Sorry if I've not been too comprehensive there - depending on the time of day (or rather, night), I have a tendency to just write what pops up in my mind, occasionally leaving out critical details ...

No worries, I'm sure we all do that at times.

easy and cheap alternate that requires no math: Double Pen of Toughness Bonus, Negates Toughness Bonus completely. =D

easy and cheap alternate that requires no math: Double Pen of Toughness Bonus, Negates Toughness Bonus completely. =D

Works for me!

I already use this for mooks and treat TB+AP as a fallout style "damage threshold" with is negated by pen.

Also not to spam another "I loved inquisitor too" post but the proposed transplant of the damage system was flawed (presumably to keep hold of the critical tables which are great fun to read but terrible to suffer) after armour reduction damage is applied as normal then you divide it by the TB applying location injuries thus bypassing the crit tables entirely. This would be notably more deadly than the Inquisitor game as characters have far lower wounds.

Can you elaborate on the last part? Isn't it rather the other way around, as the Inquisitor system had far smaller Crit tables (usually only 4-5 iirc) than Dark Heresy's 10?

Granted, Inquisitor characters also have about twice the Toughness score of the ones in this system, but this only means about +3 points of damage buffered per Crit level.

Inquisitor characters couldn't die until their injury total reached their toughness value which could often be 30+ (although there was system shock and consciousness values before this) and also he automatically regained some heath each turn in the recovery phase.

An OW guardsman rarely has more than 20 wounds, he doesn't recover anything unless he gets medical attention.

Also Inquisitor didn't have critical tables, it had injuries and they had "you die" results only on body locations with vital organs. Also they weren't cumulative you tracked injuries seperately for each location and added the total for overall tracking.

AS such an INQ characther can have their left arm blown off but the next shot hitting his groin (yes there was a groin location) will be on a fresh location and track location damge seperately. a character can sustain 9 levels of location injury before dying and only has to start test to remain conscious after 5 (or one crippled limb if we assume they all hit the same place.)

In short a tough inquisitor character can take small arms gunfire all day as long as he can heal himself and doesn't mind too much that he's getting crippling injury levels to his various limbs.

Aren't Inquisitor's Injuries pretty much the same thing as DH Crit Tables? You get hit, you suffer an injury effect. You get hit more, you suffer worse effects. And, well, Dark Heresy Critical tables aren't cumulative either - there's one per location, and if you're down to 0 Wounds and get your arm blown off, a groin hit will be tracked on a separate chart just like in INQ.

You're right about the Recovery mechanic, though, and this is something where I actually think Inquisitor was being silly. Hence I did not intend to port this part over. Even though it merely "stabilised" the character by restoring points from the Injury Total, there was also a chance you could negate Injury Levels, and that is just as unrealistic as DH's Skin Armour.

Still, I believe that a thusly modified injury system from Inquisitor would make for a (subjectively of course) better game. It may be somewhat more lethal, but it circumvents the RAW-induced issue of high TB+Pen turning iconic weapons into pea-shooters whilst simultaneously increasing a chance that characters will actually survive combat with injuries, rather than not survive at all.

Under certain circumstances, this model may even be less lethal than DH/OW - weapons that deal particularly massive damage are, as per RAW, only buffered once by TB, whereas in Inquisitor, TB would be applied several times, having you suffer "only" a heavy injury rather than getting slain right away.

In short, it seems the model is certainly more lethal if you allow yourself to get hit by small arms fire again and again - but it can also prevent player characters from getting ripped apart by some particularly dangerous weapon in a single surprising blow. The former is the player's own stupidity (or lack of knowing when it'd be better to flee), whereas the latter could simply be bad luck during an ambush, which would certainly be more frustrating.

For example, let's take an Only War meltagun versus an Imperial Guard soldier with 15 Wounds, AP 3 and TB 4. The player's character has suffered no previous injury and is at full health, but his squad gets surprised and one of the enemies is armed with a melta. Unfortunately, the melta hits and the GM rolls way higher than he wanted, resulting in 27 points of Energy damage.

As per the RAW, such a massive amount of damage would result in an 8 on the Critical table, instantly popping the character's head and having him die right there.

Using these modified Inquisitor rules, however, the 27 points of damage get divided by 4 (the Toughness Bonus) for a total of 6.75, or a result of 7 on the Critical table. Still a heavy injury, but no death.

Obviously that's not a large gap, but it gets larger once applied to characters who are already injured and may not have a huge cushion of Wounds, whereas with Inquisitor, your Toughness Bonus is always there, and thus quickly becomes more useful than a Wound Pool because it doesn't disappear after suffering two or three hits.

I was pointing out that that isn`T how damage worked in inquisitor the total suffered was still recorded in full locations just suffered status effects too.

Also you meltagun example would have killed the guardsman outright in the inquisitor system too. The head location can only take four levels of injury before being crippled and killing the character. On average that`s twelve damage after armour to kill outright.

I dearly love the Inquisitor damage model mostly because of the comedy of almost every first shot in every game I ever played hitting the target`s groin.

Yes, but we are not playing Inquisitor - I was looking for a way to port that system, or rather: parts of it, over to Dark Heresy. Using the Crit tables we already have.

A direct comparison between both systems is iffy as Inquisitor is also using very different stats, including for the meltagun.

If I've been unclear and this led to some sort of misunderstanding, I apologise. It was not my intention to suggest Inquisitor as an alternate system, but merely to suggest a hybrid model of both games when it comes to damage allocation. Hence I've applied Dark Heresy weapon damage to a Dark Heresy character. The only thing I've taken from Inquisitor was the different role of Toughness Bonus.

In regards to the Injury Total, I'm actually still undecided, though. It makes sense to adopt such a mechanic in order to have characters drop dead before looking like Monty Python's Black Knight, but at the same time it'd sacrifice one minor advantage of this system (no more counting Wounds).

Perhaps a simple Toughness Test with penalties reflecting the amount of Injuries a character has accumulated would work as an alternative? Might be more realistic, even.

To be entirely candid I simply prefer the inquisitor injury system, although I always felt system shock was a little too much realism for a big **** heroes RPG.

I liked that that characters could have significant location injuries and not being in danger of dying the next time they got a splinter, instead of having fifteen points of "I`m ok" before being kneecaped matters.

If we discard the critical tables and insteads use the injuries from inquisitor (leaving out the wounds difference and such) you can still have a gritty and cinematic battle scene without the merry air of invincibility that comes with the buffer zone of wound values.

e.g.

TB3 guardsman with 20 wounds in a flak vest AP3

Takes one hit to the right leg and one to the head from a standard OW laspistol

First hit (Right Leg) does 10 damage

Second hit (head) does 5

FFG

10 -0(AP) -3 (TB soak) = 7 damage

5 - 0 - 3 = 2 damage

Wounds remaining: 11 (another few rounds of this and you`ll be in trouble.)

INQ

10 - 0 = 10 damage / 3 = three injury levels (leg to Serious Injury, falls prone, halves all movement and is bleeding)

5 - 0 = 5 damage / 3 = one injury level (head to light injury, Stunned D3 turns)

Wounds remaning: 5 (time to roll up a squad medic, you`ve been floored and rendered helpless in one round.)

This lethal change means an average TB3 guardsman can be effectively crippled by a shot to the leg or killed outright by a headshot using starting level gear (a laspitol in this case), this means wearing full guard issue flak will actually save life and limb for once.

If we discard the critical tables and insteads use the injuries from inquisitor (leaving out the wounds difference and such) you can still have a gritty and cinematic battle scene without the merry air of invincibility that comes with the buffer zone of wound values.

I'm on the fence here as Inquisitor has much smaller Crit tables, leading to heavier injuries that can potentially cripple a character in a single attack (as your example pointed out). I like gritty, but I thought that mixing it with DH's Crit tables (which in essence doubles the "buffer zone") strikes a neat balance between realism and entertainment.

However, I'm sure we all draw our own lines regarding that balance, so this is a very subjective topic.

What I do like about the Inquisitor injury tables is that they are less specific than the DH ones. Some GMs might balk at the concept of having to come up with their own descriptions, but the advantage I see here is that they can tailor said description to what actually occurred in the game, rather than slavishly sticking to a pre-written text that may or may not fit to what just happened to the character.

The notable factor was that in inquisitor your death theshold was your toughness value. (porting this raises problems with the handling of unnatural toughness)

The game also gave methods of going out of action without dying, namely system shock tests on heavy attacks (T/5) and unconsciousness value (T/2) when these are factored in the D3 per turn (on a successful T test) recovery system made a little more sense but these are definately better suited to a tabletop campaign game that a RPG.

It should also be noted that a location could only be healed by making a successful healing action on that location and it couldn't be recover more than two injury levels from it's worst condition without proper (read: hospital, not combat) medical attention and recovery time.

Single shot injury is all the more reason to get in cover supress enemies and act as a squad, the fact you are squishy is a feature of OW not a drawback.

The notable factor was that in inquisitor your death theshold was your toughness value. (porting this raises problems with the handling of unnatural toughness)

Yeah. An idea I had about Unnatural Toughness was to simply turn this into Wounds that a creature or character has before the first Injury is triggered. In essence, only removing Wounds from normal characters or creatures, whereas bigger monsters etc retain a layer of protection you'd have to blast through first before actually starting to harm them.

Personally, I'd be looking to eliminate the current version of Unnatural traits wherever possible. I'm operating on a "if you're stronger, you are stronger" basis, and as much as I keep nagging about how FFGmarines are OP, it's silly that a normal human with 55 Strength has a better chance at pulling open a locked door than a genetically enhanced Astartes with 40 Strength and UT.

But my solution for this would include shifting both the range for starting characteristics and the range for characteristics advances, which would make it start to look like an entirely new game rather than a houserule...

Single shot injury is all the more reason to get in cover supress enemies and act as a squad, the fact you are squishy is a feature of OW not a drawback.

Yes, but I'd still want the game to remain enjoyable. If I wouldn't want to make OW even squishier than it already is in the RAW (which is not a lot), I'd not be looking into porting Inquisitor in the first place - I just hesitate as I don't want to take it "too far".

What would you do about True Grit, then, Lynata?

The first two seem a bit weak, to me. Particularly compared to the current version.

The bonus to Toughness tests reminds me strongly of GURPS, where being reduced to 0 HP forces Health tests every round to not fall unconscious, and passing -1xHP - -4xHP checks against death. (-5xHP being automatic death with very little left)
There are advantages that confer bonuses to those checks and that leads to nice, orky situations where the monster JUST WON'T DIE. I like that idea.

Ignoring the first X levels is neat, but just means that you bring back a few HP for those characters... Not really in favour

The last option I like again. Leaves weak attacks useful while making you appropriately tough against the big stuff.

I haven't given this much thought so it could be a very silly/stupid statement but how about also making TB determine the amount of health points that can be used to block damage and the remaining damage goes to critical damage.

So :

1) roll for damage

2) subtract AP from damage

3) subtract TB from damage

4) subtract health points equal to TB (max) from damage (and from your total health points)

(Optionally: Divide damage by TB, round up )

5) Remaining damage goes to critical damage

Well in the case of the Eviscerator, when are you ever going to be charging a tank with a melee weapon? That doesn't sound like the smartest idea, considering many have pintle weapons and side sponsons, not to mention a turret and hull weapon. 2d10 sounds like a lot, and with the high pen, it will do all the damage you roll.

Unless, of course, you can't seem to do any damage because somehow their skin is more durable than the armor they wear, and you simply can't penetrate that.

I have a priest player whose done it twice, dived onto a troop transport, cut it open and ****** up everyone inside haha

The current system is so "fine, fine, fine, dead." especially because of dodge, many hits don't do anything.

The divide system could need a bit of work, it means that increasing toughness bonus provides a BIG bonus, because maths.

On a hunch, how about if a character with True Grit would round incurred damage (after it was divided by TB) down instead of up - but only for the purpose of determining additional injury levels after the first?

Easier, less convoluted version of this would be that True Grit simply reduces any injury levels received by 1, to a minimum of 1.

Alternatively, or in addition to the above, True Grit could confer a bonus to Tests against unconsciousness or death that are rolled as a result of the total number of injury levels accumulated.

Both good i think

I don't understand how people can see OW as deadly, I am running a Final Testament campaign as well and if the players just think and use some kind of tactic (really, any reasonable tactic) they kick the ass of anything... And when they are in a bloddy Chimera, I hate that vehicle, there is not much in the orc armory that can penetrate the front of the chimera and the chimera has really nasty weapons.

My players was close to death once, and then they decided to divide in two groups so one group went down an elevator and had to be only 2 players again **** loads of enemies, but they still prevailed

So OW is in no way deadly, i really want to make the system a lot deadlier, i want my players to really fear the battle field and if there is a cover close by you just want to sit behind it and cry during the whole battle. But right now they just run around and really kick the ass of my NPCs...My orcs NEVER make it into melee with the player and the orcs really really suck on range.

So frustrating!

My orcs NEVER make it into melee with the player and the orcs really really suck on range.

From personal experience, I'd say that's not so bad. Orks really wreck stuff in melee, and ultimately you only want to scare your players rather than kill them. As such, the "sweet spot" is ranged combat where the Orks either pelt the Guardsmen with so many bullets that people are at risk by sheer volume of fire, or the Orks charge them 'Umies and it comes down to the soldiers desperately trying to drop their foes before they reach their ranks.

That being said, you could also create an interesting situation by placing the PCs in the second line, and have the first one overrun by the Greenskins. Will they open fire, possibly risking to hit their comrades...?

Confession time: once I accidentally roasted another PC's leg with a plasma gun. ;_;

... although that kinda brings me back to the lethalty / injury mechanics of this game, as that shot really just gave him a nice tan.