Roleplaying in the 41st Millennium

[Elennsar]

It may be possible to make a difference. It is a fucked up galaxy. And there is an EMORMOUS amount of shit that slips under the radar of those who are trying to make it work.

But "totally and utterly fubared"...I'm going to go with Abnett's softening of that for the same reason I'm going to assume that Gaunt isn't the one Commissar in the entire Imperium who actually lives up to the job description.

Grim and dark is one thing. "THERE IS NOTHING AT ALL GOOD EVER ANYWHERE WHATSOEVER ITS ALL TOTALLY EVIL" sucks for reasons about as strong as those why a setting that reverses where I put Good and Evil sucks.

As for the Tau: Right, but "death camp" and "lower on the totem pole but better than the Imperium or equal to or whatever" are contradictory.

Fudge: Problem with that is that it means that any bonus at all (or penalty) means something is a pretty damn big shift. Not to my taste. Too little room for small modifiers.

SR: Dice pools don't particularly appeal to me...too damn many dice to keep track of.

Assuming that the range that is PC-available (since this is a game run about the low-moderate individual power end of the game) is made to work out, how well/badly would GURPS's mechanic or d20's (under skill with 3d6 or d20+stuff, anything else being easily not fitting at all) work?

[Username17]

As for the Tau: Right, but "death camp" and "lower on the totem pole but better than the Imperium or equal to or whatever" are contradictory.

No, they seriously are not.

The Tau give you the option of joining the collective or being killed if they defeat you. The Imperium kills everyone they defeat who does not escape.

It's a fucked universe, but people who give you the "Join or Die" tirade are seriously the best people in the whole setting. It beats the hell out of the "Die or Die" tirade that everyone else is giving out.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

Yes, they seriously are. Saying "we'll work you to death if you join" is contradictory with "you'll do better if you join".

Unless the point is that the Tau killing you is better than living anywhere else or better than someone else killing you.

[Username17]

Yes, they seriously are. Saying "we'll work you to death if you join" is contradictory with "you'll do better if you join".

Unless the point is that the Tau killing you is better than living anywhere else or better than someone else killing you.

They don't work you to death if you join. The Gue'vesa have descendants, so they obviously are not being worked to death. Low caste =/= death camps. You get the genocide if you refuse to join the collective, and you get integrated into society if you don't.

The Tau are willing to accept surrender from other races, which by itself makes them far nicer than any other faction except the Dark Eldar. And frankly, I think it's pretty obvious that they are nicer than the Dark Eldar. I mean, seriously.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

True.

So, back to mechanics. What makes GURPS not work? (I'm presuming not since you're not recommending it)

[Koumei]

...you really like the Tau, Frank. I mean, it's not even the Weeaboo appeal, you like their approach. We have a word for that, around here. Know what that word is?

HERESY!

And I'd still rather live amongst humans than any filthy xenos race. Especially as a Sister of Battle. I mean, when they're not exterminating heretics*, they have fairly decent bases to go to, with cathedrals and actual grass, and half-naked pillow fights and stuff.

Speaking of which, what basic system would work well for a game all about them? I mean, Dark Heresy has the problem of "If everyone is a SoB (lulz) then there isn't much difference between them all."

They're just about as good as Spess Morons, except not as strong, not regenerating acid-spitters, and gifted with acts of faith (that can be represented as a magical effect or as a "The Emperor smiles upon you. You cheat fate.") and cloth cloaks that are as protective as Terminator armour. They have some very powerful, hurty weapons** and in at least one canon source, a single SoB kicked the shit out of a small group of Marines (one at a time).

Yet at the same time, they don't live for thousands of years or develop crazy powers. I'm guessing some kind of high-powered SLA or Shadowrun (based on what I remember of it) modification would work best, is that about accurate?

Oh, and I agree, everything is the fault of the Eldar. Especially Eldrad, he's a colossal dick. Nothing good can come from not exterminating them.

*for crimes they undoubtedly are guilty of.

**Within 40K. In the real world, chainsaw-swords and machine-gun rocket launchers are impractical bordering on useless. In GrimDark they are AWESOME.

[Elennsar]

SoB might work with GURPS (but don't take my word for it). The areas they should be individuals with are far more "hey personal things" and far less distinct classes or the like.

[Koumei]

GURPS has the huge disadvantage of not being a system I've played or ever intend to play.

I mean, I haven't played Shadowrun, but I used to have a character creator program, had looked through the books, made a character for a game that died before birth and considered it cool enough to try. GURPS... just seems like "the other generic system", so "d20 except you get to shell out for more books and learn it all over again!"

The differences wouldn't need to be that personal, although it'd indeed be hard to separate them with classes - you have Sister Superior/Palatine/Canoness (leadership stuff, inspires faith, uses the most faith powers, probably has sword+pistol), Repentia (least armour, eviscerator, rage abilities), Mistress (dual-whipping rage-inspiring leader that can charge really well and make fast attacks, as well as intimidating people), Seraphim (dual-pistol-wielding jetpacker), Retributor (heavy weapons + mechanic), Dominion (assaulter), Hospitaler (medic + poisoner), Dialogus (social skills, still has a bolt pistol and chainsword though, decent faith).

I think that sums it up. Equipment (and how they use it) plays a fairly large part there - I like to think they'd be able to get special abilities for weapons, such as "Scorched Earth: you can use a flamer to destroy cover and leave the area on fire, hurting people who enter it" and "Steel Rain: using a storm bolter, you can focus a hail of rounds that stuns the target and causes splash damage to adjacent foes".

I'm seeing SLA as quite likely at this point - human only, with starting packages to give someone a few relevant skills and the equipment for their specialty choice. Then special abilities could perhaps be bought like Flux powers.

[Username17]

Elensar, there is literally no pleasing you. You want a bell curve that brings great certainty but you don't want bonuses to cause large differences nor do you want to roll many dice. That means that by definition you will never be happy with any system. Since you just neatly outlined all possibilities and rejected them, I'm going to say that just like your "I want to play in the largest and grimmest, most implacable setting on the market but I don't want it to feel large, grim, or implacable!" demand, there is literally no help for you. There are inherent contradictions in your demand list and you're going to have to learn to be disappointed on some of them.

I mean, you can totally play Mutant Chronicles, pretty much straight. It's all futuristic, it has a system that doesn't subscribe to the mechanics that you have an arbitrary hate-on for like dicepools or stiff curves. And it has the much smaller galactic civilization that you seem to want that is in turn not run by an amalgamation of all the worst villains in human history such that when the game trots out mere Maoists like the Tau they end up being "too nice for the setting."

---

Especially as a Sister of Battle. I mean, when they're not exterminating heretics*, they have fairly decent bases to go to, with cathedrals and actual grass, and half-naked pillow fights and stuff.

Speaking of which, what basic system would work well for a game all about them?

Sisters of Battle live in, as you've noted, a fairly narrow "power level" which in turn is fairly proportional to "human power." This makes it inherently amenable to a dice pool system like Shadowrun or World of Darkness.

As it happens, Shadowrun comes with a set of drain-based magic that works for the psychic powers that people have pretty well, and the rendition of conjuration can be taken across whole. What you would need to do is the revert damage to the exponential system it was on in previous editions, but I've pretty much advocated that from the start anyway. Certainly my AWoD material and DMH material take the logarithmization of damage as a given.

Actually, AWoD has a pretty good setup as far as statistics for this. Since people who have the Favor of the Emperor (or any other Warp Power) get to manipulate chance and survive improbable odds on a regular basis, the system of Luminaries and Extras would hold pretty well. As a Sister of Conviction you get to have an Edge score that lets you reroll tests and other people don't. Other than that, you get to be a sexy warrior nun, and pick some arbitrary way you want the Empire to be and set fire to everyone who disagrees with you.

Nominally you're supposed to take orders from a group of sadistic a pedophilic priests, but that's just part of the GRIM DARK that your particular order of nuns can ignore if you'd rather. Make up some story about how your particular bishop was caught hereticing and you set him on fire long enough ago that you just don't have one any more.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Cool, I'll check them out. Just a couple of things...

1) AWoD? What is this particular acronym?

2) What is the difference between the two damage systems you're referring to?

Anyway, I'll check it out. Because DH is great for what it's meant to be, but the basic characters are very similar, with only psykers, sisters and tech-priests getting something inherently different. And if it's all about a group of one of them, too much overlap happens.

Also:

Nominally you're supposed to take orders from a group of sadistic a pedophilic priests, but that's just part of the GRIM DARK that your particular order of nuns can ignore if you'd rather. Make up some story about how your particular bishop was caught hereticing and you set him on fire long enough ago that you just don't have one any more.

So much win there. "They take orders from the Ecclesiarchy, providing the Ecclesiarchy doesn't order them to do anything they don't want to do".

[Username17]

1) AWoD? What is this particular acronym?

Alternate World of Darkness, it's a d6 based SR/NWoD hybrid that I've posted mechanics for.

Basically you got 6 basic attributes and some skills. You make any test by rolling a number of d6s equal to attribute + skill + equipment modifier and then you count hits. You also have special attributes of Edge (for main characters), and (in this case) Power for Psykers only.

2) What is the difference between the two damage systems you're referring to?

For reasons that defy ready analysis, SR4 went with a linearization of damage to arbitrary numbers of damage boxes that are variable in number between different enemies. This means that when you shoot an enemy who is tougher they will lose less boxes and have more boxes to lose. This means that you don't have any consistent idea of how much "a damage box" really means. In this system you compare the damage to the soak and the difference is a linear loss of boxes. This creates a lot of problems like the "2 shot kill" problem.

On the other side, in a Log damage system everyone has the same number of boxes and the damage is compared to the soak and then to a table. That is, each time one more point that damage exceeds soak you lose one more box than the last damage point caused. So one excess damage loses you 1 box, two lose you 3, three lose you 6, and four lose you 10. That kind of thing. This allows you to keep "undamaged" and "knocked out" on the same RNG for all levels, and allows you to easily scale things up from lasguns and flak armor to heavy bolters and power armor to autocannons and dreadnoughts by just adding equivalent scalars to damage and soak.

That smooth scaling of damage is important for a 40K universe, because the sizes of weapons and armors are staggeringly varied.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

Frank, in order:

1) I'd like a +1 to be a small adjustment, not a huge adjustment. That's my objection to FUDGE. There is no room for "somewhat harder" or "somewhat easier" when a +1 is that huge.

That aside, FUDGE dice offer interesting possibilities for bonuses or penalties based on gear or the like...say, a +- counts as a + for good gear.

Problem is that its a complication I'm not familiar enough with either math or the system itself to figure out how big an impact that is.

2) I don't want to roll lots of dice. Keeping track of a dozen dice and adding them up or counting which ones rolled a 5+ or whatever is more work with the dice than I'd prefer to do.

Does that mean I "hate dice pool systems and would never use them!"
No. It does mean that I'd prefer not to use one.

3) No, I don't want it to be "totally fubared because if anything actually worked then somehow we wouldn't have the setting". It is possible to have 40k and not have the Imperium be a nightmare from Hell and it is possible to travel between planets and influence multiple planets. Saying it takes months of travel time is like saying that it takes months of travel time between Boston and California.

Sure, the Warp can turn that into either hours or years of Realspace time, but not on such a regular basis as to make it impossible to navigate. (though I'm glad not to be a Navigator. I really am.)

4) When the Tau are presented as a race that is actually Good and not impacted at all by the grim and dark nature of the setting, then yes, they're too nice.

Tau as "Surrender and become part of the Greater Good or die." when your part is at a level...probably not different than where you were before...fine. Not a problem.

What is a problem is that I don't agree that 40k is solely the ugliest, nastiest, and cruelest things you can possibly imagine, magnified by the fact that daemons are literally sin incarnate (or close enough), until you reach something where there is no point in TRYING To hold to anything "bigger than yourself" without ripping down EVERYTHING as it stands.

In brief, I like the idea of a grim and dark and very unfriendly galaxy. I do not like the insistance that the Imperium is something that lights dogs on fire when it gets dark (instead of using torches of a conventional sort) instead of being a somewhat worse in many ways and better in a few form of something like the Soviet Union.

All the fucked up nastiness you need right there without having to paint the Imperium as even blacker than the setting on the whole.

[Elennsar]

Just one thing I'm musing about in regards to general "40k roleplaying"...

In the wargame, a unit is either dead or not (maybe "not yet" if they can take multiple hits).

In fluff, we never get a good idea of individuals vs. individuals because its mostly fluff for army on army struggles.

How lethal, assuming armor and weapons more or less neutralizing each other (so a flak vest vs. a lasgun maybe but not vs. a bolt pistol), would you say damage should be to 40k humans?

You = the person answering.

My impression is that if you're not killed outright, and you're not hit somewhere vital, there's probably room to survive. But avoiding those two "if"s is hard.

[Username17]

Here's how you save the universe in the 40K universe:

The Alpha Legion - the closest thing to "good guys" that the setting actually has anywhere.

Presented with an unbreakable prophesy that if Horus won then humanity would be wiped out and the Chaos threat would be destroyed, but if the Emperor won then humanity would persist in a decaying state for 10 to 20 thousand years and then the Chaos gods would destroy the galaxy - they figured out a third option: arrange a tie. And they betrayed both sides and made that happen. That set a plan in motion that saves the galaxy and humanity - though it still dooms the human empire to slowly collapse for 10-20 thousand years. And the plan actually takes over 20 thousand years to complete.

You're acting like I'm saying you can't affect positive change - you totally can. You just can't do it on the galactic scale in anything like the time frame that a campaign is likely to cover. You'd have to fast forward a lot before you could see any positive change on the galactic stage. 40K has problems that took twenty thousand years to develop, and fighting them is going to take twenty thousand years.

---

Now, back to mechanics. You said specifically that you didn't want to roll lots of dice, but you did want to get small bonuses into the system and you wanted a curve.

And sorry, you can't do that. It's not even possible. Rolling one die has no curve at all. To get a curve, you need to roll multiple dice. Seriously, that's the only way to generate a curve of any kind. And the more dice you roll, the smaller a +1 bonus is. If you want small bonuses to exist, you need to roll a pile of dice or roll dice with very many sides - and dice with many sides don't generate curves.

So the pile of dice is literally the only system that is mathematically capable of generating the kind of results you are asking for. If that doesn't make you happy, nothing will.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

An unbreakable prophecy who they, at least as of the most recent writing, only have the word of the people presenting it for being true on either part, let alone both.

And WHY do we have to emphasis ONLY the ugly things in the Imperium, but pick a legion that betrayed both sides and claim they're the good guys (or as close as we get)?

Why can the Imperium NOT be presented as actually semi halfway functional with a lot of gunk impeding it instead of being fubar taken to the level of parody?

Would it ruin the setting to actually be RIGHT that most aliens would cheerfully stomp on humanity?

As for change on the galactic scale: That's really not a problem. The problem is that you're treating change on the scale of one world as ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT on the galactic scale. Its like adding a grain of salt when weighing a truck.

And I disagree with that. If I killed or saved a thousand people on Earth (population 6+ billion), would it impact the overall population of the planet by very much? In terms of numbers, no. In terms of the impact of such an event, it might.

Similar principle. The fact that the "Imperium on the whole", let alone the GALAXY on the whole, will not notice (as in percieve) more than the ripples should not mean that the ripples disappear, which is the direction that salt grains on a truck scale take it.

Mechanics: Well, if you roll 3d6, you can have a range (not counting modifiers) of 3-18, where +1 is a...small bonus. Which is what I want. I don't want +1 to be a huge bonus.

That's my objective to FUDGE. I'd like +1 to have SOME impact on the odds. It may mean that you're more likely to get a better level of success or failure rather than alter whether you succeed or fail (say, success being just meeting the TN, 1-4 over it, 5-8, 9+.), but its not the equivalant of adding +5 or +10 with a d20.

That is not to say FUDGE is a horrible system, but there is no way to have a small bonus as opposed to a large modifier, even though (especially though) the numbers are so small to begin with.

Honestly, were it not for that (no way to have a modest change in difficulty or ability), FUDGE's dice would be an interesting option to look into (one would need to either get the special dice, improvize them, or get in the habit of reading 1-2 as -1,3-4 as -+, and 5-6 and +, but that's just getting used to something).[/i]

[Username17]

Why can the Imperium NOT be presented as actually semi halfway functional with a lot of gunk impeding it instead of being fubar taken to the level of parody?

Because that would be a different setting. There are other settings available. It sounds like you want the fractured corporatist human empire of Mutant Chronicles. They are facing an ultimate evil in the form of the Dark Symmetry, and while every corporate sphere has social problems, they do provide for the needs of the people in a meaningful fashion. Mutant Chronicles in many ways is the setting you're asking for. It's basically 40K where the difference between the good guys and the bad guys is a lot starker while the universe and timeframe are a lot smaller so that you can accomplish a lot more with your actions.

You're going on like those people who bitch about playing upbeat Call of Cthulhu. It's really simple: play something else. In Call of Cthulhu there is no progress, there is just keeping Yog Sothoth from destroying everyone for one more day. 40K isn't quite that bad, but it's also been made explicitly clear how one saves the universe: and it takes at least 5 thousand years and involves tearing down the current Imperial superstructure.

Would it ruin the setting to actually be RIGHT that most aliens would cheerfully stomp on humanity?

Well, in that that would make the setting even more horrible, I don't know why you would want to go there. The prospect of having to genocide all the Orks, all the Tau, all the Eldar, all the Hrudians, all the Kroot, all the Tyranids, all the Fimir, all the Slaan, all the blah blah blah blah... is even bleaker of a prospect than having to fight against the Imperium and tear down the government. Seriously, you're suggesting a setup in which the "right" course of action is to murder quadrillions of sapient people. That's disgusting beyond comprehension.

A universe in which the Nazis are right is worse than a universe where the Nazis are wrong. If your complaint is that the 40K universe is too bleak, making it so that the people contorting and torturing children into arcoflagellants in order to commit mass murder on peoples they don't even know are actually right is not going ameliorate that in any way.

The problem is that you're treating change on the scale of one world as ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT on the galactic scale. Its like adding a grain of salt when weighing a truck.

No, that's you. There are over a million worlds in the imperium. To put that in perspective, that means that any particular planet is in relation to the Imperium as Aspen Colorado is to the entire planet. If you can't handle that level of relevance, then 40K is wrong for you as a game universe, full stop.

Mechanics: Well, if you roll 3d6, you can have a range (not counting modifiers) of 3-18, where +1 is a...small bonus. Which is what I want. I don't want +1 to be a huge bonus.

I don't even know what you mean by a "small bonus" then. Because a +1 on 3d6 is often a bonus of 12.5% - which is more than twice the difference between one number and the next on a d20. So since you already dismissed the d20 as having units that were too large, 3d6 is obviously instantly discounted as well because there are in fact less numbers that you can roll on 3d6 than on a d20. Seriously, there are 16 instead of 20, so if a d20 is too coarse, 3d6 is automatically too course as well.

---

That's my problem with this whole discussion. You say "The 40K universe is too horrible! I want it to be gut wrenchingly disgusting instead!" You say "These numbers are too coarse, I want to use these coarser numbers instead!"

Your medicines are worse than the disease.

-Username17

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Couldn't you roll 3d20 or something if it comes to that?

[Elennsar]

Because that would be a different setting. There are other settings available.

Not entirely, no. You could run a game where the assumptions behind the Gaunt's Ghosts stories are halfway viable or one where Tyrus is one of the LESS deranged Inquisitors, but you're not forced to run the latter.

Well, in that that would make the setting even more horrible, I don't know why you would want to go there. The prospect of having to genocide all the Orks, all the Tau, all the Eldar, all the Hrudians, all the Kroot, all the Tyranids, all the Fimir, all the Slaan, all the blah blah blah blah... is even bleaker of a prospect than having to fight against the Imperium and tear down the government.

My complaint is taking the Imperium as an example of everything horrible in the human race (and nothing but those aspects) while everyone else is just in the realm of not-so-good guys and that doing THAT makes things too dark.

To put that in perspective, that means that any particular planet is in relation to the Imperium as Aspen Colorado is to the entire planet. If you can't handle that level of relevance, then 40K is wrong for you as a game universe, full stop.

The Imperium has put a lot more effort into saving Armaggedon than the United States would to save Aspen.

Cadia being a specific exceptin, and Mars, and Terra...am I missing any other worlds that the Imperium will fight until the planet is dust before giving up on it (above and beyond prefering to do that as part of Must Control Galaxy)?

don't even know what you mean by a "small bonus" then. Because a +1 on 3d6 is often a bonus of 12.5% - which is more than twice the difference between one number and the next on a d20. So since you already dismissed the d20 as having units that were too large, 3d6 is obviously instantly discounted as well because there are in fact less numbers that you can roll on 3d6 than on a d20. Seriously, there are 16 instead of 20, so if a d20 is too coarse, 3d6 is automatically too course as well.

I have two problems with d20s. One, the d20 system has characters who are too powerful for the scale I want (and doesn't really handle the I do all that well). Two, d20s don't bell curve.

As for "small bonus", if the TN is 30, and you roll 3d6+modifier, a +1 is not going to greatly increase your chances of success.

On the other hand, in FUDGE, it plays an enormous role.

That's my problem with this whole discussion. You say "The 40K universe is too horrible! I want it to be gut wrenchingly disgusting instead!"

Its too horrible when you basically say that the Imperium is the worst thing that ever happened to the galaxy and humanity and that the best thing you could do is ally with the things that seek to consume and/or control all life, backstab THAT, and work on some possibility that may or may not (I don't know where the wargame stands here) still be canon anymore.

Its not too horrible if the Imperium is something that actually is at times something humanity can rely on against things that humanity will end up fighting whether it seeks to conquer the galaxy or not.

A setting where Inquisitors run around like James Bond with planet murdering powers and pyschosises that make Stalin look sane and those are the guys that humanity is told to TRUST is a lot bleaker than one where the Imperium means something other than a method of dealing with the surplus population.

I don't have a lot of fondness for alien races as something that are basically "like humanity, but not", particularly not in a galaxy that is supposed to be incredibly messed up.

I don't want to emphasis the ugliest parts of an ugly setting. I'd like to emphasis that there are things that do work in it at times and I disagree that there's something wrong with the Imperium (in theory, if not always in practice due to the various ways our species sucks and the Ruinous Powers work on top of that) being one of them.

Because if its a choice between "the guys who would sacrifice a human planet to save a few of their kind when there's no reason we should like or trust them" (Eldar) and "the guys who are working to save humanity as a whole and individual suffering is an unfortunate price for humanity's survival" (the Inquisition), wanting the Eldar to be LESS bad bothers the hell out of me.

Wanting either to be GOOD would be bizzarely unfitting. But one should be able to assume that "heresy" is based on "the voices in my head tell me so." (Whether there's that much difference between "the Emperor told me so" and that...I'm not sure what we make of Jeanne D'Arc in our world in that regard.)

[Username17]

Couldn't you roll 3d20 or something if it comes to that?

Sure. You could roll percentiles if you wanted to, and if making the distinction between one number and the next small was your only concern you'd probably do that. Increasing die size decreases the size of a modifier without curving. But that strategy was already rejected pages back when percentiles were determined to be too swingy.

Really we're at a point where Elennsar is making a demand on probability that is best fit by rolling more, smaller dice. That he doesn't like rolling more smaller dice is unfortunate, but mathematically that is what he is asking for.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

Frank: Does a +1 (or +2) to the number of dice produce a small difference, or a not so small difference, relative to your chances of succeeding?

Say +1 on a 3d6+15 (with the TN in question being 10-35) for "small difference".

+1 die if you need say, five successes and have a dice pool of eight?

[virgil]

And I'm sure that there might actually be a planet in the Imperium where the ones in charge are fighting something that's horrible, and you can set it there.

Keep in mind that Frank was comparing Aspen's relevance to the world, not just the US (which is ~5% of the world's population). This is right on up there with people who hate Planescape because they can't stop the Blood War.

[Elennsar]

I stand by my comment on Aspen. The point is that the Imperium has devoted a ridiculous amount of resources to holding Armaggedon if it is, in fact, just a tenth thousandth of a percent of the Imperium.

I am not interested in diminishing the amount of ugliness we know about regarding the Imperium for the most part. I have a problem with the fact we get say a thousand pages (standard size, standard font, etc.) worth of things the Imperium has done that would make anyone up to and including Genghis Khan and Himmler shudder, and "and all the rest is like this too."

Its not enough that there are incidents. No, the whole Imperium has to be FUBAR.

Riiiiight.

And I disagree that you can only influence a planet or two in a campaign. Sure, a million worlds would take centuries. At least. And that assuming you were able to get far more resources than even an individual Inquisitor gets.

But dozens or scores of worlds? Its possible to do that within a lifetime. Even hundreds, if you're in the right spot.

And those drops add up.

[Username17]

Frank: Does a +1 (or +2) to the number of dice produce a small difference, or a not so small difference, relative to your chances of succeeding?

Say +1 on a 3d6+15 (with the TN in question being 10-35) for "small difference".

+1 die if you need say, five successes and have a dice pool of eight?

First of all, when you are rolling dice and adding them together the scalar additions to the TN and die roll don't mean anything at all. 3d6+15 vs. TN 30 is just the same as 3d6 straight versus TN 15. One more +1 makes no more or less difference in either direction. And as it happens, a +1 drops your needed die roll from 15 to 14, which improves your chances by 6.9%, which is still substantially more than is covered by a +1 on a d20.

Now, needing five hits on a dicepool of 8 is pretty harsh. But to put things in perspective: your chances of getting 5 hits on 8 dice is 9%, and your chances of getting 5 hits on 7 dice is 5%. That's a shift of 4%, which is less than the shift on a d20. So yeah, it's a much better fit for the numbers you claim to want.

I stand by my comment on Aspen. The point is that the Imperium has devoted a ridiculous amount of resources to holding Armaggedon if it is, in fact, just a tenth thousandth of a percent of the Imperium.

No it hasn't. How many billions of soldiers have they lost fighting over that hive planet? Totaling all of it, how does that constitute a ridiculous expenditure of resources? They have trillions of soldiers. Losing a hundred billion soldiers is painful, but not the kind of thing that would necessarily make the papers on the other side of the empire.

Your Bawwwing over the scale of these things keeps running into, well, the scale of these things. Yeah, the hundred billion people of Armageddon don't matter, but the tens of billions of soldiers they are sending to save them don't matter either. In the grand scale of the empire, the "massive" war over the planet is actually chump change, just as gaining or losing such a planet would be to the million world empire that is the Imperium of Man.

I mean, the Imperium seriously put every single person on Armageddon into concentration camps and worked them to death and then reseeded the planet with people from other planets after everyone was dead. Because they could. Because they are the bad guys.

Get over it.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

I want a +1 to be possible without it being something like +5 (in D&D).

My problem with the d20 system is the scale of CHARACTERS, not modifiers (and the fact d20s are not bell curved at all).

That's my problem with FUDGE. +1 for "good craftsmanship" is a BIG bonus when the most that can be accounted for on the dice is a +4 to whatever your ability is.

No it hasn't. How many billions of soldiers have they lost fighting over that hive planet? Totaling all of it, how does that constitute a ridiculous expenditure of resources? They have trillions of soldiers. Losing a hundred billion soldiers is painful, but not the kind of thing that would necessarily make the papers on the other side of the empire.

Its the kind of thing that they wouldn't do if Armageddon was such a minimal fraction that it wouldn't matter if it fell or not, however.

After all, the Imperium does not have more soldiers than it knows what to do with, so it would be better, if Armageddon isn't a world worth fighting over, to spend them on a world that is.

After all, if it DID have more soldiers than it knew what to do with, it would be doing a lot more conquering and a lot less "holding on to worlds it already owns".

It may not be ridiculous out of a ten trillion man army (Which assumes ten million on average for each world, and considering that there's a fair number of feral and fedual worlds, is a LOT of soldiers) to spend one hundred billion...but when there's Orks in the trillions as well, Tyrannids in numbers I don't even have a guess at, and who knows on Chaos and other rebellions...it may not make news on say, Cadia, where the entire population is in arms to a greater or lesser degree, but its not quite irrelevant, either.

I mean, the Imperium seriously put every single person on Armageddon into concentration camps and worked them to death and then reseeded the planet with people from other planets after everyone was dead. Because they could. Because they are the bad guys.

Get over it.

And of course, there is no possible reason that the Imperium might have had that might possibly be valid, and that everything it does is always like this or worse (if possible).

Nothing good, nothing productive, nothing effective...remind me how an empire (whether we mean as in the HRE as a joke or not) would SURVIVE being so totally useless and vile?

[virgil]

Or perhaps the Imperium does have more soldiers than it knows what to do with, but it's got enough crap in the bureaucratic system to prevent it from doing near as much conquering as it could/should; that whole 10 thousand years of decay and all does imply that it might actually have a couple billion soldiers it completely forgot about.

As for FUDGE, there's been at least one article concerning the +1 dilemma; and there's also the concept that not everything needs to be represented as a straight numerical bonus.