Again, the game can't decide whether it wants to be detailed (and needs to make skills accessible) or streamlined (and you don't need as many skills).

The bigger issue in my mind is that weapon training feats serve only to punish you if you don't have them. Having skills trained lets you do cool things with them. Having weapon training lets you not get punched in the balls for not having them.

The bigger issue in my mind is that weapon training feats serve only to punish you if you don't have them. Having skills trained lets you do cool things with them. Having weapon training lets you not get punched in the balls for not having them.

People who aren't competent in things generally do punch-in-ball mistakes in real life. With almost **** near everything we humans do. Seems legit to me.

Again, the game can't decide whether it wants to be detailed (and needs to make skills accessible) or streamlined (and you don't need as many skills).

The bigger issue in my mind is that weapon training feats serve only to punish you if you don't have them. Having skills trained lets you do cool things with them. Having weapon training lets you not get punched in the balls for not having them.

OW had weapon expertise and such. I'm fairly sure we'll see the very same splat released in a slightly different dress for DH2.

Yes, Cogniczar, they do. Which sucks massively . I've screwed up that way. Everyone does at some point. It's no fun. (Possibly afterwards, you can laugh about it, but not always.)

That makes it kinda bad in a game, where (I believe) fun is the goal. I'm not saying you should start out being good at everything. You certainly don't in GURPS or DSA. However, at least in GURPS, if I'm a decent soldier, I can pick up any other gun and be okay with it. If I want to be better at things, it's cheap to do so. I may feel bad about it for a session ¹ but then I pick up the relevant skill and that's it. Here, it is often prohibitively expensive to pick up another gun group and if I don't then it's a massive penalty.

^{1 Which I think is okay. I made a choice to prioritize something else and that choice turns out to be less than ideal. Darn. I'll correct that at the end of the session, and until then I can make do! GURPS provides me with plenty of ways to make up for using something untrained, so that I'll not feel useless.}

Having fun is the goal of any game. But most games do have structures to ground you in some way for playability. Even in this weapon context, the measly -20 penalty is completely negated at short range, which most fire fights tend to happen in Dark Heresy, negating the suck to only slightly inconvenient levels.

It's half negated, and negated only with single shot or aiming. The problem stems from having to negate this penalty in the first place, to reach a measly ~30-40% chance of success.
My starting character feels like an incompetent idiot, because the things he is best at, still fail the majority of the time. If I ever get to run this game, I'll at least start by giving out a lot of circumstantial bonuses and Easy(+30) or whatever tests, because even a Routine(+10) is still likely to fail.

I've realized that I dislike some of the basic mechanisms of the game, but I stick around for the fluff and the house rules, so y'know, I think this argument has run its course. We should probably take this to PM or a different topic, if we wanna continue. Otherwise thanks for your time

XD When was this an arguement?

And the game is designed to run off modifiers. If your gm is calling for Challenging (+0) all the time, somethings fairly wrong. XD

I don't think so, since +0 is the most used modifier in the pre-written adventures, afaict and is clearly presented as standard everywhere except for the description of the modifiers. This has also come up before You're right that +0 shouldn't be standard, but it's perfectly forgivable because the game presents it as standard.

Have to disagree again, especially for DH 2. The pre-written adventures have mostly negative (-10/20) modifiers to Skill tests as the status quo. There's hardly a single instance of a Challenging (+0) skill test in Dark Pursuits, and a chock full of them in Desolation of the Dead. Do take a notice that in nearly every pre-written adventure, there is no real governance of combat modifiers, and really only listings of enemies or particularly interesting combat influences (air support, turrets, etc). The reasoning is pretty simple - the pre-written adventures skill modifiers are being balanced with the assumption that characters are going to have ranks in the most re-occuring skills (Scrutiny, Stealth, Awareness, etc).

Unfortunatly this I think is a issue of Dark Heresy being the base game and the "weakest charecters" game, otherwise the universal weapon trainings from Rogue Trader make alot more sense. Will be interested if they come back if they make a Rogue Trader 2

Just read the splat about Weapon training and the comparisons to tech use and the trade armourer skills. The omnissiah exists as an actual fact, and actual machine spirits do live in your gun. Looking after your weapon is not just about keeping it clean, its about appeasing the machine spirit within, forming a bond so that weapon and man become more than the sum of their parts. It is therefore pretty easy to conclude that the whopping -20 penalty is something of an indication -just- how hard it is to learn to look after different types of weapons, that the Spirits bound within a flamer seek nothing more to spill forth their holy fire to envelop everything around them, and looking after such a weapon is a constant struggle lest it find a way to ignite anything it is left nearby, Las weapons conversely are quiessent, calm, almost laconic and must be coaxed into service. The wielder must be ever wary lest the charge of the las pistol just dissipate away into the ether.

How many people have you met in their travels that account tales of self inflicted wounds caused by over revved chain swords? mere coincidence? or do the spirits that reside in these weapons desire to plunge into flesh at any opportunity? is the oil you apply simply to grease the mechanisms within, or valium for the spirit within? If you know the answer to any of these many questions, please report to room 14 floor D of the ordo heritcus corrections facility.

Basically, just stop all your real world comparisons of how technology works, in Dark Heresey, magic makes the cogs spin. Magic that can be studied, that scientific analysis can be drawn on, that is predictable and dependable, but it is still magic.

Edit: typing errors

I'd agree with that because technology in the 41st millenium is as much about religious practices as it is to do with science. Also with regards to real world comparisons how many people have injured themselves or other people because they didn't use or respect the weapon they were holding properly? one of my old teachers used to sum up the human race in general. "always remember the user is stupid". mind you so did my dad when he was selling outboard engines "it was perfectly fine until the customer got hold of it"