Intro:

I am new to the board game / dnd universe (outside of chess, scrabble, and monopoly).

My friend is GMing a dark heresy game. And I attended 2 meetings; I find the game very interesting, I can see the fundamentals of mmorpgs inside of this medium.

So anyway, I'm getting pretty fedup with the amount of downtime involved in this game - the dice rolling and calculating - especially since our GM is pretty bad at calculating on the fly.

I've already got a working hit/miss. damage calculator. and a hit location calculator. However, I don't really know much about possible modifiers to input into these calculators. For example, in some situations. I believe a single hit/miss dice roll into several hit location dice rolls?

I guess my main issue is: I don't understand the game well enough: I don't have a detailed concept of what I should be working towards; ie. what my end product should look like.

Question:

1. Is there already a dark heresy battle calculator we can use? something that calculates damage, hit location, etc.

2. Could an expert give me a run down on the variables I need to be inputting and outputting. (Be very specific with exact numbers).

3. Excel or Visual Basic

I can code in visual basic, which is far more powerful than excel, especially if the formulas and outputs get very complicated. Basically, I want to use the simpliest tool for the task.

A visual basic program would give you a black box that works well; but the end user will have difficulty accessing the internals and modify formulas.

4. Is this even a good idea? Turning the game into a spreadsheet might just kill the point of the game. --> It might get to the point where you might as well play diablo.

For example, my intial proposal was: Someone declares "target" "weapon" and "range": and the table will output hit/miss. If it hit, "hit location." and finally damage. But apparently, rolling the dice in real life is pretty important.

1. Yes there is. At least I know a MapTools Ruleset that make all this things possible.

2. Dark Heresy is quit easy in this matter when you get acustomed to it. I can have a talk with you about that but I dont like this Forum here for longer discussions.

3. I do not know of a Excel or VB Tool for this. Excel should be enough, though it might not be very user friendly just as VB is.

4. It depends. If you have a RP strong group it makes things easier and Fights consume less time. I am playing in two Dark Herey Group via the Internet using Teamspeak and MapTools and some advanced mechanics in combinations with several macros make this game quite fast but still immersive. For example we instantly have counted up the Degrees of Sucess on a Roll or der Overbleed of a Psychic Power. But we do use a very simplistic toolset with mostly handcrafted macros for specific tasks. There is a huge Ruleset available though where you have advanced macros for every task.

For example a basic ranged attack allows you to pick the target, allocate different modifers (all availalbe and displayed) with checkboxes and automaticly handles to rolls for damage etc. All you do is picking target, checking modifiers and it is automated. This might get a bit boring but it is possible and, more important, it is fast. Some groups like long combats, other do not. How enjoyable it is depends on your mates.

Take a look, the second post contains several screenshots of some features availalbe.

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?p=228580#p228580

Thanks.

This tool looks very powerful - more powerful than what I could do in visual basic for pen n paper games…

wow it even has a map in it.

MapTools is a Java Programm made for PnP Groups to play over the Internet. Its macros a very powerfull and include even JSON. A complete Ruleset allows everything every basic and the only thing left you need is VOIP (TS, Vent, Mumble, Skype, etc.)

It is realy a Boon for the PnP Community because not every system is know enough to be played at home. Without MapTools I would not play Dark Heresy. xD There are also several other Tools d20 etc. that can be used but I do not know if they have such a powerfull Ruleset.

Whats PnP? The context, its not "plug and play?"

I think I might make an excel file based off of it for personal use. The program looks great, but it seems like it might not be the best fit for a sit down rp group.

PnP = Pen 'n Paper

And yes, I would not suggest it for a Sitdown Group where you realy throw the dices.

But if you even consider using electronic dices in a sitdown group the only real functions you have to create are the skill check with countring every degree of sucess and the power test for the psycic powers that counts the overload. With that you instantly have every calculation done that might occur more often.

Well, I made this old Combat Datasheet in Excel a few years back, but in the end I think it does too much and might be a bit cumbersome to set up.

These days we do the hitrolls and such ourselves, and handle damagerolls, psychic tests and such using the little web-tool I whipped up for this purpose.

We've been playing this game since it came out, and I have experienced the same problems you describe. Combat slows to a crawl, as people overthink and strategize, then spend lots of time looking up rules and doing too many calculations. Full-Auto and Psychers are the worst offenders.

These problems lie in the mechanics of the game, and the solution may be to use a different ruleset for the game. We've switched to the Only War rules, which solve some of these issues (almost nobody use full-auto anymore, for example), but you may also look at a lighter ruleset alltogether like FATE or something similar.

You will find many people have done just this, for exactly the same reasons described above. I have tried a Rogue Trader conversion of Apocalypse World, which worked great. People have converted Strands of Fate and other Fate versions, and this will be what I use in my next campaign.

I don't find the minutia of hit-locations and armour penetration particularly interesting, and if I wanted a tactical fighting game I'd play Necromunda or a computer game. I want to play a Roleplaying game, and for me it's more about the story than about the maths

@Darth Smeth

Wow, that excel is REALLY impressive. It must have taken forever. The code behind it in the macros is mind blowing.

The weapon drop down menu that automatically inputs relevant variables - I was considering doing that, but was like. naw way too much work for me. Everyone is just gonna have to manually input the numbers themselves.

Theres alot of very interesting stuff in there that I didn't even know was possible in excel. I'm now trying to reverse engineer how you did it.

"Combat slows to a crawl, as people overthink and strategize, then spend lots of time looking up rules and doing too many calculation" Ahaha, you described it perfectly! Though we have the extra problem of the GM misscalculating and forgeting about modifiers. And me missreading my dice. The six and nines are the same!

Thanks for your input! I learned alot. Though I have to admit, alot of the jargon went completely over my head.

I can promise you, after some expierienece the Dark Heresy Rules are very fast usable. The only problem we had so far are larger combats with tons of tokens. Thats a dice orgy, You jus have do adapt the the d10/d100 system, thats the only thing. And to add 4 Armor and 4 TB and Subtract 9 Damage isnt the great deal. xD

All the jargon was just trying to say that the Dark Heresy rules are quite complicated, and try to describe in great detail just how a combat is played out.

There are other RPG systems that are much more abstract, and try to resolve conflicts with less detail and much fewer dicerolls and calculations. You choose what works for you.

But it is also true that if everyone around the table knows the rules well, things go much faster. And if the GM enforcers a 5 second time limit in which to state your actions, then things move along hecticly and nicely. The rules can work, we've been using them for years, after all, but they do tend to break down as the characters gain ranks and have many talents and powerful abilities.

All the jargon was just trying to say that the Dark Heresy rules are quite complicated, and try to describe in great detail just how a combat is played out.

There are other RPG systems that are much more abstract, and try to resolve conflicts with less detail and much fewer dicerolls and calculations. You choose what works for you.

But it is also true that if everyone around the table knows the rules well, things go much faster. And if the GM enforcers a 5 second time limit in which to state your actions, then things move along hecticly and nicely. The rules can work, we've been using them for years, after all, but they do tend to break down as the characters gain ranks and have many talents and powerful abilities.

I'm a year late to the party on this thread, but found it interesting & am hoping posters are still possibly monitoring.

Darth Smeg , you being a very long time DH'er, it definitely caught my eye that you have possibly left the DH system behind while keeping the setting. This thread predates DH 2e - has the 2nd Edition (beta) made any difference to you? I suspect not since it sounds like you're going in the Fate direction - which I'm not sure could be generally less like the DH system.

ElysianMirage , by now you've likely formed your own opinion of DH (1e & 2e). All the same I would add, along the lines of Darth Smeg's comments, that it largely depends on how much your group enjoys detailed tactical engagements. My DH group (now 2e) does a lot of roleplaying (sometimes multiple 8-hour sessions without a shot being fired) and some serious tactical combat (extensive segments of tactical combat, sometimes including whole 8-hour sessions). So a DH Fate hack is unlikely to scratch my group's itch, as Fate's very abstract combat might just feel like more roleplaying on top of roleplaying to my group. So I think the "How much do we want detailed tactical combat?" question is an important one near the top of anyone's choosing-a-system decision tree. I'd be curious to hear what your experiences & conclusions have been to this point, a year later.

I was interested in the direction the Beta took before it was basically turned into Only War. I've adapted DH to use the new rules from BC/OW for our ongoing campaign (as described in the House Rules doc in my .sig), but if/when I ever start a new 40K campaign as a GM I'll not re-use the old DH1 rules.

We've been playing a little bit with Fate for WFRP and I think it worked quite well. Haven't had much experience with it, but I like what I've seen. I think it should be able to handle my 40K needs very well!

However, nobody were keen to convert their existing characters (all 20 000XP monsters now), so I'm stuck with our current hybrid set. I play fast and loose with the rules, however, and take great liberties with pretty much everything

The long-time self-described "nitpicker" (a.k.a. "Lord Nitpicker") is playing fast & loose with the rules. What next - locusts & frogs?

I like the new DH 2nd edition. I was fine with DH1 but had made some of the BC/OW modifications, like many others. So it's nice to have an actual DH edition that officially does that. We participated in the very long DH2 beta process, so it's also a relief to just have the process come to an end.

My group enjoys the yang of tactical combat to the yin of roleplaying too much to be interested in a system like Fate. However, I am certainly enjoying what feels like the second golden age of gaming, with all its new games & system innovations. Hizzah.