Mechanically the DH system works like the WFRP system where a character follows a well defined path (soldier, sergeant, captain etc). Each of the ranks in a DH career function as a career from WFRP, but they are all strung together without lattitude to move to another one. I would be the same as requiring that characters in WFRP follow one career progression tree and no other.

I think there are more 'elegant' ways to do it, but the current system reflects the opressive nature of the Imperium pretty well.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

This is largely why my concern with clustering the skills and talents into broader "category" skills has me so potentially upset. It is a setting thing, and let's be honest, we are all playing this game BECAUSE it is in the Imperium of Mankind of the 41st millenium. Things are balkanized, restricted, obscured, lost, confused and generally jumbled around, the original concepts long lost but the dogma and pattern remaining. It is a maxim of both the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Inquisition "Knowledge is power, guard it well!"

Given this setting it IS appropriate to have VERY specific knowledge skills and training: Common Lore (Tech), Scholastic Lore (Calixis Sector History), Forbidden Lore (Cult of the Sacred Flame) and so on...

Having the skill "Know Stuff" is NOT.

This is a sci-fi setting where knowing how to work a keyboard is NOT assumed for all characters. You might be a frickin' hillbilly from a world that has barely mastered advanced concepts such as "the wheel" and "iron tools" but you HAVE been trained the proper rituals to keep your magical "lightning staff" from getting angry at you and refusing to spit crimson death-light at the Holy Emperor's foes. Detailed skills and talents document these distinctions far better than "He's a Guardsman, so he has the 'Do Guardsman Stuff' skill."

I play both the "new" World of Darkness and WEG's D6 system and like both very much. Neither would really do the Warhammer 40K universe justice. Characters that are allowed to make plenty of choices to distinguish their talents and abilities while at the same time still shackling them to the stratified society they belong to is EXACTLY what the game needs. Niggling little quirks and errata asside, this is what we have with the current DH system. Adding a higher tier to what we have is (I am assuming) what we all want for our games. I seriously doubt that "Oh noez, my character canna' fit on a wee index card anymo'. *cry*" is a legitimate issue for making ADVANCEMENTS to an existing game. My players are all making use of expanded character sheets downloaded from the net, big piles of notebook paper, MSWord documents, the lovely DH character folios and what not already. They are NOT crying about how much space their documentation takes. On the contrary, most of the complaints seem to be that the existing character sheets do not have anywhere as much information as they would like.

Avoid the "meta-skill" approach and give us an "Advanced Character Dossier" in the book, for download or even bundled in an affordable packet sold as a gaming accessory.

Of note: I also have experience in games that were WAY more awkward regarding the skill system. Any of you remember Cyberpunk, Shadowrun 1st Ed and Traveler? How about the "old" World of Darkness where every product in the game line had a DIFFERENT skill list? I am arguing that the byzantine nature of the game setting be allowed to show through in the skills learned by individual characters, but not in the way we keep track of them.

One last thing to consider: How many of you would want to play an Adept if the skills system got distilled down to "Know Stuff +20"?

ZillaPrime said:

Without going into the rest of the rhetorical fallacies and flippant reasoning, I just wanted to touch on this point.

This is flippant and disengenous. There is no 'know stuff' skill in Dark Heresy Ascension as you well know. Moreover just because a character has, for example, Common Lore as a mastered skill, that doesn't mean they now everything. oreover it's just as thematic to have characters who do have a vast amount of knowledge. Uber Aemos for example, or any Magos depicted in the setting.

ZillaPrime said:

Seeing as there will almost certainly be no such skill, and more likely be Mastered Skills based on specific areas (such as one covering all the common knowledge skills related to.... say, The Imperium (which would include Common Lores: Imperium, Imperial Creed, Administratum, Ecclesiarchy, Imperial Guard, Adeptus Arbites and Machine Cult), the question is moot.

But going with the more likely way that skill groups will work, rather than the rather ludicrious "Know Stuff +20" you suggested? Yes, I would still play an adept.

MILLANDSON said:

I can confirm that there is no 'know stuff' skill in the book.

Apologies for us making an example using the 'Know Stuff' category. It's just that so far our two examples have been a catch-all skill for "physical stuff" and a catch-all talent for "hitting-things-with-swords stuff"

Onto my real question:

Evilref said:

But is it possible to have one crusader in the group different to another crusader, in terms of skills, talents, and equipment? In Dark Heresy any two acolytes from the same career branch could very easily be radically different. I know, I've been GMing a group with three assassins in it since day one and none of them are alike.

Sure, they all kill stuff, but our feral worlder takes the biggest weapon of any category he can and kills thing, while at the two extremes our moritat dances around shredding things with swords, while our Son of Dispater dances around shredding things with bullets or talking his way around things if necessary. This is all purely mechanical, without even going into depth behind their various characters' minds and motivations.

In Rogue Trader we found this sort of inter-career customisation nigh-impossible. Will this be possible in Dark Heresy: Ascension?

Evilref said:

Going by the preview, it would seem that there are three. Personally, I'm fine with that. My Death Cult Assassin will have Common Lore (Imperial Creed), Common Lore (Underworld) and Scholastic Lore (Imperial Creed), whereas the Interrogator will have Common Lore Mastery, Scholastic Lore Mastery and Forbidden Lore Mastery. Contrariwise, I'll probably have Athletic Mastery with a speciality in Dodge, wherehas he'll have Dodge+10.

Katsue said:

I didn't say that there weren't any Mastered Skills for the knowledge skills. My post was addressing the assertion that there was a single 'know stuff' skill and that this was dumbing down the game.