Need Help on Character Making

By Timofeo, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

I am getting confused fast making a character, is there any advice out there?

So far I have picked Race

Feral World Human

Stats

WS: 35 BS: 35 S: 42 T: 37 A: 30 INT: 26 PER: 37 WP: 25 FEL: 28

Career Guardsmen, spent XP on Strength, Weapon Skill,

Swim and Awarness but I am confused does this gain me the next box Trained? since they are already marked Basic?

Next up on equipment what does 1D10+2E mean?, whats with the giant list of weapons trainings whats Basic Weapon Training SP?

IDK but thank you to anyone who attempts to guide me

If I recall, Basic was for those skills you can try most functions of untrained. Getting skills as Basics meant you lacked full technical training but can at least usually roll on it without a penalty. I'd have to find the physical copy of the book if its even still intact to get the old DH rules in my head again though, so hopefully someone can correct me.

The next part though, THAT I can help ya with. You're looking at weapons. That right there, it be your damage.

To get the whole line up for you, let's make up a little example from a different weapons list [don't worry where its from; just a pair of weapons from black crusade, statwise].

Las Weapons

Laspistol Pistol 30m S/2/- 1d10+2E Pen 0 Clip 30 Reload Full Reliable 1.5kg, <Price somewhere here>, Availability

Long-Las Basic 150m S/-/- 1d10+3E Pen 1 Clip 40 Reload Full Reliable, Accurate, Felling[4], 4.5kg <price?sure why not>, Availability

so. First off we've got weapon names. Easy and straightforward. Look up their descriptions, since they could have special rules not listed in the list, or perhaps a picture or at least a little bit about what it is and where its from. Whole galaxy's worth of killing implements out there, and picking your weapons can really change up your combat [or even fashion] style.

Next is the class. Pistols are pistols. One-hand, rarely need a second to help ya hold it [the gun's description will warn you, like some handcannons], can be fired in melee, almost guaranteed to have relatively crappy range and relatively low power for its category. Its a pistol. Basic Weapons are standard two-handed things. Rifles, even some of the smaller launcher weapons. Lots of basic models of their category have their name ending in "gun". Like Lasgun. Plasma Gun. Melta Gun. Gun Gun. Here, the Long-Las is actually a sniper weapon.

Next up is range. Hope you like metric; most of the world does.

Here it gets different. You didn't ask and so probably already figured it out, but I may as well for the sake of completion: your Rate of Fire options. S is single shot [s indicates yes you can, a dash [-] would mean not with this thing. Like some big autofire guns you really can't do this with]. Second up is your Semi-Auto rate. In this fire mode you get an extra hit every 20% you hit by [two Degrees of success], up to a max number of total hits [including the first one] of the number here. You of course expend this much ammunition minimum to use this way. Finally is Full-Auto [extra hit every degree, which tends to bring you happiness unless its aimed at you. Often, its aimed at you. Hope you have some too then].

Xd10+Y <Letter> is your damage and type. Roll X d10s [plus one and dropping the lowest when a weapon's specials say "tearing"], add Y, add them all together, and if any of those you kept were a ten, go look up the Righteous Fury rule for improved contentment and general bien-etre. The E there indicates its Energy damage: this matters with some armour upgrades, enemy resistances, but that's rare. USUALLY? tells ya what critical chart you check on once it goes past a target's wound stock. Energy's got the crappier one, but let's face it, most [and some of the damned best ones too] weapons have this type of damage. X is for Explosive, I is for Impact, R is for Rending.

Penetration is Armour penetration. Its how much of that AP value you bypass. KIND OF like damage against armoured foes, but doesn't help against Toughness Bonus, so its inferior in several ways. Still, that armour soaks up that much less off your attack, so that's something at least.

you've got your magazine sizes of course. total shots in there. the reload value, usually half, full, or several Fulls, is the actions it takes to reload the weapon with fresh glee. Plasma run out in combat? not at all a good day.

Then you've got your specials. Look up their little rules, individually for any weapon that interests you. [Felling, in case you don't have the newest books, just ignores that much "unnatural toughness". kind of like Penetration but against space marines and mutants and a whole lot of nasty crap. Still, straight damage would do better once again, eh?

Weight. also in metric. Cost, in thrones. Availability; how hard it is to get that. Affects your "I want this bloody thing" rolls. Becomes THE value outside of Dark Heresy, where everyone's running tabs or ship or army budgets of such size that ordering just one of something becomes trivial, and the standard size is "by the crate".

Finally, remember how the weapons were split by category [las, plasma, melta, bolt, chain, power, shocking, and so on, etc, and whatnot, oh also exotics but each of those is an individual proficiency]? Training: Las:Basic: means you're trained in basic-class las weapons. SP: Pistol would be solid projectile [but not bolt, that's more gyrojet] guns, like autopistols or assault cannons of all sorts. Without it you take -20 for not being trained with your attacks.

hope that helps a bit.

There are several skills listed as you having basic training in, such as dodge for example. Basic skills mean that you can use the skill at half of the related characteristic for it, so if you try to dodge and you don't have the skill you would use half of your Agility characteristic which would be 15% instead of the full 30%. When you buy the skill dodge your skill roll should be at 30%, that's if you didn't buy any Ag advances at that point, when you try to dodge range and melee attacks.