I'm wondering if these aren't too high, particularly on skills. Even if the game is meant to either operate in a vacuum or was to be the 'new base' from which the other 40k settings will be recalculated, I'm thinking the Skill and Talent costs are a little bit out there.

I believe its already been pointed out that the game appears to use 25+2d10 as the assumption for everything EXCEPT rolling up PCs; whether we're talking about Ogryn sub-squig intelligence or all those NPC guardsmen having rolled fifteen or higher on most of their stats, but here I'm thinking 'upgrades'.

Supposedly, an average session of 4 hours should net you around 400xp. As far as having two aptitudes shared with anything goes, that's pretty fitting. But if you have only one? Getting +10 in a skill, even a common lore, is gonna net you 600xp. A session and a half, not to mention you've spent a total of 900xp on this. Getting to +20 is a total of 1800xp. If you have no shared aptitudes? This isn't an "elite advance" anymore, its 3000xp.

Even Talents: We're talking 1600xp; four sessions, to get Mighty Shot, Lasgun Barrage or several others.

Anyone else thinking perhaps the multipliers need to be lowered a little? I could easily see this being lowered to x2/x3 on skills, and x1.5/x2.5 for Talents; a Sergeant wanting not to risk his buddies with his pistol at 'pistol' ranges would already be putting out 2000xp for the prerequisites, and that's if [a big if] he actually rolled 20 on ballistic skill. Most likely its 3750 or 6250.

Even Talents: We're talking 1600xp; four sessions, to get Mighty Shot, Lasgun Barrage or several others.

I'm sorry, but if you're trying to learn tier 3 talents with no matching aptitudes, you deserve what you get.

I like the aptitude system: It ensures that you are rewarded for staying within the stuff your specialization should be good at while not outright denying things that are out of focus.

That being said, I think Common Lores should have the Knowledge aptitude switched to General to represent them being more, well, common than Scholastic and Forbidden Lores.

You certainly deserve extra cost, but we're reaching into the realm of the ridiculous there.

Let's take something that makes sense: A Sergeant wants to use his pistol and chainsword together proficiently. We'll say he was lucky and rolled 15s both on BS and WS.

So, Getting to 40 in each costs 750[bS]+500[WS], Then buying Two-Weapon[ballistic] for 1200, Two-Weapon[Melee] for 600. Then 800 for Sidearm.

Total cost: 3850. 10 sessions with 150 left over.

A Commissar has Finesse. For these purchases that's their only difference. He saves 250 on the stats, pays 600 for Two-Weapon[ballistic], 300 for the melee version, and also pays 800 for Sidearm.

Total cost: 2700. 7 sessions with 100 left over.

There should be a difference, but quadruple price seems quite excessive; even for tier ones.

A Sergeant wants to use his pistol and chainsword together proficiently.

I think that's where our difference is. You say proficiently, I'd call that "perfectly". For me, Proficience starts at Ambidextrous that allows you to have both in hand and use the more appropriate one without switching. And for most sergeants, that will be enough. A sergeant is mostly supposed to stay alive, give orders and handle communications/social play. Wading into melee is bonus that can be achieved somewhen late in the career - that's what Tier 3 with medium Aptitudes means to me. Additionally, it's not like you have to put down those 3850 XP in one go. You build it up bit by bit and every step of the way, you gain something from it - higher chances to hit, then new combat options with melee and ranged weapons (a strong sergeant could get a combat knife and a lascarbine in addition to the laspistol and chainsword and use two ranged or two melee weapons when the situation warrants it) and finally Sidearm.

(Also, I'd assume many groups play more than 4 hours, thus gaining more XP than expected)

Cifer said:

I think that's a bad assumption to make. Yes, some groups will play longer and earn more but I think you'd be better off assuming the baseline is just that… a baseline.

I agree that the costs are too high. They effectively price some advances out of reach, which kills the "open" nature of the system. While I like the aptitude system as a concept, it should not be used as a tool to bludgeon players into designing the characters the game designers want to make. If you're going to do that, be honest and go back to the class/level system from Dark Heresy. If, instead, you're going to have an open system… even a weighted open system… then have one that let's my players make the characters they want to make.

Gotta agree with Cifer here. People set the bar way too high with two weapon fighting. Its entirely reasonable for someone to not focus on the attack with both options, and instead just have a melee weapon and pistol ready, and attack with either at the appropriate range. There is no need to call that style "unproficient."

All it takes to do that is just ambidextrous, which is just going to be cheap.

The problem we're seeing is how easy it would be to game something like the aptitude system if you allow players too much choice in it. If you just say "here player, choose 9 aptitudes," you're going to see alot of BS, finesse, toughness, defence, offence, agility, willpower, Fieldcraft, Perception characters.

KommissarK said:

I submit that depends entirely on your players.

I guess it's a basic tension of game design: do I try to design a game to prevent muchkins from gaming the system (which is impossible) or do I try to design a game to allow immersive roleplayers to freely explore interesting character concepts within the setting (which is also impossible).