Thursday, March 21, 2013

Daemonic Instability

One of the significant changes in the new Daemons of Chaos book seems to have slipped under the radar somewhat. This is in relation to Daemonic Instability.

In the 7th Edition book when you worked out Daemonic Instability you added the combat modifiers to the die roll and then compared that to the Leadership value. The difference was the number of models you lost. In this process there was no limit to the number of models you could lose.

e.g. Leadership 7 ~ Combat Modifiers -10 ~ Dice Roll 10

Here you would have 10 + 10 =20 which you would compare to 7 and lose 13 models

Under 8th the process is different. Now you subtract the combat modifier from the Leadership Characteristic and compare that to the die roll. This change is important because Leadership is a Characteristic and Characteristics are required to be between 0-10.

Using the same example we get a different answer.

eg.  Leadership 7 - Combat Modifier 10 = Leadership 0. This is compared to the die roll of 10 and you lose 10 models.

This is a very subtle but important change and one I think is worth highlighting. What it means is that a unit can only lose a maximum of 11 models from Instability (the roll of 12 having far more dire consequences, excepted).

8 comments:

  1. One wonders if this was intended with the wording, as it is a shift from normal instability. On the other side of the fence, maybe its a sign of things to come, with GW to re-word normal instability rules?

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  2. The wording is very specific and while I don't know if it was intended the key is the old "If you had never played previous editions, how would you interpret it" question. Similar to the Overrun Crumble

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  3. Thanks Pete. Sam and I are having a DoC on DoC Battle tonight, will bear this subtle change in mind, should be interesting to see how it affects play

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  4. ooh that's much better than it was before.

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    1. Anybody free for a game tonight at the club? Emailed Hamish but no reply.

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  5. I bet a million internet dollars good old Mr Ward just rewrote the rule to simplify it and match how everyone actually calculated the combat res under 7th Ed Daemons and had absolutely no idea this rather substantial change would occur.

    Intentional change my arse...

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    1. We may even see another FAQ of a FAQ with random ramblings how they 'didn't mean to' but 'can't be bothered to change it now' FAQ, aka Slaughtermasters and armour... =P

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