I've been reading through a lot, and designing an Inquisitor for my players, and just noticed two things. Firstly there's a reason to use two weapon fighting; if you hit your opponent with a flurry of lighter strokes like a knife or fist first, you can get him up to a high Wound rating so your second, heavier pistol or sword stroke can finish him off. I actually like this idea, as that's a pretty cool fighting style and gives the Desperado a sweet specialization. This is especially the case as, as the example of a character taking multiple hits from one flurry of blows indicates in the book, you don't start stacking on the +5s for multiple wounds until the next ATTACK roll. Thus, you slam a guy with a series of light hits to rend his armor and get him on the backfoot, then stick him through the head or throat with a heavier finisher. Neat, and a cool reason to use a heavy and light melee weapon in tandem.

The problem is, the Inquisitor is designed as a higher rank (Rank 6) character, as an exercise in seeing what happens as characters get up there, and his chainblade/chainsword combo is attacking significantly faster than a heavy machine gun or other automatic weapon, at like RoF 6 with the blade and 4 with the sword. He attacks faster than the cyclic rate on a heavy machine gun. I want you to think about that for a moment.

I would suggest that perhaps Rate of Attack should be uncoupled from Agility Bonus. In a game where players are going to get much higher stats over time than they did in the original Dark Heresy, the numbers are just going to get absurd over time, compared to the rates of fire on the automatic weapons listed earlier. I'm also not sure how I feel about the fractional RoF weapons, and I suspect weapons with a very limited fire rate could be better represented by adding Single Shot to an RoF 1 weapon, though I cannot confirm this without having done actual playtesting yet, as we're still designing characters and preparing.

What's his WS?

RoA is the maximum number of times an attack can strike its target. The number of times it actually strikes is dependent upon degrees of success rolled on the BS or WS test. So in the dual wielding scenario you are less likely to get those hits with your off-hand weapon.

I guess the other thing is, even though you can't potentially hit as many times with ranged weapons there is the benefit of them being ranged (including the ability to take cover).

He's a Desperado with a 60 WS and Blade Dancer. Sure, his odds of hitting with all six chainblade hits aren't that high, it's more that he gets a rate of attack of 6 for a single AP, letting him spend 2 AP attacking to get the two 'long' bursts with his melee weapons. Blade Dancer eliminates the Dual Wield penalty and Desperado actually makes him better when doing so, so the guy will mess you up in hand to hand. It's less 'can he hit with all that' and more 'to have a 6 shot burst all non-heavy weapons need to spend at least 3 AP, nearly their entire turn'. The low AP cost on that combo also means he can afford to save two for Dodging, etc. And there's the general ridiculousness of, again, the potential RoF being double that of an automatic weapon.

The issue with making RoA on melee dependent on Ag is that it works at the start, but collapses late in the game because of how much Ag can be boosted in this version of the rules. IMO, that's a poor design choice, and their is no justification why only sword like weapons scale with Ag (I don't care who you are, you can't swing a power sword 12 times as fast as a power axe, it's ridiculous). They should just make them fixed RoA, like the rest of the weaponry.

Moreover, their is currently something of an issue with dual wielding; namely, it's the only way to get two distinct attacks, and that makes it straight up superior to anything else in the currently very number of attacks (rather than damage per attack) focused system. If the guy with two weapons can make his attacks sequentially, there is no reason an individual should not be able to split his attacks with one gun if he's using more than 1 set of APs for them. If the latter is impossible, the former should be resolved as split attacks, but simultaneously (so the wound bonus from the first one does not apply), as it is the only way it can make sense (else a guy can shoot one gun than another, but the same guy can't shoot the same gun twice).

I still think, like you said in another post, that THIS part of the system is the devil and must be purged. I am not sure- but at the very least, an Errata is not going to enough to fix this. Its a shift thats required.

Whatever the case, making a high level guy has convinced me that Rate of Attack should not depend on Agi. Once again, it's making an already supremely useful stat even more useful. This can be fixed, I think, and I see the logic behind how they're doing two-weapon fighting, especially as doing it successfully requires you to hit with two attack rolls, one of which is at a penalty (without a talent) and thus far from guaranteed. It just needs to be less possible to pull of 4-6 Attacks in one AP to make it a little less insane. I can see the logic behind a lot of the things I disagree with in the system, which gives me a lot of hope they can, and will, be fixed. They're stuff that 'seemed like a good idea' or seemed to make sense; lord knows I've done that kind of thing often enough in game design or houseruling only to find it just plain didn't hold up.

Maybe with dual-wielding, you should only be able to use the higher RoA of the two weapons to cap hits with both? That way, dual wielding is more about the two weapons working together rather than another weapon merely adding attacks.

I think that a lot of the stuff in here looks like a good idea , but wasn't really tested in a high level environment or against one another, with the melee RoA and ranged single shot weaponry being the most obvious ones, as other options are clearly placed besides them.

One of the things I find odd is the relative lack of RoF 1 stuff. The difference between RoF 1/2 and RoF of 2 is not only 4x the attacks, its also twice the AP cost to attack, which, overall, means less combat options, which is bad . The fact that you now need to keep AP for reactions (why?), and low RoF weapons, especially melee ones, get the short end of the stick. If I have to move just to get to hit the other guy, I expect to have enough AP to do so, but currently, especially with Power Fists and the like with 1/3 RoF, you can't really do that, and there is no way you'll be able to keep a reaction to do anything defensive.

The more I think about it, the more I think every character should have 1 free AP for reactions every round, with the possibility of keeping more, to allow melee people to dodge and/or parry a bit even if they fight.

The more I think about it, the more I think every character should have 1 free AP for reactions every round, with the possibility of keeping more, to allow melee people to dodge and/or parry a bit even if they fight.

You actually get 2AP just to use for reactions before your first turn at the start of every combat (unless you are surprised). After your first turn, however, you have a strict budget of 4AP to spend on your turn or after. That seems to mean you cannot make reactions against attacks from enemies that go before you in initiative. This has big implications for the high Agility PCs everyone seems worried about.

I don't know if that effectively solves the issue brought up ITT but it certainly curbs high Agility PCs from dancing around in the open and getting a bazillion hits on every attack. Like everyone else, they need to think tactically, get into position, and strike when the time is right if they hope to maximize their damage potential in a given turn of combat.

So, when they finally put out a power knife, you could be looking at 8 attacks per AP with lightning-attacks; as long as you at least did ONE point of damage you'll start doing the +5/+10/+15 wounds bit.

The more I think about it, the more I think every character should have 1 free AP for reactions every round, with the possibility of keeping more, to allow melee people to dodge and/or parry a bit even if they fight.

You actually get 2AP just to use for reactions before your first turn at the start of every combat (unless you are surprised). After your first turn, however, you have a strict budget of 4AP to spend on your turn or after. That seems to mean you cannot make reactions against attacks from enemies that go before you in initiative. This has big implications for the high Agility PCs everyone seems worried about.

I don't know if that effectively solves the issue brought up ITT but it certainly curbs high Agility PCs from dancing around in the open and getting a bazillion hits on every attack. Like everyone else, they need to think tactically, get into position, and strike when the time is right if they hope to maximize their damage potential in a given turn of combat.

Nope, check out the rules on "Maintaining Action Points" - you keep extra actions points until the beginning of YOUR next turn. You only lose them right before you play.

Rate of attack should NOT scale with ability scores. The damage already scales with ability scores.

There could be talents that increases your rate of attack instead.

Actually, I'm rather surprised, there aren't AP increases. Of course this should be **** rare; probably some implant or psychic power that grants just +1AP, and a talent somewhere we can assume most will grab that grants one more somewhere in the trees. Perhaps they can't even stack.

Rates of Fire can probably be something one can improve; Certainly lightning attack does it already, and ranged upgrades could certainly work there, but the entire cost list needs to be redone anyways.

Right along with the "you took a wound already? +5. Critical? +10" bits that need to leave. Let the damage build itself up with our rolls.

It isn't a bad concept, not at all, just, right now the numbers be all over the place and the balance out there with it.

you keep extra actions points until the beginning of YOUR next turn. You only lose them right before you play

Excellent catch, thanks!

So, when they finally put out a power knife, you could be looking at 8 attacks per AP with lightning-attacks; as long as you at least did ONE point of damage you'll start doing the +5/+10/+15 wounds bit.

Of course, even one 10 means most enemies are immediately killed. If even 4 hits result, at a 10% of RF per hit, this quickly becomes very lethal.