I've been poking over the Premade Ascension Characters in the "Rise to a higher Calling" downloadable content and was planning on using the Inquisitor as a Template for the advances I want for myself. The sample Inquisitor uses my own Carer Path (Arbitor) so there should be no suprise to the advances taken or their cost sI think.

however to my distress I quickly realise this is far from the case, the sample Inquisitor has around 10K XP in pure Charactheristic advances alone, some 6-7k in skills and 6k in Talents, quite a few who dont appear on the Arbitor Carrer path (Ofc some might be from alternate Ranks from books I dont have acsess to however)

My point is that the PDF states that they are made from 13k xp, but that's clearly false as far as I can see.

One half-way solution is that I can see is that Characteristic Advances are wrongly priced in the examples given in the main DH book. One method that comes close to being valid is that rising a cheap Stat (100xp - Simple/Ballistic Skill: Scum) to Expert level costs a total of 750xp, not 1600xp. to give a further example of my reasoning I mean that a mid-priced Stat (250xp - simple/Weapon skill: Scum) would cost a total of 1000xp trained to Expert level rather than 2500xp (250+500+750+1000).

Still, even with this "fix", the Sample Inquisitor has way to many Skills (and skill masteries) and Talents to fit inside the 13000xp they said they had spent. Me and my GM has had a rather heated but friendly argument over this these last two days, and we can't seem to find a resolution.

In advance, May the Emperor's Light shine on you and Guide you in the dark places you must tread.

I forgot to link to the troubeling pdf in question

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/dark-heresy/pdf/heed-the-higher-call-web-quality.pdf

I haven't had the time to go through the pre-made profiles since I'm still devouring Ascension and prefer doing the bottom-up. But I wonder if the pre-mades are a bit more generic than one could end up from following a Career through Ranks 1-8. There are some Talents and such that are only available at pretty high Ranks to certain careers. Are the pre-mades missing those? If they gave them a bit more of a generic run or gave them some of the Mastered Skills right off the bat.

As I mentioned, I haven't looked it over with a calculator yet.

I ran up a quick character (Crusader) and noticed a couple things:

1. No Homeworld (so that frees up some points)

2. More specific. Some things are available at higher ranks for less cost. Also, the pre-mades are very focused, very narrow.

3. Alternate Career Ranks may explain some changing in the price as well.

But it doesn't add up to 13,000 by the Bottom-Up method. At the same time, that's likely because it's a different method. A character made using the Top-Down method looks very different than a character from the Bottom-Up method. I would definitely pick one method for your game and stick with it. Don't let the players pick which method they want to use for each individual character. You may also be getting some bonus points for losing a whole lot of flexibility. The Crusader was really focused/streamlined and didn't have any of the more varied talents available to the Cleric. Very clear run of melee and imperial faith focus.

As an aside, some of the RT characters starting line-up doesn't match up to the XP cost either. I think it's more a threat level thing when you're starting at the level. The DW Space Marines are essentially supposed to be Rank 9 but, statting them out, might not get us there in XP cost.

It not so much the skills and Talents that are the problem. They do have a lot of them, some who are not in the Career Path (Pilot for the Inquisitor as an example) Same with Talents there are a lot of these as well. My main Problem are the Characteristic Advances no matter what method you use they would cost the same.

Since the Sample Inquisitor was an Arbite the advances down below would cost around 11200-11300 XP (If he can substitute an alternate Rank to get an extra sound constitution for 100 XP or not)

+10 WS, +10 BS, +10 Strength, +10
Toughness, +10 Agility, +20 Intelligence, +15 Perception,
+20 Willpower, +10 Fellowship, +6 Wounds

This is the Conundrum, as I like to call it, not the issue of skills/talents since they can be somewhat explained by alternate Ranks.