A game shouldn't assume bad participants. That way lies antagonism, mistrust, and arms races.

It shouldn't assume good participants. That way lies unfinished game design and designer-player disconnects.

But it should assume decent participants.

Let me just remind you of the thread we're posting on, because it seems you've forgotten. The OP and most of those that followed agree that Untouchables in their current state don't work period.

You say that they scale with their talents? Absolute garbage considering even the highest level Untouchable can only resist as many Psychic Powers as he has Reactions. For PCs that's freaking 2. Now tell me if that's worth their full investment, because I would call it a **** embarrassment and yes, the developers bending over and nerfing something that wasn't broken, wasn't overpowered just satisfy... who exactly?

Who was complaining about Power Armor granting +20 Strength before Enemies Beyond and Only War before it gutted the concept? Probably the same people that were whining about their players all being Untouchables because they're too incompetent to reel them in.

You say game balance should not be done by GMs, let me remind you that you're on the FFG forum page where we have a specific group called House Rules for every game. And guess what, most of those rules are now used as the baselines by good GMs. Just look at Mathhammer from Rogue Trader.

And while on the subject, no I believe that games should be designed with good players in mind, as GURPs or FATE were. If you lower your common denominator to suit the worst of your playerbase then you've already failed because those guys are going to ignore your rules anyway.

Let me just remind you of the thread we're posting on, because it seems you've forgotten. The OP and most of those that followed agree that Untouchables in their current state don't work period.

You say that they scale with their talents? Absolute garbage considering even the highest level Untouchable can only resist as many Psychic Powers as he has Reactions. For PCs that's freaking 2. Now tell me if that's worth their full investment, because I would call it a **** embarrassment and yes, the developers bending over and nerfing something that wasn't broken, wasn't overpowered just satisfy... who exactly?

Other than your issues, the OP and everyone else were only concerned about the Reaction limitation. Which, for the record, is something of an oversight. Granting an extra Reaction just to avoid psychic powers might not be that bad. But yes, outright immunity to psychic powers and the ability to cancel them in a decent radius at the same time is extremely powerful. In theory there may be RP drawbacks, but in practice those won't be enforced consistently (if at all). Unlike Fate (which you mention later), the 40K RPGs don't have the tools to pull off that kind of mechanism.

Who was complaining about Power Armor granting +20 Strength before Enemies Beyond and Only War before it gutted the concept? Probably the same people that were whining about their players all being Untouchables because they're too incompetent to reel them in.

You say game balance should not be done by GMs, let me remind you that you're on the FFG forum page where we have a specific group called House Rules for every game. And guess what, most of those rules are now used as the baselines by good GMs. Just look at Mathhammer from Rogue Trader.

And while on the subject, no I believe that games should be designed with good players in mind, as GURPs or FATE were. If you lower your common denominator to suit the worst of your playerbase then you've already failed because those guys are going to ignore your rules anyway.

I don't think most people were complaining previously about the change to power armor, but in retrospect it makes a good deal of sense. Adding bonuses to the actual value can really push certain (rare) tests out of whack. And yet usually all that really matters is the change to the Strength bonus itself. The situation is analogous to a number of Space Marine abilities - they're nice to have but they're generally marginal in actual play.

As for game balance, the case at hand is like that old maxim from the D&D 3.x boards years ago: house rules should be nice, not necessary.* I'm not saying that game balance should not be done by GMs, but instead that game balance is tenuous when performed by GMs and furthermore that game balance should not need to be performed by GMs . What I'm saying with my comments about "decent participants " is that there isn't just a binary between good and bad participants. Rather, most of the folks participating (players and GMs alike!) are not going in to make a horrible time for everyone else, but are also not going in with perfect knowledge of the game such that they can instantly paper over any issues.** People are fallible, after all, and thus through testing and the like we as participants should expect a game that's broadly functional for its stated goals at the outset. Is it possible and reasonable for participants to identify and tweak flaws? Yes. But is it their job, as a requirement, to do so? No.

And as a matter of fact, my current game (I've mentioned it before in scattered locations) is a hacked conversion of DH2E to Rogue Trader. And I've designed a number of rules to allow players to create concepts that better fit Rogue Trader's themes of high adventure than Dark Heresy's themes of suspicion and secret policing. But I didn't have to do this - Rogue Trader already existed, but we converted because we appreciated the design alterations first introduced by Black Crusade. And in addition, my house rules are still tenuous in play; I've sometimes wondered if, say, the human racial ability is better than one of those given to a xenos character. Even with my knowledge of the system I'm still just an amateur game designer at best!

*The original maxim was that "feats should be nice, not necessary" to decry things like Natural Spell (for druids) and Adaptive Style (for swordsages).

**About a decade ago, I was a player in a D&D 3.5 game. In particular I was asked to be some sort of divine caster because the group needed a healer. And I fulfilled this by playing a druid and looking through the books we had on hand for interesting feats and spells. The net effect was that by the act of writing "Druid" and "Natural Spell" in appropriate places on my character sheet, my character was overpowered right out of the box completely by accident. That is what I'm referring to when I say that the game shouldn't assume good participants.

Okay, SCKoNi. You obviously aren't reading my posts at this point. I have explicitly repeated what I would do to change Untouchables for the better at least three times now. These changes are in-line with the setting and not stupidly over-powered. While I have agreed repeatedly that Untouchables could use a boost, that boost would be a mechanically fair one, not some ludicrous immunity. You're also forgetting that Reactions are only used to evade certain Psychic powers, not all of them (like all those Opposed test powers).

A high level Untouchable also reduces the Psy Rating of all Psykers in his vicinity by 2-5 (depends on how many purchases of Warp Anathema they get). Most Psykers are going to be psychically incapacitated at that point. The powerful ones are going to be nerfed. That's not weak by any stretch of the imagination.

If you think total immunity to all Warp/Psychic effects for a few hundred experience isn't overpowered, that's your problem. But I'd call it a big one. That is the kind of power I wouldn't let anyone spend less than 2,000 experience to their Untouchable-ness to get access to, probably more like 3,000. It should be a reachable goal, sure. Some Untouchables are that strong. But until you invest that much into it, you shouldn't be that awesome.

You keep insulting these other illusory GMs who you apparently think aren't as talented or competent as you. It really isn't helping your arguments. Maybe drop the whining on your part and skip over the accusations.

Game balance should be done by the game designers, yes. Given they are making a massive product, it is understandable that they'll miss things, or people want to adjust a few things for their tastes. That is what house-rules are for. The first house-rule in my game was increasing the damage dice of all explosives and giving them Proven (3). I thought explosives were too weak and too variable, so they got an almost immediate boost. I also implemented a resource system to complement the Requisition system, among a few other rules. These are pretty simple adjustments to the game. These aren't handing out powerful immunities for discounted prices. I have others, but all of my table's house-rules have been made at the table, not based on of this site.

Games should not be designed with the idea that everyone is a perfect little snowflake, because almost nobody is. Arguing rules-lawyers and min-maxers are just going to cheat anyways (when most of them I encounter do all of their cheese within the limits of the rules) doesn't really cut it. Having a solid rule-set designed to work well regardless of who is playing is a much better idea than leaving holes and gaps and exploits everywhere for others to abuse.

Alright, you got a point there we can agree on. And yes, my disdain for other GMs mostly stems from my own experience as a player and the utter crap I have been exposed to over the years. Individuals that don't remember the stats of their own NPCs and take 20min to look up a single obscure rule before proceeding has made me very thin-skinned when it comes to unwanted changes to a system.

For me really the crux of this problem, and the overall problem I have with DH 2E, is that in their bid to decrease the complexity of the game they bunched together rules that did not belong and made compromises that turn normally valid concepts into jokes. In my own games I am lucky to have a consistent group of players that care more about their characters as characters than the stats they have on paper. More than once I have seen a player of mine deliberately refuse to take a bonus to a test or go down the "optimal" path to an objective because they find it does not coincide with their character's motivation or beliefs at the time. Has this resulted in deaths that could be avoided? Numerous times, but each of those was a choice by the player in question.

And this is what I do not see in the new rules, the aspect of choice. If you play an Untouchable you are playing that role, and are bound by that role and cannot escape it. The Aptitude system is the biggest culprit here with its forcing of certain paths a player must take for his character to remain relevant, and something I would more than gladly just get rid of if I were to run DH 2nd Ed. Having Untouchables start out without their immunity also just feels wrong to me, you call it overpowered but I see instead the wealth of RP possibilities that spring from it. Players treating the character with fear for the unnatural aura that surrounds him, the seemingly miraculous ways in which he can walk unscathed from psychic explosions that kill all around him, these moments are lost with these new rules and also demystify the entire concept by having a rule for everything involved in its use.

I think it's a bit of a misnomer about what people mean when they want complex games that's gotten into the rulebooks. Rules need to be universal and bug-free, which is easiest done by keeping things simple. The complexity comes twofold: First from the GM and his plot. The rulebooks can't help you there. Secondly, however, from the crunch in providing options for players. The more they have, the more complex the game. If you're limiting even basic actions such as the untouchable's ability to nullify psykers with an XP pay-wall, you aren't providing options, you're limiting them. The current system of forced progression paths (aptitudes) and nerfs that contribute literally nothing to balance isn't the way to go. Ideally, we would be building upon past editions and their options instead, and introducing genuinely NEW things players can do, instead of limiting them compared to Rogue Trader (which, despite its class system, is still one of the most-played RPGs of the 40k line for good reason: PLENTY of options).

It's always the same people that apparently have a big issue with the rulebook on this forum. No surprises there.

I'd file it under "can't please everybody". For the rest of us, it works perfectly. Worst case, some minor tweaks are done and that's enough.

To each his own.

Peace.

.

i had a untouchable player who went full melee and basically, a psyker who went melee against him, was a dead psyker, just saying.

oh and i dont know if someone point it already but corruption not only affect the soul, it also corrupt the flesh. Hell even machines can be affected by the corruption.

Out of curiosity, does the Enemies Beyond have any additional talents for the Untouchable tree? Does it add any other options to characters who took it? I haven't had the opportunity to acquire it, yet, and didn't know if they just said "here's a Culexus Assassin write-up", something a player can't be, for the most part, or if they added some other anti-psychic options, and then gave the stat block for the above, as the ultimate anti-psyker option.

As for the Culexus, as I said, I don't have the book, but I assume he has Temple Assassin, and a similar Agility bonus to his core book Eversor counterpart, and while I'm not totally there on the mechanics, it would seem that the Culexus should thus have about a half dozen extra Reactions to dodge gunfire, assuming this version's ethersuit doesn't make him intangible, sometimes, and incoming psyker attacks.

Also, and this might also be dumb, might they have done this system to less hinder other players in the Untouchable's group? Once you start playing a Null, that might otherwise mean no one in the party they will often remain close to will want to be a psyker, nor will their master want to be near them, if one of them has the Pariah gene. In an admittedly home-brew thing we played once, as Space Marines working for an Inquisitor, his NPC Null, Draco, made me miserable (I was a Grey Knight), and the Inquisitor himself was also a potent psyker. Eventually, we had to have Draco wear a made up limiter, akin to part of the Culexus's animus speculum, just so Draco could shut off the worst of his power; otherwise, the stuff we fought could KILL him, being mortal, and the one time he took a head shot, we only barely stabilized him, and had to explain it to the boss; he was pissed we didn't guard his asset better. Certainly, parts of this might've just been the home-brew, or even a fail of the rules we were using, but the idea of shutting off the options of other players, just so you can play that one thing you want to, it might make sense that they toned down the Untouchable, somewhat. Especially since mutation can make an otherwise baseline human into a psyker, but the Untouchable was that, from birth (he'd be, automatically, making his decision before the possible psyker player might). Okay, not sure I'm actually contributing here, so I'm done.