroes and the oldblood's attempt at "support"?

As for it potentially being overpowered if you make it better. That's why you can put in limitations. I never said the oldblood needs to give a horde of 40 warriors mortal wounds on a 6+, that'd probably be problematic. Though based on the stories @LizardWizard occasionally tells about tournaments, it probably wouldn't even be that much of an outlier.

As for it being too much combined with all our other support. Again, limitations are your friend. And perhaps those other sources should also be looked at. Maybe take away the sunblood's command ability and make him double down on combat, while the oldblood focusses on supporting and combines his aura with the sunblood's command ability in some way. But calling the oldblood "support" and justifying an underwhelming melee profile on account of a fairly weak and awkwardly sized buff isn't the anwser at least.

Bit on the squishy side, quite expensive & the lack of rend means the moon hammer needs quite a lot of targets to pull even with the maul. Maybe add some rend or have it gain attacks per 5 models?

Also, I'd change energy transgerence. It's not bad (in this context..) but the range is quite short, especially considering skinks aren't frontline fighters while kroxigor are. Unless the intend is to have them escort stegadons & troglodons it's just a bit of an odd rule.

 

remember they do have rend 1 reduction but i was basing them off of decismators and kurnoths they do a lot more damage then the first and are faster then both by a lot.
i might add rend 1 to the hammer the point was to have a anti horde verient and a anti hero verient i think the possibility of 36 attacks is a bit much for the 5 per model.

 

Also, as an example of what the oldblood should be look at the wight king & vampire lord. They're both the same type of commander-like heroes (both fluff wise and how they appear to be intended in the game)

Wight king:
4" move
5 wounds
3+ save
10 bravery

Balefull tomb blade: 1" 4 attacks 3+/3+/-1/1 Does D3 damage on a 6+ wound roll

Abilities:
Heals/ressurects 2 nearby units
Command ability: +1 attack to ALL melee weapons of a unit within 18"

Pointcost: 120

Vampire:
5" move or 10" and fly or 10" if it's on a horse
5 wounds
4+ save
10 bravery

Spirit possesed blades: 1" 4 attacks 3+/3+/-1/D3
Skeletal steed: 1" 2 attacks 4+/4+/-/1 if on a horse

Abilities:
Heals/ressurects 3 nearby units
Command ability: +1 attack to ALL melee weapons of a unit within 18"
heals himself if he slays a model in combat
Has an emergency heal
Is a wizard

Points: 140

They're better combatants. And wipe the floor with him in terms of providing support. While costing the same or only being a mere 20 points more expensive... The oldblood should be similar to this.

 

but you plan for the good situations the arch revenant has a reroll 1s to hit for kurnoths and he is still taken because that's great when paired with kurnoths but would be bad if paird with dryads.

ok fine do you want me to make him a pure support like these guys? or do you want him to be a melee monster because you seem to hate when i try to balance for both. the only one on this list that can do both costs 400+ and if you want me to make him a melee hero he will have to compete with the sunblood the cold one the warden and the carnasaurs.

that's the point i don't wan't to make something broken just useful it already has limitations of only saurus and it's dangerously close to breaking things

 

you are comparing a monted hero with a foot hero (and he would still win in a dule between the two of them) in the second case and as i have him now he would body the wight king. that sead +1 to attack would be good if we left our troops as they are but would be to strong if we buffed them up to be competitive the wight buffs skeletons

 

For clarity, I was comparing them to the current oldblood, not your version. Your version is significantly sturdier than either wight or vampire. Though still weaker offensivly.

Also, since the vampire on horse costs the exact same as the vampire on foot (or with wings) they're just 1 unit with different loadouts to me.

And again, I'm not saying he should get their command ability. I'm saying he should provide comparable utility to the whole list of things they have. The vampire also has 3 heals and whatever spells he has to support with. The oldblood's support combined should be comparable to the support provided by the vampires command + spells + those 3 heals.

You're forgetting the arch revenant also has a command ability that gives +1 to all melee attacks.

Which one is 400 points?

I'd say he should be comparable to the wight, vampire & SCE castelant. Those mix combat & support quite well resulting in a nice leader archetype that's distinct from the pure-support that is a skink priest, and from the champion archetype of the sunblood.

I think part of the problem might be the oldblood's command ability. Movement is something that's super usefull utility-wise. And because of this is takes up basicly all the utility he provides. Which leaves him as rather a lame unit as he can't really do anything cool that you'l be talking about for days to come. It's not as inspiring as a sunblood killing an entire 40 man horde in a single turn of perfect rolls, or a skink priest leading a couple of "mere" skinks to stubbornly stand and hold an objective against incredibly odds. Instead he allows his saurus to take 2 extra steps to the right so they can reach the objective. Which even in terms of movement isn't super impressive (it's no teleport...) and is considerably less inspiring.
Also, I feel movement probably shouldn't belong on a leader archetype, but should be on a full blown support archetype so it can be mixed with some other buffs (e.g. the skink priest combining improved charges, runs and saves). Or at least if you put movement abilities on a leader archetype it either needs to be relativly minor (e.g. +1" to charge) or it needs to be super amazingly powerfull and be put on a hero who himself is increadibly mobile like the SCE lord Aquilor. And either way the hero himself needs to be able to keep up and probably affect himself with the ability as well. Not this weird combination where you got a fairly significant movement bonus, but the hero himself is very slow.

So I'd probably say making the oldblood feel good requires dropping his command ability or completly reworking everything else about him.

 

sorry i was looking at the star drake celistant my bad

i'm not shur i'm up for a complete rework if i was i would try to make him into a war priest of Dracolith

 

Movement is powerfull yeah, but it isn't very sexy so to say. And it just seems out of place on the oldblood who's slow himself and also doesn't really shine in any other way. I think that might be a big part of why I feel he's so underwhelming. He has this 1 thing that's not terrible, but just not very sexy, it's out of place and he's not very good in any other way.

 

ok skinks these guys need a light touch they currently do there job so well that we use them above everything else and SCE grab them to field numbers. i think that's why they got a price hike we just summon them. so they might not be getting everything we would want.

skinks
move 8"
bravery 10
wounds 1
save 6+ (i think this needs a qualifier they have -1 rend inherently and they get a 6+ shrug with there shields so i don't think its nessesery to raise this)

Meteoric javelin -missile 2 10" 5/4/-/1
boltspitter - missile 2 16" 5/5/-/1
Meteoric javelin - melee 1 5/4/-/1
boltspitter - melee 1 5/5/-/1
moonstone club - melee 2 1" 4/4/-/1

alpha unchanged

celestial cohort unchanged
star-buckler 6+ shrug
wary fighters unchanged

 

chameleon skinks the inherent -1 rend still applies
move 8"
bravery 10
wounds 1
save 5+

dart pipe 2 16" 3/3/-/1
envenomed dart 1 1" 5/4/-/1

ambush unchanged
disappear unchanged
mimicry unchanged
star-venom on a hit roll of 6 deal a mortal in addition to standerd attack
star-bucklers

 

razordons unchanged they do get more tanky do to new aleagence abilities handlers are now a part of the unit 1 to 1 when summoned