Is there a D20 alternative to Dark Heresy?

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Warhammer 40k is awesome. Maybe you agree that it's the coolest sci-fi universe, maybe not.

But do you know what's not awesome? The mechanics in Dark Heresy. Playing with percentile dice makes things so unnecessarily noodily all the time and it's tiresome. Is there a D20 rpg for the beloved Warhamster or even just a random splat book 5E variant like 5E Pokemon or 5E LOTR?

 

[TwiceBorn2]

Deleted.

 

[Crusadius]

There is Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells, an OSR game that in my opinion has a very WH40K-esque feel.

 

[aramis erak]

Warhammer 40k is awesome. Maybe you agree that it's the coolest sci-fi universe, maybe not.

But do you know what's not awesome? The mechanics in Dark Heresy. Playing with percentile dice makes things so unnecessarily noodily all the time and it's tiresome. Is there a D20 rpg for the beloved Warhamster or even just a random splat book 5E variant like 5E Pokemon or 5E LOTR?

Official ones? Nope.
Unlicensed knockoffs? Probably.

Fading Suns started as a 40K RPG, but the license deal fell through, and it redeveloped. Similar tone. There's a d20 version of it. (3.0 or 3.5)...

I honestly don't understand your complaint, tho' - 1d100 is just as flat as 1d20. You could run DH just fine with d20's, just divide all scores (and any used mods) by 5.

 

[TheSword]

D20 modern is about to be updated to 5e. That would have a lot of rules for wealth, guns etc in there, and hopefully classes that could be used. I’m sure if your table knows the warhammer world enough they could make something from it. As a DM you may need to do a bit of work to convert HP but I don’t think that would be so difficult!

 

[Tantavalist]

Use the revised Stars Without Number RPG rules. For Warhammer 40,000 you should also grab the Codex of the Black Sun supplement that adds improved/expanded rules for spellcasting and psychic demons (Shadows) to the system. Go to DrivethruRPG and there's even a free version that's hundreds of pages long that should tell you whether you like the system or not.

As someone who has a tattered copy of the original "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader" on his shelves that I got as a child the feeling I got from SWN was very much that of the first editon 40K; not quite as much the later stuff.

Making a direct 40K conversion would be quite a bit of work but SWN would definitely produce something that feels 40K-adjacent in the same way as Fading Suns and similar works. Definitely look at it before trying anything based on D&D 5e or Pathfinder as the SWN system is both easier to use and works better in play.