That it does, but my group prefers the idea of an established bunch of Inquisition operatives, and I'm the only one in my gaming group so far that has a copy of Only War. I'll have to see when people's birthdays are.

"Happy birthday! Here, have a new RPG that's actually good!"

On-topic edit: What on Terra is going on with the new "2D10" tables? Why can't we just have a percentile table that's modified by various things? I understand that, for example, the effects of a psychic power going wrong are supposed to get worse if the psyker's putting more effort into it in the first place, but I find it's an awful lot simpler to have a D100 table with a whole range of accessible results, with a few simple modifiers, rather than one of these 2D10 tables where you have to juggle a lot more things. If I pulled out one of those tables and made my gaming group roll on it, they'd probably just get confused.

That it does, but my group prefers the idea of an established bunch of Inquisition operatives, and I'm the only one in my gaming group so far that has a copy of Only War. I'll have to see when people's birthdays are.

"Happy birthday! Here, have a new RPG that's actually good!"

Only War scales up quite well. Increase their starting Logistics to somewhere in the 30s or 40s, give them a a few thousand xp, and let them roll.

One unexpected thing I dont like, during character generation homeworlds instead of providing characteristic bonuses/penalties let you roll 3D10 and pick two highest (positive) or lowest (negative) results to add into the baseline. Also I cant see any Point Allocation sidebar for characteristics and with that generation I have a bad feeling there is none.

Oh yeah, one more before work I really need to point out:

Adding a scope to your meltagun currently makes the quickly-cooling armor-vaporizing[how does this not -status it?] heat-beam stay hot enough to do this longer and further out from the weapon's barrel.

x2 reflex sights protect giant fire beams from atmospheric diffusion: news at 11.

One unexpected thing I dont like, during character generation homeworlds instead of providing characteristic bonuses/penalties let you roll 3D10 and pick two highest (positive) or lowest (negative) results to add into the baseline. Also I cant see any Point Allocation sidebar for characteristics and with that generation I have a bad feeling there is none.

Sidebar on the lower left of Page 19 has the Allocating Points you're looking for.

One unexpected thing I dont like, during character generation homeworlds instead of providing characteristic bonuses/penalties let you roll 3D10 and pick two highest (positive) or lowest (negative) results to add into the baseline. Also I cant see any Point Allocation sidebar for characteristics and with that generation I have a bad feeling there is none.

Sidebar on the lower left of Page 19 has the Allocating Points you're looking for.

Oh, thank you

Hello All!

So time to start posting my impressions (and I am a spokesperson for my group- their first impressions as well.)

Overly speaking, we like the majority of the system- though I haven't always agreed with my players, we generally don't mind this upgrade and are going to give it a shot asap, limiting ourselves to the core book only and ignoring any house-rules or extra material from DH 1.0 [Which is going to be the hardest part.]

Overly positive, but seeing as this is the negative thread- I am going to go with that first.

Lets start at the beginning of the book: character creation. Great, I like it but.... I understand that this is only the core-book, and that character creation is just as bland, if not more so, in the DH 1.0 book- it feels DRY. Characters look more the same than others (having access to all skills relatively cheap stat advances). Elite advances will surely add those perks that I loved Dark Heresy backgrounds for and allow for a greater diversity and background from characters.

Also- Psykers and Untouchables. I agree that those need some sort of change (evolving untouchables are weird) & accessing the sanctioned trait should be just be part of a single origin.

For all intents and purposes, Mystics are not only psykers, but sorcerers as well? It seems that the core-book is very... weird on that aspect... it doesn't mention the word sorcerer save in the opening paragraph for the mystic. It seems that all "Casting" heretics are psykers, and sorcerers don't seem to exist in this sector. This is a relatively minor point, but it has a few implications.

A lot of these powers are also very "Niche based" - my group for example doesn't really bother with an extra detail like Carrying capacity, unless its exaggerated, so ultimately the guardsman's ability is likely to be abstracted.

Skills & Talents- I personally loved the talent tables, but I've always been a fan of tables. Its the SKILLS that I have a problem with! They are a LOT less flavorful, a LOT less "Important" and a LOT less attractive to players. My players were immediately attracted to the talents and their nifty unique abilities they would give players, whereas skills can be raised trough Characteristic advances. Speaking of which, characters can buy up to 50 points relatively cheaply if they specialize in a stat- but I will admit that they've got to be rank 10 before that starts being an issue, and with degrees of success being based on opposed tests even in cases like dodge, this might not be that much of an issue. I am not sure why you guys don't like talents- I think skills are the real problem.

Especially the "Specialist" Category- I think it should be moved to the skills sections, and be a subsection of the skills it applies too rather than a talent.

Lets not talk about weapon training- all of them costing the same EXP. One of my players attempting to make a guardsman wyrd yesterday and started with no weapons training. Hmm- maybe that needs to be fixed?

THE ARMORY- THE DEVILS SPAWN! I am going to see how it goes when I first run a game, but I think everyone's mentioned all of my problems with it. From wonky weapons, to crazy penetration values and lack of a STR attribute when you attack. Not to mention the crazy rate of fires. It seems as if those things were DESIGNED to be the least possible compatible with the other lines. WHY do this!? I don't understand! I think it can easily be resolved though to allow for easy conversion for example, by making weapons categories [small, Medium, Heavy] and have them require consistent AP to be used directly based on the size of the weapon. Again, some weird unnecessary changes to weapon stats and a couple of attributes- Accurate extra damage needs to be returned.

Psychic powers were a great positive change- its GREAT that you can't fetter. Its just perfect- I personally like the extra tables, though I can see why some people might consider them extra. BUT I think its going to be difficult to hit up the high levels of that tables- That part, and the whole 2d10 instead of a d100 seem to clash with the system. Perhaps this should be reworked somehow.

COMBAT- I hate AP, my players like it. So thats that- we'll see how it goes. Again though, I feel as if its been designed to not compatible with ANYTHING else. The weapons, I've already explained my problem with them. What also needs fixing is multiple hits hurting more than a single powerful hit. Full Auto being much stronger than single shot. This is easily resolved with something along the lines of- if an attack inflicts more than *2 your toughness bonus, it adds +10 or something on the table for the wounds.

Wounds- my players love the new system, and I do to- my main problem is logistics. Its a LOT more book-keeping. Now the tables have to be checked out EVERY SINGLE ROUND, relatively speaking, for EVERY SINGLE character. God forbid the enemies are using different types of weapons. Thats 9 tables that you have to reference during a combat, which slows down things considerably and kills the mood. One of the big rules of GMing I Find is to waste time looking into the books as LEAST as possible, and this works directly agaisnt that. Not to mention any secrecy related to other people's wounds is gone if you assign a single person to handle it, seeing as were likely to only have a single copy of the book unless those pages are printed out and passed around. LOTS of extra book-keeping.

The rest of the stuff is great. I've got a bit of a problem with Subtlety seeming like a magic stat, with few hard rules on how it interacts with say, influence. But I will need to check out and see if its intuitive or not during an actual play session.

Those are my, and my players opinions on the matter- were likely to have our first game in the weekend.

@Saldre: if you don't mind my asking, how did that Guardsman wyrd end up without weapon training? The Imperial Guard backgrounds gives it in Las and Solid-Projectile.

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.

I'm pretty sure you're saying "wrong" as a reference to not liking the rules, not a disagreement on whats in the book, but for reference:

"Degrees of Success: When a test succeeds, the

character making the test automatically gains one degree

of success (abbreviated as DoS). He also gains additional

degrees of success equal to the tens digit of the target value

minus the tens digit of the roll. A character who rolled a 23

when he was testing against a value of 66 would pass the

test with 5 degrees of success (1 for succeeding, plus 4 more

for the difference between 6 and 2)"

p. 13

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.

So that works out that if my BS is 20 and I roll 19....thats 2 degrees of success?

So that works out that if my BS is 20 and I roll 19....thats 2 degrees of success?

Yep. 1 DoS for passing, and 1 for (2 - 1).

@Lynata: I think theres still hope for how this system can handle Sisters. What the system currently lacks is any form of faith related talents that mean anything. But those could easily be added in based on how this system handles talents.

Homeworlds, Backgrounds, and Roles are also impressively modular, so it should be possible to add just about anything later. And the elite advance package setup now functions as essentially buying access to a talent tree, so theres potential for "sisters only" abilities. And it easily can be weighted that full on Battle Sister can be handled by rankers higher than 1.

@Saldre: if you don't mind my asking, how did that Guardsman wyrd end up without weapon training? The Imperial Guard backgrounds gives it in Las and Solid-Projectile.

Hmm, he created it over skype- so I admit, I should have double checked his work (and that makes me look bad )

Looks like this is a non issue. Unless you don't start with a fighting talent. Though it seems that there's no talent for regular primitive weapons? The low tech one only applies to ranged?

My biggest objection, as the Gm, is the wounds table mechanic. Trying to keep track of that for multiple npc's looks like it is going to be a book keeping nightmare and slow down the combat. I would likely ignore that part and use the old wounds system. I mean, you have to hit 29 wounds to kill a bad guy. This way, it is just as diifcult to kill a minion with a flak jacket as it is a daemonhost.

Also, I really find it difficult to properly understand the rof/burst wounds mechanic.

I have no problem with the Ap system. The way i see it, APs are similiar to half/full action,a half-action is 1 AP, full action is 2

etc.

My biggest objection, as the Gm, is the wounds table mechanic. Trying to keep track of that for multiple npc's looks like it is going to be a book keeping nightmare and slow down the combat. I would likely ignore that part and use the old wounds system. I mean, you have to hit 29 wounds to kill a bad guy. This way, it is just as diifcult to kill a minion with a flak jacket as it is a daemonhost.

Also, I really find it difficult to properly understand the rof/burst wounds mechanic.

I have no problem with the Ap system. The way i see it, APs are similiar to half/full action,a half-action is 1 AP, full action is 2

etc.

That gives you two Standard actions per turn, which isn't right.

Someone explained it to me as: a Half Action is 1.5 AP, and a Reaction is 1 AP. Two Half Actions or One Full plus a Reaction is a full turn.

My biggest objection, as the Gm, is the wounds table mechanic. Trying to keep track of that for multiple npc's looks like it is going to be a book keeping nightmare and slow down the combat.

What do you mean by NPCs?

Mooks only have one hit location and go down in two wounds or one critical wound. Even elite bad guys go down instantly on a critical wound. That leaves only the master-level baddies that take as much book keeping as a PC. Surely you can manage that much for your Big Bad.

Mooks actually don't even receive wound effects for the first hit they get.

Excellent point, KommissarK.

The wound effect tables are really for the PCs and "NPCs who matter." If a given elite enemy doesn't have "personality," consider replacing it with a couple of mooks.

To be fair, I do think we're going to be seeing quite a few elite level foes in the game. Yes, their encounter balance recommends 1-3. But for a 4 member party of rank 3-4 characters, the threat threshold is 32-40.

Novice NPCs are about 5 (the most expensive is 8), elites are about 8 to 15. Eventually those encounters are going to fill up with elites. Or baloon with novices at higher ranks. Or not be that challenging unless the GM turns up the dial on other things.

I think I would rather stick with a large number of novices rather than expect to use elites as higher level novices. Ignoring the NPC types will naturally result in "too much paper work" -- mean definitively so given the designers did not intend the GM to be doing as much paper work as he has indirectly chosen to take on.

The encounter balance thing, well, that's its own can of worms.

As an aside ... HA, and I was just told yesterday how DH "assumes nothing" about using miniatures ...

<snip>

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.

<snip>

Howdy,

Good hand-eye coordination for surgery is certainly a boon, but first aid and medicine in general really should be knowledge-based, speaking from experience.

Cheers,

Ken

first aid and medicine in general really should be knowledge-based, speaking from experience

The knowledge factor is built in as a matter of skill rank. When you need to actually use the knowledge, hand-eye coordination is more important than the ability to retain information or learn new concepts.

It is kind of funny when you see Chirugens have a bad Agility advancement scheme, but essentially need it most to get to patients/make first aid checks.

In the grim darkness of the future, medical professionals are violent maniacs. They amputate your leg above the knee if your tonsils are swollen.

As an aside ... HA, and I was just told yesterday how DH "assumes nothing" about using miniatures ...

Because it doesn't. It even says so on page 195.