I've been considering running a game of Dark Heresy with my group as a break from the high power levels and less subtlety in Rogue Trader, and was wondering which edition was better, overall of course, but also particularly in the areas of:

-Compatibility with Rogue Trader/Deathwatch?

-Ease of character creation?

-Starting Power level?

-Customization?

Thanks for anything you have to say on the matter. Ave Imperator!

As with anything, there are haters and there are lovers.

Personally, I really like this edition. I'll answer your points soonish when I have the time.

There are a select few on this forum who really hate this edition, but all opinions are valid.

Compatibility

In terms of rules compatibility, everything is pretty much the same. You can use almost anything from those games with the exception of there now being less skills. It's pretty simple to translate one of the old system skills to the new ones though. Also, you can use NPCs pretty much without effort other than all of the new ones having a unique ability that the old NPCs lack.

As far as actually using these things, you're looking at a complete lack of any oversight for balance. Balance has never been much of a concern in these games anyway, though, so it's up to you if you care or not. If you have experience with the old system, you're probably already used to making up a lot of things as you go, so this won't be much different.

Ease of Character Creation

It's honestly about on par with the old system. The big difference is that DH2 technically allows you to purchase any advance or talent or skill you want, whenever you want. However, the cost of these is determined by the different backgrounds you chose at character creation. So it's basically a "make your own class" system but with restrictions on combinations and an opaqueness of these mechanics to players. If your players want a lot of mechanical choices, this system is not very good and will take up a lot of time to get through. If your players just want narrative choices, this system is a bit more open than the old one, although you may run into issues with the narrative choices made in character creation causing mechanical problems later on.

Starting Power Level

This will vary based on how your players play. They'll have easier access to good weapons and talents to start with than in the old system. Basically, power level will depend on what all of your players choose to do. So try to get everyone on the same page if you're worried about power balance. However, the problems of having a lot of missed rolls and extremely deadly enemies still exists. Combat is even more likely to turn into rocket tag.

Customization

Pretty much the same as it has been, although DH2 includes a lot of items that were in DH1 supplements. To explain character creation further, you pick a Homeworld, background, and role. Each of these will give you a special ability, free skills or tslents, and some altitudes. Aptitudes are how you get the experience cost of a skill, talent, or characteristic. Each of those lists 2 Aptitudes and if if you have both its cheapest, 1 it's more expensive, and 0 it's most expensive. Some of the Aptitudes apply to all kinds of things, and some of them barely apply to any. This makes it difficult to plan ahead for your character during character creation, as these Aptitudes are all tied to narrative things. Once your character is made, you can buy whatever you want, but you're going to be limited by the costs of things. There's a good chance that players will accidentally make characters that can't buy most of what they want/need without it being prohibitively expensive. So it's kind of a weird half-customization thing. There are also some packages you buy with experience points to be a psyker or untouchable or whatever. Nothing like the alternate career ranks that the old systems have; it will probably all be those packages you buy with experience.

Let me know if you have any questions.

I think I mostly agree with what Nimsim just said, but I still prefer the new character creation system. It offers more flexibility, but that also means that you can very much screw yourself when picking certain combinations. I don't think that's really a problem though since part of the fun is trying out combinations that may or may not work.

Also a nice tool for the character creation aspect:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/122894-dark-heresy-2nded-character-generator-skill-picker/

Edit: Thinking about it more, whether you're screwed or not with certain combinations really depend on the type of adventure that your GM is running (Edit: and a bit of common sense). As a GM, you should mention this in advance to your players so they can prep properly. No point being Rambo if you're only going to be talking all the time.

Thanks for the write up! It's looking like 2e is the way to go, considering that narrative trumps mechanics with my group as long as everyone feels useful, and looking at the prices for a decent copy of 1e now, $90 is a bit much for 1 hardcover. I must say that Barnes and Noble's warning that Dark Heresy is not suitable for children is quite amusing, I mean, if you didn't get that from the title...

I kind of like that good weapons are available earlier. The group's been playing RT for months, but it's still hard to convince converted DnD players they don't need a new gun every session or two, so more goodies to go around is good.

Thanks for the write up! It's looking like 2e is the way to go, considering that narrative trumps mechanics with my group as long as everyone feels useful, and looking at the prices for a decent copy of 1e now, $90 is a bit much for 1 hardcover. I must say that Barnes and Noble's warning that Dark Heresy is not suitable for children is quite amusing, I mean, if you didn't get that from the title...

I kind of like that good weapons are available earlier. The group's been playing RT for months, but it's still hard to convince converted DnD players they don't need a new gun every session or two, so more goodies to go around is good.

1) obviously, the new system has less supplements for it. This is an issue with any new edition. Like I said, it's mostly compatible, but FFG has specifically said its not intended to be and makes no promises on the compatibility of past supplements.

2) this system uses influence (like in rogue trader) to acquire items and there is no hard currency. Some players and GMs dislike this.

3) the psychic powers are less game-breaking but much more boring. There are no longer any utility minor powers in the core book.

4) the change to from the class system means that players have access to everything from the get-go, meaning it's that much harder to balance encounter difficulty.

5) the subtlety system is kind of useless as written

6) this book has a lot of copy pasted stuff in it, meaning there are some rule inconsistencies, things that should have been errataed but weren't, and a general sense of "sameness" to a lot of things.

7) this system has the least rule innovation of all the 40K games and if you were hoping for a system that fixes all the problems of DH1, you won't get it.

8) I've heard some people say they miss the art from DH1

Things that are better than DH1 (note that most of these inprovements were all already done in other 40K games)

1) there are no longer inherently overpowered or underpowered classes (eg tech priests versus scum)

2) combat rules have been fixed a bit to deal with multiple attacks and auto fire.

3) psychic powers are less game breaking

4) I like a lot of the new art

5) a lot of useless talents and skills have been done away with

6) unnatural characteristics no longer break the game

Another note: the new rules change how degrees of success/failure work. You now subtract the 10s digit of your roll from your target number and completely ignore the ones digit. A successful roll also counts as 1 automatic degree of success before even subtracting the 10s digit (and a failed roll automatically counts as one degree of failure). Note that this will drastically change the way lots of gear and talents and abilities work from other books.

The others have covered it. For me the biggest pro is that you can easily make something from an Abnett book without needing to engage in mental gymnastics with the set splats of 1e. The customization is nice. Plus it makes it much easier to be a Warrior type who might happen to have a psychic power or three, instead of needing to take a psyker tree.

The fact all talents are available without being an Elite advance is huge to me too. Even if some might cost more, and thus be ideal, that more than almost anything really helps with being a more robust system. Wanna be a scholarly noble type? But also a good swordsman, it’s supported without GM approval required.

So yeah, it really opens things up for weirder concepts compared to 1e. I mean, I do wish it had gone further afield, because I LOVED what I was seeing in the original playtest when they dramtically changed the system to something not even recognizable. I was pretty bummed when it was so unpopular they went back to the 1e mechanics. But given the barriers inherent in the system? This is easily the best version to date. I really hope we get similar updates to Rogue Trader and Deathwatch (seriously, I would LOVE this variation in Deathwatch over the very, very ‘level based’ way it runs – given I’m actually running a game now!) that actually work at being compatible instead of ‘compatible if you squint or are willing to do some minor tweaking’

It's exactly the same system, aside from a few minor tweaks to combat and some tacked on, mostly useless things like "Subtlety" you're probably going to ignore anyway if you're a halfways competent GM.

The real changes made were to the chargen, which basically lets you pick anything whenever you want now, and if you're smart, for dirt cheap. The problem here is that the talents weren't rebalanced to compensate for this, making it easily exploited. When people harp on about how awesome and "free" they are to make the character they always wanted, they mean this. If they actually wanted free chargen and progression, they'd play something else. 'course, something else is probably actually balanced for this, and thus less attractive. I believe in a memorial rant over on the rogue trader forums, knighterrant referred to this as "juvenile wish fulfillment fantasy". DH2e is a massive enabler. If you're looking for a system that will allow your characters maximum freedom, while keeping things moderately sane, I'm honestly going to just suggest Call of Cthulu here.

I don't get all the hate. I mean, I was pretty disappointed after I've seen that they gone back on some of the really interesting stuff from the beta, but after playing 2. Edition for a few sessions, I have to say I like it a lot better than 1. Especially the Chargen, which does allow for a lot more freedom.

In these few sessions I've seen more creative characterbuilds than in my whole 1. Edition run. And with creative I don't mean overpowered or exploited. I do mean creative as in unusual (and not really feasable in 1. Edition without tweaking or changing the system).

<rant mode>

But that may be, because I game with actual ROLEplayers, who build characters based on a concept that sounds interesting and fun and not with optimization and powerbuild in mind. The only one going through the rules and looking for loopholes and exploits am I, and as the GM that is a good thing.

And on the topic of balancing: 2E is more balanced in char creation and progression than 1E ever was. *cough*Techpriests*cough*

</rant mode>

And Call of Cthulhu, although a great system and fun to play, is not really a good system for adaption to WH40k. CoC is a system about ordinary people and the rules reflect that (i.e. you die from anything. One goddamn zombie can obliterate a whole party). That doesn't go well with the whole notion of heroes chosen by fate to stem heroically against the evil.

Dark Heresy was a game about normal human beings in the 41st millennium, who use their wits, guile and occassionally some firepower to make sure things remain more or less the same, or at least don't turn out as bad. Lethality for a baseline human is a core theme in 40k and its heroes would be a lot less heroic if that weren't the case. In 2e, you can literally build a monster of a human who's only threatened by a rocket launcher within your first 2.5k XP, which are equivalent to about 1250 XP in 1e.

That breaks the attraction 40k has for me and my group considerably. We prefer the CoC approach, where yes, one zombie is a horrible threat, where xenos are actually scary and something like a Tau stealth suit can be a predator-esque nightmare for a party. Reading the intro adventure to 2e, and the setting, it's tremendously over the top. You're pit against a heretek and a daemonhost as rookie acolytes, and as a GM encouraged to horribly railroad your party in the finest Kiesowian manner.

Investigations abstracted via points-to-completion is another thing that I strongly dislike. It's unnecessary bookkeeping, pure and simple, where a solid framework and organisation scheme for a DM to catalogue NPCs, what they know and what's necessary to get them to talk would be far more helpful than an abstract "you need XYZ numbers to proceed". Like the subtetly track, it's another wall of text that is mostly unhelpful and I am unlikely to use. 2e has a lot of stuff that simply doesn't help me as a GM and overcomplicates things, in that regard. When I look at other systems, their intro adventures and such, I see a clear method of organisation presented for the GM that is concrete rather than abstract , which helps massively with storytelling. Abstract systems are best when they're kept simple, short and succinct. When they get complex, you are better off switching to a concrete system instead or outright using a causality chain.

That said, I do not "hate" 2e. I think it fails at its premise of an investigative game, but that's it. The rules itself are solid in their own, stable, isolated-from-any-setting environment. Thing is, it's essentially Only War, only with an inquisitorial paint job. The problem I see is that Only War is (mechanically) a low lethality game about being the heroes of your regiment, where-as Dark Heresy was a gritty, bloody space horror trip with a focus on solving mysteries and problems, rather than a space opera. That really is the core of it.

Lowering the lethality of the system means upping the ante in terms of threats that can actually challenge the PCs. This is not always a good thing, unless it is exactly what your group wants. Then, by all means, play 2e. Just know it's not a system made for investigations. Those rules were literally tacked on instead of integrated. This-is-not-a-good-thing.

INCIDENTIALLY,

Only War also had regiment creation rules, which let you finetune your character(s) exactly like you want them. Dark Heresy would need an equivalent to truly fulfill its open-game promise, namely, homeworld creation rules in a similar point-buy.

I'm not going to keep butting heads on this with dbg. Suffice it to say there's threads on the first page we have and we disagree wholeheartedly.

I will say, however, something like an "Inquisitor Creation System" equivalent to the OW Regiment Creation system would be awesome. That'd be my druthers instead of the Homeworld thing he suggested. As it would still allow easy diverse acolytes from around the Empire instead of just one homeworld or extra work in CG ffor each char, and allows a similar communal build to help dictate the direction the players want to go in the same way if your OW group creates a Tanker regiment that's going to be a very different game from if they make a Penal Siege Infantry sort.

Maybe something like:

Ordos for the first stage.

Radical vs Puritan (Or maybe, inquisition faction) for the second.

Or maybe the faction as third choice? Not sure what the third choice would be otherwise.

Limiting it to inquisitor would restrict you in the sort of game you can run. It would, for example, make the ecclessiarchal sororitas game I'm currently running entirely impossible, because the PCs have nothing to do with the inquisition. At the same time, homeworld creation would be a nice way to illustrate the vast diversity of worlds in the imperium, and let players concretely define where they come from, which in turn, benefits both the GM and the player in question, allowing them to be on the same page should a PC's homeworld be tied into the campaign (something I like to do, personally. Last time was in a campaign dealing with the night of thousand rebellions, in which the PCs' homeworlds all seceeded at once; it gave things a nice, personal touch and the info they gave me on their worlds was worth its weight in gold; they did lament having to think it all up on their own, though,and we ended up using Diaspora's system generator because DH simply doesn't have one).

Even if it adds little mechanically, such a tool would be very, very helpful.

I do agree that an inquisitor or interrogator will have some influence on the developement of his acolytes, which can be represented via stats. Since every inquisitor/interrogator is different, and every cell's training may be different, tiering it in the following slots may be appropriate:

Ordos: Xenos, Malleus, Chronos, etc.

Inquisitorial Alignment: Radical, monodominant, moderate, etc.

Cell Directive: Sleeper, insurgents, investigators, etc.

Specialist Assets: Starting Connections, add. equipment, etc.

Liabilities: Things like unstable psyker etc. Frees up additional points to use in the above.

That really comes down to focus. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for DH2e to officially have a sourcebook or three divorce it from being about playing agents of the Inquisition. But at least it is honest that being Agents of the Inquisition is the whole point.

And I do like the option of being from differing homeworlds for the players.

Maybe some other sort of thing instead of Inquisitor?

Otherwise, sticking to it makes it a rather narrative choice. I mean, you can always ban stuff, like when I did a brief OW game once I banned the Vehicle options since I wanted to run an Infantry based game - didn't care which version, just didn't want to mess with vehicles being the focus.

But that is one thing to keep in mind, this is technically not a "Generic 40k Verse Game" - instead it's a "Inquisitorial Agents" game. To be fair, it is the easiest one to tweak for generic. But that in mind is why I said Inquisitor.

The point about being otherwise limited is... opinion I imagine. For me it would be important if GMing to see what my Players came up with, after all, if I was planning to do some sort of massive Xenos invasion plot, and the players strongly indicated they were interested in buring witches and dealing with cults internally, it was best I knew that right away and could re-evaluate, since I don't do much pre-planning before characters are made.

But yes, tools are good! I sincerely hope 2e goes to a broader focus over time. I really don't think it would require a lot to broaden the focus immensely. In fact I think it could be a good book after the other two 'ordos' books are out.

Dark Heresy was a game about normal human beings in the 41st millennium, who use their wits, guile and occassionally some firepower to make sure things remain more or less the same, or at least don't turn out as bad. Lethality for a baseline human is a core theme in 40k and its heroes would be a lot less heroic if that weren't the case. In 2e, you can literally build a monster of a human who's only threatened by a rocket launcher within your first 2.5k XP, which are equivalent to about 1250 XP in 1e.

That breaks the attraction 40k has for me and my group considerably. We prefer the CoC approach, where yes, one zombie is a horrible threat, where xenos are actually scary and something like a Tau stealth suit can be a predator-esque nightmare for a party. Reading the intro adventure to 2e, and the setting, it's tremendously over the top. You're pit against a heretek and a daemonhost as rookie acolytes, and as a GM encouraged to horribly railroad your party in the finest Kiesowian manner.

Thing is, it's essentially Only War, only with an inquisitorial paint job. The problem I see is that Only War is (mechanically) a low lethality game about being the heroes of your regiment, where-as Dark Heresy was a gritty, bloody space horror trip with a focus on solving mysteries and problems, rather than a space opera. That really is the core of it.

Lowering the lethality of the system means upping the ante in terms of threats that can actually challenge the PCs. This is not always a good thing, unless it is exactly what your group wants. Then, by all means, play 2e. Just know it's not a system made for investigations. Those rules were literally tacked on instead of integrated. This-is-not-a-good-thing.

Its funny, part of what your group really liked about 1st edition was something that really bothered me about it until higher levels. Characters started out so bad in first it always had me questioning why an inquisitor would hire them in the first place. Why take the new recruit guardsman and the ad mech janitor when he could have recruited a veteran stormtrooper and a magos. There also was no room to give a character a cool background story and have it be believable. I like the slightly higher starting power level as it helps explain how the characters stood out and caught an inquisitor's attention. Plus having 1000 starting xp to flesh a character out adds a lot of variety to the party and can be used to further flesh out a character's history.

The theme of the game does seem to have changed a bit to be more heroic power level wise. The grim dark aspect now seems to be based on the futility of fighting heresy in this sector. No matter how badass the characters are and how many heretics they kill more take their place and the sector is still doomed. I can see why some people preferred the flavor of first better but I have been enjoying 2nd ed much more.

2500 xp can get you a pretty hard to kill character but they likely won't be doing much else beyond tanking. My GM has managed to still occasionally give us trouble with autogun wielding cultists and we have around 6000xp. Total wound counts are still pretty low in our group so it doesn't take much getting past armor and toughness to tear us up.

I found Only War to be pretty lethal. When I ran it awhile back I nearly group wiped a starting level party with nothing but a handful of gretchin using cover and a runt herd. I've always felt it makes more sense for Only War to be more lethal than Dark Heresy. The grunt guardsmen dying in droves makes sense. Its probably why they have less fate points than Dark Heresy characters. Inquisitors and their agents are meant to be some of the best mankind has to offer so having them steam rolled by the first zombie they encounter or by a handful of space goblins is rather anticlimactic.

I don't see 2nd ed as being any worse investigation wise than first ed or the original beta. If anything there are more concrete rules for it with subtlety, NPC personalities, inquests etc. I can understand not liking these rules but they are there.

It really boils down to what kind of game you want to run. DH1 does the dirty side of 40k a lot better than 2nd edition. Its premise is that you are a small, insignificant mortal in a big galaxy that wants to kill you, and it does that rather well (though some would argue, with later splats, not quite deadly enough...). 2e assumes you're almost on the way to inquisitor, which starts a bit too high for my tastes. It basically drops players, and the GM, at near the end of their journey, rather than letting them start with their origins. For my group, it's the path that matters, and less the goal.

Though, I will say, I have seen a LOT of DMs do skill checks in a manner that literally everything was "challenging" for everyone. Bonuses for simple or trivial tasks almost never came into play, so I do make it a point to apply them in my games, which actually turns into 1e acolytes being decently competent in their field. It's entirely RAW, just a different take than most GMs use, I suppose.

Or another way. If you want CoC style games, then... yeah. 1e.

Abnett style Inquisitorial agents? 2e.

And dbg - that's another weakness of the entire line, for sure. I've had more of those GMs when I played than not. It's a very... ingrained mindset. Maybe from D&D? I'm not even sure. But most GMs seem to have a harder time giving out bonuses than penalties in my experience. I'm really of the school that doesn't like having to rely on the GM (Or needing to make the calls as such) just to be competent.

Yeah, I played Shadowrun since 2nd ed. and The Dark Eye as well, before I even so much as touched 40k. I'm more than used to giving out boni to dice pools/DCs according to equipment used, methodology of doing the task, etc.. I understand that unlike the systems I started gaming with, DnD doesn't necessarily coach this, though, and I figure it's a matter of what you're used to.

Here, concrete examples, as Adeptus-B said in another thread, would help massively when telling GMs what boni to give out. Another thing that helps is to have equipment not add a flat bonus, but make a test one or two difficulty tiers easier, and let GMs, and players, get used to switching around test difficulty and even giving boni. Shadowrun, for example, does this, and after looking it up a few times, we just knew "assisted climbing needs only two successes" right off the bat. Everything +0 is usually simply the result of not much thought put into the skill system, and a ruleset should encourage people to do so. It helps them learn the system, run a more fluent game and reduces faux problems that really shouldn't occur, such as never having "easy" skill tests.

The plural of bonus is not boni, it is bonuses. Boni is not an English word.

Unless you were writing that post in Latin in which case all of the other words are wrong.

As Hans Gruber would say..."Benefits of a classical education."

DH2.0's psychic powers are complete ass and utterly terrible, a nerfing that was not in any way proportionate to how overpowered they were in DH1.

The rules for scatter are ass, a lot of things like the hilarious imbalance of "accurate" and the impotence of plasma weapons needed to be changed but weren't.

Overall though, I'd rate it as being slightly better.

I've been considering running a game of Dark Heresy with my group as a break from the high power levels and less subtlety in Rogue Trader, and was wondering which edition was better, overall of course, but also particularly in the areas of:

-Compatibility with Rogue Trader/Deathwatch?

-Ease of character creation?

-Starting Power level?

-Customization?

Thanks for anything you have to say on the matter. Ave Imperator!

Realized I didn't really address the op's original questions.

-Compatibility: Mostly pretty compatible with the rest of the 40k line. Equipment and weapons are especially easy to convert mostly requiring no changes. Adversaries should also mostly work between systems. Talents and traits take a bit more effort to make work between the older systems like Rogue Trader and Death Watch and DH2 but are very compatible between Only War and DH2.

-Ease of Character Creation: Pretty easy if you follow the recommended paths and/or pick home world background and role based more on fluff than rules. Can be more complicated if you try to do some weird combinations or are really trying to optimize the character's aptitudes. Figuring out what to spend the starting 1000 xp on can take a bit of time.

-power level: In terms of stats, skills and talents, a good bit higher than first edition but still lower than Black Crusade or Rogue trader. There is some flexibility here as you have the option of starting stats being 20+2d10 or 25+2d10. Starting equipment wise, slightly better than first ed. especially with the starting acquisitions you get but much worse than Rogue Trader or Black Crusade and overall more difficult to upgrade or replace equipment than Rogue Trader.

-customization: Not completely free form as it uses the aptitudes to create a limiting framework but still much more freedom in xp spending than DH1, Rogue Trader or Deathwatch. Not as free form as Black Crusade.

DH2.0's psychic powers are complete ass and utterly terrible, a nerfing that was not in any way proportionate to how overpowered they were in DH1.

The rules for scatter are ass, a lot of things like the hilarious imbalance of "accurate" and the impotence of plasma weapons needed to be changed but weren't.

Overall though, I'd rate it as being slightly better.

I think "complete ass and utterly terrible" is a pretty big exaggeration. Kinda bland perhaps and telekinesis is pretty bad but pyromancy, divination, and telepathy can all be pretty terrifying. The new minor powers in Enemies Within add some more characterful powers and most of them have pretty solid uses too. I will say, the mechanics for Pushing aren't very good. A boost to the effects of the power isn't really worth it if you have almost no chance to pass and trigger a phenomenon.

The scatter rules are the same as they've always been as far as I know. The only change I think I would make is have the scatter distance be based off degrees of failure instead of a random roll.

I agree on accurate and plasma. Plasma isn't even terrible but when compared to a bolt weapon it just doesn't feel worth it. Tearing tends to make up for the slight difference in pen and damage and you don't risk blowing your own hand off plus the downsides of maximal often outweigh the upsides.

It isn't the power-level of the abilities that bother me so much as it's the options you have. Almost all the imagination was sucked out of the powers, and like 80% of them are basically just magical guns. Where is my ability to lift up a chunk of metal and use it as mobile cover while running across a room. or my ability to make a wall of flame/force to screen melee opponents, etc? When you compare the amount of ways you could indirectly help in a fight beyond just DPS'ing people to death in DH1 to DH2, it's pretty unfortunate. The expanded powers in Enemy Within will somewhat alleviate the problem, but since many of those powers are basically just ports from their DH1 version, it still rankles as they're essentially re-selling you content you've already had.

Sorry I wasn't clear with scatter- I was referring to the weapon rule scatter, for shotguns. Scatter used to do extra d10's of damage at point-blank depending on your degrees of success on the BS test. Now it just gives a blanket +3 damage at point-blank and a +10 to hit at mid-range. Shotguns are basically useless now as full-auto weapons outperform them at every range. Special ammunition keeps them barely above water, but due to their rarity they're situational at best.

Yeah, more or less the only thing plasma has over other weapons is its high pen, but since most enemies with high AV also tend to have high toughness, its performance is often quite middling. On top of having unreasonably high reload times and that "might blow your arm off" mechanic, you're better off taking other weapons most of the time.

I think FFG did a fairly decent job with the combat this time around, but weapon balance is something that they just can't seem to get down pat. Our GM let the Tech-Priest have an autocannon, and the combat-dedicated character with the heavy stubber is like "uhh, so what am I here for again?"

Weapon balance especially irks me. FFG needs to go have a look at TT and see how much damage a plasma pistol does, and how in relation to a las cannon and a melta, it should actually be REALLY close together...

I think FFG did a fairly decent job with the combat this time around, but weapon balance is something that they just can't seem to get down pat. Our GM let the Tech-Priest have an autocannon, and the combat-dedicated character with the heavy stubber is like "uhh, so what am I here for again?"

An Autocannon is supposed to be better than a Heavy Stubber. You're comparing a tank's (Predator) main gun to a glorified HMG. Heavy Stubbers are easier to get. You're supposed to use one until you can get an Autocannon. The weapon power curve, upgrading from Lasgun to Bolter is an established fact in the setting IMO.

Agree on plasma. In theme it's a slightly dangerous, really high tech weapon that even a pistol is a potential threat to a lot of tanks.