Wound system changes?

By reddoor, in Game Mechanics

I just created this account specifically to address this issue.

I bought the second edition beta from dtrpg and gave it a skim when it came out, I skimmed these boards. I assumed everything that I didn't agree with or didn't necessarily like would all get worked out in the end during the beta testing.

I'd like to think that all the wrinkly bits would get smoothed over and input would be received and changes would be made.

I Just downloaded the 3 updates on the support page and looked them over.

I only have one question.

Has the wounds system been changed back to something more like DH1?

Nope, and it's highly unlikely it will be at this point.

Wow. That's very surprising to me. I was under the impression that the majority opinion was that this was the preferred route.

I'm very sorry to hear that, I was really looking forward to seeing Dark Heresy 2nd edition.

I have to say that this is a deal breaker for me.

This grand divergence from the previous edition is much to great for me to stomach. Not simply because of the change but because of the direction of the change. It's completely non palatable. I believe the wound system present in previous 40k rpgs was more than adequate and in no way needed any alterations or modifications let alone wholesale removal and replacement.

It may have been beneficial to have been more vocal about this early on but then again maybe not.

Thank you for answering my question.

Most people at this point seem to like the concept of the wound system, the issue is more the minutiae of it. The overall system is great, but it's got a couple of odd little glitches to it, and some of the entries aren't great.

Edited by Tom Cruise

Most people at this point seem to like the concept of the wound system, the issue is more the minutiae of it. The overall system is great, but it's got a couple of odd little glitches to it, and some of the entries aren't great.

I wouldnt talk about "most people".

You like it.

I like it.

Are we most people ? Definitely not.

It's the general consensus I got from the discussions here, is all.

I read some comments here also that were not so...amused.

Lets say - those people who post a lot in this forums seem to have the tendency to like it.

I guess those who dont, are partially not so much interested in DH2 in general.

The huge changes of DH2 does have friends and also those who dont like it. I can understand both.

My 40k players were already converted to a no-wound system before this beta came out (which was extra brutal, even with true grit and pretty insane DVs) so I cannot say the lack of wounds bothered me, if anything it is pretty much what I wanted out of the system, a representation of injury without dry, flavorless HP counting.

I think that the idea of purely narrative damage is interesting, but I have some concerns that the implementation might bog down combat, and that it might not 'scale up' well for super-human adversaries. I know 'hit points' work, albeit unrealistically; I'm open to being convinced about 'narrative damage'- but I'm not quite there yet.

I love it conceptually, but the execution is a fatal flaw in the current game rules.

Hit a guy with four lasgun hits for what amounts to, after his DV, 4 one point wounds. Under this system, he's utterly unaffected... BUT WAIT: If he's hit a fifth time, so long as it's not from the same action, he's probably getting vaporized thanks to the +20 added on! Meanwhile, if he took 10 from a single hit from a single weapon, he's somewhat affected. A far, far more powerful hit to deal so much more in comparison right? But if he gets hit a second time... it's just +5. He'd take a slightly heavier hit.

The easiest way to fix this would be to have the single heaviest hit you took from a volley be the bonus to the next one, but even that's a rather lazy way of doing it. An automatic weapon might hit eight times for one **** measly point each, but it's the 4 damage one [after DV obviously] that's the bonus on the next attack action that damages you, not a bloody +40 for having been hit that many times.

At least the guy with the meltagun would be rewarded for his choice of weapon in a way -if they ain't dead, the next shot will annihilate what's left. Folks don't survive two anti-tank energy blasts too often after all. Not that they can't... but chances are they won't.

We also want incentives for called shots - perhaps if the roll indicates that's where you would have hit, then in addition to having selected the place, you inflict a certain bonus to the targeted part. +5 on the wound perhaps.

Edited by Kiton

The reality is that if you are going to compare the realism of the setting to a hit point system you have the same problems you have if not worse with DH2. Getting shot and having HP chipped away has even less of a visible effect than the wound charts and the average joe in DH2 at least has three different sudden death rules instead of using the wound chart to represent this lethality, much better than HP in my opinion.

Further, a realistic interpretation that doesn't have hits that ought to kill you not killing you either requires you to understand the "hits" as glancing blows, barely deflected shots, flesh wounds, whatever or it requires you to just say that if a dude is hit in the torso or head or really anywhere with a frigging laser assault rifle then he dies, one hit, one kill. Same for all weapons in the setting.

Either understand that some "hits" are not square on and are the grazing shots and cheek injuries every hero/villain gets in an action movie after mowing through expendable mooks or just ignore the doing damage bits and have hit rolls kill people. Seriously, bolters kill Space Marines in the fluff with one shot, and plasma weapons punch holes in tanks, obviously if want to "balance" around that stop even trying to suggest wounds or HP or whatever and just have people up and die when shot.

I read some comments here also that were not so...amused.

Lets say - those people who post a lot in this forums seem to have the tendency to like it.

I guess those who dont, are partially not so much interested in DH2 in general.

The huge changes of DH2 does have friends and also those who dont like it. I can understand both.

And there are a few of us who have withdrawn ourselves from the equation. I wasn't sold on the new system myself, but my friends are all adamantly against it. Consequently, I've found that I don't have much to offer in the way of constructive feedback, so I've mostly stopped posting. I know I'm not the only one, which may help explain why the consensus on the forum seems to have shifted, if indeed it has.

It's the general consensus I got from the discussions here, is all.

No some of us had learned to deal with it. That does not mean some of us have to like it.

No some of us had learned to deal with it. That does not mean some of us have to like it.

On that note, how about discussing some alternative rules for this? I can't be the only one who hates the damage system, but who'll still be running DH2. And even if we want very different things from a damage system, chances are discussing our thoughts in one place will be helpful to all of us.

My current vague thoughts on an alternative are something like this:

Weapon Damage

Convert damage dice, penetration & Righteous Fury to fixed weapon strength:

  • d5 = 3
  • d0 = 5
  • +X mod = +X
  • RF = +3
  • dY Re-roll = Y+1
  • XdY Pick highest = Y+2
  • Pen X = +X
  • Damage type becomes Strength type

FX: The Bolt Pistol normally does [2d0 pick highest +4] damage and has pen 2. Going by the above it instead would have a Strength value of 5 from the die type, +2 from pick highest, +4 as usual, and +2 from penetration, for a total of Strength 13.

Righteous Fury

Instead of scoring RF when rolling 0 in the damage dice, you score RF rolling 0 on any die on the WS/BS roll.

Armour

Armour Values apply as normal, there's just no penetration.

That said, there's not a whole lot of armour in the game so I'm thinking it could be fun and reasonably doable to make armour weak to a particular strength (damage) type, and either double AV against other strength types, or halve AV against the strength type the armour is weak against. Who doesn't want to pull out exactly the right gun to shoot Mr.Big Bad full of holes, only to discover he's had an armour mod done? :)

Also, while pen has simply been folded into what used to be weapon damage, weapon Strength, I think, will tend to be a lot higher than is currently the case. So... Buffing armour values may be required.

Injury

Instead of having a 500 page wound table (yes I exaggerate, but seriously), wounds just work like this:

Body = 10 temporary Toughness damage.

Limb = 10 temporary Toughness damage, 1 Fatigue.

Head = 10 temporary Toughness damage, 1 Fatigue, Dazed 2.

If Defence Value is half or less than the Strength of a hit, the victim gains Stunned 2 in addition to the usual effects.

This alternative is simple enough to keep track of for us.

...

So why do you want to nuke Damage dice and fold Pen into it?

Because Rolling dice takes time and to myself and the people I play with, isn't interesting in and of itself. I have no problem rolling lots of dice if there's good reason for it, but if damage has to be variable it seems to me the logical place to go looking for randomness would be the to-hit roll, not a separate damage roll.

But won't it be a horrendous amount of work?

Neah... As long as there's a single, universally applicable method it isn't a big deal.

But looking at X, it doesn't seem like you've thought this through at all!

Very true. I'll try to crunch some numbers tomorrow night, but for now the above is very much off the top of my head & may not work in the slightest. Even if it does, I'm sure it needs heavy revising. This is just stuff I'd like to achieve and one way it might be possible to achieve it.

It's the general consensus I got from the discussions here, is all.

I feel the need to point out that the people posting on an official (bad) forum are in the vast minority to begin with.

Regardless of the opinion of this forum itself.

Edited by kingcom

It's the general consensus I got from the discussions here, is all.

I feel the need to point out that the people posting on an official (bad) forum are in the vast minority to begin with. Regardless of the opinion of this forum itself.

Wouldnt say this forum is bad - it is what we make of it.

And if it is a minority is also not said. I am just saying it is not an indicator for being a majority.

It is a good place to discuss and develop ideas. It is too small though to make any statistical approaches.

Wouldnt say this forum is bad - it is what we make of it.

And if it is a minority is also not said. I am just saying it is not an indicator for being a majority.

It is a good place to discuss and develop ideas. It is too small though to make any statistical approaches.

It is too small to make any statistical approaches, also I hate to break it to you but its pretty bad.

Edited by kingcom

It's about as good as any public discussion forum on the internet.

So yeah, not great.

This had been the most civil forum I had seen in a long time. I hate to break it with you, but this forum had been good. Not only good, but productive.

This had been the most civil forum I had seen in a long time. I hate to break it with you, but this forum had been good. Not only good, but productive.

I hope you enjoy your world. It sounds pretty cool.

C'mon, it is not so bad.

There are good people - there are good and different ideas - there is still some respect for each other in most cases - and there is the incredible GauntZero among you :D

Can you think of ANY better world ?

So here's my 2 cent:

I think the fact that FFGs staff do not respond to our points is shown in threads that go on and on trying to fix a problem without a sense of resolution. Feedback from the devs (who have final say) would mitigate this.

I think most of us were a bit shocked by the differences between DH2 and previous 40K RPG incarnations. I was expecting something more in line with OW, but hey *shrugs* I'm in a beta for a game, it's not what I expected but lets make it the best I can anyway.

The wound system is one of the more shocking parts, and if you remember at the start there was a lot of complaint about the amount of work it is. Personally, I like the concept but I think it could do with being simplified.

I have this concept of making a Necromunda RPG game based on my version of a refined DH2. It would only have 1 wound chart per weapon damage type, 1 armour value for the whole body, etc, etc

I heartily dislike the execution of the new system from a complexity standpoint. It doesn't add anything apparent to me, other than reduced lethality but does add additional steps and factors to track compared to DH1. Lethality can be adjusted by altering the charts themselves, and a similar result can be achieved by giving all players a fixed Wound rating from DH1, like 8 or 10.

I'd prefer the DH 1 system with some streamlining, or something like Edge of Empire (which is close to DH1's system).

Edited by Uncle Kulikov

Howdy

The majority of the 15 local players of DH, who BTW have been playing since the RPG day adventure came out year 1, have decided the changes mean we will be playing OW from now on with a change of setting. BTW I am the only one of us that goes on these boards. So good luck with the board majority. So of us were able to play at Gencon with the FFG staff and we expressed our distaste to them directly.

I guess groups differ much.

My group is going more and more away from the FFG products.

When the Beta came out, this was an enthusiastic moment when they discussed to get closer to it again...