Am I missing something with regard to a cost associated with gaining new Solo Abilities? These often seem more powerful than Talents, so granting them without a significant cost seems like it could unbalance play, but perhaps I've merely missed something.

Please point out my oversight, oh wiser and more perceptive forum-goers.

A point of clarification, if I may: I am talking largely about the additional Solo Mode abilities listed by chapter in First Founding. I am aware that the additional Solo Mode abilities based on salient operations from Jericho Reach have XP costs associated with them. I am simply unclear on whether or not the additional chapter abilities from FF are intended as optional replacements, additions, or some combination thereof.

Thanks!

Those abilities are part of a Battle Brother''s training and chapter heratige. They''ve already been learned by appropriate Brothers barring specific roleplaying situations.

Squad and Solo mode abilities are the benefits a Brother gets from either intense training or biological superiority that puts them head and shoulders above other characters in the 40k universe. A rank 1 marine may not look that impresive versus an experienced human warrior (accension class with equivalent XP) but those squad/solo modes make the difference. As it should be.

shawncarman said:

It's just an addition (contrasted with, say L5R where you need to go back to your dojo at each new rank to learn the next School ability). The new Solo Modes don't become available until Rank 3 anyway, so that's a bit of time and encounter escalation under the belt to maybe warrant a step-up in power. Rank 3 is usually also when the initial Chapter Solo Mode gets an improvement and when you start to learn new Codex Solo Modes as well. So it's one of the overall escalation points of the game.

I think it might be reasonable to have some downtime training required/abstracted that expresses the learning or unlocking of the new ability, and maybe not being able to access it mid-mission, but YMMV.