I really am loving most of the changes in BC (though the addons to weapons could use more work for one, with some adding a silly amount of rarity for a simple change) and it is really feeling like FFG's base for a 2nd edition of DH. Refined addons, equipment, talents, combat actions, unnatural modifiers and the skills and skills page is WONDERFUL. Laying it out clearly what most stuff does, example modifiers, etc.

Does anyone feel like this paves the way for a new edition of Dark Heresy?

Long as things are backwards compatible with the existing material, DH needs an overhaul to tidy it up and consolidate a few areas. If I wasnt so busy I would have already been tearing it apart into a level-less system like BC which overall, seems to be much more elegant than the 3 WH40K RPG's before it. Certainly make much more interesting characters in it.

Well, I believe most of the things would be backwards compatible, take the IH las weapons

A Sollex Steel Burner is a laspistol with a S/-/-, but it cant vary fire modes, instead locked into the maximum power on the base laspistol damage, but because of being locked in this mode, it doesnt get unreliable, it gets 10 instead of 7.5 shots and fires slower.

Fast weapons would get a nerf as parrying is harder now.

Primitive weapons have a damage cap, I cant remember right now, but how is primitive armor handled again in BC?

Most changes are simple enough, but I hope they keep the career trees for the most part, with some freeform choices. Like you get X and Y cheap this rank and have so many freeform slots based on career.

Cymbel said:

That's what I have had my hopes on. Black Crusade is just better system-wise than previous installments in the WH40K line.

Cymbel said:

In BC, "Primitive" armour is treated exactly the same as normal armour - there's no difference.

It's all about weapons with the Primitive quality having a lower damage cap.

Glowcat said:

I agree. I'm especially interested in seeing the shift of DH psychic powers over to the system in BC along with archetypes and open (but cost-guided) advancement over careers.

I am not so keen on seeing the system translated across. Ok, some aspects of it helped the slightly broken nature of Deathwatch (Swift attack and Lightning Attack), and the change to the bonuses for Single Shot, Full Auto etc seem generally like a sensible idea (though I am not so keen on them being half actions, at least in the pre-Deathwatch line). However, I actually liked the fact that melee and shooting were different, at least until Deathwatch, where Melee just became insane. Also, I liked the "level-ish" approach of the previous games as it generally stops certain busted things coming out too early, and makes sure that if you want to do something outside your forte you did have to pay for it. In fact, in order to make sure that didn't happen they had to change certain things so that they wouldn't be busted at rank 1. Preternatural Speed, for example, which has gone from "Whoa that's mental!" to "Meh". Assassin Strike is now interesting, but not nearly as potentially powerful as it used to be (though that was a change implemented in Deathwatch). There are various other talents with similar nerfings of various degrees (and some buffings... finally Combat Formation might actually help rather than just being an utter waste of xp!).

There are some small things I would translate across to Dark Heresy (the extra things you can do in a grapple other than just doing unarmed damage), but mostly I am happy with Dark Heresy as is. Ok, there are some not so carefully worded things (not that that changed when Fantasy Flight took over), but carefully read I don't think there are that many holes, and I liked the gradually building power level and the career system (I also liked the branching careers... still don't know why FFG doesn't like them. I found RT Careers really flat), and I like the fact that there are certain busted combinations you can start to get at the higher ranks ("So I can choose to shoot where ever I like on the body and suffer no penalty to hit up to maximum range"), as that really is Eisenhorn and his team level ("The team whose only flaw is that they have no flaws!").

I hope it does. The actual engine behind the game has gotten better with each iteration and DH in particular hasn't aged that well in comparison. Ascension is, of course, hideously broken in a number of ways and they system in general has too many kludges and legacy elements from WFRP in it.

Though one awesome legacy is putting mutations from the "Tome of Corruption" into Black Crusade

Personally, I think BC has the best character progression system so far in 40KRPG. HOWEVER, I feel a hybrid system between Dark Heresy and Black Crusade would work best.

There should still be a sort of Rank-progression, but the Ranks are longer and the tables way larger. The reason I think Rank-progression and tables are a good idea is because I feel that at least in a DH 2.0 certain Skills and Talents should not be immediatetly available, no matter how much the players save up. Your promising Guard conscript that for some inscrutable reason was recruited by an Inquisitor should not have Eye of Vengeance.

Secondly, I like the idea of giving characters special access to certain Skills, Talents and even Traits because of defining choices they make about their character. By making the player decide between certain optional tables he is forced to make meaningful decisions about his future progression that also helps him define his player character easier, but at the same time said progression should not be as constricted as it originally was in DH, RT (!) or DW.

Saibot said:

Why shouldn't he?

bladerunner_35 said:

I agree, why shouldn't he ? Different people have different abilities, even in the same profession. Some of my Jarheah friends are compleatelly different from one another, why should guardsmen be all the same ?

Considering Eye of Vengeance costs three times the XP of a T1 talent and requires an Infamy/Fate point to use, I'd say a guardsman who sacrifices both versatility and survivability has earned the right to use the talent.

Certain things were just inappropriate for starting characters in Dark Heresy (or even just fairly low xp characters). That's why several talents have been toned down, so that they don't completely unbalance a game early on. One GM gave his players Fearless as an elite advance in Dark Heresy... then complained it was overpowered, even though it was meant to be a rank 8 talent, and so was intended to be very powerful (yes, it is occasionally a liability, and it hasn't been toned down, but it is a rank 3 and has another talent as a prerequisite, and frankly BC does seem the kind of game where the liability will come up far more often as a problem).

Simply because I find it unlikely that a Guard conscript somehow became an incredible sniper just like that. Of course, this was just an example, you can insert any sort of powerful talent or high-level skill there. What about Mighty Shot or even Fearless or Forbidden Lore (Daemons) +30?

By BC RAW a player does not need to explain his Advancement choices with in-game events, this is fine for BC characters (especially the powerlevel they start at), but allowing the same for a Dark Heresy character can create all kinds of wonky character builds that are hard to explain from an in-universe perspective and some, like Fearless or Forbidden Lore, can even change the whole gameplay and roleplaying experience if they can simply be acquired at any point.

i ca n believe in a recruit being that good for several reasons one he was enlisted later on in life or had been in a hive gang before hand also there are people who just are good at it as was the case in my initial intake into the RAF one of our lads aged 17 was an excelent shot

@Sailbot

By BC RAW a player does not need to explain his Advancement choices with in-game events

Could you quote the relevant parts? Because while I can see how GMs should be lenient with allowing (or rather not denying) advancements, I'd personally feel free to veto anything that can't be even remotely explained - like raising tech-use while being stranded on a feral world with the most technological items around being flintstones.

Simply because I find it unlikely that a Guard conscript somehow became an incredible sniper just like that.

Eye of Vengeance is not "becoming an incredible sniper" - it's more like having the occassional bout of extreme luck, which may well be what drew the Inquisitor to this prospective acolyte in the first place.

Of course, this was just an example, you can insert any sort of powerful talent or high-level skill there. What about Mighty Shot or even Fearless or Forbidden Lore (Daemons) +30?

Fearless is pretty easy to achieve in a universe where neuro-surgery is comparably common. Mighty Shot is available to DH rank 1 characters (Metallican Gunslinger). And Forbidden Lore (Daemons)... sure, if you can give me a reason how you got it.

All a pure point-buy system would do is equalize the footing. DH massively suffers from arbitrariness, which I've once again discovered when I recently created my (how appropriate) Arbitrator/Mortiurge. You're this guy who is supposed to take a look at a horrible crime scene, sniff around for clues and then execute anyone deemed responsible. What talent do you never get? Yup, Jaded.

Could you quote the relevant parts? Because while I can see how GMs should be lenient with allowing (or rather not denying) advancements, I'd personally feel free to veto anything that can't be even remotely explained - like raising tech-use while being stranded on a feral world with the most technological items around being flintstones.

Of course I can not quote what is not there. The books never go out of their way and say: "the GM should feel free to deny an advance, even if a character has all prerequisites for it, when he can not logically explain how he got it", except when talking about Elite Advances. The fact that they feel the need to bring this up specifically for Elite Advances seems reason enough for me to assume that denying normal rank advances is not intended (of course, Rule 0 applies as always, but we are not talking about that).

Eye of Vengeance is not "becoming an incredible sniper" - it's more like having the occassional bout of extreme luck, which may well be what drew the Inquisitor to this prospective acolyte in the first place.

Now, here I can quote. From the BC core: "The character can focus his intent on where it is likely to do most damage to his enemy and then strike them down with a single shot."

This does not sound like "luck" at all, but skill (I admit, the description is pretty vague, probably on purpose). This is supported by it having a Ballistic Skill prerequisite and scaling by DoS. Be as it may, though, I only picked Eye of Vengeance because it was the first thing that came to mind, as I said you could use any other powerful talent.

Fearless is pretty easy to achieve in a universe where neuro-surgery is comparably common.

Considering how hard it is for characters of all previous gamelines to get it (including Rogue Traders!), it is either not as easy to get as one might think or has a higher danger of going wrong than seems reasonable or else you would wonder why it is not mandatory for most in the service of the Inquisition. I am sure most Inquisitors would be delighted to get easy access to fearless servants. However, my main point was that easy access to Fearless blows a big part of Dark Heresy right out of the water: Horror. It is already hard enough to scare players as it is, when they are assured that their characters are Fearless themselves this becomes even harder and apart from that it makes a mockery out of the Horros of the Universe.

All a pure point-buy system would do is equalize the footing. DH massively suffers from arbitrariness, which I've once again discovered when I recently created my (how appropriate) Arbitrator/Mortiurge. You're this guy who is supposed to take a look at a horrible crime scene, sniff around for clues and then execute anyone deemed responsible. What talent do you never get? Yup, Jaded.

This I agree with 100%. That is why I said the tables should be large and cover a lot of ground.

In my (still theoretical) plans to make a BC style chart system for Deathwatch, and then possibly the other games, I was considering level prerequisites for abilities. Something like, you need 2nd level for 2nd tier talents, skills at +10, and 3rd level for 3rd tier talents, etc.

I like BC's open system (in my current DW game I'm allowing characters to take any advancements on their allowed tables regardless of level), but for folks who wanted a similar flow chart style without all the restrictive tables, but still wanted some level requirements, then something like the above could work.

As far as the topic of the thread, I'd personally like to see a WH40KRPG Core Rulebook, that covered the basic rules for all of the games. The four games have far more in common than not. Having bought nearly everyone of the books, it would be nice to have a core book that covered the basics and then have separate books for what are now separate games. I would like to see nearly all of the changes in BC brought into the other system though, regardless of how they go about that.

@Saibot

Of course I can not quote what is not there. The books never go out of their way and say: "the GM should feel free to deny an advance, even if a character has all prerequisites for it, when he can not logically explain how he got it", except when talking about Elite Advances. The fact that they feel the need to bring this up specifically for Elite Advances seems reason enough for me to assume that denying normal rank advances is not intended (of course, Rule 0 applies as always, but we are not talking about that).

So it's really more a case of Rules As Not Written rather than RAW? Yes, under normal circumstances, a character should be entitled to the advancements on his career table, as the narrow career tables of the present are usually "fool-proof" - anyone who's more or less typical of the career should be capable of taking the advancements. The broader the advancement possibilities, the higher the degree of GM fiat by default - no Tech-Use when you're stranded without technology or a teacher, no Resistance (Heat) while you're on an ice planet. The idea that characters and their advancements should be believable IMO doesn't require a rule.

Now, here I can quote. From the BC core: "The character can focus his intent on where it is likely to do most damage to his enemy and then strike them down with a single shot."

This does not sound like "luck" at all, but skill (I admit, the description is pretty vague, probably on purpose). This is supported by it having a Ballistic Skill prerequisite and scaling by DoS. Be as it may, though, I only picked Eye of Vengeance because it was the first thing that came to mind, as I said you could use any other powerful talent.

I would consider it "luck" because it uses up IPs/FPs and is thus beyond the capability of the character to achieve consistently.

Considering how hard it is for characters of all previous gamelines to get it (including Rogue Traders!), it is either not as easy to get as one might think or has a higher danger of going wrong than seems reasonable or else you would wonder why it is not mandatory for most in the service of the Inquisition. I am sure most Inquisitors would be delighted to get easy access to fearless servants. However, my main point was that easy access to Fearless blows a big part of Dark Heresy right out of the water: Horror. It is already hard enough to scare players as it is, when they are assured that their characters are Fearless themselves this becomes even harder and apart from that it makes a mockery out of the Horros of the Universe.

Oh, it may very well go wrong in 95% of all cases - that just means the player taking the talent plays one of the other 5%, just like a psyker player is a one-in-a-million guy by default. If you want to remain true to the Horror genre, I'd just take out Fearless altogether, as anyone taking the talent marks a genre-shift. That said, I don't think I'd want to take Fearless in a DH game at rank 3 or lower. Botching the WP roll to run away when you really, really want to sucks .

This I agree with 100%. That is why I said the tables should be large and cover a lot of ground.

I haven't yet seen a strictly class-based game with a complex talent/skill/feat system where the game's idea of how a class might look entirely matched my own.

@Hereticool

In my (still theoretical) plans to make a BC style chart system for Deathwatch, and then possibly the other games, I was considering level prerequisites for abilities. Something like, you need 2nd level for 2nd tier talents, skills at +10, and 3rd level for 3rd tier talents, etc.

The problem with caps such as this one is that they limit specialization, which may miff certain character types - why have a dedicated Tech-priest when the Adept can consistently match his Tech-Use skill because the former can't specialize to the degree he'd like to?

One way to go about delayed progression (if one wants it) that makes a bit more sense than Ranks/Levels is tying limits to a related Characteristic Upgrade as a prerequisite. e.g. Mighty Shot is unavailable without at least the Intermediate Ballistic Skill upgrade. This prevents grabbing certain powerful Talents immediately while still promoting specialization as a firearms characters would be raising Ballistic Skill anyway.

The broader the advancement possibilities, the higher the degree of GM fiat by default - no Tech-Use when you're stranded without technology or a teacher, no Resistance (Heat) while you're on an ice planet. The idea that characters and their advancements should be believable IMO doesn't require a rule.

Fair enough, but it is still not explicitly written. This can miff some players if the advance they want is blocked by the GM just because of the location they are in at the moment. You touch upon an important point, though, "believability". That is exactly the reason why I would not want my 900xp Adept to gain Crushing Blow. Now, I could just say GM fiat applies or, even better, the rules make that unncessary from the get-go.

Oh, it may very well go wrong in 95% of all cases - that just means the player taking the talent plays one of the other 5%, just like a psyker player is a one-in-a-million guy by default. If you want to remain true to the Horror genre, I'd just take out Fearless altogether, as anyone taking the talent marks a genre-shift. That said, I don't think I'd want to take Fearless in a DH game at rank 3 or lower. Botching the WP roll to run away when you really, really want to sucks.

The "successful 5%" works if you only have one PC, but it stretches suspension of disbelief slightly if the whole party has it. Also, another thing is, as a high-level talent players have a certain reverence for such talents and treat gaining them as an achievement in their own right, but when you could have gotten it 10,000xp earlier, it somehow does not seem as cool anymore and this also leads into the horror-genre stuff we mentioned, while the character might not fear anything now, his comrades can now fear him for having somehow transcended his essential humanity in part.

I haven't yet seen a strictly class-based game with a complex talent/skill/feat system where the game's idea of how a class might look entirely matched my own.

That is why I mentioned that having the players be able to pick secondary tables would be a neat idea. Of course, this does not fix the problem entirely, but, at least for me personally, that would be a negative outweighed by the positive of that idea.

Saibot said:

Where does it say in any other game that any XP you spend/skills you get/etc have to be explained by in-game events?

It's always been something most GMs do because it makes sense - therefore, if you don't think it makes in-game sense, just say no to your player, there's no need to change the rulebook when you could just make a houserule.

Cifer said:

Yes, failing a WP roll to run away is bad... failing a Fear test so badly you end up (permenantly, aside from career advances) with 12 Willpower is also bad. Fearless was always meant to be a "high level" talent, after being innured to all the natural and unnatural horrors the universe could throw at you.

I was going to try and get this post back on topic, though my second point would have de-railed it again so I shall answer in reverse order.

There's no such thing as a classless system in reality - there will always need to be some kind of limit or bonus that allows each character to have something unique - in Black Crusade that is the Archetype and their unique abilities. A truly classless system also wouldn't have any kind of restriction like we have for alignment. So I think people should throw away the notion of true classlessness (mouthful!)

Compare Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition to 4th edition - they got rid of the incredibly strict level up tables for each class, and instead have a pool of level restricted abilities you can pick from each time you level up. While some saw a real loss of character for each class in doing so, others have readily welcome the changes and find the system much more approachable now as there is more initial choice in making a character but less overall management to keep track of. Now you can see a similar situation happening in the 40k line - the more recent the book, the more in-depth the character creation is but the easier (and arguably more fun) it is to play and manage the character.

An easy way to make Dark Heresy more in line with Black Crusade would be to throw out the notion that you are a raw recruit to the inquisition at 'noob' acolyte level, and have the player characters start off as trusted or even inner circle acolytes. Dark Heresy has always felt weird amongst its brethren, as the characters are SO underpowered compared to the others. At first I thought this was power creep, but if you compare an RT/DW/BC character of equal XP they come off fairly similar. The fact that in DH you had to buy EACH weapon training and there wasn't any option till ascension to get an entire skill group bonus or even training meant that you had to spend so much XP hyper-focusing that unless you had a large party entire areas were completely unskilled.

Finally to get the topic back on track -

No, there should not be a 2e of DH.

There should be a central '40k Role-play Book' that has a universal d100 system, skills, talents, armoury etc and a GM section on the 40k setting in general. Then there should be supplements, possibly released in trilogies, as FFG seem to love doing. For example, the Inquisition Trilogy with each book focussing on an Ordo and offering new archetypes specific to the Ordo along with typical adversaries, wargear and plot hooks. Basically each book should be a set of micro-books focussing on player options, GM options and setting. Deathwatch and Grey Knights would be covered in their respective tomes as archetype options, just like playing a Legionnaire in Black Crusade.

Once the Inquisition has been covered in that trilogy you then move on to cover Rogue Traders with the first book covering dynasties, ships and endeavours (much like the current book), the second book covering links to Imperial organisations and the options they open up and the final book covering links to non-Imperial organisations. These latter two would essentially be ‘loyalist’ and ‘renegade’ options for Rogue Traders.

Deathwatch would technically be covered under the Inquisition, however I would personally like a central book about playing as Astartes. There would need to be a book devoted purely to all the chapters and their foibles, and another book devoted to Astartes at war, their wargear and tactics and a final book for Astartes level adversaries and campaign management.

Black Crusade has already set the standard for how to handle this kind of thing, but in a 2e I’d like a bit more focus on setting, with some expansion covering heretic tools, rituals, pacts, star-ships and vehicles and finally some high level daemonic juju, such as assorted greater daemons, daemon princes, daemon-vehicles and even daemon-ships!

Universal Fate/Infamy system for acquisitions and influencing other groups, standardised rules for item availability and stats? It’d be a dream come true to anyone who has ever tried to use the supposedly cross-compatible books to date.

Another pro-point to this approach to the books would be that the campaign books could be written from multiple points of view – An inquisitorial cell working against a secret cult? No problem, pick which side you want to play as! Small units of Astartes fighting against elite renegade militia? Again, no problem!

If FFG gave me this I would be a happy bunny.