P.S. Even given my disappointment in some areas, I still feel this is a very worthy addition to the DH line. It is not, IMHO, the "worst supplement of the line", and I don't believe it represents a "downward spiral" in the quality of said supplements.

But ... I still want MORE!!! You hear me, FFG? I WANT MORE!!!

Are you up to it? Can you understand that? I know you have business constraints to consider. But by the God-Emperor! Give me more "FLUFF"!

PLEASE?!?

The problem with fluff is that absolutely everything has to go through GW. This means that, whilst rules and stuff like that get through fairly easily, GW often drag their heels when it comes to making a lot of completely new fluff in their setting. It's annoying, but it's one of the terms of FFG's licence.

I reckon we'll hopefully see a sector-based sourcebook sooner rather than later, with more info on the planets in the Calixis sector, along the lines of that covered in the old BI Calixis webpage.

I know, Millandson. I know. But that is not going to keep me from asking.

I know that a great many sources exist, and that I can ... assuming I have the time ... come up with my own "fluff". But since I have very limited time, and since I still recognize the enormity of the 40K universe, I would simply like to have more "official" stuff to work with. I want to do justice to the setting, while still having the freedom to throw "monkey-wrenches" here and there.

I simply don't have the time to detail the setting in a way that I feel would do it justice. So I ask for all the help I can get.

But I still appreciate all the work that FFG has put into it ... as per my previous posts. As I said, good job FFG. But I still want more! Is that so wrong?

Reilly said:

I wholeheartedly agree that Psychic Powers should retain an element of risk to balance them, for balance. That said, if you adopt the Psychic Mastery that appeared in Disciples of the Dark Gods (I believe), you become a lot less lethal. It's the talent that offers you the option to roll half your psy dice or fewer, and ignore the first 9 you roll. The prereq is Psy 5 and Discipline Focus in the Discipline it applies to.

Our GM also made it available in our games for Minor Powers (pricing it high, but it's worth paying for) and it has always made sense to me. If you want to do something small, you don't expect the walls to rain blood or a pink horror to pop into existence, but when you are, for example, going all out to destroy a massive threat, hurling huge amounts of Force Bolts around, there should be every chance of one or more Perils causing merry hell.

I guess what I'm getting at is all I want it an appropriate amount of risk. I'm not sure I'm feeling that in our Rogue Trader games from the Astropath. With the talents available early on and the new psy system, he always seems to avoid exploding. Which is, if I'll be honest, a bit disappointing.

So, Psychic Mastery at high levels in DH has made my telekine pretty safe when doing everyday witchery, but I'm not sure whether Ascension will maintain the balance since it features the RT Psy System. I hope so, otherwise I sense House Rules in our future...

MILLANDSON said:

From what I have seen, there seems a considerable interest in just such a book. I was thinking; though, that even a book around 400 pages might not be able to hold the amount of detail some people would like to see. After all, there are 190 "points of interest" in the Calixis Sector just going off of what's listed here. I would almost rather see them do sub-sector books; about 200 pages each, with more detail and some adventure hooks for each locale.

EDIT: Seems the quote function flakes most often if a reply comes in before you publish your own posts. Annoying.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Sticking with the original topic, I just wanted to put my two bits in and say that I have read 2/3rds of Ascension and love it and will use it often when my P.C.'s get to those ranks. But I'll just change whatever I don't like. Simple. But what I really wanted to say was that I REALLY like the subsector reference suppliment idea! That would work so well! And yes, I would like more too, FFG. Exellent stuff so far.

MILLANDSON said:

MILLANDSON said:

I think you're in for a disappointment there Millandson, judging by Ross Watson's comments in the interview in the thread linked below this one;

(Bloody forum boards won't let me quote!) - Basically he states 'gradual' exploration of the Calixis Sector will continue, with roughly one location being focused on in most upcoming books (presumably as with Malfi in Ascension). He also stated they're 'all about leaving big blank spaces for GMs to detail'. How kind.

In other words the drip-feeding of limited and vague information will continue, but no dedicated Sector sourcebook is planned ... let alone Sub-sector books!!

This is the worst way to detail a setting imo. It means that GMs like myself, who are basically trying to work inside canon, except when specific things don't quite work for us, now have to double guess what FFG is going to give us down the line gradually in order to avoid massively contradicting stuff we're later given.

I have to say as well, for those of us (and there are a few) who aren't interested in new rules, new (pointless) character classes, new skills etc, the reasons for putting our hands into our pockets and buying the new books grow thinner. Up till now all my group have purchased a copy of each new book, if there's only going to be a small and limited amount of new fluff in each book, buried amidst the rule bloat, that just seems extravagant and pointless. I'll read someone else's copy to extract the fluff-gems.

As a GM I'd much rather have information given to me, which I can then choose to use or not depending on my preference, than be forced to do almost all the work myself. We have to get this message across to FFG, as I feel it's fundamental to what makes roleplaying supplements fun and worthwhile.

A campaign book would be nice, but rather than covering the whole area, just break down a few planets in the sector. It'd be nice to have one fully detailed world of each type (feral, hive, imperial, agricultural, forge, etc....) While they could be specific to a planet in the sector it could also include rules for creating worlds of the same type for the GM to use.

This way, if you wanted canon worlds, you have them and if you want to draft your own, you have those too.

Best of both worlds here.

The Laughing God said:

The Laughing God said:

Couldn't agree more.

While the OP is on a bit of a rant, critical reviews (about anything) are always more valuable than the gushing praise we get from the mareting departments of this world.

Don't have Ascension yet although i hotly anticipated it given the side of the argument is was on concerning 'power levels' way back around the release of DH.

From what i'm reading so far though (across many fora and reviews), it seems the Ascension isn't quite what i was hoping for (Interrogator to Inquisitor progression).

Ah well...

I mostly liked this book, actually. The transition packages, the background that was provided (however adequate or not) was good. A few concerns though:

1. Lack of Culexus Assassins. Though this may not fit as a class, given that you have to be born with the appropriate Genes.

2. Given that the officio assassinorum is supposed to be a secret organization, how is a player supposed reconcile working in a group and carrying his/her unique (to the point of identifying) weapons? (You can tell I'm playing an assassin, right? )

3. It didn't make sense to me that there was a distinction mechanically between Interrogator and Inquisitor. Shouldn't most (if not all) Interrogators have the ambition to become an Inquisitor? Based on the class system, they can't multi-class out if they are promoted, so they become career Interrogators. Some of you may argue that they could simply remain Interrogators mechanically, but become Inquisitors in the fluff sense. Fair enough. But the question becomes: What are the characters missing that they need to be proper Inquisitors? The answer may be a lot, and it may be nothing. I need to do more research, obviously.

4. Paragon Talents and Skill Mastery seem to overlap with and duplicate the skills and talents that I've already taken. I have most of the masteries and paragon talents from the first two tiers of vindicare just from taking skills and talents as a rank 8 Assassin. Those that I don't already have, I'm only missing one skill or talent, so it would be cheaper in XP for me to go back to my assassin ranks and "clean up" so to speak. Am I the only one that sees this issue? Seems to me that these paragon talents could use more variety for the classes to give the characters depth, or the abilities they provide should become the prerequisites, and the benefit should be some bonus for / while using the skills / talents.

That's my two cents so far anyhow.

Dak Rogers said:

3.It mentions in the book that you may want to make a player play Interrogator before Inquisitor and have them transition over, in essence, you would be an Interrogator till rank X then you would switch to the Inquisitor field from there on out.

4. Yes, they do, but they will also contain one skill or talent you couldn't get. But yes, as has been mentioned, the paragon talents and mastered skills are great to save a little space(But not really because talents and skills are both listed on the character sheet as well?) however they lack that extra little oompf you feel they should have. Especially given the max bonus/penalty for a task being jack up.

Bombernoy said:

1.For point one you can kind of create one to a lesser extent by taking the package from radical's and playing an assassin(A much lesser extent)(Would be fun as a death cult assassin though.). I would have much rather seen Callidus over death cult, but that's just me.

2.If they're so secret how do you know what weapons they use . In all seriousness though I reconciled this in our first game by not wearing my gear and carrying a hellpistol when not in the company of just my group. As a matter of fact, its kind of fun when you realize you can be someone completely different when you take off the mask.

3.It mentions in the book that you may want to make a player play Interrogator before Inquisitor and have them transition over, in essence, you would be an Interrogator till rank X then you would switch to the Inquisitor field from there on out.

4. Yes, they do, but they will also contain one skill or talent you couldn't get. But yes, as has been mentioned, the paragon talents and mastered skills are great to save a little space(But not really because talents and skills are both listed on the character sheet as well?) however they lack that extra little oompf you feel they should have. Especially given the max bonus/penalty for a task being jack up.

re: #2: Well, d*mn, I f*cked the dog on that one. I hope I can convince my GM to retro some of my choices. And I need some new guns...

Adam France said:

Well, it all comes down to just how much you want official fluff on the planets. Some people, such as myself, appreciate having a degree of flexibility that isn't then spoilt by official stats, because then we're obligated to use those instead of our own info. Whilst a book on the sector might have been good, I can also understand this method of doing it too. Both work, but one method works for some GMs better than others.

Personally, since I'm almost certainly going to be buying all the books, I'm fine with it working like this. I don't really need FFG to make info on planets for me when I can do the same given a half hour or so of thought and notes.

Dak Rogers said:

Bombernoy said:

1.For point one you can kind of create one to a lesser extent by taking the package from radical's and playing an assassin(A much lesser extent)(Would be fun as a death cult assassin though.). I would have much rather seen Callidus over death cult, but that's just me.

2.If they're so secret how do you know what weapons they use . In all seriousness though I reconciled this in our first game by not wearing my gear and carrying a hellpistol when not in the company of just my group. As a matter of fact, its kind of fun when you realize you can be someone completely different when you take off the mask.

3.It mentions in the book that you may want to make a player play Interrogator before Inquisitor and have them transition over, in essence, you would be an Interrogator till rank X then you would switch to the Inquisitor field from there on out.

4. Yes, they do, but they will also contain one skill or talent you couldn't get. But yes, as has been mentioned, the paragon talents and mastered skills are great to save a little space(But not really because talents and skills are both listed on the character sheet as well?) however they lack that extra little oompf you feel they should have. Especially given the max bonus/penalty for a task being jack up.

re: #2: Well, d*mn, I f*cked the dog on that one. I hope I can convince my GM to retro some of my choices. And I need some new guns...

Yea, lol, even the gm was kind of like "Wait, what?!" When the first thing I did when getting to a new world was a change of clothes. Of course, its not like I actually trust anyone with my gear, I keep the exitus pistol on me for those complete "O SHI-" moments, but as a rule, if its out, no one in the room is going to live to tell anyone about. I also keep the mask with me and wear the armor under the clothes. For clothes I make sure to get long and looser fitting(easier to conceal the things I have.) If I bring the sniper with me, its in something that won't arouse suspicion, if not, its in a secure gene coded and trapped safe. I like to think in a lot of ways this is playing to the way the vindicare would really work. Deep undercover, find the best spot, get geared up, go to spot, kill target.
Also, you know whats fun? Unnatural agility x2 with 60 agility. 12 dodge actions in a turn? Yes please.

Bombernoy said:

Ah, the joys of the Temple Assassin trait. But, remember, not just dodges, and not just twelve. It's extra reactions, so dodges and parries beyond the norm... And the ability to dodge the unseen and unknown. Like an invisible psychic attack. And the HUGE! How about a Titan's stomp. Or the Foot of Gork.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Actually, the rules stated in the trait state that those reactions are ONLY for dodge or parry, and nothing else.

And in relation to the release of fluff so slowly: It might not be what FFG wants. Hell, I bet Ross is BURSTING to want to give us more, but if GW doesn't want it, it doesn't happen. I'm guessing that it's being held back that way more then anything.

On the case of the "uglier then Nurgle's mama" assassins (You know who I'm talking about), you wouldn't be able to play then EXCEPT in battle with demons/super psykers/such things, because one of those shows up in public and entire HIVES clear out. It just wouldn't be any fun for the player to have to sit on ship during an entire session or five until they find something for him to kill/screw with.

On the secrecy of the Temples: ALL Inquisitors know of them. The =I= and the High Lords are why those things are THERE in the first place. Just remember to not carry around your suit in public, seeing as most common people don't know what an Exitus looks like. They could just assume it's a special order rifle/pistol or something. Or you can just carry different weaponry. Both work.

Brother Praetus said:

I know, but my WS is low so parry is out, and I really have 14 dodges, weeeeeee. Also, I have lightning reflexes, I start out with +12 when rolling for initiative. I think I have to roll like a 2 to beat everyone else I play with in the turn order, lol.

Kylen said:

I'm sorry, given that a temple assassin is bloody well not likely to have a ballistic mechandendrite or reactive psychic powers, I didn't think I had to stipulate dodges and parries only. Oh, but wait, I kind of did; bolded and italicized the relevant part of my post above. But thanks for reiterating that part of the rules, Kylen.

-=Brother Praetus=-

First of all let me say - I wanted to post a strong negative review because so many who post on here post about how much they love everything that FFG is putting out. I am NOT trying to flame FFG - I love them as a company. They are my favorite gaming company in fact and I own many of their games, board, card, and RPG. However I feel if I never give negative feedback, there will never be what I might want in my (expensive) RPG products.

Ok on to specifics. Skill Mastery simply represents having +20 in three or four skills.

For example Stealth Mastery represents having Concealment, Silent Move, and Shadowing. Thats pretty much all it does. It costs a Death Cultist 500xp to have it unless they have all three skills at +20 in which case they "get it" for "free". This doesn't seem like any special work has gone into the development of a new skill. What Stealth Mastery could have represented was an entirely new way to use the skill - perhaps some kind of ability to sneak attack or to hide in plain sight.

The same might be said about Observation Mastery (Awareness, Scrutiny, Search) - It simply gives those three skills at +20. It could have represented an entirely new ability to detect those under camo-cloaks, detect danger so as to increase intiative modifiers, or improve range modifiers. This is just random examples btw, not serious suggestions.

I just feel that there could have definitely been more to the Mastered skills than this. It certainly didn't take much work - this is perhaps a single afternoon of development to come up with this concept.

The same applies to Paragon Talents, only more so. For example "Unassailable Grace" represents Deflect Shot, Hard Target, and Step Aside. It is EXACTLY the sum of those three talents with no additional ability. It costs a Rank 12 Desperado 500xp to get. It just seems that this talent could have done something at least slightly more interesting. At the very least it could be a more intense version of those talents (i.e. giving the Hard Target part a -30 to hit the character instead of just -30). Making them just the same is once again very little development. I certainly expected better from FFG.

Yes Influence Talents are interesting - those I must admit that I do like. There are things that I liked about this book, there are just things I strongly disliked.

Adversaries? Well although the Lord of Change is awesomely powerful, you won't see much else in the section that you probably haven't thrown at your players already. Certainly not much else that I would think would be an enemy for Inquisitor level play. Truly powerful Chaos Magi or Cult following generals would have been great here, the kind that can cause sector wars. Dangerous Xenos like Farseers, Necron Lords, or Genestealer Cult Magi. There is a dire need here for the power elite of the Calixis Sector - perhaps more on Marius Hax and his court, or the Cardinal of the Cathedral of Light. There certainly could have been some stats for a Quixos style inquisitor here. This should certainly have been part of the fluff and (except perhaps for the Necrons) are surely within the purview of the FFG's license.

My apologies Mr Watson to you and your team, but I just don't get the same joy from this supplement that I did from amazing supplements like Disciples of the Dark Gods or other game books like Rogue Trader.

I think it is hard to honestly state any book as "worst supplement of the line" since nearly all the books are different. Can you really compare Asc. or IH to say CA?? It would be just like comparing the Equipment guide to the Monster Manual... I guess you can comment on art, grammar, etc. but the bottom line is they are completely different topics. Either you will like them and use them or not.

I have Ascension and have read through it once and have started going back over it for player/campaign info. It does Exactly what it is supposed to do; it takes Inquisitorial lackeys and makes them Throne Agents. It goes from scraping by on resources to having Talents designed for Influence and politics. The Influence system works rather well for taking money out of the game and focuses on moving pieces and influencing the events. You are no longer a pawn on the chessboard, but a player (keep in mind, you are still a player playing another person's game who plays for, etc. etc.).

In my opinion, I thought RH was kind of a niche book that I have yet to incorporate into my campaign, but with Ascension... OH, the NPC's I can make from different radical factions all fighting for power!

In response to all the "what's in a name" parts of this thread... Ascension has a continuation for each character class as they continue to level up. I am sure each of us could come of with creative names for a class's next 8 Ranks, but FFG stuck with titles that are already in common usage in 40K. In my opinion, I think they took a bold risk actually using the Vindicare Assassin as named (very cool class) instead of calling him "ranged assassin" or whatever. I was expecting more of the social assassin (poison in your drink, "poison ivy" kisses, disguises) but FFG took a more direct and visceral approach. Heck, they even incorporated the Cadian Kaskrin as the official Calixian stormtrooper armor, hellgun, etc. so you can use all the newer miniatures (although, I do like my second gen. Russian-esque commando).

In response to "more planetary fluff".... each book, including the Haarlock adventures has introduced a new planet in detail. With luck, maybe we will see a sourcebook with more planets done up in the same fashion, but hopefully only a few. I have 6 or so planets I have taken from the simple description in the DH book and filled out; if they come out in a sourcebook, then I will just have to assign the official stats to some other planet. I am the GM, I make the rules. I personally don't want every planet and detail given simply because it wouldn't be my story and could limit what you can create on your own. Besides, 3rd Ed. D&D had a sourcebook for just about everything piece of land in Faerun and at Gen Con, the guys from WoTC said they (settings books) had horrible sales numbers, especially when compared to character-centered books... I think it was the Jungles book that actually lost money (but don't quote me on which one the guys mentioned). Now, 4th Ed. is all about PC's, equipment and monsters... hmm, sounds familiar.

On that note, I am hoping to see an official vehicles book (my guess is as part of an equipment book) since the Vehicles Apocrypha that was made available so long ago is a bit... rusty. Another critters book would be nice (say a few more Eldar Aspect types, new monsters, etc) but I am sure the upcoming DW book will have big nasties (hmm... I have a wonderful Inquisitor story with a Chaos Marine causing trouble!)

Final note... some of the new original artwork is simply powerful (was thinking the artist who did the back cover piece and a few inside.)

-Cynr

Regarding setting detail: the best way to ruin a great, evocative RPG setting is to fill it with answers to every mystery and characters who can resolve every conflict. Those are the jobs of the GM and players respectively. When the designers loose track of this, you end up with a setting for fan fiction instead of one for an RPG.

On the other hand, the Haarlock books both detail worlds wonderfully without taking up too much conceptual room, and I'd certainly buy a suppliment full of planets detailed at roughly that level.

fimarach said:

What's the point, an inquisitor can one field one Temple assassin. Yuk yuk yuk.

MILLANDSON said:

Really? Half an hours work and you can come up with a publishable quality planet writeup!? Gosh, you're a better GM than me then, hell I'd guess people like Dan Abnett and the FFG writers would be jealous of that output ... how about you share some of these planets with us, they'd be useful seeing as FFG are feeding us one planet a blue moon.

That aside, you're giving the classic defence of the vagueness policy. But it fails in two ways, firstly your preference for 'a degree of flexibility' (ie not having detail to contradict you) implies you can't and won't go against what FFG give us if you don't like it. You're the GM you decide what published material to include in your game and what not.

Secondly, FFG are detailing the setting, just bloody slowly and in drips. So you can still be contradicted by FFG (as I have been in the past) because you've detailed up a part of the setting that shows up in a later sourcebook.

A Sector sourcebook could solve these problems, it could give broad information on large parts of the setting, and could even be used to highlight specific regions and planets that FFG will never touch in the future, leaving them truly open for GMs to populate secure in the knowledge they won't later be contradicted.

At the moment FFG's vagueness policy is the worst of both worlds, there are no clearly defined blank spots, and everywhere else might someday be detailed in an extremely sporadic and gradual manner.

I really think FFG could satisfy both GM's who don't want to use published material (though ... most people seem happy to do so when the quality is good enough, despite claims to the contrary - how many people run campaigns outside of Calixis Sector for example?) and those who would like not to have to spend (in my case at least) many hours coming up with good setting info themselves.

Adam France said:

I'll think you'll find you took my comment completely out of context. I never said it'd take me half an hour or so to make a planet write-up of publishable quality, but I can make one that suits my needs as a GM fairly easily in that time. I don't need every single statistic for planetary make-up/population and a several page history to make a planet to use in my games. You might do, which is how you work as a GM. Meanwhile, I don't. All depends on what you are after in a supplement.

Okay, all. Let's not get in a pissing contest, please. We all have different preferences in what we want from this game. For me, since I have very limited time to develop my game's fluff, I want all I can get from official sources. For others, they like to develop their own fluff, so they want other things in the core books.

I personally would like more well-defined "fluff". But I can certainly understand other GM's wish to have unlimited license to create their own world.

I guess my point is ... you could have a great depth of development by the game designers, yet still have plenty of room for GM's personal development. If a GM doesn't like the "official" background, she/he can always ignore it, in favor of her/his own design.

So, for those of us who don't have spare time to embellish our setting, I just think it would be nice to have more in this regard.

Am I wrong here?