I'm pleased they stuck with traditional dice mechanics, but disappointed they didn't go for an open-ended system. Scaling limitations, I expect, will continue to require awkward workarounds.

I've often wondered how the mechanics would play out if Characteristics could be raised a maximum of three times at +10 per Advance, but for greater XP costs, and all the modifiers were changed to increments of +/-5 instead. You know, just flip-flop everything?

IMHO multicolored dices should burn in blue fire.

I can explain it. Of course, it easy to read result of the roll on this dices. It simple, its even obvious. But before you roll - it total disaster to calculate real chances. We tryed to do that, (one guy of my party byed and read the book), but decided that its too much complicated for us.

See the point, we are technicaly educated peoples. We beter with numbers, then with hammers, swords and over tons of crap. We like to know befor the roll what are we doing.

Is shoting thru the dark oriented by noise with full auto heavy bolter fire is a fair chance, or a fat chance. In d100 we see that in plain and simple numbers. In multidice sistem - it just a pack of dices we should roll.

The main difference its simple befor roll in d100, or simple only after roll in multidice.

Of course if you have troubles in schoole with elementary math, it can be not so easy, but then again, if you good with numbers you can evaluete, if you have a fair chances of sucsess, or you should more prepare your action. Positive and negative modificators in d100 is same simple as with roll, becouse you literaly know how you modifiing chanses to sucseed or fail.

For people who dislike the swinginess of the d100 mechanic, rolling 3d34 and subtracting 2 from the roll produces a bell-shaped probability curve centered around 50. 1's and 100s become less likely, but things get a lot less swingy. You get around a 50% chance of rolling between 40 and 60, 25% chance of rolling below 40, and a 25% chance of rolling above 60. This obviously might mean some rebalancing (increasing the range at which guns jam/unreliable guns jam) and it will reduce the chance of DoS quite a bit, but it might be a useful houserule. Also, you're obviously going to need to use a dice rolling program to do this.

Edited for corrections, as noted below.

For people who dislike the swinginess of the d100 mechanic, rolling 3d34 and subtracting 1 from the roll produces a bell-shaped probability curve centered around 50. 1's and 100s become less likely, but things get a lot less swingy. You get around a 50% chance of rolling between 40 and 60, 25% chance of rolling below 40, and a 25% chance of rolling above 70. This obviously might mean some rebalancing (increasing the range at which guns jam/unreliable guns jam) and it will reduce the chance of DoS quite a bit, but it might be a useful houserule. Also, you're obviously going to need to use a dice rolling program to do this.

This is a percentile system I can get behind. You, sire, are brilliant.

Quick corrections:

It should be 3d34-2, not -1

It's a 25% chance of rolling higher than 60, not 70

Problem is that the Star Wars RPG system assumes that you are a rag tag band of hero's fated to defy the powers that be. While I love it, it is not very close to the feel of 40k. In DH you are a fairly normal person (for 40k any how) who is pure enough, skilled enough, or just expendable enough to serve an inquisitor. Like the back of the first edition book says, no one will know what you are doing to protect the Imperium. The wicked and the good, the poor and the rich, the corrupted and the pure, all owe you their lives but will never know your name. You are a nearly nameless agent in a shadow war within an organization that often fights itself. You are the thin and fragile human armor that breaks when it stops the bullet aimed at civilization's heart. It is not meant to be an action hero like existence. You are meant to die or get hurt when you take a bullet. Or when the terrible insectoid monster drops on you from the ceiling and injects you with venom. Or when a daemon possesses your psyker friend and causes him to explode into a portal that radiates warp stuff that melts you into goo, as you hear daemons clamor their way through the still living portal. Or the necron wraith phases through a wall and rends your body. Sure you can survive these things, that is what Fate points are for. But you are always marked by them, always damaged. Maybe just physically, maybe mentally, maybe your very soul will be tainted. And the only true reward you can look forward to is that when you die, your name and deeds will be whispered to a cadaverous man on a golden throne that barely keeps him alive, who is worshiped as a god by trillions. That is why I like the original system: It is brutal, it is in its own way heroic without losing site of the how fragile a human being is. It is rather unforgiving. But it fits the feel of the setting better than a more cinematic game like the Star Wars RPG.

I agree. The d100 system is pretty horrible in terms ease of use and accessibility to new players. While I love WFRP 3e, I agree that keeping the cards and chits out of it is a good idea. Or if you do have them, make it optional. Just my two cents.

D100 ist the best system for experienced gamemasters, as it allows for easy and direct calibration of skill test difficulties. An average user with a skill of 50% would succeed that particular task only in 30% of cases? Okay, I'll put a -20 on the test for the player.

There is nothing difficult or inaccessible about using a d100 for new players. I have yet to meet a single player (or player's girl-friend) who has failed to grasp the concept after a short explanation. Even players with low school qualifications and no sympathy for mathematics had no problems with it.

But then again, d100 all the time gets boring too, so I welcome occasional games with very different mechanics.

Alex

For people who dislike the swinginess of the d100 mechanic, rolling 3d34 and subtracting 2 from the roll produces a bell-shaped probability curve centered around 50. 1's and 100s become less likely, but things get a lot less swingy. You get around a 50% chance of rolling between 40 and 60, 25% chance of rolling below 40, and a 25% chance of rolling above 60. This obviously might mean some rebalancing (increasing the range at which guns jam/unreliable guns jam) and it will reduce the chance of DoS quite a bit, but it might be a useful houserule. Also, you're obviously going to need to use a dice rolling program to do this.

Awww... shame you added that last sentence. I was wondering where you got your d34s from.

Awww... shame you added that last sentence. I was wondering where you got your d34s from.

Yeah, me too. I was expecting Nimsim to suddenly reveal that he just happened to own the world's only d34 manufacturing company.

Apparently this is a d34.

I can't be bothered with calculating the actual spread, but the easiest method to create a bell curve should be rolling 3d% and discarding the highest and the lowest roll.

Not that I'd ever advocate using it, I'm quite fond of my flat probability. But it's definitely quicker than 3d34

If you want to bell curve'ify DH why would you do it on top of the existing distribution?

I think if I had to do it I'd switch to a roll 3d6+value+modifiers vs. TN, and divide current values by 20. Especially because this approach gives you an open ended system.

I have no problem with the Star Wars dice mechanics, but I think the idea of ditching the percentile mechanic for Dark Heresy - thus making it totally incompatible with any other 40KRP line or book - would be folly.

It's already incompatible.

And that is folly.

It's barely less compatible than any of the other recent 40kRPGs.

As much as I love cards and chits and tokens and bits and bobs, I agree with you on that point MorioMortis. However, I'm talking specifically about the dice mechanic - Narration System, or whatever FFG is calling it. What began with WFR3 and was refined with EotE. I think it would be a perfect opportunity to present the 40K setting much like Star Wars is being presented. They could rework the whole shebang again only with the beautiful dice mechanic they've created. I don't particularly care about backwards compatibility because 1) I hate d100 systems and 2) setting material will always be compatible. Anyway, I was simply lamenting and curious if anyone else had the same disappointment.

I hate d100 too. I converted DH1 to my version of d10 mechanic and my players like it. I think I'll do the same with DH2. The conversion is really easy so I'm not complaining that much on DH2 being d100. The idea is you throw that many d10 dice as your Char mod and you are using your skill to decrease the default diff of 8. I can go into more details about it if anyone is interested.

Having said, that I would welcome narrative dice in DH2 with Chaos Star and Emperor's blessing as Light and Dark Side points from EotE. Although I have a feeling a lot of people would mark it as yet another system from FFG using their funny dice.

To sum it up I'm happy they do DH2 and they are trying new and interesting ideas without going too radical i.e. WFRP3ed.

Problem is that the Star Wars RPG system assumes that you are a rag tag band of hero's fated to defy the powers that be. While I love it, it is not very close to the feel of 40k. In DH you are a fairly normal person (for 40k any how) who is pure enough, skilled enough, or just expendable enough to serve an inquisitor. Like the back of the first edition book says, no one will know what you are doing to protect the Imperium. The wicked and the good, the poor and the rich, the corrupted and the pure, all owe you their lives but will never know your name. You are a nearly nameless agent in a shadow war within an organization that often fights itself. You are the thin and fragile human armor that breaks when it stops the bullet aimed at civilization's heart. It is not meant to be an action hero like existence. You are meant to die or get hurt when you take a bullet. Or when the terrible insectoid monster drops on you from the ceiling and injects you with venom. Or when a daemon possesses your psyker friend and causes him to explode into a portal that radiates warp stuff that melts you into goo, as you hear daemons clamor their way through the still living portal. Or the necron wraith phases through a wall and rends your body. Sure you can survive these things, that is what Fate points are for. But you are always marked by them, always damaged. Maybe just physically, maybe mentally, maybe your very soul will be tainted. And the only true reward you can look forward to is that when you die, your name and deeds will be whispered to a cadaverous man on a golden throne that barely keeps him alive, who is worshiped as a god by trillions. That is why I like the original system: It is brutal, it is in its own way heroic without losing site of the how fragile a human being is. It is rather unforgiving. But it fits the feel of the setting better than a more cinematic game like the Star Wars RPG.

I would like to disagree. The book says that PCs aren't just an average Joes. They are cut above the masses as only exceptional characters will server Inquisitors as Acolytes. This invalidates your statement.

PCs in DH are exceptional hence the Fate Points system. The difference is however their destiny against EotE characters’ destinies. DH PCs' future is grim dark and most likely they will die in some Emperor's forgotten place but they will die trying to save Humanity. That's pretty heroic in my book.

I think FFG missed an excellent opportunity to rework Dark Heresy with the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay/Edge of the Empire dice mechanics. Alas.

I agree with the original poster here. My group has been using the dice mechanics of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (and now Edge of Empire) since that game was published and it has been a blast for us. We have played many scenarios in different settings (Warhammer Fantasy, medieval Europe, modern Afghanistan, Star Wars, now planning a horror sci-fi and an Old West adventures)... the dice mechanics is really really cool, and very easy and intuitive to understand... It looks much more complex in paper than in real gaming... About the cards and tokens, they are very cool and add a lot of options to the game, but you don't need to play with them, so this should not be a problem.

In between the above games, I run several sessions of Deathwatch for my players and the d100 system seems clunky in comparison... I used to love the d100 system (played a lot of Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer 2 and some Dark Heresy back in the day) and preferred it over the d20 system (we have played a lot of both Pathfinder and D&D4), but still felt clunky compared with the new dice mechanics.

In summary, the mathematics of d100 (and d20 and d6 games) get in the way of the narrative. They are cool mechanics for tactics heavy games, but they disrupt story flow... People start looking at their statistics and making too many calculations in their minds and that disrupts play... In comparison, with the new mechanics you just know you are better at some skills and worse at others, but you don't have an exact comparison value: exactly as life works, so it's easier to get into the narrative.

On the other hand, I fully understand FFG's choice here: they want to cater to a broader fan base and they have already published two very innovative games (Warhammer 3 and Edge of the Empire) and I guess they want to go this time in waters already explored, so that's completely understandable... I hope they would have the resources to also publish a version of the game with the new dice mechanics, but I understand we are in a world with finite resources...

Don't know, maybe they could do a Kickstarter and hire some freelance designer (or clone Jay Little? I think he is a genius game developer) to publish a conversion of DH2 with the new dice mechanics? My hopes is that they decide in the future to make a Warhammer Fantasy 4 with a new mechanics that takes into account what they have learned these past years (Edge of the Empires dice mechanics is even better than Warhammer 3).

I hate d100 too. I converted DH1 to my version of d10 mechanic and my players like it. I think I'll do the same with DH2. The conversion is really easy so I'm not complaining that much on DH2 being d100. The idea is you throw that many d10 dice as your Char mod and you are using your skill to decrease the default diff of 8. I can go into more details about it if anyone is interested.

Erg... I generally really don't like "success count" systems. The WFRP one is an honourable exception, but ironically (given I am actually ok with the wiff prone linear probabilities of the 40k rpg system) I generally find them unsatisfying random. I don't know why... maybe I am more ok with wiffing on linear probability rolls than in success count systems. It seems more transparent or something.

Problem is that the Star Wars RPG system assumes that you are a rag tag band of hero's fated to defy the powers that be. While I love it, it is not very close to the feel of 40k. In DH you are a fairly normal person (for 40k any how) who is pure enough, skilled enough, or just expendable enough to serve an inquisitor. Like the back of the first edition book says, no one will know what you are doing to protect the Imperium. The wicked and the good, the poor and the rich, the corrupted and the pure, all owe you their lives but will never know your name. You are a nearly nameless agent in a shadow war within an organization that often fights itself. You are the thin and fragile human armor that breaks when it stops the bullet aimed at civilization's heart. It is not meant to be an action hero like existence. You are meant to die or get hurt when you take a bullet. Or when the terrible insectoid monster drops on you from the ceiling and injects you with venom. Or when a daemon possesses your psyker friend and causes him to explode into a portal that radiates warp stuff that melts you into goo, as you hear daemons clamor their way through the still living portal. Or the necron wraith phases through a wall and rends your body. Sure you can survive these things, that is what Fate points are for. But you are always marked by them, always damaged. Maybe just physically, maybe mentally, maybe your very soul will be tainted. And the only true reward you can look forward to is that when you die, your name and deeds will be whispered to a cadaverous man on a golden throne that barely keeps him alive, who is worshiped as a god by trillions. That is why I like the original system: It is brutal, it is in its own way heroic without losing site of the how fragile a human being is. It is rather unforgiving. But it fits the feel of the setting better than a more cinematic game like the Star Wars RPG.

While that is certainly true, I think it has little to do with the dice resolution mechanic used. One could easily have a very brutal game with narrative dice or extremely cinematic game with d100's. As such, I don't really get what you're trying to say.

I agree. The d100 system is pretty horrible in terms ease of use and accessibility to new players. While I love WFRP 3e, I agree that keeping the cards and chits out of it is a good idea. Or if you do have them, make it optional. Just my two cents.

D100 ist the best system for experienced gamemasters, as it allows for easy and direct calibration of skill test difficulties. An average user with a skill of 50% would succeed that particular task only in 30% of cases? Okay, I'll put a -20 on the test for the player.

And that highlights the difference between the d100 and a narrative system. The d100 is purely based on success or failure of a given task, while a narrative system allows for more outcomes. The ones I find most interesting in play are the the "you succeed, but something bad happens" and "you fail, but something good happens." I've those to make the actual table play much more interesting.

There is nothing difficult or inaccessible about using a d100 for new players. I have yet to meet a single player (or player's girl-friend) who has failed to grasp the concept after a short explanation. Even players with low school qualifications and no sympathy for mathematics had no problems with it.

The problem I've seen new players face with is calculating degrees of success. While the concept is not difficult, the actual mechanics as they work out play can be. Subtraction is a harder math to accomplish than addition. And maybe it's just my group, but counting symbols usually is easier to do than subtracting X from Y to determine degrees of success.

And that highlights the difference between the d100 and a narrative system. The d100 is purely based on success or failure of a given task, while a narrative system allows for more outcomes. The ones I find most interesting in play are the the "you succeed, but something bad happens" and "you fail, but something good happens." I've those to make the actual table play much more interesting.

I don't see why a d100 system would preclude a GM from doing this. In fact, I'd suggest that a good GM would do this anyway. Say your techpriest fails his Security roll to open the Armoury door by 1 DoS; instead of just flat failing to open the door, the GM rules that the door opens but an alarm is accidentally tripped. Sure, it might mean a bit of work for the GM but no more than it would for narrative dice.

Perhaps that's what FFG should add to the rules - how to not stonewall your players when they fail a test.

I don't see why a d100 system would preclude a GM from doing this. In fact, I'd suggest that a good GM would do this anyway. Say your techpriest fails his Security roll to open the Armoury door by 1 DoS; instead of just flat failing to open the door, the GM rules that the door opens but an alarm is accidentally tripped. Sure, it might mean a bit of work for the GM but no more than it would for narrative dice.

You are right here, the GM could do it, but still the dice mechanics do not suggest doing it, and so this type of very interesting situations happen less often in d100 or d20 games than in narrative games. At least, that's what I've seen in my gaming experience.

Another advantage of the narrative system is that the dice are also suggesting this kind of situations to the players . Once the players start interpreting their own rolls, you as a GM get access to a lot more ideas for interpretation of the die rolls.

A last advantage of a dice pool narrative mechanic is that each roll tells you much more than just a success-failure with DoS. The roll will give you a succes-failure with DoS plus another success-failure with DoS in a second perpendicular axis, plus information on where the successes and failures came from.

I don't see why a d100 system would preclude a GM from doing this. In fact, I'd suggest that a good GM would do this anyway. Say your techpriest fails his Security roll to open the Armoury door by 1 DoS; instead of just flat failing to open the door, the GM rules that the door opens but an alarm is accidentally tripped. Sure, it might mean a bit of work for the GM but no more than it would for narrative dice.Perhaps that's what FFG should add to the rules - how to not stonewall your players when they fail a test.

Yes, I've thought of adding something like that to the current system as well. However, since narrative dice track on different axes, as cogollo mentions, you can have have more varied results. As such you can get results of "you succeed, and something else good happens" and "you fail, and something else bad happens" (or even just plain success or failure with no added effects) in addition to the outcomes I mentioned above.

You are right here, the GM could do it, but still the dice mechanics do not suggest doing it, and so this type of very interesting situations happen less often in d100 or d20 games than in narrative games. At least, that's what I've seen in my gaming experience.

Another advantage of the narrative system is that the dice are also suggesting this kind of situations to the players . Once the players start interpreting their own rolls, you as a GM get access to a lot more ideas for interpretation of the die rolls.

A last advantage of a dice pool narrative mechanic is that each roll tells you much more than just a success-failure with DoS. The roll will give you a succes-failure with DoS plus another success-failure with DoS in a second perpendicular axis, plus information on where the successes and failures came from.

Yeah, which is all pretty cool. The other thing too is this could be potentially balanced for different atmospheres as well, if you wanted a more "hopeless" feel to your game. For instance, you could balance standard success/failure rates to limit the "whiff" factor people seem to hate so much while having the additional effects balanced much more towards getting negative effects rather than positive ones.

Can you tell I really like narrative dice systems? The One-Roll Engine is pretty cool too, but I haven't spent nearly enough time with it to really know its strengths and weaknesses.

You are right here, the GM could do it, but still the dice mechanics do not suggest doing it...

I don't get it. This is entirely the point of Degrees of Success/Failure. The more DoS you get, the better you do. The more DoF you get, the worse you do. I would argue that it's more straightforward and more flexible than a bunch of symbols.

There have been at least one attempt to do "success with a cost" with the 40k rpg system (and it is a totally legitimate way of interpreting failed rolls in certain cases). The first adventure in the second adventure trilogy, with them wandering around an abandoned cathedral, has a few instances where it has such rolls. The ones I can remember are Strength tests to bust down doors where a failure still meant they succeeded, but suffered some penalty (primarily fatigue, if I remember correctly).

Such a mechanic could be made more explicit.