I've been putting off the worry about characteristics reaching 90+ for a while now, because I assumed it would be incredibly expensive to reach that high. Theoretically possible, but not practical.

Colour me surprised: Unless I'm reading this wrong, going from 85 (or 89) to 90 (or 94) for a primary characteristic (experience modifier is 50) is a paltry 400 exp. Is it just me, or is this incredibly cheap? In DH1, the last upgrade never got cheaper than 500 exp, and that was only the 4th of its kind - not to mention they were few and far between.

Also, in DH1 the talents and skills usually cost around 100-200 exp. The really expensive stuff reached 300. Upgrading characteristics past the first step started being a real tradeoff, due to the expense.

With talents in DH2 typically starting at 200 and reaching 600 at the end, it seems a completely obvious choice to always take characteristics immediately when available. That's unfortunate, I think.

I think there is one thing to really consider with characteristics, before people run too far with the idea of characters having 90+ in any given stat.

Permenant Characteristic damage is now far more common.

Over a characters lifetime, there are bount to be situations where they take damage that high. If you examine the tables, each one appears to target specific characteristics. Energy damage to the limbs appears to target Agility for example.

do remember to reach a 80 to begin with you need to be rank 7 or 8

And then there is Permanent Characteristic damage....

Well, the total cost of that is 2800, which is a little over 10% of the xp you'll have by rank 10. So yeah, it's not a very huge investment. For a modifier of 100 it costs 5600 and for 150 it costs 8400. These still seem like pretty small investments.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to put a human cap on characteristics that's unrelated to its starting value (as it is in other 40k rpg games).

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, no characteristic can go beyond 60. That way when you take characteristic damage, you can recover from it.

I would even let a limited number of factors allow a character to push past this limit. EG a bionic arm gives you +5 strength that doesn't count towards your characteristic limit for strength. Perhaps saying these bonuses don’t stack. So;

Bionic arm +5 str doesn’t count towards limit

Combat Drug injectors +10 str doesn’t count towards limit

These, both taken together would increase the character’s strength by +15 but the cap only by +10 (so in a human a max of 70)

If it's a human limit you can modify it for other races. So Ogryns would have a higher strength and toughness limit but a lower int and wp limit, for example.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to put a human cap on characteristics that's unrelated to its starting value (as it is in other 40k rpg games).

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, no characteristic can go beyond 60. That way when you take characteristic damage, you can recover from it.

I would even let a limited number of factors allow a character to push past this limit. EG a bionic arm gives you +5 strength that doesn't count towards your characteristic limit for strength. Perhaps saying these bonuses don’t stack. So;

Bionic arm +5 str doesn’t count towards limit

Combat Drug injectors +10 str doesn’t count towards limit

These, both taken together would increase the character’s strength by +15 but the cap only by +10 (so in a human a max of 70)

If it's a human limit you can modify it for other races. So Ogryns would have a higher strength and toughness limit but a lower int and wp limit, for example.

I like that.

Maybe, then, don't limit the number of time a characteristic can be purchased, so you can always buy out of stat decreases? I'm not a big fan of permanent stat decreases to begin with, so a way to buy out of it would be welcome in my group.

Well, the total cost of that is 2800, which is a little over 10% of the xp you'll have by rank 10. So yeah, it's not a very huge investment. For a modifier of 100 it costs 5600 and for 150 it costs 8400. These still seem like pretty small investments.

to hit rank 6, you need 10 000 xp assuming your skills are all an average of 36 via point allocation, so a 50 xp characteristic is 1350, a 100 xp one is 2700, and a 150 would cost 4 050

Do remember you gonna need skills, and talents to do anything, because the game isn't all about combat, and many have a requirement of a characteristic from 50-60 assuming you buy enough advanced to hit about 60 would be about 5 advances, or if you min/max 3 advanced for some skills 4 for other etc, so buying 5 upgrades for all characteristics would cost 16-20k depending a bit on class, if we guess the average cost between all classes for all characteristics to be 900 then you gonna spend xp fast, it can be cheap for one stat, but you can't focus on one, you need ws or bs, strength and toughness, strength so you can carry additional gear, unless your melee, toughness to survive, agility and wp to dodge psykers attacks, and not be totally slow, intelligence, so you can use important lores and what not, perception so you don't get blindsided, and fellowship so you can inquiry for relevant information without it failing over and over.....

It is quite easy to max one or two stats together with any thing else you may need. But it is impossible to max everything.

But why would want to max one stat, when for that last step you can probably buy 2 or 3 advances in another stat?

The basic foundation is that all the stats are equally valuable. Currently perception, toughness and strength are a bit underwhelming. At the same time willpower and agility are perhaps too strong. There are plenty of threads out there on this, but my point is that I think that the prices are fine, provided we can get a good balance between the stats.

no

It doesn't seem unreasonable to put a human cap on characteristics that's unrelated to its starting value (as it is in other 40k rpg games).

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, no characteristic can go beyond 60. That way when you take characteristic damage, you can recover from it.

I very much like that idea. Having a reserve of Characteristic advances you can buy while keeping a cap on how far it can be advanced towards the human max helps negate the unpleasantness of permanent ability loss somewhat. That way Characteristic loss can be overcome, but the exp is still calculated at the previously purchased rank, so the loss still stings.

Do remember you gonna need skills, and talents to do anything, because the game isn't all about combat

But who needs a +20 Rememberence or Tech-Use when they have a 95 Intelligence? Or a +10 Evasion when they have 80 Agility, which not only adds to all Agility based skills but also movement, initiative, and even possibly defense in the case of Nimble? Increasing characteristics adds in multiple ways to skills and combat actions.

Sure, buying a skill nets you +10 in one specific skill. But buying a characteristic advance gets you +5 in ALL related skills. A 65 Perception means even your untrained, rank 1 Observation skill, is 55.

Obviously this ignores that the character has to get to that rank, which can be harder with lower skills. But with only a -10 modifier and higher starting stats in DH2, well, even untrained skills are good as many starting DH1 trained skills! And some games do have characters created at a higher starting XP amount, bypassing the whole "you have to work up to it" thing.

Yeah, having a natural maximum for stats and a secondary augmented maximum makes sense. After all, cybernetics and drugs pushing a character over their usual potential makes sense. It's basically how Shadowrun handles things, and that works well.

Vaeron, I understand your point, but no-one starting from Rank 1, or even Rank 4 or 5, is going to build their character during play with this in mind. I myself tend to give characters advances that make sense given what they've been doing in the previous sessions, others simply pick what's handiest at the time. Most people aren't going to build their character from wherever they start so that they'll have Agility 95.

Well, maybe a serious munchkin or *******.

Phil, your max stat idea sounds pretty good, and while I think the fuss about characteristic advancement is slightly overblown, I do agree that there needs to be some sort of cap.

Actually, given the 1 advance allowed per rank, it seems quite likely that a player could get up to that 95 stat given a natural progression. Especially since raising a favored characteristic is relatively cheap.

Do remember you gonna need skills, and talents to do anything, because the game isn't all about combat

But who needs a +20 Rememberence or Tech-Use when they have a 95 Intelligence? Or a +10 Evasion when they have 80 Agility, which not only adds to all Agility based skills but also movement, initiative, and even possibly defense in the case of Nimble? Increasing characteristics adds in multiple ways to skills and combat actions.

Sure, buying a skill nets you +10 in one specific skill. But buying a characteristic advance gets you +5 in ALL related skills. A 65 Perception means even your untrained, rank 1 Observation skill, is 55.

Obviously this ignores that the character has to get to that rank, which can be harder with lower skills. But with only a -10 modifier and higher starting stats in DH2, well, even untrained skills are good as many starting DH1 trained skills! And some games do have characters created at a higher starting XP amount, bypassing the whole "you have to work up to it" thing.

getting to +30 in a skill costs from 1400 xp too 1800 xp, and having that +20 evade at rank 3 will help when your agility is only 60.

there needs to be a balance, as focusing on only one thing will put you behind, and you will only get 95 in a stat if you rolled a 20 to begin with on it, AND you have taken no characteristic damages.

Do you know how much xp goes into rememberence? Peer is also important for certain characters, here you have many things you, at least you should have all skills trained.

And yeah, starting at 400xp is usually a bad idea, but in dh2.0 it is more viable.

Can't focus on one thing and not the other.

I also think a "human" limit on Attribute levels would be a good thing.

Also I think the attribute costs became too cheap, while they were too expensive in DH1.

Why not leave the costs as they are and also the 1 increase per rank limit, but dont increase the value by 5 per increase, but another value, maybe 4 or 3. I think a reduction to 4 as increase would indeed be a good solution - there is no reason why it should be 5.

With thtis change, you could increase by maximum 40 in your acolytes life. Still enough even considering some permanent loss on the way.

Regarding the obvious talent cost increase:

An increase was needed compared to DH1, but the increase here is too much.

Especially the tier 3 talents are way too expensive.

200/350/500 would still be enough and way better than 200/400/600

Just my 2 Cents on the issue.

There's a very obvious reason it's in fives, actually. Bonuses are the name of the game in this system, so you want to be shooting for upgrading your tens digits. Two 5 point advances will always achieve this.

As in the Character creation it is not normed on 5-digits, your point is not valid in every case.

If I have a characteristic of 37, it does not matter at all if I go (at least not regarding "round" figures):

> 37-->42-->47-->52

OR

> 37-->41-->45-->49-->53

You reach the Bonus Values slower, correct, but that would be fully intended, as in would indirectly increase the attribute costs and limit the total increase of the attributes value

Considering how very important bonuses are, I'd say keeping it at 5 makes taking advances a lot more rewarding than a lower number. I wouldn't change it, personally.

But aren't the costs way to low then ?

Especially compared to the quite high Talent costs (400 in average) ?

In DH1 it was rather the other way round - talents too cheap, attributes a little too expensive.

I am especially afraid of increasing attributes too much, especially in cases of Toughness (invincible tanks with ToughB 6 on Rank4 and ToughB 8 on Rank8) and Agility (ever-evading ninjas with AgB 5 and Evade +30 on Rank6).

The comparing dodge might help with DH2, but I am still very sceptical to tanking Toughness (6-8) + Armour (4+).

Such a character would be invincible to damage 10-12

Maybe the permanent characteristic losses can make up for this, but that has still to be seen.