Its good stuff but for the 1 dice flail results you have 7 results all listing 16.6% chance. Shouldn't the result of +1 to combat score still be a 0 result.
Its maintained something i've always felt, that the flail definitely isn't a very effective hand to hand weapon. It's interesting to see that after 3 attacks the benefits become smaller and smaller (if i've got it right) for a hand to hand focussed fighter.
Ahhh the fun of copy/paste errors. You're right, it's impossible to have 116.6% chance. The '1' field should be 0, not sure how that happened. Surprised anyone caught that actually, thanks for looking through it.
And yes, you kind of have it right. As the number of dice increases, the average bonus of each dice decreases. From 1 to 2 dice, there is an average bonus of 0.84 (4.17-3.33). From 2 to 3 dice the bonus is 0.37. It keeps getting better, but the average number increases slower and slower. The average score suffers from diminishing returns.
However for a flail, the average number increases from 1 to 2, and 2 to 3, and 3 to 4 (barely), but then after that, further dice actually hurt your chance to hit. The more dice you have beyond 4, the more chance of you rolling 1's and losing any actual bonus from the multiple dice.
Now, these are just the average numbers. For a standard weapon, the average chance increases from 3.33 to 4.17. A pretty big bonus, but nothing too eye popping, just looking at the average. But if you look at the chances of the individual numbers, you will see the real benefit. The chance of rolling terribly, aka a 2 or less on one dice is 33.3%. The chance of rolling that badly on two dice is 15%. The chance of rolling that terribly on 3 dice is 10%. So while the average number doesn't climb very quickly, what I really see it as is a vastly increased chance of not rolling absolutely terribly. That's why I showed the percentages for each individual score, and not just the aggregate average.
One thing I must point out.
This does not at all take into account the flails ability to negate parries. Sure the flail might on average roll worse than a standard weapon, but that roll of yours cannot be parried and made even worse. So when using a flail against an opponent with a sword, there is a bonus to it's average effectiveness as compared to a standard weapon. But if you are just fighting a non-parrying model, a standard weapon is more likely to hit than a chain/flail. But because parrying requires player decision, and you can't do math based on decisions without solid rules to base it off of, and because parrying is very situational in it's use, I don't want to do math dealing with parries.
Even after all this math, I still use chains and flails on certain models. Because it only requires one hand, but makes you unable to use another hand to hand weapon, it's pretty decent for a model carrying a basic or a special weapon. I typically give chains to shotgunners, due to only having one free hand, and the shorter range of the shotgun drawing them more often into hand to hand combat. Chains/flails are also cheaper and easier to get for most gangs. And finally, I use them just because I like the flavor of them, the idea of whipping around a chain in a fight and crushing people under it's weight. Because despite this thread of mine all about numbers, I really believe Necromunda should not be about min-maxing.
