Hi all

I'm having some difficulty wrapping my head around gaining talents.

My understanding is that:

a) Talents can be gained upon character creation, and by selecting them from ranked schedules. These schedules are organised into four separate tables called Speciality, Chapter, Deathwatch or General Space Marine.

b) Each Space Marine may acquire Talents from the General Table at the cost of 750

Elite advancement doesn't really work that way. Quick recap' :

1) Chapter Table represent the culture of the space marine. For instance, Flesh Tearers are savage madmen, deeply affected by the curse of their blood. That's why in there table, they'll have things like Furious Assault, Frenzy, Battle Rage.

2) General Table represent what every space marine should be able to do in his life, speciality and chapter aside.

3) Speciality table represent the way the space marine fights, or more or less represents his profession. As you want a baker to make good pastries and cakes, you want a devastator to be good at shooting any kind of ranged weapons, especially heavy ones. That's why you'll find most ranged-attack-related talents in the devastator table, and melee ones in the assault marine's.

4) Elite Advancement : there is no table for this. It's a kind of "Off the beaten path" thing, and is more associated with the battle brother and his act/deed. It is something he can ask for, or the GM can propose to him. As an example, i'll draw from my own experience : I have a Salamander Apothecary in my KT, and during a mission he manages to do like 32dmg to a Diablodon (3 RF in a row) with a single hit with a spear. So I decided to offer him the talent that gives +2dmg in melee (can't remember the name, sorry). Another good example is if the kill team escorts a magos to indentify/discover xenos/ancient technology for whatever reasons, at the end of the mission the KT could ask for an elite advancement giving them Forbidden lore : archeotech, for like 600xp.

I hope it'll help you !

Also note that they have redundancies in the tables as a method of future proofing. So if you look, you'll find things on the tables that all marines start with anyways. Never know when they'll publish the forget stick relic item.

Elite advancements are essentially up to the GM. They can cost whatever the GM decides is appropriate, almost always this means they are more expensive than their normal counterpoints. They are intended to allow, at GM discretion for acts or deeds, access to talents normally outside a character's advance schema.

The example Enmi gave for forbidden lore (a skill); a character may be able to purchase said skill in his advance tables for less XP. But the characters in the party without the option to purchase said skill, could at this point take it as an Elite advance.

Talents and skills can be cheaper or more expensive based upon the table used. In the example of Bolter Drill: The specialties more focused on shooting would see it cheaper, though at one point all space marines have access to it.

To clarify: Elite Advance does NOT mean any skill/talent for 750xp. NOR are Elite Advances normally available to players, a player can NOT choose to take Elite Advances whenever they feel like it; they are only granted by the GM and only in special circumstances (and shouldn't be common). The example you are getting this from represents a GM choosing to allow a character access to a skill/talent for that cost. The example is a one time thing and does not represent Elite advances in general.

Hey guys. Cheers for the responses - that clears things up for me. I went over the relevant section again and I probably should have read it more carefully to begin with. It says:

"The base cost for an Elite Advance is 750 xp. The GM may adjust this base cost at his discretion ." [emphasis added]