Going back to my comment on the Wound system here:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/87197-the-wound-system/page-3#entry837273

I would like get an idea of where everybody stands:

What do you favor (discounting extraordinary RF) -

A. A deadly system in which players and master enemies can be one-shotted with deadly weapons (sniper rifles, etc.)

or

B. A more forgiving system in which PCs and master NPCs need to be whittled down (even with more damaging weapons) before they can die.

The question is relevant because these things need to be balanced against each other. Making one-shots hard prevents epic fights from being cut-short. But it's less realistic.

Personally, I vote for A.

Alex

In a system that is inherently random, I would never vote for a one-hit-kill system (for PCs and possibly important NPCs).

It's just not fun to have your character finished to due a single unlucky roll of the dice. It's fine to die due to bad decisions (like staying in a fight that you have no chance of winning) - it sucks to die before you realize that the fight wasn't winnable.

I concur with Magnus. It's no fun to build up a character through the creation rules only to have them one shotted in the first firefight. Likewise important NPC characters need survivability to mantain an ongoing campaign. It will really screw over the GM if the Roge Trader in charge of the PCs ship gets killed diring a random encounter on the way to their destination. It's much better that the DM can see he's in trouble and pull him behind a screen of lackeys.

I know the fact that really bad things can happen is part of what makes the game fun. But them happening all the time is lightly to get the game thrown out.

One shotted with weapons like lascannons yes.

One shotted with weapons like sniper rifles no.

Tank busting weaponry should be able to potentially one shot someone. It is more cinematic for a major villan to be bad enough to be whittled down or that he is so bad you need to break out a tank buster to kill him.

I guess I more in the B) Category.

Seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding here. Reread the original post.

1. Extraordinary (bad) luck can kill PCs/masters already.

2. The question is: how likely should a boltgun shot to the face kill a PC/master PC? How likely a sniping rifle bullet? How likely an autogun full auto burst? Are PCs nearly guaranteed to survive everything below a missile launcher?

Discounting Fate points.

Alex

I'd rather if extrodinary bad luck wasn't able to derail my game. Slow it down a little ok, but not kill off a pivital character. I'm reading the DW scenario book 'The Emperor Protects' there are a lot of NPCs that need to survive encounters for the game to work. Such as the RT from the start. Otherwise, the DM with have to start searching around for excuses for NPC behaviour on the fly, leading to plot holes and other undesirable effects.

I tend for a rather deadly system, where combat has to be considered well.

With the right weapon, it should be possible to deal dangerous - but not necessarily instantly lethal - damage.

If a low-armour low.toughness acolyte without cover gets hit by a well placed bolter salvo or a skilled sniper bullet tol the head, he should be dead, if fate does not save him.

Acolytes do still have fate, evade & a sane GM who gives them a fair combat situation and adequate enemies.

But if the acolytes mess with the wrong guys without proper preparation...there should be blood.

I feel like a system that is allowing for at over 20 sessions of player progression and that has a huge chunk of the book dedicated to combat and weapons should probably be encouraging combat, not discouraging it. Players should be able to take a bolt pistol to the face and be ready for the next combat (sans a nose, teeth, an eye or two, etc.). Non-important NPCs should be able to take a bolt pistol to the face and be ready for the grave (sans a head).

The d100 system already has some issues with PC competence and results in a lot of whiffs on tasks that should be easy to do. On the same end, it also has a good chance of high damage rolls destroying a PC right away. In general, combat should work like this:

Player makes a big mistake (engages the guy with an eviscerator) and takes a heavy wound, learning that if he does it again he will die.

Player repeats that mistake or takes a big risk (staying engaged with eviscerator dude); this is what burning fate is for.

GM wants to use heavy weapons or enemies on the players, and this results in medium to heavy wounds and a need to change tactics or run away.

How combat should not work:

Player makes a big mistake and immediately dies from it.

Player doesn't get to make big mistakes or risks because he's already dead

GM brings out the big guns and watches as the first player hit by them is instantly killed.

Players question why they bother with wounds or armor if everything is going to kill them instantly.

For that matter, I really dislike how burning a fate point takes out a character from the rest of the session. Really? What if he does at the beginning? Is that player supposed to leave? Sit and watch everyone else has fun? No no no bad bad BAD! Let the GM choose a critical result for the player but allow him to return within the session. This is why instant death is bad; I don't want to gather my friends to play a game for four hours and them kick someone out of it. I know some people have solutions like "let that player play an NPC" or "I am a misanthrope who thinks people should be punished while playing a game", but the most parsimonious solution is to just let them keep their character with a new missing limb.

Anything that uses 'session' as a timeframe is a bit iffy, honestly. A session could be 4 hours in game time, and it could be four months.

I am more in the insta-death category. Here are the 2principal reasons I vouch for those types of fights.

First, I hate when combats drag on. I prefer a more cinematic and deadly fight to a long and boring one. IMO, Dark Heresy is more of an investigation game that a fighting game. When players are forced to go into an open fight, they should know that it could very well mean their death. The fact that they decide to go despite the possible consequences strengthen how ballsy their characters are. For me, the system should reflect that, leaning more towards a Call of Cthulhu style than a D&D one.

Also, the WH40k universe is an unforgiving place where people die all the time. I like this quote from Ravenor's book who says ''Serve the inquisition long enough and it will get you dead''. This aspect needs to appear in the actual fights. I think we tend to forget that we are getting shot by actual guns, laser / plasma or frag grenades. I don't think it's normal to get a shotgun burst in the face without dying. Of course, the acolytes are very lucky/talented individuals and this is reflected by the Fate points system. I love this system, because it allows to DM not to hold back. IN our games, if you burn a fate point, you're out of the encounter, but you can continue to play. if the injuries of your character still allows it.

It has to be grim and dark and deadly.

Make a mistake or push your luck too far - will cost you first fate, later your life.

Life in this setting is short and hard - for me that is absolutely part of the flavour.

It is not like a far future D&D setting.

So if a character survives several missions, he can be proud of it.

If one ever reaches rank 10, it is something special and honorable.

Ok, so I refreshed the topic and lost my post before I finished- time to start over.

As I was saying, as a GM that openly throws all of his rolls on the table for all his players to see, I lean more towards the "instant death" aspect for various reasons.

As a GM with limited game-time, and two groups to run, I don't want to spend 3 hours playing over a fight that isn't particularly worth it, and using GM fiat to end every encounter [instead of hit-points], is not really the best way to do it. Its an open when dealing with the small-time bar brawl, but what about those Khorn Cultists who fight to the death?

Combat should never be long and tedious, it should always be short and deadly. That problem already existed in first edition when both sides of the fight could spend rounds missing constantly or dodging effortlessly, and the second edition has taken steps to solve that problem by tweaking things like dodge.

However, the "foundation" of this system is to stack injuries for the NEXT attack instead of THIS one- a pointless delay which achieves nothing really, but gives PCs a "Safety Cushion" - the Safety Cushion already exists, and its called a "Fate Point"- it ensures that players will get to the end of the story if they suffer too heavy of a damage roll.

The touched by the fates talents, which gives NPCs fate points, describes it as protection against instant, unlucky death.

Now, granted, this is a war-game, it is first and foremost an Investigate game that should be fast paced and interesting. Like a lot of people have said, its a staple of the universe to lose characters quickly and brutally, and I believe that a fate point system is more than adequate to reflect the "special" nature of the acolytes that we don't need to pad combat further to the detriment of the atmosphere.

Sorry, guys, I feel I haven't been very good at making my point clear here. I am not asking how deadly in general you want DH to be for players (although it ties in, as PC and NPC damage are related). My poll is more specifically aimed at NPCs:

Do you want it to be the norm that Elite/Master-level characters must be whittled down (ignoring sheer luck Righteous Fury) and probably can't be one-shotted except through RF - regardless of whether you shoot a stub revolver or a meltagun? Because the system as-is seems to come down that unless you score Righteous Fury or bring HEAVY weaponry to the fight.

A. Yes, whittling down.

B. No, whether master-level or not - a bolt to the head is a bolt to the head.

I fall into the B camp for 2 reasons:

1. For Elite adversaries: It's just pretty cool to outwit them, set yourself up in a sniper position (with a Lasgun) and shoot them in the head. The difficulty here should be in outwitting. If I manage to do that and dont roll badly on my sniping roll, a lasgun hit to the head should result for any Novice or Elite very likely in death. Everything else messes with suspense of disbelief.

2. For Master-level adversaries: At the end of Rejoice For You Are True a fellow player of mine rolled an epic boltgun spray on the main adversary in the 2nd round of combat and cut the boss fight radically short for everyone. I (we!) wasnt mad at all. It was very very good rolls and I was happy for my fellow player. It is this unpredictability that makes RPGs worthwhile. If every boss fight is carefully balanced so that it is always a grind to the last Wound Point (or whatever), it becomes predictable and boring. There needs to be an element of fortune vs. misfortune.

My concern is that both become exceedingly difficult under the 2.0 system as you likely need to weaken your enemy before he can get killed.

Now it doesn't need either-or. There can be a trade-off. If you reduce the wound effect bonus from +5/+10 to +3/+6 and compress the criticals from maxing out at 30 to maxing out at 20 or 25, you shift the balance a bit further towards insta-death likelihood and away from needing to weaken the enemy first. Alternatively you can up weapon damages. The game designers can callibrate here, in my mind.

And thus I'd like hear from all of you where you'd like the balance to be.

Cheers,

Alex

The d100 system already has some issues with PC competence and results in a lot of whiffs on tasks that should be easy to do. On the same end, it also has a good chance of high damage rolls destroying a PC right away. In general, combat should work like this:

Player makes a big mistake (engages the guy with an eviscerator) and takes a heavy wound, learning that if he does it again he will die.

Player repeats that mistake or takes a big risk (staying engaged with eviscerator dude); this is what burning fate is for.

GM wants to use heavy weapons or enemies on the players, and this results in medium to heavy wounds and a need to change tactics or run away.

I was going to write a big post but Nimsim really nailed my point pretty well.

You shouldn't be burning fate as soon as you make a mistake, there should be room to learn from that mistake.

Learn from mistakes ? Not before paying for them.

This is no acolyte training school, this is the merciless battle against the enemies from within, without and beyond.

This is the desparate try to postpone the end one more day.

And if you need to give your life in His service, do so without hesitation.

And players will quickly learn to loathe the game if they're losing a crucial resource like fate points every time they make a mistake, even the first time. It's important to strike a good balance between being thematic and being fun, if you focus too much on the grimdark you'd just have everyone falling dead from laspistol shots to the leg.

For me, it's not about punishing mistakes made by players, it's more about showing the risks involved in a battle. Shooting at each other with hand cannons is deadly and it should be reflected in the game mechanic, IMO.

But wait Tom- at this point, its the "nature" of the mistake that counts.

Here, the mistake they are making is rushing with open arms into the maniac wielding an eviscerator. This isn't a mistake that people learn trough trial and error not to do. The description of the eviscerator alone, and the customary "Are you sure?" Look/comment by the GM should be more than enough to dissuade any player from doing it.

Combat is deadly. People should be aware of how deadly it is BEFORE The monster rolls his damage [in most cases.] If a genestealer cuts you up, or if a blood-letter slashes you, it should HURT A LOT [even though, in both these cases, by DH1 rules a 1 Shot was not possible.] Tt shouldn't elicit comments like "I didn't think it would hurt that much! Its just claws/a sword!"

Here the mistake happened waaaaaaaaaaaay before the damage was rolled. And in any case, players disengaging from a Genstealer isn't going to save them, as that thing moves MUCH faster than them- so its another attack virtually Guaranteed, and another pointlessly delayed round until the fate point is burned and the player learns the hard-way not to engage Genestealers in melee [unless he gets horrendously lucky.]

First, to answer ak-73, I'd like for combat to be fast and brutal against the NPCs. I feel like the current system reflects this fairly well with Novices, Elites, and Masters who are essentially given "plot armor" based on how important they are to the encounter. A lucky shot will kill off anything short of a master and a bolt pistol to the face will kill them off as well (just say its an automatic critical hit/maximum damage). I think that one of the issues that people are having comes from a lack of actual playtesting. In old dark heresy, all that really mattered was getting someone into the dead range in order to take them out. In the new version, someone can get taken out of a fight much earlier, at least for a round or two. Combat is no longer a binary dead/not dead. Or all the people wanting more realism, this is actually more realistic. Look at statistics for any battle in history. Non-death Casualties almost always outweigh deaths. People become injured and stop fighting, or run away.

So, to sum that up, I favor combat being deadly to NPCs, but I think that deadliness should extend to the various conditions that are inflicted by the new wound system.

As far as punishing players/risk of combat goes, they are the same thing. People need to keep in mind that they are playing a game based in a whacky setting, not doing a full on simulation. If you wanted to do a simulation, you'd want to include the PTSD suffered by characters and all of the awful, terrible results of actual battle. The insanity system doesn't cut it for that. This game is meant to evoke an action movie in combat, with larger than life weapons and characters. That is how it's rules are set up, and that is the kind of game it is built to run. Death is not a good way to teach the players about combat risk, because the rules aren't really set up for it. Have them lose a limb; the rules DO have robot limbs and so on. Fate Points exist to allow players to do heroic awesome things. They shouldn't be used because a player got one shotted by a ganger in a side combat.

I'm in favor of the one-shot one-kill system. As others have said, this brings the spectacular nature of combat a sense of excitement. "It could and does happen" is better than "oh, it'll happen, you just have to wait for it." Now, that being said, I'm actually in favor of the v2.0 system if they can get the bugs out now, otherwise its just a cock-up waiting to be printed thousands of times and distributed world-wide.

In relation to the OP topic, I would like to suggest there be something purposefully printed in the Core rules, perhaps at the very beginning of the Combat Rules section, about combat being a deadly prospect, and characters are encouraged to flee when over powered, outnumbered, or when the dice just plain crap out on the Player. I think this is part of the foundation of the OP: Players don't like to have their characters run away because that is not Dark Heresy. However, I say it is every bit a part of Dark Heresy. PCs that linger in the kill zone when they know the next shot, or the next or the next might kill them...that's on the Player, not the GM.

There are times when the PCs (aka the Players) will make a poor decision, and find themselves horribly outnumbered, outgunned, outmatched, or a combination of all three. The GM may have determined this is the consequence of such a poor decision. The GM is under no obligation to make every encounter a balanced engagement. And the Players need to and can understand this by tacitly saying as much, by putting it in print. This puts equal responsibility on the GMs and the Players.

I don't want the system to be an extreme randomness of "you rolled a 10, it's dead". Even though for mere humans that is realistic.

I want it dangerous and things can quickly go bad, but I want the players to have a moment or two to react and adjust to see that it's about to.

But I want the option of insta-death in a way that I can control. I.e. if two gangs are slugging it out with autoguns, then I want it as above. But if one side has a las-cannon, then that SHOULD be a case of lucky shot there goes your head. You know why? Because I as GM can decide if there is a las-cannon in play. This poll is slightly false in that it doesn't have to be entirely one or the other. I know that there are weapons that are pretty much insta-death, but I don't have to allow them. And I like that.

I want ambushes and preparation to matter. Springing out from behind some crates and getting the drop on your enemies should be a massive advantage that lets you probably swing the tide of a battle. And that's much harder to do if you're playing some D&D 4e style game where all it does is whittle off some hitpoints from a massive pile of them. So cumulative death has to be severely curtailed, otherwise the gritty and realistic feel of the game suffers badly. But so long as the ways that insta-death can occur are under my control ("hmmmm - shall I give out a plasma gun" and "will I set up and ambush where the PCs are surprised by two dire avengers behind them?"), then that's the best of both worlds.

EDIT: I guess the short version is cumulative damage but not very much of it and things that should eat up that buffer instantly can do so.

I actually thought DH1 managed a nice balance between "instant" and "cumulative" death. Essentially, if you were stupid and just standing out in the open you could go down fast, but if you were clever and actually used cover, the odds of getting instant-murdered was pretty small.

Taking a full auto to the face at point blank range should absolutely blow you away.

At the moment, only weapons can 1-shot kill a PC, if the weapon has at least the potential to deal around 32 damage with a single shot (if the target has around 2-3 Tb and no armour).

I cannot think about a single non-heavy weapon that can do that at the moment.

Thats ridiculous.

In DH1, around 20 was enough for this.

Maybe the tables should remain as they are - but there should be a threshold of Death, like the 2*Tb for Mooks, also for other NPCs and PCs. This could be Tb*3+X or sth like this.

There could be certain Talents that increase this threshold or lower your enemies threshold ("sharpshooter").

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, I believe the OW system was far superior to what's being hocked on us here! Also, I am firmly in the 'B' camp. Per the old system, it would have been very difficult (But possible!) to insta-gib a master lvl NPC or PC! As has been stated before; Both of those categories of characters have fate points and thus can avoid the worst of those painful lessons fairly easily. In my games, Actual player death has been very rare but my players are rarely stupid enough to invite it because they know it's POSSIBLE! Remember: "To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable! But the universe is a big place and whatever happens, you will not be missed!" These words are some of the few actual Canon that has remained with 40k for as long as I remember. How can that possibly jive with a D&D like combat (Admittedly sans hit points!)?

How would you instagib a master level Only War NPC without heavy weaponry?