Edit: double post mess

"I have played the game, but not often enough for this problem to become obvious during play. And it's not a problem that's likely to show up immediately anyway. You don't use opposed checks all the time, most opponents for these checks are likely to be somewhat average, etc. However, once you get enough opposed checks with PCs of varying ability against opponents with varying ability, any player with some sense for probabilities will notice that something funny is going on."

In our experience of c. 50 odd sessions this just isn't true.

"Some people on this forum have suggested using opposed checks in combat, and I think that's a really interesting idea, but it's not going to work well with the current rules for opposed checks."

We use opposed checks in combat and it works great.

I'm of the opinion that the opposed test rules are not broken and in fact are probably an intentional design feature. They do a pretty fair job of modeling what I'd expect to see in reality given various spreads of ability scores. I find that having difficult checks for matched low scores and easier checks for matched high scores to be quite "believable". Compare the highlight reel of a 5 on 5 pickup basketball game at the schoolyard (not that there would be a reel for this) to the highlight reel of an NBA game. I think you'll see this model in action.

That's ultimately beside the point and a mere side effect of what the design is successfully doing. After all, I don't see that the system as a whole is really trying to model any "physics" very specifically, its all quite abstract. What the system is doing though is making skill rolls important to the story. If you're quite unskilled at something (and the discussion has specifically mentioned attribute 2 vs. attribute 2) then we should all have a reasonable expectation of failure, and that's meaningful to the story. And it really is focused on the acting character, which I'd argue should predominantly be the PCs. So if the acting character is directly applying himself to make some change to the story (through his skills), I want it to be cool. And if you're unskilled at what you're attempting, regardless of your opponent, I think our expectation should generally be to see you fail in an awesome way. But there are still the odds, and success is possible, so it will be equally cool to see you beat the odds.

The opposed roll is very interesting in that it does have this double axis of challenge that mcv speaks about, being, a characters actual skill at something and his skill relative to an opponent. I really think having them both featured in the roll is intentional and creates a really interesting narrative feedback. Its quite a nuanced mechanic and really starts to blossom once you begin to consider fortune/misfortune, training, and action cards.

monkeylite said:

My experience (between running and playing adds up to around 35ish sessions) agrees with Monkeylite's. And we do a lot of opposed checks since we are more social/investigative than combative.

Well, I haven't been here in a while, but I just had to comment on this.

There are multiple types of contested checks in the system. If the opposed check mechanic isn't working for what you want out of a scene, use the contested check instead. I mean, we do have three mechanisms at our disposal to resolve task resolution, basic, opposed, and contested. I really don't understand what this drama is all about. The opposed mechanic works absolutely fine. It's designed to add emphasis to the story as all the mechanics are in this game. I had a roguish character try to steal something from another player. I as the GM thought it was best for the story that they succeeded. So I used this mechanic which gave the rogue a high chance of success. If I wasn't sure or thought it would be better to possibly derive further conflict from it, I could have made it contested.

I have used it when I wanted a PC to have a good chance of succeeding or failing against an NPC. It largely depends on the curve you want to create, how much you want the action to succeed or not, or how critical the check is for the story.

The contested mechanic is totally fair and balanced and works well when real dispute about the success of an action is necessary. When I once had two troll slayers racing to get to the demon first, I used the contested system instead of opposed. The guy with the lower stats succeeded. Because in this case, it was good natured fun and the outcome was better told through the contested mechanics because it ultimately added to the story for them to "race" with the dice. I also use it for moments where the outcome has to be give and take. Where the drama of the action is heightened by the dice, not subtracted from it.

This is from my play experience of at least 150 sessions, if not more.

Honestly, I feel the system is so well designed that people are just fishing for something to complain about. Contested actions in all systems favor a person with higher stats. I mean, if we both were on the d20 system and one guy with a skill of 15 and another guy with a skill of 2 are rolling for a TN 15, would you really be complaining then? High stats mean high success rates, get over it. We are lucky enough that WFRP gives us multiple ways to decide the outcome of these situations. Or did you just stop reading the page after you read opposed and didn't bother to read the contested section? LOL!

Anyway, it's a game. Enjoy it and have fun.

I do love how this thread, originally designed to temper the system hate on this board a year ago has become the flagship of system complaints. Hysterical.

Good Gaming,

Commoner

Its posted on the WoTC forums you GITs!

For the folks who don't like the "double-dipping" of the mechanic for Opposed Rolls in the RAW (it does irk me ever-so-slightly when I think about it), a supremely simple house-rule came to my mind after the first time I questioned the mechanic for my own games:

Instead of challenge dice based on relative Characteristic value, add a # equal to (Opposing Characteristic - 1).

This generates a system of absolute values rather than relativistic ones. If a thief with Agility 3 tries to sneak past a guard with Intellect 3, the test would involve 3 Characteristic dice and 2 Challenge dice. Opposing Characteristics of 1 contribute no Challenge dice (as seems sensible).

This keeps the difficulty scaling linear and (honestly) a little easier to remember.

Fast, simple and logical. Just like I like it.

Questions? Comments?

Doc, the Weasel said:

Doc, the Weasel said:

Opposed checks work great. For social encounters we use a tug-of-war tracker, so it's not just one check deciding what happends. If I really want detail and an accurate contest I'll use competitive checks. I do use a lot of opposed checks however and it all balances out. My players are past rank 4 now (almost rank 5) and they have been through a lot and have done a lot of checks. It has worked great for us. Opposed checks favor the active person and having high characteristics is important. I like how it works, although I was a bit annoyed with the system when we started playing. Actual GM experience has taught me that the opposed checks work just fine however.

Bloody Sun Boy said:

This is the chance of success for equal characteristics using your model. 20% difference, but when you put expertise dice into the mix it gets even worse. I don't think your system is as balanced as you think.

1v1 = 50%

2v2 = 43%

3v3 = 38%

4v4 = 34%

5v5 = 31%

6v6 =29%

Gallows said:

Just the kind of feedback that I was hoping for! I didn't dare claim that it was balanced (in fact, I've never playtested this change) but simply the first instinctual reaction that I had when I started opening up the can of worms that is relativistic difficulty scaling with myself. I don't recall how Expertise dice influenced Opposed dice pools (it's been a while since I've run the game).

Honestly, I feel that probabilities can be a bit too heavily slanted in favor of the "acting character" anyway, so I may give this a spin to see if it tones things down a bit.

I'm not a GM overly concerned with "balanced statistical probabilities". I house-rule with an eye for "genre/setting emulation" and simplicity.

Gallows said:

Plus, I'm guessing that this model assumes a neutral stance (something that very few players, in my experience, will allow themselves). Players in my games are always trying to get the benefit of one stance or the other, which fiddles with the numbers a bit.

After running some statistics on my "absolute value" challenge method for Opposed Checks, I'm really liking my findings. It gives some small increases to the otherwise pitiful success rates for acting characters with a Characteristic of 1 or 2 and it tones down the rather excessive success probabilities for Characteristics of 5 or 6.

Interestingly, acting Characteristics of 3 are almost entirely unaffected and 4 is only downshifted slightly. Factor in Stance dice, skill training and Specializations and PCs still can reach some incredible heights, just not quite as ridiculously high as before. This is Warhammer, **** it! Life is hard!

This method also has the added advantage of introducing challenges of greater than 4 dice, which makes the otherwise relatively shallow scalability of things like a giant's Strength value appropriately formidable. There's really no reason a PC should have *any* hope of out-muscling a giant.

Bloody Sun Boy said:

That example (and others like it) are ones I always question why you are even bothering rolling in the first place. Unless there is some situation where the STR 4 human could possibly out mussle the STR 9 giant then the Giant wins. Not only is the giant stronger he's probably got 5-10 times more mass. The Giant wins unless there is some extraneous factor that could bring that into question.

Sunatet said:

I feel offended...

that you drank that bottle of vodka without sharing

Good points though. Too much whining on these boards about things beyond our control. I WISH the products had no errors, but I enjoy the game enough to accept the facts.

Kryyst said:

It's funny because I knew that someone was going to bring that discussion up!

Oh, I agree and that's how I handle what I consider "common sense" in any RPG. Honestly, I wouldn't even bother with a Strength check for a one-on-one contest with a giant. It may, however, be an example of how to adjudicate a contest of Strength between, say, a group of 5 men attempting to trip a giant with a length of rope. The example was really only intended as an illustration for the precendent one might set for contests with creatures of significantly high Characteristics.

Bloody Sun Boy said:

I assumed you were just bringing up a stereotypical example also. But that's often how these issues fall apart people site an example that really doesn't apply to the problem at hand. Past editions it was about a girl wrestling a bear. The thing was all the arguments hinged on the rules and left common sense aside. They leave (frequently) the GM's ability to adjudicate a situation out of it. Now in some schools of thought GM adjudication should be left out of it because then the rules are impartial. I can accept that people think that way and to be fair some games are much more tightly bound to the rules and focused on the rules almost playing themselves. Which if that's the kind of game you want, then that's the kind of game you need.

However in the case of WFRP 3 where every dice role is subject to interpretation as are many other situation in the game. Then getting caught up in specific and often unlikely situations as what's my strength check needed to arm wrestle a giant are carry over problems from other systems that actually took those possibilities into account and mechanically had rules to cover them.

So my point really is when it comes to WFRP 3 is that many of the arguments on this forum when it comes to rules are carry over problems that people are bringing with them from other systems and into WFRP 3. They are looking for rules that doen't exist and aren't needed because WFRP 3's core rule is let the GM do his job.

Kryyst said:

Agreed and I think, essentially, that is what I'm doing here with my analysis of the potential values of adopting an "absolute value" system for determining Challenge dice for Opposed Checks. Just me as a GM trying to fidgit with the design of the game to explore ways to help make it my own and be relevant to my tastes as a gamer, GM and Warhammer enthusiast.