Greetings. I'm an avid fan of the Warhammer 40K RPG, but inside my heart there has been some glaring frustration with the system and flaws that could hint the system needs an overhaul with a new addition. Here are my Pet Peaves with the system that really fluster me,

1. TOO MANY SKILLS: Indeed, I am overwealmed with the number of skills in the game. So many skills do such similar things that they don't deserve to be their own independent skill. For instance my Genetor Explorator in Rogue Trader had to take not one but 3 seperate but probably similar skills to cover all his bases. This being Chem Use, Scholastic Lore Chyistry and Trade Chymist. Honestly why do you need to have so many dammed skills to do just one thing. It would be easier to combine such things into a single skill (Like under Chem Use) and be done with it. Plently of other examples. Concealment and Silent Move? Looks a lot like why Hide & Move Silent were seperate skills in D&D 3.5. There is just WAY too many skills to keep track of in the game and I can come up with reasons to remove more than half of them and replace them with just a united skill group. I hate that most of your first character sheet page is cluttered with so many skills and this needs to be fixed.

2. Success/Failure Ratio: I find that in Warhammer 40K, your odds of failure are HUGE. The average stat of 30 still means you'll be failing something you've been trained at 2 times out of 3 and don't give me the BS about fate points, they're a limited commodity. I've seen cases that a skilled scum could not pick a lock when his life depended on him. And don't get me going about that demo adventure where you need to climb down a 1/2 mile shaft that basically will kill any PC that didn't bother to take the Climb Skill. As for solutions, my idea is that being trained in a skill should give you a flat +20 skill bonus to your check, with +30 and +40 for extra advancements. As for basic skills, they should be rolled at a +0 instead of half your attribute and untrained skills at probably the opposite, a flat -20. I remember playing a Rogue Trader game where the dice coulden't get below a 50 the entire game even when spending fate points. The Odds need to be improved on the dice.

3. Trained Weapon Skills: A minor pet peeve that you have to buy talents for individual weapon training groups. You should simply have a few large skill groups covering Universal, Exotic and Xenos weapons and be done with it.

4. Weapon Skill/Ballistic Skill quandry: I find Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill should not be stats at all in the game. They would work actually better as skills in my opinion. Instead Weapon Skill should be a skill based off Agility and Ballistic Skill should be based off Perception. All PC's would be considered having a "Basic" in such skills and then be able to boust it like buying up a skill.

So here is some reasons (Of Many) of why Warhammer 40K RPG needs an overhaul. What is your opinion?

While i agree with a lot of your posts i don't understand why this needed another new topic on the subject when the front page of this forum always has this.

No there will not be an updated version of Dark Heresy any time soon. Why? Because supplements are still coming out for it so FFG are still making money, and it uses the same business model that RT, DW and BC are still using. I'd expect the entire 40k rp franchise to need to dry up before this happens.

Darkfire14 said:

No it doesn't. The average Test has a +10 to +30 modifier. That's why a +0 Test is called "Challenging," i.e., hard.

As for the "Too Many Skills" argument, I feel the opposite. I think some skills are far too broad in scope (Tech Use) and would be far better suited to be broken up into multiple other skills than remain the bloated catch-all that they are now.

The differences between Use, Lore, and Trade skills is important. For me these differences help define what a character is and is capable of, and what their job is.

I partially agree on the point of to many skills. I feel like later editions of 40k RPG (like DW and BC) have done a much better job at handling skills than DH.

Now BS and WS as attributes is one of the best decisions of the Warhammer 40k RPGs in my opinion. Because of WS and BS almost every "category" of tasks works off of two attributes.

For example melee combat relies on WS and Strength. You can be good at melee combat by having high WS but if you have high strength as well you are probably better. This allows for a great variety of reasons for being good at something. There's the old weaponmaster, that has lot of WS but (due to his old age) little strengt on the one hand, and there's the brutish unexperienced warrior on the other side with comparetively low WS but high Strength.

In D&D strength directly factors in how hard it is to hit an opponent (in general at least) so a character that isn't physically though but still good with a sword is harder to pull off (yeah I know that there's weapon finess but I don't really want to go into to much detail here).

Of course melee combat isn't the only example. It works for ranged combat (BS and agility), psi-disiplines (at least in RT and onwars) with Awarness and Willpower, social situations (Fellowship and Intelligence, since a character can be very charming but if he doesn't know what to talk about he'll still be out of place), withstanding damage (Toughness and agility for dodging) or just carrying your equipment.

TL;DR I think WS and BS should remain attributes and not be based on other attributes.

Darkfire14 said:

1: As someone else mentioned, skills have their place. Just because you know how to make chemicals (Chem-Use) doesn't mean you know everything about them + their history (Scholastic Lore Chymistry) and how to traffic them best (Trade Chymist). Also, Concealment and Silent Move are two COMPLETELY different skill sets. How does a noise damper help you hide better? How does camouflage help you move more quietly?

2: In the early game, yes, it can sometimes be a problem. But later on in the game it becomes a joke to make skill tests. Look at rogue trader. If you're not hitting the enemy ship with half a dozen macrobattery shells per round, you're doing something wrong.

3: I don't get this. How does one who knows how to use a SP pistol automatically know how to use a rocket launcher or 50lb heavy flamer? Weapon skills aren't simply "using" the weapon, they're also taking care of it. I am pretty **** good with a pistol, but I don't know how to take care of a plasma rifle. Do you?

4: As the last poster said, WS and BS are ingenius solutions to a big problem. In D&D you either have a high STR with somehow allows you to more accurately hit things and simultaneously do more damage or you waste a feat slot to more accurately hit things with your DEX instead of STR (with crappy weapons, mind you) while still relying on STR to do more damage. There are very few ways to add your DEX to your damage in addition to/instead of STR.

Musclewizard said:

Additionally, One of my favourite things about this system is that if you are good at shooting you are as good at shooting your trusty Lasgun as you with that special melta gun you 've borrowed for this mission (once you have unlocked it by buying the talent).

I for one would hate it to go to the RPG standard of characters being, for example; an axe guy, a sword guy, a solid projectile guy, that you tend to get when you have skill levels for weapons skills.

No.It doesnt need an overhaul and heres why.What ever system you think is should be still won't be the system someone else likes.My suggestion would be to just convert to your favorite system and be done with it.Despite the nay-sayers that lurk here....Its not a bad system;it just needs some tweeks here and there.

Further, and In conculsion.

I find that points 2, 3, 4 to be personal preference on behalf of the designers, needing to make the game more like other games is no reason to re-write it.

What is worth doing is re-writing it to make it it easier use (including much of the Errata for instance, and incorperating some of the rules from later games in the 40K line), as well as making it more easily scaleable to high level games with lessons learned from Assenscian.

Point 1 is a weird one, in a way it is a bit of an overload, on the other (like the classic issue with WFRP) if you take out the skills so that there is only Tech use, for instance, then you could easily as a side project be as good as the greatest life long Tech Priest Magos at creating technology and still not spend much more than a 1000 exp on it.

So, a better explanation of how they interact would help,

Darkfire14 said:

Success/Failure Ratio: OK, yes. A starting Dark heresy character is fairly bad. Remember 1) You can give people bonuses. An average tasks is +10. Easier ones get more. 2) only ask for a roll when necessary. If you think that someone trained in the activity should have no problem with something don't bother rolling (especially if they have plenty of time and/or there is next to no price for failure... think take 10 or 20 from d20).

For opposed rolls the poor base chance for success doesn't matter as all that generally matters is who passed the most, or failed the least. In combat the baseline success threshold is actually quite good. A base 30% (normally actually 40 thanks to the short ranges most Dark Heresy fights occur at) chance of hitting someone in the midst of chaotic close fight is actually quite good.

Weapon Training: Yes, this is a bit odd. While there probably should be a penalty to use unfamiliar weapons, a base -20 (which is a lot) when you have been trained in the use of other similar weapons seems a bit overly harsh. I think the original reasoning for this was to give a sort of "levelling" system with weapons, where you improved the weapons you used as you got more powerful as a character. Also, it means that those that invested their experience in the talents do have a significant boost up compared to those that don't. A different split up may have been better.

Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill: having them as skills based on other stats mean you get ridiculously high base hit chances at higher levels. Presuming a base of 30+, with +20 in a characteristic and +20 in the skill you have a base chance of 70. Add on top of that the ability to get other bonuses and you are looking at "to hit" chances of 100+ (even without this, and the original lower bonus cap of +30 you could get a "to hit" of 70+). It also means that everyone is going to prioritise those stats, Agility particularly ("Wait, you mean I improve my Dodge, Melee Attack and Parry all at the same time? Score!"), eating into various career's niches. It also means that people will not be overly penalised by having those stats being lower.

borithan said:

Yeah but hello ... why do we need three skills for Chymystry .. this is not a game about chemicals.

Face Eater said:

Face Eater said:

These two points don't match up. Lack of core mechanics consistency is probably my only major or noticeable complaint (and something that BC does fix well, which is why I'm converting to it) with DH. If it were overhauled, that is the key thing that DH (in particular) mechanics need to fix. Consistency in your core mechanics. If one weapon use attribute covers all weapons, then you need to offer a solid and logical explanation why the same isn't true for tech skills or stealth skills. And if you have a very lovely and simple percentile system (which DH does)...don't change away from it for one darn thing only (psychic powers, I'm looking at you).

All that being said, the best point made here was to keep personal preference in mind. If you've found another system that works better for you, then use it. Most (not all though) of the DH books are worthwhile enough on their own to find usage even in another set of rules and core mechanics. Convert to what works best for you and your group. I've found a modified BC to be that for my own games (though my current game will finish under modified DH rules). But I still get a lot of use out of the DH books. My group and I just prefer a level-less, mostly class-less system as we come predominately from games that work on that concept. Use whatever works best.

If FFG does ever undertake to revise DH in particular (but WH40K RPG in general), I would have just two simple rules I'd like to see used for creating the system.

1. Consistency across all aspects of the rules. Don't pull another DH psychic powers mistake. If you have a solid core mechanic, stick with it for everything from combat to skill checks to psychic powers or whatever else is necessary.

2. Cut down on the number of charts. This was largely done in later games (getting rid of Overheat charts and other similar issues). Continue the trend found in later 40K RPG systems. Nothing slows a game session down like having to dig up a small chart that is specific to just one not-frequently-used rule.

Hey!

I see a lot of people don't like the psychic powers in Dark Heresy compared to the same in other powers, where the system seems to be... better...

I don't agree!

I really like the DH Dark Heresy system- and like they said, its about preference. I don't think the system we currently have is complicated that diverting from a the regular d100 would require a constant check of the rule book, and I think it provides for a nifty mechanic that makes playing a psyker both fun and dangerous- I can tell you that the tension really goes up around the table whenever he decides to use the power, and he himself constantly questions whether he should use One or Two Dice. (Even though he can use three, he's so far never wanted to go THAT far). I think you'd lose something if you went to a simple WP test.

For the rest of the mechanics, I am completely out of my league- At first, I figured I would adopt most of the BC streamlined rules... but some of the DH stuff is simply more popular.

The only thing that bothers me about DH is Auto-fire VS Bust & Single shot... I think that BC fixes that nicely. I think I May just use that part without the rest.

Saldre said:

I might be willing to give them a greater chance, but the thresholds seem way too low. Plus, as a WP test, it's much easier for me as the GM to figure out relevant modifiers, as it matches the rest of the system. I've had my psykers fail a lot more under the WP system than we did in the threshold system. That was one of the key things that sold myself and the players on switching over. Psykers became a lot more interesting (and risky) than we found them to be under DH standard psy rules.

I gotto say yes, it kinda does.

Really I don't look at it as a complete re-write, more a clarification - using what's come after to make it better. Revamp the combat to be like BC's, and take a good look at overhauling the psychic system. I wouldn't do away with the branching career paths (I like that aspect of DH), or the way the game works, just update it to match the most recent game.

BYE

The Laughing God said:

Your players haven't found the joy of chemical warfare through grenades, needle weapons, or the use of combat drugs.

I played in a game where one of the assassins was specialized with drugs and poisons (all three chem skills). He started to spend huge amounts of money and time on re-engineering the bad sideeffects out of combat drugs. Needless to say when we had useable combat drugs with no fatigue or other long term side effects we were thrilled. We were then going to leverage our new toys into a ultra premium designer drug business targeting mercenaries.

To actually answer the question of WHY, I don't like systems that are so oversimplified skill-wise that with the purchase of one skill you are effectively a world class chemical engineer/pharmacist/chemical manufacturer/etc. Forced diversity in skills is a very good thing to me, having theoretical (Lore), practical (Trade), and applied (Use) skills be separate allows for achievement and growth for the character by taking time and expense to diversify his/her knowledge in a given field. It helps move the skill away from a number crunching statistic for me. Catchall skills are boring and have no flavor.

Tech Use is a prime example of a super-bloated-catchall-piece-of-trash skill. By purchasing Tech Use you become computer programmer, hacker, weapon designer, starship designer, engineer, manufacturing engineer, starship operator, radar operator, communications specialist, inventor, car mechanic, tank mechanic, aircraft mechanic, starship mechanic, etc., etc., etc. I find this unacceptably silly. I house rule that if you want to use Tech Use for anything, you must have another skill ( lore, trade, or other) to back it up and explain why you can do what your asking. RAW use of Tech Use suffers from Star Trek syndrome, where everybody in the Trek-verse can instantly figure out any tech or spaceship, from any species, no matter how alien and different the builder species is, instantly.

I think this is a creat question! I believe a large and detailed skill system can take away options for my players. Lets use the chem-use ex. I have a player with scholastic (chemstry) lore who can make drugs because he knows how they work. Why most he aquire another skil to be able to take it? And why do you need a skill to take drugs anyway? I do agree that having a single skill called tech-use is very broad and it does not fit with the rest of the system. Some skills are to small IMO to be called skills: like Lip reading. I rather have less but broader use so my players don't need to be specialist to get forward in the story.

lazerjones said:

Ask any heroin addict who has OD'd. Or any medical doctor.

ItsUncertainWho said:

^+1

Some people like to play skill heavy characters (read scholars/rogues and combatants secondly). What your propose sort of takes away easy a significant portion of the game. The 41st century is dark.. only the elite know how to read.. let alone create new drugs/poisons. Technology is in decline because of the lack of knowledge and innovation.

Granted a GM could always allow a person w/ the Lore or Trade in Chemistry to do a Chem Use at a -10 or 20 depending on the application. Sort of opposite where it can give you a +10 per Inquisitor's Handbook.

However, you could always use house rules to make your gaming experience quicker.. faster.. better which seems that you want. No one fantasy flight games is going to barge into your home and say "UR DOIN IT WRONG YA GIT!". Granted that could be humorous to see =D.

I played in a game where one of the assassins was specialized with drugs and poisons (all three chem skills). He started to spend huge amounts of money and time on re-engineering the bad sideeffects out of combat drugs. Needless to say when we had useable combat drugs with no fatigue or other long term side effects we were thrilled. We were then going to leverage our new toys into a ultra premium designer drug business targeting mercenaries.

I would love to see some of the Combat drugs he produced!!

ItsUncertainWho said:

You know, I very much agree with this.

Developing or discovering a new antibiotic, producing the new antibiotic in larger then experimental quantities and administering said new antibiotic to patients in proper doses are quite different, if somewhat overlapping in the chemistry sense, skillsets.

Now, were I the GM, I would never let someone design starships with tech-use alone. That would fall in Forbidden Knowledge: Shipwright (space).

On the other hand, I'm quite okay with having repair of a system as a subset of the "use system" skill. In 40k, most major systems are old to ancient instead of new, so having the ability to maintain and repair said system fits in the skillset of operating the system, IMO. If one has to craft the spare parts to maintain a device, one should know enough of the system to repair it as well.

I would be perfectly happy with a 1.5 Edition , fully Errata 'd and with a few minor tweaks (Tech Use probably should be sub-devided more..). My only major complaint about the system as it stands is the way Psychic Powers are so narrowly and rigidly defined (obvoiusly patterned after D&D spells), rather than mutable effects shaped by the Psyker himself, who decides how much or little power to use, how large or small an area to effect, etc.

bogi_khaosa said:

And thats my point! A medical doctor or a nurse whould have the scholastic skill chemistry or even better Medicai, and they should be better at it! And why not use the survival skill for the drug addict? I do not need more ranges of how good my charecter is at injecting himself.

lazerjones said:

Survival skill doesn't let you look at a bag of heroin and tell you how much of it you can inject without killing yourself.

These are very different skills. Medicae is medicine/biology. Schoalstic Lore (Chymistry) is chemistry. Chem-Use is how to apply drugs, in particular, things like combat drugs and illegal drugs, so you don't don't kill yourself with them.

A medical doctor would have the first and the third of these skills, and not the second. A drug addict would have only the last one. A theoretical chemist would have only Scholastic Lore (Chymistry) and not the first and third.

bogi_khaosa said:

But why can't chem use be a speciality to fx survival. And why do the doctor need to aquire double the amount of skills? And i agree that the medicae and scholastic skills are different! My point is that to many different skills can restrict the players!