Most people who, for whatever odd reason, bother to care will recall that I am not a fan of the career/rank system for character creation and advancement. So, in the interests of discussion, here is my current idea for an alternative. This hasn't been playtested. It's just what's rattling around in my head. Constructive comments will be appreciated.

Characteristics: All characteristics start at 25 (unless modified by homeworld). Characters recieve 70 points to distribute among their characterisitcs, with no more than 15 points assigned to any one characteristic. (Alternatively, if you prefer die rolling, generated attribute by the RAW and then allow the player to increase any 3 characterisitcs by 5.) All characteristics are advanced using the 250/500 advance scheme.

Starting Skill and Talents: Existing starting career packages are available as "templates." Players may choose one career template and gain the starting skills, talents and gear from that template. GMs may create additional templates to suit their campaign needs.

Advances (the simple method): All advances cost 100 exp. The GM may designated certain advances (for example Forbidden Lore or all Psy talents) as restricted and available only at higher cost. Starting characters recieve (for example) 400 exp to purchace any advance for which they meet the prerequisites, subject to the GMs approval. All advances puchased in play require an in-character justification for their purchase (as per the RAW elite advance rules). The GM is final arbiter for determining if the justification is sufficent.

Advances (the complex method): For GMs with concerns about the relative "balance" of certain advances, the game could have a designated "power level" based on the average experience points of the characters. This could be as finely graded as the 1-8 rank scheme or a broader scheme (for example Recruit (0-1999), Acolyte (2000-7999), Trusted Acolyte (8000-14999), Throne Agent(1500+)). Certain advances are designated as have a specificed power level as an additional prerequisite (for example Swift Attack might have an additional prerequisite of Acolyte). Only a character in a game of that power level may purchase that advance. Otherwise, the purchase of advances follows the same guidlines outlined in the simple method above.

Pretty simple, but that's the point. This is intended to be a highly flexible, campaign driven system. It does require a social contract between the GM and players, to the effect that everyone agrees to be fair, to cooperate and to not make the game about who can make the toughest, most game dominating character. Personally, I consider that sort of social contract essential for any good rpg.

Thoughts

LuciusT said:

Actually, I like this.

But on the off-chance that you are interested ... here is what I have been cooking up in my "admittedly addled" mind:

I would allow characters to choose their attribute advances as follows: 3 fast progression ((100/250/etc.), 3 median progression (250/500/etc.), and 3 slow progression (500/750/etc.).

I would then put together a complete list of all Skills and Talents, and their cost - based on their relative utility, as well as the relative time (in the campaign) that I believe they should become available ... this part would allow earlier acquisition of these, but only (based on the higher XP cost) at the expense of other more "in-line" advancements that most characters would (at least in my mind) choose. And, of course, there would be "origin-packages" and "alternate career packages" that create exceptions to this linear progression.

I agree completely with the "point-buy" characteristics purchase, and I also agree with the starting "templates" idea for starting skills/talents and equipment.

I just have to come up with a coherent ... and fair ... Skills/Talents list, and their costs.

Regardless of that, I think it's a great idea.

This is fine for experienced 40K roleplayers but for less experienced groups it's ripe for abuse or just bad mistakes.

For example, why would anyone player anything other than a Tech Priest or Psyker that give you access to abilities with no downsides, plus any characters that are similar in style would effectively be identical after a while regardless of their starting Career package choice.

Face Eater said:

As I said, the social contact is key to this system working. If your players are building characters in the way you describe, they are violating that social contract.

LuciusT said:

Well I trust my players, to varying degree's and we've been playing the game for 3+ years now so I know what's what. But still if anyone was playing a Tech Priest or a Psyker and decided that they were going to play a similar niche some one else they would have all of the abilities of those characters with the bonus of being a techpriest or Psyker. With all the good will in the world that's going to cause some resentment.

Face Eater said:

In general, I've found that if two players are playing characters with essentially the same niche, you've already got a conflict and a certain lack of good will.

So is the main difficulty that people who are locked into the psyker career (for instance), want to start getting skills/talents only available to another specialist class? Say, they want their psyker to learn heavy weapons training? And as such they complain to you the GM that it is unfair that everyone else can learn it but they cant? or something similar?

I probably don't fully understand the reasoning that caused the alternate creation rules.

Or are you proposing to create some kind of generic "everyman" type of a career path? Something that would have reasonably basic skill/talent progression with a general open stat upgrade profile?

Asgard4tw said:

The career system, like any class/level system is unnecessarily restrictive. It works if, and only if, you want to create characters who fit neatly into the templates the game designers have pre-designed into the system. It fails if you want to go beyond them. The result is an increasing weight of alternate ranks, background packages and elite advance schemes which attempt to add flexibility back into the system. If the system was not restricted to begin with all of that would be unneeded.

Look at the Dramatis Personae section in the back of the core rules. Each NPC template has the skills and talents needed to fill their role. Players, however, are denied that flexibility when creating their own characters. These alternate rules exist to allow players that flexibility.

Thanks for the clarification. With that in mind, those rules look pretty good.

Would trainers/dataslates being further requirements for skill/talent upgrades be too cliche? Either using inquisition sanctioned trainers or finding outside help for the more exotic/forbidden lores?

I don't see that this is necessary. If a player really wants a still or talent that he doesn't have access to he can come to me and ask to take it as an elite advance. I look at his request, determine if it will conflict with what the other characters are doing, and give a yes or no answer. Part of my job as GM is to insure that players are not trampling all over one another's areas of specialization, so everyone can feel important, useful and needed throughout the course of a campaign - a system that does not limit what people can purchase makes this more difficult.

And before you pull "social contract" on me, you have to assume everyone at the table is willing to give up their character concept and effectively let the other characters decide what skills they can choose from. This has the potential to create a lot of resentment, as each time player A picks a skill it means player B is being limited. As GM part of my duties entail being target of resentment in pursuit of making the game more balanced and fair for everyone.

As a GM it is also easier for me to look at two people playing Scum and say "Okay, but you guys need to decide how your characters are going to differ" - it is a lot less realistic for me to try and remember which skills every player has, every time they improve their characters, and say "wait, you can't have X because Joe does, and you can't have Y because Sam does ... oh, Sam didn't end up buying that, okay ... oh wait, Jill got that a while back? Well, **** then no again .." ad nauseum.

Jack of Tears said:

All I can say is that in my many years playing and running classless, levelless, skill based games, I have never once found this to be a problem.

LuciusT said:

All I can say, then, is good for you - I've almost always found classless "freeform character generation" games to produce bland and generic characters who may as well be interchangeable.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

That's very weird because my experience has universally been the opposite. Class/level systems almost always produce bland, generic, cookie-cutter characters. Skills based systems almost always produce unique, varied and interesting characters. I cannot begin to comprehend why your experience has been so different, though I do not doubt you.

Once again, I have to agree with Lucius here. In my experience, the class/level-based systems tend to create bland, cookie-cutter characters, while the greater leeway of a class-less, level/rank-less system tends to inspire my players to new heights of character concept and development. And ... that is including my more "gamist" players, who always look for technical advantages. Granted, my players are all decent RP'ers, but some of them are still more "gamist" than others. Even then, however, they seem to come into their own RP greatness much more quickly in less restrictive game settings. It is my belief that this is because such systems allow them to to really exercise their creative "juices" when creating their character ... without worrying about how the system may "gimp" them for their creative choices. As my friend Kage is fond of saying, though, YMMV.

I think I'm fairly in the middle depending entirely on what system was used but I've almost certainly not been playing the same games. I think though what's most important in a free wheeling character gen is familiarity with the setting and to a lesser degree the rules.

Take Cthulu for example, you could come with a half a dozen characters with one set of rolled stats because most people are quite familiar with the setting, put in a unfamiliar setting and people will start to focus on one or two things or just get lost.

Shadowrun was pretty good for a fairly unfamiliar setting with just a description to work to, however they had a lot of balancing factors for their magic which I think this DH would need if it was the same for everyone.

LuciusT said:

Probably has to do with the players' rpg backgrounds and what they feel most comfortable with. I have played dozens of different settings over my 20 years of GMing, but my players usually seem to do best when they have some kind of structure - be that imposed by a class system or me keeping a tight reign on their skill choices. I don't get boring, cookie cutter characters from classless, levelless systems, but characters who all want to do everything and are constantly stealing the lime light from one another.

Like I said, it just ends up being more work for me ... but if some of you have had better luck with it - more power to you.

So the general consensus (leaving aside 'I don't like class-less, level-less systems'... which is a valid position but not relevant to my project) is that this system looks good, but that psyker and tech priest abilities need special consideration.

Would simply increasing the cost of psyker and tech priest talents be enough to address those concerns? Do all psyker and tech priest talents need to have an increased cost or do folks feel some are more agregious than others?

... and for all my fellow Yanks, Happy Thanksgiving.

I think the issue with tech-priest and sanctioned psykers is that you don't just become one from one session to the next. It's a profession and a position within an organisation, not a set of skills and talents.

One might get something like a potentia coil without the blessing of the mechanicum, but that wouldn't make you a tech priest but a here-tek. Same goes for sanctioned psyker. You COULD develop psyker powers at almost any point in your career, but that would make you a hunted unsanctioned psyker, not an imperial psyker.

So in order to play a tech priest or sanctioned psyker one needs to either be one at character creation or do some time skip and backstory between sessions. And if you pick something at character creation that allows you to shoot lightning from your hands without running the risk of being hunted by the mechanicus or another inquisitor there needs to be a tradeoff. Simply increasing the cost of psyker specific/tech priest specific talents penalises the actual psykers and tech priest as much as their unsanctioned counterparts. And anyway, that's not the part that should cost, it's induction into the priesthood of mars and the trip on the black ships for sanctioning that needs a cost if there's no trade off in what skills and talents are available down the line.

Graspar said:

Those considerations all fall under the core "mechanic" of the existing elite advance system... you need to provide an in character justifcation of how your character got the new skill or talent and the GM needs to approve it. It seems to me people often overlook that rather critical element in the rules.

Yeah, but then you'll just turn in a backstory that includes "he was inducted in the adeptus mechanicus during blah blah" or "and then the black ships took him to terra blah blah blah". If you've got players that are above that kind of powergaming it's not a problem, but in my opinion a system for building characters should include some kind of checks for this instead of just relying on the GM saying no, "you're not allowed [advance] because I said so" is lack of a system.

I don't understand your objection. If your character's backstory says you were inducted into the Adeptus Mechanicus then you're a tech-priest. If your backstory says you are a psyker who was taken to Terra by the Black Ships, then you're a sanctioned psyker.

Yes but as others has pointed out, tech priest and psyker are careers that give special powers. If all characters advance the same way except that tech priests get do do tech-priest related stuff without being branded a heretek and psykers get magic powers it's sub-optimal to not make a tech-priest or psyker, they can do everything other characters can as easily and extra stuff.

Graspar said:

Except that you need to pay for those powers, and that means characters who haven't paid for those powers have paid for other things. If I've spent 400 experience points on Psy Rating 2, then I haven't spent 400 experience points on ambidexterity, two weapon wielder (balisitic) and gunslinger and crack shot. Therefore, those are things that another character can do that mine can't. Yes, I could also buy all those things, but if I do I haven't bought Psy Rating 2... or I have to spend another 400 experience points, which that gunslinger can spend on even more advances.

Ultimately, I don't see the point that you're getting at. If you have spent points on psy powers or tech priest abilities, that means you haven't spent them on other things. A character without psy powers or tech priest abilities will have more exp to spend on other skills and talents, or on characterisitc advances. Also, in my experience, not everyone wants to play a psyker or a tech priest. In fact, given the Perils of Warp, I've never had a player who wants to play a psyker.

My main objection there is fluff. You don't see random characters running around using special Tech Priest powers in the fluff unless they are Techpriests. The Psyker thing is slightly looser, if you assume the people in the books who seem to only have one or two psy talents are not psyker classes but something else ... but that still makes them a witch, which comes with plenty of problems. (and since they are RP problems I am - tenuously - less prone to instant objection ... but only by a very narrow margin)

The other issue is, realistically, if anyone can have a psy power - everyone is going to have one. Likelihood is everyone in the party will suddenly have Healer, or Fear Aura, or Chameleon. (or all of the above if you give a standard X number of powers with each psy rating they purchase) Sure, some gamers will steadfastly stick by their character concepts and never do that ... but then this becomes a mechanic which wholly depends on the integrity of the Player to make it balanced. (And I know very good role players who would still jump on this - or very mediocre power gamers who can nonetheless come up with very convincing excuses for why they should have access to a power)

Yes, I can say no ... but as someone else mentioned, if that is the only power limiter the system is broken. But, house rules don't have to be mass market friendly, so there is no reason this wouldn't work for your own group.

Wow. All I can say is that it sounds like you guys have had some really horrible experiences with your players. I feel sorry for you.