Hello all,

A simple question regarding the % of success for different actions.
Characters tend to succeed actions a little too much for my taste.
Even an average starting character with basic characteristic of 3.
Is it a flaw in the system? Is it intended to be that simple?
Am I missing something?

I have checked the dice probability generator.

(sorry for my poor English)

No it's a very big flaw in the system.

I'm trying to see if I can somehow make a system that makes it work for combat, but for simple passive rolls the success rate for even the hardest d4 rolls will be 85% or more after 10 experience points.

They should release new dice with the following number of successes on:

Blue dice: d8 and 2 successes, 1 boon

Green dice: d10, 3 successes, 3 boon, 2 delay

Red dice: d10, 3 successes (one of them double), 3 boons (one of them double), 2 fatigue/stress, 1 bane

White dice: 1 success, 1 boon

Yellow dice: 1 success+(for reroll), 2 boon, 1 comet

Black and purple like now.

But the major problem with their system is they clearly used the dice pool idea and getting successes, like the vampire system. The only thing they failed to realize is that in Vampire the number of successes needed depend on your opponents defence, the difficulty etc. Instead they added the purple die, but it's way too weak. In vampire the dice pools were perhaps 8 d10 total and the difficulty could be 7 modified by defence and then you would require a number of successes to hit. A very scalable system.

This system is not scalable at all unless some kind of requirement for a number of successes based on difficulty, range, spell, defence etc. is introduced.

But it's like they haven't thought the system through, because you can only use up to three successes for damage, but my freshly created characters have had 6+ successes and they don't even see 3 successes as something special. It becomes so incredibly dull because they just succeed to well all the time, except a few freak incidents.

Calling it a flaw is a matter of personal opinion , but there is a general feeling that beginning characters are generally more competent in this game than in V2 for instance.

Personally, that's not an issue for me, because the difficulty of tasks sits very much in hands of the GM anyway, so you can make things more difficult just by making sure you find ways to add in misfortune or challenge as needed.

Remember and/or reread the descriptions of the different Difficulty ratings.

In essence:

0d (Simple) - Should Always succeed, barring extraordinary bad luck

1d (Easy) - Should succeed most of the time, but failure is known to occasionally happen

2d (Average) - Should succeed, but failures are almost as common as successes

3d (Hard) - Should fail more than you succeed

4d (Very Hard) - Should fail most of the time, but successes are known to happen.

Now, most unopposed checks are made at 0d or 1d. So ... of course characters are going succeed most of the time. PCs (and NPCs) are more competent in general, which was often a pain in previous editions where starting characters would only have a 20-30% chance to succeed in some of the simpler tasks. All you, as the GM, needs to do is increase the difficulty of a task should you deem it more difficult or things are too easy for the PCs. Just keep in mind that the PCs *are* supposed to be somewhat competent, even at Rank 1.

a character with 5 intelligence, taking his time (using conservative stance), 2 levels of observation, 2 fortune dice in inteligence would with the following pool succeed 76% of the time on the very hardest possible roll.

2 blue

3 green

2 yellow

2 white

Even if you had a d7 difficulty he would still have 47% chance to succeed.

Beginning characters are fine ... but it's like FFG only balanced the game for beginning characters. Once you get some rank 3+ characters, they just won't fail... so why roll the dice?

But there is a universal solution though.

Instead of adding purple dice for difficulty simply demand a certain number of successes based on the difficulty and then use black/purple dice for extra complications to the task.

But I look forward to the campaign if it's long and players will reach rank 3+ and see how FFG handles rolls for spotting something when players will have 80%+ chance on average rolls without spending fortune. A single point of fortune only gives +3% anyway, so why bother?

Then we have insanity... rank 3+ characters won't become insane.

Critical wounds... rank 3+ characters will heal them so easily that it's almost silly.

These systems may be neat, but they ruin the while feeling of Warhammer.

dvang said:

Those descriptions are way off for a character with just 10 exp:

0d = ~100%

1d = 99%

2d = 95%

3d = 88%

4d = 80%

That's with 5 intelligence (easy for an elf), 2 skill in observation, specialization and 2 fortune dice in intelligence.

Just look... the biggest issue is that there is only 20% difference from the easiest to the hardest!

Gallows said:

How did you work all that out? There's never 100% chance of anything in WFRP, coz every die has at least one blank side.

The whole core set and tool kit has been designed for beginning characters, there's no telling what additions FFG might make to the game mechanics to scale it for experienced characters yet.

Possibly nothing, but time will presumably tell.....

But I doubt they will change the core rules... and I don't really want to wait for expansions to have a system that is viable for more than 10 sessions.

It's so close to 100% that I rounded up My bad. on 0d he has 96% chance for 3 successes for instance.

Gallows said:

I did read a lot of your posts about the system.
- I think you had the idea of an automatic failure with the chaos star. thats not a bad idea.
- I did not test this so far but could we not for the Opposed checks use the purple dices (specialisations,skills) instead of the misfortune die?
and misfortune dies only for conditions or effects that would undermine success.
- Is the challenge level of 1 as base difficulty for combat not a little too low?

So what you're saying is that someone who is obviously incredibly well trained, and well suited to observation tests is generally going to succeed at observation tests? I am not sure the problem is THAT out of whack when you are pairing a character that is obviously geared towards X performing X-type tasks. How is said character in other elements of the game?

I will say, as a GM and author for my group's campaigns, I often do rely on multiple success criteria, but not in every case. I just don't know that it needs to become a formal rule, nor am I sufficiently convinced that it's a problem. Instead of sufficiently illuminating a situation, I see more folks offering a lot of imperatives ("FFG must do this") or saying something is broken and immediately offering their alternative without really showing that it IS broken by design.

Gallows said:

That's very sloppy handling of the numbers, 96 -> 100 is reducing to 1 significant digit. It translates to a 4% chance difference for a supposedly 20% spread. That's a 20% difference in the supposed spread. Something that's 20% off is in my book no better than an educated guess.

Please, if you post numbers and do round numbers do it only to a point that it doesn't affect the argument being made. It helps the rest of us make decisions based on your careful analysis. But it makes it hard, for me at least, to trust your numbers if they've been "tampered" with, even if there was no ill will.

Lexicanum said:

No read it again. I rounded up from 99.9... to 100. The 96% was for THREE successes to put some perspective on the chance for one success.

Glad you replied to defend your math, I almost felt compelled to, but figured it wasn't my place to try to correct someone's opinion of your work.

Okay, that makes more sense then!

Please check my simple reflexion and rule limitation in this thread ? I think I've got something quite cool to solve that problem.

(Moreover could we please guys moderate us about this subject and talk about it on less threads at the same time ?)

willmanx said:

I have a problem accessing your post using the link...
FINE - went to see the thread. Very good ideas indeed.
We should probably at one point collect all ideas in one thread and propose 2 or 3 max different solutions to the difficulty level and resume the different systems when done.

Gallows said:

....stupid quote issue. Can't seem to fix it now either.

pumpkin said:

Yeah the boards are strange sometimes... but I could read it

That's with 5 intelligence (easy for an elf), 2 skill in observation, specialization and 2 fortune dice in intelligence.

Those descriptions are way off for a character with just 10 exp:

0d = ~100%

1d = 99%

2d = 95%

3d = 88%

4d = 80%

First, at 10xp Im pretty sure you can't have 2 skill in observation AND 2 fortune dice in intelligence. Since you can only take 1 per rank, it would be either or at 10xp. (0-9 is rank 1, thus at 10xp you only have 1xp to spend for skill training OR stat fortune die).

Anyway, using Sunatet's excellent Dice roller, using what you said above (including 2x skill and 2x fortune for Int), I found your numbers are significantly off. Rolling 1000 times for each of these:

<BBBBB>[YY][WWW] + various amounts of <P>

0d - 99.7% success, .3% fail
Passed:997
(Passed+Banes:0)
Failed:3
(Failed+Boons:3)

1d - 95.8% success, 4.2% fail
Passed:958
(Passed+Banes:31)
Failed:42
(Failed+Boons:41)

2d - 87.5% success, 12.5% fail
Passed:875
(Passed+Banes:88)
Failed:125
(Failed+Boons:123)

3d - 75.2% success, 24.8% fail
Passed:752
(Passed+Banes:128)
Failed:248
(Failed+Boons:225)

4d - 62.8% success, 37.2% fail
Passed:628
Passed+Banes:169
Failed:372
Failed+Boons:313

Take note, there are NO misfortune dice involved. As a GM, it will be a rare occasion where a player makes a roll that doesn't contain at least 1 misfortune die. Granted, no stance dice are included either.
Keep in mind this is an experienced PC doing a task that they are not only significantly trained in, but also specialized in and specially 'enhanced' for (stat fortune dice). Those percentages look pretty spot on to me for a task for such a character.

dvang said:

Sorry but for me they are not spot on...

geekoo said:

Please elaborate. Why do they not work for you?

Remember, the difficulty of a task does not scale with the rank of the PC.

For example, a rank 1 PC wants to pick a lock. The GM assigns a difficulty of Average (2d) to the task.

Now, a rank 2 PC wants to pick the same lock. That same lock is still an Average (2d) difficulty. The task is easier now, however, because the rank 2 PC is more experienced/competent/trained. So, while for both PCs the task is "Average", they have different chances to succeed. So, an "Average" task is actually more like an 'Easy' for the rank 2 PC. The GM needs to be prepared to shift difficulties, and present tougher challenges to higher-ranked PCs. You might want to think of task difficulties, as far as chance of success, as a number of levels equal to the PC's rank (above 1) less than they are. For example, a task that is "Average" difficulty (2d) for a rank 1 PC. For a rank 2 PC, this same task will have a a success rate similar to 2d-(1 for 1 rank above rank 1) = 1d (Easy). This is a very broad generalization, of course. A PC performing a task that they have no additional training or bonuses from ranks will have the same success rate regardless what rank they are. It also depends on stance, training, fortune/misfortune dice, etc.

Remember, the example given by Gallows, and rolled by me above, is for an exceptional experienced PC (5 in their relevant stat) in their precise field of expertise/training. They *should* succeed the majority of the time. The percentages of success will be lower when attempting a task they do NOT have trained and NOT specialized in.

Just removing the two training [YY] dice from the above examples, and the chance of success for the above PC on an Easy (1d) task drops down to about 88% success rate. A difficult (3d) roll, drops to a whopping 57% chance of success (approximately, from a couple hundred rolls I just did).

I see nothing wrong with this. Yes, a PC doing a task they've maxed out their stats/skills/training to do will have a very good chance of succeeding. Why shouldn't they? What percentage of the time do you should they succeed?

Bravo, well said.

The elf spots the ambush, but what can he do about it?

I think I calculated based on green dice back then... the difference between the blue and green is significant to say the least,

But no, if there were no stance dice, the issue wouldn't be that great (for our group at least). But limiting the stance meter to career default as max is certainly one idea. When you get the 10th exp point you're rank 2 and can spend the advancement on the fortune die.