I'm doing a major overhaul of the Dark Heresy rules, and along with eliminating Careers, I'm looking at reassigning the various 'weapon training' Talents (Basic Weapon Training, Exotic Weapon Training, Heavy Weapon Training, Melee Weapon Training, and Pistol Training) as Skills. This will mean that it's possible to take skill mastery (and even Talented) with various types of weapons.

This would allow someone to have Basic Weapon Training (Las) +10, Basic Weapon Training (SP), Pistol Training (Las) +20, etc. showing increased proficiency in dedicated weapon groups. I realize that this will make for greater accuracy in combat-dedicated characters, but this is intentional and it fits with my desire to ramp-up the 'epic' factor and allow for higher profile games.

Incidentally, I've decided to add Unarmed as a part of the Melee Weapon Training groups. Advanced martial artists may have Melee Weapon Training (Unarmed) +10 or +20 and may even have Talented added in for good measure.

Lastly, the untrained penalty for all basic skill use is going to be -20 rather than the -1/2 as it currently is written. This is actually just the carryover of the untrained weapon use modifier, and I feel it fits better than halving the characteristic.

Any input?

You might want to consider ditching WS and BS alltogether and make melee skills Agility-based and ranged skills Perception-based (Like in Arcanum ).

I'm going to stick with WS and BS. The Characteristics are already in place, and with Basic Weapon (BS), Exotic Weapon (WS or BS depending on the weapon), Heavy Weapon (BS), Melee Weapon (WS), Pistol (BS), Thrown Weapon (BS), and Unarmed Combat (WS) joing the skill list, there will be plenty of skills that make use of them.

All of these will be Basic skills, and note that I'm going to pull Unarmed Combat out as a seperate skill rather than making it a part of the Melee Weapon group as I originally planned. Unarmed will not be a set of skill groups but just a single skill.

One thing I never liked about basing WS or BS on a single stat is it isn't very reflective of combat potential. In my opinion WS is a combination of Strength, dexterity, and intelligence; wielding, manipulating, and learning swords etc.

If WS is based on Ag then classically low Ag creatures like orks end up with low WS, despite us knowing that they have quite a high WS.

Making skills for each kind of weapon is a good idea I think, because they ARE skills.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

<devil's advocate mode>

Regardless of their inclusion into the "characteristics" category, couldn't you regard WS and BS as skills anyway?

...and generally someone who's good with a blade or gun is going to be good with other hand or ranged weapons.

I would also argue that there are plenty of people out there who are either strong or agile, but make lousy combatants in the chaos of melee.

Which is where the intelligence comes in. The training component.

Ranged weapons could realistically be sperated into pistol, single shot basic, semi basic, full auto basic, heavy. These would be skills in those weapon types and the Talent would be the knowledge unique to a specific group of weapons, say Talent Bolt enables you to use bolt weapons, and your Ballistic Skills indicate how well you use different types of Bolt weapons (say you have 25 in pistol, but 45 in full auto basic).

For ease of use, the different types may also affect another one. Firing a single shot basic weapon isn't much different from a pistol - there are differences, but perhaps not enough. So if you learn single shot you can use pistols and basic weapons with this mode etc.

The problem with WS and BS being in the characteristics is that it doesn't tell you their governing attribute nor how much training you've already received. Skills can only go up by +20 on top of the base stat, but WS and BS can only go up as if they are characteristics, not skills.

Hellebore

WS / BS still there (reads: they get better); and Weapon Trainngs as a skill (another option for getting better)

Your pc will surly "hit home"! Do not get me wrong, I like the idea. But your snipers and your guys with the rapid fire weapons WILL hit the spot. Big Time.

Gregorius21778 said:

With cover and other modifiers often dropping the base shot to -30, even someone with Ranged Combat (my name change for BS) 50 and Basic Weapons (SP) +10 firing Semi-Auto at Short Range has only a 50/50 chance of making the shot. That's not breaking the game, and it counts for both sides of the battle.

But this does allow for heroic over-the-top maxed-out Rambo characters with really high chances to hit. That's good IMO. Read a Gaunt's Ghosts novel and see how often those guys hit the mark - I want my games to feel a bit more like that rather than the whiffle-shot exchanges that can and do occur in RAW Dark Heresy.