It is incredibly stupid that an autocannon round can do all that damage to a person but not kill them, only for a punch to that person's thigh next round causing his leg to become a hand-grenade, though.

That's very similar to someone with high Wounds losing a whole bunch to a heavy weapon and feeling no ill-effects, and then suddenly someone punches them and they start going to pieces aka DH1. At least in the DH2 version, there are likely effects before that incrementally building. Also you can feed into things narratively with very little effort. In the example we're talking about the character is dazed and stunned and if someone walks up to them whilst they're still swaying and grabs them by the neck and slams them into a wall - yeah, they get their skull cracked and they die. That is pretty much what we're talking about - an autocannon hit and then an unarmed physical. But it sounds alright, doesn't it? Even the specific example you gave - a leg hit, I can make that work pretty easily. You spot a piece of sharp shell casing from the autocannon embedded in their thigh. Grabbing it you push it in further / yank it downwards slicing open their leg. As the arteries spill out, you produce the "shower of blood and gore" described in the Impact Limb result.

There's a basic choice here - FFG produce the world's largest role-playing book, or GMs exercise a very small amount of descriptive freedom adjusting the wound effects occasionally as needed. It even prompts you to do this in some places, though really, if you shoot someone from behind and the result says it hits you in the forehead, then I do not believe that any GM here should have a problem altering that flavour text in a tiny way as needed. So I don't see big problems doing so anywhere else. And I want to keep the existing wound descriptions because they are useful to me in a way that a bland mechanical listing would not be.

Yes, well put knasserll. We've all been playing with a system (1e) that was pretty terrible at this. DH 1e combat had you behaving in tip-top physical condition even though you were heavily wounded and wearing 70lbs of gear. Then you went from diving, rolling & sword fighting with zero ramifications - to dead from a moderate amount of damage.

This is a great opportunity to keep crunching to get 2e as right as possible, but it's still useful to assert at this point that, in this particular aspect, there's a good case that 2e is already better than 1e (we just got used to it in 1e). Still needs work but it's better than what we've all already have been using.

Another good point you make, is it's perfectly realistic and reasonable for a character to take a blast, be near death & to be finished off by a moderate amount more damage. That's realistic, not un realistic. A lot has been made about this in this thread and on this forum - but I don't think it's something we should be trying to fix.

If anything, it's simply the Wound descriptions that are in question for this. I'm okay with discussing how to make the Wound Effect tables more accurate, but everyone has to admit that to try to have them describe every possible situation accurately is a very tall task.

I actually find more compelling the question of whether +5 for every previous Wound suffered of any size is the best number to use. There's a case to be made that it makes the lasting effects of small wounds too big and big wounds too small. I'm still captured by the notion of making the cumulative Wound Modifier the amount of damage actually taken: +1 future Wound Effect Table modifier for 1 point of damage taken and +15 future Wound Effect Table modifier for 15 points of damage taken. This way would perfectly represent the size of the wound.

It's worth noting that this is the way that 1e handled multiple Critical Wound effects and I thought it worked quite well. In 1e, if a character suffered damage resulting in a "2" on a Critical Wound table, they suffered that result on the table and the next wound suffered would get a +2 to the next damage result on the Critical Wound table. The +2 exactly represented the "2" they had before on the table. Simple & perfectly representing where on the table they were before.

I'd emailed Tim about something similar to this (give the glancing wounds only a +1 to later wounds rather than +5. His main issue with that was how much it would impact the speed of combat. As it is now, if you're damaged 6 times you're either incapacitated or dead. That is anywhere from 1-6 rounds (more if shots miss) in single combat. That's already a pretty long combat. The +5 is putting a firmer cap on combat length, though, which is appreciated.

Maybe it would help to run some simulations on combat length using these differing rules. Another awesome poster whose name escapes me has put up 3 excellently written combat simulations. Maybe we could try rewriting them using some of these alternative suggestions?

I actually find more compelling the question of whether +5 for every previous Wound suffered of any size is the best number to use. There's a case to be made that it makes the lasting effects of small wounds too big and big wounds too small. I'm still captured by the notion of making the cumulative Wound Modifier the amount of damage actually taken: +1 future Wound Effect Table modifier for 1 point of damage taken and +15 future Wound Effect Table modifier for 15 points of damage taken. This way would perfectly represent the size of the wound.

It's worth noting that this is the way that 1e handled multiple Critical Wound effects and I thought it worked quite well. In 1e, if a character suffered damage resulting in a "2" on a Critical Wound table, they suffered that result on the table and the next wound suffered would get a +2 to the next damage result on the Critical Wound table. The +2 exactly represented the "2" they had before on the table. Simple & perfectly representing where on the table they were before.

I'd emailed Tim about something similar to this (give the glancing wounds only a +1 to later wounds rather than +5. His main issue with that was how much it would impact the speed of combat. As it is now, if you're damaged 6 times you're either incapacitated or dead. That is anywhere from 1-6 rounds (more if shots miss) in single combat. That's already a pretty long combat. The +5 is putting a firmer cap on combat length, though, which is appreciated.

Maybe it would help to run some simulations on combat length using these differing rules. Another awesome poster whose name escapes me has put up 3 excellently written combat simulations. Maybe we could try rewriting them using some of these alternative suggestions?

Interesting, thanks for posting that Nimsim. So your suggestion to him seemed to focus on the problem of small wounds having too much lasting effect. Did it also include big wounds causing too little lasting effect?

Meaning, if a PC taking 15 damage would now use that as a +15 Wound Modifier on the next damage they suffered - would that help to alleviate, at least somewhat, his concern regarding the speed of combat, I wonder?

The comment that you're dead or incapacitated after 6 wounds is useful...but that number does lack the dynamics that the Wound Effects cause in an ongoing battle. In other words, the "6 wounds" estimation would be accurate if there were no Wound Effects.

In 1e a PC frequently suffered no ill effects until they were maimed or dead. In 2e if a party's best shooter suffers a disabled arm (even temporarily disabled) early on I suspect that could substantially change the battle.

Unless your previous suggestion to him already included it, do you think it's worth suggesting to him the 1:1 damage to cumulative-Wound-Modifier? So that big hits resulted in big immediate Wound Modifiers? In his mind it could mitigate his concern about having small wounds cause small Wound Modifiers.

Shoot him an email about it, as I have a feeling those have more weight than forum posts. He'll probably say something similar to what he told me and tell you to try playtesting it. Ill ask him about it at Gencon tomorrow if I get a chance.

Okay, shot fired:

------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Tim

It is incredibly stupid that an autocannon round can do all that damage to a person but not kill them, only for a punch to that person's thigh next round causing his leg to become a hand-grenade, though.

That's very similar to someone with high Wounds losing a whole bunch to a heavy weapon and feeling no ill-effects, and then suddenly someone punches them and they start going to pieces aka DH1.

Not really no, because it didn't work that way in Dark Heresy V1.

Because of the way the damage table worked, just to even get to the point where a single punch could make someone's head explode, they'd have had to suffer enough damage on the table from multiple turns of attacks so that their head was barely attached to their neck to begin with. There are no situations in DH1 where someone can go from "head is slightly grazed from the near-hit" to "their skull explodes, everyone with 5 meters must roll to evade or else suffer 1d5 damage from the skull-shrapnel" within just two or three turns unless a powerful weapon is used.

Frankly, I will never buy "the GM just needs to do a little extra work" as a justification or apologetic argument for a game mechanic. If I as the GM need to do extra leg work to explain why a ridiculous effect is not so ridiculous, then what's the point of me spending money for these damage-description tables in the first place? Might as well just have wounds with no damage tables and leave the descriptions of damage to the GM altogether.

No, DH1's critical damage tables, while over-the-top in that 40K kind of way, were fine, and had a somewhat logical progression to them that didn't need me explaining them away. DH2.0 needs something similar.

Justifying a number ticking down as bringing someone to the point that 'their head is barely attached to their neck' is the same **** as justifying wound modifiers in the same way. They're both arbitrary, abstract numbers without any specific meaning behind 'you're hurt pretty bad',

No it isn't, because "wounds" are an abstraction for anything- they don't have to be injuries at all, they could just be grazing hits, or minor scratches, or near-hits. That's why they have no description.

A damage chart that specifically says "the attack grazes your arm, leaving a blood scratch upon its surface" is, literally, an attack grazing your arm, leaving a bloody scratch upon the surface.

And when somebody shoots that same arm next turn with a bow, and your arm is described as exploding and damaging everyone in a 5 meter radius, your arm is literally exploding. There is no abstracting or interpreting necessary.

They aren't the same thing. As far as damage, DHV2's damage system is basically DHV1's damage without wounds, only the critical damage chart remains, that and an "exploding dice" syndrome, which is a poor mechanic in any game.

They really should just get rid of the damage multiplier mechanic altogether- it's dumb and doesn't enrich the combat at all. Have a damage chart, with additional damage incurring worse critical effects- that's all you need to show that "ouch, the more damage I take the more it hurts".

In Dark Heresy, once you're into crits, you could logically get a result like this one turn;

"The attack knocks the limb backwards, painfully jerking it away from the body. The target takes 1

Interesting, thanks for posting that Nimsim. So your suggestion to him seemed to focus on the problem of small wounds having too much lasting effect. Did it also include big wounds causing too little lasting effect?

Meaning, if a PC taking 15 damage would now use that as a +15 Wound Modifier on the next damage they suffered - would that help to alleviate, at least somewhat, his concern regarding the speed of combat, I wonder?

The comment that you're dead or incapacitated after 6 wounds is useful...but that number does lack the dynamics that the Wound Effects cause in an ongoing battle. In other words, the "6 wounds" estimation would be accurate if there were no Wound Effects.

In 1e a PC frequently suffered no ill effects until they were maimed or dead. In 2e if a party's best shooter suffers a disabled arm (even temporarily disabled) early on I suspect that could substantially change the battle.

Unless your previous suggestion to him already included it, do you think it's worth suggesting to him the 1:1 damage to cumulative-Wound-Modifier? So that big hits resulted in big immediate Wound Modifiers? In his mind it could mitigate his concern about having small wounds cause small Wound Modifiers.

I have a few thoughts on this. If you swap the system so that instead of +5/+10 you get a running Wound total, increased by the actual damage total, you get several consequences.

1. Related to the "speed of combat" which you're talking about, you'd probably find combats going noticeably faster - chiefly due to the speed of death. Obviously +15 damage on the wound table result, is worth three +5 wounds in the current system. If the average damage taken by a character is less than 5, then a change to this system results in slightly longer before death on average. Anything else results in faster death on average. Obviously depending on your game the average value of damage could be higher or lower than 5 (armour availability, quality of opponents, etc.), but my feeling is that 5 is lower than average, so generally speaking, this change would make the game noticeably more deadly and those deaths would happen noticeably more quickly.
2. Book keeping and calculation would be increased. Aside from now having an actual number rather than a tally, you're now adding random numbers together all the time.
3. Swinginess of combat increases significantly. By introducing a third random factor into the results, the same hit would now have a much more pronounced variability. When you add an extra dice roll, that happens. Note (before someone reaches for their keyboard), I didn't say an extra dice, I said an extra dice roll. More dice usually leads to greater predictability. The average roll of a literal hundred sided dice would be 51, but the results would be scattered all over the place whilst rolling 10d10 would have the same average result (well, 55), but the results would be much more clustered around that value. However, here, we are rolling dice roll THEN dice roll THEN dice roll with each conditional on the previous. Specifically, current system is Hit Roll + Evade Roll = Effect on Future Rolls (i.e. whether they get +5 or not). This proposal would be Hit Roll + Evade Roll + Damage Roll = Effect on Future Rolls. This is a great deal more swingy. The overall average over many combats could be the same, but each combat would be a lot less predictable.

I'm going to expand on that last point because I'm not sure everyone appreciates that greater swinginess means greater chance of death. Go back to that example with the literal hundred sided dice vs. the 10d10, earlier. (I'm going to ignore the minor difference in actual average between 51 and 55). If I tell you to roll both fifty times, your totals at the end are likely to be close. So you say to yourself that swinginess doesn't actually matter. But it does because if I tell you: roll fifty times, but a result of over 95 means you're dead, then you're way more likely to die with the more swingy d100 (it's a 5% chance on each roll whereas getting ten 9 or 10s on 10d10 is significantly less than 1% chance).

So essentially I see three negatives to this. The first is greater book-keeping. That's a minor. The second is greater lethality. That's a matter of taste but if greater lethality is desired then there are better ways of doing this. The third is reduced predictability. That's the worst consequence to me. DH2 is already a dangerous game with a high lethality. That means that I as GM already have to be pretty careful and thoughtful about what opponents I select for the PCs to fight. Make the whole system even swingier and I'm going to have to be more cautious the whole time and that's going to be frustrating. I want to be able to give them fights on their level, but the more swingy the system, the more I have to err on the side of caution because if I do keep giving them appropriate level fights, I know they will start dying just through odd rolls. Remember the d100 and the 10d10. I have to pitch the opposition around the average of what the PCs can fight. But with low swinginess the results will cluster around that average. With high swinginess, they're all over the place making some fights won easily and others shockingly deadly. This is already the case in DH2 to some extent. This proposal makes it more so and makes the GMs job harder if the GM wants to be able to gauge opposition.

So, a few thoughts.

It's also worth considering that healing and Medicae would need some significant rewrites if we weren't looking at flat +5 modifiers. Not difficult ones, but still.

In Dark Heresy, once you're into crits, you could logically get a result like this one turn;

"The attack knocks the limb backwards, painfully jerking it away from the body. The target takes 1

level of Fatigue."

And then on the next, get one like this;

"The target is completely encased in fire, melting his skin and popping his eyes like superheated eggs. He

falls to the ground a blackened corpse."

And that's only due to eight extra points of damage. A good lasgun shot. It's honestly almost the exact same phenomenon.

Yes. And the only way this makes sense is if you accept it as the luck of that PC/NPC running out.

But this is what I was getting at above: It clearly is an anomaly in the game system, only now, in 2.0, the spotlight is being put on it as it not only applies to crits but to all wounds.

Apparently, FFG considers this anomaly part of the trademark of Warhammer Roleplay. Maybe one shouldn't go overboard with it though.

Alex

It is incredibly stupid that an autocannon round can do all that damage to a person but not kill them, only for a punch to that person's thigh next round causing his leg to become a hand-grenade, though.

That's very similar to someone with high Wounds losing a whole bunch to a heavy weapon and feeling no ill-effects, and then suddenly someone punches them and they start going to pieces aka DH1.

Not really no, because it didn't work that way in Dark Heresy V1.

Because of the way the damage table worked, just to even get to the point where a single punch could make someone's head explode, they'd have had to suffer enough damage on the table from multiple turns of attacks so that their head was barely attached to their neck to begin with. There are no situations in DH1 where someone can go from "head is slightly grazed from the near-hit" to "their skull explodes, everyone with 5 meters must roll to evade or else suffer 1d5 damage from the skull-shrapnel" within just two or three turns unless a powerful weapon is used.

I'm a bit confused by how you see DH1 working. It did work like that. You could have an autocannon or other heavy weapon wipe out all but one of your Wound points in one shot, starting from perfect health, and your character would suffer no ill-effects. Someone could then punch your character for a couple of damage and then get a spectacular and messy death. I don't see how you say otherwise in all honesty nor why you would say that to suffer enough damage it must take "multiple turns of attacks". Do you use some house rule of some kind?

Frankly, I will never buy "the GM just needs to do a little extra work" as a justification or apologetic argument for a game mechanic. If I as the GM need to do extra leg work to explain why a ridiculous effect is not so ridiculous, then what's the point of me spending money for these damage-description tables in the first place? Might as well just have wounds with no damage tables and leave the descriptions of damage to the GM altogether.

Okay, if you turn it into pure Hit Point system with abstract damage you still have to do the work in describing blows, only now you have no base to start from and no guidelines. As another poster wrote, systems like D&D et al just end up with "you hit him for X points" the whole time. If you don't like the descriptions in the Wound table and they're there, you can ignore them very easily. But if I like them and they're not there, I now have much more work to do - as do other newbie GMs. Tweaking the description of a wound is easier than making everything up from scratch the whole time. Plus this whole discussion is a small subset of the general case where the wound descriptions actually do work fine.

No, DH1's critical damage tables, while over-the-top in that 40K kind of way, were fine, and had a somewhat logical progression to them that didn't need me explaining them away. DH2.0 needs something similar

I genuinely do not see how that is true. They didn't "progress" cleanly. You accumulated damage for ages with no ill-effect and then suddenly exploded. That's much less of a progression than in DH2 and more of a flip-switch from on to off.

In Dark Heresy, once you're into crits, you could logically get a result like this one turn;

"The attack knocks the limb backwards, painfully jerking it away from the body. The target takes 1

level of Fatigue."

And then on the next, get one like this;

"The target is completely encased in fire, melting his skin and popping his eyes like superheated eggs. He

falls to the ground a blackened corpse."

And that's only due to eight extra points of damage. A good lasgun shot. It's honestly almost the exact same phenomenon.

Yes. And the only way this makes sense is if you accept it as the luck of that PC/NPC running out.

I don't agree with this. Even with an auto-cannon shell followed by a punch (given earlier) I was able to describe this as cumulative damage quite easily. And that's about as hard as it gets. Cumulative las-gun shots, etc. are easy.

It is incredibly stupid that an autocannon round can do all that damage to a person but not kill them, only for a punch to that person's thigh next round causing his leg to become a hand-grenade, though.

That's very similar to someone with high Wounds losing a whole bunch to a heavy weapon and feeling no ill-effects, and then suddenly someone punches them and they start going to pieces aka DH1. At least in the DH2 version, there are likely effects before that incrementally building. Also you can feed into things narratively with very little effort. In the example we're talking about the character is dazed and stunned and if someone walks up to them whilst they're still swaying and grabs them by the neck and slams them into a wall - yeah, they get their skull cracked and they die. That is pretty much what we're talking about - an autocannon hit and then an unarmed physical. But it sounds alright, doesn't it? Even the specific example you gave - a leg hit, I can make that work pretty easily. You spot a piece of sharp shell casing from the autocannon embedded in their thigh. Grabbing it you push it in further / yank it downwards slicing open their leg. As the arteries spill out, you produce the "shower of blood and gore" described in the Impact Limb result.

There's a basic choice here - FFG produce the world's largest role-playing book, or GMs exercise a very small amount of descriptive freedom adjusting the wound effects occasionally as needed. It even prompts you to do this in some places, though really, if you shoot someone from behind and the result says it hits you in the forehead, then I do not believe that any GM here should have a problem altering that flavour text in a tiny way as needed. So I don't see big problems doing so anywhere else. And I want to keep the existing wound descriptions because they are useful to me in a way that a bland mechanical listing would not be.

Yes, well put knasserll. We've all been playing with a system (1e) that was pretty terrible at this. DH 1e combat had you behaving in tip-top physical condition even though you were heavily wounded and wearing 70lbs of gear. Then you went from diving, rolling & sword fighting with zero ramifications - to dead from a moderate amount of damage.

This is a great opportunity to keep crunching to get 2e as right as possible, but it's still useful to assert at this point that, in this particular aspect, there's a good case that 2e is already better than 1e (we just got used to it in 1e). Still needs work but it's better than what we've all already have been using.

Another good point you make, is it's perfectly realistic and reasonable for a character to take a blast, be near death & to be finished off by a moderate amount more damage. That's realistic, not un realistic. A lot has been made about this in this thread and on this forum - but I don't think it's something we should be trying to fix.

If anything, it's simply the Wound descriptions that are in question for this. I'm okay with discussing how to make the Wound Effect tables more accurate, but everyone has to admit that to try to have them describe every possible situation accurately is a very tall task.

I actually find more compelling the question of whether +5 for every previous Wound suffered of any size is the best number to use. There's a case to be made that it makes the lasting effects of small wounds too big and big wounds too small. I'm still captured by the notion of making the cumulative Wound Modifier the amount of damage actually taken: +1 future Wound Effect Table modifier for 1 point of damage taken and +15 future Wound Effect Table modifier for 15 points of damage taken. This way would perfectly represent the size of the wound.

It's worth noting that this is the way that 1e handled multiple Critical Wound effects and I thought it worked quite well. In 1e, if a character suffered damage resulting in a "2" on a Critical Wound table, they suffered that result on the table and the next wound suffered would get a +2 to the next damage result on the Critical Wound table. The +2 exactly represented the "2" they had before on the table. Simple & perfectly representing where on the table they were before.

I'd emailed Tim about something similar to this (give the glancing wounds only a +1 to later wounds rather than +5. His main issue with that was how much it would impact the speed of combat. As it is now, if you're damaged 6 times you're either incapacitated or dead. That is anywhere from 1-6 rounds (more if shots miss) in single combat. That's already a pretty long combat. The +5 is putting a firmer cap on combat length, though, which is appreciated.

Maybe it would help to run some simulations on combat length using these differing rules. Another awesome poster whose name escapes me has put up 3 excellently written combat simulations. Maybe we could try rewriting them using some of these alternative suggestions?

I'll see what I can do. I'm already coming up with modified combat rules for my 1.75 OW update I'm working on (nicknamed 'Grim Darkness' because 40k), and I do need to test them...

Hmmm. Page 7. Has anyone pointed out yet that the word is "unofficial"?

Or is this "interwebz" humour?

I don't agree with this. Even with an auto-cannon shell followed by a punch (given earlier) I was able to describe this as cumulative damage quite easily. And that's about as hard as it gets. Cumulative las-gun shots, etc. are easy.

Yeah, your description isnt very convincing though.

Alex

Stop talking about "Death-Punches" lime it was impossible.

A wound is only counted, if a damage already has a certain level.

That means, this hit has already penetrated your armour and has overcome your Toughness.

If a punch causes a wound, it already is a serious punch.

The kind of punch which breaks your ribs and pushes them into your lungs.

Stop talking about "Death-Punches" lime it was impossible.

A wound is only counted, if a damage already has a certain level.

That means, this hit has already penetrated your armour and has overcome your Toughness.

If a punch causes a wound, it already is a serious punch.

The kind of punch which breaks your ribs and pushes them into your lungs.

The kind of punch any Sb 1 PC can do with a good roll, I see. Yeah, alright. Got it.

Anyway, I am surrendering on this issue because from what I puick up on the game designers are targeting control over combat length through this mechanism, so it's pointless. If they wanna do that in a semi-plausible way though, they better not tie it to the effects of previous wounds but luck running out. Yet if they wanna keep the "previous wound effect" as a Warhammer Roleplay system trademark... well, good luck, as the system as-is puts the previous games' anomalies under magnifying glass.

I'll move on to other aspects of the beta.

Alex

Stop talking about "Death-Punches" lime it was impossible.

I think the point is that, in DH1, I could shoot your arm off with my auto cannon, then flip your earlobe and watch your head explode like a frag grenade.

But I generally don't find "this was a problem in the old edition too!" to be a very good defence for not fixing it. Unless you think it's a feature and are deliberately keeping it in. There was some quirks in DH1 that we had to work around. It'd be nice to see it "normalized" a bit, but it's not really end of the world if it isn't.

Stop talking about "Death-Punches" lime it was impossible.

I think the point is that, in DH1, I could shoot your arm off with my auto cannon, then flip your earlobe and watch your head explode like a frag grenade.

But I generally don't find "this was a problem in the old edition too!" to be a very good defence for not fixing it. Unless you think it's a feature and are deliberately keeping it in. There was some quirks in DH1 that we had to work around. It'd be nice to see it "normalized" a bit, but it's not really end of the world if it isn't.

Of course you're absolutely right Slaunyeh that this phenomenon having been in DH1 shouldn't be used as an excuse for it existing in DH2. I think this problem in DH1 is coming up because some of the posts on the Beta forum are extremely sharp - almost outraged - at this lingering phenomenon in DH2. So there's a reaction like, "Hey, we've been playing with that same phenomenon in DH1 for a long time, let's not lose perspective." Especially since DH2 is making a legitimate attempt to fix it . Replacing Hit Points with the Wounds Effects Table + cumulative modifiers to that Table are an attempt to directly address that problem of going from heavily-wounded-with-zero-ramifications to death.

One continuing challenge is the narrative descriptions, as you point out in your first paragraph. It's tough to address this without adding a ton of description tables and/or a lot of complexity (like keeping track of separate Wound Modifiers for each hit location).

The other challenge is getting the cumulative Wound Modifier just right...is +5 for any wound of any size the right choice? Seems a tad arbitrary to me, giving small wounds (1-2) too much lingering effects and big wounds (12-20+) too little lingering effects. As you've probably seen on this thread, I've pushed for the solution of using the # of wounds suffered itself for the cumulative Wounds Modifier.

1)

I'm with NO-1_H3r3 when he states nearby, "Granularity of action results in more choice", which is to say it has a positive effect in one of the holy grails of game design - Player Agency . I don't root for or against my players - whatever happens happens - but I want them to have the maximum ability to operate their PCs in my universe. More tactical choices are better than fewer tactical choices - which is why 4 quarter-actions are better than 2-half actions. (I.e. It doesn't take 2.5 seconds to get up off the ground - but the Full/Half Action scheme said it did - clunky.)

2)

-- "I am also unclear what you mean by "no matter what the character is otherwise doing."

Being able to carefully Aim for your entire Turn at a target 200m away while at the very same time successfully Dodging out of the way of a sword attack and still getting full credit for a full turn of careful Aiming - and all of this within 5 seconds! DH isn't supposed to be a historical reenactment...but it's not supposed to be a cartoon-world, either.

--"Now, I have to say I never really looked at a 03 as an big deal of a roll with a single shot weapon whenever I played, it was just "did I hit or not?" Look at it this way, the PC's attack could have 7 DoS and the mook's Dodge had 1 DoS, but the mook is good to go. I guess your players had no problem with that, and that's fair enough - mine had a different reaction & I'm in their camp.

Dodge (Evade) is still a "main method of survival", as you say - nothing's changed that - but now the PCs are required to account for it in their small 5 second window by reserving 1+ Action Points for it or not. It's completely up to them, which gets back to players making choices. If they want to be able to dive out of the way of an Auto blast, then they don't get to Aim for the entire turn.

3)

-"The roll-to-hit was just replaced by the opponent making an agility test instead. Then the target could dodge if they were still hit."

Respectfully, that's just not the case. The rules clearly state, and even go into the narrative of why it's so, that Flamers don't have a To-Hit and all that remains is for a target to try their Dodge. Nowhere in RAW does it call for 2 consecutive Dodges for the target (not counting the separate AG Test to avoid being on fire). I think one would be hard pressed to explain why two consecutive Dodges even makes sense. As you say, FFG even clarified it for everyone in the Forum that what the rules actually state - no To-Hit and just a Dodge - is actually what they intended. It was clear on the Forum that a number of DH GM's seemed to assume that FFG intended 2 consecutive Dodges simply because Flamers would be badly overpowered otherwise (which I agree with) and understandably none too happy with FFG's answer. All the confusion was because most couldn't believe that Flamers were that out-of-whack. I suspect most GM's just House Rule'd Flamers. All of which is to say, Flamers have been a problem in DH.

4) "The simple fact is that creeping around quietly (Silent Move) and following someone around while trying not to draw attention to yourself (Shadowing) are separate, different skills."

The large number of skills would not uncommonly tend to thwart a player's best efforts of what he wanted his PC to be good at. "Your high-Fellowship-with-Charm-Mastery character is extremely charming & engaging - but you didn't take Blather? Oh bummer, Blather's an Advanced Skill so you have absolutely no chance of distracting the bartender." Of course, I could hand-wave that ridiculousness but I'd be hand-waving because of a problem with the system.

5) It had a recurring tendency to slow down combat, whether the players were experienced or new.

6) "It was a measure for certain specific cases such as Tactical Movement etc, ie it was for when you were moving more than a walk, but were still being careful about your surroundings. Run was what you should be using if you were just getting from one place to the next."

That's the narrative explanation for what a Full Move is for and what you said sounds good. But I was referring to when is it mechanically & practically called for given DH's system. Under what set of circumstances does a player, given the system's rules & modifiers for various types of movement, obviously decide Full Action is the specific action he should use? I would suggest that's not easily answered. Mechanically there's not much point to a player choosing it.

7) "Didn't bother me that much. It was a straight up HP system, with some interesting stuff happening for the last few hit points."

Yes, indeed, DH 1e is not alone among RPGs in having no ramifications for badly wounded characters wearing 70lbs of gear engaging in sword fights. Simply stated, I'd prefer that a system provide ramifications for badly wounded characters trying to perform very strenuous acts. YMMV. A character having to switch to his offhand because of a first hit disabling his primary hand, for example, I find a desirable type of feature in combat. That wouldn't happen in 1e unless the arm is pretty much coming off and the character pretty much dying or bleeding out. In 1e, irrespective of wounds, you're either in tip-top fighting condition or you're dead/close-to-dead.

2e is striving to do this better. As you point out, whether using +5 for any previous Wound is the right parameter is an open question - and that's the reason for having a Public Beta and having a Beta Forum, of course.

"Also, just bearing on what others have said: the effects of an attack in the new system will often lack weight."

You may very well be right - and that's the purpose of the forum. I personally am thinking the right path is to simply use the damage incurred as the accruing Wound Modifier. If a character took 1 point of damage than the next attack will be a perfectly represented +1 on the Wound Effect table. If a character took 21 points of damage then the next attack will be a perfectly represented +21 on the Wound Effect table. This would fix both nicks being reflected too much and large hits being reduced too much.

1) I guess so. I am still not totally convinced, as I still feel it will make the GM's life more difficult (tracking NPCs action points). The extra flexibility for players isn't necessarily a bad thing, granted. The AP costs for certain things have to be looked at though.

2) I was fairly sure dodging nullified your aiming bonus... haven't got my rulebook with me, so I can't check, but I remember something like that. OK, half action aim, half action shooting wouldn't be interfered with, I grant you.

3) See post 26 in the following thread: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/79425-dodging-flamers-unclear-rules/page-2

However, you are right that it seems to be a contradiction from what FFG had said previously in answers to questions (which they had ruled incorrectly, if you read the rules carefully). However, when presented by the way that the rules state it should work, they agreed. Flamers did not remove the "to hit" roll, it was just kinda reversed. The target tried to avoid being hit with their agility, rather than the shooter rolling to see that they hit with their BS. If you then needed to dodge it was adjudicated via the area weapon rules (ie it still allowed a dodge, providing you could reach the edge of the area. Still quite powerful, I will grant you as, Eldar etc aside, it still granted you a greater chance of hitting most of the time, but not auto-hit by any means.

4) It still remains a system design decision. Just because someone is good at persuading someone, or seducing them, doesn't mean they are good at distracting them by babbling on about random topics (Blather). The original game decided on granularity (different skills should be different skills in game) while the newer one has gone more for streamlining (similarly themed skills should be covered by the same in game skill). I wouldn't say one is wrong while the other isn't, it is a game design decision (willpower based evade for dealing with psychic powers just bugs me though, as does agility based First Aid).

6) In my opinion? Never, unless a specific action they are taking expressly says they should use a full-move (Tactical Advance... was that what it was called?). I don't think it was ever really intended to be a thing you used in of itself ("I will full-move over there"), but was just a measurement for the special forms of movement action (Tactical Advance being the only one I can currently think of, but I do have a recollection of there being others, even if it was mentioned in talents).

Limb : Ballistic Decay (1d10) [possibly not so big a deal], and the limb is Crippled for 3-7 rounds [probably the rest of the fight, at this rate]. If that's an arm, that character can now only use light weapons - hope they got one. If it's a leg, they're not going to be moving much. Chances are he'll have to spend all his AP to get into cover.

Body : Body Armour's status is reduced by 1 [probably not a big deal, since we were penetrating that anyway - but it could matter], the target is knocked Prone [an AP sink, which is going to matter because..] and unless he passes a -10 Strength test, he's Dazed for DoF rounds [which would halve his AP - he'll now only have 1 left after standing up]. That character's next turn is probably worthless. He better be near cover.

Head : 2 Fatigue [might very well matter, depending on current condition - Fatigue is deadly], Intelligence Decay (1d5+1) [okay, probably not a big deal] and he must pass a Toughness test -20 (!) or be Stunned (!!) for DoF rounds. That's going to kill him. Unless he has an ally that will drag him to safety, he's as good as dead if doesn't pass that (very difficult) Toughness test.

And that's assuming the character isn't wounded. Put just a single Wound on him beforehand and he's in major trouble.

It's also worth noting that the Autocannon gets 2 shots per AP spent. You're likely to put a lot of bullets in your target, further increasing your odds of a good damage roll.

EDIT: And we haven't even considered the frightening effect an Autocannon has of setting up a target for instant death: With base damage that high, every hit is going to cause a Wound (even with TB 9 and Power Armour, rolling snake eyes for damage to the body). Spend 3 AP on that with a decent Ballistic Skill and the target is likely to have 6 Wounds on him. You could flick him to death now.

Maybe you want an Autocannon to kill in one hit, and I can sympathize with that. I don't agree (in an RPG setting), but I think it's a fair argument. I don't think it's fair to completely ignore what the Wound system actually does, though.

I think it's a hell of a lot more terrifying than going from 15 to 3 Wounds in DH1, which would be mostly pointless since my 50% chance to dodge would probably save my ass anyway.

Ok, yes, there is more too it than +5 to a wound, ok, but it still strikes me as daft that being hit by a light anti-vehicle weapon is dazing or stunning your character, or temporarily rendering your limb useless. Ok, yes, it might spell certain doom for your character afterwards, but no matter how many times this 30mm+ cannon hits you in the chest, as long as you haven't taken any damage at all you will be alive after this. You can take 6 autocannon shots to the chest... and survive (having checked it up, an autocannon would kill an average character in Dark Heresy on an average roll. 4d10+5 damage Pen 4 meant an average roll of 27). Though this also depends how you take the hits. Take them in 2 separate groups of 3 and now they will suddenly kill you. Even on a maximum damage roll the weapon cannot kill an unhurt man, unless he happens to be unlucky enough to bleed to death.

And is it just me, or is the idea of a "Lost Internal Organ" condition just a little... strange? I just find it quite funny wording. Rather than "My lung has just been reduced to a bloody mess", we have "I have a lost Internal Organ condition". I don't know... I don't know whether it is due to playing various games to me, but "condition", especially with the generic "lost internal organ" label just sounds very... temporary. I know it isn't be, but it sounds like I should be thinking "just 5 more rounds till I loose that Lost Internal Organ condition", like it was some sort of status effect. That or it is some sort of illness: "Yes, the doctor diagnosed me with a condition called "Lost Internal Organ". 6 week on these pills and I should be able to find my liver again."

In Dark Heresy, once you're into crits, you could logically get a result like this one turn;

"The attack knocks the limb backwards, painfully jerking it away from the body. The target takes 1

level of Fatigue."

And then on the next, get one like this;

"The target is completely encased in fire, melting his skin and popping his eyes like superheated eggs. He

falls to the ground a blackened corpse."

And that's only due to eight extra points of damage. A good lasgun shot. It's honestly almost the exact same phenomenon.

"Once you're into crits" means that you have to go through ALL of their wounds in order to reach that juncture.

So... thanks for re-iterating my point I guess?

I'm a bit confused by how you see DH1 working. It did work like that. You could have an autocannon or other heavy weapon wipe out all but one of your Wound points in one shot, starting from perfect health, and your character would suffer no ill-effects. Someone could then punch your character for a couple of damage and then get a spectacular and messy death. I don't see how you say otherwise in all honesty nor why you would say that to suffer enough damage it must take "multiple turns of attacks". Do you use some house rule of some kind?

Okay, if you turn it into pure Hit Point system with abstract damage you still have to do the work in describing blows, only now you have no base to start from and no guidelines. As another poster wrote, systems like D&D et al just end up with "you hit him for X points" the whole time. If you don't like the descriptions in the Wound table and they're there, you can ignore them very easily. But if I like them and they're not there, I now have much more work to do - as do other newbie GMs. Tweaking the description of a wound is easier than making everything up from scratch the whole time. Plus this whole discussion is a small subset of the general case where the wound descriptions actually do work fine.

I genuinely do not see how that is true. They didn't "progress" cleanly. You accumulated damage for ages with no ill-effect and then suddenly exploded. That's much less of a progression than in DH2 and more of a flip-switch from on to off.

No, it didn't work like that. Before you could even get to the point in the system where you're punching people's limbs off, you have to GET RID OF ALL THEIR WOUNDS FIRST. Try punching someone to zero wounds in Dark Heresy. 1d5 minus 2 damage with the primitive quality. You're going to be at it all day. Even once you bring them down to zero wounds, you're STILL going to be at it all day because 1d5 minus 2 damage on someone with even 30 toughness is going to be taking zero to one levels of critical damage per turn, meaning if you want to punch someone until their head exploded, you would need to punch them for six or seven straight turns. <---- That is reasonable. Shooting someone with a sniper rifle one time and then punching their spinal column out is not reasonable- it's the end result of "exploding dice", which is a terrible game mechanic that needs to die.

I didn't say that there should be no critical damage, or a critical damage table- keep up with my argument please. I'm saying that the way damage is doled out in Dark Heresy V2 follows no logical path and is inconsistent.

"For ages with no ill effect, and then suddenly exploded"?!?! Really?! Let's take a look at the DH1 crit chart for arm damage.

1. "The attack numbs the target's limb, causing him to drop anything he was holding."

2. "The strike leaves a deep bruise- take one level of fatigue."

3. "The impact causes crushing pain and the target takes 1 level of fatigue and drops whatever was held in that hand."

4. "The impact leaves the target reeling from the pain. The target is stunned for 1 round. The limb is useless for 1d5 rounds and the target takes one level of fatigue."

So that's 4 tables in. Dropping your weapon or your shield isn't an "ill effect"? Taking fatigue isn't an ill effect? Experiencing "crushing pain" and taking MORE fatigue isn't "an ill effect"? You realize that taking more fatigue than your TB in DH1 causes you to pass out, right? I can go on.

The critical damage chart in DH1 is MORE than lethal enough. The difference between DH1 and DH2, as I just stated a few posts up, is that DH2's damage system is literally just DH1 with an expanded crit chart, no wounds and exploding dice. What that results in is a terrible damage mechanic where weapons that are powerful and should by all rights turn you into red mist in a second don't, while attacks that shouldn't be lethal can blow you up. DH1 suffers from the former, but not the latter, while DH2 suffers from both. That is not a good system.

There isn't any exploding dice in DH2, though?

I think your definition of the term is way off.

The difference between DH1 and DH2, as I just stated a few posts up, is that DH2's damage system is literally just DH1 with an expanded crit chart, no wounds and exploding dice. What that results in is a terrible damage mechanic where weapons that are powerful and should by all rights turn you into red mist in a second don't, while attacks that shouldn't be lethal can blow you up. DH1 suffers from the former, but not the latter, while DH2 suffers from both. That is not a good system.

1e was infamous for heavily wounded PCs carrying 75lbs of gear suffering zero ramifications in a furious sword fight. It wasn't uncommon for such a PC to then suffer a relatively modest additional wound to devastating consequences. So from tip-top operational performance to maimed or dead from one more modest wound.

To wit, it was possible for a PC with 15 Hit Points ("Wounds") to have taken 12-17 damage, 80-113% of their Hit Point total , and suffer no worse than 1 level of Fatigue - which is to say, tip-top operational performance. Take a PC that has 2 points of Critical Damage, which on the Impact-Body Critical Effect table was 1 level of Fatigue. Then they suffer 6 more points of Impact damage to the head. In DH 1e you added the previous 2 Critical Wounds to the fresh 6 points to go to 8 on the Head-Impact Critical Effect Table - which says "...the attack pulverizes his brain. He does not survive the experience." Death.

So in review, a PC with 15 Hit Points can take 17 damage & be no worse off than out of breath. Then they suffer six more points of damage to the head & are instantly dead. And mind you, they might not have suffered a single previous injury to the head to get this result.

We all got use to it and have been pretty happily playing with it as it's been our vehicle to tap the sick setting that is Warhammer 40k. But that doesn't mean it wasn't ridiculous .

So what's the point of having this discussion on the Dark Heresy 2e Beta Forum? I mean Dark Heresy 1e has it's own forum. Because 2e is trying to address this particular ridiculousness of 1e and the reason that ak-73 started this thread was to discuss the specific parameters of how 2e could best address it.

To simply criticize with general characterizations is not at all helpful. To all who "don't like 2e" - got it . Understood and it's all good. Now, the point of this thread is to discuss ideas of tweaking the +5 Wound Effects modifier.

My best suggestion is to instead simply use the exact damage suffered as the cumulative Wounds Effect modifier. So if 2 damage points were taken the cumulative Wounds Modifier would be at +2. If they then suffered 10 more points their cumulative Wound Modifier would then be at +12...and so on. It seems like this would perfectly represent the damage actually taken, great and small.

The difference between DH1 and DH2, as I just stated a few posts up, is that DH2's damage system is literally just DH1 with an expanded crit chart, no wounds and exploding dice.

As has been stated, your definition of "exploding dice" seems to differ from everyone else's.

Typically speaking, an "exploding dice" mechanic is one where particular die results cause additional dice to be rolled to further increase the total... for example, the Ulric's Fury/Righteous Fury mechanic used in WFRP 1st and 2nd Edition, DH1, RT and DW, where rolling maximum for damage caused you to roll extra damage dice. It's actually a mechanic that is completely absent from Dark Heresy 2nd edition.