Kasatka said:
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!)
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.
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.
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.
One of the players in our group has decided to go the social route... but has picked Renegade and used the special ability on fellowship. He spent the starting xp on social things, and intends to spend very little on combat stuff in the future, but he wanted that initial set that would mean he wasn't incompetent in combat.
I like the fact that in Dark Heresy you start as a total nobody (and it is why the new sister of battle irritates me. Firstly it makes them out to be totally average, and secondly a full blown Battle Sister would not be hanging around with rank 1 Dark Heresy characters. Black Industry's approach of having you start as a Sister Trainee made much more sense). I like the whole "You start as a nobody and then grow into something significant and powerful" of this, which it shares with many RPGs. Truthfully I just didn't get that from Deathwatch, for example, which is why I find it a bit flat. Now, it could be partly due to starting at Rank 2, and maybe it is because I am playing an Apothecary, but truthfully after a certain point Deathwatch Characters seem to progress quite flatly (I had the same issue with Rogue Trader). The "nobodies" route also works for the idea. Dark Heresy was not meant to be the game of "Eisenhorn and his gang kick ass", but was basically intended (as demonstrated by all the initial adventures) more to be "Cuthulu in SPAAACE!"
Personally I find that a Dark heresy character of similar xp will outclass things from Rogue Trader, at least in their specialism. Rogue Trader characters are much more generalist, but if Dark heresy characters specialise I find that they can get quite good in their niche quite quickly, and by the time they reached 4000xp they will really be quite good. This is aside from equipment of course which Rogue Traders will surpass them in.
I would have actually liked them to include Throne prices for things more generally. For certain lines the individual coin counting didn't make sense (Rogue Trader... it would be impossible to keep track of the sheer amounts, and by the level of Ascension the cost of things themselves shouldn't be so much of an issue), but there are a couple of things that irk me about the Influence/Infamy/Wealth system. Firstly: It isn't really a consumable resources. OK, yes you can do things which reduce it for excessive use or whatever, but generally it isn't. With money to take into account people actually have to think about what to spend it on. Looking at the weapons in DH someone in my group worked out the Heavy Bolter was generally simply the best weapon there was. However, it had one major flaw: the ammunition cost. Yes, it was good, but it cost 160 per burst, more than most character's monthly income. Someone had a character with a bolt pistol. He barely ever used it, due to the cost. I like this. It gives a little bit more flavour to the thing: Bolters are rare and expensive and more than slightly impractical for most uses. It also means players have to weight up "Now, do I get this now, or do I want to try and save up for something else better later on?".
Another thing I didn't like about the Acquisition system is that it kind of made whether you get something a bit random, and there is the whole matter of "how often can I use it?" It doesn't really make much sense that you can only get one thing at a time (As the original Rogue Trader's default assumption), but if you are more lax can they just go "Well, I want to get this... ok, Fail. Right I will try for that instead... Pass, ok I have it. Oh, and that thing..." etc. Obviously GM can decide whether they can try for something at a particular point, but truthfully I like a system where you can go "Ok, yeah, that's commonly available here. No need to roll for finding it. Now you just decide whether you want to use your funds to buy it".