Question about Easy DoS houserule

By Meatpuppet, in Dark Heresy House Rules

Hey there,

I posted this question on another thread but I didn't want to derail it so I started my own thread gran_risa.gif

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On the other thread, Darth Smeg said:

Easy DoS

Whenever rolling a test, the 10's digit is also your DoS.
Example: Bob shoots Greg, at short range using Semi Auto for a total bonus of +20 to his BS, which is 30. His effective BS for this test is 50, and he rolls 34.

Under the Easy DoS rules, this is a hit with 3 Degrees of Success. That being resolved simply by looking at the first die (the one showing 10's).

This means that you want to roll as high as possible, under your threshold, rather than as low as possible. The statistics are the same, however, you have just as much chance of scoring the same number of DoS as you have under the normal rule. The higher your effective threshold, the higher you can roll and still pass the test. And the more DoS you can achieve. But this saves you from a calculation on every test, and they add up. In a 10 round combat with 6-8 fighters, this simple subtraction to work out DoS can account for several minutes real time. Over a long and combat intensive game session, it really adds up.

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I find this houserule very interesting.

As my player's are old farts like me, sometimes after a full day's work, simple subtractions can be quite daunting.

But I was wondering for those of you who are using this houserule, how does it handle thresholds when they are over 100 ? Do you add an extra DoS for every "10" over 100 ? Hmm that doesn't seem quite right..

Well I quite like the look of this house rule. Far too often the other players in my group look stunned until I tell them how many DoS they got. This is quick and makes no difference.

To answer your question, in the situation where the skill is over 100 you have a couple of options. The simplest is to just use the old rule. It's not very often this happens so it doesn't make the houserule obsolete. Another option is to take the number of multiples of ten over one hundred and add that figure to the tens digit. e.g. if the skill with bonuses is 125, then add 2 to the tens dice to calculate DoS.

Interogator Z.

Hmm, that situation hasn't really cropped up for us. Reading the digits straight off will let you roll at most 9 DoS (10 with the BC ruleset), and as such this rule will not accurately reflect tests where your target score is over 100.

You could rule that any 10s above 100 will just add 1 DoS to your roll. This is what happens under the "normal" system anyway: You will never roll over 100, so any margin over 100 will just contribute to your degrees of success.

So for example, if your target score is 120 (Eg. a person with BS of 60 who gets a +60 to his aimed shot at an unaware target) and you roll 57, the EasyDos would say 5 DoS. You then add 2 for the 20 over 100 on your target score for a final result of 7 DoS.

At most you will roll 93 for 9 Dos, add 2 from the margin over 100 for a total of 11 DoS. In the normal rule, rolling 01 would also net you 11 DoS. so this works out just fine.

It loses some granularity though. Change the example above to a shooter with BS of 65, with the same bonus. Target score now 125. In the regular rules you now actually have a 5% chance of scoring 12 DoS, but with the EasyDos you still won't score more than 11. You could round off the range to the nearest 10, instead of counting complete 10s. Then it evens out in the long run, but gives some inaccuracies on individual tests. If this level of detail is important to you, I'd suggest skipping the EasyDos rule. At least for these kind of rolls.

If not, then append the following to the rule description:

If your target score is higher than 100, any range above 100 adds to your Degrees of Success directly. Round any surplus over 100 to the nearest 10, then add these 10s to your rolled DoS for the test.

Edit: Ninja'ed by Interrogator Zakalwe it seems. But as he suggested the same solution, it must be a good one :)

Thanks

I'm about to start an Ascension campaign and I just wanted to make sure this houserule could cover every aspect of "tests" before proposing it to my group.

This sounds like a great way to do things, thanks for pointing it out.

Another house rule we have is that if any situation gives you a target number over 100, it's a 100 instead, which actually interacts very nicely with this system.