The BrikWars Forums

Here's my latest idea: since a minifig's Skill rating also reflects strength and general ability, why not replace the d6es in Close Combat damage ratings with the attacker's Skill die? For most minifigs this means nothing changes, since their Skill is already a d6, but a d10 Hero will hit harder with the same weapon and a d4 civilian will be even more pathetic.

There's a follow-up idea, but let's do the math first. Here are our current stats for Close Combat weapons:
And here's what I'm thinking of changing them to: I've graphed out some probabilities for killing minifigs (of Armor 4) and Heroes (with Armor 2d6). Note that I've ignored critical successes and failures for these graphs:



The orange line shows the current standard probabilities for killing somebody with different d6-based damage ratings, and the other lines show what happens if you switch to different dice.

The effect is exacerbated when you take weapons' Use ratings into account, since the units whose higher Skill lets them do more damage also makes them more likely to hit:



This makes Heroes and Officers feel appropriately more lethal in Close Combat, and incompetent units appropriately less so.

The follow-up idea is to make it a single roll, so that the successful skill roll automatically becomes the first die in the damage roll. I haven't run the exact numbers on this second idea yet, but this improves lethality even more, since it eliminates low rolls from the damage results, and eliminates critical failures on damage entirely (while still preserving them for the initial attack roll). Under this follow-up system, a successful hit with a Heavy or 2H weapon is almost always a kill, because you have to roll so high to hit in the first place.

I like this idea a lot. Plus you can still have a gunner-esque unit that has a d8 for melee skill attacks only.

I'm also in favor, this rework will be great for gameflow.

Looks good. It should make melee fighting more streamlined.

Karpet charts and munching.
New combat rules, with charts.
Its wednesday.
You must be on vacation.

This looks great, as it reflects a minifig's skill in handling and using a CC weapon. Whereas with a ranged weapon, the 1d6's are still required for what exits the weapon, such as a missile which may or may not be a dud, depending on the damage roll.

Silent-sigfig wrote:I like this idea a lot. Plus you can still have a gunner-esque unit that has a d8 for melee skill attacks only.

Yeah, that's how I came up with the idea originally.

As I look at this more, I'm not sure if it's going to work for d4s - a 0% chance to kill with a hand weapon isn't very BrikWars, and d4s don't get Bonus Dice. So it may just apply to d8s and above.

stubby wrote:
As I look at this more, I'm not sure if it's going to work for d4s - a 0% chance to kill with a hand weapon isn't very BrikWars, and d4s don't get Bonus Dice. So it may just apply to d8s and above.

On the other hand, civillians would only be effective ganging up on a target.


I'm gonna test this idea in my forum battle and see how it goes

Silent-sigfig wrote:On the other hand, civillians would only be effective ganging up on a target.

I'm gonna test this idea in my forum battle and see how it goes

Or using two weapons, or using a bigger weapon... there are lots of ways around it; it's just that one point where it's broken.

I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Silent-sigfig wrote:

stubby wrote:
As I look at this more, I'm not sure if it's going to work for d4s - a 0% chance to kill with a hand weapon isn't very BrikWars, and d4s don't get Bonus Dice. So it may just apply to d8s and above.

On the other hand, civillians would only be effective ganging up on a target.


I'm gonna test this idea in my forum battle and see how it goes

Angry mob incoming!

The only thing I can think of is that it will be slightly harder to break through armor/shielding with no overskill.

Silent-sigfig wrote:The only thing I can think of is that it will be slightly harder to break through armor/shielding with no overskill.

Nah, that part isn't changing. D4 units already didn't get Overskill, and the other units still get Overskill dice at the same rates they did before.

If anything, it's actually easier now - ever since the change to make Overskill add the same die type as Skill rather than a straight d6, it meant that people playing the Shielding rules too strictly might cancel both a weapon's regular d6 of damage and the non-d6 Overskill damage. This way the weapon damage and the overskill damage are the same die type, so only one will be canceled by shielding.

I actually really like this in theory. I'd need to feel in it play flow to make sure but the idea is a solid one. I have played a few battles in the past, particularly the ones where I spent time recording the results from turn to turn and felt rushed to move the game along, where I completely forgot to even do damage rolls on a few turns.

SN dice might throw a kink in the works, at first blush.

Even though it adds in a little bit more complexity I actually really like this idea. It would boost the danger of elite CC units even more and it adds another advantage of CC over ranged weapons which i a good thing for gameplay flow. It would also significantly boost Heroes abilities to kill tougher enemies, something which they could only do with their heroic feet before. It makes them real powerhouse which I like.
Just a couple of questions.
-Does this apply to a squads skill being boosted to 1D8 by an officer?
-Do MOMs stay D6's?
-What do the probabilities look like in a charge attack?

Also I didn't know two hand weapons had such a high weapon kill rate. I'm kind of surprised but I guess it still has it's disadvantages such as not being able to charge with them.
Could we some more of these probability charts as I'm loving the insight they give on the actual game mechanics. Maybe we could see how the kill rate would change against an enemy trying to block with a shield or something.

Instead of a Critical Success or Bonus Die, I might give the d4 guys a Critical Briefly Not Sucking So Much where if they roll a '4' then they can roll a d6 instead of a d4 in the damage roll.

Quantumsurfer wrote:SN dice might throw a kink in the works, at first blush.

How so?