"Descent boardgame style dice for a miniature wargame?" Topic

What's your opinion on using special dice and a rolling mechanic similar to the Descent boardgame from FFG for a full fledged tabletop wargame like 40k?

The idea is to use these special dice to reduce the buckets of dice needed for one roll, and the multiple checks for armor and damage, while still providing an interesting outcome and a good amount of dice to roll in every check.

I am all for the principles you outlined.
However, I am not familiar with the Descent dice and rolling mechanic. Could you tell us how that works and how they provide an interesting outcome and a good amount of dice rolling?

The Descent dice are d6 with faces marked with up to three elements: a numeral, pips, and a lightning symbol. Some faces have all elements, some faces have two, some faces have one, some faces are blank, and some faces have only an X. Some faces have a slash dividing two symbols; this is an either/or slash, meaning the roller (or circumstances) selects which result applies. The numerals indicate range, the pips (little hearts) indicate damage, and the lightning symbol triggers special effects depending on a character's skills or equipment. The X is a miss. The dice are also different colors, and different colored dice have different arrays of symbols; in general this reflects the "quality" or possible effects of an attack, as different colored dice are used depending on the nature of the attacker's combat skills. One special set of dice (colored black) are used as "boosters" to the other dice, and are rolled based on player choice and "payment" of certain resources, limiting their use.

Counting up the various symbols on the dice is slower than just looking for a target number. However, if the extra processing leads to a more fun game, then it is worthwhile. In Descent, some symbols allow you to choose between different special abilities, but usually they don't do anything that would be more difficult with regular dice.

If it saves me looking at a table in the rules set, I would be OK with it. Still, as timlillig, if the process can be reduced to counting values > a target number that will be faster.

I don't know about Descent, but I always liked the HeroQuest combat dice. Three sides had skulls, two had white shields, and one had a black shield. Each skull represented a hit, each white shield negated one hit for heroes, and each black shield negated one hit for monsters. The attacker and defender rolled a certain amount of dice. The more skulls the attacker rolled, the more damage he did. But that damage could be negated if the defender rolled shields corresponding to the character type.

link

Turtle: Do you have any ideas on how the dice would work for your idea? Multiple hits/saves/effects on each face of the dice? Give us a bit more about what you are considering and I am sure people will chime in with their ideas.

Well, my "idea" started out as an almost direct rip off of the descent dice as described above.

I later got to thinking about various trade offs you can make with dice and how the systems of symbols and numbers could be changed.

You can check out my post in the game design section to see where the second idea ended up:
TMP link

Needless to say, it was more complex a system than needed. A direct link to my dice mock ups is here:
picture

I'm starting out with a scifi skirmish wargame with RPG elements similar to Necromunda, but this dice system should scale up (with changes) to a mass battle system, and maybe even a fantasy game.

One core concept was that what symbols you pull off a die are used, any extras are wasted. So it had a built in mechanic similar to Descent's half/half die faces where you had to choose.

The goal of the system was not just to simplify to hit, multiple hits, saves, and more, but also to allow for interesting effects beyond two models standing in melee base to base and rolling off, or just as bland, two models standing in cover rolling off. In the worst case, to prevent two players rolling off buckets of dice and blowing up an entire army in one turn with him unable to respond.

In the skirmish game, extra symbols beyond the based hit and damage would do things like suppress, force movement, knockdown, etc. In the mass battle version, these extra symbols would be effects on the unit, like suppression, demoralization. It could also even out the effects of bad dice, where even if you didn't get many hits, the die faces with less hits could have more suppression.

Eventually, all this got to big for just me to ponder as I'm more an artist who just happens to like boardgames with strong mechanics tied to components.

It's an idea I think has merit, but the difficulties of getting special dice accepted means that the system I use has to be exemplary and groundbreaking in its simplicity and design (similar to current boardgames) otherwise I should just go with my original idea to make a d10 based more traditional system. But, if I can get it to work, it can give my game that "something special" that raises it above the pack, and that's something I'm willing to invest in.

It certainly sounds like an interesting, flavorful approach. It may be challenging to include both usual effects like killing the other guys with suppressing some, forcing back others, demoralizing some, etc. but I can see it raising the usual dice-fest to a new level. I am now re-reading your other posts, which I missed before, to better understand where you are coming from.
Please update us if you make any progress with your concept.