Let´s incite a rumour, shall we?

"Blood of Martyrs" rebuild the whole way a "Sister" works. Some Fanbozy would say they were "given back" there Icon tools of the Trade (Servo Armour & Bolter). At start.

On the horizone, there is "Daemon Hunter", "Book of Judgement" and "Only War".

A lot of us were complaining about the low powerlevel of Acolythes at Rank 1. Perhaps, FFG is now completely re-inventing the career classes. Or some of them.

"Book of Judgment" could see the Arbitrator getting the same treatment as the Sisters. At least, in the gear department (Enforcer Carapace and Bolter and/or Combat Shotgun from the start). While the Scum might not see to much in new gear, he might be able to pull of some clever tricks using with "Common Lore (Underworld)". Getting some information, getting some gear, getting something done...

"Daemon Hunter" could feature new nice ideas for pskyer and clerics. After all, they are the prime candidates for doing some banishment, aren´t they?

"Only war" ...well,,,you know it.

Of course, none of the three hints at Tech-Priests, Assasines, Adepts, ...

but hey, perhaps they are just getting started?

Just one for the rumour mill.

Greetings

Gregorius21778

Gregorius21778 said:

It would be nice, and I could see it happening to a degree. I imagine at least getting different starting packages that alter starting skills and gear (as we have FINALLY seen in BoM).

It would be a nice build up to a 2nd Edition of the core book. (And honestly, the only thing I would want changed is the careers). But I would hate to have the previous career entries removed and just replaced with new ones.

I do think the Scum needs to largest rewrite though, as it covers everything from con men and rogues, to thieves, scouts, gangers and so forth. So a few alternate routes would be awesome for them. There could be one for Adept (idea men, schemers, plotters) and one for guardsmen (bounty hunters, thugs, hit men) and Assassin (hit men) and so forth.

Would also work for Guardsmen with alternates for the different types. Officer (adept), snipers and commandos (assassins), scouts (scum) and so forth. But I would love to see a conversion book for Rogue Trader Careers in DH.

I don't think we'll be getting rework's of existing classes.

FFG have made it pretty clear (without stating out outright) that there are huge chunks of Black Industry's rules that they do not like, starting with branching career paths (which is why no FFG product has ever included them). Re-doing the Sister class was their way of 'fixing' the perceived 'mistake' inherent in the Inquisitor's Handbook. Luckily for us I think it worked - the new Sister is considerably better than the old one, even without the branching paths - but don't expect them to rewrite history for all the other classes.

BYE

I personally very much hope that for Book of Judgement the designers read and re-read the very excellent Enforcer omnibus. As for starting gear: if I were to GM Dark Heresy, I wouldn't start the Acolytes below 2000-2200 Xp ever. This seems to be the "power level" where the careers start to become competent; and at this stage it's almost a given that an Arbitrator has Enforcer Carapacle, combat shotgun and a shock maul - and also the rank to actually get things done within the Adeptus (being able to call in Arbites forces - maybe too early for Rank 4, but still - if needed; or have the clearance to look into Arbites files during the investigation stage). The latter is actually much more important IMHO, as I see DH as Delta Green in Spaaace!

Gregorius21778 said:

Yeah, I'd be willing to be that Only War will break the Guardsman's three different advancment schemes into seperate classes (Officer, Scout, and- well, I guess the name Stormtrooper is limited to Ascended level now...) - and I'm not thrilled about it. To me, it reeks of churning out filler to keep players buying redundant books. Kinda like TSR just before it's bankrupcy...

Adeptus-B said:

Yeah Skills and Powers 2E AD&D was a horrible expansion series of books. But I enjoyed the core class essential books, it just became unbearable when they were releasing books like the Complete Half Elf Ranger Named Clem Handbook and so forth.

I do not think Storm Trooper is limited to Ascended level now, in fact, it would surprise me if we ever hear from Ascended rules or level again.

I think Guardsmen in Only War will work just fine if it goes more along the lines of alternate career ranks like they did with the space nuns (Dia, Famu and Hosp). But I think they should stay with the guardsmen core advance scheme and just have alternate starting career skills and rank one advances.

Great, so that means while the sister got the Power/bolter kit, the Arbites got combat shotgun with enforcer amrour, the guardsmen starts with heavy weapons or a fancy officer's hat with bolt pistol and chain sword, the scum with massive contacts, the assassin got killer rounds..

The Tech-Priest got a nice las carabine

The adept got a revolver.

Yeah I sure can see the DH groups will look like in the future; all combat, no social/investigation. It's gonna be Deathwatch minus the whole 'Space Marine' angle.

I know I never accepted a SoB in my group, especially due to the Power Armour/Bolter problem..I did once actually but the game stopped due to time constraint and other things. Also, I don't get how people seems to 'lock-in' careers with a certain type: not all scum are under-hivers, some might just be crooked guardsmen who runs cards on the side or a small smuggling operation (Sgt Bilko) like not all Arbitrators are technically Arbites: some could be enforcers. Like guardsmen can be mercs or just ganger goons.

Besides, it's not like they can actually WEAR the armour or carry that fancy weapon around; if the Inquisition didn't wanted an investigation to go discreetly, he would not have bothered with the players but send in a squad of Storm Trooper and call it a day.

Braddoc said:

Amen!

I know for myself, in my games we changed a lot of the nomenclature just to remove some of the percieved limitaions of the Career Systems, Guardsman became Soldier (any kindle of professional warrior, be it feudal knight, Imperial Guardsman, Mercenary, PDF, etc), Arbitrator became Enforcer (be it Arbitrator, Magisterium, Gang Thug, etc), and so on...

We all removed all specificity from the the skill advance charts. No of us could reconcile the idea that the Adept PC who was a xeno-archaeologist specializing in Enulian culture but the only forbidden lore open to him was Cults.... so we simple read all of those types of skills in the adbvancement charts as XYZ Lore (any) , where the Player picks one that is appropriate the the PCs concept and in game adventures.

In one game I ran, the Arbitrator PC had the Scum Career, the Death Cult Assassin PC was a Cleric Career..

ymmv

-Skallagrim

Good to know I'm not the only one not stuck in the 'guardsmen must be an 'IG Jok'.

I did not have such...extremes as you, but I had a ganger who took the guardsman's career, another was a Ship gunnery-crew overseer who took Arbitrator (got to keep the ratlings in line) like you the knowledge skills became 'random' i.e. what fitted most with the char/situation/whatever.

but those are exceptions: most stick with something' simple' like an Arbitrator being an Arbites or some enforcer type.

This talk really makes me want to see a core rulebook 2.0 - the idea of the classes (largely) being archtypes is definitely represented in the core book, but its largely glossed over and made somewhat silly by the advance schemes (ex: the afforementioned ganger represented by a guardsman automatically gets access to peer: guardsman) and background packages tend to view them as literally interpreted classes. Sometimes elite schemes are like that, too.

Not to see that you cant represent other types via an archtype - some are better than others (assassin for example). But just.. Eh. To be fair, its hard to encompass all of 40k.

To be honest, lot of them (Scum, Psyker etc) do need a sound re-working over... and by sound working over, I do mean "savagely beaten" into something that makes sense.

Braddoc said:

By that same logic the psyker can't be around, since they have a brand/tattoo declaring them a sanctioned psyker. Not very subtle and to a criminal (probably wouldn't even want anything to do with a psyker in any form) almost certainly working for the imperium, since that's why they are even allowed to live. Definitely not worth the chance.

Most "Lawmen" have that smell about them, so even they would be hard pressed to do stuff undercover, unless specifically trained for it.

I wasn't aware guardmen got acting or infiltration as skills?

Some of this is suspension of disbelief.

The SoB could have a hooded cloak, and make a dynamic entrance and force the information out of the suspect.

They could be the backup in the alley waiting for the quarry to split out the back door, or bust in if a fight starts to pull their bacon out of the fire.

SoB don't "HAVE TO" bust every door down and shoot everyone in the head with a boltgun while every attack plinks off their armor and the rest of the group stands behind her with their thumbs up their butts.

Suijin said:

You can choose where the sanctioning brand is on your character's body. You may opt for it to be in plain sight, but on my psykers, it never is. This only becomes an issue when you are, for one reason or another, obliged to show a bit of flesh (e.g. when stripped naked for some reason, or when attending a party where revealing attire is the in thing). That works for me, since it's a consideration for the PC, but it isn't a huge problem most of the time.

I think a Sister of Battle would have a hard time in many covert investigations, and don't feel that's what the militant orders are for. We have games of DH that involve intricate undercover work, in which such a woman would stand out terribly. We also have games in which the PCs are much more openly working for the Inquisition (and have a Sister in one such campaign), which is more welcoming of that sort of character.

I agree that a certain type of Arbitrator will always have a distinctive 'arbite' way about them. You could get around that by passing them off as an "ex-Arbites bodyguard" for another member of the group posing as a decadent noble (well, that's always been our answer). In the Underhive, perhaps your arbiter could have been disgraced in some way and dismissed from service (though NPCs would probably have a really hard time trusting/accepting them). Explaining away a Sister in that way (in a long-term undercover operation) would prove more challenging, I think.

Re: the original topic, for me, the Errata cover the key things that would need to be in a second edition of the core DH rules. I am a very big fan of the branching system (it makes for excitingly different characters of the same class) and would be extremely disappointed to see it removed.

Just out of interest, does anyone know why FFG didn't like the Branching Career paths? I personally prefer them. I like the idea of players having at some point to decide what to specialise in, or having to choose between sacrificing power in their niche to become more generalised.

I'm not sure why FFG doesn't like branching career paths. Particularly since they have provided quite a few alternate career ranks, which are like mini-branches really.

I always liked the mix and match career system in the Fantasy RPG (1st and 2nd editions) and wish the 40k RPGs were a little more flexible. I do think they did a good job with Deathwatch having multiple parallel advances to choose from.

That's the point of the Alternate Ranks, it means that you can have all these different insertable new ranks to chose from, without being forced to then follow on to other alternate ranks. It provides even more flexibility this way than the branching system does.

Still, it's interesting to see the speculation , I'm looking forward to seeing how substantiated it is

Some stuff I heard was more of an ala carte type thing where you have the base class and then can pick the add on stuff that you actually want.

I think in some ways they feel it is more simple, and then there is only one base path to go through the 8 ranks. Like the old Adepta Sororitas had 14 "ranks" of skills/talents for a progression of 8 ranks. I think that particular class they felt needed more differentiation also between the different types of orders, but the base part still stands.

One of the reasons I favour DH over RT is that the characters end up so much more varried. Alot of the RT careers are somewhat stifling and frequently become rather "cookie cutter" over time. I LOVE alternate career ranks and Elite Packages! Now one change I would probably embrace for DH is a more fluid character creation process, sort of how in RT you have the flowchart character backgrounds... You can still do this somewhat in DH if you have a cooperative GM and work with them to develop your character background, but it requires a personal touch in the current rules. This is why in the DH erratta the "starting" skills and talents for all careers were added to the rank 1 charts... So that creative players and GMs can make unique or different characters and still go back and pick up missed items later. For example: An Atillan Guardsman would replace their "free" Drive(Ground) or Swim choice with the Wrangling skill, since if you don't know horses, you aren't Atillan!

My other major concern with a theoretical rewrite of the existing career trees into a branchless system is the rather questionable points costs on the Deathwatch trees. Seriously, some of the points costs in DW are simply put, EFFING RETARDED! On the positive side, they did a good job with the Sororitas re-write. I also like the idea of making choices and those choices having consequences, both good and bad: Is your Psyker more militant or more scholarly? Is your Guardsman more sneaky and patient like "Mad Larkins" or more [Front Towards Enemy] like "Try Again Bragg"? This is especially nice when you have more than one player playing the same career since each one has their own distinctive talents and contribution to the team. Heck, the Arbiter could seriously use a THIRD branch to their tree, since it is a major struggle to portray an Arbites investigator as portrayed in the fiction and fluff. I have had to sign off on several elite advances for my Arbites player for things that simply should have been on his career tree.

Minor tweaks and moving some skills up to earlier in the trees would be a nice change though. Guardsmen can't learn Climb without GM intervention before rank 5, Scum can't learn Climb either unless they go for the ganger branch late in their career (so it is hard to make a catburglar character concept!), Arbiters cannot learn Medicae at all! Some of the skills and talents need to be late in the careers for game balance, but there are some glaring exceptions like this in just about all the career trees.

ZillaPrime said:

Thats one of my biggest complaints.

Id even be happy if each "alternate" branch in the career path started sooner with some earlier rank oprions. Like Officer Cadet or Scout in the case of Guardsman. And I still do not think Storm Trooper should be a rank 8 (or even ascended) career option.

Storm Troopers come in two varieties. The ones selected late in life from experienced guard vets and the ones raised in Schola Progenums to be Storm Troopers. Meaning it is just as reasonable to have rank 1 Storm Troopers as it is to have Rank 1 Sisters of Battle. Same goes for Commissars.

I've been of this opinion for quite some time now, and have voiced to whoever will listen, but we need FFG to stop producing material for DH, RT and DW and give us Warhammer 40k: Grim Dark Roleplay.

Basically a core set of rules for roleplaying in GW's phenomenal setting, accompanied by a set of core classes, pardoning my D&D approach here... Warrior (anyone who makes a living fighting), Rogue (anyone who makes a living outside the law), Mage (anyone who studies or practices occult, psychic or sorcerous abilities) and Clerics(anyone who is defined by their faith). Then they can release a sourcebook for Inquisitorial agents, Rogue Traders, Astartes etc with various add-on rules, but the point would be to have a definitive set of core, universal rules that never change.

The current trio of systems are just too different to effectively try mixed games and by releasing more source books as FFG currently are, the issue is getting compounded.

So come on FFG, give us 40k RPG version 2, the version we all know you can deliver us better than Black Industries did.

Hey I liked the branching baths of development for the classes. It forces a player to choose to go down a career, see some Guardsman become leaders others go down a special forces career, and the branching path illustrates it.

Warmaster40k said:

The only problem is that ou get seriously penalized for going down the leadership route, what with your uber expensive Fellowship and Intelligence advancement prices. And then you have to buy all the leadership skills and talents. If you go down the special forces or sniper paths, at least you already start with combat skills, talents and advances.

the Branching does offer more options than just 'Guardsmen=grunt,' at least with the Officer line, you can bring nice support to the team, like litany of Hate, nice knowledge (better than just hoping the Adept makes his roll) and not to mention Plasma weapon!

The bad thing is to get conceal, mighty shot and other more 'combat' related skills and talents only come with specialization (Sniper/Storm Trooper) rather than with Sgt. or Veteran

Kasatka said:

Given the list of releases set up for the next year plus, this ain't happening anytime soon (or, if previous interviews with Ross and Sam are to be believed, at all).

It'll almost certainly have been a clause in the licensing agreement that they had to keep the game in the same style, etc, as Black Industries had it.

Plus, anything that's nothing like DnD is good in my book.

Peacekeeper_b said:

It seems pedantic when talking about single skills that seem like they were just missed, and we have probably had to correct it ourselves. But it shouldn't be down to a player to have to bargin with their GM each time.

And yes the Storm Troopers from a SP would be trained (from at least adolescence specifically) to be a Storm Trooper from the start. Balance is an issue and I was happy (like the previous incarnation of SoB) with some previously unknown trainee ranks. And a player was a Storm trooper throughout Dark Heresy then it would have been easy to have Commisar as the Ascended rank.

I could adjust to a single path career structure, I can accept that a Preist may not be Priest, but the core rulebook pretty clearly struggles against that. You can understand that want people to have a clear picture of the character types though.

In general I would say, regarding a 2nd Edition for instance, that they should rename the single tree career paths with incredible generic names. A preist would be a 'Leader' career for instance but they include the alt starting ranks from the get-go, that could be the well described Imperial Priest, Officer Cadet, Merchant Lord (and some of the abilities in the tree could have the starting package as a pre-req for the specific later abilities).

Requires a lot of work though, but as is the career structure is starting to look pretty messy as two companys have pulled it in the direction they wanted to go.