Just wondering, how about making Medicae - First Aid a Willpower based test? To represent neccesity of coolheadness and quick and rational usage of knowledge in a very short time. Far fetched or not?

I think if we were designing a similar game we could justify it under any of A, I, P, or WP -- maybe even F ("hang in there, buddy!").

I'm just trying to understand how this game is designed.

Carrying Capacities are a little low. You've finally, happily, done a lot to fix the weapon weights a little, or at least the backpacks, but right now Sb4 can only carry 30kg?

I'd suggest, if you wanna keep that table growth, adding half toughness bonus to the value.

No, scratch that, empty missile launchers are still 35kg with 1kg munitions, Laser sights are a whole kilogram, 2kg counterweights might be a little high. Probably a multiplier for it and Reinforced instead of adding 2 and 3kg to a little knife. Shouldn't the weight of the melee attachment be that of, I dunno, the attached weapon?

Right now a Balanced, Reinforced Knife is 6kg. Six Kilograms.

Of your average human's 20kg limit.

I'm just trying to understand how this game is designed.

I think the lead designers are still working on that too.

Carrying Capacities are a little low. You've finally, happily, done a lot to fix the weapon weights a little, or at least the backpacks, but right now Sb4 can only carry 30kg?

I'd suggest, if you wanna keep that table growth, adding half toughness bonus to the value.

No, scratch that, empty missile launchers are still 35kg with 1kg munitions, Laser sights are a whole kilogram, 2kg counterweights might be a little high. Probably a multiplier for it and Reinforced instead of adding 2 and 3kg to a little knife. Shouldn't the weight of the melee attachment be that of, I dunno, the attached weapon?

Right now a Balanced, Reinforced Knife is 6kg. Six Kilograms.

Of your average human's 20kg limit.

Yea, currently, like in most RPG's, the weight of the weaponry is ridiculously high, especially for the melee weapons. In real life, the biggest zweihanders used in combat weighed around 5 lb. (a bit under 2.3 kg for you metric folk). That's pretty much the heaviest swords could get. Now, you can assume that the power/chain stuff might add 1 or 2 kg, but that still means melee weapons are more or less 2x too heavy. The guns are also around 2x too heavy (for reference, an AK, which is a pretty heavy assault riffle, is 3-3.5 kg depending on the stock composition, and the larger battle riffles like the G3 and FN FAL are around 4 kg, which is a weight suitable for something like the Armageddon pattern, which is sturdier and fires a larger round). The heavy stubber is 30 kg, when real life GPMG's are between 9-13 kg, the venerable M2 being 38 kg; depending on the frame of reference, it is either correctly weighed, or way too heavy. The specialized weapons, like the melta and plasma guns, are even worse, clocking in at 15 and 18 kg, for things that are meant to be fired without bracing. The people carrying the previously mentioned GPMG's usually dislike lugging it around all day, and you can't expect them to properly engage targets while standing, and those weigh 40% less.

I was excited, but now disappointed. Just so many tables that need to be referenced during play. A different table to roll on for each different type of peril? Wound tables for every wound type at every wound location for every single damaging hit, not just for criticals? Can't even begin to imagine how long combat is going to take. Pages and pages of talent trees to slog through?

I was hoping to test this with my group in a couple of weeks, but I almost don't see this as even being playable. And everything, especially the armory, just seems so dumbed down and simplified.

I need to read over it more carefully to assess it fairly, as I did just spend money on it, but so far this is just about the exact opposite of everything I wanted in a 2e, which was just continued building on the refinements introduced in BC and other WH40k lines.

Vaeron, you appear to have my exact thoughts on this entire beta.

On the carry capacity issue, i think the problem is confusing and conflating together weight and encumbrance .

In real life i'm fairly big and robust, so i can for example easily lift and carry a queen-sized mattress. However, i'm EXTREMELY encumbered when doing so.

I've always favoured encumbrance (in any game) as a limit to what the PCs are carrying, but i think divorcing that from weight is a good thing.

Wound tables for every wound type at every wound location for every single damaging hit, not just for criticals?

I wish people would read the rules, and find that this isn't the case for the majority of combats.

Mooks don't use the wound tables at all, and elites die on crits. It's only Masters and PCs that'll need to look at it much.

There are many things wrong with dark heresy 0.2, here are some of them.

Character creation has become the death of flavor. Just look at some of these names: Sage, mystic, seeker and warrior of all things? These are names suited for a generic fantasy game. Where is my techpriest, arbitrator and Scum? The fact that you can combine anything with anything is also dumb, not to mention psykerism being open to any one. Speaking of psykers, why are they no longer scarred from their training?

Talent trees would have been ok if they hadn't been so poorly constructed. Now you're forced to take a bunch of useless stuff to reach the good talents. Ranks no longer have cool fluff names associated with them. The fact that rank 4+ acolytes can easily outstrip space marines in terms of raw stats is dumb. I would have hoped FFG would have learned from Ascension, but it seems they decided to merge it with DH core. What a surprise then that the result is a huge mess.

The new system with skills and subskills is alright, but I don't see why this reduced the amount of skills. It should have increased it since more marginal skills could have been brought 'back', ie why is search and awareness still merged and hide and move silent still merged into sneaking? Also, Common lore is perception now, and forbidden is willpower? that makes no sense.

Why must I learn to disarm before learning how to counterattack, and what does that have to do with parrying simple projectiles? Why must I learn assassin strike before takedown? Every tree is similarly stupid, enforcing poorly conceived prerequisites for seemingly no reason.

The new carrying capacity table is just too low. Making it only depend on strength makes little sense either since it's about how far you can carry something, not what you can lift.

Weapon quality doesn't even seem to do anything any more. The weapons in general are a huge mess. Did you know that frag grenades to E damage? After all, when I think grenade I don't think

(I) Impact: Blunt force, brute explosions, and
concussive strength mark these weapons

No, I think

(E) Energy: Using beams of electromagnetic power
and concentrated bursts of photons, these weapons burn
and scar with horrible effect.

But above all what I actually think is Where is the Explosive damage type?

Range now being a hard cap and not a large penalty to hit dice is also bad. Shotguns with spray is also hilarious. Warhammers do about as much damage on average as a power sword. Armor is bought in bulk, so can't mix it in a clear and logical fashion.

Psykers yet again use the boring WP check instead of the dynamic and interesting xd10 system. Several of the most interesting powers have been removed. Each school having its own perils table is cool. The fact that phenomena no longer exist and that the perils are overall a lot more lenient is bad too. Psykers used to be this great vessels with immense power but every time they cast a spell everyone would be a little bit worried that the psyker would get swalloed by the warp or summon some party wiping daemon. Now they're much more 'meh'.

Action points seem like they could be a nice replacement. But I don't really see why time has been spent replacing the fully functional full/half turn system. Keeping track of wounds just seems like a huge hassle, especially if there's lots of people involved in the combat. FUREH is now an instakill or something that doesn't even have an effect until next hit. Being on fire does very little damage and is put out more easily. Fear tests are now rather toothless and boring. The intro text claims a character’s response to a fearful sight is unpredictable, when in truth, its completely deterministic.

The fact that FAILING to know forbidden knowledge gives corruption is ridiculous. At least mutations/malignancies are still ok, even if there are fewer results.

Your biggest problem is including pointless rules noone wants nor uses.

Ditch encumbrance altogether. Who on earth spends their time counting up weights and measures. This is a roleplaying game not a maths exercise.

There is way too much info/stats for equipment. Way way way too much. Players are not going to spend their time poring over Armoury listings for their cahracters. They don't want shopping lists; they want to play. There may be the odd group of players that are into such things and have all the books themselves, but when you factor in all the stuff that gets added per supplement you are essentially giving your players a metric ton of material to read through and weigh up - before they evne start playing. I get that 40k fetishises equipment as wargear, but there has to be a much simpler way to proceed otherwise you are wasting your time and mine as a GM.

Don't bother with experience either. You have a system that is based around starting players being weaker, which is off putting, and at higher levels, they don't ever fail. This is because it's the only way to make a % system work. If you start the player off with decent skill scores they improve too quickly. If you start them off low they fail too often. You need a different approach entirely. This also frees up space from needless xp tables and charts. Just have a simpler improvement system that doesn't revolve around increasing scores and numbers.

Don't have pointless skills like Operate/Pilot - particularly when you can't be bothered to include rules for vehicles (which when included in later games are a massive headache).

There is way too much crunch in this game. It is unecessary. Pages and pages of critical hit charts? Seriously?

This isn't a miniatures game. If you want to create a miniatures game, like Inquisitor, then go for it. But roleplaying games just don't really work that way: you can't do a half baked game otherwise because it just becoems a mess of weights and measures.

Carrying Capacities are a little low. You've finally, happily, done a lot to fix the weapon weights a little, or at least the backpacks, but right now Sb4 can only carry 30kg?

I'd suggest, if you wanna keep that table growth, adding half toughness bonus to the value.

No, scratch that, empty missile launchers are still 35kg with 1kg munitions, Laser sights are a whole kilogram, 2kg counterweights might be a little high. Probably a multiplier for it and Reinforced instead of adding 2 and 3kg to a little knife. Shouldn't the weight of the melee attachment be that of, I dunno, the attached weapon?

Right now a Balanced, Reinforced Knife is 6kg. Six Kilograms.

Of your average human's 20kg limit.

Yea, currently, like in most RPG's, the weight of the weaponry is ridiculously high, especially for the melee weapons. In real life, the biggest zweihanders used in combat weighed around 5 lb. (a bit under 2.3 kg for you metric folk). That's pretty much the heaviest swords could get. Now, you can assume that the power/chain stuff might add 1 or 2 kg, but that still means melee weapons are more or less 2x too heavy. The guns are also around 2x too heavy (for reference, an AK, which is a pretty heavy assault riffle, is 3-3.5 kg depending on the stock composition, and the larger battle riffles like the G3 and FN FAL are around 4 kg, which is a weight suitable for something like the Armageddon pattern, which is sturdier and fires a larger round). The heavy stubber is 30 kg, when real life GPMG's are between 9-13 kg.

The AK4 (Swedish version of the G3) weighs in at 5.3kg with a full mag, 4,5 unloaded, the AK5 (assault rifle) weighs in at 4,5, with a full mag. GPMGs varies greatly in weight, as you are not limited in the same way by magazine capacity, but the swedish MG using assault rifle ammo weighs in at about 11kg and the older model, using battle rifle ammo, weighs in at about 13,5 IIRC.

When I did military service we used the AK4, the AK5 was being phased in but had not taken over yet, and were expected to carry the gun, 8 mags, vest, helmet, water etc. If we were doing a long march we also carried our backpacks with full field kit.

Just the gun and ammo weighs in at 11,9kg, the vest was at least as heavy as a loaded gun. 20kg seems lowballing it for an average human, especially with what the designers think a gun weighs.

Your biggest problem is including pointless rules noone wants nor uses.

Ditch encumbrance altogether. Who on earth spends their time counting up weights and measures. This is a roleplaying game not a maths exercise.

There is way too much info/stats for equipment. Way way way too much. Players are not going to spend their time poring over Armoury listings for their cahracters. They don't want shopping lists; they want to play. There may be the odd group of players that are into such things and have all the books themselves, but when you factor in all the stuff that gets added per supplement you are essentially giving your players a metric ton of material to read through and weigh up - before they evne start playing. I get that 40k fetishises equipment as wargear, but there has to be a much simpler way to proceed otherwise you are wasting your time and mine as a GM.

Don't bother with experience either. You have a system that is based around starting players being weaker, which is off putting, and at higher levels, they don't ever fail. This is because it's the only way to make a % system work. If you start the player off with decent skill scores they improve too quickly. If you start them off low they fail too often. You need a different approach entirely. This also frees up space from needless xp tables and charts. Just have a simpler improvement system that doesn't revolve around increasing scores and numbers.

Don't have pointless skills like Operate/Pilot - particularly when you can't be bothered to include rules for vehicles (which when included in later games are a massive headache).

There is way too much crunch in this game. It is unecessary. Pages and pages of critical hit charts? Seriously?

This isn't a miniatures game. If you want to create a miniatures game, like Inquisitor, then go for it. But roleplaying games just don't really work that way: you can't do a half baked game otherwise because it just becoems a mess of weights and measures.

You've just described things that most people I know really enjoy in RPGs in general, not just Dark Heresy. At best your point about weight limits is valid for some players, but I know a few that even really like those sort of rules (plus, the rules for vehicles are in Dark Heresy 2, which is what is being discussed here).

If this is how you like to play, then fair enough, but don't try and say that no-one is interested in these thing, because that is obviously untrue.

And unfortunately, there are rules for vehicles.

Even though I think thats space that could have best been spent on something else.

Actually, I am not sure- I am torn.

Maybe a couple of lines for vehicles... But this is just too much space for a game that's likely not going to use them nearly as much as any other of the line.

Car chase is fun from time to time- but do we really need to include it every session now?

The XP and trees system are decent enough.

It's true though that sometimes a % system causes progression to go from "everyone is utterly incompetent and succeeds half the time with good tools and conditions" to "how could you ever fail", but that's all in the numbers.

Let's take a look at the possible numbers here:

25+2d10 gives us a range of 27~45, or 24~48 with the divinations [24~50 for perception]. An Ordinary job is +10%, the right tools should be giving us +10% as well, or +20% for the realy good stuff [combitools, etc], and the basic 'professional' level of a skill should be another +10% [Good]. 54~78% chance of success for regular work by a regular guy with regular tools who does this regularly for a living? That is kind of low. At the same time, +30 skill on 74~98 characteristic with +20 tools and +10 from a talent nets a lord inquisitor gets you 134~158% before difficulty. That? That's high.

However, there is generally no penalty for trying again, and this should be taken into account. It also has to be taken into account by the players and Gm, which may be more difficult. We could, with this, consider a basic work requiring one hour minimum to "average" about two hours, and base time, workday and all on this.

The only recommendations I'd have here are as follows:

-Be **** clear about how all of this works in-universe, regarding what difficulties oughta be, that regular professionals have their bloody tools; it's only rare for an inquisitor or non techpriest acolyte to be lugging around a combitool that should've gone to a new techpriest is all, and all that in the skills chapter so the majority of Gms and players understand that +0 is "This is difficult" conditions for a check, not "what we usually have to fix"

This is actually rarer than it sounds. A lot of Gms and players though cannot seem to wrap their minds around this, and so "+0%" becomes the base in other % systems such as Hackmaster, where average job is actually supposed to be at +40% and professional grade tools; not the hobbyist stuff but good solid wrenches,etc, are +10%.

-Lower the maximum number of stat purchases a little. I'd suggest either slight diminishing returns [Purchases above +25 from initial value grant 3% each; wording here is to not punish those spending their influence stat through those talents/abilities if they try to recover it], or capping the purchases at +30 outright[you'll have to burn five influence to get your +30 back if you were capped, can't purchase it back if you're still at +28]. Brings the extremely high maximum back down to a far more managable level.

And unfortunately, there are rules for vehicles.

Even though I think thats space that could have best been spent on something else.

Actually, I am not sure- I am torn.

Maybe a couple of lines for vehicles... But this is just too much space for a game that's likely not going to use them nearly as much as any other of the line.

Car chase is fun from time to time- but do we really need to include it every session now?

I'm not sure they're intended for every session, but it's a pretty standard part of 40k fluff to have people driving around in a chimera from time to time (and is a good way to mix up combats every so often), which you'd want reflected in the rules.

Is there anything specific you'd consider a better use of space in the book?

One that always rubbed me the wrong way; the exclusion of Rhinos. For how often the Acolytes end up working with the Arbites, I think their go-to vehicle never got stats outside of Deathwatch.

Well, a lot of tables got cut in replacement from those rules.

From extra-cybernetics, which would much closer to the full or usefulness in a Spy game, to the minor/major mutation and insanity layout [even though the malignancy table has been moved to two tables, its still one page short from the other system, which was more laid out], to considerably more fluff attached to even less starting classes. Less Psy powers. Less combat modifiers. No rules for "crafting". None for poisons at all. No rules for contacts. A LOT less weapons.

Its true that they added a number of things [a table per psy power, so an extra three tables, for example]- but they've lost a considerable amount which would have been better off then a detailed Chimera, which ultimately is unlikely to show up in a hive setting for example, or at least rarely show, which is the "primary setting" of a DH game.

Its not the main setting, or only setting, I agree- but when all of the stuff I've mentioned earlier can be used every session and fits into the spirit and theme of the game, and also helps build characters and stick with them- the Chimera and the rules for it are just that- a one thing thing, which the players are going to be forced to leave behind as soon as they enter a dark temple or such. [Their contacts on the other hand, provide hundreds of leads, opportunities, RP potential that does not necessarily cease to play a part even if they are planets apart.]

The Bloodlust malignancy needs looked at. Our melee guy with power sword racked up 60+ corruption in just two combat encounters using whirlwind. Granted, they were close quarters fights with a lot of melee going on, but...

Pretty much what I've been saying

Warp Regen is terrible as well. Gives 1d5 Corruption per wound... Your not going to survive long, if at all, once you've taken that.

Witch-mark, in specific cases, could result in a ridiculously high Psy-rating. But these issues need to go into another thread [The Malignancy thread, likely ]

The biggest disappointments for me thus far (only read the character creation part of the book):

- Maintenance of Ranks (and as someone said already without any flavor/names)

- Bland role names

- Talent Trees, as oposed to the system used on BC/OW.

Just wondering, how about making Medicae - First Aid a Willpower based test? To represent neccesity of coolheadness and quick and rational usage of knowledge in a very short time. Far fetched or not?

Howdy,

Perfectly reasonable.

Cheers,

Ken

Carrying Capacities are a little low. You've finally, happily, done a lot to fix the weapon weights a little, or at least the backpacks, but right now Sb4 can only carry 30kg?

I'd suggest, if you wanna keep that table growth, adding half toughness bonus to the value.

No, scratch that, empty missile launchers are still 35kg with 1kg munitions, Laser sights are a whole kilogram, 2kg counterweights might be a little high. Probably a multiplier for it and Reinforced instead of adding 2 and 3kg to a little knife. Shouldn't the weight of the melee attachment be that of, I dunno, the attached weapon?

Right now a Balanced, Reinforced Knife is 6kg. Six Kilograms.

Of your average human's 20kg limit.

Howdy,

The weapons weights are just OFF.

Cheers,

Ken

Vaeron, you appear to have my exact thoughts on this entire beta.

Howdy,

I concur. I wish that I waited to read these threads before I purchased the Beta - I downlaoded it on announcement day as my group is into DH/RT/DW/BC. It is a mess, but even when it is cleaned up, I really think that it goes in the wrong direction (especially concerning compatibility with the other lines).

Cheers,

Ken

I've noticed more than a couple of people complaining about the bland names for roles. There's a pretty obvious reason for this, though. They ARE generic roles. They're not intended to represent a specific profession, they're intended to be broad categories. Keeping things unspecific gives players a lot more free reign to interpret things in ways that work for their character concept.