Couple of questions re the advance tables.

Now where a multiple is shown, this means you can take it more than once (Sound Constitution seems to be the only one). In the cases of a skill group where it states any (Speak Language (Any) from the General advances rank 1, for example), does this mean you can only learn one language?

Or can you take it multiple times, for different options from the group? Can a marine learn Tau, Ork, Eldar etc by buying Speak Language multiple times?

My second question is specifically re the advance table for the Kill Marine. This includes Speak Language (Any), which raised the first question in my head. It also includes Survival.

Now both of these skills are on the General Advances table, at Rank 1. The cost for Speak Language is the same, 200xp on both tables. But Survival is more expensive for a Kill Marine, at 400xp rather than the 300xp it is on the General table.

Is this just a case of bad proofing, somebody not paying attention to the advances and costs, or is there a justification for this?

Also, why do they include skills Marines get as standard, in this case on both tables, in the form of Concealment and Silent Move? (Silent Move is more expensive for Kill Marines as well... oh wait, comes as standard!!!).

Yeah there are some weird proofing things in RoB. there is a thread complaining about it floating about here somewhere

but in answer to your question, in general anything on any of the advance tables can only be taken once (for the most part)

so as you have said, things like sound constitution x2 and psychic power x2 can be taken two separate times and act separately from one another. on the other hand when selecting something like tactics (any) you must pick a style of tactics, and that is the style you learn, you can not then keep learning all the types of tactics until you gain access to a new one on a different advance table.

If it's mentioned once, you're correct in thinking that it can only be bought once.

As to duplication, it's mentioned in the rules before the skill lists that this is deliberate, and for the sake of compatability with potentially future products and other vague reasons.

Don Raccoon said:

Never did get the official clarification of this from a rules dude myself. On the other hand all you have to do is look back into the rules for selecting talents and skills in Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader. Whenever a character is allowed to buy a skill group in those game it either specifies which group you are buying (i.e. Hatred (Orks) for 200xp) or it allowes the player to choose. When the player is given a choice in the other books it actually specifies how many groups the player may choose. i.e. Hatred (choose one) for 200 xp. Or for multiple choices: Heavy weapon training (choose one) (x2). Most skill group skills and talents in Deathwatch are listed with an (any) following it. As the ruleset for skills and talents are the same as the previous rules its farily easy to determine those skills in DW with (any) allow the marine to buy as many of the skill groups as he wanted. If it were the other way and you could only choose one, then the skill or talent would indeed say "(choose one)".

As for Sound Constitution (the skill everyone uses as their example of x2 etc.). Sound Constitution does not have skill groups. It is also a special case, it is a talent that you can buy whose effects actually stack (most talents wouldn't stack even if you could buy them more than once). Another similar one would be unnatural strength, but we don't have the option to buy a second unnatural strength in any of our advance tables. The x2 on Sound constitution just means you can buy it at that rank twice. It has no bearing on how skill groups are handled.

Your second question has been brought up many times. The designers state in rites of battle, as well as in the errata, the duplicate skills are there to "future prrof" their rulebooks. In the event a chapter or rule in the future does not allow a character to start with certain skills (say they are still scouts just now inducted) they will have the options to buy those skills. The rules state in Rites of Battle a player is allowed to choose which table he has access to he wants to take the advance from.

Seems a bit rubbish overall, the duplicating of skills. Means some tables only have about half as many options as it looks on first glance.

Ah well, one more instance of an RPG being full of bugs.

I'd hardly call the deliberate future-proofing of a product and a bit of duplication 'full of bugs', to be fair. It would be full of bugs if the entire system was broken... which it isn't.

Well, perhaps not full of bugs, but looking at the errata.... definetely not flawless either

Personally, I find this duplication a little odd as well, but perhaps one of the next releases will prove that it really is useful. Nevertheless, no one would have been hurt if FFG had printed the duplicated skills and talents in a different font or colour, that would have prevented much confusion.

Too be honest, I suspect the claim of future proofing the rules, is more down to them covering their own back after the mistakes were spotted before release. But who knows, maybe one day we'll get a supplement that makes all the confusion worthwhile.....:s

I'm not really sure what's so confusing here, you simply need to know what tables your character can draw from and select the skills that make sense at the time. If a skill is more expensive in one list than another, then look at the level reqs first to decide when you want the skill, and if you can get the skill when you want it for cheaper on one table versus another, then buy it there.

And a table not being what it appears at first glace is hardly a bug if that's the design of the table and system.

@Arkhan: agree fully, though I think it's an unfortunate state of many industries these days that take the step of the 'neccesary evil' of publish on time and then fixing in a web update.

And if we had the duped skills in a different font or color we'd have people complaining about the inconsistency of the formatting in the book

*lol* No disagreement there, brother.

@Don Raccoon

Too be honest, I suspect the claim of future proofing the rules, is more down to them covering their own back after the mistakes were spotted before release. But who knows, maybe one day we'll get a supplement that makes all the confusion worthwhile.....:s

Considering they did this consistently through all three game lines and even errataed Dark Heresy to place these duplicates in there, I find it rather hard to believe it wasn't fully intentional.

As for the rest... yeah, I'd like my RPG books to be flawless. However, I'd also like my RPG books to cost less than a hundred bucks. Couple this with the low number of copies sold (in comparison to mainstream books) and the two become rather hard to combine. Regarding the size of the Errata document, I find that most rpgs are in need of such a file - the only difference lies in whether they get it.

I'll gladly pay 100 bucks for a well written and designed RPG-system which does not need months and months of additional tweaking, house-ruling, and errating until you can play it properly. In my opinion, quality prevails in such things. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Charmander, the industry does currently not see it that way.

Don Raccoon said:

No: Because the formatting issues of adding an extra paragraph stating that would have been far more trouble to deal with than simply adjusting some tables.

I can't ever once remember picking up any rule system and finding it to be faultless and error free and that nobody wanted to houserule. At least the errata are easily accessed and free.

Ok, so lets say we all happily accept the need to duplicate skills across multiple tables, that Marines start with, because one day a book might appear that allows a Marine to start without them.

Why the need for such cost differences?

Lets say I get to use the new option, one day, of being a Marine from a new chapter that doesn't have Awareness as standard training. If this chapter allows access to General Advances, I can pick it up for a mere 200xp. Nice.

But if it doesn't give access to General Advances (a major flaw in the chapter really), I can still go the Black Shield advanced speciality option and pick it up there... for 4 times as much! Why is it so much harder for Black Shields to notice things?

Then you have the Kill-marine (ugh, that name!). A character designed to be out there on his own, in all kinds of environs, able to survive without help. Survival sounds a good choice. Thats only 300xp as a general marine. But wait, the Kill-marine table has it, of course, it's their thing, surely they get a discount... oh wait, it's more expensive, by 100xp.

Arguing that you don't need to buy the more expensive option doesn't justify it being there and padding out the table. Either match the cost and it comes under the duplication of skills category (like Speak Language) or discount it (like Concealment... though this counts as both a duplicate and a discount).

You're right in general about Advanced Specializations having some fairly ***** pricing, as well as "Never Take This" Advances heaped throughout the books, i.e. buying something later or at the same time as the General Space Marine advances and at an increased cost. To be honest, I think you've hit the nail on the head: they ran out of exciting options to give these Specializations and someone at FFG said "well, if they're getting an additional Advance table that they can select from freely, they should pay a premium to get those Advances."

Also, the explanation of duplicated skills makes sense for placing Advances the Character starts off with on the list for some price. For example, duplicated Advances from the Deathwatch Table, general starting skills [CL (Deathwatch) or FL (Xenos)]. It doesn't make sense when a Career has an Advance for more expensive and later-placed than the General SM Tables. I mean, you might allow a non-Deathwatch character to play a "Deathwatch Apothecary". But a non-Space Marine character? You're so far in House Rules territory, the book has no obligation to support you in it.

This compounds when you consider how exceedingly expensive some Advanced Specializations are without providing too much of a unique benefit. Champions pay 4000xp for Toxic against only Xenos and the ability to Taunt with what is most likely a weak Fellowship (queue Tank comparisons, WoW really ruined that. A good GM will play his enemies in such a manner anyhow, unless they're unusually intelligent. A 10-foot tall giant jump packs down onto you, you don't need a Taunt rule to assume that they attack him.)

Now, that's a pretty steep price especially when you factor in the notion that you will forever be 4k XP behind your Kill Team which is almost a full Rank, but it's not unfairly priced. It gets dumb when you see that every single Talent costs between 1k and 2k though. DW Champion starts becoming a choice more appealing to Tactical Marines and such who do not have access to melee Talents but want to play a melee character, and less suited to (in my mind) the natural audience: Assault Marines who are so skilled at melee combat that they are elevated to Champion status.

[by the by, I wish there were something of a "jack of all trades" or "balanced" Career. Tactical Marine should have been split into two Careers, one being "Sergeant" who possessed a large number of those Command attributes and one as "Tactical Marine" which filled numerous battlefield roles. But I digress.]

In general I think the prices in Deathwatch are a little out of whack. A single level of a skill often costs as much or more than a powerful Talent, and because you essentially "need" all your combat talents to be successful in many situations, you're running on fumes when it comes to skills. Heck, usually it's more cost effective to simply raise your Attribute by 5 rather than pay a comparable price for a +10 to only one specialized skill. The game should reward those who reach beyond the more generic "I take whatever talent helps me kill harder", or at the very least not penalize them.

The system is balanced really heavily around combat, and most else falls by the wayside.

At Last Forgot said:

I really disagree. You're paying a premium cost in *some* specialities for the chance to buy either stuff that you can't normally buy, or for getting it early. 2000xp is well worth it for a Dev to buy a melee ability that they can't otherwise get, and it's an expensive *option* for existing melee characters. I would pay 2000xp to give a non-melee character 'sidestep' in a heartbeat, and it would be worth every last XP.

Advanced careers are not like PrCs in D&D. They're not intended as a no-brainer power-creep, but as an alternative option that you might or might not want.

the 4000xp for Champion covers a couple of niche special abilities that might be worth a thousand or two XP, PLUS 500xp worth of power sword, 500xp worth of combat shield, bragging rights, and the *option* of buying melee stuff and the option of buying more wargear than anyone else can ever get. You can end up tool-up up with a bunch more cool stuff than anyone else. It might not make the already killy AM much more killy and uber, but it certainly adds more scope, and it allows non-AMs to get some melee skills. If you look at it through the eyes of min-maxxing a melee character then it's not worth it, but did you really want something that's as brokenly good as that anyway?

The Champion is also a bit of an odd one out. If you check the other careers, they are often more points effective. 1 Coy vet, for example offers a host of skills that 'typical' marines 'should' have in order to have a well rounded skill set on the cheap.

I agree with you, Siranui, on most of your points. I don't want it to be a no brainer, or a clear power increase, but it just seems to me that it missed it's target audience. Advanced Specializations, at this point in the development of DW, should be aiming to fill niches otherwise left vacant by the core Specializations.

My gripe is that they didn't have an appropriate mapping from their concept to their application, i.e. what "Champion" means in terms of an Advance scheme and special skills. For example, the Champion's special ability seems off-message to me. He's a duelist, a one on one guy, not a "knows xenos really well" guy. A bonus when engaged in single combat would make more sense than Toxic. The Intimidate Special use is more on-message, since it implies the challenge aspect of WHF and has flavor, even if it seems to me like an obvious place for roleplaying to step in rather than relying on strict in-game rules.

The Power Sword isn't as good as it seems, by the way, since they'll most likely be using something better by Rank 4, though the Combat Shield is of course always great to have. The Chaplain gets a Rosarius, Crozius Arcanum and Skull Helm for less, so I don't think the Champion's starting gear is too powerful by comparison. I guess what I would have preferred was a reduction in entry-cost, and an increase in cost of some of the Advances to compensate (Signature Wargear (Hero) for example should be at least 1500xp).

Another example of where it seems that FFG just lost their focus when developing an Advanced Specialization is the Forge Master. Their Special Ability makes sense, but they introduce a whole new skill, Trade (Forge Master), that basically just duplicates Tech Use and Trade (Armourer). The bit about being able to replace Tech Use when dealing with Astartes Equipment is what bugs me; all Forge Masters will have been Techmarines, who will max out Tech Use as soon as possible! There's no need for a replacement. The Trade (Armourer) skill would have sufficed perfectly well.

I've heard some griping that the Chaplain didn't live up to expectations, but I can't comment on that since I've not really examined it, and I didn't have expectations.

I just took a harder look at 1st Company Veteran, and you're right, it looks like a nice little package of fairly inexpensive items to round out a character that should have tons of experience with differing threats, strategems, and situations.

My real gripe is with the wide disparities in cost between different Advances, which sometimes seem excessive. Trained in Charm for 800xp is on nearly the same price point as the 1000xp Signature Wargear (Master), one of the best and most "requisite" Talents in the game. Just seems to me that Trained in most skills should be relatively cheap, with cost increasing as you go up in proficiency. Obviously some higher ranks should be class exclusive (Tech Use +20 for Techmarines, for example).

I want to encourage SMs to think outside the shooty box, not discourage them.

Personally, I think picking an advanced specialization should not be about skill or talent decisions, but about character background. With what justification could a devastator, a highly trained ranged specialist, become a melee champion from one day to the other.

I regard this as highly inappropriate and I am happy that all my players do not consider such choices. Our Assault Marine wants to become champion, our Tactical wants to become Captain, our Tech Marine Forge Master etc.

That is a development which is logical and consistent, for someone who has dedicated his fighting style (or even way of life) to one particular path is likely to become highly proficient in this particular field one day.

But suddenly being proficient and gaining honourary titles in a field which has previously been fully neglected is just illogical. Therefore I regard choosing an advances specialization from an all-outgame perspective as a kind powergaming and would probably go as far as to not allow it.

In brief: An AM becoming Champion? Yes, of course. A Devastaor becoming Champion? No freaking way. Same goes for all other specializations that can be seen as a kind of expansion of a basic specializations.

Regarding the costs, I'd gladly pay the XP just for roleplaying reasons. Seriously, how cool is it to earn the rank of captain of the deathwatch, or be rewarded with the honours of becoming a keeper. How cool is it to roleplay such highly dignified characters. That alone is worth thousands of experience points to me.

Arkhan said:

Good roleplaying oppurtunities shouldn't be at the expense of sensible xp spend options.

Yes I want my players to roleplay as well as roll-play, but when the choices discourage it, you have to accept that the majority will take the options that give them more bang for their buck.

Not all the advanced specialities appeal to me, should I ever be a player, which is fair enough. But of the ones that do, the costs/choices/duplications etc, go a long way to put me off.

In fact, I like it that players who see advanced specializations just as a bundle of skills and talents that make their PCs stronger are being put off by the high costs.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to tell anyone how to play his/her char, so I find it perfectly ok if these guys just stay with their normal specializations and max them out in order to reach maximum efficiency.

The ones who really favour the roleplaying aspect of such an advanced spezialization will still pay the cost and be happy with it. Sure, they will be one or two steps behind their peers without advanced specialization when it comes to power but then that's not where their priorities lie.

And if someone who did not take such an advanced specialization and sees his battle brothers rise in hierarchy of the deathwatch changes his mind then he is free to buy the same ad. spec. any time he wants, if he can cough up the XP for it.

Siranui said:

I'd think that if you want a non-assault marine to get melee skills, taking the same talents as elete advances would be more sensible. The costs on the champion table average a bit more than twice the xp. that an assault marine would pay for the same talent. If you take the talents as elete advances you don't have to work around the story issue of why your devistator is now a "champion" gifted with special melee wargear when he's not yet especially good in melee and you'd probably get the talents at no higher cost (especially when you factor in the 4000 xp cost of deathwatch champion).