A few threads cropped up with the issue of the underlying math of the system being skewed towards success, a bit too much.

IE. In melee, combatants tend to hit almost all the time, and defense and active defense are no match for offense.

Is that your experience of the system ? Is the system broken as characters become more and more proficient ? IE. Can somebody ever hope to parry tha attack of a warrior with Str5 and 2 expertise dice ?

yes, i do think it is easier to hit than miss in this game, but thats why there is a soak value. defense in this game is not at all like AC in DnD, it does occasionally completely negate a hit, but more often it softens the blow. there are also improved parry/dodge/block cards that are much more potent than their basic forerunners that, while maybe not making an attack miss, have a much better chance to help out the defender. a hand weapon used by someone with 5 str and 2 trained dice doing a melee strike will still do at max 12 dmg, which is easily soaked down to not much at all.

Nope. Even for new players it's VERY hard to miss. I have made some house rules that create a more balanced success rate.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=166&efcid=3&efidt=277452

Summary of the hit percentage issue.

Fixing the high hit percentage while maintaining variety:

1. You subtract 1 success for every point your enemy has in melee/archery/athletics/whateverskilltheGMthinksfits

2. Defence adds black dice as normal

3. Default difficulty for an attack is average (2d).

4. You need at least one hammer to use a sigmars comet as a success.

Jericho said:

I noticed the same thing and since I use Opposed check even in combat, as suggested p.58 of the rulebook : The default difculty for Melee Attack and Ranged Attack actions is Easy (1d), but may be modifed by a variety of factors. The GM may decide the action in question is better served as an unopposed or opposed check.

The number of challenge dices is set by comparing active and opposed characteristic. A trained or specialized character had also misfortunes dices.

Moreover, I found Range Attack not really fair damage equal to melee, less risks so we houseruled to add 1 misfortune dice per range increment between the shooter his target in range.

You might test This on the fan made compact dice roller

@willmanx: How has the rule of +1 defense per range increment been working out for you?

Lexicanum said:

Statisticly the extra black dice won't work. for new players it could be harsh compared to how little rank 2-3 characters would be limited.

I don't care what actual probabilities say, our experience has been that success for starting characters is far from guaranteed. In both groups I'm involved with, there are plenty of failures cropping up. Maybe not as many as previous editions of the game, but still often enough that no one takes success for granted. One player actually thinks his dice rolling ability is cursed since he seems to fail more often than he succeeds. In short, it hasn't really been a problem for us. Will this change as the characters improve and become more competent? It should, but we're far from considering house ruling anything yet.

Lexicanum said:

Lexicanum said:

That helps to balance that dice system math problem. Also, my PCs liked this range increment stuff beacause it works fine with other checks too. IE : Observation, or leadership if you're in a crowded noisy place, a Guile for seduction is better when engaged than far away...

As said in a few thread, it's too easy to get success even for beginners... and that is not what Warhammer RPG has been so far. Beginner PCs have to struggle to hit and survive. That has always been one of this RPG's strengh.

Moreover, if everybody, PC/NPC, always hit when attack, Initiative become way to important and Delays way too dangerous.

The reason I test and work out statistics and calculate propability is that I want a consistent system that works now when they are new characters but also when they get more experience. I don't want to fiddle around changing rules as they level. I want to find a sound mechanic that works, so we can keep rules consistent.

mac40k said:

In my games, I had a bit of problem with that 1d difficulty on attacks... Players (a dillettante and a commoner... not really fighters, uh ) noticed everybody was hitting very often. So we run now combat with opposed checks like suggested in the rulebook (p58). And that's fine

I don't see how Gallow's idea would work : how would you enhance a NPC defence as he hasn't got ranks ?

But willx if you believe the success rate is way too high then take a look at my house rule. I have tested and calculated success rates and for a begining character against a Gor the hit percentage would be 73% for one success and 34% for 3 successes. Now if the Gor use advanced parry the chance drops to 59% and 23 %. If the Gor should use all three advanced defences the success rate would to 34& and 10%. That's for a fresh character against a Gor.

An experienced player with a strenght of 6, melee of 2, speciality and two strenght fortune dice the chance of 1 success is 97% and the chance for 3 successes against a npc with 2 defence is 82%. So 82% of the time he will do max damage and even if the npc parries, dodges and blocks with advanced defence all at the same time, the chance of 1 success is still 76% and the chance for 3 successes is 45%. That is simply so wrong if you ask me. Even if the player/npc misses the maximum damage difference is still only 2 wounds.The same will hit the players making reactive defence almost pointless. When players get even more experienced it gets even more silly. The game really is missing some kind of passive defence being figured into the roll.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=166&efcid=3&efidt=277452

Fixing the high hit percentage while maintaining variety:

1. You subtract 1 success for every point your enemy has in melee/archery/athletics/whateverskilltheGMthinksfit

• The best option would be to have a dedicated passive defence stat.

2. Defence adds black dice as normal

3. Default difficulty for an attack is average (2d).

4. You need at least one hammer to use a sigmars comet as a success.

Success and damage:

I find that my players don't want to bother with reckless stance because they often need just 3 successes and any extra successes are wasted. For that reason I have decided that any successes above 3 give extra damage. I allow players to pick multiple damage bonuses from successes. 4-5 successes would give the player +3 AND +1 damage. 6 successes would give 2x+3 damage on the card. That way it's more rewarding getting more successes. I use the same for multiple critical wounds etc. I just allow players (and monsters) to use all the successes, boons, and comets to gain multiple effects. The same is true with banes and chaos stars of course. This gives more variety instead of damage just being either 9 or 11 for instance and no other result possible.

Assisting in combat:

I do not allow assisting in combat to give other players an extra fortune die. As it is I find that with only one purple die under normal circumstances it's hard enough to fail altogether even for freshly created combat characters. Instead I allow another kind of defensive assist. If two players are engaged with the same npc one of them can assist the other allowing him to perform a parry or block for an attack against that player. This could lead to two blocks against one attack or even two blocks and two parries. The assisting player uses his free maneuver for this assist and he uses his active defence card(s) as well.

As for monster statistics I would use the "Enemy threat level" minus one. This would give a monster passive defence value from 0 (snotling) to 5 (Giant).

From my calculations it's a value from 0 to 5 that will from with my system from fresh characters to very experienced characters.

If it's NPCs and others they can simply be assigned a threat level by you depending on how tough you want them to be. All the monsters in the bestiary have a threat level though.

For the PCs there are many ways to give them the passive defence stat. It could be based off the total of either their mental or physical stats giving them a passive defence from 0-5. It would be their rank or rank minus one. It could also be a benefit of career completion. It could be a stat in itself that costs 3 advances for each point you buy. 3 points for the first one, 6 for the next, 9, 12, 15. I haven't decided what the stat will be for my PCs yet, only that it will range from 0 to 5 because that's where the perfect balance is. But I'll add that I limit my players stats to 8 max and one stat fortune die.

Gallows said:

Interesting. I save it for later, when RAW opposed check alternative won't make it :)Thanks a lot. That is simple but it create a new concept a erasing successes... If we wanted to keep like before, we could also say :

• PCs : +1 defence per rank for PCs
• NPCs : +1 defense per skull-1

willmanx said:

But that won't give the same result. giving 5 defence in the current system adds 5 black dice, resulting in statisticly ~1,7 successes erased.

The very reason I picked this solution was to keep it simple and not make the dice pool bigger than it already is

Yep, I do agree and you understood my point too.

This is another good discussion that I've been following and bear in mind that my input is purely academic as I'm still working through the rules and haven't played yet. I'll just throw these points out there to hear you guys' thoughts on them.

As I read through the rules it quickly struck me as well that success in combat seemed to be relatively easy to achieve, perhaps even for beginners. But then I look at the example of your experienced warrior above and it strikes me that he's not just experienced but he's a true hardened combat veteran in the peak of his career and extremely highly trained and not to mention far above the average person in natural ability as well. So, this guy should be able to get the job done in an impressive fashion. And his job is combat.

So then I think about what combat is in v3. Getting successes on the roll is only part of the equation for combat. What we have for generic "wounds" are really just scrapes and bruises, more "fatigue" and wearing down than anything else. For most folks, even experienced veterans, that should be happening at a pretty quick rate in combat. Maybe that's why the success rate is so high in the game as that's what its wanting to emulate.

The real meat of combat is the critical wound. And to get those you need to be rolling enough dice to get the boons OR be trained enough to know what you're doing out there. You still need those successes but you really want the criticals, that's what kills and diminishes your opponent's performance.

It seems to me that if you try to increase difficulties, yes you get a reduced hit rate, but you're also reducing the whole grimness of combat in that everyone has more staying power. I would envision combat between two very experienced trained warriors, in the gritty world of WFRP anyway, to be a flurry of exchanges as both wear down (wounds) until one is overcome and at the mercy of his opponent (KO) or until that telling critical lands. I imagine it would be very quick and dirty.

Thoughts?

Well in my house rules I have also made the rule to allow players to multiple damage success lines from cards for more varied damage. I have even thought about having criticals count as a number of wounds equal to their severuty rating (for a rating three card for instance two extra wounds would be drawn). Critical wounds may be annoying and hard to heal but it's still the regular wounds that will put you down except for a few very very rare freak situations where you are unlucky to get more than your toughness... but still you need to get more wounds than your wounds rating, which will come from regular wounds.

The fighter above isn't really that experienced. Just a rank two character with at least 10 experience, but most likely around 15.

But in this thread: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=166&efcid=3&efidt=277452&efpag=0#278245

you can find a more elaborate explanation of how it works. In the first post it states that chaos stars remove successes as well, but that's wrong... couldn't edit the post any longer. But you could use my system and keep the 1d default dificulty to scale it a bit more towards hitting if you like. It's very scalable really.

What I'm worried about is if these rule changes make the system a bit like other role-playing games I've tried where characters kept consistently missing, making combat a drag. Leading to bored players disillusioned with their characters and where the majority of our time was spent focusing on uninteresting results (And you miss yet again, for the third time in a row!).

I mean, a 40% hit rate might sound well statistically, but if I'm spending 36 minutes of a 1 hour combat focusing on misses that's going to be a major problem for my group. There are many ways of putting in interesting stakes into a story aside from "Will the sword hit the Ungor?"

I think I'll leave things as they are, and use opposed checks when a little more challenge is called for. I guess what I do take away from this interesting discussion is that conflict needs to be put into the actual scenario and won't arise organically from the dice themselves.

Yep, for my games, I am going to tell my players to expect to hit (and to be hit) more often than in V2, and that the combat dynamic has changed quite a bit. Combat will now be about wearing the other person down, hoping to getting boons on the roll to deal the the debilitating criticals or just dealing enough damage to take them out. Parrying is more likely now to reduce damage rather than stopping an attack completely (which is more similar to the V1 parry, in effect).

Combat in warhammer was always known for being deadly and to be something to avoid, unless something was heavily in your favour, one well placed hit could take you down; the fact that a lot of rounds went by without anyone successfully doing damage on another, was just a by product of that deadliness. An unfortunate by product IMO.

V3 retains that deadliness but removes a lot of the drag of "wasted rounds". In v3 you need to look for ways to get those fortune dice added to your rolls ASAP and every round counts as chances are if you don't take out your opponent quickly, then you'll be the one on the ground with a handful of your own entrails.

Because of the high soak values and max +3 damage you will never be taking down something quick unless it's much weaker than you. But my system is scalable. I added the extra purple die because I felt the hit ratio was still too big. But I will test with 1d default difficulty this weekend too because I don't like more purple dice that much. But less purple dice does cut down the randomness of combat a lot.

But for example a new guy using my rules and having d2 difficulty will have a 54% chance of hiting an ungor with passive defence 1

If using d1 difficulty instead the chance for success would be 74% for a freshly created character.

This would be 94% with the current rules and 70% for 3 successes

A very experienced character (rank 3) trying to hit an orc would have a hit percentage of 85% with d2 and 93% with d1

This would be 99% for one success and 93% for three successes with the current system

If you use d1 as the difficulty with my system you get a good hit percentage for new players while still presenting experienced players with a challenge. Players don't need a lot of experience to get their chance of 3 successes above 80% - in fact after 10 experience at rank 2 it's there. 10 experience and their chance to roll 3 successes is 80% (86% to be exact with 10 advancements)

The game just becomes a predictable battle of attrition and why would you ever need the cards that give you a bonus fortune die, but sacrifice an attack (adding only 4% to the chance of 3 successes)?

I hear you donbaloo, but it seems to me that the system as is now would have two very experienced combatants make mincemeat of each other extremely quickly because their respective offensive capabilities far outweight their defensive ones. That doesn't fit the bill for me.

Two extremely experienced combatants would weave and strike and parry many times before finding a way to land a critical. Would they necessarily cover each other in minor bruises and uts before hand ? I don't know.

Also, it seems to me normal wounds will be the major reason for taking an opponent out with the present rules. The crits necessary to kill someone being extremely hard to get, most combatants will fall unconscious at 0 wounds and very few will ever actually die. That is somewhat bizarre. Sure, they might still be alive when they fall, that's realistic, but they should bleed to death, shouldn't they ? In the present rules, for that to happen, you need those multiple crits before taking the adversary to 0 wounds. The present math seem to make success really easy, while keeping boons and thus crits at a very reasonable level. (They are pretty rare...)

End result, experienced combatants will dish out a predictible "normal damage" very often and combats might become as boring as computer generated ones, where you see the wound level go down by predictable increments...

pumpkin said:

Sure, but it shouldn't be a predictable exchange of damage ratings, should it ?

I'm still in my first few games, so I haven't taken into account all other combat modifiers that can really add up (high ground, outnumbering, surprise, etc), but still, in my tests up to now, beginning characters have had very criticals done on either side, and many many wounds delt on a regular basis.

What I liked in V2 was that tactics could really turn the table. IE. Beginning characters (43 WS for example), would have a hard time alone... But if they could outnumber (+10%) and one of the two would then All-and-out attack (+20%), then the situation would suddenly turn to the advantage of the PCs.

In V3, outnumbering gives 1 Fortune die it seems (maybe 1 per times you outnumber the opponent?), but that simple white die won't make much of a difference. The PC's Str and expertise will be a major factor, so big that situationnal modifiers will be less important. Leading players to just charge in and try to dish out as much damage as possible as fast as possible... Boring. The maths of the RAW seem to encourage that attitude.

Yep exactly and with a system with a lesser hit percentage such maneuvers as assisting, outnumbering, flanking etc. suddenly make a greater difference.

Opposed rolls have been suggested and it works... somewhat.

The issue with opposed rolls is that the system does not scale. For newly created players it can be rather harsh and for experienced characters it doesn't really affect them much.

This idea with soaking successes has been used in the Vampire system for instance and it really gave a very organic, simple, fair, scalable and easy to use mechanic.

When you remove a success then that single white die with a 33% chance for a success is suddenly more attractive, because you know the opponents passive defence may remove 2 successes without rolls. Or you could think of it another way. To hit someone you need to get more successes than his defence and any extra above that can give extra damage.

But I also use an extra rule for extra damage to supplement this rule, so combat feels more alive and deadly.

Opposed check is suggested by RAW as I said elsewhere. Rulebook p.58

Why I like it ? this system gives the opportunity to represent somehow the target's combat abilities as the number of challenge dices depends on the comparison between the active characteristic rolled and the passive characteristic opposed.

Beside the "math only" point of view, this is a great addition to the extremely limited concept of "defense" which is only some armor class. And I don't like armor class, and I don't play D&D. Thoughts ?

@ Gallows : Plus don't forget opposed checks are ALSO modified by some misfortunes dices too a lot of time : 1 for a relevant skill training, 1 other for a relevant specialization. These are factors you input in your houserule. And finally A/C/E dices for NPCS.

My point is I'll try to play RAW as much as I can because I'm in a whole "WFRP3 discovery tour" with several differents players parties so they could try it once.

Good work anyway. I think math matters too.

Hmm yes willmanx... with 2d + 2 misfortune for an equal opponent makes success rate go from 90% to 66% for a new guy and from 99% to 93% for an experienced guy (20 exp used).

But I really do like the idea of the opposed rolls, because it struck me that it would be natural to use opposed rolls whenever someone parry! If that's not an opposed roll then I don't know what is. So advanced parry would be 3d + 2 misfortune (with skill and special).

But with that in mind my 1-5 passive defence subtacting successes may be too much. 0-4 or 0-3 may be better. I'll have to make some calculations again.

Some quick calculations:

new guy vs. new guy: 87% with no parry 46% with adv. parry (0 successes subtracted)

experienced guy vs. experienced guy: 80% with no parry and 45% with advanced parry (3 successes subtracted)

That's not bad at all considering you can have 3 defence cards and that it's fair to assume that it's not hard hitting someone not actively defending.