Rather than posting seperately my group have asked me to be the funnel for all of our feed-back - I will try and make clear what is my view and what is one of my players.

From reading the beta book and the reactions of my current group of players the new rules are a pretty mixed bag in terms of whether you agree with the changes or not. I'll try and deal with each comment in a structured way.

• The new way of rolling stats is very popular, with my players seeming to prefer the + and - stats to the different modifiers from 1e.

• The new skills list seems to be a fairly split descision, with some players glad that it reduces the complexity and other worried that it will lead to a lack of specialisation. Particularly the Rememberance skill was singled out as my players felt that it would have been better handled as distinct Common, Scholastic, and Forbidden skills.

• The new wound system currently has my players completely confused

• The new Talant trees have also split the group. Several of the players complained of "dumbing down for the computer generation" (and you'll be surprised to hear that our group are all still in our 20's, one of them only just) on seeing the Talant Trees. On the flip side other players (and myself as GM) liked the flexability that the Tree system provides.

• From discusions with my players they are very unhappy with the loss of Thrones from the game. They have never been a fan of abstract wealth, and they feel that in a game where you are quiet often operating undercover removing currentcy from the equation is a massive oversight. As a GM I can understand why FFG have made this change as It does streamline shopping, But at the same time the face-to-face encounters whilst haggling over a few thrones, or greasing the wheels of commerce with a local informant with a palmed coin, are part and parcel of undercover opperations and so definately have a home in DH - Perhaps both systems of wealth are needed.

• The idea of weapon reloads now being a number of action points (and by extension the action point system seems) to have gone down pretty well.

• The general consensus is that vehicles are far too weak. We have actually had player characters with significantly higher defence values than the Chimera listed - when a tank rolls around the corner the first reaction shouldn't be a round of hysterical laughter once the players realise its less protected than they are.

• The addition of detailed rules for social interraction and Investigations have been welcomed.

Any comments welcomed.

Regards

Surak (and friends )

Sounds great! So the wound system has confused them? was it easy to keep track for you as a GM?

The way I read it is that they have created a system that measures the amount of "grease" the pc throw around and if it have any positive or negative Influence ( ) all the while removing the need to track individual Thrones.

The interesting thing isn't how mant Thrones they push into the hand of their informant but what it buys them.

Wounds

Personally as GM I found the new damage/wounds system very slow to use - its fine if you are using "quick-kill" minor enemies but for anyone who uses the full rules it slows the game down massivly. Event though I love the descriptive dmage tables I want my old hit points back just so a combat doesn't take all evening.

Influence

The thing my players love about having thrones is they can relate to them far easier than the generalised stat. Also they have to balance buying new shiny's vs paying off their contacts. Plus from a GM point of view its alot easier to manage the "I slip the bar-keep 5 thrones and ask about XYZ" rather than "If I wanted to slip the bar-keep 5 thrones to grease the wheels how much Influence does that cost me/whats the modifier on the roll?"

More feed-back and thoughts as I get it fom the group (and my musings)

Regards

Surak

Its interesting your comments on Remembrance, thats one thing that occured to us.

All Skills are one talent. Why common lore is Perception is something we didn't understand, but its also wierd that if you have "specialist" in an area you have all the lore.

You might be a specialist in the Mechanicus and have low and medium info....but is a level 1 character going to have access to the Forbidden Lores of the Mechanicus?

Also I miss money. Having to save for weapons and work things up to them was good, felt like a reward to get a new item. Now just rollling dice every time you're at home or the market to see if you get that Melta gun (although why you'd want it now!) isn't quite the same

Note that I haven't read the new rules yet, but I've been thinking of making something like the Star Wars X-Wing game for handling Wounds:

Have a deck of cards. On each one, print the hit location and a table of effects (if you currently have 0-2 Wound cards, do X, if you have 3 do Y, if you have 4 do Z, if you have 5 you die, or something like that).

Whenever you're hit, draw a card. If you get a critical hit, draw two cards but keep the first one face down (only using the effects of the second card). Ignore the rolled hit location and just let the cards decide (further speeding things up).

Magnus, problem: you'd have to print several sets as different people can get the same wound. This quickly spirals out of control.... Not to mention the NPC's.

Magnus, problem: you'd have to print several sets as different people can get the same wound. This quickly spirals out of control.... Not to mention the NPC's.

Everyone could draw from the same pile - just have multiples of each card. You'd want that anyway to increase the random factor. Doesn't seem like a big problem.

I did forget to factor the damage from the current hit into it, though. That obviously matters. You wouldn't be able to just base the table on the number of cards, so you'd still need to do the +5 per Wound thing. Not a difficult change.

Ultimately, the cards would just move the tables in the book to a more manageable format and reduce bookkeeping.

Oh, you want it drawn randomly? That doesn't sound like a good solution at all. One guy gets grazed by a laspistol and takes a severe wound while another gets shot by a laslock and even though he takes less damage gets a minor wound? What I do like about the card idea though is having the numbers printed on them, means I just have to go through the pile and hand a player the correct wound. Saves me the "let me see if I can find the page here..."

Having tried to use the card based wound system of WHFRP 3E I would avoid using them for groups larger than 2 or 3 people (including GM) otherwise you need too many to make them a practical solution.

Regards

Surak

Talked to my players (too many Wh40k fans in there, makes objective analysis difficult), in general this is the feedback I got from them. They are pretty much in agreement with yours.

-Chargen needs more options, possible another layer that just gives skills, something like a personal thing in your life (think Lure of the Stars/Trials and Travails in RT) which could make Feral World Guardsmen 1 different from Feral World Guardsmen 2. Fixed options, especially after OW regimental generation system, made some feel like a regression.

-They like the idea of roles and Background, although felt that the standard Tech-Priest/operator couldn't be made, so one of my players pulled this thing out in about 5 minutes, which makes it seem like making new roles on the fly to suit player needs is a breeze:

Technician (your stereotypical Tech-Priest or Operator, the mix of tough and smart that's good with machines), tougher than a Sage and more combat focused

WS 100

BS 100

S 100

T 50

Ag 100 or 150 (depending if you want a generally good technician, or a stereotypical heavy, machine-like techpriest)

Int 50

Per 50

Wp 100 or 150 (see first parenthesis)

Fel 150

Good in Pilot, Tech-Use, Navigate (he forgot the 4th one, so I guess Logic, Commerce or Remembrance, although those are stepping in the Sage's shoes, so maybe Survival or Observe)

-They felt that Backgrounds needed to give more weapon training. Administratum they couldn't settle between Low-tech (for literal backstabbing politics) or SP (think of your average, Emperor fearing citizen; what is his weaponry of choice? the cheapest bullet slugger he can find), Arbites needs low-tech and/or shock (don't think they should have 2, but it makes no sense to be trained in any of the higher melee weapons if low-tech isn't trained),Astra Telepathica needs a ranged one (SP or Las), Mechanicus needs Las, Ministorum, Imperial Guard and Outcast need low-tech.

-Liked the new skills, although disagree on the stats for some actions. The most obvious in their opinion are that Demolition should be Perception while Patch Breach should be Agility (one requires good observation of the structure or bomb, the other one fast hands; having fast hands when doing demolition is going to cause an accident. You don't see bomb squads doing things quickly, but you see them doing a whole lot of observations). Unlike many, the found it fine that Common Lore was perception, as it was based on what the player saw or heard during his day to day life, and the more you see and hear, the more you know about the basic things.

-Disliked the amount of advances possible (they liked the capped to +20, especially with the now RT level starting stats), it avoids what they find to be ridiculous things like a good proportion of humanity being better shooters than Astartes. It also means that combat essentially becomes a joke, with 95 in your primary skill, you don't even need to roll to hit; you either hit or Jam. Considering the way the combat system favors multiple hits over stronger ones, they felt that making it too easy to hit made combat a game of Rocket-Tag where the first one to go opened fire with the highest RoF weapon he had that could pierce the other guys defenses, and than proceeded to stack +5s until the other guy died after a few APs.

-They want their Thrones back. A dual system would be best, with Acquisitions available for requisitioning stuff from different organisations, but money being needed to buy stuff if you can't requisition it, or to get stuff from more shady organisations that don't care about your rep and don't owe you anything. Acquisition as the only mechanic is for people with so much money they can't count it, or who obtain stuff without paying in money, ala BC.

-The armoury, oh god I have never seen so many complaints... They think the new weapon system is, well, terrible, with the interaction between weapons being all over the place. Autoguns are too weak, some RoF as lasguns, melta-guns that can't pierce most armor, but suddenly ignore it, plasma guns that finally do some damage, but shoot incredibly slowly and have no ammo, autocannons that don't perform like autocannons should, etc. The melee system of hybridizing RoF, sometimes with Ag, sometimes fixed, makes no sense to them (they feel making it only Ag would be the best), and weapons with no +SB making no damage against the average Joe (they feel that giving +Ag or Per bonus could work for precision weapons, who still need the extra damage source to cause damage in the first place). The armors themselves where ok, although they felt that making them overall weaker reduced the amount of play available for weapon design as far as Pen vs extra damage (if all the armor had +2 AB, than all weapons can have the equivalent of +2 damage or pen, a mix thereof, or another bonus to balance out, giving more options for making new weapons). They also felt that Enforcer Armour should probably be dropped, as Flak has always been said to be the cheapest effective armor available (hell, it's still cheaper and lighter, so they don't even see the purpose of Enforcer Armour except for +1 to max Ab). They want forcefields back to invulnerable saves (as one of them mentioned, "A Terminator doesn't care how well you aim, or even if you shoot him with a conversion beamer from 18 miles, he'll still shrug it off a third of the time. Fields either block or don't block stuff, they don't reduce how well it hits.")

- They want accurate back to what it was, so snipers can actually do serious damage to people.

- They want explosive damage back.

- They like the idea of the critical like system for combat, but the execution is way too bookkeeping intensive for them, especially for nameless mooks. They feel that there needs to be a way to kill off unimportant characters without inflicting a pile of conditions on them, something like a wound threshold after which they simply die, no matter what effect they have on them.

- They are ambivalent towards the Talent system, they like the idea of progression, but feel that it is too limiting. Their best idea is a pool of options at 200, a pool at 400, and a pool at 600, where you need to take one of each level before accessing the next, with possibly some talents requiring others as prerequisite. Makes for more character customization, while still giving the idea of a particular skill. They think Gunslinger and Blade Dancer should be crushed into a single, Dual-Wielding Talent. They also feel that their should be 2 scales of costs for weapon training, "basic weaponry", which includes las, SP, low-tech, flame and shock, which would be cheaper (200 xp) and "advanced weaponry", which includes the rest, and are 400 xp.

- They don't really like the idea of tracking weapon status.

- They feel the audibility range is a little messed off (bolt weapons being heard from less distance than autoguns, when the former is shooting high explosive rockets )

- Psykers need a way to obtain sanctioning without being astra telepathica, considering that IG Primaris Psykers are mentioned directly in the rules. They like the new powers, but again feel that stacked pools, rather than trees, would work better.

- They like the idea of more in-depth systems for influence, subtlety and social interactions.

Also I miss money. Having to save for weapons and work things up to them was good, felt like a reward to get a new item. Now just rollling dice every time you're at home or the market to see if you get that Melta gun (although why you'd want it now!) isn't quite the same

Someone obviously hasn't played a poor Hive World Guardsman in a party chalk full of noble borns! Seriously, when I'm only making 250+ thrones per month compared to the thousands by my "comrades," I am so happy about the introduction of Influence across the board. The idea of influence now stands, largely, as the only unifying strand across all of the lines of FFG products (Deathwatch has renown, BC has infamy, OW has logistics, RT has profit factor), so it makes total sense for FFG to throw an influence-type mechanic into DH2.

I do have some concern over how function the raising and lowering of Influence will work out in a campaign. Will it work well for most groups, or is it something that will be highly GM-dependent? I'm not sure. My hope is that our current group will be able to finally finish our long-term DH/Ascension game so that we can rigorously test this beta.

- They like the idea of the critical like system for combat, but the execution is way too bookkeeping intensive for them, especially for nameless mooks. They feel that there needs to be a way to kill off unimportant characters without inflicting a pile of conditions on them, something like a wound threshold after which they simply die, no matter what effect they have on them.

You haven't read the rules properly, I fear - you don't use the critical stuff for mooks. Mooks die after taking 2 wounds, or one crit, and never use the crit table. Elites use the crit table, but die instantly to one crit, and only the Master NPCs act like PCs when it comes to wounds.

You haven't read the rules properly, I fear - you don't use the critical stuff for mooks. Mooks die after taking 2 wounds, or one crit, and never use the crit table. Elites use the crit table, but die instantly to one crit, and only the Master NPCs act like PCs when it comes to wounds.

That's what my players get for being too nice and not reading the monster section (surprising for once...). The elite die on crit is in the wound section, not the regular mob die in 2 wounds. It would probably be worth mentioning there as well

- They feel the audibility range is a little messed off (bolt weapons being heard from less distance than autoguns, when the former is shooting high explosive rockets )

Well... gyrojets (which Bolts are based off) are actually... at least more difficult to identify, and theoretically quieter than the report of a gun (though obviously longer lasting, as they are burning their engines as they go along, while a bullet has a single report and then a crack if it is a supersonic round). However, bolters start off with a conventional bullet, fired out the weapon by the standard process a gun works by, and only then does the rocket engine come into play... so they should be just as loud as guns.

The explosive aspect... well, a bolt isn't that big, and they go off inside a target. I don't know how load the actual explosion would be... What it would be is rather distinctive though, as a guy gets a chunk blown out of him.

The explosive aspect... well, a bolt isn't that big, and they go off inside a target. I don't know how load the actual explosion would be... What it would be is rather distinctive though, as a guy gets a chunk blown out of him.

Add to that the fact that bolters are not single shot weapons, and you have explosions all over the place, not only in people. The loudness of the bolts in motion would of course vary according to their speed (well, if they are subsonic or not, as many gyrojet weapons are supposed to be). And the explosions are definitely louder than the gunshot; the former is partially muffled by a barrel, the later is usually meant to explode either directly on contact or immediately before (it depends on the rounds, some are meant to airburst, others to form shaped-charged like darts of superheated metal, others simply blow a large chunk of metal in your face). Without going into details of the reactive speed of the explosives used, it's probable that simply by virtue of the size difference, the noise should definitely be similar if not louder than a standard gunshot.

In GW sources, bolt weapons have in the past been described as discharging their ammunition by a low-powered conventional shot, with the projectile's rocket motor kicking in immediately after it has cleared the main barrel (2E Wargear) and catapulting the missile to subsonic speed (WD #258*). The explosive charge detonates only after the diamond-tipped projectile has penetrated its target by way of a millisecond fuse being triggered upon contact (3E Core Rulebook).

*: this bit is extrapolation by the article only stating that Stalker Silenced Shells fly at subsonic speed, yet have the same penetrating power as an ordinary bolt - the difference being the rocket motor being exchanged for a gas cartridge, and the explosive charge being removed

With the fluff of this franchise being as inconsistent as it is, and with many FFG books contradicting studio material as well (including on certain details of bolt weaponry), the above must not mean anything - but I still wanted to point out that, at least in this case, there actually is some possible explanation for this mechanic in earlier background.

On a sidenote, I'm still irked by "Remembrancer". Not just how it is used, but the name as well. You can't tell me that the only reason they went for this term, which has so far been absent from any other 40k publication ever, wasn't its invention and use in the HH novels. Where it didn't even apply to skillsets, but to a rather specific job.

Admittedly, a popular series of novels, but still ... were the various instances of "Lore" really that bad?

Honestly I liked the various lores. I alot of the other skills I'm glad seeing put together, but ALL lores into one is a bit too much. At least start with scholastic, forbidden and common.

Honestly I liked the various lores. I alot of the other skills I'm glad seeing put together, but ALL lores into one is a bit too much. At least start with scholastic, forbidden and common.

I'd actually be at home with even broader skills than that, something like Forbidden Lore - Warp, Forbidden Lore - Xeno, Forbidden Lore - Man. Perfectly at home with combining most of them though, it just would be nice to keep the feel of having experts in different fields still.

Agreed Navi, just figured they didn't have to go ALL the way in one go. Certain things like Warp and Daemon could easily be merged though.

It could be based on your skill RANK.

People with rank 2 would roll common lores, 3 scholastic lores, 4 Forbidden lores- and 5 would be "Talented".

This would be sort of an unlockable skills that could easily be added to the description of the skills themselves.

"A person with rank two on a speciality knows the basics about it trough experience, a person with rank 3 and a speciality had studied it extensively and a person with rank FOUR and a speciality knows its secrets- a person with rank 5, not a lot of secrets left he couldn't gleam out from the dark depths of the subject matter at hand."

Wait. Am I getting this right? You have access to all forbidden lores if you have one of them?

No, you have access to common lore, scholastic lore and forbidden lore of your chosen specialty [so a single field].

Oh good I was getting scared.

Saldre,

If that is the intention of FFG then they may want to re-word it becuase it really isn't clear, My resident rules monkey would have a field day currently.

I'm currently running through character creation with two of the players in my DH1 campaign, they are trying to re-create their current characters (after adjusting to the higher assumed exp of DH2) and at the moment is looking like a very mixed bag.

here are my notes so far;

telepathica background - background needs to sort its weapon training out (las pistol given but weapon training is low tech)

stat progression seems very slow, and very expensive

removal of minor powers has "seriously removed the fun" from playing psykers, as has reducing the number of powers - the player in question really missed the minor powers and psi blade.

subterfuge for an assassin should be a core skill and shouldn't be 150 to upgrade

more as the experiment continues

Surak