Hi,

In the game I'm currently playing in, we adopted the rule that when spending xp, you only have to pay half of the indicated amount for any lore skill.

Our gm found that DH1 has a multitude of lore skills and that the chance of the players having the correct lore skill is minimal. The fact that we usually like tuning our characters up combatwise, made sure that nobody invested in these lore skills. This posed problems for the investigation part of the game.

So how about it. Do you invest in lore skills of does your dm also have to encourage you to buy these advances? And if so, would you consider halving the cost for these skills.

Cheers,

Both my current RT groups have the same houserule (unsurprising, I'm the GM in both):

Common Lores cost 100 xp, available at any time, to anyone with even a vague excuse.

I should think having a few missions fail because of a lack of lore skills would lead to investment pretty quickly. That's what happened in my campaign.

This is almost worse in DH 2e, where to not have to buy it at max price, you need to have Intelligence and Knowledge aptitudes. So besides a few career/role combos, most acolytes are barred even more than normal (no exceptions for career related lores, Judgement for an Arbites, War/Tactica for IG, etc.)

I should think having a few missions fail because of a lack of lore skills would lead to investment pretty quickly. That's what happened in my campaign.

Our GM caved in when we risked missing the entire plot because of those lore skills. But this motivated us to spend some xp, so in the end he found a workaround.

If your players missed part of adventure due the poor lore skills they are choosing bad skills or adventure is better for higher acolyte rank.

Now, if your players are not taking lore skills first everything else secondary in general, your RPG is too much hack and slash and too little real problem solving. Cut down combat, add research and mystery. Show them that they are not playing tabletop version of Modern Warfare, they are playing Role Playing Game.

My games, EVERYONE tries to get at least some lore skills, last game by carefully choosing alternate career ranks and taking some elite advances I had Guardsmen (Officer path) with decent amount of Forbidden and Scholastic Lore skills. For that effort, I allowed him to became Seneschal when we moved to Rogue Trader. That is a good character development, someone who was just brawn at first bt he found that he has a brain for problem solving and focused on that field of research. He did not mind spending more exp then he would with adept to acquire those skills as he considered idea of someone who sees bad things, realizes that only by learning you can effectively combat them and then learns as much as possible about them was much more interesting character concept then "I am an Adept. I exist to learn".

Now, common lore, I will give anyone opportunity to earn them at 100 exp per single one in downtime between adventures, provided their characters study a subjects, and possibility of bulk buy at discount - usually 350 exp for 5 chosen to fit player.

.

I also have this problem - Lore skills are not considered 'worth it' when you can spend XP on killing things and not being dead. The problem is you can't really say 'unless you have this one very specific skill, you cannot complete this campaign' any more than you can say 'If you don't have toughness 40, you die'. The trick is to make using lore skills beneficial but not required. I confess that this is quite hard. One idea I came up with for the gun-monkey group is to say using a lore skill to know about an enemy can reduce their fear rating and/or give you knowledge about a weak spot that you can hit with a called shot to deal extra damage.

Other than that, simple ways to get more lore skills into your group is to give out a couple for free at the start, (Say, each player may choose 2 from a list of 5 common lore skills?) or give XP discounts on them for circumstance. (e.g. The players spend a month or two on a forge world - they may now purchase related lore skills at half XP cost.)

...One idea I came up with for the gun-monkey group...

See a problem? You don't have balanced group. DH is not ever supposed to be combat heavy game, it is supposed to be investigative game with occasional horor and action moments.

If even 50% of your game time is spent in combats or preparing for combats you are doing it wrong.

Instead of trying to fit square peg (your group) in round hole (lore skills), try actually talking with them about, you know, maybe someone playing something where Int is not dump stat?

Realistically speaking "gun monkey" groups should do very poorly in majority of situations missing vital clues, screwing interaction and so on.

So maybe next time instead maxing BS, WS and getting best guns they could they will sacrifice some exp for some lore skill.

Or maybe they just built reflex to your particular stile of play? Make some investigative games, they will take much more balanced skill set.

I'm always of the opinion that Lore skills shouldn't be handed out. My reasoning being - If my players don't have something, I can either introduce an NPC or allow the players to find one as a hire or blackmail, drawing out more of the rp aspect.

I understand not every session it will be appropriate, but when it's a mission that requires some knowledge crunching, I'll allow a common skill taken as an untrained 'basic' for that mission. It's very organic for me, but admittidly hard for me to convey my methodology.

(1) If nobody in the group has the "right" Lore skill to advance the plot - that is the time the GM should figure out the way to move the plot forward, one way or another, and regardless of your XP purchases.

(2) Really I find Lore skills to be the most fun part of the game. I also like DH to be a good amount of shooting, but you're better off acting like Shadowrunners than replicating games of Deathwatch with the amount of combat. Lore skills are only not-valuable if your GM makes them not-valuable.

(1) If nobody in the group has the "right" Lore skill to advance the plot - that is the time the GM should figure out the way to move the plot forward, one way or another, and regardless of your XP purchases.

One thing I always try to do is make the Lore skills expedite the plot - if the characters have the right skill, they can skip steps b-c and get to d, but without it they have to go through all the hoops. With that said, I think any plot necessary things should hold without a lore skill - it just might take the players a lot longer to piece together.

:clasps hands in evil gm fashion with a laugh ::

(1) If nobody in the group has the "right" Lore skill to advance the plot - that is the time the GM should figure out the way to move the plot forward, one way or another, and regardless of your XP purchases.

(2) Really I find Lore skills to be the most fun part of the game. I also like DH to be a good amount of shooting, but you're better off acting like Shadowrunners than replicating games of Deathwatch with the amount of combat. Lore skills are only not-valuable if your GM makes them not-valuable.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SchrodingersGun

Schrodingers Gun can really help to boost the profile of Lore skills. If you know that a PC has bought particular Lore skill don't make a big thing of it but a few sessions in put in a death dealing trap of doom or a scenario where knowing this is essential. Smugly ask whether any of the players have the lore skill and then act slightly surprised when they say they do. PCs avoid the nasty event, think they outwitted the GM and have a new found respect for Lore Skills. GM has a group that (slowly) starts moving away from a hack and slash mentality.

The flip side is true as well.

I also have this problem - Lore skills are not considered 'worth it' when you can spend XP on killing things and not being dead. The problem is you can't really say 'unless you have this one very specific skill, you cannot complete this campaign' any more than you can say 'If you don't have toughness 40, you die'.

I slightly disagree. I think this is partially what fate points are for. I had a bit in my DH campaign early on where the PCs were very geared towards fighting at the expense of all else. I put in a situation where there was a room with varius occult paraphenalia geared up to summoning a Flesh Hound of Khorne. All that was needed was for a PC to read not even out loud the pages of a book. They duly did so summoned the Flesh Hound and nearly got slaughtered (one poor chap lost two fate points!). I mentioned afterwards that a Forbidden Lore Warp or Deamons check would have identified the issue immediatly, cue everyone asking how they can stock up on FL/SL skills.

(1) If nobody in the group has the "right" Lore skill to advance the plot - that is the time the GM should figure out the way to move the plot forward, one way or another, and regardless of your XP purchases.

(2) Really I find Lore skills to be the most fun part of the game. I also like DH to be a good amount of shooting, but you're better off acting like Shadowrunners than replicating games of Deathwatch with the amount of combat. Lore skills are only not-valuable if your GM makes them not-valuable.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SchrodingersGun

Schrodingers Gun can really help to boost the profile of Lore skills. If you know that a PC has bought particular Lore skill don't make a big thing of it but a few sessions in put in a death dealing trap of doom or a scenario where knowing this is essential. Smugly ask whether any of the players have the lore skill and then act slightly surprised when they say they do. PCs avoid the nasty event, think they outwitted the GM and have a new found respect for Lore Skills. GM has a group that (slowly) starts moving away from a hack and slash mentality.

The flip side is true as well.

I also have this problem - Lore skills are not considered 'worth it' when you can spend XP on killing things and not being dead. The problem is you can't really say 'unless you have this one very specific skill, you cannot complete this campaign' any more than you can say 'If you don't have toughness 40, you die'.

I slightly disagree. I think this is partially what fate points are for. I had a bit in my DH campaign early on where the PCs were very geared towards fighting at the expense of all else. I put in a situation where there was a room with varius occult paraphenalia geared up to summoning a Flesh Hound of Khorne. All that was needed was for a PC to read not even out loud the pages of a book. They duly did so summoned the Flesh Hound and nearly got slaughtered (one poor chap lost two fate points!). I mentioned afterwards that a Forbidden Lore Warp or Deamons check would have identified the issue immediatly, cue everyone asking how they can stock up on FL/SL skills.

That why much like CoC you never read anything!!!

and my Moritat is illiterate so not an issue

In my games, having lore skills fasten the quest. They don't know something? They will fall in a trap or have 50% chance of doing the wrong things (occasioning deaths, wounds, madness, mutations, etc.). It can even, sometimes, make them fail their mission and have to report to their Inquisitor to tell him that they didn't KNOW what to do.

When they do not have trade (cook), I make them gain fatigue when the mission is long; they don't know how to cook, they must spend a lot on rations, or risk themselves on cooking and so on.

They don't have medicae, they can't tell for sure if the target of their assassination mission is dead or not.

Etc.

I allow players to purchase Lore skills at 1/2 price. There are so many Lore skills that purchasing them all at full price requires a massive XP sink. I run a DH 2.0 game, so with this house rule even a Guardsman can buy any Common Lore skill for 100 xp. Two of my players have the Intelligence and Knowledge aptitudes and can get ANY Lore skill for 50xp at rank 1. They still aren't buying Lore skills very quickly (the Biologis Mechanicus Chirurgeon player is too busy buying Swift Attack to pick up SL: Beasts...) but they have been gradually picking up a few Lores here and there.