furashgf said:

My personal alternative: stop the ongoing game after Rank 8. Either to have break from RPG, to start a different RPG or to start DH with fresh characters.
And as you see how many Background Packages have been made available after the release of "Ascension", I think every player will have it easy to come up with something new.

"Tweaking the rules" is something I only advise if one thinks s/he is REALLY familiar with the mechanic (what is broken? what is whole? What will get broken if I fix THIS in THAT WAY?). Otherwise, things tend to get even worse...

Just stop XP progression. Stop handing out XP all together. Characters can only get powerful to a certain point before it becomes ridiculous. Have them focus on progression via new gear, allies etc.

The idea of characters progressing beyond Rank 8 and doing serious Inquisitorial stuff rather than Acolyte legwork is IMHO fully salvageable. Other 40k games can progress much further on the exp scale without bursting in flames from the accumulated brokenness

However, Ascension is broken beyond the possibility to fix it with a bunch of houserules, and no 40k game up to date has a good way to handle large-scale politics in an interesting manner.

It doesn't help that at this point, Dark Heresy is so outdated and out of sync with other 40k games, it'd probably be easier to discard both DH core and Ascension altogether and start anew, having the high level play in mind even while designing low level play.

Maybe switch over to analogous Rogue Trader Careers to squeeze out a few more levels...?

This has turned out to be a very depressing post. So far, I have:

1. Just stop w/ Dark Heresy core levels;

2. Invent my own game (no idea how to do this);

3. Rogue Trader Careers (no idea how to do this);

4. Stop leveling;

Has anyone come up with a solution that would allow the characters to continue to level without becoming more powerful than can be managed. For example, has anyone used DH background + Black Crusade mechanics? I'd love details because I'm not a game designer.

In terms of the source material, Eisenhorn, Ravenor, and Civik and their teams are all badass and capable, and handle high level plots, and have throne agents on the team, but it somehow works.

furashgf said:

Hi Furashgf

How attached are you to using the FFG mechanic? I f ind more narrative game systems are better for higher level play because they are not so crunch heavy. Now some peole like crunch, but for the same reason most d&d games struggle after 10th level (I'm talking 2nd ed here) was it got too complex for the gm. Same with these games, keeping track of that massive talent and equipment list is hard work.

I'm not in any way suggesting ditching the FFG books, they are really awesome 40k books, and I will keep buying them as the basis for my games, I am however leaning towards a more-colourful and less-crunchy mechanic.

Anyway, enough heresy, I'm not sure that's really what you're after anyway, so on to the next idea.

Another suggestion is create a single 'Ascended' skill and talent list on a custom basis for each character (based on character concept - include lots of peer and influence skills if appropriate) allow access to the ascended Stat advances if you wish or create your own. (Alternately you could just say a flat +5% for 2000xp for example),and then just keep giving out xp. You already have the opposed test mechanic for politics, and you can handle the other stuff like access to gear narratively (I soooooo strongly suggest narrative explanations for access to equipment. Grovelling for gear shouldn't get in the way of the story - unless it is of course integral to the story.

Name of the game if you go down this path is to keep it simple.

Lastly, you could just use Ascension and say any Assassin that wants to keep being Death Cult Assassins or Vindicares are now essentially mindless and unavailalbe as PCs. Assassins seem to be the biggest gripe about Ascension so that may help. But what do PC Assassins do? Well, I currently have a rank6 feral world assassin, and he has a little intelligence and charisma and is trying to be as valuable as possible to his Inquisitor, so he'll end up an Interrogator I think. In this instance it holds with his concept as 'assassin' is the class i used to build him, not to define who he can be, that is a narrative function.

I hope there's something there that helps.

I wouldn't say Assassins are the only major issue. I remember once someone did the math and worked out that a max level Primaris Psyker can kill 3.5 Greater Daemons per turn . Which is just ******* ridiculous.

Ive been an avid gamer for the last 24yrs now and tried out alot of the systems and editions of them...One thing ive learned as a GM / DM of ANY RPG game is this....The GM / DM has final say..if you dont like a rule..throw it out or alter it to suit you and YOUR game as YOU see fit. As one of my collegues here called it " The rule of cool". As for the question of editing or revamping / replacing the current career setup ( either for acolyte levels or ascended ones ) Ill refer you to a page that apparently everyone else has forgotten about or otherwise missed in the DH mainbook ( pg. 43 right hand column titled "Creating your own Career Paths.")

The bottom line with playing any RPG is simple...having fun and spending time with friends socializing...thats what its all about...So if a rule is causing too much friction / static within your group...then sit down with them and figure out what exactly the issue is...and then you as GM decide to either remove the rule in question or revamp it as needed so that you and your group can get back to having fun...otherwise..teach them how to play because beginners will always nag about this rule or that rule not being right or fair etc...In this case 40k is NOT easy or fair...same as reality....so they can either grow up and deal...or go suck a lemon and shut their yap if the problem is their inexperience as a player. If its just that they are unfamiliar with the setting / universe then give them a chance to read up some on it from one of the myriad of books and novels available..

Some personal changes ive implemented are thus

1) ALL homeworlds EXCEPT for feral automatically gain Literacy , Common Lore ( Imperium , War ) as well as ANY of the skills they listed individually under the homeworld traits.

2) I automatically have all my PCs start with Max Wounds ( i dont have issue with killing PCs if they dont pay attention to whats going on and simply beef up the opposition numbers and or skills/talents to suit whatever my needs are at the time for each encounter )

3) I have the players actually RP alot as well as "hack and slash" to achieve their goals and give them ( usually ) several ways to achieve the target set them by their Inquisitor. But i emphasize good roleplay always and can and will reward with extra XP and/or a FREE skill/talent IF they do very well ( for example they see a random mugging attempt by some ganger scum and they actually feel nice and assist the would-be victim....they might just be saving the arbites wife or nobles son from assassins etc...you never know...and if they are polite enough afterwards to the victim ( escorting them safely back wherever ) then they can easily earn a Peer or Contact talent out of it.)

My standard for extra rewards is as follows:

10-20xp for clever idea to solve an issue ( 50 if its a bloodless solution )

+1% to associated skill for each Critical success ( in this case i mean ONLY when a Natural 01% is rolled on a check and Yes this includes WS and BS traits as well )

200xp for playing in character ( awarded at end of each game session )

200xp per 4hrs of game session ( actual game time NOT including breaks etc...)

10-20xp for killing / subduing a minor threat ( Threat rating: Minima )

20-40xp for killing / subduing a moderate threat ( Threat rating: Minoris )

50-100xp for killing / subduing a major threat ( Threat rating: Majoris )

100-400xp for killing / subduing a extreme threat ( Threat rating Extremis )

Potential " good samaritan" rewards include gaining Peer and Contact talents for free ( in addition to whatever XP you get from "handling the situation" that brings you into contact with said individual(s)

Ive found that handing out these extra rewards helps to keep the game running smoothly by keeping the players happy as well as encouraging them to actively RP the situations and try to find alternative solutions ( bloodless when possible ) to gain more XP as well as to help maintain their cover identities as members of the Inquisition by NOT attracting undue attention to themselves by starting fights arbitrarily

Okay, here's the barest minimum plan for making Ascension work. Your Mileage May Vary, and I give you no guarantee whatsoever that it'll work at all.

1. Buy Black Crusade, adopt the basic rules of this system instead (as in, the combat rules, the new Skills and Talents - leave the rest as it was, adjusting for any discrepancies that might arise). Treat Influence as Infamy, ignore the Infamy Points rules and stick to Fate Points as they work in Ascension. Have everyone discard their previous character sheets and rebuild them from scratch using BC costing for Skills and Talents - everything they have in their Career tables counts as if they were Alligned to it (otherwise, ignore the Allignment system altogether).

2. Any mention of WP bonus in DH/Ascension Psychic Powers gets changed to Psy Rating instead.

3. Temple Assassin Trait changes from granting extra Reactions to granting the Assassin a permanent Force Field with a Rating of 50 that never overloads (it's still dodging fluff-wise, just uses a different mechanic to represent that). It doesn't work if the Vindicare uses an armor different than his bodysuit or normal Synskin Bodyglove.

4. All Unnatural Characteristics purchasable through Ascension Careers get changed from the multiplier value listed to an equivalent + value, in accord with BC rules (so a Vindicare can buy Unnatural Agi +2 rather than x2).

5. All Skill Mastery packages disappear. Any character having a Skill Mastery package in his Career can instead buy any of the Skills in that package using BC costs (again, treating them as if they were Alligned).

6. Ascended Talents don't grant the benefits of all the Talents listed. Instead, they grant only their extra benefits and the normal Talents they entail become prerequisites instead. If a character has an Ascended Talent in his Career, but lacks the prerequisite Talents necessary to buy it, he can buy them using the Black Crusade costs (treating them as if they were Alligned for him). If the prerequisite Talent doesn't exist in BC, either ignore it altogether or eyeball a Tier for it and price it accordingly.

7. Wall of Steel, a Talent that doesn't exist anymore in BC, gets removed from all characters who had it (exp gets refunded). Instead, it becomes a unique special ability for Crusader characters.

8. Instead of upgrading the Craftsmanship of Carapace Armor by one step, the Stormtrooper just adds +1 AP to any armor of Imperial manufacture that he wears - this extra point stacks with Best Craftsmanship and neither counts towards determining if the armor hinders Stealth. Likewise, he can add either Tearing or Proven (3) to any non-exotic Basic weapon he uses.

9. Any rule that lets the character auto-confirm Righteous Fury instead gives one a reroll of the Zealous Hatred roll.

And there you have it. I'm not guaranteeing any internal balance of those rules, as I just came up with them on the fly, zero playtesting. What I can guarantee is, it'll be much better than Ascension as-written. You'll need BC corebook to make sense of some of the things I speak of.

First of all you need to decide what you want from ascension before you go about trying to find alternatives. If your simply wanting to continue your campaign from rank 8, i'm not really sure that ascension is salvagable if you want any sembilance of balance. If on the other hand you want a game where your players can succeed at tying their shoes on an average roll, can read and write at there first rank, and in general feel competence(not excellence, just basic competence) is the rule instead of the norm. Or perhaps your players want to be eisenhorn and his retinue and not some nameless mooks who don't even get a name.

We have some options here. The first and easiest is to just use Rogue Trader. The starting power level leaves plenty of room to grow, while still having staring characters that are well rounded and quite competent. You might not want to give your players a ship automatically(or you might, depending on the type of game you want to run), and you might want disallow the naviagator career, and maybe make slight changes to the astropath carrer to change into a more normal psyker.

The other option i see is using black crusade and making archetypes that are appropriate for an Inquistion game. This includes special abilities for each archetype(possibly looting from rogue trader, deathwatch, and ascension, and well as the existing archetypes in black crusade), figuring out how to treat aligment,(is everyone automatically stay unaligned, pick an anlignment at character creation, use normal black crusade alignment, maybe a system where you for puposed and advancement choose to be aligned to one god and apposed to a different god, like a death cult assassin alighned to khorne, opposed to nurgle and neutral with the other two, Or even reassigning alignments based on class or something),whether or not to use failings, whether to allow space marines, and other choices you might want to make such as how to handle sisters of battle, you handle limits on the psy rating and other choices.

This is clearly the most labor intensive choice, but also the one in my opinion makes for the best game.

Wow, I guess I never realized that Ascension was such a universally despised book; I knew several people didn't like it, but not to this level . Sadly, it's probably one of my favorite books; the one I saw at Barnes & Noble, and started buying the other 13 of these that I have. Then again, my character types are Guardsman, Psyker, and Assassin, so I would get the nice extra breakiness part most people don't like.

As for tossing the book, I'd say hold off on it. Look at your characters; is there a twinky assassin, or a trembling with power psyker waiting to burst at the seams? If not, then it should be a fine book to use. If you use such as NPCs, tone them down, or don't; one Officio Assassin SHOULD be a threat to a whole party. If you do have those players, maybe just carefully watch their progressions. You could use the psychic power variants from either other system (I suggest Deathwatch, as it has less Perils, IMO). For Assassins, give in and use the modified rule, giving them the "Invul save" field. Otherwise, minusing out the Stormtrooper (it seems a bit weak, compared to the other stuff), I think that Ascension has some good stuff. You can keep your players' spending limited, because everything is Very Rare, and that makes for a difficult Influence test (a million worlds, and they still only have two Inferno Pistols on hand ).

I'd say, if you have the book, give it a try. See if it does, somehow, bring your game grinding to a halt, and if so why. If you don't like it, and often having one person in charge (the Inquisitor) can offset a party, along with all the politicking and currying of favor, then give Rogue Trader a shot. Be advised though, that there, your players will probably start with most of the best gear, and often have much less "important" seeming goals (wow look, more money!).

I rate Ascension as one of the five worst RPG supplements I've ever seen. It's an untested, unbalanced mess that doesn't even know what it's trying to accomplish.

It tries to be a follow-up to Dark Heresy, but it doesn't let you keep developing your character organically from what he was in DH - instead, it shoehorns each character into one of the new Careers that were made just to correspond with TT miniatures, and stumps the inividual character growth by stuffing large, unified advancement packages down everyone's throat.

It tries to support playing a "chessmaster" Inquisitor, but screws it up by supplying dull, uninspired Influence rules that make all large-scale endeavors boil down to GM fiat.

It tries to support playing a "cowboy" Inquisitor, but fails by creating Careers that make all sorts of hands-on challenges irrelevant.

It tries to emphasize the Inquisitor working closely with his Cadre, but again, fails thanks to this Cadre containing guys like the Primaris Psyker or the Vindicare, who can totally accomplish any task without any support from the team.

All in all, it sucks and should be rebuilt from scratch.

Considering all the talents are pretty much influence talents, the skills are just normal skills mashed together nothing in this book makes you feel ascended. My game fell apart at level 9 because many of the characters didn't fit in with any of the ascended careers. We want to take on greater daemons and stare down genestealer cults, not see if we can get another +10 bonus to persuade a tech priest.

Considering all the talents are pretty much influence talents, the skills are just normal skills mashed together nothing in this book makes you feel ascended. My game fell apart at level 9 because many of the characters didn't fit in with any of the ascended careers. We want to take on greater daemons and stare down genestealer cults, not see if we can get another +10 bonus to persuade a tech priest.

So, is there anything we can do to persuade FFG to rewrite Ascention into a ballanced and workable system? Do the people responsible for planning their future releases read the Forums?

Well I agree with Venkelos. Even though many people here seem to dislike Ascension I love it and it fits perfectly to my own group. True, I and my GM did a lot of changes on it but now it seems to work very good with our play style. I will list up all the things we did, maybe some people can use it (sorry if this becomes a long post!)

First off we opened up all the Career paths all the way through from rank 9. So a player who chose to play as a Crusader can from rank 9 buy ALL advances in the entire career. This approach was inspired by Black Crusade’s Career free system but instead of removing the Alignment system from Black Crusade we just opened the careers in Ascension from the start. It grants more freedom from the start (granted not as effective as BC’s system but it is easy to do and works fine in our opinion).

Secondly all Unnatural states that can be bought should be replaced with the equivalent plus modifier instead of its multiplying modifier (exactly as Monragias said above)

Thirdly we removed all Prerequisites from all Influence talents so everyone could get peer and Good Rep no matter their Fellowship.

Fourthly we changed how the mastery skills work. Instead of giving you all the skills of a giving category at +20 it only gives you one skill of that category at +20 at the cost of 300 no matter the skill. So you can choose Forbidden Lore Mastery for 300 pts and then get one of the Forbidden Lore skill (such as Forbidden Lore: Inquisition) at +20. You can buy the skill as many times as the mastery skill group incorporates.

Fifthly we did an extensive rebuild of the entire DH psychic power system so it functions much more like the RT, DW and BC Systems. here it comes:

First off instead of rolling dice and adding them together to reach the threshold of a given power, we made it to a simple Willpower skill test (just like in RT, DW and BC). Then to make it more like BC’s System (and making it more balanced) we gave every power a penalty/bonus (but mostly penalties) to the WP test. For every full 10 on the threshold before, you now get -10 to you WP test instead. Also exchange all mentioning of WP in the DH/ascension psychic powers with Psy Rating (also Like Monragias said above ). so our new power thresholds are: All powers with a threshold of 0-9 are a +0 WP test . All powers with a threshold of 10-19 are a -10 WP test. All powers with a threshold of 20-29 are -20 WP test and so on.

But then we had the problem of Ascension powers still being too easily manifested (in our opinion) so we gave all Ascension powers a threshold increase of 10 (so Lightning Arc now gives -20 to the WP test instead of -10 and Warp Time gives -40 instead of -30). But by the same token we also made all minor psychic powers easier to manifest lowering the threshold but 10 (so in effect give all Minor psychic powers +10 to their test WP. So Healer now gives +10 to the test and Touch of Madness gives +0 to the WP test).

And also like RT,DW and BC now for every Psy Rating you have you add +5 to the WP test. So a Psyker with WP 50 and Psy rating 4 tries to manifest Precision Telekinesis with the threshold of 23. Now it would be -20 for the threshold and a +20 for the Psy rating which makes for a standard +0 test for the Psyker.
Also the Fettered/unfettered/push system in Ascension works with this system (like in the three other games).

Also we changed to range of every power so it was more like BC. So all powers with a range of 0-10 meters have a range of Psy Rating in meters instead. All powers with a ranger between 11 and 30 meters have a range of Psy Rating x5 in meters instead. Powers with a range of 30-100 has a range of Psy Rating x10 instead.

So yeh … that was the psychic powers… phew…

Sixthly the entire group agreed upon that the Vindicare career could not be picked. Simply because we think it does not fit well with our play style.

Seventhly we also agreed that the Influence talents should be gained through the actions of the group/individual not be simply saying “I want more guns” and then picking the Ally of the Departmento Munitorum. They are also more fun to gain that way! Also we made them available to all careers so everyone can get them if it makes sense.

Eighthly we removed the duration modifier on Influence when dealing with equipment or more precisely personal wargear (after reading one of the post on here, I think it was your’s Venkelos was it not ?). So if you wanted 2000 miners and the mining gear for them to use then you would be effected by the Duration modifier but if you wanted that shining new plasma pistol for your personal use then no duration modifier. Though this should ultimately be left up to the GM if the definition of “personal wargear/gear” becomes blurred.

Ninthly we made our own version of the Influence talent “Acolyte Network” which makes it much more fun for all to use including the GM. I will not post it because I think it would be too long but if somebody wants to know it, I could post it later or on another threat.

Oh and I agree with buying BC and using its combat system simply because it work some much better.

So there it is. That is what we did to make Ascension enjoyable for us. I think it depends on the individual group’s play style on how much they could make use of this.

Also a side note about Ascension as a whole. Ascension has a lot less focus on Character development then DH had BUT that does not mean it does not have any. Your character development are just not as focused on Skill and Talents as DH was but actually more focused on story and your actions to shape how your character evolves in the grim darkness of the 40k universe .

-House-ruling pretty much every single aspect of Ascension.

-Saying Ascension is good.

Pick one.

You can house-rule anything until it works. Doesn't mean it's good.

Pretty much at the point of abandoning a 3yr DH game due to various frustrations with the system. Gave it a good whack came to the realisation that to run the game at the throne agent level I'd have to re-write/abolish at least 50% of the career mechanics to be fair and functional to players and probably at least 25% of the cumbersome rule system to stop myself accumulating insanity points... There are so many additional rules, addendums, web-releases, apocrypha and errata that its just too unweildy.

The quickest, (and somewhat ironic) solution so far is to adopt some of the Black Crusade game and career systems with a few bits stolen from Deathwatch and Rogue Trader, using the DH material I have as a 'rough guide' for interesting careers and backgrounds. That and I have several new players to the group, having to make up 17,000xp + characters is just not practical, in fact its an utter f**king nightmare to be honest!

Its not that I want to abandon that work the characters did or even stop running, but it simply cannot continue as-is and the next campaign will pick up from there 5-10 years later game time.

Morangias said:

Okay okay I see your point

Ascension is stuffed with flaws and could really use an official overhaul.

So let me change my point.

As a supplement to pick up and use right away it is quite bad.

But I must say I like the idea that Ascension presents to the readers. So as an idea I think it is good but as a supplement ... not as good. Though it did give me the basics for creating that which works fine now and that’s okay in my book

But the overall idea of my post was not whether or not I like ascension but how I can help to make it better for other people who like the idea as well but are not sure how to fix it.

Morangias said:

Off topic a bit, but the above just reminded me of how people always say the game lines should be built more like the WoD.

I find it rather funny.

That said, a variety of frankly minor house rules, even presented accross the board, is hardly "every single aspect".

The one about psychic powers alone can (and probably should) be applied to Dark Heresy, and many people feel this. Unnaturals is something else that people have suggested be changed overall. If it's something that's considered a problem with the game line as a whole, then we can hardly fault someone from house ruling it when it comes to Ascension. What I'm trying to get accross is, they're not an "Ascension Problem". And I'm just going to say it, "don't pick the Vindicare" is not something you can call out, it's just bull to try and argue that, when the forums have discussed the class already at great length.

Blood Pact said:

Mastered Skills? Altered.

Careers? Altered.

Influence rules? Altered.

Influence talents? Altered.

Psychic Powers? Altered completely.

Vindicare? Banned.

How much of the Ascension rules does that leave untouched? How much of the experience of playing Ascension by RAW is preserved?

At this point, all that's left is the general idea of playing a mighty Inquisitor and his elite cadre rather than a ragtag bunch of Acolytes.

"I've house-ruled it and it works fine now" in no way means "it's fine". No matter how brilliant your houserules and how enjoyable your game, they have no bearing on how the game works (or in this case, doesn't work) by RAW. Saying otherwise is what is commonly called a Rule Zero Fallacy.

I'm sorry, but you must have missed the part where I said Unnaturals and Psychic powers are problems with Dark Heresy . You can't indict fixing then for Ascension, when they need to be fixed for everything!

And what are these big sweeping alterations to Careers? Oh, you can't use Vindicares (the one Career EVERYONE complains about), and loostened up the ranks so that you could buy stuff from any chart upon entering the Ascended Career.

When you take a dose of common sense, it suddenly becomes clear that the only MAJOR changes being made to Ascension are influences and master skills.

It doesn't matter if you consider the house rule to be major or minor - once you introduce a single house rule to your game, you're no longer playing by RAW, and thus your experience is irrelevant for discussing how the game works by RAW.

That's the common sense. "It can be fixed, therefore it isn't broken" is the opposite of common sense.

Yes, the psychic powers rules were already clunky in core - doesn't change the fact that it's Ascension that let psykers kill multiple Greater Daemons per turn. Nothing in core lets you do that.

And I wouldn't call throwing the entire Rank system through the window a "minor" change to the Career system.

Well, I'm not going to argue with you Morangias that RAW Ascension has many problems with it. What I will say however, is that the OP was not asking for "is Ascension broken or not", they were asking if there were ways to play the same idea with a different system, or perhaps house rules to fix Ascension. If you're just going to argue about how fixing the game doesn't mean it's not broken RAW, could I suggest you go find somewhere else to post? As is, it's already an assumption of this thread that such is the case. If you're not giving suggestions yourself, then you're just taking up space.

Back to the OP, I'd have to agree with many of the posts here about using BC's combat system as it is far more streamlined. I personally like the skill system a lot as well, as it gets rid of a ton of skills, which leaves you with more xp towards diversifying your characters. I think Rex Tauron's fixes to Psychic powers is probably one of the best ones I've seen, although I generally on principle don't play a psyker due to their ability to becomes broken faster than most Careers. Overall, I already use many of the fixes that Tauron suggested, and they have worked wonders, so I would say to go with his post for the OP's answer.