The trouble I have with taking all this (or perhaps certain individuals) seriously are the constant remarks that the current system is supposedly a big pile of ****. I haven't noticed most of the gripes listed here in my games to be any significant problem tbh.

To me it just seems like you're just nitpicking the hell out of it, just out of disappointment that DH2 didn't do any actual overhaul of the whole system. I'm sorry, but there it is.

Yes, it's not perfect and there are newer systems. Yes I agree that a system that's completely tailored to a game would play smoother. Is the current system bad? No, far from it, it's still pretty good, but with everything there is always room for improvement.

So discuss away, but please stop the bashing. I find it to be very disrespectful to the people who developed this game.

The trouble I have with taking all this (or perhaps certain individuals) seriously are the constant remarks that the current system is supposedly a big pile of ****. I haven't noticed most of the gripes listed here in my games to be any significant problem tbh.

To me it just seems like you're just nitpicking the hell out of it, just out of disappointment that DH2 didn't do any actual overhaul of the whole system. I'm sorry, but there it is.

I can speak only for myself, but yeah, you're basically right. That said, it is fun to pick apart the system and lay out what kind of weirdness the rules as written can lead to. If you don't like what I post, do as several other posters have done and put me on ignore.

So discuss away, but please stop the bashing. I find it to be very disrespectful to the people who developed this game.

Engaging in an analysis of a system is not disrespectful. This isn't an area where if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. They made some bad choices in DH2 and looking only at the silver lining is pointless. It's not personal.

I mentioned it a bit above, but how are you going to determine this difficulty? By the average human? What about trained skills, like tech-use? Is difficulty based on the average human, the average tech-user, or is it arbitrary? Think of having a space marine with 110 strength. He'll automatically succeed at most strength rolls. However, the game is under an assumption that fun gameplay involves succeeding at a much lower rate. So you suddenly have a character who is breaking the assumed success rate conpletely. Suddenly, what may be considered an interesting task is trivially easy and you then have to look at what an interesting task is for a space marine but then base the difficulty on a human. Basically, one of the assumptions must get ciolated for non-humans with crazy abilities to be started out.

Yes, the average human. Trained skills, implants, etc would all be "specialist" stuff, thus rewarding people who develop their characters along a certain route with a greater or in some cases almost guaranteed chance for success. The challenge for the GM would be to include a sufficiently variety in encounters so that all characters in the group find a moment to shine, as well as providing alternative options for when they botch a roll or are not confident enough to even try it (or simply can't think of what you had originally planned). This is how it's already working right now - I see Marine implants as being no different than Skills and Talents and Traits that provide a greater chance for success in certain tests.

That Space Marine with 110* Strength would become the group's go-to guy for whenever they need a door kicked in or something heavy lifted, but let's be honest - how often do you have tests like that in your game? I think it'd be okay to reward this character with auto-successes on most such trivial tasks, as well as - being a "specialist" for Strength-based tests - unlocking alternative solutions that may not have been available to the group otherwise, such as forcing open a blast-resistant airlock with their bare hands. Isn't this kind of how it already worked in normal games of Dark Heresy where you had specialists like the Adept or the Tech-Priest?

Certain tests - let's call them Legendary Challenges for dramatic flair - might have a difficulty beyond "-100". These would be meant mostly for Space Marines or other augmented characters, and usually impossible to accomplish by anyone else, but under some circumstances they might be possible to pull off by normal humans if they roll really, really well and stack a lot of modifiers (Fate use, teamwork, the whole works).

*: alternatively, lower everyone's maximal characteristics score and decrease the gap, like so ->

• make normal humans start at around ~30 (20 +1d5 + homeworld modifiers)
• characteristics advances are 5 x +3, having them cap out at ~45 for Ascension-level play
• Marines have Strength and Toughness start at ~50 (50 + 1d5)
• these characteristics advances are 5 x +2, having them cap out at ~60 for Ascension-level play

Doesn't change much about the above, but it'd fit to the idea of keeping everyone's characteristics below 100.

The trouble I have with taking all this (or perhaps certain individuals) seriously are the constant remarks that the current system is supposedly a big pile of ****. I haven't noticed most of the gripes listed here in my games to be any significant problem tbh.

To me it just seems like you're just nitpicking the hell out of it, just out of disappointment that DH2 didn't do any actual overhaul of the whole system. I'm sorry, but there it is.

Yes, it's not perfect and there are newer systems. Yes I agree that a system that's completely tailored to a game would play smoother. Is the current system bad? No, far from it, it's still pretty good, but with everything there is always room for improvement.

So discuss away, but please stop the bashing. I find it to be very disrespectful to the people who developed this game.

I have my honest appraisal of the game and what it means to people with different expectations. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that the system works and runs, but doesn't do a good job of fostering the gameplay implied by the fluff. In that manner, yes it is a bad system. It's not garbage, but it's the equivalent of getting a USB drive with 128mb on it: outdated and much less useful in comparison to contemporary USB drives.

And like CPS said, criticizing the system is not inherently disrespectful. How else do we get feedback to FFG than by talking about our concerns and issues? It's important to get these voices out there. Even if someone thinks the system is a painful chore to run ( another example: it's like running an older version of a program with a poor user interface when there are better UIs available), that's feedback the developers should hear. The stories people tell about what happened in their game are great for the people writing the fluff and setting. The game designers need to hear about people's actual experience with the game, which is to myself and others frequently difficult to run and distracting from roleplaying.

I mentioned it a bit above, but how are you going to determine this difficulty? By the average human? What about trained skills, like tech-use? Is difficulty based on the average human, the average tech-user, or is it arbitrary? Think of having a space marine with 110 strength. He'll automatically succeed at most strength rolls. However, the game is under an assumption that fun gameplay involves succeeding at a much lower rate. So you suddenly have a character who is breaking the assumed success rate conpletely. Suddenly, what may be considered an interesting task is trivially easy and you then have to look at what an interesting task is for a space marine but then base the difficulty on a human. Basically, one of the assumptions must get ciolated for non-humans with crazy abilities to be started out.

Yes, the average human. Trained skills, implants, etc would all be "specialist" stuff, thus rewarding people who develop their characters along a certain route with a greater or in some cases almost guaranteed chance for success. The challenge for the GM would be to include a sufficiently variety in encounters so that all characters in the group find a moment to shine, as well as providing alternative options for when they botch a roll or are not confident enough to even try it (or simply can't think of what you had originally planned). This is how it's already working right now - I see Marine implants as being no different than Skills and Talents and Traits that provide a greater chance for success in certain tests.

That Space Marine with 110* Strength would become the group's go-to guy for whenever they need a door kicked in or something heavy lifted, but let's be honest - how often do you have tests like that in your game? I think it'd be okay to reward this character with auto-successes on most such trivial tasks, as well as - being a "specialist" for Strength-based tests - unlocking alternative solutions that may not have been available to the group otherwise, such as forcing open a blast-resistant airlock with their bare hands. Isn't this kind of how it already worked in normal games of Dark Heresy where you had specialists like the Adept or the Tech-Priest?

Certain tests - let's call them Legendary Challenges for dramatic flair - might have a difficulty beyond "-100". These would be meant mostly for Space Marines or other augmented characters, and usually impossible to accomplish by anyone else, but under some circumstances they might be possible to pull off by normal humans if they roll really, really well and stack a lot of modifiers (Fate use, teamwork, the whole works).

*: alternatively, lower everyone's maximal characteristics score and decrease the gap, like so ->

• make normal humans start at around ~30 (20 +1d10 + homeworld modifiers)
• characteristics advances are 5 x +3, having them cap out at ~45 for Ascension-level play
• Marines have Strength and Toughness start at ~50 (45 + 1d10)
• these characteristics advances are 5 x +2, having them cap out at ~60 for Ascension-level play

Doesn't change much about the above, but it'd fit to the idea of keeping everyone's characteristics below 100.

This still doesn't answer the fact that difficulty adjustment and cause for actually rolling are based on nebulous concepts that may at times be mutually exclusive to each other.

That and the basic premise behind percentile chances of success is based in old war games for naval combat. Back in the day, ships actually knew their hit percentages (out of thousands of shells fired), which were used for naval war games. This in turn was used for land army war games, which was in turn used for fantasy wargames, and finally the assumption made it to Dungeons & Dragons. This carried over assumption is why we now arguments about how many attacks are made in a round, how many bullets fired, and all this other nonsense. Hit Points in turn you have taken from war games allowing te fighting strength of a unit of multiple troops to be taken out (hence why wizards were low HP; they're based on artillery units that a single good shot would disable). Suddenly you see how most of the debates over rpg combat are due to assumptions being carried over from wargames, then continued with ad infinitum.

The point of all that is that using a percentage chance for a roll is based on an assumption of thousands of attempts being made in a battle, rather than a single one-and-done. So you suddenly violate that old assumption with many games, including Dark Heresy. In addition, those percentages are for a very specific thing (naval bombardment), which is nowhere near the same as something like "tech-use" or "sneaking." Some newer RPGs have replaced the binary success and failure with chances of good or bad things happening, which make more sense and are designed to fit roleplaying rather than trying to shoehorn roleplaying into another system.

In other words, showing differences between humans and non-humans via chance of success is a poor way of reflecting those differences, as well as the effect that equipment of other modifiers have on ability.

This still doesn't answer the fact that difficulty adjustment and cause for actually rolling are based on nebulous concepts that may at times be mutually exclusive to each other.

Those nebulous concepts are still the same ones we already had in DH1, though. And they aren't really that different from deciding on d20 target numbers, are they?

The rulebook already covers test difficulties by assigning a specific modifier to a difficulty description, whose name implies it is based on the bog standard human without skills and talents. All that Skills, Talents and Traits do is allowing specialists to get better at overcoming these challenges. Isn't this one of any P&P RPG's most basic principles?

I also don't see how these concepts can be mutually exclusive. As a GM, you have total control over the world. If you don't wish players to go through a door, it's up to you to determine whether or not it is possible, or whether there is a door in the first place. Players come up with crazyideas all the time - the GM has to be clever to find reasonable/logical ways to explain why something wouldn't work, if they really feel like the players shouldn't progress down that path (although a better approach may be to just roll with it and adapt/improvise as you go).

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, though - can you expand on where exactly you see the problem?

Basically, what I'm saying is that you could have a set of normal challenges as well as a few insanely difficult ones where only specialists have a chance at succeeding. If the specialist fails or the players lack it, they just need to find another way. The test difficulties are all based on in-universe realism, just their placement is based on your narrative. As a GM, it's up to you to decide how thick and heavy that door is, what material it's made of, and whether or not it's maglocked or welded shut.

Or is this just about the test difficulty names, meaning that you don't let people roll by saying "+/-X" but rather provide the name for the test, and are irritated by how a "Challenging" test is not actually challenging for a true specialist?

... hmm, that would remind me of a similar topic in the Dragon Age RPG where I proposed adjusting test nomenclature based on the characters' progression ...

As for d100 as a percentile success chance - I don't actually care where it originates from, as the many modifiers that get slapped onto people's characteristics as well as the tests themselves don't let it feel like a percentile system at all. Personally, I regard it more along the very simple idea of "it has more numbers than d20". It could be d50 for all I care, it still wouldn't change anything about the application of the game's mechanics.

Not that it's my favourite system, mind you. I really like the 3d6 AGE. But I'd go as far as saying d100 is a close second.

Nimsim covered most of what I was getting at. FFG's Star Wars system is really, really good, but it doesn't have rules to address the main themes of 40k. They know how to make a good system, but they chose to re-release an old system without fixing any of the core problems with it.

It is my firm belief that the example of D&D 4E ended radical changes in game systems that sell well for a long time. I can totally understand, especially in light of the beta why FFG wanted to go safe on DH2.

DH2 is a (slight) incremental imprivement of OW and a rather big (but still incremental) improvement of DH1 ans my guess is that's exqvtly what they were aiming for.

Which is a **** shame, because 4E was a solid tactical combat RPG.

DH2 being a slight, incremental improvement of a previous game is, in my opinion, damning with faint praise.

If you are an apple seller and one day you stop stocking apples and replace them with oranges, odds are your customers aren't going to be happy. Start marketing your oranges as 'new and improved apples' and start explaining how your previous apples were so bad and they will be downright pissed. WotC tried selling 4E as 'D&D' to a group of people for whom 4E clearly registered as 'not D&D'.

For us DH might be just a game, but for somebody at FFG is the way he pays his bills. He tried something he thought he was cool (1st beta) and didn't received the review he had hoped. If he had gone through with it and failed, he'd be out of a job. So he chose the safe way out. Can you really blame this guy?

If you are an apple seller and one day you stop stocking apples and replace them with oranges, odds are your customers aren't going to be happy. Start marketing your oranges as 'new and improved apples' and start explaining how your previous apples were so bad and they will be downright pissed. WotC tried selling 4E as 'D&D' to a group of people for whom 4E clearly registered as 'not D&D'.

This is a bad analogy because apples are a resource that is gained and lost while RPG books don't change once they're printed and purchased. If you owned one eternal apple there'd never be a reason to buy another identical product because you can just eat your apple forever and ever. So the apple vendor has to cook up new breeds of apples to get apple consumers to continue to purchase apples. Such creativity has its limit, and once everyone who buys apples has all the apples they need, there's no more market. So your apple vendor has to find new products to sell.

Actually, maybe this is the perfect analogy for D&D 4E. The people who were mad about 4E wanted to go on eating the same old apple forever - D&D 3/3.5. When WotC saw that they were running out of novel apple breeds, they had to make something else, something that didn't taste like the apples people were used to (which I would argue but that's a different story).

But since RPG books don't change once you buy them, those people can go on eating the same old apple, year after year.

For us DH might be just a game, but for somebody at FFG is the way he pays his bills. He tried something he thought he was cool (1st beta) and didn't received the review he had hoped. If he had gone through with it and failed, he'd be out of a job. So he chose the safe way out. Can you really blame this guy?

"the guy" Come on, man. This wasn't one guy's call of whether to put his job on the line over a new game. It was a business decision, nobody disputes that.

If you are an apple seller and one day you stop stocking apples and replace them with oranges, odds are your customers aren't going to be happy. Start marketing your oranges as 'new and improved apples' and start explaining how your previous apples were so bad and they will be downright pissed. WotC tried selling 4E as 'D&D' to a group of people for whom 4E clearly registered as 'not D&D'.

This is a bad analogy because apples are a resource that is gained and lost while RPG books don't change once they're printed and purchased. If you owned one eternal apple there'd never be a reason to buy another identical product because you can just eat your apple forever and ever. So the apple vendor has to cook up new breeds of apples to get apple consumers to continue to purchase apples. Such creativity has its limit, and once everyone who buys apples has all the apples they need, there's no more market. So your apple vendor has to find new products to sell.

Actually, maybe this is the perfect analogy for D&D 4E. The people who were mad about 4E wanted to go on eating the same old apple forever - D&D 3/3.5. When WotC saw that they were running out of novel apple breeds, they had to make something else, something that didn't taste like the apples people were used to (which I would argue but that's a different story).

But since RPG books don't change once you buy them, those people can go on eating the same old apple, year after year.

For us DH might be just a game, but for somebody at FFG is the way he pays his bills. He tried something he thought he was cool (1st beta) and didn't received the review he had hoped. If he had gone through with it and failed, he'd be out of a job. So he chose the safe way out. Can you really blame this guy?

"the guy" Come on, man. This wasn't one guy's call of whether to put his job on the line over a new game. It was a business decision, nobody disputes that.

Business decisions often rest on the shoulder of one guy. Yes, there's market research, discussions, etc., but somebody gets the final 'yay' or 'nay' say, and is usually the one blamed for it if it fails.

I get it! Some people didn't like the direction DH2 took! You didn't like it during the beta, you don't like it now! That's cool! And yet, you are still here! Ergo; it can't be THAT BAD! These more "modern" gaming systems I keep hearing about are simply a difference in style. They are not necessarily in all ways better or worse! That's a matter of personal opinion! For my personal opinion, I think DH2 turned out alright! Perfect? Certainly not!

The Idea that the apples and oranges analogy is bad is the change for change sake argument. Tired of apples? Fine! Eat something else! But berating the apple stand owner because he doesn't sell grapes is pretty silly! Not everyone is tired of apples! Apparently, a lot of people still eat a whole bunch of them!

Extending that to FFG: You're right, it wasn't one guy! It was a business decision. It's the same thing though... Wizards lost a huge percentage of their market share trying to accomodate the "something new" crowd! I know the people in that crowd don't want to admit it but there it is! In order for something new to sell it must be inherently better! (AKA D&D 3rd ed. vs. 2nd.) If it is not, (AKA DH2 beta1) it will not succeed. You can hardly blame FFG for recognizing this and making corrections!

Another example of this was Mechwarrior 3rd ed. Anyone remember a company called FASA? After mechwarrior 3rd ed. tanked, the company failed and simply went away. Are they related? I'm pretty sure it was! It's not much consolation that the Battletech IP has continued on if you were one of the people that lost their job at FASA!

I get it! Some people didn't like the direction DH2 took! You didn't like it during the beta, you don't like it now! That's cool! And yet, you are still here! Ergo; it can't be THAT BAD! These more "modern" gaming systems I keep hearing about are simply a difference in style. They are not necessarily in all ways better or worse! That's a matter of personal opinion! For my personal opinion, I think DH2 turned out alright! Perfect? Certainly not!

This. I mean That Bad is still bad, which obviously isn't good, but no one said DH2 was perfect.

I get it! Some people didn't like the direction DH2 took! You didn't like it during the beta, you don't like it now! That's cool! And yet, you are still here! Ergo; it can't be THAT BAD! These more "modern" gaming systems I keep hearing about are simply a difference in style. They are not necessarily in all ways better or worse! That's a matter of personal opinion! For my personal opinion, I think DH2 turned out alright! Perfect? Certainly not!

I think this being all about personal preferences is something we can all agree on - if it wasn't obvious already.

The thing with criticism of this sort is that it's born not out of scorn or spite, but emotional attachment to the franchise, and subjectively disappointed hopes. People want the company to succeed because they have high hopes for the product they aim to create. This kind of involvement is a double-edged sword, however: on one hand it creates brand loyalty, whilst on the other you will end up with some pretty vocal fans, all of whom have their own ideas on where to take the IP next. "It would have been so good if [...]"

Of course, most of this isn't actually FFG's doing but rather GW's, yet they still have to deal with this "boon and curse" thing all the same. And the more said fans feel let down about the designers and/or writers not catering to their own preferences, the more vocal they'll be. In a way, cps "still being here" doesn't actually have anything to do with the product being bad or good, it just means that he's still invested in the franchise.

I mean, I've not purchased DH2 myself and only taken a peek into a book my current BC campaign's GM has brought, yet I am still here also. Simply because I enjoy discussing the franchise as a whole, and because I still perceive a lot of potential in this RPG's new product line, even if I'm unsatisfied with the direction it has taken. Because as you said, it's not a question of it being all good or all bad, but rather a mixture of both, and as I've already pointed out I like some aspects of DH2 and could see myself trying to houserule them into a heavily modified DH1. Cannibalising good ideas in the true spirit of Wh40k.

The problem for FFG is, of course, that this approach still won't bring them any revenue, which is why the input of potential customers still has a certain value. Then again, who can say how good DH2 is actually selling? It's not like we are given any numbers, and it's impossible to gauge a general tendency just from looking at these forums alone.

I suppose it'll show in the amount and frequency of supplements.

Either way, I'm still happy for those who enjoy it. Right now, we have the luxury of having access to a whole lot of different RPGs, and I'm sure that we must all have at least one that we like a lot.

The problem for FFG is, of course, that this approach still won't bring them any revenue, which is why the input of potential customers still has a certain value. Then again, who can say how good DH2 is actually selling? It's not like we are given any numbers, and it's impossible to gauge a general tendency just from looking at these forums alone.

I suppose it'll show in the amount and frequency of supplements.

Either way, I'm still happy for those who enjoy it. Right now, we have the luxury of having access to a whole lot of different RPGs, and I'm sure that we must all have at least one that we like a lot.

FF rep: "DH2 is selling great! Everyone who bought a book orderered another one soon after- oh no wait, those are replacement books we have to send out because the first books had pages comming undone and more broken spines than batman and Magnus the red combined." *

I like DH2, and BC, and DW and D&D, and World of darkness, (Old and new) and savage worlds, and CoC and Cthulhutech and L5R and Shadowrun and Cyberpunk and HoL and World of Synnibarr and-

Intsec has just informed me that my favorite roleplaying game of all time is Paranoia. I am writing this of my own free will and not because Intsec green goons are pointing their tacnuke launchers at me. So to recap: My fave RPG of all time is Paranoia . The Computer is your Friend.

* @ FFG: don't get mad guys, you're doing great!

In order for something new to sell it must be inherently better! (AKA D&D 3rd ed. vs. 2nd.)

This may shock you, but there are real people in the world, alive today, who will argue this point. So yeah.

Also, there is little to no proof of D&D 4th edition doing all that poorly (it did number one in sales on amazon when it was releasing new books and D&D Insider for 4th edition is still making bank). Most of the criticism leveled against it online was, for those with long memories or who do a little searching, almost identical to the shift from second edition to 3rd (this is just an MMO for 4th/this is just Diablo for 3rd, this is dumbed down/too easy, every class is the same, blah blah blah). The only difference is that 4th edition came out when it was much easier to make opinions known on the Internet, and it's criticism seemed much larger in proportion to its sales, which weren't released by WOTC. That and the transfer from second to third edition didn't have another company swoop in to copy the entirety of the old edition, claim easy backwards compatibility which proved to be completely unbalanced, and basically re-sell the entire old game in a prettier package. So you have these two issues and it seems like 4th editions biggest issues were both a bad job presenting itself (because the main complaints about it tended to be untrue and memetically repeated) and a marketing issue. Or you could claim the fanbase was just toxic to innovation, given that it was repeating things that it did each time the edition changed. So the story that 4th edition was a failure could just as easily be explained as 4th edition not marketing itself well, and ALSO Hasbro expecting it to make way more money than any rpg ever has and in turn being disappointed and deciding to to give up on making a more mass appealing game in favor of just repeating third edition.

What does this have to do with dark heresy 2? Well, people keep claiming that 4th edition was an example of something new failing to sell, which seems to be untrue. Also, you have an old edition being copy-pasted and re-written with enough changes to make it pretty incompatible with older material while also advertising simple compatibility in a kind of crass business decision. All of this so they could resell older books with copied stuff changed around with most of the budget going toward art. There are some parallels to be drawn here, although I don't think FFG is falsely advertising compatibility, to their credit.

D&D 4th was a nice boardga- err roleplaying game!

I'm not suprised it sold well, it has the D&D name on it, and that still counts for something. People will probably keep buying D&D if it was called "D&D: 34th-yo momma is an ork- edition"

And wich each new edition you get fans of the old arguing with fans of the new, and so it continues...

D&D 4th was a nice boardga- err roleplaying game!

I'm not suprised it sold well, it has the D&D name on it, and that still counts for something. People will probably keep buying D&D if it was called "D&D: 34th-yo momma is an ork- edition"

And wich each new edition you get fans of the old arguing with fans of the new, and so it continues...

Ah yes, the old canard of criticizing an rpg by comparing it to a kind of game that is much more popular and well-received (and typically more well-designed!). Why is it a bad thing for RPGs to adopt design principles and ideas from other forms of media besides naval war games?

Well, that depends on how much you like bringing one into the other.

I like both pizza and vanilla ice cream, but I wouldn't mix the two. Some people do that, mind you, but I'm convinced they're crazy!

In the end, all it comes down to is personal preferences, but I think we can all agree that it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise when at least a number of people are bummed simply because a successor product is too far removed from the predecessor. Humans are creatures of habit, and perhaps people became fans of X precisely because of something that X2 The Remake sacrificed.

Just look at the original Total Recall and its reboot, or Master of Orion 3, or ... or OldTrek vs JJtrek!

(do we have any other Axanar backers here? show of hands!)

Bottom line: you cannot make everyone happy , and for every new fan you gain you'll lose an old veteran. If you're lucky, that ratio will shift more towards the new generation. If you're particularly unlucky, you may have just sunk your own IP by scaring off both the vets as well as the new target audience.

This still doesn't answer the fact that difficulty adjustment and cause for actually rolling are based on nebulous concepts that may at times be mutually exclusive to each other.

Those nebulous concepts are still the same ones we already had in DH1, though. And they aren't really that different from deciding on d20 target numbers, are they?

The rulebook already covers test difficulties by assigning a specific modifier to a difficulty description, whose name implies it is based on the bog standard human without skills and talents. All that Skills, Talents and Traits do is allowing specialists to get better at overcoming these challenges. Isn't this one of any P&P RPG's most basic principles?

I also don't see how these concepts can be mutually exclusive. As a GM, you have total control over the world. If you don't wish players to go through a door, it's up to you to determine whether or not it is possible, or whether there is a door in the first place. Players come up with crazyideas all the time - the GM has to be clever to find reasonable/logical ways to explain why something wouldn't work, if they really feel like the players shouldn't progress down that path (although a better approach may be to just roll with it and adapt/improvise as you go).

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, though - can you expand on where exactly you see the problem?

Basically, what I'm saying is that you could have a set of normal challenges as well as a few insanely difficult ones where only specialists have a chance at succeeding. If the specialist fails or the players lack it, they just need to find another way. The test difficulties are all based on in-universe realism, just their placement is based on your narrative. As a GM, it's up to you to decide how thick and heavy that door is, what material it's made of, and whether or not it's maglocked or welded shut.

Or is this just about the test difficulty names, meaning that you don't let people roll by saying "+/-X" but rather provide the name for the test, and are irritated by how a "Challenging" test is not actually challenging for a true specialist?

... hmm, that would remind me of a similar topic in the Dragon Age RPG where I proposed adjusting test nomenclature based on the characters' progression ...

As for d100 as a percentile success chance - I don't actually care where it originates from, as the many modifiers that get slapped onto people's characteristics as well as the tests themselves don't let it feel like a percentile system at all. Personally, I regard it more along the very simple idea of "it has more numbers than d20". It could be d50 for all I care, it still wouldn't change anything about the application of the game's mechanics.

Not that it's my favourite system, mind you. I really like the 3d6 AGE. But I'd go as far as saying d100 is a close second.

The real issue arising from these being nebulous concepts left to the GM to surmise is that the system is built to run on access to a hard series of modifiers, meaning that the player or GM must now seek out/present the modifiers for success before the roll is made (meaning it must have already been decided whether the roll is interesting enough to make) while also deciding on whether the roll is worth making AND using a poorly defined sense of how difficult the action should be. In other words, the system is both expecting the GM to do a lot of work and have a strong knowledge of the game without giving him any guidance on this. This is why these nebulous concepts work so poorly, because the system doesn't define them as expects the GM to just make sense of them.

And how many results are on a die is actually an important thing. The d100 has no bell curve of probability, meaning every result is equally likely. This can lead to very swingy results on the dice where your average character can have a failing result almost triple what their characteristic is. Basically, the bigger the die, the more rolls you need to make before probability on it will begin actually evening out. You'd have to roll the dice at least 100 times to get every result at least once, and would likely have to roll several hundred times for each result to show up. That makes it far less likely for good and bad luck to even out. In addition, the d100 system really only cares about multiples of 10, so the ones digit might as well be superfluous for actual gameplay. Just use a d10.

And there are more systems out there than d20 and d100

Also, there is little to no proof of D&D 4th edition doing all that poorly (it did number one in sales on amazon when it was releasing new books and D&D Insider for 4th edition is still making bank). Most of the criticism leveled against it online was, for those with long memories or who do a little searching, almost identical to the shift from second edition to 3rd (this is just an MMO for 4th/this is just Diablo for 3rd, this is dumbed down/too easy, every class is the same, blah blah blah). The only difference is that 4th edition came out when it was much easier to make opinions known on the Internet, and it's criticism seemed much larger in proportion to its sales, which weren't released by WOTC. That and the transfer from second to third edition didn't have another company swoop in to copy the entirety of the old edition, claim easy backwards compatibility which proved to be completely unbalanced, and basically re-sell the entire old game in a prettier package. So you have these two issues and it seems like 4th editions biggest issues were both a bad job presenting itself (because the main complaints about it tended to be untrue and memetically repeated) and a marketing issue. Or you could claim the fanbase was just toxic to innovation, given that it was repeating things that it did each time the edition changed. So the story that 4th edition was a failure could just as easily be explained as 4th edition not marketing itself well, and ALSO Hasbro expecting it to make way more money than any rpg ever has and in turn being disappointed and deciding to to give up on making a more mass appealing game in favor of just repeating third edition.What does this have to do with dark heresy 2? Well, people keep claiming that 4th edition was an example of something new failing to sell, which seems to be untrue. Also, you have an old edition being copy-pasted and re-written with enough changes to make it pretty incompatible with older material while also advertising simple compatibility in a kind of crass business decision. All of this so they could resell older books with copied stuff changed around with most of the budget going toward art. There are some parallels to be drawn here, although I don't think FFG is falsely advertising compatibility, to their credit.

A lot of people stuck to 3.5 (all d&d forums I hamng around have had more active 3.5 communities than 4E for the entire 4E print run) and a lot ofpeople moved on to PF. All in all I thought nk less than half of the 3.5 customers bought into 4E.D&D being D&D it's still a while **** lot but if a product cuts your customer base by half then ot's most definitely a failure of epic proportions.

Now bad marketing definitely played a role, especially the 'you old d&d sucked so much, here, buy this new and improved d&d) but there were also two main factors :

-Fan base is attached to certain aspects of the IP(probanly varies from individual to individual). Remove too many of those abd they stop buying your stuff.

-What the fan base screams 'We want!' might not be what they actually want most. For all the crirs for balance, the 3.5 crowd didn't buy the balanced game.

The former shows that knowing what exactly your customers value is critical. The latter shows knowing it is hard.As such, it highlights incremental change is the safe way forward.

dude, if you have this much of a problem figuring out how difficult something should be for someone like you in real life (an average, unaugmented human), and you need the system to spoonfeed you every little detail of how to tell a story, run it and how to determine every little aspect of the world should work out under all these different circumstances, than you should probably reevaluate your decision to run a game. Just in general. Any RPG system cannot be anything more than a framework for you to tell your story. Yes, there is this super-fantastic setting that is completely unrealistic, but we do have to bring some common sense to it and we do have our real life experiences to draw from to help inform these decisions.

dude, if you have this much of a problem figuring out how difficult something should be for someone like you in real life (an average, unaugmented human), and you need the system to spoonfeed you every little detail of how to tell a story, run it and how to determine every little aspect of the world should work out under all these different circumstances, than you should probably reevaluate your decision to run a game. Just in general. Any RPG system cannot be anything more than a framework for you to tell your story. Yes, there is this super-fantastic setting that is completely unrealistic, but we do have to bring some common sense to it and we do have our real life experiences to draw from to help inform these decisions.

Ah yes, do tell me how difficult a battlefield dressing, translating an ancient language, trailing someone without them seeing you, whispering to the spirits of a computer to make it turn on, and detecting the psychic signature of a murder scene would be for the average person. Like I said, choosing a tasks difficulty also involves figuring out potential modifiers for it, deciding whether it's worth rolling to begin with, and dealing with the fact that doing all of this can still lead to boring outcomes with low success rates and boring things happening as players fail to accomplish things. The system has listings of concrete modifiers, expects you to make up more of your own, makes you hunt for those modifiers in order to actually accomplish things in the game, and then expects the GM to somehow synthesize all of this into a consistent experience for the players.

I can bull a difficulty easily, sure. But what I can't do on the fly is constantly adjust the math to move the story forward while trying to be consistent to the rules but also consistent with the players experience. Maybe I'm a bad GM for not being able to basically design a fun game on the fly for my players, but the d100 system sure isn't doing me any favors in that regard. The system wants to use all of these fiddly modifiers AND a difficulty system AND GM's discretion AND narrative importance AND system mastery and understanding and frankly that's going to involve having to ignore some of those things, meaning that the system is being ignored, meaning that it's not actually working that well. I don't want to be spoonfed modifiers; I want a system that doesn't require simultaneously making them up and memorizing existing ones in order to approach reasonable success rates. Having to do all that isn't a framework for telling a story, it's getting in the way of a story because I have to constantly correct for low success rates and swingy dice.

Honestly I'm not really sure where all of this 'low success rate' comes from.

Take a challenging (+0) testp: by it's very natureit's supposed to be challenging.An Average Joe (30 relevant stat, trained in the skill) will succedd 30% of the time. A well trained guy (30 relevant stat +20 skill) succeeds 50 % of the time. An exceptionally gifted individual (40 relevant stat + 30 in the skill) succeeds 70% of the time.

So where's the issue?

Well, if I'm looking at myself(which for the sake of this discussion I will):

battlefield dressing. I have extensive training on this, and applicable experience. Plus, they're made to be used by people who are in a bit of a rush, I'd say i'm sitting at about as close to 'right every time' as a person can be.

translating ancient language: I don't know any, so this isn't possible for me. Lynatta already discussed those situations so I don't need to go further.

stalking someone: Never done it, so I don't know. I live in the United States, where most people are pretty oblivious to their surroundings, so I would guess LordBlade's 1 in 3 is probably applicable. However, were I inclined to practice I would likely get better as my stalker skills increased. I've also got a lot of practice sneaking around in the woods and mountains, so I would probably be better there. I could also do things like use disguises, hide behind stuff, use terrain in general and while combining several of these things, I imagine I could probably be successful more often than not. Maybe the 2 in 3 or even 3 in 4, depending on how motivated and how smart about it I am, and about how aware my target is. Just off the top of my head,

whispering to the spirits of a computer: Just tried it; it didn't say anything back. It never does. It still likes to be turned on by touch.

psychic signatures: I'm not attuned to the warp, so again that's not possible. Miss Cleo on the other hand might be able to help you.

I find most of the things in my games are pretty intuitive if it needs a roll or not, how difficult that might be etc. If I'm stuck, I might ask a player to describe in more detail what they're doing, then I can justify giving them a higher bonus for something intelligent, or smacking them with some negativity if they're not. It's a collaborative process in my group. I even allow my players to lobby for higher bonuses, and if they can justify it, then I will give it to them. I guess that's why I have such a hard time understanding your issues with the system. There HAS to be some mechanism to make sticky narrative parts work. And it's the narrative itself that decides what is and isn't sticky. Whether it's the numeral d20 or d100 systems, or the fancy new proprietary dice system that I won't get into because I hate it so very very much, other than to say that it also requires an interaction between mechanism and narration to resolve the sticky bits. I think it's even more wonky than numerical systems because now you get a +/- thing AFTER the roll, that as GM you have to explain away and the modifiers are in the number and type of dice you roll, so you're trading one bonus/penalty mechanic for a different bonus/penalty mechanic.

Being a GM means you have to balance all that stuff out, regardless of the system. Every system has to have a way to simulate different things being different difficulties. Otherwise all you're doing is just sitting at a table telling a story to your friends, which is cool to, just a different type of roleplaying. Narrative importance isn't something I think about consciously during a game. When you write a scenario for your players, you know what's important, after all you're the omnipotent god of everything. You know every detail of what's behind the curtain. The question of what's narratively important should be organic to the story you're telling. System mastery is overrated. That's not a joke. I have a book for a reason. It's a resource. It's really ok to no know everything right off the top of your head, The book is what? close to 500 pages or something? I don't know, but I could get off my lazy ass and look it up. Easy peasy. GM's discretion is the capricious nature of your GM godhood. Feel like being a jerk? Feel like being a cuddly wuddly widdle teddy bear? Coolio to all. I don't know, maybe I'm a bad GM because I write a story, just drop some challenges in and let my players do whatever they want (within normal reason). I do end up having to make some unanticipated decisions on the fly, but that's part of the fun of it for me, I guess you could say I GM by feel. I 'feel' like this particular thing should be pretty difficult, so it's getting some negatives. I 'feel' like that's probably gona be pretty easy so maybe I won't even say 0, I might give a bonus. I don't worry too much about individual success rates. That's the player's problem. I genuinely want them to succeed, but games are more memorable and fun when it's not a walk through. Failure is always an option. And a great teacher.

Where I do agree with you is I absolutely hate that there's an absolute max to the scale. Whether it's 20 or 100 or 1000 doesn't matter. If i'm in a fist fight with a Bloodletter of Khorne, no matter how Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris or Jason Statham badass I am, I will lose. There is just no way I will accept a human being better at melee combat than a daemon of the melee combat god. Yet, with the d100 system, that's possible for a shockingly low XP price. So yeah, not perfect. Just like anything else anywhere. Not perfect but I like it, and that's good enough for me.

Just out of curiosity, what would you do different? how would you reconcile the issue of assigning difficulty without modifiers and so on?

EDIT: the book is 446 pages, to the gm's tracking sheet.

The real issue arising from these being nebulous concepts left to the GM to surmise is that the system is built to run on access to a hard series of modifiers, meaning that the player or GM must now seek out/present the modifiers for success before the roll is made (meaning it must have already been decided whether the roll is interesting enough to make) while also deciding on whether the roll is worth making AND using a poorly defined sense of how difficult the action should be. In other words, the system is both expecting the GM to do a lot of work and have a strong knowledge of the game without giving him any guidance on this. This is why these nebulous concepts work so poorly, because the system doesn't define them as expects the GM to just make sense of them.

I still don't really understand the nature of this criticism... Yes, it can be difficult to get a "feeling" for the most suitable modifiers at first, but isn't this how every single pen&paper RPG works? You have tests for people to overcome. Tests differ in difficulties. So a GM must determine how difficult this must be.

In D&D this is done with Target Numbers. Dark Heresy has modifiers. Same thing with a different name.

I'd say the same is true of the d6 and the d10.

Though you could say a curve is inserted with the test difficulty and all modifiers factored into the roll. Depending on what numbers you throw at it, a general success or failure becomes more or less likely (as DoS and DoF will simply be counted as either).

Why would you even need to get every result at least once when this isn't what the tests are after? Probabilities of success and failure do not depend on the die. d100 just means you can be more granular, whereas something like a d10 would force you to heavily limit the range of attributes. For example, with d100 you can provide people with bonuses and ability increases in the form of anything between +1 and +10, or even higher. d10 on the other hand? I'd say +1 or +2 with each step at best, lest you risk people getting close to a 90% success rate fairly quick.

It's not at all impossible to craft a good system using d10, I'm just saying you'd have to sacrifice granularity in the process, and I'm not sure this would be a good thing. At least not how the mechanic is currently set up. Perhaps if you approach it from a more "traditional" D&D angle with rolling over a test's target number, rather than below your own attribute.

Certainly; I already mentioned the Dragon Age's 3d6. Like I said, that's actually my current favourite, if mainly for the interesting stunt system it features.

I have a feeling this is a perception issue born from two things:

• a lot of GMs not realising that unmodified (+0) tests are already counted as "challenging" rather than "ordinary", thus unintentionally cheating players out of an additional +10 for things that should be everyday business
• specialists and veterans still having a rather high chance of failure at things they should supposedly be experts at (see: the Catachan Guardsman not managing to kick open a door, the Sister of Battle forgetting how to correctly say a prayer, the nimble Assassin tripping up ... in my last game of Deathwatch, the Techmarine actually rolled so many critical failures attempting to scan the area that our GM decided to set his auspex on fire. hilarious on the table, but really awkward for the characters themselves. and this happens all the time )

The latter irritates me as well, because your character can at times look like a fool for constantly botching what they are supposed to be good at if the dice gods aren't with you. Perhaps a system should allow automatic successes for some tasks if a character has specialised in that area so that you only roll to see how well you succeed. And only demand real tests in that area if there is a reasonable chance for the character to fail (perhaps because it is something new, or because the object of attention has somehow been modified, or boobytrapped, etc)?