6 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Ah this is an interesting point that I think should be clarified, the Armor and Armor X keywords would still exist. For units like stormtroopers and clones where the "armor rating" is more resistance than actual armor (laminate that we see fail to stop standard blaster bolts all the time) a chance to resist damage seems more pertinent than giving them a hard resistance. Especially given the keywords for this already exist.

Yes, and the "armor rating," consisting of Armor+Body should be applied to every shot in an attack, not just the first X of them is my point. Every shot has a chance to be stopped by the resistance, and a chance to bypass the resistance (as you said, the laminate armor we see doesn't always work depending on narrative need).
Why is there only ONE "soak" roll when there are multiple bodies in the unit? Just because Bob couldn't take all the hits from the attack doesn't mean Alice shouldn't be fine. Similarly, why is the unit just as capable of absorbing shots when they are down to one model? I fell like your design complicates defending without actually adding any improved simulation. This sort of design I've seen more successfully implemented in skirmish games, since there this makes a bit more sense to be applying an upper limit of Armor+Body to each attack, and wounds beyond the number of failures needed to inflict a casualty are discarded.

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Yes, and the "armor rating," consisting of Armor+Body should be applied to every shot in an attack, not just the first X of them is my point. Every shot has a chance to be stopped by the resistance, and a chance to bypass the resistance (as you said, the laminate armor we see doesn't always work depending on narrative need).

Ah, because of how armor works. I'm not sure if you're familiar with how IRL body armor works. Typically soft armor (Kevlar) is rated to stop one round of a specific set of calibers (based on it's rating), after one the vest is compromised. If you don't have the right rating vest to stop the oncoming bullet, it will very likely penetrate the vest. In practice it could stop the bullet, even stop more than one, but in many cases wont. Hard armor is similar but often has a higher range of calibers it will resist and a higher round count (ceramic is the hardest but can rarely can take more than 1 or 2 rounds). Therefore the armor is only as effective as it's rating, IE a unit with Armor rating of X can only stop X "damage" before the armor is rendered compromised. (technically SR has rules for degradation of materials too, but seeing as we're trying to create a rule set without over encumbering it, I figured to do armor resistance per attack similar to legion).

Bulletproof armors are kind of a misnomer, in reality they're considered bullet resistive armors.


I'll try to explain why it works this way in my version:

When rolling hits vs dodge, the hits don't specifically represent multiple shots so much has the accuracy of the shot/shots. The number of times the weapon is fired/swung is interpretive. The dodge is also interpretive not as a hard "this many shots were dodged" but rather how the unit has moved in reaction to the attack. (Which is why zero net hits counts as successfully avoiding the attack entirely, but even 1 net hit applies the DV of the weapon).

Once we've established the attack hit, whether interpreted as multiple shots or single, we need to sort how damaging it is.

This is where we balance the damage value of the weapon (and how accurate it was, this is why DVs are usually # of hits + a number) against the unit's armor rating. If the armor rating is higher than then the damage value, the armor will successfully prevent the attack from doing physical wounds, just like real vests (and any damage is suffered in suppression as a alternate to "stun". Again I'm not sure how familiar you are with vests, getting shot with a vest on can still break ribs and cause internal damage, even if the armor is rated to stop the attack, it still causes the unit to be supressed).

so when we get to the soak test ( Armor Rating + body vs Modified Damage Value ) we've established that the attack hit, we've calculated how much damage the weapon did, we established whether the damage was high enough to penetrate the armor to cause physical wounds, then we roll to see if they resist that damage based on that units body stat and the rating of their armor.

All this being said, I'm open to ideas, how would you adjust it?

19 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

All this being said, I'm open to ideas, how would you adjust it?

I'd go with the rules printed in the RRG. This is a very good game that plays well. Are there quirks and other things that make no sense? Sure, but it is a heck of a lot better than some other war games out there. If I want to have a tabletop role playing experience, I will play DnD. I don't need or want that kind of granularity in my war games.

12 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

I'd go with the rules printed in the RRG. This is a very good game that plays well. Are there quirks and other things that make no sense? Sure, but it is a heck of a lot better than some other war games out there. If I want to have a tabletop role playing experience, I will play DnD. I don't need or want that kind of granularity in my war games.

I mean, not sure it really needed said again but here goes

On 10/20/2020 at 4:12 PM, Darth Sanguis said:

I love Legion for what it is

On 10/20/2020 at 4:12 PM, Darth Sanguis said:

Not to say I think they should change the game, at all, from what it is now. I think for the health of the game, the simplicity, ease of access to both the casual and the competitive play, as well as the hobby side they should maintain it exactly as it is.

16 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the streamlined style of Legion. It’s designed to host competitive events and be played in a timely manner. I don’t want that to change. The accessibility and the IP really make this game. I’m just saying I know people, myself included, who would love a deeper more methodical version.

I get that people don't want Legion to change. I don't either. I love this game exactly as it is. What I am talking about, and hoping to discuss, if not for the sake of fun maybe as a means to crowdsource house rule ideas, is an alternate, optional, version with deeper more complicated/delineated rules.

11 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I get that people don't want Legion to change. I don't either. I love this game exactly as it is. What I am talking about, and hoping to discuss, if not for the sake of fun maybe as a means to crowdsource house rule ideas, is an alternate, optional, version with deeper more complicated/delineated rules.

I don't want this in any way though. This is what happened in 40k with the ITC rule set. It kind of killed the game for me because everyone adopted that rule set, which differed substantially from the normal rules in a variety of ways. From that, 9th edition spawned. I don't find 9th fun because the tournament power gamers dictated how the missions should be, and as a result, scoring gets ridiculous because of granularity.

I don't want Legion to go anywhere close to that style where tournament power gamers are adapting the rules, and it winds up hurting everyone in the long run.

Simplicity is key for me (or as simple as one can be in a tabletop war game).

3 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

I don't want this in any way though. This is what happened in 40k with the ITC rule set. It kind of killed the game for me because everyone adopted that rule set, which differed substantially from the normal rules in a variety of ways. From that, 9th edition spawned. I don't find 9th fun because the tournament power gamers dictated how the missions should be, and as a result, scoring gets ridiculous because of granularity.

I don't want Legion to go anywhere close to that style where tournament power gamers are adapting the rules, and it winds up hurting everyone in the long run.

Simplicity is key for me (or as simple as one can be in a tabletop war game).

There's no way a forum discussion about a hypothetical optional-alternate ruleset, one that isn't even flushed out past the rudimentary attack rules, could ever completely change the entire format of the game. Let us have our fun man.

5 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

There's no way a forum discussion about a hypothetical optional-alternate ruleset, one that isn't even flushed out past the rudimentary attack rules, could ever completely change the entire format of the game. Let us have our fun man.

Have your fun, but if this thing goes off of the rails, I shall hold you personally responsible 😋

5 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

Have your fun, but if this thing goes off of the rails, I shall hold you personally responsible 😋

I accept these terms!

@Darth Sanguis Yes, I am aware of how a bullet "proof" vest works, that's not the issue I'm having. The issue I am having is just because Bob's vest failed against the shots that hit him doesn't mean that Alice should be taken down by the shots that targeted her. The single check to cancel X hits out of the pool makes it feel like once the armor has stopped two shots (at most) the rest of the unit gets injured, as if ALL of their protection failed at the same time. The level of abstraction feels off, a blending of being "more simulation" while still being rather abstract, since usually the "hits" represent possible chances for the target to become disabled (injured, dead, etc), either through the shot hitting the mark, or the blast radius of the specific weapon, whereas the "saves" represent something preventing that opportunity resulting in injury, either from body armor, dodging out of the way, or ability to carry on regardless of injury (either physiological or psychological). So to me, having an "soak value" for an entire unit (which doesn't change regardless of models remaining) feels more like something that is fitting for a single model, or as part of an RPG adaptation into a wargame, akin to the original Star Wars miniature battle game.

To me, this design works better in something like the following example:
10 "hits" get through the dodge check and still need to determine how many wounds are inflicted, so we check the full 10 hits against Bob's Armor+Body, and see that he only manages to cancel 1 hit, so we take 2 out of the "pool" of hits to be resolved (one for the "save" and one to inflict the debilitating injury), now we see how well Alice fairs against the remaining 8 hits, continuing until all hits are canceled or we run out of models in the target unit.

45 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

To me, this design works better in something like the following example:
10 "hits" get through the dodge check and still need to determine how many wounds are inflicted, so we check the full 10 hits against Bob's Armor+Body, and see that he only manages to cancel 1 hit, so we take 2 out of the "pool" of hits to be resolved (one for the "save" and one to inflict the debilitating injury), now we see how well Alice fairs against the remaining 8 hits, continuing until all hits are canceled or we run out of models in the target unit

I see, you actually make a good point here.

In the attack step each mini applies weapon skill plus governing attribute, so for the soak to be simplified as much as it is doesn't make a ton of sense. The big issue here is we don't want to encumber the attack steps with dice rolls. 2 opposed checks is comfortable, doing up to 8 (B1 droids) for each mini could take some time. So if we wanted to prevent an absolute mess of soak rolls, why not alter how the body and armor are applied to the soak roll?

For instance, during an attack each mini gathers dice for the weapon kill they're using and the governing attribute, as seen by Stormtroopers applying 2 D6 each. In a similar sense, instead of rolling soak as 1 armor 1 body for the whole group, why not change the way armor applies to the unit ( # per mini) and make the Soak pool: Modified Armor Value + Body per mini in the defender. So in the case of stormtroopers, defending against an attack, if there are 4 minis, each would add their armor and body to the pool. (I figure since wounds are suffered 1 at a time this works just as well the method you explained).

So the unit stats would have to change to reflect this too, the Armor Value and Armor Penetration Value would need to be: X per mini , and the attack step rules would change as such:

10.) Soak damage: Resolve the following substeps in order:

a.) Calculate Modified Damage Value : If the attacker has at least 1 net hit they must calculate the Modified Damage Value by solving the formula under the weapon's Damage Value .
b.) Determine Modified Armor Value : Substract the attacker's Armor Penetration Value from the defender's Armor Value , this is the Modified Armor Value .
c.) Determine damage type: If the Modified Armor Value is higher than the Modified Damage Value then any damage received is suffered in suppression, if the Modified Damage Value is higher then damage is suffered in wounds.
d.) Gather soak pool: The defender gathers a pool consisting of ( Body rating x Minis) + Modified Armor Value
e.) Roll dice: The defender rolls their soak pool.
f.) Calculate total damage: for each 5 or 6 result subtract 1 from the modified damage value.
g.) Suffer damage: If any damage has not been soaked in step f.) that damage is applied to the defender in either suppression or wounds based on the results from step c.)

Having to roll for defense separately for every model in a unit severely bogs the game down though. Thats the disadvantage to that type of system.

I dont mind units sharing a wound pool in order to drastically speed things up. What bothers me is the sheer randomness of saving throws.

I dont mind some randomness but when the difference between a model living or dying depends entirely on it making its saving throw I dont like that. It just feels bad when your deathtroopers or mandalorians whiff every one of their saves and die.

I prefer systems where you roll dice to attack then armor reduces the damage and any damage that gets past the armor reduces health. With no saving throws involved.

Or if youre going to have saving throws at least give players access to rerolls. Thats one of the things 40k does with its strategems. If you whiff an important saving throw you can use a strategem to reroll it.

3 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Having to roll for defense separately for every model in a unit severely bogs the game down though. Thats the disadvantage to that type of system.

I dont mind units sharing a wound pool in order to drastically speed things up. What bothers me is the sheer randomness of saving throws.

Presuming the changes above apply, my system would only require each player roll dice twice per attack. Basically just two opposed tests. The attacker's accuracy versus the defenders dodge, and then the weapon damage versus armor + body. I think this rule set would reduce the randomness.

yes but your damage resolution phase still bogs things down when you have to apply damage to each model individually.

I think its an overcomplicated fix where a simple fix would suffice. you dont need to redesign the entire game just to make saving throws less random. you just need to add a reroll mechanic so you can reroll whiffed saving throws.

Legion should have something like 40Ks command points and strategems. Where you can spend points for different meta effects like rerolling failed rolls. That would add a strategic resource management aspect to the game thats currently lacking. it could also be tied into the command cards somehow.

7 minutes ago, Khobai said:

yes but your damage resolution phase still bogs things down when you have to apply damage to each model individually

You do this in standard Legion. Once you figure out how much damage goes through you pick a mini to suffer wounds until it's removed then move to the next.

yeah but you dont have to do maths for each model to apply its individual soak value to the damage. it takes time to do that.

its just straight up remove 1 model for each 1 wound suffered. thats easy.

@Darth Sanguis It's a bit better, but still feels a bit off to me. I think because with this design the defence pool size doesn't care about how many wounds are inflicted, making saving against lower wound weapons significantly more likely regardless of the armor penetration. As you said, we see Stormtrooper armor failing to a single blaster bolt all the time, rolling a large defence pool because of the unit size makes that significantly less likely, where basing the number of saves off the number of hits keeps the odds of taking a wound from each hit the same. The "Damage Value" calculations would also be... interesting for weapons like the AT-ST's laser canon, with the issue of making the Armor penetration value work for getting through the tough armor of a Sabre tank and inflicting an appropriate number of wounds, while not causing it to instantly vaporize an entire infantry squad because they end up with a hugely negative modified Armor Value. I agree that an individual taking a shot from an AT-ST to the chest should be dead, I'm not so certain that should extend to everyone around them. We see plenty of Ewoks survive surprisingly close hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14HRo_eTUgg

Table lookups still slow a game down quite in my experience more than rolling. Every weapon stats have to be compared, so this would actually probably work better for a video game than a physical tabletop game. Like I said, I refer this kind of detail gameplay appeals to me more for small skirmish games where each model is an independent unit, as then you don't have nearly so many weapons or statlines on the table to deal with, and there isn't a concern about getting the "squad" feeling wrong.

Honestly, it still boils down to a different type of abstraction, and so long as dice are involved, you STILL end up with randomness. You have reduced the randomness in average number of saves rolled, which is likely to result in more models left on the board, which in turn means more models/units to maneuver, and more attack/defense dice to roll in a given turn. In my experience, making small attacks less damaging increases the length of the game simply by leaving more of the army on the table in later rounds.

42 minutes ago, Khobai said:

I dont mind units sharing a wound pool in order to drastically speed things up. What bothers me is the sheer randomness of saving throws.

I really like how Armada does it. The only roll is the attack/damage roll. Defense is handled in the form of tokens, which can be flipped to do various things regarding damage (cancel a die, cancel half of total damage, cancel all crits, etc). token get flipped back to the good side at the end of the round. However, they can still be spent for their effect when when flipped, they just go away forever. It would obviously have to be extensively modified for Legion, but I honestly would like to see only one roll per attack. Legion isn't as bad as GW hit/wound/save, but I still think it could go a bit faster.

In a related vein, I appreciate the system Warcry uses: 5+ to wound if weapon strength is lower than defence, 4+ if equal, 3+ if greater. No hit rolls, no saves, just one attack roll, compare two numbers from each model's card and done.

32 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

I think because with this design the defence pool size doesn't care about how many wounds are inflicted, making saving against lower wound weapons significantly more likely regardless of the armor penetration.

I mean, you're not wrong, but also keep in mind there's easy ways to balance this because the attack sequence delineates accuracy and damage.

I actually just adjusted the damage values and accuracy values to be more in-line with the change to the soak pool. Instead of Hits+1 the DV is now # of minis+ # of net hits+1, ACC is # of minis +1 for the E-11 blaster. So the damage also sees a boost from including the number of minis applying weapons.

In practice:

The stormtrooper with 1 aim attacks the rebel troopers with 1 dodge.

The stormtrooper unit gathers a dice pool of 8 D6 based on 4 minis each adding 2 d6 for weapon skill in ranged weapons (+1) and the governing attribute of Agility (+1).

This results in 3 hits, the stormtrooper spends an aim and uses it's precise keyword to reroll 3 dice resulting in an additional 2 hits, totaling 5 hits. The weapon accuracy is # of minis +1 (so 5 maximum).

(edited to apply reaction + intuition for each mini? I think I'm seeing why I wanted the stats to be hardline for the unit not per mini now) There is no cover, so the defender gathers their dodge roll pool of 12 D6. They have a dodge token so they spend it to apply +2 D6 to the dodge roll, and with nimble they gain a new dodge token.

The defender rolls a total of 14 D6 with 4 dodge results.

After comparing results the stormtroopers has 1 net hit. Using the E-11 weapon DV they calculate the modified damage value as 6. The rebel troopers have no armor value so the modified damage is higher by default, meaning any damage not soaked is suffered in wounds.

The defender gathers their soak pool of 4 D6, and manages to lower the damage by 3 wound.

The defender then suffers 2 wounds and a suppression.

(interesting that it ended in the same result as the first test lol)

14 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

I really like how Armada does it. The only roll is the attack/damage roll. Defense is handled in the form of tokens, which can be flipped to do various things regarding damage (cancel a die, cancel half of total damage, cancel all crits, etc). token get flipped back to the good side at the end of the round. However, they can still be spent for their effect when when flipped, they just go away forever. It would obviously have to be extensively modified for Legion, but I honestly would like to see only one roll per attack. Legion isn't as bad as GW hit/wound/save, but I still think it could go a bit faster.

I've been saying this for ages. Armada got it right with defense tokens.

1 minute ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I've been saying this for ages. Armada got it right with defense dice.

I don't actually play Armada (I think I would really like it, but I only so much time and money) so I was worried I had explained it wrong.

2 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

I don't actually play Armada (I think I would really like it, but I only so much time and money) so I was worried I had explained it wrong.

you got it right. Armada is my favorite tabletop thus far. It has it's flaws (it's no where near as objective oriented as Legion, and the deploy/conditions are less interesting than Legion) but the core mechanics just flow so smooth. I played a sector fleet match last week of 2x standard points and I had so much fun.

9 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

you got it right. Armada is my favorite tabletop thus far. It has it's flaws (it's no where near as objective oriented as Legion, and the deploy/conditions are less interesting than Legion) but the core mechanics just flow so smooth. I played a sector fleet match last week of 2x standard points and I had so much fun.

Armada is absolutely fantastic. What really gets me every time with it is how good the balance is (aside from the time flotilla spam was the king). Sure the releases are hella slow, but with how viable everything is I never really feel like it gets stale

6 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

There's no way a forum discussion about a hypothetical optional-alternate ruleset, one that isn't even flushed out past the rudimentary attack rules, could ever completely change the entire format of the game. Let us have our fun man.

I am so here for you and your house rule set that you are developing live before our eyes, but maybe you should start a new thread for it? This one is supposed to be about the Alex Davy interview and point change speculation. 🤓

I've got my gripes with the system, but I ultimately like how the defense saves work. It's random, yes, but it also allows for an unpredictable element that can lead to some really interesting moments.

One of my fondest memories of memories of Legion was in a losing match against a buddy of mine when I had a squad of Snowtroopers survive a total of 37 damage (my opening round was terrible and he was super lucky with his attacks before I got to cover) while dealing a total of 5 damage globally. We still refer to that moment, cause they ended up being the last unit alive in my army and yet they survived the two rounds it took for Luke to reach them to finish them off. The armor saves allowed for that to happen, and even though I lost we now have an inside joke about the "boxer bois" (they were half painted at the time so I told my two squads apart by which one had their pants painted, so now that squad is painted in their boxers)

Sure, there's ways to make it more predictable and less random, but I wouldn't trade some of those moments for anything because of the laughs they produced.

12 hours ago, Mokoshkana said:

I'd go with the rules printed in the RRG. This is a very good game that plays well. Are there quirks and other things that make no sense? Sure, but it is a heck of a lot better than some other war games out there. If I want to have a tabletop role playing experience, I will play DnD. I don't need or want that kind of granularity in my war games.

But...but how am I supposed to be a couch game designer then? 🤔