Hello fellow Battle-Brothers,

as the title says I wonder why there is no more than +60 as a bonus allowed?

I ask because in my opinion +60 is not that much. Space Marines do not have that high characteristics (BS 50 is nonsense) so they live from their boni.

So why is there an upper boundary? Be happy to get every bonus you are able to get.

I mean it is not that hard to get a high bonus:

short range +10, full auto +20, personal weapon +10, oath of knowledge +10, enormous size (tyranid warrior) +20...

... oh we are at +70 without much effort.

So why is it cut to +60?

Any comment from game designers? Any thought?

Best regards,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

It may be due to some mathematical calculations that prove anything beyond +60% is pointless. That gives you greater than a 50/50 chance to hit without any skill whatsoever (BS = 0 or WS = 0).

Sorry,

but I cannot follow your arguments.

I do not care about to hit or not to hit.

I care about the degrees of success. If you have a bonus of +80 which is cut to +60 the system takes you away two potential degrees of success.

You could reduce the magnitude of a horde by two more, or get two extra hits, or make sure your enemy does not dodge your full-auto attack.

Best regards,

TechVoid.

TechVoid said:

While you may not care about "to hit or not to hit", that doesn't mean that isn't what the -%60 or +%60 rule was based on. The odds of you actually hitting something.

While crunch wise, it would give you more degrees of success, from a statistical standpoint (also factoring in a characters BS and WS) you would not miss anyway. Which is why the game is centered around a d100 roll.

Mind you, I'm also guessing as to the purpose of the rule. It just makes logical sense when I look at it.

SpawnoChaos said:

How is anything beyond +60% pointless ?

Lets take a Heavy Bolter user with 75BS* as an example. With a +60 modifier, he still needs to roll 45 or less to score the maximum number of hits. So how is anything beyond +60 pointless ?

The way I see it, in order for for further modifiers to be useless to him, his modified BS will need to be high enough that he scores 9 DOS on a natural 100**, meaning a modified BS of 190, which would require a modifier of 115. More if the character hasn't maxed out his BS.

If that rule wasn't in place, how high could modifiers get ?

- Magnitude 120+ horde: +60

- Full Auto: +20

- Motion Predictor: +10

- Signature Wargear (Master) +10

That gives a +100 modifier before accounting for range.

For DH and RT I didn't care about the +/-60 modifier because players wouldn't hit it often (and when they did it usually means that the gm is allowing things to stack that shouldn't). But Deathwatch adds in hordes, meaning players will be hitting that cap a lot. Even worse, if facing that 120+ horde they will hit the maximum from the horde alone, making many negative modifiers (such as fatigue) rather useless because the players will have other positive modifiers to bring them back up to +60.

*The maximum possible from the RAW.

**Assuming his weapon is reliable or unjammable (40 req gives an unjammable heavy bolter).

Bilateralrope said:

Rolling a natural 96-100 is a miss with a reliable weapon. The gun just doesn't jam.

Bilateralrope said:

The basis of my argument is from the perspective of what the system was based on...

...from the perspective of hitting something. Not how well you hit something, but just hitting it. Consider all of the factors that go into shooting a target or smashing something with a baseball bat.

Now consider that you've never fired a gun or swung a baseball bat. I don't just mean once or twice... I mean NEVER.

That would mean that you have a base %0 chance of hitting something (no experience, since WS and BS are a function of experience) modified by all the above factors.

That would mean that at most you would get a +%60 chance of hitting something with no experience if everything was in your favor. That gives you a 3 out of 5 chance to hit your target. That's not too bad for NEVER having swung a baseball bat or NEVER firing a gun.

What this really comes down to is a matter of perspective... and this question:

Do you really expect someone with no experience to somehow wind up in a situation that they would have a +%100 chance of hitting a target?

If you find this notion hard to swallow, feel a slight tinge in the back of your throat that makes you go "Ehhh... I'm not sure if it would be a %100 chance...", then you now know why they chose %60. Having a 3 out of 5 chance to hit a target with no experience is pretty **** good under the best of circumstances.

Consider bonuses in D&D. For the most part, they don't always stack. If you have boots that give a +2 enhancement to dex, and gloves that provide +2 enhancement to dex, you don't get +4, you get a +2.

Sometimes, conditions can only become so good until it really doesn't effect the situation. 60 represents the largest number by which test difficulty can be difficult (-60 hellish tests, or +60 trivial). So it really isn't so far off to say that the maximum bonus can be +60/-60. Basically, even the most difficult task can become challenging under the best circumstances. And the easiest task can still be challenging under the worst conditions.

What can't really happen, is that the most difficult task becomes "easier" than the easiest task.

But seriously, does it really piss you off that much?

Attacks are +0, so a +60 is pretty good in those cases. The average, starting, marine stat is 41, so a 101 target number. This means that if you are actually squeezing out a +60 bonus or higher, you have a 50% chance of getting 4+ degrees of success. I'm not sure if you've ever noticed, but 4+ degrees of success, is alot. As in, often the upper limit of test difficulty. 50% of the time. At early ranks.

If you want more, I feel sorry for your GM.

Greetings Fellow Battle-Brothers,

KommissarK said:

On the one side I understand this argument from the DnD side. But on the other you come up with something I also thought about: Different bonuses. In DnD only bonuses coming from different sources stack or better say with different descriptors.

KommissarK said:

And that one I do understand very well. That is a good explanation I can live with. "A task can't be easier than trivial and trivial means +60".

But to put it together with the upper explanation about different bonuses I want to add: "A circumstance cannot be easier than trivial." So I thought about bonuses with different descriptors like signature wargear (master) for example. This bonus is not about a circmustance modifier it s about the hundred years the Marine uses his personal weapon. So for me it would be okay that this bonus does not count against the +60.

Best regards,

TechVoid.

Consider bonuses in D&D. For the most part, they don't always stack. If you have boots that give a +2 enhancement to dex, and gloves that provide +2 enhancement to dex, you don't get +4, you get a +2.

That would come under the gm allowing things to stack when they shouldn't. How many of the modifiers I listed above shouldn't stack ?

Sometimes, conditions can only become so good until it really doesn't effect the situation. 60 represents the largest number by which test difficulty can be difficult (-60 hellish tests, or +60 trivial). So it really isn't so far off to say that the maximum bonus can be +60/-60.

Why is the +/- 60 cap a good idea ?

All I'm getting from this is that it is a good idea because that is the limit on the base difficulties of tests.

Basically, even the most difficult task can become challenging under the best circumstances. And the easiest task can still be challenging under the worst conditions.

That is a decent justification for the limit on base difficulties. But I don't see how it follows into justifying the limits on the total modifiers.

What can't really happen, is that the most difficult task becomes "easier" than the easiest task.

There are things easier than the easiest task. They are the things the gm doesn't make players roll for.

For most tests where DOS/DOF doesn't matter, the +/-60 cap allows the full range of possibilities, from auto-success to auto-failure. By removing the cap, it allows that range on all tests.

But seriously, does it really piss you off that much?

Hard caps on things generally annoy me, unless there is a good reason for the cap or the cap won't be hit often. But this cap will be hit regularly and I haven't seen any convincing justification for it.

In this case the cap means that small negative modifiers can do nothing, instead of almost nothing, because a player can easily be far enough over the cap that the negative modifier doesn't move them from the cap.

Attacks are +0, so a +60 is pretty good in those cases. The average, starting, marine stat is 41, so a 101 target number. This means that if you are actually squeezing out a +60 bonus or higher, you have a 50% chance of getting 4+ degrees of success. I'm not sure if you've ever noticed, but 4+ degrees of success, is alot. As in, often the upper limit of test difficulty. 50% of the time. At early ranks.

4 DOS is a lot on most weapons. But on the heavy bolter it is only half the potential damage.

If you want more, I feel sorry for your GM.

So what problems would removing the cap cause ?

I am talking about removing both the +60 and -60 cap. Leaving one in while removing the other will just be unfair.

SpawnoChaos said:

The basis of my argument is from the perspective of what the system was based on...

...from the perspective of hitting something. Not how well you hit something, but just hitting it.

That would be a valid perspective if DOS doesn't matter. However DOS matters a lot, such as the heavy bolter user only getting 10% of his damage from the success, the other 90% comes from how well he hits the target.

So how do you justify ignoring DOS ?

Consider all of the factors that go into shooting a target or smashing something with a baseball bat.

Now consider that you've never fired a gun or swung a baseball bat. I don't just mean once or twice... I mean NEVER.

That would mean that you have a base %0 chance of hitting something (no experience, since WS and BS are a function of experience) modified by all the above factors.

That would mean that at most you would get a +%60 chance of hitting something with no experience if everything was in your favor. That gives you a 3 out of 5 chance to hit your target. That's not too bad for NEVER having swung a baseball bat or NEVER firing a gun.

If you sneak up on an unsuspecting target, getting yourself close enough that the gun is nearly touching him, having a 40% chance to miss seems way too high. If you're that close with a baseball bat, swinging it into his side shouldn't be a problem.

What this really comes down to is a matter of perspective... and this question:

Do you really expect someone with no experience to somehow wind up in a situation that they would have a +%100 chance of hitting a target?

Any issue that DW has with low skilled characters isn't very important because it will rarely come up. However the problem with players hitting the +60 cap will come up a lot more often.

SpawnoChaos said:

How about the completely untrained guy standing next to a barn, spraying it with bullets from a machine gun?

Something would be wrong if he didn't have 100% chance of hitting it.

The same applies to the experienced Space Marine Devastator firing a Heavy Bolter at an Ork Mob that's ten meters from him. If there are 60 of them, he's not very likely to miss a single shot, is he?

But then, you have to consider game balance. I'm not sure on which side of the fence I stand here, just wanted to make a counterpoint.

Maybe I totally missed something, but where does it say that +60 is the cap?

p244, Under "Step one", second paragraph, first sentence.

This has been around since the dark heresy errata as far as I know.

Totally missed that errata. Guess I really need to go through this book page by page and not just count on my knowledge from the other games. Thank you very much.

Well, as far as I can tell, it carries over from Warhammer Fantasy, and there it seems to be in place to convince people to do more interesting things with their to hit rolls. At least there, and we tend to use the same ruling in our games, +60 is the largest bonus that can be applied to the roll . You can get higher to offset penalties from tricks, called shots, firing into melee, etc.

Edit: Actually, the RAW on 244 seems to agree with me. That's the cap that can be applied to the test.

Ladegard said:

I don't think anyone is arguing that. Certainly, as modifiers start to increase, more difficult tasks become easier. The problem is, there really isn't much fancy stuff to be done.

Part of the problem I think leading to this, is people read all the really cool talents/abilities for increasing magnitude damage vs. hordes, and started to try and figure out just how they can squeeze out full hits with the heavy bolter. And after doing it so much, they started to assume making all 10 hits is commonplace. By no means should that be the case. Almost everywhere, anything more than 4 DoS is actually fairly impressive. RoF 10 just means that you don't get "punished" for rolling particularly well.

KommissarK said:

+1. People never seemed to care in the other systems because you didn't always have a guy with a heavy bolter or assault cannon wandering around with you. The aggravation at the cap here seems to largely stem from 'but why can't I do even MORE obscene amounts of damage with my stacked abilities!?'

As for the rule being arbitrary, I would have to agree that to a certain extent it is, and it's a bit of a hold over from DH/RT I imagine. It bothers me a lot less than some of the 'gamey' squad/solo mode abilities and the pure luck associated with dodge. But I also like it because it removes the need to create bonuses of certain classes, where some stack and others don't, which always turns into more math for players (and this game has enough math for me) and longer times to calculate damage and hits.

I don't think keeping it or disregarding it would be game breaking. After all, the GM has final say over how big the horde attacking you is, and the GM always has more bad guys than you have bullets. Just remember everything you can do, your enemies can do as well. That 200% chance to hit netting you all 10 hits with your HB will not feel so good when it's a Chaos Marine doing the same thing to your character's face: 23-25 damage pen 5 10 times will kill most characters outright.

For me it's quite simply that you shouldn't be rolling if there's no interesting chance of failure. Simulationist concerns aside (and I very much doubt this game is an accurate simulator), the GM should just declare the SM gets his intent if you're reaching ridiculous bonuses and the chance of failing are negligible. Also the impact of DoS on max damage is compensated by the fact that even hordes are limited in their damage bonus from magnitude (+2d10), so it only makes sense that other actions be limited in how crazy it can get:

^ is probably right. The best way to convince someone 60 is the max modifier, is throw a mag 120 horde at them, and ask if 12d10 is too much.

KommissarK said: