How Age of Sigmar Dice Odds Work

By Shakeel Muzaffar, reviewed by Prof. Dr. Khalil Mudassar, PhD. Last updated 2026-10-05.

Ever thrown a fistful of dice in Warhammer Age of Sigmar and wondered why your unit did far less than you hoped? The math is friendlier than it looks. Every attack is a short chain of d6 rolls, and each roll has a clean chance you can work out before the dice even land.

How the Age of Sigmar Attack Sequence Works

Every attack in Age of Sigmar 4th edition resolves the same way: a hit roll, a wound roll, a save roll, then damage. Each roll uses one d6, and the roll succeeds when it meets or beats a target number. An unmodified 1 always fails, and an unmodified 6 always succeeds.

Here is what happens, step by step. First you roll to hit against the weapon’s Hit value. Pass it, and you roll to wound against the Wound value. Pass that, and the defender rolls a save, but they subtract the weapon’s Rend from their result. If the save fails, the attack deals the weapon’s Damage.

A ward is a separate side save. After a failed save, the defender rolls a d6 for each point of damage, and any roll at or above the ward value removes that point. A ward cannot be modified and is never affected by Rend. You can run any warscroll through the Age of Sigmar dice calculator to see these odds instantly.

How To Turn a Dice Target Into a Probability

The short answer is one tidy formula. For a d6 target of T with no modifier, the chance of success is (7 minus T) divided by 6. A 3+ needs a 3, 4, 5, or 6, which is 4 of the 6 faces, so the chance is 4/6.

Because an unmodified 1 always fails and an unmodified 6 always succeeds, the chance is boxed in. It can never drop below 1/6 and never rise above 5/6, no matter how strong the buff or debuff. Here are the common targets you will meet most often:

• 2+: 5/6, about 83 percent
• 3+: 4/6, about 67 percent
• 4+: 3/6, exactly 50 percent
• 5+: 2/6, about 33 percent
• 6+: 1/6, about 17 percent

One rule keeps this clean in 4th edition: hit and wound modifiers are capped at plus or minus 1. So a hit roll can shift by one target number at most, which keeps the odds inside that same 1/6 to 5/6 band.

How Rend Changes Your Save Odds

Rend makes a save harder by subtracting from the defender’s save roll. A save still passes when the final result meets the Save value, but Rend pushes the needed natural roll higher. Importantly, Rend is not subject to the plus or minus 1 cap that limits hit and wound modifiers.

Take a Save of 4+. With no Rend, it passes on a natural 4, 5, or 6, which is 3/6. Apply Rend 1 and the defender needs a natural 5 or 6, dropping the save to 2/6. Apply Rend 2 and only a natural 6 saves, which is 1/6. The table makes the slide clear.

For the attacker, a saved attack is a failed attack, so you want the save to hold as rarely as possible. That is why Rend is prized: it chips directly at the one step the defender controls.

How To Calculate Expected Damage

Expected damage is the average damage a weapon deals over many identical rounds. For a simple weapon with no crit ability, the formula multiplies the number of attacks by each step’s success chance, then by the Damage value.

In plain terms: Expected damage = Attacks x P(hit) x P(wound) x P(fail save) x Damage. Each probability comes from the (7 minus T) over 6 rule, with Rend folded into the save step. The result is an average, so it assumes the d6 rolls are independent of one another.

Work a full example. Say 10 attacks, Hit 3+, Wound 3+, Rend 1 against a 4+ save, and Damage 1, with no ward. P(hit 3+) is 4/6 and P(wound 3+) is 4/6. A 4+ save against Rend 1 holds only on a natural 5 or 6, so P(save) is 2/6 and P(fail save) is 4/6.

Now multiply: 10 x 4/6 x 4/6 x 4/6 x 1 = 640/216 = 2.96 damage. So this unit deals about 2.96 wounds on average, and its single most likely result is 3. The live tool returns 2.96 for these same inputs, so you can check your own warscrolls the same way.

What Critical Hits Do to Your Odds

A critical hit is an unmodified 6 on the hit roll. It always lands, and it triggers whatever Crit ability the weapon carries. There are three common versions, and each one bends the usual sequence in a different way.

• Crit (2 Hits): the single hit becomes 2 hits, and you make a wound roll for each one.
• Crit (Auto-wound): the attack skips the wound roll and counts as a wound, though the defender still gets a save.
• Crit (Mortal): the attack inflicts mortal damage equal to the weapon’s Damage, and the attack sequence ends. This bypasses the wound and save rolls, but the defender may still take a ward save.

These abilities raise expected damage above the simple formula, which is why warscrolls with strong crits punch harder than their base stats suggest. The chart below shows the shape of results for the earlier 10-attack example, so you can see why the average and the most likely roll both sit near 3.

Two caveats are worth stating plainly. These are 4th-edition rules from 2024 onward, and the number of Attacks always comes from the warscroll, which is your input. Expected values also assume each d6 roll is independent, which is the standard way to model dice.

For dice math in other games, try the 40k visual dice calculator or the D&D dice calculator. To reason about drawing cards or models without replacement, the hypergeometric calculator helps, and you can browse the whole set of gaming calculators.

FAQs About Age of Sigmar Dice Odds

Sources and Further Reading

These figures follow the Warhammer Age of Sigmar 4th-edition Core Rules and assume independent d6 rolls. Reviewed for accuracy by Prof. Dr. Khalil Mudassar, PhD. Last updated 2026-10-05.