[First Impressions]: Negatives

By ThatGrumpyScotsman, in Dark Heresy Second Edition Beta

Since this is a Beta Test, I thought it could be constructive to have a thread dedicated to things that we don't like in the new rules. I also think a Positives thread would be a good idea, as letting the devs know what we think is good is just as important. Feel free to share your own criticisms if you have any!

But anyway, here are my own initial thoughts. Specifically, these have come about after reading over the character creation system.

1) Skill limitations:
Characters begin play with too few skills at the point of creation. They only begin play with 500 experience, and as such it will be very difficult to make a compelling and multi-faceted character.
2) Background choice defines your skills:
Also, your skills shouldn't be tied purely to your background choice. This stifles character creation as it means your narrative backstory can be limited by the strict limitations imposed by the game.
For example, if I want to play a Highborn Warrior who comes from a Ministorum background, I'd only be able to use flame weapons. This is especially troublesome when you combine this with the lack of starting skills your character can amass & the limited starting experience (400 exp per weapon training!).
Ideally, your role should define what you begin play with in terms of combat skills and talent. Your 'background' should be full of more flavourful, non combat skills and talents.
2) No Sororitas/Sisters:
The Sororitas background should be there. A lot of people will port over characters from DH 1st edition, and it would be very beneficial if you'd let them do it. I understand you might want to include them in a sourcebook, but I feel this is unfair on loyal fans. A later sororitas book could still expand on the concept, after all.
Edited by ThatGrumpyScotsman

1) how is this different from DH1? You don't start with much there either. Not complaining, just want an elaboration.

2) this has been an issue in previous games as well, with BC actually giving you personality traits defining stats. Personally had to houserule that to avoid horrid characters.

3) not sure how I feel about sororitas, had alot of issues with power armour, not having met anyone who RP's one convincingly etc. But kind of sad that people who like them will miss out.


quick question: do you see this creating huge problems for the supplements to dark heresy v1 or can conversions be made iwth relative ease even for novice GM's/players? Mostly asking due to a new group that might start up and alot of them are new.

1) how is this different from DH1? You don't start with much there either. Not complaining, just want an elaboration.

2) this has been an issue in previous games as well, with BC actually giving you personality traits defining stats. Personally had to houserule that to avoid horrid characters.

3) not sure how I feel about sororitas, had alot of issues with power armour, not having met anyone who RP's one convincingly etc. But kind of sad that people who like them will miss out.

quick question: do you see this creating huge problems for the supplements to dark heresy v1 or can conversions be made iwth relative ease even for novice GM's/players? Mostly asking due to a new group that might start up and alot of them are new.

1) In DH1 you got a lot more skills, I'd say. Some of these careers only start with 3 skills.
2) Mm. This is even more severe this DH2, from the looks of it.
3) I'm not saying give them power armour - especially not at character creation! The Inquisitor's Handbook didn't, and that worked fine. I'm more meaning that they deserve a background slot, as none of the others really fit.

Aaaaand... I'd say this is incompatible with DH1 rules, but not the background. With some elbow grease, you could convert concepts over.

Edited by ThatGrumpyScotsman

Advances in DH2.0 are very expensive.

BYE

On Sisters: Shrine World/Ministorum/Warrior. Romping about in Power Armor with a Bolter at the get-go is a bit much. If you want to be a Sister, Novitiates (low-ranking Sisters) use Lasguns and Flak/Carapace.

It says that all characters begin with all the Skills in the game. Listed creation Skills are Skills that the character starts with at Rank 2. So they have more Skills than in Dark Heresy 1, but advances are more expensive.

My negatives:

  • Sniper Rifle to the face=impossible to kill with (unless a 10 is rolled against the fodder NPCs)
  • Storm rule needs to clarify whether it overcomes the RoF cap on # of hits
  • The gun ranges are random guesswork and need to all be increased (to varying degrees) even considering things like telescopic sights and Marksman talent
  • The psychic powers need to not be badly copy pasted from the 40k Big Rule Book
  • The wonky untouchable rules are out of touch with the lore

It says that all characters begin with all the Skills in the game. Listed creation Skills are Skills that the character starts with at Rank 2. So they have more Skills than in Dark Heresy 1, but advances are more expensive.

True but false. Rank 1 of any skill is "untrained" and gives a -10 to use the skill, with the GM having the option to completely disallow the skill use if he feels an untrained character couldn't do it. In short, Rank 1 is the equivalent of an Untrained Basic Skill from DH1.

It says that all characters begin with all the Skills in the game. Listed creation Skills are Skills that the character starts with at Rank 2. So they have more Skills than in Dark Heresy 1, but advances are more expensive.

True but false. Rank 1 of any skill is "untrained" and gives a -10 to use the skill, with the GM having the option to completely disallow the skill use if he feels an untrained character couldn't do it. In short, Rank 1 is the equivalent of an Untrained Basic Skill from DH1.

My understanding was that Untrained Basic Skills were simply halved when testing. I feel that -10 is more forgiving than half. Average characteristic is 36 (25 + 5.5 + 5.5) and so testing against 26 is preferable to testing against 18.

My negatives:

  • Sniper Rifle to the face=impossible to kill with (unless a 10 is rolled against the fodder NPCs)

This is an issue of mine with removing the Wounds system.

It's now impossible to take someone out with a well-placed shot.

My negatives:

  • Sniper Rifle to the face=impossible to kill with (unless a 10 is rolled against the fodder NPCs)

This is an issue of mine with removing the Wounds system.

It's now impossible to take someone out with a well-placed shot.

Its easy to House Rule (as I'm sure most will) but the idea that rolling a 9 on the damage die with a sniper rifle head shot and having talents like Eye of Vengeance and Crippling Shot still doesn't kill a human is silly. The operator-type characters who double tap in the upper torso with precision fire are overshadowed by low skill characters who just spray.

Two shots will always be better than one shot in this new system. Remember that a hit on an already Wounded target gets a +5 on the table.

It says that all characters begin with all the Skills in the game. Listed creation Skills are Skills that the character starts with at Rank 2. So they have more Skills than in Dark Heresy 1, but advances are more expensive.

My full complaints for now:

  • The new Wounds system creates a lot of trouble. Single shot weapons are now inferior to Full-Auto, again. It's impossible to kill someone with a single Sniper Rifle shot, or indeed one shot from almost anything. It also makes combat a slog with so much to keep track of. "The mook dies at 0 Wounds" is much more elegant than "the mook is at Wound 19 and has Blood Loss (7), Fatigue 3, and is nauseated."
  • We've returned to Talent trees for the first time since Deathwatch. Why? They're outdated and clunky, cluttering the character sheet with unwanted Talents. BC/OW handled this much better.
  • The switch to AP instead of Half/Full/Free makes cross-line conversion an utter pain. I also can't seem to wrap my head around how RoF works anymore, though this might just be me.
  • Toughness is still better than Armour.
  • Accurate quality lost its bonus damage, further making Full-Auto better than Single Shots. I thought we fixed this in OW, guys.
  • Untouchables got nerfed, lost their Fellowship/Interaction penalties, and are overpriced for how weak they are. Make them immune to psychic abilities like they've literally always been.
  • Sanctioned trait does almost nothing. Psykers who have served in the Imperial Guard are doomed to be rogue, because Sanctioned cannot be bought with xp.
  • The cap on Characteristic Advances is now "equal to rank" rather than "five total." This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Rank 10 Assassins have no right to be rocking 95 Agility.
  • Removing "+SB" from Melee damage profiles for no reason. Now a Great Weapon swung by an Ogryn will hurt just as much as one swung by a normal fella. Punching (1d5+SB) outpaces the damage from a Knife (1d10-2). A normal person punching will do 4 damage minimum (average Strength is 30) while the worst roll on a knife does either 0 or one damage. The best roll on a knife (8 damage) is as strong as the best punch from an average human being (also 8 damage). See the issue here?

tl;dr AP does nothing but hurt cross-line conversion, Full Auto is back to being inherently better than every other option, it's literally impossible to kill someone with a single shot from almost every weapon, melee is now pants-on-head retarded, Untouchables are not what they've always been, combat is still bloated and slow.

Don't think they removed SB from melee.

Don't think they removed SB from melee.

Some damage profiles have the dice + SB, while others do not.

Knife: 1d10-2 ®

Unarmed: 1d5+Sb (I)

Chainsword: 1d10+Sb ® (Which seems a bit weak...)

Eviscerator: 2d10+8 ®

Advances in DH2.0 are very expensive.

BYE

As they should be.

Bye.

If advances are going to be expensive, then should not the gaps between ranks be increased?

And why should they be expensive?

BYE

I'm not quite sure I understand, EVERYONE starts with EVERYTHING and advances are expensive? That sounds like almost all characters will be bland as hell when it comes to character diversity. Did I misread or misunderstand stuff mentioned in this thread?

Thanks Plushy! I haven't read the rules yet, so it was quite insightful.

My comments to some of your comments (which matter me most, so far):

1. I, for one, strongly advocate for the Action Points system. Despite the difficulties with the conversion, it was plainly retarted to start with, to give an equal amount half-actions (as half-actions are actually Action Points but named differently) to everyone regardless of the agility or other stats. It always baffled me how a drunk Administratum Clerk has rules-wise the same amount of 'action' as a Dark Eldar assassin? So, introducing APs is a big system improvement for me, really.

2. Toughness better than armor . If this is not yet fixed, this is very bad. This issue still stems as far as from the days of the wfrp 1st edition, and it has not been dealt with in any wfrp game until today. It makes me even think, whether it's a d100 system flaw, or it just a particular wfrp curse. NEEDS FIXING .

3. Untouchables nerfed - this is plain stupid. As I've already noted elsewhere, the new revision simply contradicts the 40k basics. This will be the first thing to houserule this out, if this makes its way to the final version. NEEDS FIXING .

4. Melee . As you put it, this is plain crazy. I would rather think that SB was omitted by pure error, than it's a intended game design decision. NEEDS FIXING .

I'm not quite sure I understand, EVERYONE starts with EVERYTHING and advances are expensive? That sounds like almost all characters will be bland as hell when it comes to character diversity. Did I misread or misunderstand stuff mentioned in this thread?

Its just a way to avoid the confusion that was caused by trained/untrained/advanced/basic.

All skills are now just ranks.

All skill ranks are measured from 1-5 (there is no such thing as rank 0).

Rank 1 = -10

Rank 2 = 0

Rank 3 = 10

There is no concept of "this can't be made untrained," instead the GM has total say in if a check is too complext to even attempt.

Rank advances are kinda expensive, but there are fewer of them, and they mean quite a bit more than a +5 characteristic advance.

Its worth pointing out that DoSs/DoFs are calculated differently now too, its 1 DoS/DoF for passing the test, + difference in 10s digit between the target and the result.

Target 27, rolled 19 is 2 DoSs. Target 39 rolled 41 is 2 DoFs.

Edited by KommissarK

I'm not quite sure I understand, EVERYONE starts with EVERYTHING and advances are expensive? That sounds like almost all characters will be bland as hell when it comes to character diversity. Did I misread or misunderstand stuff mentioned in this thread?

Everyone starts with every skill... at untrained level, which is either -10 or if the GM deems so, impossible to make the roll altogether. It's a counter-intuitive way for a game to say that you don't, in fact, start with everything.

Actually, I think I have to rescind my whole "higher competence" comment from the other thread. All the things that made it seem like the game is about relatively competent people turn out to be a rather weak baseline under the new rules where the scaling is completely different.

If advances are going to be expensive, then should not the gaps between ranks be increased?

And why should they be expensive?

BYE

Cheap advances (for example, as they are arranged in wfrp, or even DH1) allowed players to quickly reach stat values which are close to 100. And that's in a percentile system. Therefore, by reaching 5th rank (on average) in DH, combined with skills, talents, background traits, circumstances and other buffs, the Acolytes become far too good to be fun to play.

I understand that this is an inherent problem of the d100 system, and I don't see any better solution other than to increase the advances cost. Obviously, FFG do neither.

Ah, so it's to simplify the whole "basic/advanced" etc debacle? Alright, doesn't sound that bad then.

Interesting, I'll have to see if the local group is interested in starting up a new game after the summer, though judging from some of the threads I'll have to do some houseruling unless the complaints have missed some rule nuances.

I'm glad!

My complaint with the AP system derives from a few issues. First, the issue you described is not fixed; everyone, from Administratum clerk to Eldar reaver to drunken Vindicare Assassin, seems to get 4 AP per turn. I could be wrong, but don't believe so.

Secondly; there were ways to get more Actions in the other systems. I recall at the very least Step Aside, which gave you an additional Reaction per turn. I think Dark Eldar has something for extra Half Actions per turn.

I don't like it because it hampers conversion work. Re-wording Talents and changing weapon profiles to fit the new RoF system is going to be a pain.

As for the melee issue; it seems deliberate. "+Sb" has never been listed in damage profiles before, instead being explained in the Melee Weapons section. This seems to have been done on purpose.