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Hypothetical question, I know.

If with the change to 8th GW had rewritten the rules in a way that low results for hit rolls, armor saves etc. are the desired -like leadership- , would that bother you enough to quit?

Weird, and counter to the way I like to play. Human psychology tends to be "bigger = better". It's the whole reason that "idle games" exist, because humans are easily addicted to seeing numbers go up. For that reason, it's never something I like to see when you want to roll low. Having to roll low should only ever be an exception. Heck, even with Leadership rolls, I'd rather a way to make a "roll high" be better than "roll low" just because this is so ingrained into us.

I mean, I'd play it. It's not that bad. But it is, as Yarium said, counter-intuitive.

Easily re-learned. I'd just need to re-order some custom dice and put my logos on the 1's. No big deal. It is counter-intuitive and would be so throughout all the rules.

No problem. it is just that you cant mix them, as it will create too many mistakes.

It wouldn't bother me much. Of course it's counter-intuitive, but I guess after a few games, it will be ok.

Out of curiosity, why are you asking that?

I play games where you have to roll low. Doesn't matter one bit.The dice know what's bad and trend towards that no matter what you try.

Just fine. I play games where low rolls are desirable too.

As geifer said, the dice always know. When you're looking for 1's, you'll see all the 6's you were looking for yesterday.

I was amazed at how hard it was for my players to adapt to rolling low is good when we played the 40k FFG rpgs. It doesn't bother me but man it does bother some.

The only time this bugs me is when you have companies (GW, and Battlefront Miniatures) who inexplicably put icons on the '1' face in a game where it's 95% bad to roll low. I love me some custom dice, but it's so counter-intuitive to see an icon roll up...and indicate how poorly you did.

So as long as my dice line up, I'm fine. Rolling low (when applied to an entire game system) is completely fine as it is much easier to logically explain something like that. For instance in many RPGs the percentage of your skill is what you need to roll equal/under.

It's far more logical when designed from the ground up. For instance if we applied a simple D20 to a Warhammer game, and said "Space Marines have Ballistic Skill 16", well that obviously sounds better than Gretchin who have Ballistic Skill 5.

Have played such games, no issues. Only bummer would be dices where symbol is 6. I want those on best rolls, not worst.

I'd be ok with it if ALL rolls in the game wanted low rolls. I still have a hard time explaining to people new to the game why when smacking someone you'd want it to be high as possible, but when dealing with morale you want it as low as possible (yes, there are people who actually get confused by this concept. I am not making this up although I wish I was).

SilverAlien wrote:
I was amazed at how hard it was for my players to adapt to rolling low is good when we played the 40k FFG rpgs. It doesn't bother me but man it does bother some.

I've run DH and DW for two different groups.

One group was fairly long time D&D players. They got the roll-low part fine, but the difficulty modifiers modifying the stat and not the die roll was confusing.

In the other group, my Dark Heresy campaign was only their second RPG ever, and they took to it really easily. The only catch up was that 00 is 100, and not 0.

Roll-under-stat and roll-over-stat are both a bit counterintuitive (in roll-under-stat low rolls are good, in roll-over-stat low stats are good), but players adapt to either one pretty well. To my mind it's more a question of what the point would be; if you're going to try and make something that's mathematically equivalent but has the numbers reorganized it isn't really going to do anything.

That's what happened when Wizards of the Coast took over D&D. Originally, a roll of 1 was good and 20 was bad, but in the last several editions of D&D, 20 is good and 1 is bad. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now it seems as natural as ever.

I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. There are already rolls in 40k and many other games where rolling low is desirable.

On a side note, I never use dice with icons, and don't like it when my opponent does. You never know whether the icon is a one or a six, which makes it easier to cheat or just mess up. I want pips or clear Arabic numerals on my dice.

 alienux wrote:
That's what happened when Wizards of the Coast took over D&D. Originally, a roll of 1 was good and 20 was bad, but in the last several editions of D&D, 20 is good and 1 is bad. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now it seems as natural as ever.

Uh, no. It’s ALWAYS been the case that you want high for the attack rolls in D&D. Its only changed for saving throws and ability checks you now want high. They made it uniform high since 3E, whereas before, depending on the type of roll, you needed high or low.

I’ve played many systems that go either way. As long as its uniforn - you want high on all rolls or low on all rolls, I’m fine with it.

I didn't think it mattered. As long as the game was fun and i was having fun with friends.

It's kind of smart when a game requires both. Keeps the dice honest. Personally, I've always felt that if players rolled armor saves with the same dice that landed the successful wounds it would be good for the game, but probably demand a lot more hand sanitizer.

As long as I know what I'm trying to roll. Because that's an important influence on the result.

 Stormonu wrote:

 alienux wrote:
That's what happened when Wizards of the Coast took over D&D. Originally, a roll of 1 was good and 20 was bad, but in the last several editions of D&D, 20 is good and 1 is bad. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now it seems as natural as ever.

Uh, no. It’s ALWAYS been the case that you want high for the attack rolls in D&D. Its only changed for saving throws and ability checks you now want high. They made it uniform high since 3E, whereas before, depending on the type of roll, you needed high or low.

I’ve played many systems that go either way. As long as its uniforn - you want high on all rolls or low on all rolls, I’m fine with it.

Uh, I didn't specifically mention the attack roll. Yes, attack rolls always used a higher number, but I didn't think I needed to go into details to point out the difference between attack rolls and saving throws since that's not really the point. The point is that there was a change in D&D and it wasn't a big deal.

So if I am charging into combat with a genestealer with my Primaris marine, what is the THACO?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
So if I am charging into combat with a genestealer with my Primaris marine, what is the THACO?

It depends on whether or not the genestealer is wearing his super special leather jacket and pants. And if he ate at THAC0 Bell before fighting.

Actually, I have been considering using the 5E DMG monster guidelines to make a genestealer to add to my D&D campaigns.

It's pretty counter intuitive and to be honest GW doesn't make a good enough product for me to want to relearn it and the community isn't good enough to make up for it.

Honestly before I played any 40k, I had played a bunch of rpgs with roll under mechanics, so ballistic skill confused the hell out of me for the longest time. A Ballistic Skill 3 Guardsman needed a 4+ to hit, a Ballistic Skill 4 Space Marine needed a 3+ to hit, and a Ballistic Skill 2 Ork needed a 5+, while mentally I kept thinking "ok, guardsmen have ballistic skill 3, and hit half the time, so 1-3 I'm good". It just mentally felt so intuitive - stats that were mostly labelled as 2, 3, 4, and 5, where we know that 2 is bad and 5 is good, it just seemed so natural for it to mean to roll under. It took me forever to make it feel normal, because it was just so weird.

Needless to say, I am very happy they changed it from an arbitrary number to 3+ and 4+ to hit, etc for 8th edition.

To answer the original question - so long as the rules were clearly written out that it was a roll under system, yes, it would be perfectly fine with me.

I've played so many game systems that there is very little in my brain that is hard wired for "high = good"... I've played rpgs with d6, d10, d20, d100, and with desirable outcomes at high and low, and the very idea that one is counter-intuitive and the other not is the weird thing for me...

So anything is fine by me, but if they completely changed the roll system in 40k it would take a bit of adjustement, since the general gist of the game has been the same since I've played back in the 1st edition...

No one mentioned you already rolled low some things in 40K? Like stat tests to see if you IC didn't die from some spells or abilities? How people who find low rolls confusing dealt with that?

 Elbows wrote:
The only time this bugs me is when you have companies (GW, and Battlefront Miniatures) who inexplicably put icons on the '1' face in a game where it's 95% bad to roll low. I love me some custom dice, but it's so counter-intuitive to see an icon roll up...and indicate how poorly you did.

The icons are on 1s because that makes them roll more evenly, though, is that not the case?

 alienux wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

 alienux wrote:
That's what happened when Wizards of the Coast took over D&D. Originally, a roll of 1 was good and 20 was bad, but in the last several editions of D&D, 20 is good and 1 is bad. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now it seems as natural as ever.

Uh, no. It’s ALWAYS been the case that you want high for the attack rolls in D&D. Its only changed for saving throws and ability checks you now want high. They made it uniform high since 3E, whereas before, depending on the type of roll, you needed high or low.

I’ve played many systems that go either way. As long as its uniforn - you want high on all rolls or low on all rolls, I’m fine with it.

Uh, I didn't specifically mention the attack roll. Yes, attack rolls always used a higher number, but I didn't think I needed to go into details to point out the difference between attack rolls and saving throws since that's not really the point. The point is that there was a change in D&D and it wasn't a big deal.

No, saving throws you also wanted a high(er) number, what just happened was that the number you needed to roll dropped. So at at first level, if you needed to make a save you for example needed to roll 17 or higher for example, but when you were 20th level it was just 4 or higher on a D20.

The counter-intuitive thing (in 2nd Edition DnD) was that you wanted high stats, but you wanted a low AC and low saving throw numbers. And your attack roll worked the same, you had THAC0, i.e. To Hit Armor Class 0. So you started with a 20 THAC0 at level 1 and it progressed to a THAC0 1 at level 20 (if you were a fighter, other classes had a slower progression to lower THAC0 numbers).

I mean If they re-worked everything for low to high sure, but why bother?

Malachon wrote:

 alienux wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

 alienux wrote:
That's what happened when Wizards of the Coast took over D&D. Originally, a roll of 1 was good and 20 was bad, but in the last several editions of D&D, 20 is good and 1 is bad. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now it seems as natural as ever.

Uh, no. It’s ALWAYS been the case that you want high for the attack rolls in D&D. Its only changed for saving throws and ability checks you now want high. They made it uniform high since 3E, whereas before, depending on the type of roll, you needed high or low.

I’ve played many systems that go either way. As long as its uniforn - you want high on all rolls or low on all rolls, I’m fine with it.

Uh, I didn't specifically mention the attack roll. Yes, attack rolls always used a higher number, but I didn't think I needed to go into details to point out the difference between attack rolls and saving throws since that's not really the point. The point is that there was a change in D&D and it wasn't a big deal.

No, saving throws you also wanted a high(er) number, what just happened was that the number you needed to roll dropped. So at at first level, if you needed to make a save you for example needed to roll 17 or higher for example, but when you were 20th level it was just 4 or higher on a D20.

The counter-intuitive thing (in 2nd Edition DnD) was that you wanted high stats, but you wanted a low AC and low saving throw numbers. And your attack roll worked the same, you had THAC0, i.e. To Hit Armor Class 0. So you started with a 20 THAC0 at level 1 and it progressed to a THAC0 1 at level 20 (if you were a fighter, other classes had a slower progression to lower THAC0 numbers).

This has gotten so far off the point. Here is a direct quote from my 2e Player's Handbook regarding Ability Checks, which is what I was originally referring to:

Ability check--a 1d20 roll against one of your character's ability scores (modifiers may
be added to or subtracted from the die roll). A result that is equal to or less than your
character's ability score indicates that the attempted action succeeds.

Again, the intention was not to go into detail about the D&D rules, just to compare a similar concept of this rule changing to the opposite type of roll.