Ascension

By hereth37, in Dark Heresy House Rules

My players have recently reached 20,000 exp in my 2nd ed game. I looked through the ascension book and tried to adapt it to 2nd ed but it was underwhelming. I was wondering what others have made in the interest of late game 2nd ed.

On ‎9‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 2:47 AM, hereth37 said:

My players have recently reached 20,000 exp in my 2nd ed game. I looked through the ascension book and tried to adapt it to 2nd ed but it was underwhelming. I was wondering what others have made in the interest of late game 2nd ed.

What was it you found underwhelming? I did like ascension, but it did take a bit of work to run the campaign because of the power level of the characters (and especially because of the variation in combat-capability of the characters! - providing a combat threat which can threaten a vindicere or palatine can pretty much annihilate a sage in accidental cross-fire...)

Inquisitor and Battle Sister look like good points to aim for - they're primarily Influence-dependent options, not XP, so it depends on the GM when people would qualify for them. Whether you'd want to have equivalent entities for other....I dunno? Roles? Backgrounds? is up to you.

I haven't anything 'ready to go' but could imagine it working well. What ended up being the problem?

Edited by Magnus Grendel

Sorry about the late reply, my players and I have since finished the campaign.

The power levels was part of the problem, one of my players was a psyker with PR 7 that one shot anything. But anything I made that could survive that would then kill my party as the rest were mostly non-combat characters.

The real problem was that none of my players liked the bonuses gained from the various options. I ended up letting them take talents I made on my own based off the unique ones they give to the ascended characters. Ignore corruption from heirophant, shoot things from vindicare etc.

I have an excel doc with all the talents I've made, including the ascended ones. I've tried to put it on here before but idk how :(

Another problem, although not one I expected DH to solve, was that I was running a more normal kind of adventure. They weren't acolytes so a lot of the ascension trees didn't make sense either.

6 hours ago, hereth37 said:

The power levels was part of the problem, one of my players was a psyker with PR 7 that one shot anything. But anything I made that could survive that would then kill my party as the rest were mostly non-combat characters.

The primaris psyker is incredibly powerful, and one of the main balance issues in the book, but yes, if you let someone take a PR7 psyker, challenging them without one-shotting the party in the crossfire is difficult. Most of the time I've used ascension for largely non-combat intrigue settings, and I've often mandated 'no psyker'.

6 hours ago, hereth37 said:

The real problem was that none of my players liked the bonuses gained from the various options.

Sounds surprising, but if you don't like, you don't like.

Try the "attach files" at the bottom of the reply box?

I would be interesting in see it hereth37

As previously mentioned, we've finished the campaign so I haven't edited the ascension thing much. The excel sheet is basically an appendix for all the talents i cared about from all the non 2nd edition books with added stuff to make it fit.

All (most) talents.xlsx

Ascension.rtf