It would put you at a disadvantage when you needed to stay in stealth and you didn't get the DoS needed. It's all about application of skills in the game.

Point is, that if you are spending buckloads of XP into an advancement then you might as well get the comfort of not sucking with the Skill compared to others. Or just suck overall, because you are wasting XP like crazy while the rest of the party just specialize and get much better value out of their hardly earned XP.

This is exactly what I was talking about. It appears that yeah, anyone can take stealth, go for it. But the XP cost is so prohibitive that it just doesn't make sense to invest in things you're not built to be good at.

Is this a feature? Bug? Who knows. What is clear is that even though it is possible to take any advance, players are highly incentivized to not branch out from the advances that are cheap for them. So the problem Aptitudes aim to solve - namely that character progression is too linear (as was the case in DH1), isn't actually solved at all because players still aren't going to want to branch out.

If you believe it to be too high, just modify the XP costs a bit.

If you don't like the rules, don't play by the rules!

What other industry has this as an acceptable attitude?

What other industry makes products so easy to modify by the user?

What other industry has such blurred lines between content consumer and content creator?

What other industry has this problem where the product is supposed to simulate an infinite number of different scenarios using a mathematical model that your average high school student is supposed to understand and apply on the spot?

The golden rule is as much a quirk of the hobby as it is a necessity stemming from the nature of the medium.

The rules out of the box should work. There's a strong case to be made that Aptitudes don't actually solve the problem they purport to.

This assumes a lot about what the Aptitudes were meant to do. Do you have a developer statement backing such assumptions?

While the cost of going outside your area of expertise is quite high (and therefore heavily encourage careful progression planning) it's still a giant leap forward from the career systems, which set your development on a fairly narrow path and alt ranks often came with many strings attached(for example I once played a very agile RT Void Master and discovered the only way to get Step Aside, keeping with the agile theme was Colchite Servo-master).

What other industry makes products so easy to modify by the user?

What other industry has such blurred lines between content consumer and content creator?

What other industry has this problem where the product is supposed to simulate an infinite number of different scenarios using a mathematical model that your average high school student is supposed to understand and apply on the spot?

The golden rule is as much a quirk of the hobby as it is a necessity stemming from the nature of the medium.

The rules out of the box should work. There's a strong case to be made that Aptitudes don't actually solve the problem they purport to.

This assumes a lot about what the Aptitudes were meant to do. Do you have a developer statement backing such assumptions?

I'm tired of seeing "oh well just change the rule" as a response to people pointing out flaws in the rule system. It's come up in pretty much every critique of the system and is profoundly unhelpful. Why bother making anything better or analyzing anything for flaws if the customers can just make it work for them?

Asking for sources is cute, but no, I don't have any FFG press releases or dev memos. But we can guess at why they were added in BC, after 3 games of linear career rank tables. If not a response to the critiques of restrictive, linear career ranks, what are they?

Seeing as the proof of burden is on you to prove that the material doesn't work out of the box it isn't really cute to ask for a source. It's how discussions tend to work. He's not barred from asking you to prove your point.

'm tired of seeing "oh well just change the rule" as a response to people pointing out flaws in the rule system. It's come up in pretty much every critique of the system and is profoundly unhelpful. Why bother making anything better or analyzing anything for flaws if the customers can just make it work for them?

I still don't see the flaws, sorry.

It may depend a lot on how we perceive the system, individually.

• It works nicely if you just want to supplement/customise an average character concept with just a few special skills or talents that are not fully supported by your Aptitudes.
• It works not so well if you really want to cherrypick from across the board all the time, using Aptitudes not as a guidance for progression (= the character's predisposition) but solely for determining the final cost.

Undoubtedly, this would also factor into how we perceive the general idea? I doubt anyone would condemn the entire system just because of a single purchase. Besides, it's not like DH1 did not have some lulzy XP costs for some careers/abilities at later ranks.

It may depend a lot on how we perceive the system, individually.

• It works nicely if you just want to supplement/customise an average character concept with just a few special skills or talents that are not fully supported by your Aptitudes.
• It works not so well if you really want to cherrypick from across the board all the time, using Aptitudes not as a guidance for progression (= the character's predisposition) but solely for determining the final cost.

Undoubtedly, this would also factor into how we perceive the general idea? I doubt anyone would condemn the entire system just because of a single purchase. Besides, it's not like DH1 did not have some lulzy XP costs for some careers/abilities at later ranks.

Exactly, just like I've said before:

Effectively, the Aptitude system means your "career path" consists of all Skills, Talents and Characteristic advances in the game, all available from "Rank 1" and sorted only by experience cost, and you get a say on what costs how much by picking from three sets of options which combine into your final list of Aptitudes.

Clearly this is less restrictive than having to commit to a ridiculously arbitrary set of charts that not only say what you can buy and for how much, but also in what order you have to get things and what you cannot get at all, barring GM's special permission.

The Aptitudes do preserve the idea of roles by arranging all the advancements into cheap, moderately priced and very expensive categories. If someone feels this restricts their options too much, okay, personal preference and all that, but to say the system is as restrictive as the pre-BC careers is objectively untrue.

Anyone who says the Aptitudes system "doesn't work" actually means it doesn't work according to their expectations, which clearly isn't the same thing.

It may depend a lot on how we perceive the system, individually.

• It works nicely if you just want to supplement/customise an average character concept with just a few special skills or talents that are not fully supported by your Aptitudes.
• It works not so well if you really want to cherrypick from across the board all the time, using Aptitudes not as a guidance for progression (= the character's predisposition) but solely for determining the final cost.

And here is the problem: the setting of DH is such that eventually, you have to involve yourself into the second heavily if you want to meaningfully participate. You have to stand your own in a fight as a social character, you have to be not completely lost in an investigation as a combat character and so on. That's the point where the Aptitude system falls apart: certain characters adapt better because they have better Aptitudes, others have to invest too much into the advancements and either fall behind, while others simply give up and reduce themselves into helpless bystanders for certain scenes.

However, I must add that there is a very good way to bypass the whole Aptitude system (other than playing an Assassin or a Desperado): use the Reinforcements rule to create "backup characters" who can jump in when your main character encounters an obstacle he can't overcome without burning XP on expensive advancements.

Reading this, and given some feedback from my own players (who, after trying DSA4 for the first time* have asked me to adapt DSA4's skill system to Dark Heresy...), and given that the skillset in DH is essentially a lot more compact, I'm pondering tiered costs based on characteristic scores.

Basically: Characteristic used in skill low: High cost.
Characteristic used in skill average: Average cost
Characteristic used in skill high: Low cost.

I'm also contemplating tossing aptitudes entirely, or giving some sort of small bonus for them, such as a +5 to skill rolls per aptitude.

*Initial jokes about pottery went to: Hey, this mechanic is cool -and- makes sense.Why aren't other RPGs like this?

I figure I'll throw in a summation of the reason for the new aptitude system not working that well.

First, we'd need to decide what "working" means, because that's apparently a point of contention. From what I understand, the general summation of the aptitude system is that it is "more flexible" than the older system. What this would mean in the context of the system itself is that players can make a character with any combination of skills, talents, and characteristics desired. Technically, the old system allowed this, although it had to be accomplished through elite advances with little guidance on how to price them. So the old dark heresy was as "flexible" as the GM made it, which means it could be equally as flexible as the current system. It should also be noted that both systems fail at allowing players to choose any combination of characteristics, as they both use random rolling for that. In addition, both systems effectively start players out with a set cost for each characteristic based either on class chosen or homeworld/role/etc. chosen so they're kind of equal on flexibility for those. For talents and skills, the old system had you get a set list you could buy from for each class/rank, whereas the new one allows any skill or talent to be purchased. It's also worth mentioning that the old class system had the potential to balance out player classes and niches, but failed to do so in inplementation. It did allow some talents and skills to only be accessible for higher ranked characters, however, creating sort of tiers of play. Again, this wasn't implemented very well.

So right off both systems can be equally flexible, depending on GM (excepting characteristics). However, the new system does offer actual guidelines for buying every skill and talent, which is helpful. The problem with this, however, is that the system makes some skills or talents so expensive as to be unreasonable to purchase. They become what is called in game theory a "dominated strategy" which is a choice for a game (which dark heresy IS, in addition to a story) which is demonstrably worse than other choices. "Winning" in this case would typically be how much the player is able to contribute to the story, which, when we take away for the roleplay opportunity available to every player for free, comes down to dice rolls and how those can be influenced. So the game part that players are meant to engage in and which is the only part that this 400+ page rulebook can directly contribute to the game is funneling players to certain choices for spending XP. So if you amend "flexibility" to be a player being able to able to make any combination of skills, talents, and characteristics with any of those combinations having roughly equal game impact, the new dark heresy stops filling the criteria. Even if you amend it to having most of those combinations be useful, it still fails. The aptitude system funnels choices down to those that cost the least xp being the best ones. It would be interesting to see someone run the math on how many choices are available for cheap in the new system versus the old one. While some people may feel that most choices should not be good, basic game theory would then logically follow that this would mean that players do nt actually have flexibility of choices. As an analogy, having the ability to shoot the ball in your own goal in soccer/football does not mean that it should be considered as an option for playing the game.

As for some other general criticism of aptitudes, they suffer from issues with concept and implementation. As implemented, aptitudes require either lots of book-flipping or a specialized chart to be created for individual characters. This is clunky and inconvenient, and could have been better-implemented. If it's not enhancing the game and is disliked by a number of people, it shouldn't be in the game. In addition, aptitudes as implemented have some level of disconnect from choices made in character creation, meaning that players don't necessarily has control over their choice of aptitude versus their choice of roleplaying background. As mentioned above, many of the choices available are dominated strategies, and thus players may want a certain skill or talent and find that it is a dominate strategy and this not an actual choice. In addition, the concept of aptitudes is essentially creating an extra statistic/barrier between actually buying new skills and talents. This creates a layer of obfuscation/system mastery for players. The reasoning behind aptitudes is to reinforce that some characters are better at some things than others. However, the groupings for these aptitudes fail to account for how useful some skills/talents are in the game, as well as applying to uneven amounts of skills/talents. Thus, some aptitudes in and of themselves are dominated strategies. The issue with trying to show differences in ability through aptitudes comes in part from them being artificial layers for buying skills and talents rather than actual things affecting gameplay, meaning that their intended effect of showing different "aptitudes" becomes diluted.

In other words, many of the choices offered by the aptitude system are worse to the point of not making available, and the aptitude system is both convoluted and fails at thematic representation.

I didn't cite anything, but I think this sums it up.

And I'll add that "change the rule if you don't like it" is a cop out of an answer, and claiming that RPGs simulate to broad of a world to try making cohesive and balanced rules is like me claiming that it's impossible for me to map out a genome so it's not worth trying. It's nowhere near impossible to make a cohesive and thematic ruleset, especially for a setting as specific with such specific implied gameplay of dark heresy. No one is asking for rules that thematically create a dance off between inquisitors. Having more thematic combat, investigation, and social intrigue would be nice, thoigh.

...So the old dark heresy was as "flexible" as the GM made it, which means it could be equally as flexible as the current system...

I think it's a stretch of the imagination to say that Elite Advances (which, as you mention, have almost no guidelines for the GM) made DH1 100% as flexible as the Aptitude system in DH2 .

But it's obvious that no one is going to change their stance on Aptitudes, and we are just talking in circles, so let's look at another aspect of DH2 :

However, I must add that there is a very good way to bypass the whole Aptitude system (other than playing an Assassin or a Desperado): use the Reinforcements rule to create "backup characters" who can jump in when your main character encounters an obstacle he can't overcome without burning XP on expensive advancements.

Does anyone actually like the Reinforcements rules? I remember when they were first hinted at during the Beta : people were quite excited by what they assumed would be a new resource to be 'Requisitioned'- Arbites Kill-Teams, orbital bombardments, Imperial Guard patrols, etc. But then the actual rules appeared, and people were taken aback that the 'reinforcements' were in fact just better characters that sidelined the PCs. I remember reading many complaints about this on the Beta Forum, but I don't recall a single post in support of it, so I was pretty shocked that this rule made it into DH2 ...

However, I must add that there is a very good way to bypass the whole Aptitude system (other than playing an Assassin or a Desperado): use the Reinforcements rule to create "backup characters" who can jump in when your main character encounters an obstacle he can't overcome without burning XP on expensive advancements.

Does anyone actually like the Reinforcements rules? I remember when they were first hinted at during the Beta : people were quite excited by what they assumed would be a new resource to be 'Requisitioned'- Arbites Kill-Teams, orbital bombardments, Imperial Guard patrols, etc. But then the actual rules appeared, and people were taken aback that the 'reinforcements' were in fact just better characters that sidelined the PCs. I remember reading many complaints about this on the Beta Forum, but I don't recall a single post in support of it, so I was pretty shocked that this rule made it into DH2 ...

Its presentation in the rulebook is horrendous, but the rule is OK. You will need some time to work out your Reinforcements Characters, but once you have a handful of templates, everything becomes smooth and convenient.

You know, if I have to work it out myself, why should I pay for the product?

The argument about some choices being non-options seems off to me. Just because something is more expensive doesn't mean it wont be a tempting choice. Apple computers still sell for more than twice the cost of a PC, and you can often get several economy cars for the cost of a single high-end imported sports car, yet some people just have to have them.

At the same time, there are so many areas that everybody will have some expensive areas and some inexpensive areas. I don't think any character type is going to be overly forced into one specific role if everyone is branching out a bit.

The argument about some choices being non-options seems off to me. Just because something is more expensive doesn't mean it wont be a tempting choice. Apple computers still sell for more than twice the cost of a PC, and you can often get several economy cars for the cost of a single high-end imported sports car, yet some people just have to have them.

You're leaving out the fact that there are alternative choices with roughly the same amount of usefulness (particularly in the case of skill increases) that cost significantly less under the aptitude system. Even the talents roughly grade their usefulness by tier, meaning that a player will also have a choice between talents of the same tier and roughly same utility having very different costs. And the problem with this is that the cost of these things differs by character, which would be like apple computers costing different amounts depending on a computer literacy test you take beforehand. Marketing aside, only the people who pass the test and get a cheaper computer would want to buy it.

At the same time, there are so many areas that everybody will have some expensive areas and some inexpensive areas. I don't think any character type is going to be overly forced into one specific role if everyone is branching out a bit.

You're basically throwing up your hands and saying "well I can't be arsed to look at specifics, but it sure seems like it will just balance out in the end." You have no guarantee of things balancing out. In addition, the game isn't about competition between players but rather between the player and the dice/game. It won't matter what the other players have if one person is failing to get agency over the game due to choosing over-expensive options/optimizing purchases because that allows him or her the most agency of the game.

Again, this is basic game theory. In the example of the prisoner's dilemma, you have two people arrested. The police separate them and tell each of them that they can either rat out the other or stay silent. If both people stay silent, they both get 1 month in jail. If both of them rat each other out, they both get 6 months in jail. If one rats the other out and the other stays silent, the silent one gets 10 months and the other gets zero. At first glance, each of these options seems doable, right? However, when you break it down, the best option is to rat out the other person. Why? Because if prisoner A stays silent and prisoner B rats them out, A gets a worse result than if they'd ratted out B. If A stays silent and B stays silent, there is a worse result for A than if they'd ratted out B. This mirrors over to B as well, so you see that the best strategy in the game is actually to rat the other one out.

It's the same issue, where the fact that by having roughly equivalent purchases cost different amounts, the person who purchases the over-priced purchase is making a worse choice than purchasing several cheaper ones for the same price. Yes, I know that sometimes the overpriced thing will be particularly appealing to the character and feel totally worth it. HOWEVER, that is not always the case, with the opposite sometimes occurring, meaning that you can only consider the objective worth of the purchases, not the subjective. Basically, the game has no ability to control for subjective opinions of things, so it should be designed to work perfectly in an objective sense. It does not do this, if the goal is for "flexibility." That said, if the goal of the aptitude system is to semi-randomly assign people different optimal builds with small amounts of choice, it does succeed at that. This works no differently than the original dark heresy, however.

I'll counter that you have no guarantee that it won't work out.

If character A pays low price for combat stuff and high price for investigative stuff while character B pays high price for combat stuff and low price for investigative stuff, you'll most likely see A with mostly combat abilities but a smattering of investigative stuff, while B does the opposite. The imbalance you suggest only occurs if one character takes only the inexpensive options while the other does the opposite and overindulges in expensive purchases. In any case, getting agency over the game is only going to mean dealing with what the GM puts in front of the characters, and most GMs will adjust adventures to the characters that are active in them.

I'll counter that you have no guarantee that it won't work out.

If character A pays low price for combat stuff and high price for investigative stuff while character B pays high price for combat stuff and low price for investigative stuff, you'll most likely see A with mostly combat abilities but a smattering of investigative stuff, while B does the opposite. The imbalance you suggest only occurs if one character takes only the inexpensive options while the other does the opposite and overindulges in expensive purchases. In any case, getting agency over the game is only going to mean dealing with what the GM puts in front of the characters, and most GMs will adjust adventures to the characters that are active in them.

No, no, no, for two reasons.

1) Having no guarantee that it won't work out carries the same assumption that it WILL work out. Proper game design means planning for the worst, not assuming the best. This is like saying that sports don't need referees because the players will all just follow the rules.

2) This is not a case of the players competing with each other for agency; as I said, they are competing with the game itself. If it's up to the GM to adjudicate and adjust, then why have dice or a system at all? To follow up on the above analogy, THIS would be like saying that the presence of a referee means that there don't actually need to be rules in games, because the referees will just be able to know when the game is being unfair.

Basically, you're trying to obviate responsibility of the system and put it all on either the GM or the assumption that it will all work out.

No, I'm just saying that I don't agree with you. You can continue to tell me it doesn't work, but I haven't seen you show me that it doesn't work.

This game has rules, and it has a referee (GM). It also has flexibility in both of those that sports don't allow.

I don't see any evidence that the system in place for character advancement by Aptitudes doesn't work. It may not work the way you like, but it does work.

No, I'm just saying that I don't agree with you. You can continue to tell me it doesn't work, but I haven't seen you show me that it doesn't work.

This game has rules, and it has a referee (GM). It also has flexibility in both of those that sports don't allow.

I don't see any evidence that the system in place for character advancement by Aptitudes doesn't work. It may not work the way you like, but it does work.

I defined "working" as "allows players to freely choose from any combination of skills and talents" and then described how the system taken without assumptions of player intention (because that will always be subjective and thus cannot be taken into account) still presents a limited number of viable choices. If you don't see it, that's willful blindness to it on your part.

No, I'm just saying that I don't agree with you. You can continue to tell me it doesn't work, but I haven't seen you show me that it doesn't work.

This game has rules, and it has a referee (GM). It also has flexibility in both of those that sports don't allow.

I don't see any evidence that the system in place for character advancement by Aptitudes doesn't work. It may not work the way you like, but it does work.

I defined "working" as "allows players to freely choose from any combination of skills and talents" and then described how the system taken without assumptions of player intention (because that will always be subjective and thus cannot be taken into account) still presents a limited number of viable choices. If you don't see it, that's willful blindness to it on your part.

Did you also define what makes a choice viable? Simply being more expensive does not make it non-viable.

Also, that part on "subjective assumptions of player intention" that you exclude is a pretty big part. If the characters were not being made by players that were going to make such choices then you might have a point, but all of my games have such players. Don't yours?

I'll counter that you have no guarantee that it won't work out. If character A pays low price for combat stuff and high price for investigative stuff while character B pays high price for combat stuff and low price for investigative stuff, you'll most likely see A with mostly combat abilities but a smattering of investigative stuff, while B does the opposite. The imbalance you suggest only occurs if one character takes only the inexpensive options while the other does the opposite and overindulges in expensive purchases. In any case, getting agency over the game is only going to mean dealing with what the GM puts in front of the characters, and most GMs will adjust adventures to the characters that are active in them.

For example, some activities(like combat) benefit from the whole group contributing (if the 'good at combat' guy doesn't single-handedly destroy encounters, he will benefit from the input of every 'average at combat' guy, as every added damage helps the combat end faster). Other activities (like social stuff) only involve thre most competent character (apart from some very special circumstances there's little reason to not let the party face do the talking). A good at social/average at combat character will get drqstically more spotlight time than an average at social/good at combat one.