So take the example on pg 333 of the Dark Heresy rule book. If Gaybalt had a S of 50 and the Daemon still had a S of 35 Unnatural X2, does that mean on an Opposed S Test if they both roll a 40 Gaybalt wins? That seems a little off.....

Nile said:

iirc contested rolls with unnatural characteristics would give the daemon a number of degrees of success = to the x? rating, so in this case the daemon might not succeed with a 35 strength and a roll of 40, but it gets 2 success automatically.

Since gaybalt only had two successes total, I believe the person with the unnatural characteristic wins in case of ties.

If I'm wrong someone will correct me....

From The inquisitr's Handbook.

"During Opposed Characteristic Tests, where success is achieved, the Unnatural multiplier is added to the degrees of success. In the case of a tie, the participiant without the Unnatural Characteristic trait loses the Opposed Test.

But thats my question, what if the unnatural characteristic doesn't suceed?

if the unnatural characteristic fails their check and the character succeeds, then then character wins the opposed check.

That's how I understand it.

It depends on what you mean by 'doesn't succeed". If the person with unnatural strength (x2) with a strength of 35 rolls a 40 on his strength check, he still gets 2 degrees of success from unnatural strength. The person opposing him would need to have 3 or more successes to beat him, even though he didn't pass his strength check.

Emprah_Horus said:

Why would he get 2 degrees of success? It says: "During Opposed Characteristic Tests, where success is achieved , the Unnatural multiplier is added to the degrees of success. In the case of a tie, the participiant without the Unnatural Characteristic trait loses the Opposed Test."

If success is not achieved, you lose any bonus degrees of success leaving you with 0.

The Inquisitors Handbook, on page 226, states that when making the opposed skill test, the difficulty of the test is reduced by one for each level of the Unnatural Characteristic.

So the demon (with S x2) rolling towoards a S of 35 would only really need 45 or less to succeed at all (0 DoS) , and would score a 1 DoS if he rolled 35.

Seems to me like the whole thing is overly complex and could be more easily handled by just having a creature have a Strength of 70 instead of 35 (x2)

Indeed. The whole idea of keeping scores under 100 while representing creatures that behave like they have scores above 100 is stupid.

Yeah, particularly since there are penalties for trying to accomplish difficult feats. Some things are so strong that they should be able to succeed 100% of the time at something the average human should only be able to accomplish 30% of the time. Plus, the way degrees of success work means that 100% as a maximum is irrelevant since you can still fail to get enough degrees of success even if you technically succeed by rolling under your 100+ attribute.

Way I see it, the opposed test is handled narratively. The *unnatural* character simply wins the test automatically against a *normal* character.No matter how strong a human is, he/she won't wrestle a Bloodthirster to the ground..

A test is only rolled if the opposed character/creature has the same unnatural trait. But this only works with opposed tests of course.

I disagree, I like to give my players at least a chance to succeed even if it is a very slim one.

and for enemies I want there to be at least a slight chance of failure.

The rules for Unnatural Characteristics are rather complex, especially for a system as simple as DH's.

Sergeant Brother said:

And at what point do you stop? Flat penalties on characteristic tests can only get you so far, and while scores a little over 100 might well work reasonably well, the higher you get, the closer the system gets to breaking down completely. Inquisitor has this problem.

Meanwhile, I've statted up a Carnifex with Strength 65 and Unnatural Strength (x4), granting a bonus only achievable otherwise by giving it Strength 240, without causing the game to splutter and cough and shudder under the strain of trying to roll higher than 240 on a d100.

At the lower end of the scale, sure it's easier to just ramp up the basic ability score... but that rapidly because a non-option. With Unnatural Characteristics, the upper limit for ability scaling gets much higher... to the point where I could concievably and easily represent titan-sized creatures. It's not something I'll ever really need to do, but the fact that I can do so very, very easily without breaking the game is ample demonstration of the flexibility introduced by the mechanic.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

The real problem is that characteristics and skills are so intimatly tied together. Unnatural characteristics is a band aid on this and combined with the fact that when you are generalizing stuff you need to set a target area, outside of which things get blurry, you get to my objection.

If they can't think of a way to both model carnifex and ogryn well, why on earth did the choose to model carnifex? Shouldn't focus be more on the pc's and the surrounding area instead of on the pc's, some blur in the middle, and when we emerge in focus again we're into titan territory? I'd rather have to make **** up by myself when I want to include a titan instead of making **** up when I want to include an ogryn.

But that's besides the point. The main point is that there's no reason why you can't use both. Scores above 100 until you feel it's simpler to slap unnatural characteristic on there. And even that would have been easier if the rule had been different.

What did you need to roll vs. strenght for btw? Three skills in the game are based on strength, Swim, Climb and intimidate. I have a hard time picturing a swimming carnifex, for climbing I'd issue a heavy penalty for size and weight and no penalty for intimidate. For straight characteristics tests... Arm wrestling? Beating down a wall? Both of those could be handled with large penalties or where appropriate, automatic success. Just curious.

The thing is, I think that the system was made to handle roughly human sized creatures and human levels of damage an activity. It really starts breaking down when you try to represent something much larger or smaller than a human - as Graspar said. The thing is that whether you are using a Strength of 240 or 65 (x4) its really straining what the system is meant to represent. Though I think that the weirdness that results from 65 (x4) is greater than 240, since the unnatural 65 score means that the superhuman behemoth has a 35% chance of failing at feats of strength that normal humans are able to accomplish 20% to 40% of the time. Really, it makes more sense to me that the Carnifex would succeed 100% of the time at any feat of strength that any normal human could reasonably attempt. If the Carnifex is trying a feat of strength that no human could ever think of doing - like flipping over a tank - then it would seem reasonable to have a penalty to the roll far in excess of -100. Though really, when we're talking about feats of strength for creatures so far removed from the human focus of the game's scale I wouldn't worry about making the Carnifex roll to see whether or not it can lift the tank.

This is one of the few areas where I break from the RAW.

On Opposed Tests, I give the bonus DoS to Tests made with an Unnatural Characteristic even if the roll is failed, but count Degrees of Failure as a negative count to those DoS.

So if the Carnifex with Str 65 (x4) rolled 70 on a Str test, it would still get 4 DoS for its x4 Unnatural Characteristic. But if it rolled 75 (1 degree of failure) it would only get 3 DoS, 2 DoS for rolling 85, and 1 DoS for rolling 95.

I think this works a bit better for Opposed rolls against characters without the Unnatural Characteristic. The Carnifex is far more likely to beat any human in a Strength contest using this system.

Even if, say, you had a strong human (Str 45) dressed in power armour (total Str of 65), he would have the same as the Carnifex minus its Unnatural bonus. On an Opposed Test, if the human rolled 64 and the Carnifex 66, the human would win under the RAW, which is clearly wrong. If you use my method, the carnifex would still win most of the time. Even if the Carnifex rolled 75, it would have 3 DoS, so the human would have to roll 25 in order to get the 4 DoS he needs to win. It isn't perfect, but its the best I can come up with that works better than the RAW without completelly changing the rules of the game.

The St 65(x4) carnifex would only fail a St test on a roll of 70 if the test was very hard(-30) to begin with. A St test that would require a challenging(+0) roll for an ordinary human would onøy be failed bu the carnifex on 96+. Having Unnatural Stx4 gives it a +30 bonus on St tests. It's really quite simple if you take the time to read the rules carefully.

Where does it say that? I only recall it giving the multiplier as degrees of success, if he succeeds on his check. ie 4 DoS if he rolls 65 or lower.

Jackal_Strain said:

Where does it say that unnatural (x4) = +30bounse? All of this is very unclear and defiantly not simple no matter how carefully you read the rules. And do I really need to piece together information from 3 different books to understand it?

Unfortunately this exact ambiguity has lead to more time arguing over the interpretation of “unnatural” than actually playing in my last session. I hoped this is fixed soon or it might be on to 4th edition….

Nile said:

There's a sidebar examining the Unnatural Characteristics trait in more detail in The Inquisitor's Handbook. That is the only source you need for the full description of Unnatural Characteristics, and can be found on page 226.

It confers three abilities, none of which are particularly complicated:

• The Characteristic Bonus is multiplied by the degree of Unnatural Characteristic (x2, x3, etc). In the case of Unnatural Agility, this does not apply to movement speeds - that's what Unnatural Speed is for.
• All opposed tests involving the Unnatural Characteristic get a number of bonus degrees of success equal to the multiplier the trait grants - so Unnatural Agility (x2) grants 2 bonus Degrees of Success on any opposed tests involving that creature's Agility.
• Finally, when taking a Skill Test based on an Unnatural Characteristic, the basic difficulty of the test is improved by one step for every degree of multiplier - so Unnatural Intelligence (x2) makes all Intelligence-based Skill Tests one step easier, while Unnatural Perception (x3) makes all Perception-based Skill Tests two steps easier.

There. Simple.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I'm not sure why people are having such a hard time with this, it's pretty straightforward. You guys need to stop thinking of it as D&D-style +2 STR and more of an extra edge in situations where two characters would otherwise be evenly matched. Besides, almost every monster with an unnatural stat has a high base to begin with; it's not like there's guys running around with Strength 12 and Unnatural Strength (x99)

Also, the Tabletop --> Roleplay conversion is (Physical Stats x 10), (Psychological Stats x 5). So a Carnifex with Strength 60 is spot on

I agree the part about opposed tests is a bit wierd but just apply the extra degrees to failed tests as well. BAM! Fixed.

Action_Carl said:

You got a source on that?

Graspar said:

Old WFRP, there was a whole section on it.

Hey everybody! First time poster here in Dark Heresy, I just got the books and have a quick question along the same lines as the others here so I thought this was the best place for it.

If characteristic bonuses are multiplied, doesn't that make creatures with unnatural toughness nigh on impossible to hurt?