Ok, so I know that Ascention is currently scheduled to come out roughly late April assuming it does not suffer delays. What I am hoping for in the meantime is a little insight into what steps (if any) are being tossed around to deal with the power-gap between DH characters and RT characters from a stat-wise point of view. Having 5 extra points in ALL nine stats is rather unbalancing for those higher level games and I would like to keep the characters that crawled up through the ranks of Acolytes to remain competitive compared to the careers in RT. I already have a player fairly constantly agitating to replace his existing DH character (one that has been in the game since mission 1!) with a new one from RT. Granted this particular player is a frickin' munchkin, but still...

Just kinda hoping to have something to chew on between now and the book release so I can answer questions from my players regarding their characters and planned XP expendatures in a reasonably intelligent fashion. Letting them plan out some XP advances before they hit the cap is pretty reasonable and I would like to avoid having to ret-con sweeping changes if I can avoid it.

Any of you FFG folk or playtesters (assuming you are not forbidden by a playtest contract) willing to shed a little light on how this is going to be handled?

I've not personally tested Ascension (I'm solely a Rogue Trader playtester), but the NDAs we sign mean that we can't talk about anything in detail (other than "We are playtesters" and the like) until the book is on shelves and on sale, and even then we can only talk about what is included in the book (we aren't allowed to talk about things that were cut).

Where do you get late April from? There's not been any indication of a month for release.

Other than that, everything MIllandson said.

Evilref said:

VERY rough estimated shipping date on my Amazon account. I pre-ordered this book last summer....

I know all about non-disclosure limitations for playtesters as I have done it for several games over the years. Sadly not DH, RT or Deathwatch though... This was more of my undignified begging for a peek at possible options for how the stat-disparity might be getting handled. I have not seen the text of a FFG NDA so I was unsure what exactly it prohibits. Not a problem if Ross or one of the other nice FFG people throw us a bone like they sometimes do though.

Hi Guys,

Keep your eyes on the website, I have a designer diary for Damned Cities going up today, and starting next week, it is ALL about Ascension!

Nice to hear that, Ross, hope to see more of this book. Since the RT-Rulebook, this will be my most wanted book for the Wh 40k Roleplayinggame.

I like everyone else, can't wait to see some information regarding Ascension. However what I'm really curious about is... what's next? The end of the Haarlock Trilogy and then... what? Are we done seeing DH sourcebooks in favor of RT sourcebooks? Will there be more DH and RT sourcebooks? What's in the cards for Dark Heresy?

I don`t thing, that Ascension will make the end of the Dark Heresy line. At the moment, there more new releases for DH than RT. Also, the two systems are compatible, so whats bad, when some more books for RT comes? Also, what is about the mysterious Deathwatch-Book? My personal though on this is, that all the books make one big Roleplayingsetting, so I wait what comes in this year.

ZillaPrime said:

Having created characters from Dark Heresy for Rogue Trader (specifically a Metallican Gunslinger/Assassin, a Guardsman, and an Imperial Psyker/Templar Calix) as well as Rogue Trader characters (specifically an Arch Militant and a Seneschal), here's what I have observed:

-Dark Heresy characters will tend to have more Wounds and a greater spread of Skills and Talents

-Dark Heresy characters will tend to have some of the more advanced Skills and Talents already known (Gunslinger, Crushing Blow, and Crippling Strike are some that come to mind, as do the various Heavy Weapon Training Talents)

-Rogue Trader characters tend to start with better gear; non-noble Dark Heresy characters created from the ground up for a Rogue Trader campaign are likely to be hurting in this area, especially for a Guardsman with his measly 70 Thrones per month (Dark Heresy characters created with more than 400 XP starting off get a month's wages per 400XP, so a character created for Rogue Trader would have about 12-13 months' wages plus new character starting money)

-Rogue Trader characters have greater flexibility and raw potential, represented by the Universal class Weapon Talents and +5 to base stats respectively; they also have a greater chance of starting with 4 Fate Points (Dark Heresy characters can get up to five, but only if you are willing to come from a specific Imperial World and rolled something appropriate on the Divination table)

Truthfully, I don't think the power gap is as pronounced as it might initially appear. Heck, it may very well be that the ones who are underpowered are the Rogue Trader characters (+5 Fellowship for an Arch Militant? Couldn't that have been channeled into something more useful for the profession?)

Ultimately, the best thing you can do (I think, anyway) is to create 5,000 XP Dark Heresy characters and Rogue Trader characters and then decide for yourself. If you still feel that Rogue Trader characters are overpowered, work from there.

-Kirov

Kirov said:

You have a point about the starting gear. But starting gear doesn't matter much when the Dark Heresy characters get to use profit factor to replace it.

The text telling you how to bring in Dark Heresy characters into Rogue Trader specifically states: These rules assume that Dark Heresy characters are joining a Rouge Trader's crew and are gaining the full benefits of Profit Factor.

Kirov said:

Remember that +5 to each stat is part of the 5000xp, hence why they have fewer skills and the like than you'd think. If you make sure to do with same with a DH character, they quickly don't actually start off as advanced as you state. It's a lot more balanced between the two games if you make sure to do that.

MILLANDSON said:

This is somewhat true, but this means that the DH character only has 3 advances left to them while the RT character has 4 left to them for EVERY stat. My players do not have an issue with spending XP to advance their attributes, but the issue at hand is the CAP. It basically implies that ALL RT characters have intrinsically better potential than ANY DH character. I do not think this is a sound premise, and therefore surmise that it is a game balance issue.

If you're playing RT characters in a DH campaign, I could actually see the RT characters feeling underpowered rather than the reverse. By Rank 8 in DH, an RT character is somewhere mired in Rank 4. That means that RT characters often end up miles away from important talents combat talents such as Swift Attack, Lightning Attack, Crushing Blow, Combat Master, etc, that an DH character joining an RT campaign would likely start with. Likewise, at rank 4, the RT character will have access to only a handful of skills at a +20, at best still far less than a rank 4 Adept. Meanwhile, a DH character joining a RT campaign can fairly easily have a large assortment of skills at +20. The worst situation is Wounds- as was mentioned by another poster, RT characters generally get less Wounds than DH characters, and at RT rank 4, this can be a severe problem.

Certainly, there are factors that mitigate this, such as the unique class abilities RT characters get, and some of their own unique talents. But I can't see the balance problems you're experiencing being anything other than your players seeing the grass as greener on the other side.

Of course, naturally all RT characters do have more "potential" than DH characters- they're designed to spend 19,999 more XP in their careers than DH characters. Put differently, a RT character who completes Rank 8 has spend more than twice the XP that a Rank 8 DH character has. To keep competing, a DH character essentially needs to be houseruled into the equivalent of 5000 XP more than an entire second DH career worth of new advances once the game hits RT rank 4/DH rank 8+.

Of course, there is also a gap in talent pricing between RT and DH characters which eats some of this difference- this should serve as a guide to pricing new advances. My highly scientific guestimate is that allowing DH characters a fifth advance in each characteristic at the full cost of their fourth advance would be a good way to allow them to advance past rank 8 while making up for their relative "discount" in the price of many talents.

Of course, the guidelines for conversion could have been a lot clearer, something I'd like to see adde*ASTROPATHIC TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED - MORAL THREAT DETECTED*