In order to make ranged combat even MORE lethal, I was considering implementing the rule of adding one's Ag bonus to their ranged attack damage.

Could this work? Does it break the balance of the game in some way?

How would someones agility bonus affect the damage of a ranged weapon? That doesn't break the game...it doesn't make sense. How were you planning on implementing this? Examples?

Melee seems a fair possibility, but ranged?

At ascension level, both death cultists and vindicares get Unnatural Agility. Do you really want to give them a +8 or more damage to every hit from a Storm Bolter ?

Because that is what you will do. Also consider that mighty shot only gives a +2, while you are talking about a +3 or more for almost every single character in the game.

Also, doing this doesn't make any sense.

I could see a character's Strength bonus increasing the damage of thrown weapons such as spears or daggers, but Agility increasing bullet damage does sound ... odd, yeah.

The justification is clearly that many other games have something of this nature. For example, DnD has Dex mods added to ranged damage for certain ranged weapons. The idea being that this agility allows you to aim better. It's a relatively weak justification however.

I would personally be against it. If you want to make ranged combat more lethal (WHY!?) then just improve the penetration of all your guns or give all your dudes manstoppers or use Full-Auto all the time or just increase the damage of certain weapons.

Those games, D&D for example, don't have a dedicated "how well you can aim a ranged weapon" statistic like Dark Heresy does. Adding AB to damage is nonsensical in a system which explicitly states that your talent at aiming is controlled by another, equally fundamental score.

The closest thing that would make sense is adding agility bonus to ballistic skill.

Necrozius said:

No, it will not work in my opinion because yes it will break the game very much.
It is already the case, that the assassin types dominate combat in endgame and that will be even more so with this HR.

Okay, point taken. It was a bad idea and I feel like an imbecile.

Good thing I asked, except now my reputation here is going to be the "HURR DURR ADD AG BONUS TO GUN DAMAGE" guy.

Thread closed!

Why? It was just a question asking for feedback. No harm in that.

In RT and DW there is a rule I did not find in DH, which you could use to make (ranged) combat more lethal:

For all attack rolls, count the degrees of success. The attacker
may choose to replace the result on a single damage dice with
the number of degrees of success from his attack roll

So if you had 3 dos and roll a 1 on damage you can replace that 1 with 3.

Or instead, if you want a house rule you could just add the dos to damage or you could rule that a dodge is only successful if it nets at least the same number of dos as the attack.

Don't worry Necrozius, we're not asshats like that here. No one will hold it against you, you just asked for opinions on an idea and the idea turned out to be unpopular. Plus, with a few exceptions, we all have attention spans too short to remember your post-history anyway.

Phew! That's a relief.

'Cause I've made some inflammatory comments in the WFRP 3rd ed forum that have made me reluctant to ever go back there.

Neckbeards: ruining chances at productive human interaction since 1983.

If you just want to add some lethality there are far better ways:

1. Instead of adding AB (which doesen't make sense and might be unbalanced because of unnatural traits) consider instead a BSB (Ballistic Skill Bonus). It may be similar, but uses the actual skill to increase damage, and is difficult to increase to insane amounts. I strongly suggest not allowing this for Full Auto weapons at least, or allowing it to stack with extra damage from Accurate. These deal more than enough damage already.

2. Make a system where Degrees of Success increase base damage for single shots (I use this atm). Thus skill will mean you aim better, meaning the damage you deal is not just luck and gun)

3. Nerf TB and/or armor.

Or just give everyone the Talent Eye of Vengance (DW) as standart.
That increases the pen for each dos for single shot attacks that are not blast weapons.

@Necrozius: Cool Avatar

And there have been worse postings. And some of those posters insisted that their ideas were cool, so no harm done.
If some answers to posts seem rude that could be because the poster isn't a native speaker and thus has difficulties to differenciate his/her posts in politeness.
At least thats my problem. While I guess my english is ok, I would not guarantee to always find the right nuances of language.

Friend of the Dork said:

Necrozius said:

That's the core bit of that sentence. You can say things that are different to the general belief,most people won't be bothered, unless they are inflammatory,then that's your own fault for wording your posts in such a way.

Basically, if you flame people, you should expect people to not like you. Just sayin'.

Lynata said:

I think I have said this before but... how exactly is the human skin more resistant to a sharp sword that can easily cleave a man in two than a Lasgun or even just a bullet? Making it "Primitive" doesen't make sense, better to just halve it anyway. In any case this does nothing to boost single attacks, and makes Full Auto even more overpowered as it takes away it's only weakness. The game is balanced for TB in mind, if you remove it's defensive ability you change the nature of the game.

Now if you just wanna make combat deadly overall you could just remove Wounds altogether, all damage that is significant enough to go through armor and TB will cause a critical of some sort. More realistic, if you're into that sort of thing, although FPs will go swiftly.

i think if anything you could else give more bonus to aim actions the better your perseption is.

psykohippo said:

Hmm that would really only apply at longer ranges - and in that case it would be better to have Perception as a requirement for the Talents that decrease penalties from range (Crack Shot?). Maybe they already have some requirements like that, I can't remember.

MILLANDSON said:

Typically it is because I post when I'm already in a bad mood, which is a terrible idea. For example, hearing people endlessly whining about gaming makes me just want to reach into the internet and strangle them.

I won't go into details, but I get angry when people equate poor customer service or quality control from a roleplaying game company with human rights violations. Which the tone of the thread in question sure sounded like.

And of course, being labelled a "fanboi" makes me go into a Khorne Berzerker rage.

It would make more sense to just create an attribute bonus for Ballistic Skill and use that, rather then agility. The only real reason to use agility is if you wanted to force some kind of artificial synergy between ranged combat and Agility. The downside to this is of course that Ballistic Skill will become a godly stat for any serious gun-bunny character, rather then just a "very important" attribute.

Such characters generally don't need the help though...

Also, to the people talking about logic...RP systems have a long tradition of making up their own logic. In the DH system, adding your str bonus to your damage sets a precedent. In RPG logic its not really that much of a stretch to apply that precedent in other ways. The attribute bonuses are already underused as it is...

But no, it would definitely not be balanced with the current system. If you're the type of person who finds "knife fightin' in mah gun fights" to be incredibly offensive/illogical it could be a valid change. It really would kill melee though and allow players to disregard str and WS far more then they already do.

Friend of the Dork said:

Heightened Senses (Sight) description says that its +10 bonus doesn't apply to BS tests; the devs certainly didn't meant Perception to only represent how good do you see or hear, seeing the skills it governs (Awareness, Scrutiny etc.) it's more like Observancy.

As for BS, yes - just remove Wounds if you want MOAR BLOOD, then the Toughness Bonus and Sound Constitutions will represent how much punishment can a PC take.

About TB itself - you'll have to have a good weapon training and be very strong in order to cleave a standing human in two - means that you should have WS about 45, S about 50 and some CC +damage talents, and with that you can kill an unarmored T 30 W 10 NPC with one blow with a Best Q mono-sword and a lucky die. And if you wield a Two-Handed Sword than you can even kill a flak-armored NPC.

If you want to radically change the combat system to make it more dangerous, remove dodge, or make dodge skill just provide minus to the opponenets to hit.