From rpg.net:

Is the core mechanic broken, it it fixable?

Example: The scholar

Has 20 points of experience and the following dice on an Int test: 5 blue, 2 yellow, 2 white. He is attempting a Hard test - 3 purple.

Taking the test 20 times he can't fail at all. Or mostly ever: 17-18 out of 20, or 8-9 out of 10 times, he will pass it. It is wrong, he is competent, but not a master. For him it's supposed to be a hard task, with max. 60-70% chance of success in normal conditions and max. 80% in favorable conditions. Not 90% chance.

Example: The Troll Slayer

Has 20 exp. Combat Mode: 5 red, 2 yellow, 2 white, 1 purple, 3 black (opponent has shield, armour and dodges).

This one is worse: 10/10 and 19/20. Combat becomes hack fest "who has more wounds" with no finesse.

If you up the number of diff. dice there's no way that a "3-4 blue 1 yellow dice" character will pass such test.

Is this correct? I dislike games that have this 'you are so good you simply cannot fail ever no matter how much time passes'.

As a general rule, any RPG post containing the word 'broken' can be safely ignored.

Fair enough perhaps someone else would be kind enough to reply?

Rat Catcher said:

The first example is incorrect. Using the dice simulator you can immediately see that he will not succeed 90%. Doing 100 dice rolls with the pool you have above, I get:

~60-80% pass, but out of those ~20% have uncancelled banes

~30% have at least one chaos star

The chaos stars and banes allow the GM to let the player succeed on a test but to place constraints on the success. Also, the situation you have there (no black dice) is in favorable conditions, add black dice if you want it to be harder.

The second example is a bit off to start with, 5 reckless die? That assumes that a couple of rounds have already passed. And reckless dice have the exertion symbol, do not forget about this, the troll slayer will become fatigued in notime running that far in reckless stance. Again using the dice roller I get:

~90% pass, but out of those ~30% have uncancelled banes

~10% chaos stars

~90-100% exertion symbols!

Yes, a troll slayer running in extreme reckless style will hit almost all the time, but he cannot do it for more than ~5 attacks, then he'll become fatigued in his primary stats. And that's assuming that he gets no fatigue from other sources.

That's a great response and really shows the high risk/high reward nature of the reckless dice.

If you are putting your "all" into something, then you would hope to have a good chance, but you have to save this for the occasions when you

really need to push yourself, trying to go around you daily life diong that simply isn't possible; you'll collapse from exhaustion, pretty quickly!

I would argue that a PC with two ranks of training in a skill (2 yellow dice) is nearly a master at that skill. Combined with a near-brilliant statistic (5 is well above the average of 3), plus some good fortune (2 white fortune dice) and of course a PC should have a pretty good chance of succeeding at even a difficult task. Since there are no misfortune dice allocated, everything is in the PCs favor as far as the environment and situation: No time pressure, well-lit library, plenty of materials on hand, perhaps a research assistant to help. Put the scholar in a less-than optimal situation and the GM can add misfortune dice (poor-lighting, poor materials, disorganized workspace, etc) which helps make the task more difficult.

Same goes for the Trollslayer.

You're talking about Rank 3 PCs. Of course they're going to be pretty competent when everything is optimal condition for them!

Keep in mind that "task difficulty" does not literally scale with PC competency. A Rank 1 PC and a Rank 3 PC both attempt to pick the same rusty but difficult (3d) lock. It's the same difficulty (3d) for each of them, despite the Rank 3 PC being better at picking locks, because the assigned difficulty doesn't consider the PC's competancy. The Rank 3 PC has more training (and possibly an increased stat), and so the task is actually easier for the Rank 3 PC, even though the task was assigned a "hard" difficulty.

So, when the article says that "for him it's supposed to be a hard task" is not exactly accurate either.

gruntl said:

Bravo! Very well explained and laid out - that is one of the aspects I really like about the game: Yes if you are focused you may be able to do something very well - but there is always some wiggle room with the die symbols. =)

I also wanted to point out that the above character has survived 21 sessions of play. Without sounding like a player killer, in this setting I don't think too many characters, who are melee combat monkeys will see their 21st session, if all of them do, then imo the GM isn't making the world gritty enough.

You have all answered with far better material I can offer, so I will merely add this: the cry of a voice on an internet forum that x is broken should be taken with a grain of salt without some serious evidence on display.

HedgeWizard said:

+1

Well said!

There's plenty of signature lines and mentions of Sunatet's excellent dice roller. But there's a similar page that calculates probability instead of dice rolls at:

http://jaj22.org.uk/wfrp/diceprob.html

Using this confirms gruntl's 100 dice roll math:

5 Characteristic + 2 Experience + 2 Fortune vs. 3 Challenge is a %77.3 chance of at least one success. %45 chance of two or more boons and %6 chance of two or more banes.

5 Reckless + 2 Experience + 2 Fortune vs. 1 Challenge + 3 Misfortune has a %91 chance of at least once success and a %40 chance of two boons but the reckless dice increase the two or more bane chance to %13.