Goblin Bombchucker variable dice

[gull2112]

The Goblin Bombchucker's 2D6 to hit dice may be varied by Command Action. A Command Action may be spent to change the number of to hit dice rolled to either 1D6 by writing 1D on the card, or 3D6 by writing 3D on the card.

If only 1 die is rolled there is no chance to roll doubles and is considered safe mode (OSHA approved).

If 3 dice are rolled the likelihood of two of the dice having the same value doubles from 1 in 6 to 1 in 3 (goblin madness).

[elgin_j]

You know, I reckon it would simply be better to allow players to change dice by spending CAs.  1 dice can be raised, or lowered, by 1 for the cost of 1 CA.  Although that means it would almost never roll doubles I think that is probably a good thing - no other unit has an inbuilt suicide device like the Catapult...

[Kevin]

I consider the intitial suggestion a very cool variant! 

One thing though, if you roll 3 dice, the probability that a shot blows up in your face is 4/9. 

IMHO you're overcharging for it.  I'd say spend one CA to make the bomb chucker flexible for the entire game.  Flexible = throw as many dice as you want to determine the number of attacks, but if any 2 (or more) dice show the same number you don't fire and take a point of damage.

That way desperate people could even throw 4 dice, knowign there's a 13/18 (or around 72%) chance it backfires. 

[gull2112]

I was basing my original CA cost on the theory that the goblins wouldn't really decide on their own how risky a shot they wanted or needed to roll, that is something the general/player would decide; this keeping in line with the BG intention of not having omniscient unit commanders. Beyond that consideration, I don't think there is a need to use CA's at all. Throwing 1d6 hit dice is paying 300 points for some pretty mediocre archers, whereas rolling 3d6 hit dice for an attack that fails to occur almost half the time is also a waste of 300 points. Taking a pot shot or some other low priority attack could easily justify a no risk 1d6 shot and if you are in a situation like I was v. Niko with a unit of HE knights bearing down on me...3d6 sounds reasonable. The other case is one where you may have rolled too many doubles already, and with the heavily damaged chucker you decide to back off and just throw 1d6, which if your subtracting for being in the red means you probably aren't going to be doing a lot of damage anyway.

There are all kinds of conditions I thought of adding, like die limits for being in the yellow or red, special damage for rolling triples, etc. but this simple variable would get way too convoluted too quickly. If this were a siege game or something maybe, but its not, and I just want a fun little variant. To that end I will propose testing this without any CA's required, and if it seems wrong for whatever reason we can see. I think for the most part I would stick to 2d6 anyway as the ideal balance between effectiveness and risk, and only vary the dice in extremis.

[gull2112]

Statistical testing results
Imagine 5 games, each lasting ten turns and the GBC firing every turn for 3d6. # = Hit Dice, X=doubles!
turn  #1   #2   #3   #4   #5
  1      X    X    12    13    8
  2     10    8    15    12    6
  3     11   11   11     X    10
  4     X     7     9     X      X
  5      8    X     X    12    12
  6      X    X     X     9    12
  7      X    X     X    13     X
  8      7    12    X     9     X
  9      9     X     8    12   12
 10    10     6    10    7    12
        55    44    65   87   72 Total Hit Dice
         6      5     6    8     7  # of successful turns
         9      9    11   11   10 Average Hit Dice per successful shot (adjusted for being in the Yellow or Red)

32 out of 50 non-doubles results = 64% success actual vs. 65.666% expected (one more success would be 66% actual, so right on).

Based on these results I think I would always go with 3 dice. However, note in game 3 that I had 4 turns in a row with no success, with 300 points doing nothing. Originally, I decided to run this trial because, when I started just throwing dice and got mostly doubles, I thought maybe no one would bother using three dice. In the end the numbers work out. Who'd a thunk?

If this is thought too much then I would suggest doubles damage be (total dice rolled-1)= number of hit boxes marked. So on three dice two boxes are marked off. In fact, as I look at this, with this rule the bombchucker wouldn't have fired successfuly after turn 5 4 4 10 10 respectively.

turn  #1   #2   #3   #4   #5
  1      X    X    12    13    8
  2     10    8    15    12    6
  3     11   11   11     X    10
  4     X     7     9     X      X
  5      7    X     X    11    12
  6      X    X     X     8    12
  7      X    X     X    12     X
  8      X    X     X     8     X
  9      X     X     X    11   10
 10     X     X     X     6    10
        28    26    47   81   68 Total Hit Dice
         3      3     4    8     7  # of successful turns
         9      8    11   10   10 Average Hit Dice per successful shot (adjusted for being in the Yellow or Red)

Those numbers seem better.