The Reason You’re NOT a Game Designer- The Debate Over Saves

Everyone has seen this guy on the Internet. You know him. He’s the guy who thinks he can make an uber character or “fix” a rule in an established game system. Every time I look at a homebrew thread I pretty much want to choke the shit out of whoever wrote it. It really just seems like most of the time the people coming up with this bullshit don’t have the foggiest idea about the mechanics behind the games they are playing. 9 times out of ten this guy makes something ridiculously over powered or that isn’t congruent with the current state of the game system.

Case in point, this is what Captain_trips01 had to say about how he thinks cover saves should work (I will snowmobile in red):

Hey guys, just some ideas I had about some minor changes to cover saves.

1st: Weapons of strength 8 or higher impose a -1 to cover saves taken
against them ~so kind of like fantasy, but more arbitrary, since honestly something like a melta gun or railgun is probably going to go through most kinds of cover. ~so are railguns and meltas getting an additional bonus. If 40k needs one thing to fix it, it’s another chart
2nd, when a unit takes cover saves given to them by an intervening unit or model, for every save passed the intervening unit is hit by the saved weapon wound on a roll of 4+. (basically, every saved cover save from intervening models has a 50% chance to take that saved hit instead). ~I think I had to read that like 5 times before I could figure out what the fuck he was trying to say. Allow me to translate into English- ‘when targeting a unit receiving cover from an intervening unit apply each wound saved by the target unit to the intervening unit on a roll of 4+.’ Well, now that I can understand your rule, I think it sucks major ass. Can you imagine trying to add all this shit into a game with a time limit? Nice to see somebody trying to over complicate things when the trend is to streamline them. What if there are multiple intervening units? Didn’t plan on that one, did ya?
Thoughts, opinions, derogatory comments about my mother? ~ I heard she sucks cocks in hell.

Great job dude. Arbitrary mechanics and bogging down a game that is meant to be played fast. That should go over well. Stupid rules, no doubt, but it only gets worse from here.

In another recent thread about the same topic Darkvoidof40k proves that he is dense and void of intelligence. How would he fix cover saves? Well, since you asked…..

“My space marine captain has power armour and a forcefield. He is shot by a
lasgun while in the cover of a ruin. The lasgun, being a weapon of untold fail ~I think what you meant was a weapon of untold reliability. This is the same guy who will be extolling the virtues of fluff over good lists in some other thread. Good thing he fails at fluff, automatically bypasses the cover and the forcefield as if it wasn’t there. WTF”

This isn’t for everybody, so no flame or RAEG please. Constructive critisism and discussion only. ~it’s almost like he knows how badly he’s about to fail at life. If only his precognitive abilities could have saved him from looking the fool.
Anyway, onto the actual proposed rules:

take the aforementioned Captain for instance. In his situation, under my
rules, he would first take a 4+ cover save, which if failed, he would take his
4+ invulnerable save, which if failed would mean he takes his 3+ save. ~sssssssllllllloooooooooowwwwwwwwww ppppppppppllllllllllllaaaaaaaaayyyyyy

So basically, a model gets to take all of these saves in this order if
it has them and if it is not prevented from taking them.
Cover save
Invulnerable save
Armour save

This is likely to make Vulcan Terminators rediculous ~everyone knows that Vulcan Termies are actually greendiculous under these rules, but oh well. ~so what you’re trying to say is that you run a Vulcan army, so you’re creating a rule to pump up your own dudes If it really matters that much, then you could just make them cost more points, or not use these rules. ~so we’ve now gone from “I think this is a quick fix to make cover saves more realistic” to “here is how I would overhaul the entire rules system and re-work every codex because I just unbalanced the game off a cliff.”
Also, before anyone starts saying, ~it’ll overpower certain units and unbalance the game “it’ll overpower certain units and unbalance the game” – as I said before withthe Terminators, just add on however many pts you think is fair. ~well that’ll certainly fix the gaping hole you just blew into the rules. Leave it up to the players to decide. I’ll add 0 points to my Terminators. That seems fair, right?

Two MAJOR problems with the above “fix.” First, throwing more dice means slower play, as with our previous example. Second, as Void points out, this creates huge imbalances in the system. Problem is, he hasn’t bothered to look into just how badly his rules change throws things out of whack. Models with already low saves in addition to cover/invulnerable saves will get exponentially better than troops with low saves. Don’t believe me, let’s shoot some lasguns…pew pew.

I’m setting up a target range in my basement right now. I’ll be using a lasgun and I have a ballistic skill of 3 (sorry Reecius, we can’t all be veterans). My first target will be a regular Terminator in Cover (2+ armor, 4+ cover, and 5+ invlunerable save). My second target will be an Ork (4+ cover save and 6+ armor save).

First volley will be done with the rules as the currently exist.

Terminator has a 1/2 x 1/3 x 1/6 x 100% = 2.78% chance of being killed.

Ork has a 1/2 x 1/3 x 5/6 x 100% = 8.33% chance of being killed

Now for the second volley, we’ll use the proposed changes, giving the Terminator 3 saves to the Ork’s 2 saves.

Terminator now has a 1/2 x 1/3 x 1/6 x 1/2 x 2 /3 x 100% = 0.93% chance of being killed (or you have to shoot each Terminator 107.53 times).

Ork now has a 1/2 x 1/3 x 1/2 x 5/6 x 100% = 6.94% chance of being killed

So with the proposed rules changes, the Terminator is now more survivable by a factor of 2.78% / 0.93% = 2.98

The Ork’s survivability only increases by a factor of 8.33% / 6.94% = 1.20

Now you’re playing Danabnetthammer! Pretty fucked up when you look at it with the most basic statistical analysis, no…. Now imagine if those Terminators had Stormshields… eep. So the single save system is far superior, as it doesn’t give ridiculous advantages to certain types of troopers. The current system is great for keeping this balanced.