Greetings, fellow GM and Gamers,

a member of one of my groups plays a Sister of Battle. As the new rules became available, we switched her pc (rebuiling it with the same amount of pc; keeping the person the same).

To us, it turned out that the same amount of xp made for a far weeker Sister of Battle. She used to play a Sister Militant and went down the same path, gratiously taking the "Celestine" alternative rank. But everytime we study the list of advancement, we see a lot of price tags indicating 200xp, 300xp and even 400xp, all of them far outweighing the 100xp tags. Which seems different in all other careers in DH, where in most steps 100xp advances seem to outweigh the more expensive choices. At least in Ranks 1 to 5.

What is your experience with this?

Haven't had a Battle Sister in my game since the revised career got published. What I HAVE noticed is FFG has been trending towards more expensive advances for ALL new product lines. Rogue Trader started the ball rolling, then Deathwatch escalated things to ABSURD levels!

For Deathwatch we literally had to cut all the XP costs IN HALF to make any sense at all. It was just not right that Inquisition characters were buying SKILL MASTERY for 700xp and a Space Marine was buying Drive (Landspeeder) +10 for 800xp. Alot of Astartes Talents are 1000xp by the book. Yes, even the relatively lame ones...

The designers noted that they charged the Sisters more because of their "superior wargear" which at the first few ranks is true. I made a Sister Famulous and she worked out reasonably well. Then again, Ranks 2-8 are bought out of the core book except for your Faith Talents (2100 XP spent on those ALONE [not counting True Faith] at the bottom of rank 7!)

ZillaPrime said:

...okay. So they gave the character access to better gear (which makes her more effective in combat) and raised the cost for most of the Talents/Skills (which reduced her effectiveness in all fields of activity compared to other charackter at the same level).

I think I did a mistake in rebuilding poor Katja´s pc

Well, in a way it makes sense, and is an interesting idea to balance a Sister's early access to high-level equipment. On the downside this makes such a character considerably less versatile on later levels when other characters would have "catched up" in terms of gear (or have even acquired better items a Sister has no access to). That said, I do think that Sororitas characters, and Sisters Militant in particular, should indeed be less flexible due to the nature of their education and dogmatic living style, making it harder for them to pick up skills not directly connected to their respective primary tasks. I cannot yet comment on if the restrictions placed on the career are truly too harsh, though, as I have just begun to play a character of this career myself.

If your game doesn't have much of a combat focus, then the Battle Sister is very gimped in terms of skills as she won't be able to compete. The sister pays a great deal more for her skills (even combat ones) than any other class. She has less attacks and her Int and Toughness advance costs are through the roof. If you want the talents that make her unique in the group she has to pay an arm and a leg for them at 300 xp each for those nifty Faith Talents.

Yes they basicaly made the BoM battle sisters for a different game system. One that it looks like the FF writers are going to transform DH into in the future support books. I get the impression that they feel that the BL version gives to much to each class, for to little cost.

They are beyond useless as written, limited skill/ talent access, very high cost for skill/talents availbe, (magic) abilties that gooble up FP, TOTAL incompatence in HtH combat (can never get even 2 attacks).

This was really upseting to me as I was hoping that they would be great and I liked the new version in concept, but the execution made me very upset.

Izinverse said:

I fixed it up a bit editing the skill and talent costs to be more in line with other classes. I like the skills that are available to the Battle Sister which are better than the Sororitas selection wise. Its just that the sisters pay and keep on paying for it as they advance. As for extra attacks I just added them back in at rank 4 and 6 for 200 and 300 xp respectively. I also added step aside at rank 6 as well. The Battle Sisters defenses aside from her armor are also underdeveloped. Each wound is 200 xp or more and there is no access to Step Aside or Wall of Steel.

I respect Mack for his approach to Battle Sisters immensely as I feel he treated them with respect. From a design perspective though I feel they were a little shot changed. The other orders conversely are better at combat than the Battle Sister since the Famulous is a Cleric and gets multiple attacks, plenty of wounds, etc and even the Adept (for the Hospitaler and Dialogous) gets swift attack and step aside. The worst part is they pay less for most of thier talents than does the Battle Sister

ZillaPrime said:

Do you also reduce the number of xp you hand out at night as well? DH suggests 1-200xp per night, DW suggests 500. Though the core point of gear versus skills remains.

It also doesn't fix the Sisters issue that people have as that's more apples to apples than DH v DW. I will chime and say if you play a combat focused character, be prepared to have combat focused skills (don't even get me started on how hard it is to make the social/commander guardsman classes with your prohibitively expensive Fellowship). Just something to keep in mind when home-brewing xp and skill adjustments..

As I'm trying to put together a game that's going cross over from DH to DW...I have to say this kinda scares the hell out of me (it was not a problem I had noticed or frankly even considered).

What are the chance of one of the authors/designers getting on here and explaining things to us or telling us why it's not anything to worry about?

jbuck said:

Slim to none?

Are you going to put DH Ascended characters in DW or a DW character in your DH Ascended game? Each one poses different challenges. Either way, it's more work as a GM for certain. Not impossible, but you need to work extra hard to make everyone have their shot at being the star.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but the new rules for the SoB's start them with completely OTT gear, but by the time anyone else can get gear of a similar level the SoB's will have so few skills as to be pretty much pointless?

Face Eater said:

I wouldn't quite go that far, but they will have far less skills, wounds, and talents than their associates at rank 8 unless you do like I did and modify the charts. The Sister won't be useless she just won't be as good at anything as her compatriots unless she is hyper specialized.

Frankly I was not keen on the whole new Sisters (or anything much from that book generally. really felt like FFG didn't get what Dark Heresy is about much). One of the things is that a starting Dark Heresy character is a bit of a dweeb. They are not veterans or elite anything. They are mooks hired by the Inquisition to work for them. Sisters of Battle are not mooks. They are highly trained elite soldiers. The old Sister's Career solved that by having a startng Sister being exactly that, a lowly initiate. You couldn't specialise and become a proper Sister of Battle for a while (rank 3 or 4?). By that point characters are quite competent, and so it fits how Sisters of Battle are meant to be. Now we have Rank 1 Sisters of Battle... who consequently have to be seriously gimped in some fashion to attempt some semblance of balance with the other characters.

What does FFG have against branched career paths anyway?

borithan said:

Rank 4, yeah.

To be honest, both IH as well as BoM did something right, and both books did something wrong. I like IH's Novices and fully-fledged Dialogous/Hospitaller careers. In addition, a Sororitas character also had access to some more skills, which gets important when you consider that they are not just warriors but also (space) nuns and thus should know a few things aside from fighting. On the other hand, I also like BoM's Famulous and the (admittedly very rudimentary) requisitioning system allowing at least the Battle Sister to get her Order's signature wargear.

I'm currently toying with ways to combine both version's benefits.

I was personally considering that whenever a character reached the level that truely qualified them as being a member of the iconic organisations they would probably be issued the relevant gear (if it was any use to them). A fully functioning Sister of Battle would get their power armour and bolter, the Storm Trooper his carapace and hellgun etc.

Just weighing in on the DH/DW synthesis campaign jbuck mentioned. Because I like to derail threads.

You'll have to do quite a bit of work rebalancing the two systems. It depends entirely on your characters and their method of play, however.

Say, for example, that you have an Inquisitor, Adept, or Primaris Psyker joining a Kill Team. Now, if you accept that the DH characters will be essentially the only ones with social skills, and the Psyker will have her powers and they all have knowledge skills, maybe it will be doable. The DH characters will also be full of a wealth of skills and talents that the SM's will not have, so be prepared for the SM's to seem rather like cardboard-cutouts in comparison. If possible, encourage the DH players to spend a majority of their experience points on raising their core Statistics as this will make the two groups look more similar.

Of course, these Ascension characters will rule the game in terms of skills and interractions, and the Marines will completely eclipse them in combat. The only Ascension level character that could go toe to toe with a Marine in normal combat is the Vindicare, so perhaps someone could play one of them. Depending on the Psychic system you use, the Primaris may still be ridiculous and OP. Maybe the players are okay with that, in which case you'll only need a touch of tweaking, primarily making either the DW character's advances cheaper or the Ascension character's advances more expensive.

In this case, the different character groups are in essence playing two different but parallel games, specializing to such a degree that they hardly overlap at all. This can actually work wonders if your group is particularly heterogeneous, with different interests. Because you are not trying to get the two games to be truly "level" but simply run side-by-side, there will probably only be a few changes you will need to make and most of it could be done on the fly. As long as each character has a specialty in which they feel useful to the group, and no player resents another's time in the spotlight, no problems will arise.

However, once different things start happening you will have to make a whole broad spectrum of changes. For example, Stormtrooper is beyond useless amidst DW level characters, weapons and enemies and likewise for Crusader, Death Cultist will die in a single round and have trouble doing any damage at all, and so on and so forth.

In that case, be prepared to overhaul each class and system to the point that they line up. It'll be tough, too, because balance is very tricky to get right. A Rank 9 Stormtrooper is going to have skills and talents out the wazoo that SM's can't touch, but will pale alongside them in combat which will make that player feel useless. Even if they tote about an MP lascannon or something so they can damage their enemies, they'd die almost instantly to attacks. There is also no provision in DH for Horde rules.

TL;DR version: Depending on what your players (and you) intend, expect either very little work or almost as much effort as it would take to dovetail d20 modern into Dark Heresy; that is to say, completely re-working or re-writing one set of concepts to fit in the target system.

Allright, from what I understand it, all they are trying to do is make it apparent that the sisters and space marines are the creme of the crop. An example of this would be in the core rulebook where skills are bought at 125, 250, 500, and 750 points each. Each level would cost more because it takes more effort to expand upon a skill you are already an expert in.

The Battle Sisters, and to a greater extent, the Fabled Space Marines, are already at the top of their game. As a result, FFG is trying to simulate how much effort it takes to improve on knowledge and skills when the characters are "that good." The problem is that the wrong skills are too expensive. Heck Space Marines have had extensive modification to their bodies. The only problem to this line of logic is that FFG gave the wrong skills a high price. What should have happened is that The battle sisters get their faith powers for cheap, (if they have to pay anything at all), and the space marines get an extra d10 when rolling stats, in addition to boots to all skills that allow computer assistance. (The power armor itself can display targeting info, driving manuals and instructions, ect.) Now the high points would make sense, since its hard to improve on such awesome abilities. The sisters, in their zeal would need to devote time for the emperor in addition to gaining skills. As it stands now, they get no special skills by default . As a result, it becomes very easy to learn the basics of learning hover cars, bicycles, and so forth. Therefore, it should not cost 400xp to pick up a driving skill.

My solution is simple. Just change the sister what the other classes get. They got screwed by the "They're better than everyone else" mentality. However, they are not better than anyone else in this ruleset, and it is up to us to compensate.

Simrobert2001 said:

I don't agree, what is important in a game is the balancing.

New Sisters pay more for their better armours and weapons they have for free.

Their role in a cell is take damage and shoot.

Sebashaw said:

Lies, our job is to ignore damage, not take it.

Sebashaw said:

They don't do that very once the enemy starts packign weapons with AP. Toughness is the highest stat a Sister pays xp to advance along with Intelligence. They are strongly lacking in defensive talents and wounds are expensive at a minimum of 200 xp a pop. If the Sister's only job is to take damage thats not a very satisfying role in the group as a player. No one wants to play the party role of take damage and waste my fate points to buff everyone else.

Meh, I already know that I'll act as the Cell's "tank" in the current campaign, simply due to power armour. I don't have much of a problem with that. "My faith is my shield!"

The problem that I see is that all of this gets less attractive the more you progress, as the other characters will continually upgrade their weapons and armour until surpassing you, but your own character keeps being "stuck" with expensive skills and talents. In essence, you'll be OP first and suck in endgame.

Of course, if you really feel this is a problem, there are multiple ways to deal with this. For example, how about making some of the overpriced skills/talents/characteristics slightly cheaper the higher you raise in Rank? Like some sort of "Veteran Discount".

My group has settled on keeping the sister out of IH and just adding the equipment and faith rules. Sisters were/ are supposed to be better then other classes to start.

off topic but I really hope that the Tech priests get similar equipment rules ie the Mechanicus should see that TP are equiped to a non embaresing degree.

Lynata said:

That’s exactly what I did. My group was sufficiently advanced to rank 8 that having power armor and a bolter didn't seem as awesome as it would at rank 1. Plus the group occasionally goes for subtlety. I kept the skills and talents pretty much where they were but adjusted the costs. Everyone pays 100 xp for wounds in my group so that was easy. I'd put it up here but that would involve wholesale reprinting of the career ranks.

With the addition of extra attacks, step aside, and wall of steel for the Celestian it worked out nicely without overtaking anyone’s group role. The class lost a few skills in translating from IH to BoM but it looks good.

Izinverse said:

And there is very little that is universal among tech-priests (aside from those implants they get already). Yes, wanting to replace your body parts with cybernetics is fairly universal, but that is an aspiration which you work towards, and the particular ways that tech-priests are upgraded differs from one to the other. Servo arms (and the like) are not universal. And frankly, they are slightly over equipped with military gear. Tech priests are not routinely armed, yet they get to tool around a long arm and flak vest as standard? The only class that can genuinely complain is the Adept (Stub revolver OR a staff and no armour).

borithan said:

This may change, similar to how the Battle Sister was only a Novice in IH.

I have to say, making characters seem less "really junior" does make Inquisitorial recruitment look a lot more plausible.