Just in case anyone was curious, I was doing some math about the various ratios of success for the dice, and the expected outcome of an "average attack" pitting one combat focused character against a middling foe. I thought I would post it here just in case anyone was interested.

The ratio is broken down like so...

DIE TYPE = [(number of success/failure icons on die * number of faces containing successes/failures) * percentage of facings containing successes/failures on die] = Expected Contribution of successes/failures towards total

DICE

CHALLENGE = 1.5 * 50% = .75 failure
MISFORTUNE = 1 * 33% = .33 failure

CHARACTERISTIC = 1 * 50% = .5 Success
CONSERVATIVE = 1 * 70% = .7 Success
RECKLESS = 1.4 * 50% = .7 Success
EXPERTISE = 1.165 * 33% = .38 Success
FORTUNE = 1 * 33% = .33 Success

Soooo... an average attack of a combat focused character against a middling opponent looks like...

2 CHAR = 1
2 Stance = 1.4
1 Exp = .38

1 Challenge = .75
3 Misfortune = .99 (2 for defense, 1 for aggression/active defense)

2.78 - 1.74 = 1.04 (Or odds say you should get 1 success)

Analyze as you will.

Using the WFRP dice roller here:

www.jaj22.org.uk/wfrp/diceroller_compact.html

www.jaj22.org.uk/wfrp/diceprob.html

I've done some analyses of my own (and Mac and I have discussed this..at length..on rpg.net)
1 purple, 2 blue, 2 green, 1 yellow: A simple melee attack.
That's gives: Success chance: 89% Three success: 44% and a 40% chance of two boons.

So..a n00b character has an 89% chance to hit...

jh

Take into account though that this is just against a generic low level enemy such as ungor. As a GM to combat this you can either throw larger enemies at this player, who have a defence rating adding black dice to this pool. Or have multiple smaller enemies so you can add a black dice for them outnumbering the player. I pretty much always have my creatures use a defence action aswell so you could consider adding another black dice in aswell.

so my generic pool for a basic characters Melee strike is:

1 purple, 2 black, 2 green, 2 blue, 1 yellow

Thats only a 75% of one success or more and only 29% chance to get 3 successes. Not a massive reduction but it does hamper the PCs damage output capabilities slightly more.

Also this yellow dice is coming from a training in weapon skill i imagine? If we look at the 43 basic careers in the Players guide they could choose from at character creation only 9 of them has weapon skill as a trainable skill at creation. So only a quarter of your potential characters would have that yellow dice. If we take it out of the equation:

1 purple, 2 black, 2 green, 2 blue

Its now only 64% chance of success and only like 15% chance of 3 successes and 16% chance of 2 boons. Very reduced now.

Also you are using 4 characteristic dice so i assume you have strength 4 on this character. I think, if i remember, only 6 of the 43 careers have strength as a career primary charecteristic. So unless your character wants to differ from those skills on his career not many will have 4 characteristic points in strength, most will probably average 3.

1 purple, 2 black, 2 green, 1 blue (keeping the same stance you used with 2 conservative)

the character now only has a 51% chance to hit, only 5% chance of 3 successes and 9% of 2 boons

Your examples do show that a character with strength 4, trained in weapon skill DOES hit very often and succeed with his Melee strikes against a very low and easy opponent. I hope mine shows that characters not built for combat and not trained with relevant skills will have a hard time of being a powerhouse in combat. I think it is important to take into account a few black misfortune dice in the roll though as in most cases its not going to be an easy unguarded and unprepared enemy that they face.

Hope this helps?

Emirikol said:

- This also is a PC with a 4 characteristic who is 2-deep into his stance and trained in melee

- The GM has not allocated any misfortune dice for the situation

- The enemy has no Defense

Regardless of those factors, it's nice that even low-level PCs can successfully strike opponents. Also try to keep in mind that Enemies have a similarly increased chance to hit the PCs. Combat is quite dangerous for everyone.

Emirikol said:

A "n00b" character would not be trained in hand to hand combat.

And I like the high success rate.

While I do not have an practical experience I'd say that the system is quite a bit more complex than your analysis let on. There are numerous actions that add extra purple and black dice, if you fight anything more dangerous than an animal, goblin, thug or the like you're bound to get some extra black dice as well.

bladerunner_35 said:

Not really that complicated. NON-MIN-MAXED, 4 characteristic, Weapon-skill-trained characters have a 89% chance to hit with a melee attack against a 0 def character. Simply put, as a "n00b", you're going to hit..the only determining factor is how hard and whether you're going to get a crit. Players need to be reminded that it goes BOTH WAYS and if they think they're going to solve every mystery with a sword, they're going to live a short, brutal life.

Now, take a min-maxed n00b character, such as this (and suffer 1 stress to drop yourself instantly into 2 green dice):
5 strength, WS trained, 2 conservative dice with melee strike: 92% chance to hit, 57% chance 3 successes, 47% chance of boon

Give the monster a couple black dice (and conveniently, for the sake of arguement, forget that characters can have white dice too), and the min-maxed character drops to a lowly, peon-ish 82% chance to hit.

By the time the character gains ONE X.P. and raises his Green stance by one, he now has a 94% chance to hit. That's with ONE X.P.

I like that they hit a lot and the players do too. ~jh

www.jaj22.org.uk/wfrp/diceprob.html

Emirikol said:

On the other hand just adding either one more purple and one black dice takes it down to 66 % and adding just two black dice makes it 75 %, which is far from "you're going to hit". Again, you're setting that "n00b" character up against some very lame opposition.

Anyways,I am not quite sure I see the argument and it feels like it's just a matter of semantics and perspectives. If by "n00b" you mean a starting character then yes, I agree. What I see before me when you mention 5 characteristic dice, training, relatively deep stance and the like is someone who knows what he is doing. 5 in any characteristic likely makes him or her one of the strongest/most agile/smartest persons for many, many miles.

I do not disagree with your core point (as I see it) the success rate in WFRP3 is very high, which, as you point out, goes both ways....

My first WFRP3 character was a Wood Elf and I remember how cool it felt to actually be that wicked wood wraith; inhumanly agile and a god-like archer - from the start. It felt nice to actually not have to "grind" the character to become what I envisoned in my head when I created him.

Wait... what happened with that GREAT dice probability calculator?!

I was only able to salvage the html for one of the two. I really needed the expanded one. Darnit!

Emirikol said:

I think this is the concept that I don't like about D&D 4e (as well). n00b characters start EPIC..where is there to go from there at 2nd level?

jh

Emirikol said:

So... what? It's dead? JaJ22's site seems down for good

Yea, I don't know whose site it was, but it would be nice to have the calculator for probabilities when doing some tweaky house rules.

jh

Emiriko: The file on your gallery seems a bit weird? Should it be a workable version of the roller? If so could you email it to me. I could add it on the Daily Empire with a notice for the original writer to claim his glory.

That is the entire file. Its html. I still dont know who built it.

Hi,

Thank you for the files !

I made it work by changing the filenames and creating the good repositories.

But all the images are missing, so the results are not readable. I have to make some new icons with the dice symbols.

When it is done, I will make it available, as soon as possible.

ciao.

That's what I thought. Can you upload it somewhere gregoire_lk or should I add it on the Daily Empire?

gregoire_lk said:

That would be grrrrrrrrrrreat (says the Frosted Flakes tiger) !

It's done.

You can use it directly here : http://laakmann.free.fr/wfrp

Or you can download it here : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9686329/diceroller/diceroller.zip

You just have to unzip the file and doucble-click index.htm. Of course, if you want to upload the package at Daily Empire, just do it !

Enjoy.

Hurray!

Long live yadda yadda yadda !

If any of you happen to have the time and leisure to calculate this, I would like to know the chances of an „average“ character to hit against 1 black die:

Strength: 3, Weapon Skill: none, stance: one green

Ah, sorry, just used the great tool! Thanks for that

So it seems the chances are 55%, and 6% for three successes. Fine enough, at least half of the attacks hit the target. With no stance dice, the chances for success are reduced to 49%, and 4% for three successes.

I came up with 66 percent with that layout:

* 2 blue, 1 green, 1 purple

ozean said:

I found this more likely for a short combat, where a barber-surgeon or gambler or other non-combat focussed character faces a foe, since a decent GM will probably spend some A/C/E points on the foe's defense or works the circumstances in a way that give their foe a slight advantage. But maybe it is even more likely that our character can also muster a white die, which would make the chance of success: 64%

I've started a WFRP3 resource site and scratched out a Dice Roller at http://brokentome.com/tools/DiceRoller.aspx

I like this - it is neat and handy. Are there any plans to make it available offline?

Alp