Graver said:

But the you woul ave entries that still covered the exact same skills and talents, but you would have to learn a whole new set of "mastered" skills and "paragon" talents to remember what 5 or 6 or 7 normals skills or talents they cover.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Which assumes that the Mastered Skills and Paragon Talents are simply just lists of other abilities that say "refer to the rulebook for details". I really don't expect them to be so crudely presented, but rather contain rules that encompass the same effects as the skills/talents they replace (plus additional ones; there's no point in swapping out your individual skills for the bulk purchase equivalent unless you get something else on top).

Peacekeeper_b said:

What N0-1 said. Just looking over the two released Mastered Skill thingies, it seems that each could be summed up in less then one sentence. If it involves physical excretion then it falls under Athletics Mastery. If it involves parting and entertainment, then it's decant Mastery. You don't need to know all the skills it replaces, just the area it covers which solves those massive blinding skill lists. With these, you don't need to know that the character can dodge like no one's business but can't pull off a backflip and is only moderately capable of climbing. If they have that mastery, you know at a glance that they can do everything under that wide umbrella unless something is specifically listed countering this (such as a specific skill which has been developed beyond the mastery level of the Master Skill, etc). It seems that with the Skill Masteries, having extraneous details is the exception with a general listing of abilities being the rule where as in DH as written, extraneous detail is the rule with no recourse for general listing of abilities in a large area. You can't just glance at a massive skill list and know that the character can climb shear surfaces like no one's business but will have difficulty pulling off a backflip or swimming. With the Master Skills, if see the Master Skill, then they can do X, Y, and Z unless noted otherwise instead of having to hunt through all the skills to see if they can do X but aren't too sure if they can also do Y and Z. In other words, it seems you'll be able to get more at a glance then you can now where the text walls just get a bit daunting and make it quite easy to miss something in the midst of a game session.

How this will translate over to Paragon Talents, I'm not too sure. However, and perhaps it's just one part logical extrapolation and one part wishful thinking, but I would think the Paragon Talents would simplify and expand on the talents that fall under their umbrella into something that can be summed up in a simple phrase as opposed to 4-5 phrases each describing a small nit-picky little thing -sort of melding them together into a simple gestalt concept that can be applied to a wider range of situations. After all, they were mentioned as having more options on what they can do and how you can use them then the sum whole of the components that make them would allow. Judging from what was said about the direction of the Psychic Powers in Ascension (few powers, but powerful, flashy, and versital) I would assume the same aesthetic would fallow the Paragon Talents and Master Skills so that all you need to know is the area it governs and a quick phrase as to what it dose.

Some questions, that in all the hype/criticism, I still haven't found answered from a mechanical standpoint:

Why should I buy this Athletic Mastery if I already have Acrobatics, Climb, Dodge, and Swim at +20 (maybe a talented or two in there too), and all the decent athletic talents?

What if I don't care about swimming (desert homeworld for example) but am quite content with backflipping and Step-Asiding my way through everything?

Would it be unreasonable for such a character to exist, and could they in Ascension?

What else will I spend my XP on if I don't purchase these? How much XP are Throne Agents 'worth' anyway?

Dark Heresy really intrigued me when it was released because of the way characters could vary so much through their choices of skills and talents, even between characters of the same rank and career. This only became more diverse with other supplements that brought with them new ranks, equipment, occasional talents, and a new career.

If Ascension doesn't folow this trend, I don't think it's going to get a lot of praise.

Graver said:

When I run characters like that in my games, they get their own printed character sheet. With Fate Points if they're particularly awesome.

It also helps to divide their skills into three blocks: Languages, Lores, and Other(the general skill list). I'm sure Adept players already do this as a matter of course. Likewise, I try and group talents into Combat:offensive, Combat:defensive, and noncombat if needed.

It's a little bit of extra effort, but if you're GMing at the sort of level where your characters can attempt to take on NPCs like that, your players are all in that boat with their characters as well.

The Hobo Hunter said:

Ya, and it kind of sucks. My DH group is all in the 8th rank and it is a recurring complaint of their's. They have more then they'd like to keep track of and tend to forget talents that are rarely used or highly circumstantial when that circumstance actually occurs and the talent could have been helpful. Fewer things but of a wider scope would help that out a lot.

Going by the standards set in the core book, you should be looking at 40-50 sessions (giving leeway for roleplaying or objective-based rewards) for a starting character to reach 10,000xp.

After 40+ sessions worth of experience, growth, and journeying with their characters, are they really struggling to remember what their characters can do?

That being said, having the ability to group multiple skills together is nice. Having that forced upon you is not. I'm just worried that the main selling point of Ascension is going to be removing all the previous skills and replacing it with 1-5 broader skills with no ability to do otherwise. I don't see anyone capable of growing 1-2 more ranks if that's the only sort of thing they can purchase, let alone 8. Are they all going to be like RT's ranks? Linear and with no chance of customisation within them?

Sure, my martial arts assassin might be a master at backflipping and swimming and marathon-running and climbing vertical surfaces, but what if I only want backflipping? Why should I pay extra xp just for that? What can I do otherwise with my xp?

What if I don't want fries with that?

The Hobo Hunter said:

Yes they are. Of course, we only get together once every other week for about 4-6 hours at a time and most of what they have trouble remembering are, like I said, the highly specific and situational talents that had been picked up over the course of play but only ever used once if at all... and a couple of skills now and again that simply don't come up all that often, though I reckon this is due more to some heavily erased upon, rewritten, and appended sheets, but still, there is a bit of a skill bloat in the system, at least to our eyes. Of course, we're used to simpler systems with less over-all stuff, so take it how you will.

From listing to the podcast, however, I don't think the old skills are leaving, just a new thing being introduced and, as all things in the system goes, any group could use them or not as they see fit. There's more coming in this book then Master Skills and Paragon talents after all.

Graver said:

Are you saying that Athletics Mastery allows you to go to the toilet really well? And surely Decant Mastery means you are amazingly skilled at pouring liquids?

Targan said:

Well, if you call for a roll for such a thing, I reckon that would be the skill set to use. It'd make more sense then using Forbidden Lore (Adaptus Mechanicus).

lol Graver, Targan is clearly poking fun at your spelling errors

Spellcheck aims to ruin me!

**** you, Spellcheck! **** you!

Honestly I think this system sounds great. It allows for just about anything already in the DH rules, but stops short of having the overcomplexity of an advanced DH char sheet (way too many skills and talents to deal with).

With this system, the skills are broader, instead of oddly specific, and the talents are there to still allow specific areas of expertise for the characters.

Locque said:

So does it matter if I never took Dodge+20 in my acolyte years? Can I still become some crazy ninja? Likewise, for someone playing a crazy ninja who does Purchase Dodge+20, will they be happy that they made that choice or will they feel that +20 (along with numerous other skills) is redundant come Skill Mastery when, as it seems at this moment, anyone else can do the same?

The Hobo Hunter said:

There's really not enough information yet to say one way or anouther if such a thing matters. Ross did mention that specialization and all that such entails would be available from within the master skills and paragon talents indicating that if a player so desires, they can tweak certain areas of a Master Skill to be better at that aspect then the rest and what-not. It would just be an exception as opposed to the rule you get when you just have two hocking fist-fulls of individually specific skills. What I hope is meant by that is that the broad Master Skills and Paragon Talents will be the rule (with independent skills where desired) for those in Ascension with specializations and tweaks where needed for the character being the exception -kind of like how skill specialization was handled in Shadow run 2nd ed and other such systems with specializations.

However, I do not think that DH skills are being curbed. This is a supplement, not a new game. As such, it is simply an addition to the rules found in DH, not a replacement for them. Likewise, Ross mentioned that more skills and talents have been made just for Ascension signifying that not everything is a Master Skill or Paragon Talent. This is, again, just a small part of what the book will have.

The Hobo Hunter said:

Sure, if you could swim, flip acrobatically, and whatnot before, go ahead, have dodge for free, though i found it odd that you never got it, considering your skillset. One would assume athletic characters were predisposed to such skills.

I am curious to know what other games you guys are playing that makes the skills and talents list in Dark Heresy look so "epic huge and unmanageable". Seriously? Compared to most of the other popular titles out there DH is fairly concise and coherent regarding skills and talents. You honestly have players who can't keep track of what their characters can do after 8 ranks of advancement? Really? Granted, the skills in Kobolds Ate My Baby are fewer and simplified, but then that game is intended to be playable (and more fun!) while puking-drunk.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT take us down the path that Wizkids crammed down Battletech players' throats with the abominable "click-warrior". Do not dumb down our game, for such is the path of heresy. Given the subject matter and setting it is not necessary or wanted that a 7 year old can easily master the game. Leave some complexity and customization so that characters can be distinctive and unique. Either this is a BAD idea or we got a true failure of a designer diary this time around. As it stands now Master skills and Paragon talents smack sharply of cookie-cutter character tools. In short, if I can play DH using those stupid "power cards" from D&D4E instead of a character sheet then I am going to be forced to declare my status "Special Condition" until I can root out the festering heresy threatening my game.

ZillaPrime said:

New World of Darkness, for one?

I can cope easily with this many skills and stuff, but being able to condense several skills my character has into one skill is good if only for space on my character sheet.

ZillaPrime said:

Some of us don't need rules and lists to dictate who and what our characters are and how to make them interesting and unique individuals. A lot of RPers are fully capable of doing that without long lists of stuff and, in some cases, those lists can get in the way of creativity -like when a character wants to do something, it sounds cool and based on the talents/skills they have, it sounds like they should be able to do it so you give them the thumbs-up only to have that same player ask what good a talent they just opened up in their advancement scheme is since they, as per your ruling, can already do exactly what that talent covers and then some. Long lists of things, in my opinion, just means there's that much more stuff that has to be kept in mind and remembered.

In my experience, when ability sets are broad and more umbrella like, *** doesn't lead to cookie-cutter characters (unless the players are just bad, uninspired, and the GM is falling asleep at the helm) the players will be encouraged to be more creative as they have fewer far more versatile tools. True, in some this can initially foster a bit of munchkinism before they begin thinking less about the exact Stuff that's written on their character sheet and more about what/how their character dose Stuff. The more stuff there is to chose from, the less likely one will be to think outside the box and come up with their own spin on things, come up with their own character instead of the system doing it for them. Hell, one of my favorite games doesn't even have a skill list and it's freaking brilliant. It's not wrong, bad, or something for children. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say that younger roleplayers need more extensive rules and Lists of Stuff to help guide them then more experienced players who've been at this a while (and who might live rather hectic lives and can't be bothered with anything game related unless the game is actually being played that very moment).

It's not a wrong choice nor is it a bad way to play just like your approach of mastering a complex rule system as being the high water mark of good gaming. Likewise a few broad Things instead of massive laundry lists of stuff dose not equate to cookie-cutter tools. hell, the shape, color, and name of a tool isn't nearly as important as how that tool is used. While there are hundreds of different brushes of all shapes and sizes, a good artiest only needs 3 to achieve any effect imaginable while a bad artist will require a special brush for everything and will still be unable to make a good painting.

So where do you draw the line? Where is it too much for you? When the skills are boiled down to mind skills and body skills and if you have mind you can do anything that is possible with the human mind? Or is that 'too much' for you? Because you are treading a slippery sloap and trying to say that one 'level' of that continual slope is the 'right' one and the others aren't.

You seem to say that two characters, one with Knowledge and Athletics and the other with Knowledge and Athletics are far more different than one with knowledge arbites and climb and another with knowledge imperium and contortionist. I suppose anything can be different if you ignore what's there.

It's not like real people (which we are simulating with an RPG, actual people) learn their skills in a piecemeal fashion or anything.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Oh no, no, no. First, I've made no statement about what is right and what is wrong in this discussion. There is no right or wrong. It's all just opinions, preferences, and points of view. I don't see mine is any more right then any other that has been posted -it just happens to be mine and it's just contrary to a good handful of others, nothing more and nothing less. In the end, what my group and I prefer may or may not be what anouther group prefers but neither group will be right nor wrong. It'd be quite silly to believe one's preference to be more right then anouther. So, no, I'm not treading on any slope what-so-ever. No one's 'right' in this discussion, including you. ;-p

Now, to make sure there's no further confusion, let me state that what fallows is my opinion and personal view of things which is neither right nor wrong (unless there's a fact in there somewhere in which case that could be right or wrong, but... hell, you get what I'm saying here).

As lines go, I don't know where they can be drawn, I just know where they're not. I know that DH in it's end game is 'too much'. I know that, to my and my group's preference, there is an awful lot of too specific talents (those are the major culprit of our slight woes and misgivings with the skill/talent part of the system). The skills I'm not all that displeased with as there are far fewer of them and situational interpretation of them usually won't lead to anouther skill becoming obsolete (mostly because a good hand-full of the skills are already fairly redundant to begin with). However, there can still be less and it wouldn't hurt things.

I'd say your slightly sarcastic hyperbole of Mind and Body is, indeed, not 'too much' for me and my group and, for a long running game, it might be a bit too slim, but for shorter games, such a set-up can work wonders. It really depends on the type of game, story, and mood, however. For instance, Amber uses such a slim stat line quite well, but then you're playing gods of gods and the Big Picture is far more important then small details which can change on a whim. In a completely different setting, game, and almost polar opposite in regards to the amount of dice required (seriously, in upwards of 10-15 per player) is a little gem called Don't Rest Your Head which deals with normal folks falling into a waking surreal nightmare. In it, the character's stat line consists of only three qualities (Discipline, Exhaustion, and Madness) and one trait (a really weird power) that determines, mechanically, everything the character can do -4 phrases and three numbers, everything else is left up to the story, the player's vision of their character, and the game master. There's Lacuna in which the characters, again, only have 4 stats that determine all dice amounts and only ever really have 1-4 skill/talent/special-stuff-they-do and one meater, the character's heart-rate. Again, in it's setting, it works as there's really only a few things in that setting that need to be rolled for (and players usually don't want to roll dice, the more they roll them, the worse their situation will become). There's Over the Edge in which all characters are solely defined by (usualy) four traits that the player makes up along with a dice total for that trait along the lines of: Mean Ex-Boxer 4d6, Lives a Seedy Life 3d6, Dogs Love Me 3d6, Punch-Drunk 1d6 which tells you most everything you need to know about the character for the game. In essence, all a character sheet is, no matter it's form and no matter the rpg, is scribbled notes as to what everyone present has agreed a character is and is not capable of -and there are MANNY ways of tackling the question of what a character is and is not capable of.

As for your assertion I said that two characters, one with Knowledge and Athletics and the other with the same are more different to one anouther then two characters, one with Knowledge Arbites and Climb and the other with Knowledge Imperium and Contortionist, is false. I never said that, insinuated that, came any where near it's family, nor do i even know any casual acquaintances of that statement (I might have seen one, but I didn't say "hi"). So, ya, you got things wrong. I know i said there was no wrong, but I think you have misread most everything in several different ways. I know I'm a terrible writer and have a hard time making a clear and concise point, but your gonna give me a complex!

What's the same and what's different all depends on context. In the context you put forth, there's simply not enough information to say whether the characters with the broad skills are more different to one anouther then the ones with the narrow ones because we know next to nothing about the characters. I've said this before and I'll say it again, a character is not numbers and words, they are not just a list of stats and skills. That's simply the agreed upon listing of what a character is and is not capable of, not who and what the character is. In this system, a character solely defined by his or her stats and listings of stuff is a bad and ill-defined character (you know, the kind that Steven Seagal would play if a movie were made of the game). What's on a DH character sheet is simply a list of tools available to the character. Just as in real life, the person using the tools and how that person choses to use the tools is far more important then the tools themselves and will be far more telling as to their character then the tools alone. After all, are two characters in Dark Heresy who are both armed with Hecuters(sp?) the exact same character? Do they do the same things with their guns in combat? Do they say the same things, react the same way, do everything like a mirror reflection of the other because they both have the same tools? Or is there more to the characters then their guns, more then their tools?

Two characters, character "A" with Athletics and Knowledge and character "B" with Athletics and Knowledge can be clones of one anouther or as different as night and day. If character "A" was a massive hulking man, brutish but with a philosophic mind and a quiet deep contemplative way to him and character "B" was a wiry limber gymnast who was put through all the best schools, given the best education money can buy and never shuts up about it and how much more he knows then everybody else, then, yes, they would be more different from one anouther then character "C", a thieving fast talking second-story-man who knows how the law works (Knowledge arbites and climb) and his partner, a thieving fast talking second-story-man who knows how the Imperium works (Knowledge Imperium and Contortionist).

In summery (everyone, repeat after me) a good character is more then a string of numbers and a laundry-list of abilities. Those things alone will not determine if two characters are alike or not. Though they can help, they are not the final arbitrators of such.

Oh, and Hellebore, all game systems are abstractions of reality. As simulations go, DH is a poor excuse for one. If you really want something close to how people acquire knowledge and skills, you'll need to differentiate between a lot more then has been (after all, there's a big difference between knowing how to twiddle the knobs of an auspex to get a good energy reading [tech-use] and building a bionic arm [tech-use] but, apparently, two character who both have that skill can do both of those things). You'll also need to implement a system for forgetting skills and knowledges, getting rusty at things when not practiced, figuring out how long some one can retain a foreign language without speaking or hearing it before they're reduced to speaking like a five-year-old in that tongue, etc. It's all abstractions, it's all just a matter of abstraction level and focus.

Graver said:

That becomes more a matter of your actual characteristics being the determining factor in what your character is, not his skills. In which case, might as well just remove skills altogether and base all actions on characteristics alone.

Graver said:

Again, you are entering an area where you might as well just ignore everything and just roleplay the game out as a larp. Two characters with the same gun are not the same. Two characters who have invested skill points, characteristics and talents in the area of mastery are essentially mario and luigi. Different characters, but performing the same roles.

Graver said:

Dark Heresy only a poor excuse in the character generation and advancement department, Whatever designer decided to notmic WFRP 2E career system is the grandfather this flaw. And whoever decided what skills were broad skills and what were not is a co-conspirator. Survival, Wrangling, Tech-Use should all be broad skills.

Skill bloat occurs in this game for three key reasons. 1) You dont have many options for skills, just three levels, +0, +10, +20. Adding in +30 and +40 would help some, or converting to a +5, +10, +15, +20, +25 version would help alot. Many other games use the continuous progress version of skills, as in D20 where you can add skill points to a unlimited number, as long as it isnt more then level +2 (or whatever), and in the D6 games you can buy additional dice till your hearts content. BRP has the % system where you can continually additional +1%s to your skill. 2) You have attribute increasements that cost a lot of XP, so many people decide to spend XP on skills and talents instead of characteristics. 3) You have a chart of advancements you have to spend your XPs on to gain skills and talents that you may not want just to get to the next rank and buy the skills and talents you may want.

ZillaPrime said:

Dumbed down is a misnomer here. Paragon talents and Mastered Skills do not dumb down the system or the characters.

Characters in Ascension continue to be complex and customised. The Inquisitor in my group does things in a different manner to the Interrogator, who has a different skillset to the Crusader who certainly differs to the Primaris Psyker (or soul-stealer as he came to be called last night) etc. etc.

Just because they exist doesn't mean every career gets access to every mastered skill or paragon talent...

I'm not a fan of "Rules Lite" systems. I like my game systems crunchy. Compared to what I normally play I'd say DH is a big step downwards in complexity. I still think it will serve my purposes nicely though. I will be interested to see how Paragon talents and Mastered Skills are worded in Ascension. For the record I certainly don't see DH as suffering from "skills bloat".

Peacekeeper_b said:

Oh, please. The WFRP career system is just as screwy when it comes to character advancement, it's just screwy in different ways. I've seen the original drafts of Dark Heresy. There were WFRP-style careers in there, with a few minor changes. They didn't work - each career was too narrow in scope and resulted in cookie-cutter characters (because every 1st-career Guardsman had exactly the same skill and talent choices and available characteristic advances), a problem I've had just as frequently with WFRP1 and 2.

There is one core difference between the WFRP career system and the one used in 40kRP - the WFRP one allows diversity by letting characters mix-and-match a selection of individually-narrow careers, while the 40kRP one allows diversity by giving characters a far greater number of choices within the careers, at the cost of a smaller number of careers.