This one is not exactly a home rule, but rather the attempt of drawing out comments aimed at creating a home rule to work out one of the perceived issues with a rule or rules currently in the Ascension rules.

Recently, I left a campaign that I had been in for a year and a half. There were a number of things that led to this, but among them was the issue of changing rules out of the books by the GMs who control that game. Some of these changes I can see, but some of them I have issues with.

One example of a rules change that I didn't like, was that they didn't like the idea of 'Forbidden Lore Mastery' as a character, who may have previously had no Forbidden Lores whatsoever could suddenly, relatively cheaply, buy the talent for 400 experience. To remind people, this talent gives the player all the Forbidden Lores, at a +20 in each. The GMs in the game ruled that they were going to allow a maximum of 4 Lores, and they must be stated what they are. While this seems like a fair compromise, I think they're missing a point. Many of the skills/talents given for the various classes are designed so as to have each class be able to perform a certain role, so while 400 might seem cheap, the character in question usually has a high cost for other abilities in their career, which offsets this low cost. My complaints were falling on deaf ears, so I left.

Anyone having issues with any of the seemingly low cost or high cost of abilities out of the Ascension book?

Well, you could allow it but cut the character out of the game for say 20 in game years.
Now is it unlikely the character wouldn't have any forbidden lores but you could demand he should have atleast 3 at +10 before taking the talent...

The rule sounds okay to me, but I agree it feels as though they're missing the point. I mean really, will having too many lores for too cheap break the game (any more than folks with unnatural characteristics)?

From a fluff/descriptive standpoint it depends on the flow of the campaign- leaning all those lores may take some time, but if the team has spans of downtime in between missions and such, it makes sense to me.

From a rules perspective, I've no problem with skill mastery in Ascention because the game has moved beyond those basics. Your character is a VIP now, not just a 'mere' acolyte, and worrying about what forbidden lores a character can role is kind of missing the point of the game at this stage. The characters are supposed to have 'the power of life and death' in their hands.

I think it would be more in line to give you some corruption points, or some kind of sanctified branding or mechanicum cogitation module implanted in their cerebral cortex with all the proper warding. But arbitrarily limiting the skill, yeah I think that's a bit much.

I like the master skills, really thats the whole concept with Ascension is to bring together alot of these skills you have aquired in the time it took you to become Ascended, and make them workable. Otherwise you would probably have 4 pages of character sheet in DH. Besides as others have said you are now a throne agent, thats no small feat thats someone that can rub elbows with the likes of Ravenor ect. Sorry to hear you had to leave, it does sound like a very strict enviroment I have made some harsh calls in combat but I have always encouraged Lore skills.

You left the game because you couldn't get all FLs at +20% for 400 xp? Seriously?

That must not be a very fun game....

As for the topic it seems a little strange to get something like that with no prerequisites. I could see the Arbites in my group getting it, but only because he has some Forbidden lores already and seem dedicated to learning more. As a throne agent you would have access to alot of dark secrets.. but it seems like a fairly big leap when you might not know anything about it from before.

Limiting it to 4 FLs is not too shabby either.. seems like a rule I might use myself. Thanks for the tip!

Friend of the Dork said:

Will you limit the other mastery skills, too?
Would you allow somone who up until than only hat Pistol skills to lern Basic weapons expertise? Or will that be a choice of 4, too?

I myself am playing a sage.

The char already has Common lore mastery, linguistic mastery and recently lerned forbidden lore mastery. Not long and it's time for scholastic lore mastery, too. But why should that be bad? What's the sage about if not knowing what there is to know?

I don't like the idea of nerfing Master Skills. The deal with Assention is that you are the Pinical of your area of Experties, there is no gray area as to "I kinda know this or I can kinda shoot that" The Crusaider is the Inquisitors personal body guard/Meat shield, and can buy Fate points for Emperors sake. FATE POINTS! I think thats a little more powerful than Cheep knowlege. Not to mention the fact that it says there is a minimum of 1 year transition between rank 8 and 9. Whats so hard to believe about saying there's 5-6 months between missions/travel time that the acolyte dedicates every waking moment to learning said skill set. I like to follow the listings in the book as much as possible and prefer to not get crazy with my own things lest they be too powerful/unbalanced. People who throw rules out the window just make me mad.

Umbranus said:

A couple things I thought of after reading several of these posts.

1 - Many of the Lores tend to dovetail into each other (how often have you had a Lore roll come up in game wherein you had more than one Lore that was applicable to the situation at hand?)

2 - Of the classes that get these mastery skills, generally the characters had to learn some of them at some point during their careers, prior to ascending

3 - The group I was in was only going to limit Lore Masteries, not other mastered skills

4 - This rule of mastered skills streamlines the DH game, bringing it more in line with other games such as RT. In RT you can buy pistol - universal for 500 on several classes. So the point to me here is the attempt by Fantasy Flight to be able to list all of one's skill sets on a single sheet, intead of 5... which you might have to if you don't have mastered skills and the like

Umbranus said:

If you could go from having no skills with any pistol and then getting all of them and at +20% to booth for just 400 xp, then yeah I might consider limiting that as well. As of now these seems more about getting the last few trainings you lack. It's also about going from no skills at all to all of them that makes my eyebrows rise if it had prerequisite: Any 2 FLs I would probably allow it.

As for the other Mastery skills... well most of them have only 4 skills anyway, some 5. Only the Knowledge and Language skills really divert from this.

Cryptological Mastery seems to be one maybe even worse than FL Mastery... suddenly I know ALL Ciphers and ALL secret Languages?