Personaly, I give 10 wounds to my mooks, sometimes a bit less depending on how the flow of combat went...hitting a guy once and then him dying is, to me, merely flavour kill than any form of challenge or combat.

with this sytem they would get a couple of wounds, 3 tops, and then die horribly.

If they're a challenge in combat, they're not really mooks , are they?

Elite opponents are like PCs regarding regular wounds but still die instantly on a critical wound.

Master opponents are like PCs regarding both regular and critical wounds.

Then I'll get in an annoying spot when it comes to balancing fights really. Either I run ALOT of mooks, which I either houserule into squads or alot of bookeeping for all the elites. Neither are tempting prospects, but until I've tried it I'd love to hear how people handle this and if it's as bad as it sounds, or if there's a few good tips to make the combat flow without just disregarding the rules.

I think the trick is, you can't presume, contrary to the rules, to treat elites as novices just to keep the number of combatants down when managing some kind of encounter budget. Remember, Threat Threshold "limits the maximum number and strength of NPCs that should be included in an encounter" (emphasis mine).

I'm really surprised with the negative response to the game, honestly.

You guys do realize that this is a Beta, right? Albeit, I paid $20 for the Beta, but I'm still very pleased with it.

I don't know about everyone else, but I wanted a new system. I wrote a 100 page conversion from Only War to Dark Heresy, and I developed a serious love/hate relationship with the system.

I'm almost ecstatic that they dropped about 100 Talents. Really, I am. Nobody remembered what they did and they were so minor at times that they became inconsequential. When you were a high enough rank, you had too many Talents to keep track of.

Really, what this game needs is the ability and rules to create your own Roles and Backgrounds- and it would be fantastic,

As for the conversion potential, this game is called Dark Heresy, not Deathwatch or Rogue Trader. Furthermore, it's a Beta with a new system- I'd be surprised if it had the ability to run anything but this game.

There is plenty of room for expansion here, as well. New Talent Trees in future expansions? Melee 2, Defense 2, etc?

However, there are a few things that stick out (which is fine, so long as they're fixed):

-Single-shot Accurate weapons need to be more lethal without achieving the broken-level damage that they were in OW. I get that they can fell tougher/ more armored targets faster than a rapid fire weapon, but they still need to be able to kill outright with a well-placed shot.

-Make Pen go through Toughness

-Wounds are an issue as well. I like the new wounds system, we just need less wounds or stronger weapons.

-Untouchables and Sanctions need fixing, as explained in Plushy's post.

-Please give us codified rules to create our own Backgrounds, Roles, and Home Worlds. That would be wonderful.

Other than that, the game looks beautiful and I like what you've done. Keep up the good job, FFG.

To be fair, it is the feedback forum. Useful feedback is typically negative towards the original content under scrutiny. I've yet to see any death cries of "40K RPGS RUINED FOREVER".

I'm quite fond of what we've gotten thus far, but I'm not wild.

I think the main problem for what were asking for is the extra space.

There just won;t be enough space in the book for that.

So were going to have to loose something.

But I dont know if I our opinion matters when it comes to that.

If we had to lose something, I would say cut down on SOME vehicles. We don't really need tanks in the investigative game. What else could be cut down to make space to add, say, a homeworld Generator?

To be fair, it is the feedback forum. Useful feedback is typically negative towards the original content under scrutiny. I've yet to see any death cries of "40K RPGS RUINED FOREVER".

I'm quite fond of what we've gotten thus far, but I'm not wild.

We've already had one or two people say pretty much that.

Infrastructure ideas of the new system are great. Elegant and intuitive. The implementations (weapon stats, how AP is derived, wound effects) need major adjustment.

I am reserving my doom-sayer cries until such time where I realize that my input meant nothing at all

Until then, I realize that the whole point of the Beta-test is to actually listen to us, the more active players, who cared enough to post and argue and detail our responses and our ideas in order to directly contribute.

After all, we did shell out 20$ for this thing so that it ends up being as good as possible- not so that we can complain about it and then throw it out the window

My feeling is that until I have had a chance to gen some characters, and run/play a game or two I am going to keep silent on whether the changes work or not. I will admit to a few issues with what I have read so far, but until I have tried them in live fire exercises I am not going to make a call.

E

I downloaded the beta rules yesterday and have read them twice. While I think there are a lot of great things going on with the revision I am also extremely frustrated with how some of the most important mechanics in the game have been changed and it comes across as let's change stuff for the sake of change so we can sell another set of books. I am not opposed to changes in the rules but after two reads there are definitely some issues with the beta that are just as problematic to me as some of the rules in DH1.

I hope, I'll have the opportunity to gather my players and run them through an actual round of character creation and the first adventure. But August usually is a pretty crappy month for that, vacation time and all...

As it stands now, after the first - mostly casual - readthrough there's quite a lot I like (new character creation, much of the streamlining) a couple of things that could do with some tweaking ( mostly some elements to further strengthen the game's theme) and some things that desperately need to be adjusted (the reliance on crit tables). I, for one, am curious to see the new sector, as I've never really got a good feeling for Calixis anyway.

Do people who think DH2E is too divergent really think the various iterations were that cross-complimentary?

The only one I would say is completely incompatible with the rest of the series is Deathwatch. The mechanics on that were built on a scale where they don't make any sense in the context of the rest of the series. Black Crusade and Only War aren't really compatible with the earlier ones (due to the new mechanics), but building on a similar scale meant that conversion work, without too much was possible.

Straight up I would say the only ones that are entirely compatible are Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy 1. The changes were... minor, at least in the original rules. The only real problem was lack of Throne costs for gear. However, some of the more recent supplements for RT have tended to had villains that look like they belong a heck of a lot more in Deathwatch than either Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader (though this seems to be universal: hideous adversaries that are nuts hard for anyone except Deathwatch Space Marines to deal with, even in the recent Only War book).

As well as the locale, the current setting is also completely separate chronilogically. The 40k RPG settings had all been "historical", set several hundred years in the past of the "current day" of 40k. The new setting seems to be set in the current day.

-Make Pen go through Toughness

One of the issues with this (which has been seen in WFRP 3rd and Edge of Empire) is that unless you have silly levels of it there is no real reason for it. If Pen ignores Armour and Toughness then anything less than about PEN 5 might as well be straight up damage.

Elephant in the room eh?

Well, i'd suggest the following options to FFG:

1. Update DH to a 1.5, adopting in and further refining all the imporvements to the game through the follow-on games.

2. Ditch the mechanic and go with scalable dice pools (i.e. complete reboot the core mechanics).

Given the amount of time and treasure most players have invested in the core line, option 1 seems to eb largest crowd pleaser (i.e. creates the largest sales market).

Can i just ask though: if the current Beta rules are ditched, can i have my $20 back? Or at least have it as a discount towards the PHYSICAL copy of whatever shape the DH 2nd rules take? Please...

Luddite - they have no way of knowing if you bought it, that info is held by DriveThruRPG, and even if they could get that info, they'd only be able to offer the discount if you bought it from FFG themselves, they can't really make every retailer accept that deal.

Not a ton here that is really revolutionary, but I think as a community (assuming FFG is listening) we can likely take this in a good direction. I wouldn't be so quick (aka dramatic) to say it's ready for a trash can.

Things I would hope we can revise before publication (and my initial knee-jerk reaction/comments/suggestions):

1. Action Points

The jury is still out on this mechanic... but as-is, it gives the players way to many options in a round which (as a GM) makes me worry about analysis paralysis and calculations on how to best use APs. Not sure the fundamental value here and/or why it was added - especially when FFG's latest Star Wars project has a great action system. Also the RoF piece is going to be a math nightmare for some players. Seems like this should be a board game mechanic, not something in an RPG... and not for nothing, but if a round represents 5 seconds, why not give 5 action points? Seems like you guys tried to back into a way to compensate for slow-swinging weapons. Reminds me of battletech. Nothing like spending 8 hours on one fight.

1a. Knives

By the way... did anyone else notice that (assuming an Agility Bonus of 5) you can get like 20 knife attacks in one turn? Or am I missing some limitation/ruling on this.

2. Skills

Er. Ok. So you truncated the list, but then have 5 sub-skills per skill. So effectively, all you did was abstract a skill layer. Just leave it the way it was... it really made characters more diverse - especially in the lore department, which is a huge part of the game and solving the mysteries and clues. ...Also "remembrance"? C'mon really?! You guys couldn't think of a better name?

3. Wound Tables

Yikes. The crit tables were fun the first 10 times I read them, then they got old. How about having a general "lightly wounded" >> "heavily wounded" threshold with simple, inbuilt effects like armor damage, stuns, fatigue, etc. The other tables can be optional. Very few of us want to have to reference 9 tables every time someone gets shot. I do like the idea of cumulative wounds, and no "hit points"... but the tables are bulky. Seems easy enough to rework.

4. Armory Stuff

I am so baffled by this section. Regular swords and power swords do the same damage? Power axes do more than a power fist unless your SB > 6. I could go on... and I get that not everyone may agree, but I think there was some "balancing" here because money is no longer a factor (which is cool, by the way!). If that's not the case, then why such a divergence from 1st edition damage spreads; it's all over the place. Also, why do robes offer as much protection as enforcer armor? lolwat?

Only made one pass through the book, and I am excited by the interest to pump out a new edition of DH. There are alot of cool things, especially with the homeworld/background/role split, and the elite advances around pysker and inquisitor.

I think a little TLC and this could be good. But definitely need to get some of the guts tuned up first.

@Exalted:

RoA is only as good as DoSs. Combat bonuses are alot harder to come by in this game as opposed to the previous game. So yes, in theory you could get 20 RoA with knives, but why would you? 3-5 is easily enough. You're better off spending an action to aim, holding onto an action to dodge, and either moving or having a second action to dodge. Remember, on Evasion, it opposses DoSs first, then RoA kicks in to limit the DoSs down to that. So if the target is going to evade any way, no point in giving it any value.

While it was always nifty having degrees of expertise in different fields, it did result in quite a bit of bloat with regards to what is actually bought. The simplification with Rememberance isn't that bad.

Also, its worth noting that skills aren't inherently linked to a characteristic now, which has its uses.

I think with experience, it'll become easier for a GM to come up with alternate effects/conditions for a given wound score. It certainly appears to follow a pattern.

I agree 100% with the OP.

Ive been planning a Rogue Trader campaign but updating the Rules to the Black Crusade/Only War standards: transforming skills, talents, combat, gear stats, etc... Its been a lot of work so i was super-hyper-happy when i heard about the 2nd Edition of Dark Heresy.

I was hoping for an updated version making it more compatible with Black Crusade/Only War. Turns i was wrong. Oh dear...

Now im not really looking foward to it. An even less compatible system with the other lines of W40K rpgs. Definitely not looking foward to it.

I seriously am not seeing how this requires much more legwork than the other systems to make cross compatible. Nothing is really compatible between Dark Heresy and Only War, save for gear (which you should be tweaking if you're porting to the newer systems, anyway). Sure, there's the rules for porting over characters, but they've always been shakey as hell and generally a lot of work to deal with.

This system isn't all that fundamentally different, it's not hard at all the port things over. I really don't see the issue here.