Can we get the debate back on track please, guys? The beta test phase isnt that long and while I enjoy reading everyone's opinion here, I'd like to stay focussed on the actual issue of tweaking the beta. Or not (finding that it is good as-is.).

Is +5/+10 too much? Is it just about right? Or too low? (Of course changing these values would mean FFG would have to overhaul the critical tables or change weapon damages also... not sure if they want to do bigger revisions at the beta stage...)

Alex

I think it's pretty good.

• It needs to be something that's easily multiplicative. 2, 5 or 10 are the only good options. A lot of players aren't quick with math.
• The critical hit needs to be divisible by the normal hit, so you don't need separate bookkeeping, but can just check off two wounds on a crit.
• The current system means that the first time you get hit is almost always a "warning shot". You can still get killed before you get your turn if the opposition is strong, but it's not going to happen by "GM accident". You have a chance to get into cover/run away.

There are arguments to be made for adjusting weapon damage and crit table effects (personally I can see altering [or omitting] the critical table descriptions , but I think the effects are alright), but the base 5/10 system is exactly as it should be.

Story time! Slight derail, but this reminded me of something similar I did for a DH1 game.

For a session, I had planned a sort of zombie outbreak. My rules for zombies, to make the session sufficiently gory, were quite simple:

1) Zombies did not have wounds. Every hit they took would go straight to the critical hit tables.

2) Critical hits on zombies did not accumulate. To destroy a zombie, you actually had to deal enough damage in a single hit to a single location to actually get a result on the crit table that would reasonably destroy the zombie.

3) I forgot the exact details, but there was some conditions where they would be easier to destroy. Like headshots. I forget.

This actually made them surprisingly tough. Granted, they had a pretty high Tb (they might even have had Unnatural Toughness, I forget), but for the party's full auto weapons it was actually quite difficult to roll enough damage to destroy a body outright. Lots of severed limbs and blood spraying everywhere though.

Just quickly throwing in that you dont need to multiply things in your head; if you are bad at math, you just add to the current tally. (And that if one doesnt want other factors than 5 or 10, a d20 system would be better. )

Alex

Just quickly throwing in that you dont need to multiply things in your head; if you are bad at math, you just add to the current tally.

Alex

True, but I like to minimize book-keeping. I love that I can now just put in a checkmark in a box when I get wounded, instead of having to erase, add up and write in my new "HP", smudging up my character sheet. It's a small thing, but I think a marked improvement.

But the wound tables does not describe glanzing wound. They describe things such as:

10 or lower: The shot hammers into the target’s chest with a vengeance, pulping his fl esh, bruising his ribs, or infl icting another suitably ghastly blemish upon him. The exact narrative severity of this wound is left to the Game Master’s discretion, but it has no mechanical effect beyond the wound itself.

11: The brutal strike smashes into the target’s solar plexus, causing him to double over in pain and leaving him vulnerable for a moment. The target suffers 1 fatigue.

10 or lower: The shot strikes the target’s head with an dolorous thump, deflecting off of his skull but perhaps inflicting a dreadful abrasion, gash, or fracture in the process. The exact narrative severity of this wound is left to the Game Master’s discretion,but it has no mechanical effect beyond the wound itself.

11 With a crunch, the blow slams into the target’s temple, causing him to reel backward as searing spots of light fill his vision. The target suffers 1 fatigue. If the attack scored a number of degrees of success greater than the target’s Tb, he is Stunned for 1 round.

These are all likely wound effects from a sniper rifle shot to the body or head of an unwounded PC (average damage rolled, TB3, no armor).

Also, while the inability to actually kill an important character with the first couple of hits may have certain narrative advantages, it is the opposite of deadly. That's why I find the system very undeadly. When you also take fate points into account it becomes even less deadly for the PCs.

As I wrote in reply in your other thread where you put this argument, I'm not wishing to trivialize but if someone fires a plasma gun at a PC and somehow manages to score a 5 on the Wound table, I'll just say: "as the plasma charge spits past your head, a small drop of the plasma spatters against your chest plate. Even through the armour, it blisters your skin and singes your chest hair"

Improvisation is easy for me to do, but customized wound charts for different weapons would be very hard for FFG to do. Being unwilling to make minor flavour adjustments to the Wound results is just making things hard for yourself, imo.

And again, I find it hard to describe a game where a couple of low-level thugs getting the jump on a PC hasa good chance of that PC being dead in a couple of rounds can reasonably be called "very undeadly".

But it would be easy for FFG to make sure that wounds with no serious side effect are actually described as near-misses, grazing wounds, and so on.

Obviously our definition of deadly differs, but I also think that our idea of how a combat between two thugs and a PC would play out differs quite a bit. I find it unlikely that a PC attacked by two thugs armed with stub revolvers would be dead before the thugs run out of ammo (unless they have spare ammo). If we give the thugs a 50% hit chance and the PC a 30% dodge chance, he will be hit by 35% of the attacks. Thats 4 hits from stub revolvers each doing 1d10+3 damage. If the PC has average toughness (TB3) and no armor, he would be wounded by every attack. The final bullet would do 1d10+15 damage, thus unable to kill the PC (unless he is unlucky, and has been hit by a critical wound in one of the 3 first attacks = 27% chance). This is after 6 rounds of combat and before any fate points come into play. While he may walk away with one or two serious wounds (unless he uses fate points to remove wounds during the combat), he would be quite likely to be alive. Things may be different if we are talking about ganger equipped with heavy stubbers, but it would also be very different if the PC actually fought back or were trained for combat and wore an armor.

I do not find that deadly. But thats a matter of taste.

I think the main issue of many people is not the general deadliness in the system right now.

All in all, the systems deadliness is quite good so far.

There are just special circumstances, that seem a little odd.

The most obvious ones being:

- the snipers being unable to head-shot targets dead syndrom

- the wound a target with full-auto to become a living time bomb for the next hit (however weak that one might be) syndrom

To mathematically not being able to sniper a target is frustrating.

Its also frustrating, if a well-put auto-attack does around 4-5 wounds in one attack.

For that reasons I am for:

- limiting wounds of multihits (auto) and limit the RF chances

- improve called shots regarding damage (especially for accurate weapons).

Other than that, I think, the current system is a really good one.

I am more in the insta-death category. Here are the 2principal reasons I vouch for those types of fights.

First, I hate when combats drag on. I prefer a more cinematic and deadly fight to a long and boring one. IMO, Dark Heresy is more of an investigation game that a fighting game. When players are forced to go into an open fight, they should know that it could very well mean their death. The fact that they decide to go despite the possible consequences strengthen how ballsy their characters are. For me, the system should reflect that, leaning more towards a Call of Cthulhu style than a D&D one.

Also, the WH40k universe is an unforgiving place where people die all the time. I like this quote from Ravenor's book who says ''Serve the inquisition long enough and it will get you dead''. This aspect needs to appear in the actual fights. I think we tend to forget that we are getting shot by actual guns, laser / plasma or frag grenades. I don't think it's normal to get a shotgun burst in the face without dying. Of course, the acolytes are very lucky/talented individuals and this is reflected by the Fate points system. I love this system, because it allows to DM not to hold back. IN our games, if you burn a fate point, you're out of the encounter, but you can continue to play. if the injuries of your character still allows it.

This

YMMV.

The one idea that captured my attention the most in this worthwhile thread has been - instead of the +5 for any attack that gets through, why not just accumulate the damage that gets through the Defensive Value, however small or much that is? It's the simplicity of it & the perfect 1:1 granularity with damage taken that seems so right with it.

If one point got through TB + armour, that is perfectly represented by the one accumulated point to add to the next Wound sustained for purposes of the Wound Effect Table. If ten points got through then ten is added to the next Wound sustained for purposes of the Wound Effect Table.

In this way, one could have kept the old Righteous Fury rules, granting a qualified exploding damage die. Though perhaps FFG wanted to get rid of those Righteous Fury rolls to streamline things.

If a character takes four hits where 1 damage gets through on each, then they have 4 accumulated damage points for adding to the next Wound sustained for purposes of the Wound Effect Table - not 20 like the the 2e-beta currently has (4x(+5)). The Wound Effect Table may need adjusting for suggestion, I'm not sure.

I was actually thinking about this last night after I read your post, seanpp.

I think it has to do with the possibility of having (up to) 30 different individual injury effect lines for each Location- if a PC/Master takes 1 point one Round, then 1 more point the following Round, and so on. If . This method would definitely be too granular.

1 I would like to pose a question to the people in the pro-cumulative damage camp : Don't you feel the beta shifts the balance too much in favor of cumulative damage? A single previous wound turns a Boltgun hit into kinda a Heavy Bolter hit? Really?! A single critical wound turns a Boltgun hit into kinda a Meltagun hit...

2 Don't you feel that +5/+10 is too much? I feel FFG in general isn't conservative enough when it comes to modifiers (and too conservative when it comes to lethal weaponry, see Deathwatch rulebook). Smart player will use modifiers in ways unforeseen by the designers... that's why it's best to be light on that.

If you run the numbers in comparison to weapon damages, then +3/+6 or +3/+5 seem a much better fit.

Alex

With regards to 1- Yes. In my opinion, the current cumulative damage/injury system is unbalanced, but I'm concerned about the "little" guns. If someone gets dinked and receives a wounding hit for a minimum of 1 point, it counts as +5 toward the next wounding hit which, as seanpp points out, is possibly too great an increase, and I agree. Perhaps instead "light" weapons (read as smaller calibers) only result in +3/+10, and bigger weapons get the +5/+10? But then you have injury effect tables with entries for 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and so on, rather than 5, 10, 15 et al, and that is also too granular.

+3/+5 would run 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and so on.

+3/+6 would run 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and so on.

What it boils down to (from my perspective) is A- +3/+5 and +3/+10 are too granular, requiring seriously overlong injury effect tables, even if they stop at 20+ rather than 30+, and are right out (sort of); B- +3/+6 really is no better or worse than +5/+10, unless the table still runs to 30+, then in that case there have to be more injury effects, which means more injury tracking, which means more combat drag. Dropping it back to 20+ then just seems like it might as well stay +5/+10, as +3/+6 gives us nearly the same number of non-RF/RF increments.

But...

What if we took the +10 out of the equation and used +3/+5, and stopped the injury effect tables at 15, with anything > 15 being dead?

Again, +3/+5 would run 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

A PC/Master could be hit with a maximum of five non-RF wounding hits, or a maximum of three times with RF, before the next one kills him. This might double (?) the number of injury effects on the tables, but the number progression is slightly more granular and actually requires no more injury tracking than already exists. At the low end the increments indicate going from "I'm fine" to being hit that first time and it being "Oh, crap!". The latter increments appear to be a buffer from "I'm almost dead" to actually being dead, but in fact they are no such thing. A PC/Master gets hit 3-5 times at the most before the next one kills him.

That is grimdark deadly.

Now, what if the number of wounding hits in every round started the count-down from the very first hit?

A PC/Master take a non-RF wounding hit from a stub pistol, so +3. He takes three more in the same Round from an autogun, so now he's at +12. It would take longer irl-time to record the injury effect than it would in-game time for him to get killed. That's combat. And that's a combat system that doesn't drag.

Voila! Sniper Rifles that can "one-shot, one-kill" any normal person.

Too deadly? Fine, give them the first wounding hit for "free."

A PC/Master could be hit with a maximum of five non-RF wounding hits, or a maximum of three times with RF, before the next one kills him. This might double (?) the number of injury effects on the tables, but the number progression is slightly more granular and actually requires no more injury tracking than already exists. At the low end the increments indicate going from "I'm fine" to being hit that first time and it being "Oh, crap!". The latter increments appear to be a buffer from "I'm almost dead" to actually being dead, but in fact they are no such thing. A PC/Master gets hit 3-5 times at the most before the next one kills him.

That is grimdark deadly.

I am not sure I am following you on everything in your post but your remark with regards to maximum numbers of wounds that a master NPC could withstand got me into thinking. Yeah, I think that is problematic.

Which brings me back to this idea: assign every crit table entry a wound effect modifier between +0 and +5. Rule that critical hits double the modifier. That way it's unknown how many wounds an enemy can withstand. Wounds that cause little damage potentially dont add much to the multiplier - making light weapons less a preparatory weapon and making meltas and plasmas more fearsome. Ofc you then need to take care that light weapons can kill otherwise by reducing the number where crits become deadly. Or, if you dont want to lose crit entries (variety!), add +1 or +2 to the damage of all weapons (depending on ROF, I guess).

In short... one can balance between cumulative and insta-death and i'd like to get it technical in here. Less philsosophical.

Alex

I would prefer a damage system where:

1) previous wounds did not add +5 to the following damage effects.

2) there wound effect tables had much fever levels, for instance 10.

3) the individual wounds were more likely to remove someone from the combat while stille being alive , for instance by knocking him/her out instead of having his/her head explode.

4) one hit could kill someone with a lucky roll, but temporary fate points could be used to reroll making death unlikely, and permanent fate points guaranteed survival.

This way, low damage weapons would likely remove enemies from combat due to bleeding, fatigue, burning, or simply failing toughness check to keep staying conscious. High damage weapons would be much more likely to severely damage or kill someone, and could potentially remove a target from the combat with one hit.

I am not sure I am following you on everything in your post...

Looking back on it, neither am I.

Generally, I prefer a system that lies somewhere in the middle. Close to "instadeath", but forgiving to a degree - at least to player characters. It could be argued that the option of Burning Fate would already provide for forgiveness. In another thread, I have already mentioned GW's Inquisitor RPG, which to me always felt a bit brutal, yet realistic, and most of all still bearable to players. Being hit by strong weapons need not necessarily have you explode right away, but it should leave a significant, even permanent mark on the character. You don't just shrug off a plasma blast to the leg - you shrug off the leg.

If I'd really have to choose between the two extremes, however, I'd gravitate to instadeath. The rules should reflect the atmosphere of the setting, and not just because of the premise that "life is cheap". This is a sci-fi setting with horrific weapons, and to me it just doesn't feel right when said weapons just don't do what I would expect of them after having read about how they work and what they do. It's one thing to be stabbed with a sword, or even being shot by a normal bullet, but quite another to be subjected to weapons that melt tank armour on a subatomic level, that flash-boil your flesh and have it explode due to rapid expansion of wet parts, or that essentially hit you with a miniature sun.

YMMV.

So how would you tweak 2.0 beta, Sister Lynata? Let's get technical!

I am not sure I am following you on everything in your post...

Looking back on it, neither am I.

It happens.

Alex

Which brings me back to this idea: assign every crit table entry a wound effect modifier between +0 and +5. Rule that critical hits double the modifier. That way it's unknown how many wounds an enemy can withstand. Wounds that cause little damage potentially dont add much to the multiplier - making light weapons less a preparatory weapon and making meltas and plasmas more fearsome. Ofc you then need to take care that light weapons can kill otherwise by reducing the number where crits become deadly. Or, if you dont want to lose crit entries (variety!), add +1 or +2 to the damage of all weapons (depending on ROF, I guess).

This is all good stuff, to be sure, in this whole thread - but it all seems to be heading into the direction of significant complexity, no?

Rather than have 1-3 intermediate layers to determine what 'wound effect modifier' a certain amount of damage would call for, doesn't it make more sense to have no layers at all and simply use the damage that got through TB+Armour? One point gets through and the character has +1 to Wound Effects for next time. Same character takes 5 points from subsequent hit - you add the previous 1 to the new 5 to get 6. You go to the Wound Effects Table to 6 and apply the effects. That character now has +6 to subsequent hits that get through. There's no figuring out anything, the damage is what it is. The adding two numbers is as easy as keeping track of your hit points was before.

So pure. So simple. The current Wound Effects Tables may need adjusting if you did this, but it certainly wouldn't call for wholesale rewrites.

Which brings me back to this idea: assign every crit table entry a wound effect modifier between +0 and +5. Rule that critical hits double the modifier. That way it's unknown how many wounds an enemy can withstand. Wounds that cause little damage potentially dont add much to the multiplier - making light weapons less a preparatory weapon and making meltas and plasmas more fearsome. Ofc you then need to take care that light weapons can kill otherwise by reducing the number where crits become deadly. Or, if you dont want to lose crit entries (variety!), add +1 or +2 to the damage of all weapons (depending on ROF, I guess).

This is all good stuff, to be sure, in this whole thread - but it all seems to be heading into the direction of significant complexity, no?

Rather than have 1-3 intermediate layers to determine what 'wound effect modifier' a certain amount of damage would call for, doesn't it make more sense to have no layers at all and simply use the damage that got through TB+Armour? One point gets through and the character has +1 to Wound Effects for next time. Same character takes 5 points from subsequent hit - you add the previous 1 to the new 5 to get 6. You go to the Wound Effects Table to 6 and apply the effects. That character now has +6 to subsequent hits that get through. There's no figuring out anything, the damage is what it is. The adding two numbers is as easy as keeping track of your hit points was before.

So pure. So simple. The current Wound Effects Tables may need adjusting if you did this, but it certainly wouldn't call for wholesale rewrites.

Both approaches at least amount to the same thing: keeping track of a climbing tally. Personally I think the crit table entry allows for more control. For example, you could have limb hits that do crippling damage but dont increase the wound effect modifier much.

But they go in the same general direction.

Alex

Ultimately, this is a preference thing. No game is "right" or "wrong" when it comes to something like this.

DH2 is a lot more realistic than a lot of other games (including DH1) due to the wound effects, but it's not a real-life simulation.

It's a game, and it wants you to play it. Playing games is generally more than just preparation - you get to react to your circumstances. If your circumstance is being dead, there's not much you can do to react. Early death removes gameplay, which (to me) is a bad thing, even if it's more realistic.

That said, I think a lot of you are greatly underestimating the deadliness of the new system:

1. Evasion is not very dependable anymore. A lot more hits are going to get in due to the opposed DoS nature of evasion tests.
2. Those critical effects are nothing to sneeze at, and they come in a lot earlier than they used to. You're likely to see some very severe effects by the second round (or first, if you're hit by a high-damage weapon). Being one-shotted in real life doesn't always mean you're "dead dead". It means you're unconscious and bleeding to death rapidly - that's going to happen in DH2, too.

I agree with this. DH 2.0, like any other RPG, is a game and the point is to make a character and get to interact with the world it's set in. This particular setting is supposed to be violent and to place an emphasis on how cheap human life is. That does not, in my opinion, translate to "it should be possible to instant kill anything." That's not realism or grim darkness, it's unnecessary punishment that leads to a high body count and little else. I've played plenty of DH sessions where I've already been mighty fearful of what lay around the next corner because I knew my character couldn't take a whole lot of punishment.

Like Magnus said, there's no right or wrong answer here, but I personally feel that instant kill rules for anything other than what already exists is just going to make combat something PCs will dread, and not because it's supposed to be frightening, but because they don't want to roll poorly on their dodge and thus spend the rest of the evening creating a new character.

One last note, I did immensely enjoy playing Only War, because it is incredibly deadly. In our group, in the span of maybe 7 or 8 sessions, 3 PC's died and a whole mess of comrades. But the reason I enjoyed that is because we were playing Guardsman in a war zone and the high mortality rate helped underline the trudging meat grinder feeling. DH, however, is about investigation, and I would prefer the rules focus more on that and allow a greater chance to survive combat, even if you are missing an arm or walking away with several new scars.

So how would you tweak 2.0 beta, Sister Lynata? Let's get technical!

You already know what I'd do.

When the core rules in their current iteration appear that unattractive in terms of the effects they yield and just come across as being overly and unnecessarily complex, then I'd either not use the system at all, or houserule it. I see no minor tweaks that could turn it into something that I, personally, would appreciate. Even the old rules seemed less like a headache.

I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel.

I would prefer a damage system where:

1) previous wounds did not add +5 to the following damage effects.

2) there wound effect tables had much fever levels, for instance 10.

3) the individual wounds were more likely to remove someone from the combat while stille being alive , for instance by knocking him/her out instead of having his/her head explode.

4) one hit could kill someone with a lucky roll, but temporary fate points could be used to reroll making death unlikely, and permanent fate points guaranteed survival.

This way, low damage weapons would likely remove enemies from combat due to bleeding, fatigue, burning, or simply failing toughness check to keep staying conscious. High damage weapons would be much more likely to severely damage or kill someone, and could potentially remove a target from the combat with one hit.

AKA: Go back to DH1/OW combat rules! That's my fix guys. The OW system works better, Period. You don't have to redo everything else, Just that! Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did was silly! Much of the rest of DH2 is very well done! Particularly the narrative stuff! The combat system, while playable (Sort of!) is inferior to it's predecessors for a lot of reasons!

For me, DH2 is a huge improvement.

The rules before, DH1 most, had many many downsides in my eyes.

And the most critical issues in my eyes, are being adressed now, so I am really a pro-DH2.

So how would you tweak 2.0 beta, Sister Lynata? Let's get technical!

You already know what I'd do.

When the core rules in their current iteration appear that unattractive in terms of the effects they yield and just come across as being overly and unnecessarily complex, then I'd either not use the system at all, or houserule it. I see no minor tweaks that could turn it into something that I, personally, would appreciate. Even the old rules seemed less like a headache.

I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel.

LOL, fair enough - but it's not very helpful as a beta-testing feedback, right? Well, looking around the boards, the damage rules seem to be the most controversial issue. Might give FFG a pause for thought.

Alex

I would prefer a damage system where:

1) previous wounds did not add +5 to the following damage effects.

2) there wound effect tables had much fever levels, for instance 10.

3) the individual wounds were more likely to remove someone from the combat while stille being alive , for instance by knocking him/her out instead of having his/her head explode.

4) one hit could kill someone with a lucky roll, but temporary fate points could be used to reroll making death unlikely, and permanent fate points guaranteed survival.

This way, low damage weapons would likely remove enemies from combat due to bleeding, fatigue, burning, or simply failing toughness check to keep staying conscious. High damage weapons would be much more likely to severely damage or kill someone, and could potentially remove a target from the combat with one hit.

AKA: Go back to DH1/OW combat rules! That's my fix guys. The OW system works better, Period. You don't have to redo everything else, Just that! Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did was silly! Much of the rest of DH2 is very well done! Particularly the narrative stuff! The combat system, while playable (Sort of!) is inferior to it's predecessors for a lot of reasons!

The thing is, the only thing I really need from a 40k RPG is a combat system with weapon and armor stats that works really well. I need a system where anti-tank weapons are plausibly deadly, and a power armour a really big deal in combat, but where swords and lasguns are not completely redundant. A game where a Space Marine can survive several shots from a predator tanks autocannon, and a salvo of lasgun blasts, but can still possibly be defeated by orks with meat cleavers in close combat. I need interesting stats for monsters combat abilities that make them mechanically unique and give them just the right amount of staying power. I wan't the system to have details and mechanical chrunch, but I do not want drawn out combats and constant looking up wound effects in different charts.

This is really hard to do right, and I don't know any other system that can do this to my satisfaction!

I know these preferences a highly personal, for instance my "the right amount of staying power" may not be the same as yours,

I don't need rules for skills or talents. There are plenty of other games that can do this excellently, so I don't need to buy a new book for the climbing or first aid rules. I don't need all the other things in this book (though many subsystems are great, while there are other that I dislike), The only thing I really need to be sold on DH2 is a combat system that works for me while including all the iconic 40k equipment. Currently DH2's combat system is not working for me, and neither is the system in DH1.

YMMV, and so on.

AKA: Go back to DH1/OW combat rules! That's my fix guys. The OW system works better, Period. You don't have to redo everything else, Just that! Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did was silly! Much of the rest of DH2 is very well done! Particularly the narrative stuff! The combat system, while playable (Sort of!) is inferior to it's predecessors for a lot of reasons!

Obviously Radwraith, to each his own, and I agree this 2e-Beta isn't ready for prime time...and it stunned me to first learn 2e wasn't mechanically backwards compatible. However, I'm in the camp that, despite the nostalgic glow it seems to be enjoying on here, the DH1 system had quite a few significant problems not to be glossed over now. I suspect that most current DH campaigns are, as a result, heavily-to-very-heavily House Rule'd. I know mine was. OW modifications made the DH1 system more palatable but it still had significant issues. I kept playing because of the sick setting.

Given your comment that the "OW system works better, period" and that this is "Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did", let me list the key areas that I find 2e already better than 1e. It's an important topic for all DH fans who are trying to decide whether a system upgrade is worth working on.

1. IMO, Action Points (essentially 4 quarter-turns) are a big improvement over Full Actions/Half Actions (2 half turns). Now a character can move, fire, move & go prone all in the same Turn. With Action Points a character can choose btw completely dedicating that Turn to an action or budgeting some of their Turn for Evading - or even multiple Evades. We always found Full/Half Actions to be clunky.
2. Dodge wasn't right. Attacker would roll a "3" on their To-Hit percentile roll, Target would only make their Dodge by 1 and negate the whole attack. Comparing Evade DoS against the Attack's DoS is superior and is a big change, because it comes up all the time. Moreover, I never liked that the 1e system essentially allowed you to Dodge no matter what a character was otherwise doing. Now in 2e, at least a character has to account for their Dodging (Evade) with Action Points.
3. Flamers with their auto-hit-but-you-can-try-to-Dodge were overpowered and a bit strange, falling outside the normal combat mechanic. One man's opinion.
4. There were WAY too many skills and too many tiny niche' skills (i.e. Blather) that needed to be rolled into another broader ones.
5. I like crunchy combat systems but DH could certainly get ponderous, "Okay, so your attack is +10, -20, +10...+10....right? Wait. How many +10's was that?"
6. I had more than one of my players ask me under what circumstances their best choice would be to use a Full Move vs. just Run for a short distance. Interesting question.
7. A character in DH 1e could have suffered multiple wounds and be in terrible shape but still be in a massive sword fight while carrying all 70lbs of their gear - all without any ramifications whatsoever. Yet they took one more shot & suddenly died. Sure, we just all shrugged and said "Pulp" (a.k.a. this isn't intended to be a historic reenactment) - but that doesn't mean it wasn't completely ridiculous.

The 2e-Beta is attempting to address all these things. As 2e-B stands. it's addressing some better than others (and it's addressing some of them quite nicely as-is), which is why FFG is having this Public-Beta and why ak-73 started this thread to discuss specific suggestions rather than broad characterizations.

I've always played DH because of the Inquisition, Commissars, psykers, bolters, Ordos Malleus, Mechanicus, daemonhosts, Space Marines, power swords, Adeptus Sororitas, Moritat & Radicals...oh and, of course, the Emperor sitting motionless for thousands of years on his Golden Throne. But it'd be nice to bring the system fully up into the 2013 roleplaying era in several major areas it's been lacking since its inception.

There's always going to be folks who stay with the old - always - and it's all good. But let's the rest of us do this.

I would prefer a damage system where:

1) previous wounds did not add +5 to the following damage effects.

2) there wound effect tables had much fever levels, for instance 10.

3) the individual wounds were more likely to remove someone from the combat while stille being alive , for instance by knocking him/her out instead of having his/her head explode.

4) one hit could kill someone with a lucky roll, but temporary fate points could be used to reroll making death unlikely, and permanent fate points guaranteed survival.

This way, low damage weapons would likely remove enemies from combat due to bleeding, fatigue, burning, or simply failing toughness check to keep staying conscious. High damage weapons would be much more likely to severely damage or kill someone, and could potentially remove a target from the combat with one hit.

AKA: Go back to DH1/OW combat rules! That's my fix guys. The OW system works better, Period. You don't have to redo everything else, Just that! Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did was silly! Much of the rest of DH2 is very well done! Particularly the narrative stuff! The combat system, while playable (Sort of!) is inferior to it's predecessors for a lot of reasons!

Since your quoting me, I'll comment. I don't like the DH1 system, but there is no reason to go into details about this here.

The thing is, the only thing I really need from a 40k RPG is a combat system with weapon and armor stats that works really well. I need a system where anti-tank weapons are plausibly deadly, and a power armour a really big deal in combat, but where swords and lasguns are not completely redundant. A game where a Space Marine can survive several shots from a predator tanks autocannon, and a salvo of lasgun blasts, but can still possibly be defeated by orks with meat cleavers in close combat. I need interesting stats for monsters combat abilities that make them mechanically unique and give them just the right amount of staying power. I wan't the system to have details and mechanical chrunch, but I do not want drawn out combats and constant looking up wound effects in different charts.

This is really hard to do right, and I don't know any other system that can do this to my satisfaction!

I know these preferences a highly personal, for instance my "the right amount of staying power" may not be the same as yours,

I don't need rules for skills or talents. There are plenty of other games that can do this excellently, so I don't need to buy a new book for the climbing or first aid rules. I don't need all the other things in this book (though many subsystems are great, while there are other that I dislike), The only thing I really need to be sold on DH2 is a combat system that works for me while including all the iconic 40k equipment. Currently DH2's combat system is not working for me, and neither is the system in DH1.

YMMV, and so on.

What kind of combats are you expecting to run with your ideas? Whomever shoots first wins? That's what you're looking at with making all of the anti-vehicle weapons powerful enough to destroy vehicles. How do you envision a combat with your level of melta, plasma, etc. stopping power working out? I'm serious about this.

If you really want that level of separation, just class the weapons as "anti-armor" or not. If you get shot with an anti armor weapon, you die. If you're in a tank or power armor, you treat the damage normally. There you go. There's no reasonable way to have a combat among a few people carrying pistols that can melt tanks that ends in anything less than instant death upon being shot.

The HP system addresses this by giving players plot armor that goes up as you get stronger and allows people to get hit and the attacker get the enjoyment of a hit without instantly taking someone out. The new wound system has decided to make those hits before death cause other effects as well in order to make combat become more of a risk the longer it takes and the more often it is engaged in.

With your proposed system the PCs and NPCs are all a moments away from death at any time if they don't make their dodge and someone with the best weapon hits them. It sounds like you'd rather be playing deathwatch, where the fiction supports the people living through being hit with an anti armor weapon. Swords and lasguns are redundant compared to melta weapons and plasma weapons. They work on the tabletop by dint of having a few dozen guys shooting at one thing or stabbing at one thing.

Here is what you're asking for:

Anti-tank weapons being realistically deadly, which means they would kill anyone not in a tank or power armor instantly.

Swords and lasguns still being a good option in comparison, which would mean increasing their damage, which in turn increases the relative damage of antitank weapons, and so on ad infinitum

Someone surviving being shot by a tank but able to be killed by stabbing, which is either reflecting swingy luck or impossible numbers

Basically, what I'm telling you is that what you're asking is not possible using numbers as we know them to work. A game like dark heresy with lots of stat values and flavor for those to reflect cannot ever bend the numbers to work that way without making exceptions that extend outside the normal damage rules (like the example I gave you above for anti-armor weapons). This is a scaling problem. I honestly think you'd be happier with a more narrative based system that could just change damage values on the fly to reflect their narrative importance. What you're asking right now isn't doable on a game at the scale tat DH is.

LOL, fair enough - but it's not very helpful as a beta-testing feedback, right?

I think it is. Unless FFG is fine with pushing out a controversial system regardless of how it is received. You can always go back and start from scratch if something is seriously broken and you don't want to rush the product into release with all the strings attached (such as not selling well and ruining the line's reputation) - and in this case it wouldn't even be necessary to go back that far, considering that most of the work has been done before with DH1 already!

I've whipped up that DH1/Inquisitor hybrid concept in the other thread in less than an hour thanks to experience with the old system. Give me another one and I have a system ready for play(test).

All the alternatives so far only feel like they'd add complexity to an already bloated and clunky basis. That's just not attractive enough for me.

Of course it is entirely possible that this forum is just not representative of the playerbase at all. /shrug

AKA: Go back to DH1/OW combat rules! That's my fix guys. The OW system works better, Period. You don't have to redo everything else, Just that! Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did was silly! Much of the rest of DH2 is very well done! Particularly the narrative stuff! The combat system, while playable (Sort of!) is inferior to it's predecessors for a lot of reasons!

Obviously Radwraith, to each his own, and I agree this 2e-Beta isn't ready for prime time...and it stunned me to first learn 2e wasn't mechanically backwards compatible. However, I'm in the camp that, despite the nostalgic glow it seems to be enjoying on here, the DH1 system had quite a few significant problems not to be glossed over now. I suspect that most current DH campaigns are, as a result, heavily-to-very-heavily House Rule'd. I know mine was. OW modifications made the DH1 system more palatable but it still had significant issues. I kept playing because of the sick setting.

Given your comment that the "OW system works better, period" and that this is "Reinventing the wheel for the sake of saying you did", let me list the key areas that I find 2e already better than 1e. It's an important topic for all DH fans who are trying to decide whether a system upgrade is worth working on.

1. IMO, Action Points (essentially 4 quarter-turns) are a big improvement over Full Actions/Half Actions (2 half turns). Now a character can move, fire, move & go prone all in the same Turn. With Action Points a character can choose btw completely dedicating that Turn to an action or budgeting some of their Turn for Evading - or even multiple Evades. We always found Full/Half Actions to be clunky.
2. Dodge wasn't right. Attacker would roll a "3" on their To-Hit percentile roll, Target would only make their Dodge by 1 and negate the whole attack. Comparing Evade DoS against the Attack's DoS is superior and is a big change, because it comes up all the time. Moreover, I never liked that the 1e system essentially allowed you to Dodge no matter what a character was otherwise doing. Now in 2e, at least a character has to account for their Dodging (Evade) with Action Points.
3. Flamers with their auto-hit-but-you-can-try-to-Dodge were overpowered and a bit strange, falling outside the normal combat mechanic. One man's opinion.
4. There were WAY too many skills and too many tiny niche' skills (i.e. Blather) that needed to be rolled into another broader ones.
5. I like crunchy combat systems but DH could certainly get ponderous, "Okay, so your attack is +10, -20, +10...+10....right? Wait. How many +10's was that?"
6. I had more than one of my players ask me under what circumstances their best choice would be to use a Full Move vs. just Run for a short distance. Interesting question.
7. A character in DH 1e could have suffered multiple wounds and be in terrible shape but still be in a massive sword fight while carrying all 70lbs of their gear - all without any ramifications whatsoever. Yet they took one more shot & suddenly died. Sure, we just all shrugged and said "Pulp" (a.k.a. this isn't intended to be a historic reenactment) - but that doesn't mean it wasn't completely ridiculous.

There's always going to be folks who stay with the old - always - and it's all good. But let's the rest of us do this.

Ok, I'm sorry but I feel a rebuttal is in order! While I respect that each of us has an opinion I think since specific points were made they deserve specific counter arguments (So no disrespect intended).

1.) AP are absolutely NO different from the half/full/evade pattern of previous system other than tying them to a weapons rate of fire (Which is also ridiculous IMO!). They are simply labeled differently and handled in a more clunky non-organic feel to them. As I have pointed out before: This idea is not new. It was tried by GDW for some of the traveller expansions of the early eighties as well as some wargames. It was largely abandoned in later game since most players felt it made the game feel too 'mechanical' rather than a living character role. This was pretty much the common opinion of most players and gm's back then and I still feel the same way now.

2.) I agree with you on the basic thought but this could have been added to the OW combat system seamlessly (I don't doubt it was probably a fairly common 'house rule' at many tables.)

3.) I disagree with you here. A flamer works like a hose so it is going to hit unless you somehow get out of the way. Flamer's auto hit was mitigated by extremely short range and gay marriage ban in california (Joke! Sorry couldn't resist ). Also Flamer's base damage was comparable to a Lasgun so it wasn't THAT potent.

4.) This was largely fixed in later products. (Again OW and BC).

5.) I didn't find the modifiers to be that mathmatically challenging and neither did any of my players! Particularly if you had a GM screen to keep it all straight. Must just be me.

6.) Good question! Circumstance would dictate the answer.

7.) I agree with this. In DH1 (And later products,) The framework was there with fatigue, lightly and heavily damaged conditions but nothing other than healing times was tied to it. Again, This could have been added seamlessly w/o a complete rewrite!

As I've said before: I could buy into this if the new rules were obviously better! They aren't! This is just different! And arguably worse in many ways!