Even with your logic, which I agree with, I think a "feat tax" is perfectly applicable. In this case, Pistols are not meant to be as strong as Basic weapons, so it should take some effort to make Pistols stronger. I believe that character concepts/late-game fantasies should be determined up front, before hitting the table for an actual game. If I were a GM, I'd negotiate with my players to make sure they're obtaining the "power high" that comes from having a satisfying character. As a player, I would want to let my GM know what it is I'm striving for and ask how I should go about attaining it. Talents may be an experience gate to players who want X concept to be more viable, but then Psykers also have an experience gate for Y Psychic Power. Making Pistols more viable through Talents is the same as a player buying Psychic Powers to me.

My (flawed) view on these kinds of RPGs assumes that everyone is experienced, that the GM and all the other players know exactly what they're doing. This creates a significant blindspot for me, namely trying to put myself in other, less over-thinking people's shoes. Such as brand new players.

Honestly I don't think Desperados even win in the mobility department. Most of the ways in which Move and Shoot is superior to Hip Shooting are very,very curcumstantial. It's usefulness is even more debatable: even if for the round you get to move, do something and shoot you have an advantage over somebody who can't most combats span over several rounds, which are likely to include at least a couple of stand and shoot rounds where the *** gun dual wielder will be vastly superior so he still would have done more over the course of the combat than a desperado. Desperado doesn't make you more mobile, just lets you do an extra attack (of questionable value if all your other attacks are pistol shots too) from time to time.

My gripe with the Desperado is that it's a trap for newer players: it encourages fighting with pistols (which even as dual wield is sub-par) without giving you neither a heads-up about this nor anything that makes pistol fighting remotely worthwile.

I agree that the Desperado special talent does not give you the ultimate fighting edge. But why should it? We are discussing a Role Bonus...a single speciality of the role. The system is quite equal...every character can build a dual full auto killing machine. A too strong talent would also unbalance the system...why should a Desperado be a better fighter than the Warrior?

The Bonus is only a gimnick if you want to play an agile Pistolero...I guess everyone has an idea about pistols not being the best weapons of mass destruction. Still I find the talent usefull and powerful. You can move (half action), aim (half action), fire standard attack (free action)...you are agile and have a increased chance to hit.

But no doubt, that a devestator with a heavy bolter and long range will cause more hits and damage.

Move,aim shoot just gets you at the same bonus as a guy who moves and shoots with a basic weapon since most pistol range is inside basic weapon short range.

For almost any given concept you can get a better character by not taking Desperado (and taking something else) and that IMO us a class design issue.

Move,aim shoot just gets you at the same bonus as a guy who moves and shoots with a basic weapon since most pistol range is inside basic weapon short range.

With a Basic Weapon, sure.

But in my years of playing DH I've found that the majority of combat takes place at short range.

Given that, I wouldn't call a 10% difference the same.

Move, aim, shoot (short range) = + 20 to hit

Vs. Move, shoot (short range) = +10 to hit

Ripplo, that seems out of order, the free-action-shot has to come immediately after the move action, surely? How did the aim action get in the middle?

*reads 'trait'*

AH. Interpretation - once per round, after move... so it doesn't explicitly say 'directly after move'.

I see why you do that, makes sense, extra +10 to hit.

I'm gonna interpret it as 'directly after move' personally, but that's GM's choice I suppose.

Keffisch and LordBlades, you seem to be discussing something the topic question was not about - you're discussing optimum role choice and it's pros/cons, which, as GMs, doesn't really matter, as it's our players that pick that? So we leave it up to the players, letting them pick what they want and answering questions they may have. Or have I missed something vital? If I have, please let me know.

Anyway, If players want to pick a role based on assumed benefits, such as '3 shots a turn' it's up to the GM to be clear on his ruling, which, thanks to all of you, I am - It's 2 fire-modes at most with two-weapon wielder, making Desperado's move-and-shoot a functional utilitarian 'trait'.

This strikes me more as an issue of the requisitioning system, which I've always disliked.

LordBlades gives us the example of an assassin dual wielding Stormbolters being much better then pistols. Well no duh, but at least back in Dark Heresy 1 those Stormbolters cost orders of magnitudes more then pistols, firing them was like attaching a hose to your wallet, and they were hard as hell to actually find. Weapons were more balanced by their prices and availabilities.

Lack of a resource system beyond Influence is probably my biggest gripe with DH2, and I know when I'm running a game I'm just gonna use Thrones.

Equipment is another form of character progression, and DH2 lets you bypass a lot of that progression right from Character creation, and then easily leap up the ladder further with Influence and Inquisitor Influence.

Maybe thrones isn't the answer anymore, but there needs to be some other limiter on equipment, I think.

This strikes me more as an issue of the requisitioning system, which I've always disliked.

LordBlades gives us the example of an assassin dual wielding Stormbolters being much better then pistols. Well no duh, but at least back in Dark Heresy 1 those Stormbolters cost orders of magnitudes more then pistols, firing them was like attaching a hose to your wallet, and they were hard as hell to actually find. Weapons were more balanced by their prices and availabilities.

Lack of a resource system beyond Influence is probably my biggest gripe with DH2, and I know when I'm running a game I'm just gonna use Thrones.

Equipment is another form of character progression, and DH2 lets you bypass a lot of that progression right from Character creation, and then easily leap up the ladder further with Influence and Inquisitor Influence.

Maybe thrones isn't the answer anymore, but there needs to be some other limiter on equipment, I think.

In my experience they weren't. The only issue was ammo price, and that's why bolters sucked in DH1. This doesn't mean there were clear winners and losers weapon-wise (for Example the Average Availiablity Skitarii Vanaheim Assault Shotgun or the Scarce (in Lathes) D'laku Hellgun. There really is little reason apart from personal preference to use 80% of Dark Heresy 1 guns.

It doesn't need to be Storm Bolters vs. Bolt Pistols, logic stands for every basic vs. equivalent pistol weapon.

Lack of a resource system beyond Influence is probably my biggest gripe with DH2, and I know when I'm running a game I'm just gonna use Thrones.

Equipment is another form of character progression, and DH2 lets you bypass a lot of that progression right from Character creation, and then easily leap up the ladder further with Influence and Inquisitor Influence.

If I may offer my opinion on this matter, having a discrete amount of Thrones is fairly suffocating. In the most extreme case, a Scum and a Noble from the first <Dark Heresy> have very different incomes. To me, it seems like a player is being punished if a Scum wants to be decked out in any gear worth more than a couple hundred Thrones or rarer than Common. At that point, are Nobles expected to shoulder all of a group's expenses since Nobles have the highest income? How much money would be left for the Noble to spend on herself after that? Assigning each player an abstract value solves that problem, to an extent. There will still be wide gaps between players, especially if a player specializes in Commerce and such, but at least characters from all walks of life have a chance of personally obtaining the equipment they dream of.

As an aside, if character creation bypasses equipment progression, a GM could just disallow certain items. The written guideline for the "free" Requisitions past Background handouts is that items should be limited to Scarce and up. Bolt weapons in <Dark Heresy Second Edition> start at Very Rare, so a player wouldn't be able to start with Bolt weapons unless the GM was generous. If a player wanted to pick up a Bolt weapon by rolling, that's a (-30) on her Influence before Location modifiers and such. A fresh character would most likely only have single digit of Influence left coming straight from character creation.

There is a rule that allows a player to lose 1d5 influence to auto-succeed at an Influence test. Sounless artificially regulated players can get what they want sooner rather than later.

There is a rule that allows a player to lose 1d5 influence to auto-succeed at an Influence test. Sounless artificially regulated players can get what they want sooner rather than later.

That rule is only as abusable as the GM makes it. Personally, I would probably just defenestrate that rule. Now I'm not sure where I read it, but I think one book described how a failed Requisition could still grant the character the item if they were willing to have strings attached to it. The item could have been stolen, the merchant wants a favour in return, or it's a Poor craftsmanship item. Something along those lines.

There is a rule that allows a player to lose 1d5 influence to auto-succeed at an Influence test. Sounless artificially regulated players can get what they want sooner rather than later.

That rule is only as abusable as the GM makes it. Personally, I would probably just defenestrate that rule. Now I'm not sure where I read it, but I think one book described how a failed Requisition could still grant the character the item if they were willing to have strings attached to it. The item could have been stolen, the merchant wants a favour in return, or it's a Poor craftsmanship item. Something along those lines.

Everything is exactly as abusable as the GM makes it. As a very extreme example if nobody ever sellsbolt ammo a Storm Bolter is way way worse than an autogun.

Everything is exactly as abusable as the GM makes it. As a very extreme example if nobody ever sellsbolt ammo a Storm Bolter is way way worse than an autogun.

I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. From my understanding, the problem was that strong guns are too easy to acquire. I responded that the main way players could have early access to such weapons, i.e., nuking their Influence, is not a good rule to use. Ammo only entered the equation just now.

Everything is exactly as abusable as the GM makes it. As a very extreme example if nobody ever sellsbolt ammo a Storm Bolter is way way worse than an autogun.

I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. From my understanding, the problem was that strong guns are too easy to acquire. I responded that the main way players could have early access to such weapons, i.e., nuking their Influence, is not a good rule to use. Ammo only entered the equation just now.

Honestly I think the whole 'Influence check to get gear' is bad due to randomness(still loads better than DH1's let's make PC's earn radically different amounts of money just because').

EDIT: Come to think of it Deathwatch is the only system whose gearing system isn't poorly thought out.

Honestly I think the whole 'Influence check to get gear' is bad due to randomness(still loads better than DH1's let's make PC's earn radically different amounts of money just because')

I think randomness is a necessary evil in this case, but let me know if you have another solution.

Honestly I think the whole 'Influence check to get gear' is bad due to randomness(still loads better than DH1's let's make PC's earn radically different amounts of money just because')

I think randomness is a necessary evil in this case, but let me know if you have another solution.

Do it like deathwatch. Have a fixed resource pool that increasrs based on your party's actions and decreases when you buy stuff, call in favors etc.

Randomness has two main disadvantages: it has an inherent unfairness potential (it is possible for a.player to get way more lucky than others) and it does a poor job at keeping strong gear out of players' hands. Yes a character starting out has a slim chance of getting let's say power armor but some characters in some groups will make that 1% roll. And I'm sure 'it's unlikely' will be a poor consolation for those groups.

<Deathwatch> is the game I know least about, so I won't be able to comment much there. I'll get back to you on that.

Honestly, if a character only has a 1% chance of succeeding a Requisition chance, I'd just deny them the roll. Come back when you're older and all that. As a GM, I would keep such game-warping items out of player hands until they deserve it. As a player, I wouldn't expect to get such things until much later.

If you are going to rule 0 it anyway (not saying rule 0 isn't good in this case) why have the random system in the first place then?

If you are going to rule 0 it anyway (not saying rule 0 isn't good in this case) why have the random system in the first place then?

I think we've way derailed the thread at this point, but oh well.

1% is not reasonable by any standard, especially for a strong piece of equipment. 30% is a fair baseline before I would allow people to roll. Even then, I'd want to see what a character is going to do with such hard-to-get items.

Burning Influence for a guaranteed success is abusable. [Cost is No Object] from <Rogue Trader - Into the Storm> is a preferable alternative. Per point of Profit Factor burned, the Explorer got +10 to her Acquisition Test. Shouldn't be too hard to port that over to <Dark Heresy Second Edition>, though I might change the interval to +5 and a maximum of 5 Influence burned.

If you are going to rule 0 it anyway (not saying rule 0 isn't good in this case) why have the random system in the first place then?

I think we've way derailed the thread at this point, but oh well. 1% is not reasonable by any standard, especially for a strong piece of equipment. 30% is a fair baseline before I would allow people to roll. Even then, I'd want to see what a character is going to do with such hard-to-get items. Burning Influence for a guaranteed success is abusable. [Cost is No Object] from <Rogue Trader - Into the Storm> is a preferable alternative. Per point of Profit Factor burned, the Explorer got +10 to her Acquisition Test. Shouldn't be too hard to port that over to <Dark Heresy Second Edition>, though I might change the interval to +5 and a maximum of 5 Influence burned.

Not sure how much of am issue derailing this thread is as the original question has already been completely answered.

30% is just 10% and an Adeptus Ministorum character spending a Fate Point, so players can still roll for pretty much anything. In any case, if you want to restrict and veto the roll so much why bother having the roll at all as opposed to flat out GM call?

Personally I see little issue with players getting strong gear early on by burning influence for 2 reasons:

-Dark heresy is an investigation game first of all. You have a terminator armor? Good for you! Let's see how you inflitrate the Chaos cult you are investigating in that.

-Reinforcement characters. If you hoard Influence you will get access to them sooner rather than later. I haven't done an.in-depth analysis on this but I highly doubt a DH2 character decked in best gear in the book is a match for let's say the reinforcement Grey Knight.

I grow tired of this back-and-forth, as now it's just griping over personal methods. Would I be replying to get you to agree with me (which I doubt will happen), or just to vocalize my opinion (which I don't think are worth all that much to you anyway)? Up to now, I don't think you've said anything that I fully agree with. That's not your fault; I'm admittedly very stubborn when it comes to these sort of things. You do have good logic behind your statements, I just have my own rigid point-of-view. While I'm telling you this, I will answer your last post. I may or may not provide a follow-up response, though I will read any further posts.

I arbitrarily picked a 30 with the intention of that target number being after Availability Modifiers kick in but before Fate Points and all that nonsense. A character would need 60 Influence before rolling for a Very Rare (-30) item, which is reasonable to me. It's not something I thought out very far, just something that I would find acceptable as a player.

When I think strong gear, I include Cybernetics and Tools and things too. A player may not want power armor, but, I don't know, [Cerebral Implants] or something. Burning an Influence point or a five is a small price to pay for that Unique [Power Board] or what have you. Powerful items like that are going to distort a game. My problem is not what players ask for but when . After the game has rolling for a while and people are hitting their mid-game, that's the time I would open the door to higher-level gear. Unless I'm starting a game at that power level, ain't no way I'm letting people walk out of chargen with a storm bolter. I'm not saying I'm an experienced GM or even an experienced player (I'm far from either), but games have to be scaled around the player characters' capabiities. If one character can fly but the other's can't, or a lone character passes every Intelligence test ever, that makes it hard to have a game where everyone can have fun.

If everyone can just burn Influence to instantly gain any item they want, what stops them from burning Influence every single flippin' time? They could have one person who hordes their Influence (if such a thing is even desired) while everybody else burns theirs. Burning Influence just provides weird incentives if doing so means guaranteed success.

I greatly dislike the fact that you played the Grey Knight card. There is no way a humdrum Acolyte should ever, EVER , come across a Grey Knight. If a Grey Knight is present, it means that something has gone horribly horribly wrong and everyone is going to die. I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they made a Grey Knight a Reinforcement character. I absolutely oppose any Grey Knight coming into contact with any players and will unconditionally refuse any Grey Knight player characters. This is all just my opinion, but I despise even having Grey Knights statted and available at all. Immaterial legends should just stay immaterial legends.

ADDENDUM: The new Graviton weapons will ruin a Grey Knight in short order. Take an Untouchable to nuke the Grey Knight's PR. Use Haywire Fields to cripple the armour. Not being able to Run or Dodge is a serious liability if you're talking about dueling a Grey Knight. So an Acolyte with the "best gear" and the right mindset will be more than a match for a Grey Knight.

In the end we can just agree to disagree. Only people who need to agree with me or you are pur respective play groups

Regarding gray knights, they need 65 Influence. Somebody with 65 Influence is no longer just an acolyte.You're almost as influent as some new inquisitors (requires 70 influence). By that point you possibly know a guy who knows a guy with enough authority to call in the Gray Knights.

That being said I agree Gray Knights are a bad call: they're too strong.Anythimg that threatens a Gray Knight will squash the other acolytes, forcing them to either call in their own reinforcement chars or stand by and watch.

I'm not going to comment on your requisition problem - if you don't like it, change it, take out your GM's ruling gavel and strike down their logic with "I'm the GM". I'll comment on it maybe if you re-thread it.

I do apologize for that whole exchange. I did extend an offer to move over to private messaging near the top of Page 2, but I'm not quite sure where that went.

Back on [Move and Shoot]'s viability, Running is a bit of a stretch, but Run and Shoot's viability is kept in control by:

• limiting the attack to a single pistol shot
• the running character giving enemies a +20 bonus to WS

However, Running:

• is faster than Charging and thus characters can escape from melee enemies
• can be doubled through the [sprint {Talent}], exacerbating the above problem
• applies -40 BS to enemies when characters have the [Hard Target {Talent}]

I don't have enough experience to say whether Run n' Gunnin' should be a thing or not, but it carves a distinct playstyle for players should they opt into it. I stand by my interpretation that Disengage, Guarded Move, and Half Move and Shoot are thematically appropriate though. And Tactical Advance and Shoot too, like you said.

EDIT: Some clarification.

You know, now that I think about it, I've always wanted to be a baker the most obvious player-obtainable that makes [Move and Shoot] almost completely useless is the Rare [MIU Weapon Interface]. That implant makes attacking a Free Action, just like Move and Shoot does. Except, unlike Move and Shoot, the MIU Weapon Interface'd weapon is allowed (or at least not dis-allowed) to fire on Semi-Auto or even Full Auto if the user so wills it. I completely forgot about that implant. So yeah... I've boarded the "Move and Shoot is worthless" bandwagon. Sorry Desperados.

EDIT: Double-post, but I figured a new train of thought justifies it.