Percentile - Bad

With the arrival of Warhammer 40K the RPG (no...not the miniature game), I've had to accept that I really can't handle another system that uses percentiles as their core mechanic.


I've run two games in recent memory that use percentiles (Maelstrom - a tiny game published by Penguin publishing) and Warhammer Fantasy Role playing. And...well...percentiles suck.


It's a reasonably clean mechanic. If I have a 45% change to hit you...well...45 out of every 100 attacks should hit you. Mechanically...there are no flaws.


But...but...well...they just suck. I can't speak about statistics because my players are always anomalies. One guy I had in the Maelstrom game had a 50% attack value...hit almost every single time. One girl in my Warhammer game had a 65% attack value...she missed more often than she should have. Look people...follow the rules of clearly defined statistics OR ELSE!


I dislike this wild probability that percentile systems bring to the table. I, as a player, want to minimize the randomness.


"So why the fuck do you play these games, Trent?" That's the thought forming in your mind. I know. I am psychic.

There is a space between complete randomness and complete determination that is my happy space. Complete randomness would be flipping a coin for every action with no 're-rolls' (re-flips?). 50% chance you succeed, 50% chance you fail. Clearly very boring. Complete determination is that the GM or the players as a group decide whether every action succeeds or fail without any dice rolls at all. There are some people who would call me an elitist as far as gaming goes. I call the people who play deterministic systems elitists. Mainly cuz, I don't get it. You're not really playing a game at that point...you're just telling a communal story.

I cannot (get) stand deterministic systems. Therefore I understand and require some sort of randonmess in my games. But what I don't have to accept is utter and complete randomness. The percentile (and the d20 for that matter) will produce more randomness in a game than a system that used a d6. It's as simple as that.

Therefore, I much prefer a tighter, less random system. Games like Maelstrom and Warhammer cannot manufacturer that. Games like Savage Worlds sits around the middle ground. It sometimes works but due to exploding dice, it can get very random. The Unisystem (Buffy, Witchcraft, etc) has a simple and tight system. Some randomness but if your character is competent in an area, it really shows.

It is a shame, then, that the new Warhammer 40K RPG is percentile. Of course they mirrored their Warhammer Fantasy system almost word for word. The flaws with the Warhammer system have become apparant after running it for almost 2 years. Your character seems either incompetent, relying on luck to save the day or your character is too competent and you cannot fail so there is little reason to roll the dice. It rarely feels like there is middle ground.

To give an example, it was my desire, at one point, to ambush the characters with a group of Skaven (rat men if ya don't know). I actually wanted to have the Skaven pepper the group with poison darts, leaving them unconscious. Then I thought about the rules...and other than telling the characters this is what happened (which isn't really fair in most cases) I realized that there was no way for this to actually happen, rules wise. At least, in the Warhammer system.

I tried to think about this example from both side. It is clearly not fair to just hit the party with an attack with no roll. So it would make sense that a Perception roll would be due. But having a Perception roll and then saying you're attack anyway is just a slap in the face. No, a successful Perception roll should mean that that party member noticed something and has stopped just shy of the ideal spot. Okay, if that's what I feel comfortable with...I now realize that I have 6 players. One of those players has a Perception through the roof. Something like 80% at the time. So...he's gonna make it. He's gonna make it even if I tack on a -30 to his Perception test. And if he makes it, there is a very likely chance that 1 other party member will also make it...cuz it's percentiles and they are all over the place.

So...I presume that two of the characters make it. If one of them makes their roll by a considerable deal then maybe they noticed the ambush well before the entire party walks in. That's only fair. So the Skaven are competant enough to realize that their abmush has failed...they attack...combat begins.

Now poison in the world works with Toughness tests. And I have to hit. I'm not one of those GM's who just says my NPC's always succeed (that'll be a rant for the future). So between the hits of the Skaven, piercing their armour and the Toughness tests of my party...would any of them actually fall? I doubt it. Regardless of the fluff about Skaven being master assassins and using poison because it's very effective...the rules do not support this. Because the laws that seem to govern precentile would suggest that my party will do a tremendous amount of dice rolling, just to find out that they could probably murder those 20 Skaven. I'm not saying that the party would come out smelling like roses afterwards. Some would be dropped. And then those players would get the glorious fun of sitting around waiting for the other characters who were tougher, better armoured or luckier than them, to finish the damn combat.

In the end, I realize that the numbers wouldn't work. So it was far better to just drop the ambush (which might have worked at the beginning of the campaign) and just have the Skaven talk to the party. That was the original point. I just wanted a confrontation between the two. My first way was to capture the party (never works outside of a superhero game) to force a meeting between the Skaven and the party. Instead, I just cut out the headache of the painful dice rolls, which would have likely failed to produce the results I was hoping for in the first place.

Bottom line: I don't like precentile systems. They are too random for my tastes. They cannot produce the desired effect that I like when running games. By the same token, I cannot stand deterministic systems. Some randomness is required in a game. Just not as much as precentile brings to the table.