Okay, I've started reading DH and flipped occasionally through RT, now that I own both. I like the idea that you get exp to spend on customizing and leveling your character as you'd like to. This is one of my preferred ways of leveling characters, rather than characters reaching some unseen / mystic point in their life where they can throw lightning bolts whereas yesterday they could barely light up a corridor with the tip of their wand. (Sorry for the ranting.) My problem that I personally see being a player in this system, other than money concerns, how do you balance your exp expenditures? Mostly skills, some talents, and few attributes, or some other odd combo? I really want to see other's opinions regarding this unusual situation.

I ask this question, because there is the possibility I will probably run a small, casual game, before I can find a regular stable group where I can be a regular player. I'm looking for clarification for myself, as well as being able to advise my future potential players.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Kerstrom

Hi,

can you give a more detailled example about which "raising possibility" of the current system gives you...well, headaches? As you used the "traditionell wizard" in your example, I assume that the thing you frown upon is the ability to gather psyker powers.

Never the less, the easiest way to ensure that you do not change "over night" is not to spend xp "over night". Only buy new talents after a longer episode of downtime ("ingame" or in the time between two "missions").

Take note, however, that raising an attribute will have only a 5% effect on things, so raising an attribute ONCE during the course of a running game should not be to much of a problem. Same could be argued for all non-knowledge based skills (like Silent Move, Climbing, etc.)

A player in my group (I am the GM) has annonced similiar "problems" to me. He know simply saves his xp "for the downtime" since he does not like his character "to pop up with a new power out of blue air".

As I understand it, you're after a rough idea of what sort of 'ratio' of skills/talents/characteristics to spend XP on?

You probably won't like this answer, but here it comes.........................it's really up to you. Yeah, I said it. But because that's a complete copout answer, I'll throw in the way I look at things.

From a mechanical point (from a roleplaying point you can't really disucss such 'metagame' issues like this in an objective fashion), DH is all about whoring out modifiers to your Tests to improve odds of success. Therefore, you'll want to look at your purchases in relation to that.

When you improve an existing skill, you gain +10% ability with that. When you take a skill that's new to you, you are either getting an improvement from testing at untrained (basic skills) or not being able to test at all (advanced). That's about half your characteristics (15%) or the whole thing (~30%) respectively worth of 'improvement'. So you gain a marked improvement overall by taking new skills over training in existing skills, assuming they cost the same XP (which they usually all do save for skills not usually within the general domain of a career).

Similarly, when taking characteristic advances, you gain a blanket +5% to all tests using that characteristic. This is where you have to decide whether it's worth being selectively skilled but **** good in your field, and being less effective in a particular field but better overall. The deciding factor in this regard should be how many skills you already possess which can gain an improvement from this increase. For particularly new characters, they won't possess enough skills to gain an overall greater effect from a characteristic advance than they would improving one of their few current skills, let alone learning a new skill.

As such, I would advise characters to begin by purchasing as many different skills as possible, before focusing on improving those through skill masteries (+10/+20), before finally purchasing characteristic advances for those smaller blanket increases across what is now a very wide board. The only time I would condone purchasing a characteristic advance, on its own merits, before exhausting other optins is if you want a VERY heavily focused character (now we edge from optimised and into munchkin territory IMO), if you can reach the next characteristic bonus (SB to gain a tangible increase in damage, or TB for resiliance, etc) or prerequisite for something, or if it's WS/BS and you can get it relatively cheaply, because they have no bearing to skills or characteristic bonuses and if you're meant to be in combat you WANT this to be high in exchange for being skilled elsewhere.

I find skills are more useful overall than talents, so i would only take those which directly benefit the idea of a character you had (like all the ambidextrous ones for a gunslinger, or iron jaw etc for a tough-as-nails arbitrator, for example).

Just some food for thought. It's the rationale I go through when building characters from a mechanical point of view. Lots of skills with masteries in the ones deemed important to the character and a little less talents to give them the edge, and a few characteristic boosts where it's deemed necessary.

Okay, sorry if I wasn't specific enough with what I was looking for opinion-wise. I don't mind individual growth with one or two new abilities because of current use and training, i.e. DH / RT system or the old White Wolf style system. I really hate the traditional D&D level style system. Honestly, what I was looking for was an approximate ratio, i.e. 10% attributes, 35% talents and 55% skills or something like that, that seems to work with your characters or is roughly how most of your players or yourself develop your characters.

Thanks again,

Kerstrom

P.S. - I'm not afraid of psyker's or using them, just wizards seemed the easiest example to come up with.

I think it depends entirely on the character and your concept. Of the three characters in my current group, two (the Scum and Adept) have spent most of their exp on skills, a handful of useful talents and a couple of characteristic advances, the third (a Tech Priest) has almost filled the talents section of his character sheet with neat Mechanicus talents , has a couple of key skills and very few characteristic advances. I don't think there is a magic ratio.

Playing an Adept, almost all of my XP has gone into Lore skills.

We spend XP between sessions and usually it doesn't break the suspension of disbelief. When my old guardsman picked up Basic Weapon Training (SP) she'd never once had to fire a Solid Projectile weapon anyway, so when she displayed proficiency with a Solid Projectile weapon it was hardly surprising.

Even Lore skills can be argued to make sense (sometimes), as the character may have possessed the knowledge previously but not acted on it, either because they didn't make the connection or because they saw it as irrelevant to the task at hand. Tech-Use is harder to justify picking up, as is Medicae, since they cover a wealth of knowledge, though again, if you haven't had the skill earlier you won't have tried your hand at it and it can be chalked up to "I knew it all along, it just never came up."

With my guardsman, the Skill/Talent/Attribute spending would be something like: 20/50/30
With my Adept it'd be more like: 70/20/10

They're covering entirely different bases in the group, so it's only natural that they aren't spending XP on the same things.

Another vote for "it depends" I'm afraid... But to expand on that with examples from my own experience:

Psyker 1: A scholar, so spending is roughly 50% psychic talents, 15% stats (mainly willpower) and 35% skills like lores/medicae etc.

Psyker 2: A combatant, so more like 25% psychic talents, 25% stats (mainly weapon skill and toughness) and 50% combat skills and talents, e.g. Blademaster/Dodge+10 etc.

Cleric: An all-rounder (combat and interaction), so 50% stats (mainly fellowship, strength and weapon skill), then 50% skills and talents.

Hopefully that illustrates a little how the character you're playing will shift the balance of XP purchases. The Psykers have a better spread of abilities and have a more wide-ranging skillset than the Cleric, but the Cleric has higher stats, so when he does do something, he does it well .

Deciding what to spend on and how best to hone your character to be amazing at whatever you want them to do is basically something that comes down to player experience. My cleric is inherently a better-stacked character than my first psyker because he's been built from the beginning with a much better understanding of what you can do with the system. If you get into Dark Heresy and play around with it, and spend some time reading through the rulebook, you'll pick it up over time.

I hope that's at least vaguely helpful...

One of the things I did when I realized that I was going to be the GM of my group is sit down with a bunch of paper and "rolled up" a bunch of sample characters. These were not really intended as "pregens" for my players or anything like that. I wanted to see how fully statted and realized (minus names and personality) characters compared against each other. You use D&D in your examples, so you know that some of the D&D core classes are inherently more powerful and effective than others. I wanted to see if I could find any potential issues like that before I had disappointed players. What I figured out by all that is that it is very hard to NOT make a cool character in the DH system. There was not a single "sample character" in that batch that I would be unwilling to play as my own... By contrast I would rather take a flamer to my genitals than play a Druid in D&D.

If you have the time and inclination you might try doing this as well. Pick some arbitrary level of "XP earned" and then improve several sample characters from baseline to your selected points total as if it was your own character. Once you have a handfull of "leveled" characters go back and take a look at them. How did you spread their points around? What focus (or general spread) did each character gravitate towards?

In my game there is a Noble Guardsman on the Officer path. She is downright DEATH with a gun, but has been pushing alot of her attributes up into the 40+ range. Maybe 15 or so trained or better skills and a nice pile of talents distributed between shooting, melee and leadership/social types.

By contrast the team's Hiver Assassin is on the shooter's path. He has an assortment of underworld themed skills as you might expect. He has absolutely MAXED his Agility and Dodge skill, but has only made moderate improvements to his other Attributes (or left them base). If a talent in the game has anything to do with "Kill anything with a rifle or two pistols" then he has it.

Our Schola Adept started out as a fairly typical less-than-athletic bookworm. She has piled on with Intelligence and Lore skills as any self respecting Adept would. Her player looks for opportunities in game to pick up justification for elite-advance buys of Lore skills not in her career tree whenever possible. The interesting development here is that over the course of the campaign she has been stuck in close quarters combat on a surprisingly large number of occasions and forced to defend herself. She still has a 2-mod for Strength and is hardly a paragon of fitness, but she has been training LONG hours with the combat specialists and has pushed her WS up to a surprising level (without looking at her character sheet, I believe mid-40's).

Several other characters on the team, but I think I have made offered up enough examples to prove the point. Every character in my game would tally up a different Stats/Skills/Talents ratio, but they are all cool and useful to the group. The more important question here is "Are your players happy with their characters?" If the answer is "yes" then they have the correct ratio... for them. Heck, our Cleric is at best a moderate talent at ranged combat and is borderline useless in melee... But she has a 63 Fellowship (and one advance left to go!) and has piled on with the social skills and talents (amusingly including Carrouse skill and the Decadence talent). A few decent punches will lay her flat out, but she could survive participating in a drinking contest with an undead Russian an Ogryn and a Kennedy.

Thanks for the information everyone, it's been helpful reading everyone's responses. Zilla, I have been playing around with several character ideas in my mind, but I haven't put them down on paper yet. I have also been playing around with the character generator over on Ordo Malleus website. Not the greatest, but definitely nice and has lots of neat options. I know that lot of it is personal choice and no single method is best, I was just concerned over the idea that I might spend as much exp on talents as I did on skills or attributes, but I see that for some characters that is going to be more appropriate.

Thanks again,

Kerstrom

The thing to remember is that it's hard to screw your PC over in the 1st few ranks, and you can always buy your lower rank skills, and talents.

ZillaPrime said:

Anna (the adept in the example) has a 41 WS. She has 14 Lore skills and a few talents that I have deemed necessary (Step Aside I love you). She can take out a menacing looking wall with her moderate BS of 31 (dice don't like me shooting for some reason go fig.). I've used 2 skill adv. in my WS, 3 in my Int for a modest 52 and her Strength is now a 3 mod, bought my first skill advance. I attribute gaining the lore knowledge by having her hang out in libraries and places like that in her downtime. Ironically enough tho you get her behind a weapon she has no training in and she's freakin deadly, elite advance in heavy Las due to an incident involving capping 3 mooks w/ a las autocannon after one of the other characters tried to catch a krak missile w/ his teeth (didn't work out too well).

It does all depend upon the character you are playing but also what you want to accomplish. Now this also ties into chargen, but you also want to make sure that all "skill sets" are covered in the party. For larger, varied groups this isn't an issue. But for smaller groups, you'll want to make sure that each character can do more than one thing. That means spending xp on non core elements social skills for the "tank", combat skills for the "face", and so on.

Sounds obvious but you end up paying a premium for those non core elements so the "proper" xp ratio will vary for both individual characters and campaigns.