Rules Skills too awesome to exist: Hail Mary Pass(revised)

[Murderholic]

today, I wanna talk about making changes to an existing skill: the hail mary pass.

What's wrong with it?
Does anybody use this skill in it's current form? I don't. Do you? As far as I know, this a completely ignored skill in its current form. I think the problem with it is that if you're a high agility team, you prolly prefer to try a legitamate pass. If you're a low agility team, you probably already said to yourself "i'm not passing with this team unless I absolutely have to" anyway.

The change:
Hail Mary Pass - When you throw an inaccurate pass, the ball will only scatter 1 square instead of 3. You may not use this skill while in opposing tackle zones. * revised on march 5

Pros: in essence this skill lets anyone throw an inaccurate pass or better on a 2+ regardless of agility. It also guarantees that the ball will scatter adjacent to the receiver on inacurate passes, so if the receiver has the diving catch skill, it triggers 100% of the time, assuming the ball doesn't scatter onto another player.

Cons: the skill loses it's ability to ignore intercepts, and since it's functioning within a normal pass attempt, it loses some range. The skill also has some negative synergy with other passing skills and agility upgrades since the better you are at throwing accurate passes, the less valuable this skill is. Lastly, I made sure people couldn't use this skill to just launch the ball when surrounded by bad guys.

Why? Okay purely as a football simulater, the idea of professional athletes fumbling a throw 50% of the time is flat out rediculous. The skill as it is seems worthless. Also, diving catch seems weak to me as well, because the main ability hardly ever triggers EVEN WHEN AN INACCURATE PASS HAPPENS. personally, if I took a skill specifically for the purpose of trying to catch inaccurate passes, I deserve to use that skill 100% of the time on an inaccurate passes.

A long time ago, I ran the math on the diving catch skill, and concluded that diving catch only triggers 46% of the time with the current 3 square scatter mechanic on inaccurate passes*. That's way too low in my book.

*http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/brett-anderson/blood-bowl-skill-statistics-article-1/11760115198
link to an old old blog post on diving catch (warning, very math heavy)

 

[Dalryk]

As a goblin coach I like HMP just the way it is, thanks. Nothing like chucking a bomb the length of the field to take out a ball carrier

 

[Limdood]

the new HMP would make any catcher that can pull a 4AG and diving catch into a passing team to rival elves.

Oh look! my norse runner got +AG!, next level: Diving catch!
Norse thrower: New HMP

Now my norse can throw on a 2+ and catch on a 3+ (or 2+ if the first roll happens to be a 6 and land on the player).

It basically gives non-agile teams a 1-skill way to be nearly as good as elves.

In its current incarnation, HMP is useful for goblin bombers, for less agile or slower teams that need to solidify a win when they're already up, or for a team that has a man downfield and wants to punish someone for overcommitting on ball hunting. My first game against Phunbaba's ogres in CTALE would have avoided the loss if i had a HMP player on the field.

Your comment about fumbling 50% of the time is...wierd...i don't know where you get it from. In professional american football, if you're waiting for your players to get far enough downfield to make a super long pass, then you're fumbling or getting sacked more often than 50%. If you're making quick or short passes, which is the majority of football plays, then you're chance to avoid a fumble (in Blood bowl) is 35/36 with the pass skill, since those won't fumble on a 2 or higher and get a skill reroll. It might not be an accurate pass, but that also is realistic.

Finally, on the subject of diving catch. #1: diving catch is most often taken on AG3 catchers (like humans) for the +1 to catch accurate passes. A 43% chance to use the skill is otherwise on par with most other skills. Pro works 50% of the time. Block only works when a is rolled. Tackle only does anything to players with dodge. Dump-off only works when your player has the ball and gets hit. Most of these aren't activating very often. Tackle doesn't do much to dwarves, block doesn't work when you don't roll s, etc. In its current incarnation, Diving catch seems to be a skill for 3AG catchers to take to turn them into elves, but with a couple minor added perks (which also tend to come up more often when you have AG3 throwers throwing the ball!) on inaccurate passes, crowd throw ins, and kickoffs.

 

[Coach]

I'm not a fan of this. You've crippled the main function of Hail Mary being that anyone can lob the ball anywhere on the pitch which is great for defence, especially some of the weaker teams like Goblins.

It also makes long bombs far too reliable, especially for the standard Hail Mary punt and chase ploy. Send some receivers down the pitch and you can more accurately place the ball and perhaps have someone in a group catch it which wouldn't cause a turnover. Even if no one catches it you can guarantee it will be in at least 1 tackle zone.

It is of course even more lethal against slow and low agility teams.

I can't see your Facebook content but there is an article on here for ball scatter odds Inaccurate Scatter Odds | Blood Bowl Tactics

I also agree your logic of realism is flawed and also game rules and mechanics shouldn't be based on realism anyway. There isn't a comparable sport to compare it against and some things are done for game play reasons, like the intercept roll being done before the pass roll.

 

[Narly Bird]

Regardless of what Dalryk says, this skill would actually be a godsend to stunty teams. You can throw a goblin/halfling/snottling even on a roll of a 1. And it reduces the scatter too. So it would make TTM plays waaaayyyyy more viable.

I agree that in its current form nobody takes it. Maybe a better idea than changing the skill would be to change some of the positionals on different teams so that they have it as a starting skill?

 

[Coach]

Hail Mary doesn't work with Throw Team Mate, you are restricted to Quick and Short passes.

 

[danton]

Yeah, I don't think this is a good idea.

Hail Mary is hardly taken, but that doesn't mean it's a bad skill for some teams to take. Really it's main function is to work like a punt rather than as a throw and I would be more in favour of just renaming it to punt like it used to be! Either that, or make it part of the Kick skill!

In terms of how hard passing is in this game in general compared to "real sports", I think that most people simply overlook the fact that the ball is covered in spikes!

If you think about it, trying to quickly pick up, pass, or catch a ball that is covered in spikes, while other people are actively trying to kill you, is not something that even professional athletes from the real world would find easy to do!!

 

[Murderholic]

I revised the skill to remove the reduced fumble mechanic, and now it would only improve the scatter roll. I did some number crunching, and found that once you had the HMP + DC combo, taking accurate and strong arm only added marginal benifits (3% success). This puts it back to a place where you need all 3 skills to throw good long bombs, and HMP would prolly be the last of the 3 to take, since it has little value for short range passing.

I did like the idea of saving the old HMP mechanic, and rolling it in with the kick skill as a package deal. It could also be interesting if old and new HMP could interact as a combo.

As for the goblin bombadier, I would think the reduced scatter mechanic would mean that the bomb could be placed much more accurately (hitting the primary target 100% of the time due to a 1 square scatter), so I think that's a good example of someone having a knee jerk reaction without thinking it through and realizing the bombardier arguably gets an amazing buff with this revision

cheers

oh and here's another link to the old blod (yes the blog exits in multiple places lol)
http://brettskiadventures.blogspot.ca/2007/09/blood-bowl-skill-statistics-article-1.html

 

[Coach]

It isn't a knee jerk reaction, Hail Mary Bombardiers can sit back 1 square from their end zone and just throw bombs anywhere on the pitch.

 

[Limdood]

having your favorite team get an amazing buff isn't always a good thing. the bomber is fine in its current implementation.

Also, again, it still boggles my mind that people think HMP is a passing skill. HMP just happens to be listed in the passing category, but it is really 100% (ok, maybe 90%, considering the use on goblin bombers) a defensive skill - used to secure a draw or a win....or just buying time by hucking the ball super far down the field and making slow or average speed teams run all the way back for the ball.

it DOESN'T NEED to be a skill to improve passing....those skills already exist (and you've been naming them throughout the thread! - Accurate and Strong arm). Turning HMP into a "this skill improves passing" skill is just taking AWAY something from the game, and adding an unneeded and redundant skill to make passing better (of which two already exist!).

 

[Altashheth]

hail mary pass is an awesome desperation skill.... I read on an underworld thread a lovely idea for a goblin with bighand to run in, pick up the ball and then hoof it down field....

 

[Deluge]

I really like the idea of removing HMP and kick skills and adding the skill "Punt". Simply combine the two, as doing a HMP is pretty much the same as kicking the ball with kick. I can't really see how this would unbalance anything, but if HMP was altered into what you suggested, then I have to agree with Coach, it would be a two skill way to elf play for nearly anyone