I've both Gm'ed and played DH for some time now and one thing that really bugs me about this game is how unskilled the players are when it comes to skills. An average PC will have Perception 30. If said Pc don't have the awareness skill, he's stuck with a 15% chance of spotting something. Situational modifiers help of course, but I can't help but feel that DH have handle the skill system poorly.

So I propose a houserule to help remedy the situation a little.

Instead of halving the stat value when atempting to use a basic skill your character don't possess, give -10% modifier instead.

In my Dark Heresy Without Careers thread (you can look on the House Rules forum if you're interested), I've changed the untrained penalty to -20. This looks bad, but I allow for somewhat higher stats (40s for 'heroic' charactrs are not at all uncommon) along with broader access to skills and a greatly extended XP system to compensate. While you'll still spend 100 xp to become trained, the xp scale will allow for 'beginning' characters that have about 3,000 xp to build with.

Jackal_Strain said:

It says in the Inquisitior's Handbook about Awareness that you shouldn't be punishing players for not having taken the skill - just do a Perception test for passive things, like if you're figuring out if the PCs notice that there's a tripwire ahead.

Use your own judgement as to whether or not you should test the specific skill or just the trait it is based off of. Generally I test the skill for broader things or for passive occurrences, and only use the specific skills when the players bring them up.

I'm aware of what the Inuisitors handbook says about Awareness. I just used that skll in particular as an example. I'm just sick of players failing their basic skill checks over and over. I'm tired of constantly having to throw them new clues just in order to advance the story, when they could have stumbled upon those clues themselves and felt that they really were responsible for those crucial discoveries.

What I have noticed is that the published adventures seem to mix this up quite well. For very specific instances, for example disguising yourself as a NPC, it sticks with the basic rules. But for most general actions, especially movement, climbing, it uses a lot more stat roles with modifers based on skills (more like WFRPG).

I'll be using modified stat roles a lot more in the future.

Inquisitors handbook also suggests making most awareness tests into perception tests, but giving players with the awareness skill a +20 bonus.

Inquisitors handbook also suggests making most awareness tests into perception tests, but giving players with the awareness skill a +20 bonus.

Which of course defeats the point of having basic skills in the first place.

I prefer upping all basic skills by one level (untrained->trained->+10+->+20->+30). This way, the homeworld becomes more relevant as characters that get skills as basic skills from their homeworld and as trained skills from their career actually benefit from having both and I don't have to roll on attributes that often when the skills plainly and obviously exist.

I toyed with the numbers for a while and will also stick to the mention house rule. But instead as counting it as a "modifier", I simply rule that the "overall hardness of the test" goes up by one level (from easy to routine; from routine to ordinary and so on).

You know, there is this little "modifier can´t get worse then -60" thing I am a little to much into details...

The modifier can't get any better than +60, IIRC. There's no lower limit whatsoever.

Also, I don't see what the major issue is with using some basic skills as augmented characteristic checks. Like with Awareness - if you make a Perception roll to notice something but you have Awareness, you get a +20. If you're untrained in Awareness, you roll Perception flat. Charm and Fellowship strike me as similar. It makes a great deal of sense to me. For rolls in which it isn't something handled cleanly within the core attribute, like Disguise and Charm, use the Basic Skill system as-written.

Can you explain your problem with it?

I've been thinking of the very same house rule and I normally don't like house rules. -10 seems a suitable penalty to me.

As for the modifier limit I was under the impression it was -30/+30 for non-combat rolls, and -60/+60 for combat based rolls. If so raising the difficulty one step makes sense and overall has the same effect. *shrug*

Either way, it still strikes me that there was no mention of a "lower limit" (that modifiers can't go below -30 or -60). I know they capped the top end, but not the bottom end.

Pneumonica said:

The confusion may come from the fact that the word modifier on it's own is neither negative nor positive. So if you read the rule as all modifiers are limited to 60 than that would mean both positive or negative modifiers. I can't give it another read over until I get home as I only have Creatures Anathema on me right now.

Personally I find -30 or -60 to be plenty of penalty in any game situation.

Nevermind, it is clearly stated within the errata:

The maximum situational modifiers in combat should
be +60/–60, instead of +30/–30 as described in the
Combining Difficulties sidebar on page 197.

Also, I don't see what the major issue is with using some basic skills as augmented characteristic checks. Like with Awareness - if you make a Perception roll to notice something but you have Awareness, you get a +20. If you're untrained in Awareness, you roll Perception flat. Charm and Fellowship strike me as similar. It makes a great deal of sense to me. For rolls in which it isn't something handled cleanly within the core attribute, like Disguise and Charm, use the Basic Skill system as-written.

Can you explain your problem with it?

If I want to be aware of something, there's a skill for it. It's called Awareness. It uses the mechanics for basic skills, which are there precisely to reflect that everyone has a chance at this skill despite not training it.

This is exactly how it should be - apart from the chance I have being too low. That means we can either depart from the idea of having basic skills altogether (and have people roll on the abilities) or we can improve the ratings of the skill. But saying that some skills, despite being basic skills, are not rolled against if you don't have them is neither here nor there. If I never roll against the basic Awareness, I don't need to have it as a basic skill.

Do you understand my problem now?

Jackal_Strain said:

I like this.

Meatpuppet said:

So do I and after mulling it over for the night I'm going to implement it in my games. My first house rule!

Cifer said:

No, you're failing to make sense. You're telling me that if one Skill behaves a given way, they all should? Or more correctly, if most Skills behave a given way, then there should be no exceptions to that practice? That makes no sense at all. There are different systematics to every Skill. Some are penalized by encumberance, some aren't, some have different modifiers apply to them. You're saying that there should be no Skills that augment an aspect of a core Characteristic. If I want to notice something inobvious, I use Awareness and Perception. If I don't have Awareness, I just use Perception. If I want to look like somebody else, I use Disguise. Disguise relies on Fellowship, but is not a real application of how socially adept I am. This makes sense. Telling me that all these Skills should do the same things in the same way doesn't.

yeah, I anticipate a LOT of failures for early characters... especially if I'm in a particularly evil mood... driving through the desert in the back of a truck the need strikes someone to pee and he (lets hope it's a he, ok?) needs to pee over the side (since they cant get the driver's attention). Make an agility check to avoid peeing on yourself over bumpy ground.

I fully agree that the skill ratings are too low in DH. I use the rule proposed for awareness in the Inquisitor's Handbook (i.e. untrained = roll full stat, trained = roll stat +20) for all skills. Even advanced skills get the +20 trained bonus in my campaign. I find this makes the game a lot less needlessly frustrating.

The exception to the above is Dodge, which would be brokenly good with this rule. That works as per the core rulebook.

Cardinalsin said:

Do you tend to stick to simple success vs. failure or do you put a lot of thought behind success levels? The reason I haven't done something similar is that I tend to be very liberal with success and failure. Often in my games a non-combat failure that is by 10 or less ends up being very close to a success but with some form of setback. I don't consider a roll a total failure unless they miss by 20 or more. I also don't consider a roll a total success unless it succeeds by 10 or more.

A common spread of results for me would be:

A player creeps into a guarded area where the men on duty are currently lax and completely unsuspicious. He rolls Silent Move.

Success (by 10+) - You succeed. The guards continue with their card game completely oblivious to you.

Success (by 9 or less) - You creep along almost flawlessly. A guard suddenly perks up thinking it a good idea to do a quick sweep. He's almost unaware he heard the softest of sounds but you'll have to be extra cautious now that he's more aware.

Failure (by 9 or less) - You're creeping along when the toe of your boot sends a pebble skipping away from you. The guards elect one of their number to do a search, convinced it's probably some form of vermin but figuring better safe then sorry.

Failure (by 10-19) - You're creeping along when you accidentally snap a twig underfoot. The guards are immediately alert, certain that something is out there but not sure exactly where.

Failure (20+) - Tripping over your own feet you've alerted the guards who are fanning out to inspect your particular patch of shadows. Think fast!

It's not a definite system but it makes narration fun.

I'm not sure I take as systematic an approach as you do - I quite often go for relatively straightforward success/failure (with appropriate description to indicate if a roll was especially close, generally for an on-the-nose roll or a miss by less than 5%), but equally I sometimes take a more flexible approach. I tend to be especially flexible around lore skills, allowing characters to know either a little or a lot about a subject depending on how well they roll.

I quite like the way you handle stealth in your example, I may steal it at some point. But I'll have to think about how it interacts with my +20% rule - I don't want to make things too easy!

According to Da Rulez a +0 skill check is "challenging." Unless you're being chaised by an angry mob or something most checks are going to be +10 (routine) or better. The vast majority of stuff acolytes do shouldn't requre a test at all, unless it's really really funny.

Cardinalsin said:

Indeed, that's precisely why I asked. Effectively we're increasing success chance in a similar way. I just prefer success/failure to be less black and white unless we're in combat.