Sorry, I tend to get caustic about both Ascension and Rule Zero Fallacy. As you may see, I already gave my share of constructive advice on page one.

Rex's fix of psychic powers is pretty good, though I prefer to just rip the BC rules for that whole cloth and not touch DH psychic powers with a ten foot pole (Minor Powers... so broken).

I understand Morangias, sometimes people need someone to politely point such out though. I myself have been at the brunt of such in other forums, so I thought to do such here. I'm curious about the prospect of just using BC's psychic powers, I'll probably have to read through them, will probably go through RT's as well. As I mentioned in my other post though, not a huge fan of playing a psyker, so it'll probably just be in case I ever run a game myself.

I haven't read up on psychic powers in BC either, so I can't comment on that. But I am sceptical of the claims (here and in other threads) that everything else about BC is better than DH . BC has only been out a few months, and already there are complaints on the BC Forums about players, freed from any artificial limitations from a Career/Rank system, who have found wildly broken minmaxed powerbuilds that throw the whole game off the rails. Give it some time, and I suspect that BC will quickly rack up more complains (from everyone but hard-core Power Gamers) than Ascention .

BC psychic powers are pretty solid. The system isn't much changed from RT or DW, but some improvements have been made - namely, Focus Power Tests have varying difficulties now (kind of a return to the Threshold system from DH, but much better) and the Action necessary to sustain varies between powers.

There are some troublesome powers, mostly in the Chaos-related groups. In more "vanilla" disciplines, the only really problematic power is Force Storm (way too much damage, hopefully will be errata'd soon - in the meantime, dropping the damage to PRx2 or just PR does the job).

Overall, BC isn't flawless (for one, editing is extremely poor), but compared to previous 40k games, it's a major improvement in all vital aspects of the system. The Rank-less advancement system isn't half as bad as some people on the BC forum present, but more importantly, it doesn't interfere with mining all other core updates for your previous 40k games. Right now, we're using at least the new combat system and new Unnatural Characteristics in all our 40k games, and nobody wants to go back.

Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with Unnatural Stats as is... the problem was the proliferation of them. When they were limited to Daemons and other truly nasty gribblies they weren't terribly broken... it only really became an issue with Ascension and Deathwatch. Personally I think it would have been solved by not giving Space Marines Unnatural characteristics, just give them much higher base scores (which would also leave out much of the need for minor fussy rules for things like poison resistance... just account for it in the increased toughness score). Now, this was a flaw that existed since Purge the Unclean (as we had the stats for a Space Marine, and he had Unnatural Strength and Toughness), but it isn't a problem with the rule as is. With the change for BC, the problem with Strength and Toughness Bonuses has kind of disappeared, but it now means that a person with unnatural stats is no more likely to succeed at something than someone without (they will just succeed better when they do), which just strikes me as weird.

Another way to allow further playing would just to allow them to buy further from their existing tables. Now, I have never played a DH to Rank 8, so it may not work, as maybe most items are purchased by the time you reach the end of rank 8, and it will tend to mean your players have to broaden out, rather than improve at their specialty (as much as their career tables allow, though many of the later career paths are about doing exactly that). Even if it is possible, it may result in increasingly similar characters, so it might not be ideal, but it is one way of doing it.

@ Morangias

PLEASE, please don't take this as me trying to set this off, again, but I am curious, and foolishly going into "fluff made manifest" territory. High-end psykers, say Beta-grade, are often described as "being able to turn a man inside out", or have lesser effects over a commanding scale. In a game like Ascension, where you are, presumably, playing characters who hold the fate of whole worlds, maybe sub-sectors, in their hands, where an Inquisitor could order that world blown up (not really, in Ascension, but again, there's fluff) one would assume you are wanting to be playing a psyker who is as powerful as the setting's feeling is supposed to impart. How, then, would you want to reflect that such a psyker can gak someone so easily? And PLEASE, do not just say "it's the game, not the fluff, so you shouldn't be able to." Certainly, blasting through three Bloodthirsters in a turn, or whatever, is dumb as hell, and begs the question why do we have Grey Knights, and knowing that the psyker will one-shot the big baddie, if the rest of the guys can keep the lesser ones off of himi is certainly anticlimactic, but still, how else would you reflect the sheer power a Psy 8 psyker is meant to be able to bear on someone? He's not the Emperor, but he might be powerful enough to flip a moving transport, or crush a man's heart in his chest. I played D&D till 4th ed came out, and their attempts to curtail wizards is one reason of several why I'll never play 4th ed again; some things just don't balance, and wizards aren't the same as warriors of equal level, by then. While I'm not saying screw balance, and let the wizards/psykers be a class above, and a class apart, what would a psyker in your game get/have to illustrate how powerful they SHOULD be. Thanks much.

Don't get me wrong, I like verisimilitude, and I like staying true to fluff. Except if it makes the game unbalanced, in which case, screw the fluff.

Yes, Psykers can get ungodly powerful in fluff. But unless the game you're playing is Psykers: the Pwning, you don't get to play a Psyker who can dominate an entire planet while the rest of the team struggles to hit something with a bolt pistol. It's not even a violation of verisimilitude, because among the already ultra rare psykers, only a small fraction has the innate potential to achieve such power - well, guess what, your PC psyker is SOL in this regard, he's not Beta or, Emprah forbid, Alpha. He has to work for his achievements just like everyone else in the team.

You know why? Because the fun of the game comes from the challenges, and the game has to be balanced to remain challenging, both internally (as in, party members shouldn't operate on entirely separate tiers of power) and externally (i.e., no party member gets to be tougher than the strongest monster in the bestiary). Ascension doesn't provide that in the slightest, ergo it's a bad product.

The idea that the political power of the Inquisitor balances him out with the Psyker of Vindicare is misaimed, for two reasons. First, you can take the badge away from the Inquisitor, and then he's only as good as his personal capacities allow. Second, the fluff may indicate otherwise, but in Ascension, the Inquisitor only gets to exercise his power because the Primaris allows him - how much sense does that make?

Morangias said:

I do completely get what it is you are saying; when it's an RPG, and not a book, it isn't fun to be the ones who appear to be at the lesser end of the spectrum; the fighter, as opposed to the wizard, and it can be very difficult to have the one feel equally accomplished to the other, when the other can do so much more, in certain applications (feels like another "skilled Inquisitor in Deathwatch" thread ). I wouldn't really want to play the Burning Princess, even if I do come off as looking for the ways to excessive power, and would rather play something that goes with the party; just seems that for a psyker to "ascend" beyond their prior system, an increase in the thing that is their focus is warranted, and then it gets hard to have such growith, without dwarfing everyone who is "just another gun". Still, I don't hear people griping that a SM Librarian can hit PR 10, while everyone else caps out at 6, and I don't care what they do to Space Marines, nothing in there enables them to mentally outstrip everyone else in ability; their training should help (and it looks like they DON'T get Un WP), but the physical oomph would just make for a harder witch to kill. No modification done to them "opens their mind's eye further", or what have you, so they should probably cap out in the same zone as every other believable Human psyker. If it's their mental training, maybe every psyker should be trained by the Librarium; they seem to lose a lot less.

No, I'm not trying to keep this going. It would be nice if the psyker system did work, though. Is there enough good stuff in DW to flub it, and run psykers well, even if they aren't Space Marines? I haven't looked through my DW as much, and mostly just know that it vaguely draws from Ascension/RT, and I like that Perils are next to unlikely, with having to roll doubles on 2 dice (Focus Power/WP test), rather than just 9's on 2-6+ dice (how I believe Ascension does it). I didn't look at RT as much, because I feel they don't use psykers; they use Astropaths, and they happen to be psykers, and much of it is Telepathy and Divination (astropath's bread and butter), which I would want as an Eldar Farseer, but not as a human battle-psyker, personally. Is there enough there to squeeze out from beyond Chapter-flavored stuff, that someone of no Chapter (a non-SM) could use it, or would one have to piece together their own psychic arsenal? For now, there is no way I'm buying BC; I already have 14 books in FFG (7 DH, 4 RT, and 3 DW), and don't need a fourth system, one that different, to flip through, while I try to get my friends, who don't know 40k lore, to want to play them. I slip up here enough, asking strange/stupid questions, and don't really want to half-ass another system, wondering if I know it well enough to GM it.

Comparing characters between 40k game lines is meaningless, those systems aren't balanced between each other. And Psy Rating doesn't even claim to be a unified measure of psychic potential between systems, it's just an abstract way for characters to advance their psychic powers. So I see no problem with Librarians going up to PR 10.

Deathwatch psychic rules are... well, certainly better than DH's but not so impressive ever since BC came out. DW focuses heavily on direct combat powers, with only the barest minimum in Telepathy and Divination Disciplines, and no Telekinesis whatsoever. That, and having to Sustain all powers with a Half Action is a little excessive.

So, how is Black Crusade? Does it remember that there are more threats then Chaos in the universe? I haven't seen it, yet, but if it is just a fun way to do Imperium vs. the servants of the Ruinous Powers, I am not quite as interested. I don't expect rules for playing xenos characters (that would be cool, but not necessarily a great plan, considering), but if it has a page describing Eldar, and no stats, a page describing Orks, and two stat blocks, and a page describing Nids, with two blocks, following pages of rules for just one more flavor of Space Marine, and a bunch of Daemons, as using Abaddon's sunday afternoon plans as the title sort of implies to me, then it is lukewarm in my mind, and not something I'd want to spend another $35-$50 on. So how is it? Can I build a decent psyker, a Grey Knight, and an Imperial Officer in it well? Does its stuff go well with the other three sets? Is it another book that demands I buy 2 more to get Antagonist stat blocks? Thanks much for any endorsement you can make.

from france

venkelos i like your point of view but honestly i disagree ascention is not only brocken for me it s also totaly unbalanced. take a look at the crusader it s so totally useless.

for me ascension should be rewrite. it s with the "o my emperor god the sector wil burn" campaign around the echlesiarchy one of the worst book ever made. it s one of the few that taking dust in my library.

i dont think that dh get too old but rogue trader solve a lot of time consuming mathematics that dh is so fuull of. just a example? universal melée profeciency instead of primitive, chain power etc . a part for the exotic of course. the probleme with dh is that with time passing you simply have to rules, skills and so on to remenber

fluidity is what i like and dh is less and less fluid. but the univers the fluff is still great. instead of ascension i would like just a book of simplfy rules, and not a rewrite of the whole game at 35 euros more or les per book and with 15 books it will hurt me to buy it again.

i want more fluff less rules and i am on of those who wants a guide to the sector with planet description fauna flora peapole custom .....

sorry i almost change the subject.

Make no mistakes, BC is a game about Chaos, and most of it's content is geared for that. Frankly, it's not very inspiring for a new game corebook - the setting is good but somewhat underdeveloped, the focus of the game is murky, and character creation is pretty generic. The antagonist section is somewhat better IMO than in Deathwatch - it's got a lot of Imperial antagonists, from lowly guardsmen and clerics to Inquisitors and Grey Knights. It covers daemons pretty thoroughly - all the lesser and two greater daemons get a writeup, as well as two completely unique daemonic creatures. Then, we have the stats for Eldar Harlequins, four kinds of Necrons, and three kinds of Dark Eldar (though the latter are sadly lacking any form of Power From Pain rule). It's pretty good, almost comparable to the antagonists chapter in DH core (one of the very few parts of that book that I still have uses for).

But the real deal are the new rules. Unnatural Characteristics are now both more adjustable and less broken. Combat has gotten more dynamic and tactical. Righteous Fury is out, replaced with a faster, more interesting rule called Zealous Hatred. New weapon stats are great, and now it really makes sense that the Imperial Guard would be issued lasguns rather than autoguns. Skills are streamlined, Talents are adjusted.

There are several problems with new rules (mostly due to inferior editing), but overall, the new system is a thing of beauty and a real milestone in 40k development compared to cosmetic polishings RT and DW gave it. It's so good, it made me wonder how I managed to put up with the previous incarnations of the game for so long.

Morangias said:

I hate rule zero fallacy's too, actually. Just that I don't like calling psychic powers, et al, as "Ascension Problems". Ascension has its own problems. The game-line as a whole (or one particular game) has its own problems. And a houserule for one isn't a houserule for the other.

It certainly doesn't help Ascension that DH core has it's share of fails. But Ascension did try to change the psychic rules, and they turned out much worse for that, so I'm reluctant to write off psychic powers as "just" a core problem. And it's not just a problem with the Primaris career, because the career wouldn't be half as broken if they didn't introduce the Psychic Strength rules.

I have to admit that Ascension is by far the biggest disappointment in the whole 40k-rpg game line. I have just completed the Haarlock Trilogy with my group on ascention level. I am glad that I have completed it because my groups becomes more and more unplayable. The Vindicate assassin is impossible to hit because of his dodge features. The only way to hit him is the feint action in melee which robs him the possibility to doge which is a very nasty way to handle to problem for me as gm and for the player. My Inquisitor as a psyker now uses the new psy system also for old abilities which means that he can't fail anymore which makes him extremely strong and taking out the fun of the character in the long run. The techpriest will sooner or later accumulate more AP than astartes terminators (amour monger & dragon scale &machine trait etc.).

Another problem is the basic idea of the career system. At first we have the standard paths of the core book. Than we got docents of alternate careers in the supplement books with great opportunities for character detail and development. Then comes ascension and all these variations end in about 5 basic classes (and the selection is seems strange). More than that I also detest the mastered skill and paragon talents idea and the strong break in power level during the translation from core game to ascension characters.

Iv it would be possible I would go back to pre ascension times without hesitation. But I think I have to start all over with a new group but I will wait till there is a new edition of the core rule book. If they reach a certain level and have established a certain network of contacts and so on I will make one an interrogator and later an inquisitor which is more about good rp and not so much about new talents and mechanics. If they have reach max level I will offer them self created pools of skills & talents without level restrictions based and of course elite advancements. By then I think the game should not be so much about levels but acquiring influence, building networks and developing more a sandbox approach in persuing adversaries. DH should (in my opinion) not be about playing god like fighting machines. One can do this with DH / BC. It should be about secrecy, horror, mysteries, social interaction/social power also on inquisitor level.

Well my group after playing DH for awhile moved up to becoing Throne Agents not long after Ascention came out and with some minor tweaking it does pretty good. Our group make up as follows: Judge (me), Hierophant, Sage, Crusader, Magos (new player), and a Death Cult Assain. We arn't doing the go see how many Greater Daemons you can kill but deal more with the political side of the game while still kill stuff. Recently we got rid of a world Govenor that was going to have his planet rebel. After killing said Govenor and his major supporters we are running the World untill a new Goverment can be set up. As the Judge this puts we in charge with the Hierophant and the Sage helping. Now the GM has redone the influence rules to make them more detailed since that is more of the direction our game has been headed. Basicly we have gotten around the combat power of the Assain and the Psyker by making the game go in a different direction. If we need stuff dead they get to go in and do thier job. Not a perfect solution but one that fits our group.

With how we have changed or more correctly enhanced the influence rules as a Judge I can go toe to toe with some of the newest Inquisitors and the Heirophant can come very close. The Magos since he is a new character is working that way and will probly be more a bridge between the combat characters and the Terrible Trio (Judge, Heirophant, Sage) the combat guys have little influence and basicly kill stuff they are very good at if but its what they do.

MKX said:

LOL, this reads as a metaphor for why Imperial citizens turn from the light of the emporer to chaos! Somewhat ironic, as you have already said.

Blood Pact said:

I agree. WOD wasn't any better at high end play. Too clunky, FAR TOO MANY BLOODY DICE, and too many suppliments, additional rules, changes etc. It seems to be that RPGs suffer from the law of diminising returns in general (as advancement increases, playability decreases). There will always be a sweet spot, and for my money, in DH that would appear to be about rank6 or 7 where you are well balanced between characters being tough and competant, verses having too much for the gm to handle.

Morangias said:

What are "TT miniatures"?

If you do want to carry on advancing your DH characters past Rank 9 then just take the XP advancement chart from the book and let the characters select skills and talents from their existing DH careers.

You can use the Skill and Talent Mastery (award free when they have all the skills as a quick guide to the skills and talents they have)

You may also want to use the aquisition system from Rogue Trader for buying thing and it could also be used as a guide to for running influenc tests.

Just use the good bit that suit and ignore the rest

ronaldo1 said:

Table Top. Models from the 40k or Necromunda line.

The Glen said:

This.

Mind you, I don't consider it a fault that Ascension introduces new careers that don't normally hang around Acolytes, like Crusader or Interrogator (or the Inquisitor himself).

What I do consider a fault is that certain Careers in DH could produce vastly different characters at Rank 8, but Ascension nevertheless tries to shoehorn all of them into a single Ascended Career. How do you resolve your IG officer becoming either an Inquisitor/Interrogator, or becoming a Storm Trooper rather than keep being an officer and keep advancing in rank and power? Why does my mercenary assassin, a natural guild leader material, is forced to choose between forfeiting his financial/political ambitions and becoming a Temple Assassin, or forfeiting his ambitions and becoming a Death Cultist?

Because he's not a Guard officer, but an Inquisitorial acolyte?

Because you apparently are one of those people who just can't wrap their head around the fact that the little names for all the ranks of the careers has nothing to do with your actual character. Rank 8 could say "Lord General", but that doesn't actually make your character one, JUST for being Rank 8.

So, if your character is actually an IG officer, how the hell has he become an Acolyte? Because the simple fact is it'd be impossible to run around being a big Throne Agent, valuable enough to consider elevating to the rank of Inquisitor, while still performing all the duties required of your rank. And if your shirking them, and just doing the Acolyte thing, then you're not an IG officer at all.

(God I've come to hate how the Ranks of the Careers are named, because so many people seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around how they're. Just. Names!)

Morangias said:

Thats very true and also one of my major points of critique. I would also add the dimension of radical characters which seem to have no fitting carriers in ascension. An example in my group was an assassin which has become a maltek stalker. It was quite hard to find a fitting carreer for him. The are of course rules how to purge corruption out of the characters but what about those who want to play radicals? This is true for forbidden knowledge, high corruption points, mutations, and not removeable heretic bodyparts.

Morangias said:

Thats very true and also one of my major points of critique. I would also add the dimension of radical characters which seem to have no fitting carriers in ascension. An example in my group was an assassin which has become a maltek stalker. It was quite hard to find a fitting carreer for him. The are of course rules how to purge corruption out of the characters but what about those who want to play radicals? This is true for forbidden knowledge, high corruption points, mutations, and not removeable heretic bodyparts.