Snowman0147 said:
Personally I like the flat bonuses as they make life easier... Though I am wondering if they are going to make perception and intelligence matter if they get the unnatural boost, or not. Seriously 21 intelligence mod is no better than 7 intelligence mod compared to strength 21 mod and strength 7 mod. Strength wise you get +21 to damage with that x3. What does intelligence get? You can argue the ability to get +3 in contested rolls is good, but strength gets that bonus as well. You can say that reducing -20 penalty instantly is always nice, but strength gets that bonus as well. One stat is getting more than the other.
Strength gets bonus damage and the ability to lift more.
Toughness gets bonus damage reduction and the ability to lift more.
Agility gets more init mod.
Perception gets nothing.
Intelligence gets nothing.
Willpower gets nothing unless your a psyker, or faith user... Then things get broken.
Fellowship allows for more people to control, charm, and out right lie to them.
Perception actually benefits considerably from Unnatural Characteristics (at least in the DH/RT/DW version - I can't go into detail about the BC version); many Perception Tests are opposed by something, so bonus degrees of success are extremely valuable for unearthing stealthy enemies (much as the current version of Unnatural Agility is extremely good for sneaking)
Strength gets a big benefit, yes, but the benefit is in the use, not in the number of functions. Under the current Unnatural Characteristic rules, an Adept from DH with Unnatural Intelligence (x3) (from good Cortex Implants and the ability to buy the trait in his career path) gets an effective +20 on all Intelligence-based skill tests... which is huge, as the entire career is built around having lots of Intelligence-based skills. The Intelligence Bonus increase is a nice little side perk (most commonly affecting the number of wounds you restore with Medicae), but it's not the big attraction.
On the other hand, Toughness pretty much just benefits from the Bonus increase, because there aren't many Toughness-based skills or opposed tests requiring Toughness. Unnatural Agility's benefit to tests (particularly opposed ones, which are common for Agility-based skills) is far greater than the boost to Agility Bonus. Unnatural Willpower is only really broken with psykers if you're playing Dark Heresy; the RT/DW psychic power system deals with the trait in a more reasonable manner, and opposed tests resisted by Willpower are common when facing psykers and the like. It's not about what the benefits are in isolation, but how they interact with the characteristic tests around them. You'll pretty much never be rolling Strength vs Intelligence in an Opposed Test, so the differing benefits don't actually matter all that much because each characteristic serves within a different context.
Remember, the boost to the characteristic bonus is not the only effect of Unnatural Characteristics in the current (pre-BC) rules, and that Broken Chains is (in the majority of regards) a simplified version of the system.