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?

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.

Well, in DH1 all character did possess all the Basic Skills, so no new problem with the diversity here.

But, what about Advanced Skills? Can I now roll against the language that I don't know? Or a Scholastic Lore? Or other skills which require knowledge to even make an attempt to succeed?

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?

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.

Well, in DH1 all character did possess all the Basic Skills, so no new problem with the diversity here.

But, what about Advanced Skills? Can I now roll against the language that I don't know? Or a Scholastic Lore? Or other skills which require knowledge to even make an attempt to succeed?

Its a matter of the GM saying "no, you can't do that."

Technically what you're asking falls under the Specialist(X) talents anyway. Knowledge as a skill is just called Rememberance, and is used to remember the things you know.

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.

Novice-level NPCs, which would appear to be your standard issue mooks, get 3 points per turn.

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.

You mean that the amount of APs is NOT equal to the Agility Bonus, but everyone now has 4 APs?

If this is so, then I'm disappointed. It's not different than having 2 APs, as in the DH.

***

All in all, without even reading the beta, it seems that this version is going to a recycle bin, unless re-worked. What a pity - I eagerly awaited the new DH edition, not a bunch of absurd rules, inconsistencies and imbalanced figures. On a good note, it's still better than going the wfrp3 edition way.

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.

You mean that the amount of APs is NOT equal to the Agility Bonus, but everyone now has 4 APs?

If this is so, then I'm disappointed. It's not different than having 2 APs, as in the DH.

***

All in all, without even reading the beta, it seems that this version is going to a recycle bin, unless re-worked. What a pity - I eagerly awaited the new DH edition, not a bunch of absurd rules, inconsistencies and imbalanced figures. On a good note, it's still better than going the wfrp3 edition way.

To be fair, you are looking in the thread discussing the negative thoughts people have on the game. Here you are going to see complaints.

There are some issues, sure, but I can say that the system at least appears to "work" that is to say, for most given situations, I can tell that the rules provide clear enough langauge to figure out whats going on. Realize, there are alot of complaints about how things work as opposed to how they used to, but not many actual questions.

everyone, from Administratum clerk to Eldar reaver to drunken Vindicare Assassin, seems to get 4 AP per turn

Of course, some can do more with those 4AP than others ...

Aha, like make the same amount of single shots or knife blows, for example.

Aha, like make the same amount of single shots or knife blows, for example.

Though those knife blows should be bare-knuckle punches

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.

You are wrong, but you're also not wrong. I realise that doesn't make any sense. What I mean is that you should look at the rules for the adversaries and generating encounters. It modifies the AP and wounds for various types of adversaries and clears up some of what you're saying. However, you're not wrong in that the 4 AP all the time (except in certain situations) is a big issue.

BYE

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.

You are wrong, but you're also not wrong. I realise that doesn't make any sense. What I mean is that you should look at the rules for the adversaries and generating encounters. It modifies the AP and wounds for various types of adversaries and clears up some of what you're saying. However, you're not wrong in that the 4 AP all the time (except in certain situations) is a big issue.

BYE

I dislike it because PCs can't break away from it.

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.

Hold on, I think we've got our wires crossed. When I said advances I meant things like the Talent and Skill prices, not advances to base characteristics. My bad, I was using the wrong terminology.

What you're saying though about the advances and reaching high levels quickly makes perfect sense and I agree with it.

BYE

combat is clunky as all hell i agree

the new wounding system, just doesn`t make much sense too me

they are trying too push the social and investiasion bits of DH (i don`t mind that)

char creation also feels.... well not restaned but just off.

i like too find my "role" while rp (or when party askes for set roles)

i don`t like this more or less set role set befor you even start

combat is clunky as all hell i agree

the new wounding system, just doesn`t make much sense too me

they are trying too push the social and investiasion bits of DH (i don`t mind that)

char creation also feels.... well not restaned but just off.

i like too find my "role" while rp (or when party askes for set roles)

i don`t like this more or less set role set befor you even start

Every 40kRPG has had some sort of career/class/role. You're pretty free to spend your xp.

Oh my..

-why are we returning to the bazilion clunky advancement tables for skills, characteristics and completely differently *cough, EotE ripoff, cough* styled talent trees for everyone with point costs for everyone? BC/OW style aptitudes werent perfect, but it was move into right direction and even if you dont agree, they saved copious amount of space, which could be used for more fluff or options. The single most dissapointing thing in Beta for me.

- Armoury Chapter and weapons Dmg/Pen and armours AP: basicaly echoing problems discussed in other threads.

-combat seems at least to me like unholy spawn of DH1, EotE (various criticals in combat are good... but not constantly and spread over ten long tables) and hate of old hardcore XCOM fan (AP points) against the new XCOM remake (two actions, respectively two HALF-actions *gasp* a turn). Still on the fence whether it should be shot thrice into head and burned, or salvaged with help of at least two Sister Hospitaller orders and magos fetishising chainsaws...

-probably the biggest one is simple and personal: for me, it is not as awesome as Only War Beta or as it should be. Yeah, depends, but this negative makes me the saddest

EDIT: just realised I mentioned two things as most dissapointing, sigh...

Inexplicable nerfs to most weapons. Plasma and Melta are feeling this hard.

Plasma Gun:

• OW: 1d10+7 E, Pen 6, Clip 40, Maximal (brings it up to 2d10+7, Pen 8), Overheat
• DH 2e: 1d10+12 E, Pen 2, Clip 6, Overload (brings it up to 1d10+14, Clip 3), Overheat

Meltagun:

• OW: 2d10+10 E, Pen 12, Clip 5, Melta (double Pen when fired at Short Range)
• DH 2e: 2d10+4 E, Pen 3, Clip 6, Melta (ignores AP when fired at half distance)

The new Melta rule is absurdly powerful, and makes Melta weapons either useless or instant death for everything. The old rule worked better.

The Pen values on both weapons are disgraceful. Overload is too dinky for the glorious Plasma Gun, and I don't really think the clip for it needed to be 1/6th of what it was.

Nevermind the fact that both of these weapons lack a Pen strong enough to ignore Flak armour. The venerable Plasma Gun now doesn't entirely penetrate the chest fabric of a sackcloth robe (Pen 2 vs AP 3).

First time poster, was excited to see the beta this morning. After reading it....maybe not so much

Skills. Are they too oversimplified? Now instead of buying a skill from DH1, you're buying 5-6 skills at a time. Also why are some related to random characteristics? Medicae being Agility based is wierd.

"I'm so fast, I can heal that bleeding hole in your arm. Never mind I'm as thick as two planks and will try and heal you with Genestealer Bait, I'm better at healing you than anyone else! Cos I'm fast"

Talent trees seem a bit clunky as well

Money. Where is my Throne Gelt gone? Having to save up and buy equipment, weapons made it feel like a accomplishment. Now its just "I'm a rank 1 guy. *Roll dice*. Sweet I got a melta gun and power armour cos I rolled well"

Action points and rate of fire stuff is confusing and uneccessary. As is having to "save" your action points in case you might need to evade an attack

Wounding rolls seems ridiculously hard to kill someone. And require huge amounts of note keeping. 3 Wounds on this arm, blood loss 2 on there as well, 1 wound head, stunned....

First time poster, was excited to see the beta this morning. After reading it....maybe not so much

Skills. Are they too oversimplified? Now instead of buying a skill from DH1, you're buying 5-6 skills at a time. Also why are some related to random characteristics? Medicae being Agility based is wierd.

"I'm so fast, I can heal that bleeding hole in your arm. Never mind I'm as thick as two planks and will try and heal you with Genestealer Bait, I'm better at healing you than anyone else! Cos I'm fast"

Talent trees seem a bit clunky as well

Money. Where is my Throne Gelt gone? Having to save up and buy equipment, weapons made it feel like a accomplishment. Now its just "I'm a rank 1 guy. *Roll dice*. Sweet I got a melta gun and power armour cos I rolled well"

Action points and rate of fire stuff is confusing and uneccessary. As is having to "save" your action points in case you might need to evade an attack

Wounding rolls seems ridiculously hard to kill someone. And require huge amounts of note keeping. 3 Wounds on this arm, blood loss 2 on there as well, 1 wound head, stunned....

Skill consolidation is welcome in my book. I think this is a fine amount. No more, no less.

Medicae and Agility; you gotta have fast hands to perform surgery. Get that wound closed as soon as possible so the poor bastard doesn't lose any more blood than he has to.

Agreed on Talent trees.

Agreed on Action Points.

Money; personal preference. DH was the only system with Gelt, and I enjoy the simplified approach that every other game has used.

Wounds; the way I read them, it's very hard to kill someone. It all depends on if hitting a target who already has a Wound just gives a +5 bonus, or consecutive +5 bonuses. I also agree that it creates too much to keep track of and slows down combat.

I think there was an opportunity for some other skills to be done with multiple characteristics.

The afore mentioned Medicae. I concede agility being useful to patch someone up. But surely knowledge of how to fix someone (Int as it is now) would be good as well. Allowing some of the "sub skills" to be used with multiple characteristics would be good.

And in some places they just seem the wrong way around

In Tech Use - Correctly setting up demolitions is Agility (manual dexterity to set them up I'd guess), when Int makes more sense in not crossing the wrong wires or setting them up int he correct spot, whereas Patch Breach, a skill that says "rapid repairs are better than none" is a Int test, not a Ag test.

I'lll admit i've only ever really played DH. Dabbled in DW, but didn't like it so much.

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.

I haven't had the chance to check out the beta yet, but that just sounds wrong to me. Sure, the first part is fine (not making a difference between passing a test and DoSs, just counting the number of successes/failures), but the difference in 10s digit between target and the result? Your example perfectly proves how broken that can be, so I sincerely hope that DoSs/DoFs remain as they were, i.e. rolled number +10/-10 compared to target.

Personally, I'm not keen on having loads of different Perils of the Warp tables. In my experience you only tend to have, at best, 1 psyker in a party. I'd rather have the space dedicated to something else. Minor complaint, but still.

Maybe it is just me, but I am seeing thing which looks like ports from Edge of the Empire to make game more cinematic (criticals during combat, less lethal combat) and streamlined (talent trees), but are they end up broken, weird, unnessary or too complex. Dog and cat cooking the soup and worse...

My group has our own 'crits during combat' system, and it meshes in very well with the old system (we've used it for years - since WFRP 2!).

Basically, after working out how much damage has been dealt to a person (after armour/toughness) we subtract toughness bonus from that again and apply the remaining number as a crit.

For example, Dave the Toughness 3 Scribe with no armour takes a 10 damage shot from an autopistol. He suffers 7 damage, as normal. He then suffers a level 4 crit as well. We find this makes the game really cinematic and extra deadly.

Well, a lot of problems but that's to be expected, right?

First, The starting XP is a little low, and the starting skills and bonuses for certain backgrounds and/or roles could use a little oomph. Tech Priests with not so much as a mechadendrite to begin with is a little odd as well.

Next, naw you know what screw doing it in order let's go straight to the Equipment chapter. Before that though....

You finally made Overheat work properly ? At least, I think so? Looks like it's a "when you'd jam", as opposed to "here's an entirely different mechanic that thus makes things incompatible with weapon quality and reliability". Kudos for finally fixing something that was screwed up since Dark Heresy [ha]. Perhaps I've just read it wrong, it can't possibly be true.

Penetration's an issue. How is a Plasma weapon losing damage against ROBES? And don't say part of that is damage unless you're willing to kick said damage up another notch; You're not supposed to be down to bolter outputs against a guy in power-armor when you're supposed to leave a smoking ventilation shaft right down said armored torso. Combined with Penetration is the high likelihood that many weapons are going to be dealing with high toughness opponents, often in the form of "Well it's natural armour" or the like. Again, unless it would be a "x++" save in the wargame, appropriate penetration should burn through it.

ROF needs work. I like where you're going with this but you're not there yet. Right now, particularly with the wounds system, there's little reason to get anything with low RoF. This of course puts plasma/melta weapons on the chopping block, doing one shot unlikely to kill anything with 2AP, which a lasgun will use to pump out four shots for higher average damage. Overcharge is nowhere near worth it at +2 damage given the cooldown it will cause, particularly when you consider what that will do to your chances of actually killing a target with the weapon [hint: it does about the same thing a commissar's pistol does to a cowardly conscript's mission completion rate]

The +5 per wound suffered flat out needs to go with the current stacking wounds system, but weapon ROFs are gonna need some work as well.

Overall here are my suggestions:

-Stacking +5 per cumulative woundings is gone. Seriously. It takes five seconds of math to see just how much trouble this is causing at the moment. Glad Lasguns aren't utterly useless anymore, but they shouldn't be one of the best weapons in the game either due to ROF + Stacking.

-Weapon ROF tweakings: Fractions above 1 should be considered. 1.5 would be single shot, for 1 AP, 3 shots for 2 AP, for example. If 2 is a Lasgun, Plasma should probably be 1, and Autocannons 1.5 not 3.

-> In regards to ROF, slow weapons like Sniper Rifles or Long-Las could perhaps get a small break if you keep them slow: Capacitors needing a few seconds to build back up does not prevent you from aiming. Let that be a free action on slow fire rates. We're not hooking it to our belt and a stirrup, we're keeping our aim down the sight waiting on the thing to greenlight the next shot.

-Double the Armor things get, Implement equal parts Armor and unnatural toughness for stuff like demons, increase Penetration across most of the board to help the weapons spread out a little better.

-Of course to match this, weapons get a bit more Pen.

->In regards to this, Weapons that should pack a lot of punch and penetration, that you don't want too overly powerful "because if it's balanced against a Great Unclean One it's bloody broken against weeny terminators and sentinels" should have Felling. Use it. You can even have things with scaling felling like Razor Sharp used to. 1/2 Unnatural TB < 1/4 Total TB < Half Total TB or the like.

-I still can't believe you've fixed Overheat, I must be missing something somewhere. I still disbelieve.

-Overcharge somehow just got more pathetic than it was in BC and Only War. Somehow. On the upside, good job wording the unreliable/reliable changes by it this time.

-You KNOW you want to combi more than bolters as the main. Go on. Do it.

-The mono upgrade has mono. I don't know why it kissed shocking weapons, but there you have it. That needs fixings.

Forcefields; interesting rules, but perhaps blow out and get penetrated a little too easily.

-20m on Luminen Blast is a little short.

-Whatever happened to that snazzy autofire pyromancy power from Only War? A nice psychic storm with decent range? The... old Sunburst I believe?

That's all I can think of at the moment

Going to be brutally honest here, I genuinely hate this new rule set. Doubt my gaming group will be happy either -- we get on just fine with DH1E thank you very much, and while Dark Heresy needed an update, this beta is extremely poor and suboptimal. The talent trees are a throwback, the changes to the combat system somehow make it even more bloated, the armoury changes are just bizarre (and nonsensical -- most of the range/ROF/penetration complaints have already been explained more eloquently by other posters, though), and the skill ranking system is just plain counter-intuitive.

Prior to Black Crusade, I found that the Rogue Trader rule set was a lot cleaner and smoother than some of the kinks Dark Heresy threw up. Black Crusade admittedly left me a little cold when it came out, but I've since warmed to it a lot more (especially since many of the changes Black Crusade introduced were further refined in Only War). If Dark Heresy's future incarnation became more like Black Crusade and Only War, rather than the current beta, that would not only give us a stronger game, but also maintain consistency between the various game systems.

As it stands, I think I might push my gaming group for a straight move into using the Rogue Trader rule set for Dark Heresy style gaming, because unless the final DH2E bears little to no resemblance to the beta, I won't be playing it.

Going to be brutally honest here, I genuinely hate this new rule set. Doubt my gaming group will be happy either -- we get on just fine with DH1E thank you very much, and while Dark Heresy needed an update, this beta is extremely poor and suboptimal.

Prior to Black Crusade, I found that the Rogue Trader rule set was a lot cleaner and smoother than some of the kinks Dark Heresy threw up. Black Crusade admittedly left me a little cold when it came out, but I've since warmed to it a lot more (especially since many of the changes Black Crusade introduced were further refined in Only War). If Dark Heresy's future incarnation became more like Black Crusade and Only War, rather than the current beta, that would not only give us a stronger game, but also maintain consistency between the various game systems.

As it stands, I think I might push my gaming group for a straight move into using the Rogue Trader rule set for Dark Heresy style gaming, because unless the final DH2E bears little to no resemblance to the beta, I won't be playing it.

Only War works better for a DH power level game.