Gentlemen and Ladies,

Question. Dark Heresy? is a score of 01-06 a hit/pass, regardless of modifiers, and a 96-100 a miss, regardless?

For SOME reason, when I saw the rule for Black Crusade that a natural "01" was an auto pass, I thought "wow, that's better than DH" and went looking for the rule (which I've stated above) to ensure I was on the right track.

…I then couldn't find it.
I was like "What the hell, Jeans? Seriously. Did you leave your brain in the car?"

Someone please say either "you'll find it here" or "You was wrong, Jeans. You mad."
I expect to be dealt with under section-470 for this… a 5% auto success at the bottom of the D100? Sh*t.

I think you pulled this rule, not from the book, but from the gaming hive mind. D&D has long had a 5% chance of auto success and 5% chance of auto failure. I could be wrong, though; I don't have the book handy.

It's not a bad rule, though. (Just make it 01-05, so that it's even on both ends.) Anyway, there will be few circumstances where 01-05 would fail, or where 96-100 would succeed, so it shouldn't have a huge impact.

I've never seen a rule for Auto-Pass. I don't think it's in DH core book or Inquisitor's Handbook. Perhaps you saw it in Ascension?

I've had players fail an Inquiry test when they rolled a 03. They needed a 02.

In DH, the success depends on the degrees of successes you've obtained on the dice. Since it's the low-level meat grinder game (of sorts), there's no place for some auto-success idea.

…Gotterdamerung.
*Sigh* Thanks people, you've been most helpful. I've been seeing things in the rulebook again…

I think you took it from WFRP 1st edition

Jeans_Stealer said:

"Twilight of the Gods"?

Boss Gitsmasha said:

I suppose I'm trying to refer to "the Twilight of my brainpan" using the "end times" interpretation. Otherwise i'd say something like "hey there, call the loony truck, this one's about to start spewing tongues and foaming" or sigh for several minutes. Spur of the moment Idiocy.

For my game I have always used something cribbed from a couple of games, works like this:

A 01-05 is always an auto-success.

A 96-00 is always an auto-fail.

This applies on the rare occurences wherein a player has a chance to succeed at something in the 96-100 range or should simply fail when his numbers fall below that.

The exceptions occur that after a person has managed to get so many bonuses on one thing or another that then for every 5 points over 100, then they may get a bonus of 1, until they reach the point of 125% in which they cannot fail, or acquire so many minuses that at -25% they cannot even attempt something.

Also, remember that the game states (somewhere, I don't remember where?) of a maximum bonus or maximum penalty of 60% to be applied in either direction.

Only in the case of a Tech-Priest have I seen or heard of someone being able to stack bonuses beyond 125%.

Dark Heresy has no "Automatic pass" mechanism. Technically there is no auto-fail mechanism either. However, the "Jamming" mechanic says that on a 96 to 100, "as well as automatically missing" (or something very similar) the weapon jams. Now, this could be taken to imply that 96-100 is an automatic miss in combat. This is how we have been running it. However, it isn't stated as such anywhere else, so it is entirely a matter of interpretation, as it could just be down to them not expecting that anyone could ever hit on a 96-100 (as the original rules limited bonuses to +30, and with a maximum BS of 60 (maximum roll of 40 + 20 improvement) with the maximum roll was 90 anyway.

Warhammer 1st edition had an auto fail mechanic on a 96-100, and that is the set of rules these developed out of, so I don't see much issue introducing it.

No it doesn't have an auto-pass, you're right. I'm trying to determine if it should (it probably should.)

That might be it, the auto-miss for jamming - so I mirrored it.
Now that bonuses can be that big I'm going for an auto-pass on a 01, and an auto-fail on a 100. (with the jamming still applying.)

I'd say no to auto-pass. Even on a 1% chance of auto-pass I don't think it's appropriate.

A Rank 1 Tech Priest may have Tech-Use trained, but there is no reason at all that the Tech Priest should be able to reprogram a Xenos gene-sequencing artifact in the middle of a high-stress situation while on the move. It is simply beyond them. You can fall back on the position that the GM should dictate what can and can't be done by the Tech Priest. Or you can let the negative modifiers exclude the possibility for them.

Enough negative modifiers can make some tasks impossible to perform. That's okay, isn't it?

On that note, I think automatic failures don't belong in the game either. If you're able to devote your whole attention to a task that is rote and simple, with no distractions, then there is no reason why you should fail. Mistakes happen when people don't commit their full abilities to a task. (and those moments are best handled by modifiers)

Just my 2 thrones.