Lets see...

Mentioned careers/specialities: Sanctioned Psyker , Techpriest Enginseer, Commissar, Ministorum Priest , and the Guardsman versions: Medic, Sergeant, Heavy Gunner, Stormtroopper . Careers already in DH underlined.

Estimated powerlevel: 20+2d10 stats+ Homeworld (or whatever it will be in this.. regiment or something like the awesome RT origin path?). 25 could be, but it is generally left for heroes, like RT characters or BC humans. I'd guess the exp compared to other systems would be begin at 0 exp, as well.

Seems to me that this is redo of Dark Heresy, with the new rulesystem presented in Black Crusade (although I could guess that ranks are returning in some way). Your opinions? At least I think DH system was feeling quite old already, and refreshing it was needed. But is this the proper way? Create new military-centered core game, instead of DH 2nd ed? Does the 40k line need more combat-heavy lines, so full of official GW material ( I mean, Cadians in Calixis Sector, or whatever the new place will be, might be Jericho Reach or something close).

Dige

You have to understand, the books are not just about power level and character roles, but also setting.

"War" simply is not an aspect well covered by Dark Heresy. Yes, it can be a set piece, but if made the central piece of the campaign, something is lost (at least when using the core RAW of the system).

Classes in DH are ultimately designed to become inquisitorial agents.

What I'm trying to say is that OW and DH should be considered two distinct settings at roughly the same power level. OW characters will probably function as poor investigators, and most DH characters would probably find themselves turned into a fine red mist in OW.

Also, while it is "another" combat heavy book, it is important to realize that 40k is, and almost always has been, about war.

I agree! Up until now; the only reference to "Normal citizens" and or life i/s the Imperium has been DH. OW will serve two major functions: First (And formost IMHO) is to update the "Core mechanic" as it applies to "Normal" characters. Secondly: It will give us a close look at the nature of life at the edge of the the darkness.

My thoughts precisely.

Rogue Trader has a Guardsman, Priest, Tech-Priest and Psyker.
Black Crusade has a Guardsman, Priest, Tech-Priest and Psyker.

Oh my God all the games are identical in every single way!!!



Except they aren't.

BYE

Yes they are so different one is good one is evil wait.. it's all about the grey line..

The FAN base won't admit but yes FFG is doing the White Wolf game of millions of setting books with tons of defects but all in 1 freaking universe.

Mind you the books are pretty nice but in the end, If DH is so badly made that they are creating a game to fix the mistake of the last one every 6 months?

I find it all LOL.

Quantity without quality is mediocrity at best. BC was full of errors and game loop hole. We still are waiting for an official errata... Yet there is Only War!

Sorry to chase you all the way from the Dark Heresy forums but your comment here is not quite right.

The premise is different enough (at least in BC's case) that the classes don't overlap. On the other hand, DH & Only War give you the opportunity to play literally the exact same thing. And even though people use the argument "Its on a War World this time!" That's the location, not even the setting- because even in DH there's Only War (One of the themes of the game.)

IN BC your playing bad guys- in Rogue Trader ( there's no guardsman there, is there? I figured it was a commander of sorts. And the Navigators are different enough from the regular Psyker. Your right that the Tech-priest and explorators are the same- but the idea is not that NO content should overlap.

The problem is in this new book, ALL content Overlaps. By buying it, your essentially paying for half of things you likely already have or you won't be able to use. Instead of making it a Supplement (priced at 26$ from when I pre-ordered but now at 60$ [Without shipping, handling, sales taxes for those who have them) where I would have been able to use everything without working on it, now even the weapons may not be compatible depending on the power-levels of these "guardsmen"- [You can start as a Stormtrooper, maybe? Rank 8 Char in DH? 9 in Ascension?] (Speaking about the weapons- are we going to get yet another stat-block for a standard Laz-gun?)

The games are close enough to fit in the same universe- different enough that you can't play them together in the same universe- because of things like a) Wonky exp cost for talents and abilities. b) Weapon & monster stats. c) weapons availability and purchasing methods. d) The "Special mechanic" missing from every game.

Its bad form to bring about a comment from another thread- you mentioned not wanting to add a Marine Char to a DH game. However- BC did just that by mixing humans and marines and sustaining them together- they can play and grow together and just appear as guest stars for one mission. Likely War will do the exact same thing with the Ogryn- which will be "Protomarines."

Dark Heresy is not a badly-made game. Black Industries knew just what they were doing with it, and produced a solid ruleset upon which Fantasy Flight has built subsequent offerings.

Only War can be more than just Dark Heresy on a war world. The foundation of your group is fundamentally different (trained soldiers rather than a mishmash of folk from across the Imperium) and the missions you are sent on will also likely be entirely different to the investigative style of Dark Heresy. I haven't seen the book to comment definitively, but I can't imagine Fantasy Flight will have just reproduced Dark Heresy with Black Crusade rules.

I find it a little sad some people are being so fiercely down on the game when it's only just been announced. And yes, Fantasy Flight wants to make money, it is a company, after all. I'm more than happy to keep paying them to provide me with new rulebooks and supplements. That's their job, and they need to profit from it in order to continue.

My comments were an exaggeration (I thought that would've been obvious). Of course the Apostate and Heretek aren't the same as the Cleric and the Tech-Priest. My point is their archetypes (not in the BC sense of 'archetypes') are analogous. An Apostate is a Cleric is a Ministorum Priest is a Confessor. They function in a similar role.

The reason I made that point is to discredit the argument that because Only War contains Priests/Psykers/Tech-Priests that it is somehow the same as Dark Heresy. No one complained when RT had a Confessor rather than a Cleric, an Explorator rather than a Tech-Priest and so on. No one tried to say "Oh it's just DH all over again!" . The same applies here.

Furthermore you're making presumptions about something you've not seen. Now it's fine to speculate - speculation is fun, and so is wishlisting - but the downside to speculation is when you jump to conclusions. Well it has X, and I have something similar to X in this other game, so I'm paying for something I already have! Well, no you're not. OW is a different game, with different mechanics, just the same base rules (like all the 40K RPGs). The Priest in OW is no more a carbon copy of the Cleric than the Confessor is in RT.

You can mix and match these games, taking elements from some and mixing it with another. If your trying to play a game of Dark Rogue Deathwatch Trader Crusade, where Acolytes activate Squad Modes whilst in space combat, then yeah, you might run into problems. But that doesn't make the games themselves incompatible. XP costs for advances are dependant on the system and really shouldn't be the same across the board (some Skills/Talents are worth more on certain types of characters than on others). Yes, some adversaries have different stats in different games - it drives me crazy - and I'm a very vocal proponent to have unified stats for adversaries across all games. However , I also acknowledge that sometimes things do need to be different because what's good for some lowly DH Acolytes might be too easy for some Deathwatch Marines, and vice versa, and thus unified stats, whilst desirable, aren't always possible (or even appropriate).

Finally Acolytes represent the lowest of the low in terms of power scale. It was actually quite a common complaint when the game came out (Russ on the D6 Generation jokingly referred to it as playing the Janitors and Window Washers of 40K). Mixing Marines with them is a bad idea for that exact reason, the Marines outshine them completely. The humans in Black Crusade are around RT level, perhaps even a little higher. They still can't completely compete with Marines, but it's not a giant and an infant as it would be with DH/DW mixed.

BYE

Also: FFG has been remarkably consistent in maintaining a "Power balance" by useing consistent XP values across all of the prior systems I wonder where OW will fall. My personal wish would be for it to start at the DH 0xp lvl and move up from there. Not everyone wants to play the "Lowly grunt" but it is a great place to start and (From a Gm's perspective) learn the Nuances of the new game and setting.

I too admit that Dark Heresy ruleset is old, and needs to be improved to BC rules.

I have nothing against war-oriented game, yet I am little bit surprised. But I can understand the reasons behind it. We shall see what makes it different from DH surely in given time, but now we shouldn't be guessing, for we have too little information. I am just happy that the lowly citizens of Imperium are visited again, it has been too long. Also I wonder what will be this games "special dynamic", and I hope it won't be only something like the acolyte-team rules in late DH rulebooks. Yet it is for other topic.

Also I am thinking ways how to use OW rules to play Inquisitorial Acolytes, which might require some conversion work, yet ultimately less that converting DH to use BC.

But Radwraith, the balance isn't that great. Sure, they are comparable, but DH and RT chars of equal exp are quite different, with DH being more powerful usually. And comparing Ascension to any other system.. is going to end badly. I mean, buying entire groups of skills suddenly to +20? Hopely they fix this in OW, by keeping the exp costs and starting wounds/etc enough large, so the low-exp game PCs are too comparable with other gamesystems. DH will be the odd one after that of course, but for that fix we will have to wait for DH 2ed.

Dige

Dige said:

I think you might be surprised about that. If you calculate the cost of a +5 stat advance in every stat, Universal weapons talents (Which amount to 5 separate DH weapons talents each!) and the cost of the RT "Special abilities" you will find that it's not very different. The reason for the power differential is that almost every player has a little bit of Munchkinism in them and can design their DH character from the very start to a very specific end. Also baring in mind that the RT origin path has a number of points that award skills, talents or Stat advances. All of these would have a point cost if the character did it from rank 1. I have run RT and DH characters in side by side games and found that the Acolyte will be better in their specialty (A blood cult Assassin with her swords for example) but the Explorer will have a much wider range of options. The combat system is balanced enough that a "Bolter round to the face" solves all disparities! A DW maarine is a 13000 pt ascended character in DH terms. BC characters average about a rank 6 DH class. These power lvls seem fairly consistent to me! Of corse the characters are different! I think that's sort of the point!

I can say that I can't wait for this new book to come out. The group that I play in just switch from a "Rogue Trader" Ork setting back to "Deathwatch." Now we have something new to look forward to.

Looking forward to getting a decent review of the book (although I'm probably going to focus on other games for some time). So far I've enjoyed playing "the little guy". It tends to be more rewarding, especially when you actually manage to do something fairly epic.

As I see it, the BC system is a start to remake he DH 1.0 engine. Just as RT and DW made little steps. I expect OW to refine what has been done right in BC so that eventually this can be seen as the next step to DH 2.0