So, I got to thinking about the way skills work, how the statline reads, and the 40k wargame. The wargame uses d6s, and a "3" in a characteristic gives you a 50% to succeed (more or less, since WS and BS work differently from each other). Same for things like Strength, Toughness or Initiative tests (although these are far more common in Fantasy). Long story short, having a bunch of 3s means that you should succeed maybe 50% of the time.

In Dark Heresy (and WFRP), the stats imitate the wargame. The downside is, a 40k "3" in BS does not translate into a "30" for a percentile system. Now, obviously, the designers wanted to give characters room to grow and all, but it seems uneccesarily harsh.They also wanted stats to cap at 50-60 it seems, also sorts in keeping with the wargames. If anything, the poor aptitude (or craptitude ) of characters into relatively high experience levels is a very common point of discussion.

The rulebooks advise giving players +10-20% bonuses to their checks a lot of the time, unless they're really in the (stuff). My conclusion is that there is a basic flaw with the characteristic system (for PCs if anything), if you have to do something extra all the time for PCs to succeed. Some people could argue that having "too good" of stats leads to the PCs rarely failing and thus killing interest. I say, at such a point you can occasionally bring out the big modifiers on the heavy stuff, and let them feel competent for the rest. As a side note, I've always been a follower of the school that states adversaries and NPCs should never follow the same character rules as PCs, and be made fairly ad-hoc to be a challenge (or fodder) as necessary (so one could ignore these musings for foes and the like, or simply reserve them for key adversaries).

So, here's a look at Ballistic Skill for ease of direct comparison (percentages are rounded as appropriate).

BS 1 = 6 to hit on d6, 17% chance to hit. BS 2 = 5+ to hit, 33% chance. BS 3 = 4+ to hit, 50% chance. BS 4 = 3+ to hit, 67% chance. BS 5 = 2+ to hit, 83% chance. BS 6 = 2+ to hit, with a 6+ allowed if you miss, (This math has become tricky! Any assistance would be great).

BS 6 was tricky, as its handled differently in Fantasy and 40k. In Fantasy, each point over 5 reduces to-hit penalties by 1, which are -1-4 in range. In 40k, a BS of 6 provides a re-roll of a miss on a 6+, 7 is a re-roll on a 5+, all the way to 10 with a re-roll on a 2+. I used the 40k one above. The thing I noticed is the progession slows, bringing about diminishing returns. Interesting.

Long story short: I think that instead of making basic characteristics "the wargame value x10", they should be "the wargame % chance of success", as the percentile die system deals with actual chances of sucess.

Thoughts?

The 50-60 cap for stats doesn't take into account various tech which can take it even higher does it?

I'm not going to say your idea wouldn't be good, just kinda sideways in my opinion neither improving nor making things worse but merely different.

I find the game works really well if you really learn the modifiers. My players like that combat is whiff heavy because instead of stabbing a guy 25 times before he dies (DnD) you know that if he doesn't dodge your strike he's likely to lose a limb and die clutching a bloody stump. Plus there's no die roll for just sticking the barrel of your bolter in some guys face until he dumps his bowels. Weapons are freakin' scary in DH.

Hell I've had PCs in DnD scoff at a knife to the throat because they know that even if the rogue crits his compiled sneak attack damage won't have any chance of actually killing them. I've even purposefully impaled myself on a bastard sword (auto hit, auto crit for max damage) and still had over 70% of my hit points. My point is, a game like DnD needs a high success rate because it can take a dozen or more successes to put many enemies down.

As for non-combat skill rolls. Well I avoid them at all cost unless there's significant danger or risk. If they have the skill they can accomplish anything within the scope of their training in most cases. Even if I do have them roll then degrees of success or failure play a significant role in my GMing style. Similar to the optional rule you find suggested in Creatures Anathema, if a player only fails by one degree then I describe it as a success but with a minor setback. As failure degrees get higher I pile on the setbacks.

Some actual examples from my game:

* Yes you bind the wound but in the process you cause an infection due to your inferior supplies. The wound will take longer to heal but it will heal.

* You manage to unjam the weapon but it immediately jams after the next round is fired and is now beyond the scope of repair without tools and time. The Ork on the other hand looks even more intimidating with his crude yet functional choppa. (He ended up rolling two 10s and a 6 on damage with his one shot which was so epic we took a smoke break to celebrate.)

* You make the leap but fall just short, you're now hanging over the precipice by your fingers.

* You sharpen your knife to a point, unfortunately you've also accidentally compromised the strength of the blade. On the next Righteous Fury your blade snaps from the pressure doing full damage but becoming effectively useless.

* You mistakenly confuse the weakness of the Xenos with another breed. You'll realize this mistake but only on your turn following any attempts by your comrades to exploit said weakness. "Oh god-emperor! It's weak against fire not cold!" *slaps forehead*

Most games treat your base chance as optimal conditions and modifyers are mainly penalties to that chance. Warhammer treats your base chance as stressful conditions with bonuses if no one's trying to kill you.

Another thing to remember isd that most skill use is presented as Time passes-->Make test; say you're picking a lock: you muck about for a minute, then make a test. If you fail, you muck about for another minute and take another test; repeat until the lock is picked. A low skilled plaer might take 10 minutes to pick a lock while a high skilled player takes only 3.

Mark It Zero said:

You've hit the nail on the head there.

This is responsible for the perceived problem with the core rules that crops up in so many threads concerning how DH works.

As i've expressed elsewhere, the balance between inherent PC skill and modifiers is skewed to a level that most RPGs don't use. Therefore experienced RPers struggle to conceptualise it.

DH character have an inherent skill range of 20-60 (roughly). Thus 40 points covers the whole of the inherent skill range of the human experience. The best, most elite human is never more than 40 points better than the worst most incompetent human (tech may modify it further).

However, modifiers cover a 120 point range (-60 to +60)!!

Therefore the DH mechanics establish the fact that conditional modifiers are three times more important than the inherent ability of a human to the resolution of tasks.

I think the continued and consistent problem (that is expressed in thread after thread) people have with the 'system', 'power levels of PCs' etc., stems from this.

Most games make PC inherent ability the primary determinant of success and apply modifiers as a small percentage of that ability.

DH makes conditional modifiers the primary determinant of success which reduces the inherent ability of the PC to a minor value.

Hence, as you say, the game works really well if you really learn the modifiers . You have to as modifiers are actually the core mechanical 'lever' the GM has for determining the success of his players in mechanical task resolution.

As a GM, i found this actually quite tricky to implement. I would )in any system), typically not ask a player to make a die roll unless i considered the task 'challenging'. However DH sets up the base unmodified test as 'challenging'. So i personally struggled with the mechanic as i try as a GM to keep modifiers to an absolute minimum to allow the inherent skills of the PCs to be the determination of success. that way, it becomes important for them to choose the skills they develop carefully.

With the DH system, this actually becomes almost irrelevant, since as long as the player is able to max out his condiftional modifiers, inherent skill is irrelevant. A Pc could have minimums across the board (22?), and as long as he's careful and maxes his advantages all the time he's on 82% chance of success...

So...as to the OP, tweaking the basics from TT rating x3 to TT rating %, really only adds, what, +10% to inherent skills? Fair enough, but its still pretty irrelevant compared to the 120% modifier spread...