As in the warp is the sea and chaos is the oil. Not as much as the sea, but when it is let out it can totally ruin the sea with everything with it.

And it is very hard to ever get it out again.

Agreed. The concept of a 'general specialist' by definition should be limited because it's a contradiction in terms.

I'm not a fan of having multiple tiers of specialist talents hard-set in the rules, because that's (a) adding unnecessary rules verbiage and (b) cannot cover every possible situation.

However, a GM should discuss with the player how 'tightly' he wishes to draw the boundaries of his specialisation - on the understanding that it will be better the closer he has focused.

Using the examples above:

Remembrance with Specialist (Imperium) will know what space marines are fairly easily and with more difficulty will know what first founding chapters are and be able to name some of them.

Remembrance with Specialist (Adeptus Astartes) wouldn't have much difficulty rattling of a list of the named first founding chapters and giving the names of most of the special characters from Codex:Space Wolves.

Remembrance with Specialist (Space Wolves) would (potentially) know anything published about the wolves in Codexes or novels to date.

i.e. a 'proper' sage should be encouraged to take Specialist (Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Imperial Fists, etc) rather than Specialist (Adeptus Astartes) because it's made clear that whilst the former bundle of talents costs more it will provide more knowledge.

A man with Operate and Specialist (Adeptus Astartes) should have a reasonable chance of driving a Rhino. Unless he has Specialist (Blood Angels), however, presenting him with a faster Lucifer-pattern variant won't look any different right up until the moment he steps on the gas and plants it into a wall.

Also, with regards to the comment about "You speak every daemonic language there is, you know how to heal daemons and you know how their infernal machines work." - I agree this shouldn't be the case, therefore I would pointedly say that the Specialist talent is not useable with any skill you do not have at least one advance with.

Having Specialist (Adeptus Astartes) together with Remembrance skills means you know the history, notable heroes, publically published tactics, etc, of the astartes. If you don't have Medicae to start with, though, there's no way you could have learned anything meaningful other than 'space marine innards have extra bits' which won't help in the slightest if you're trying to fit said extra bits back in through a bolter wound.

I would like to add that this kind of granularity should ONLY be added if it's going to be a DH game focusing heavily on space marines (acolytes, go find out if the ultramarines are technically violating their chapter limit and then stop them!). If space marines are showing up for one session or two and the player who bought an adeptus astartes specialty is told that he knows nothing about their chapter because his specialty isn't specific enough, you are being a bad GM. Players shouldn't be talent taxed like that without good reason and without taking into account how valuable its going to be to know this. No one is advocating that players need to increase BS for each individual gun because a sniper rifle shoots a lot differently than an autopistol. I know that one of the themes of the game is that knowledge is power, but specialist and lore talents were huge and terrible XP taxes in previous games and the new change is the best thing to happen to skills. Players see a lot more use out of their combat talents than their mental ones in the majority of games, particularly in terms of immediate reward and how often the talent is used. The talent already says it needs a good explanation for why a player is able to acquire it, akin to the use of elite advances. It doesn't need to be depowered or split up anymore unless the game being played is heavily focused on dividing up one of the specialties.

Oh, a fair comment. I certainly agree that we don't want lore talents to be the red-headed stepchild.

Above all, the most important thing with Specialist is that the GM should make clear both the breadth and depth of knowledge he's going to assume a given specialist scope to cover at the point the acolyte is considering buying it, and the two of them should mutually agree this and tweak it as appropriate until both are happy.

I still think you should need at least one level of the actual skill (remembrance, medicae, etc) to use a specialist talent, though. How many specialist talents you can apply it across is less relevant.

I'm fine with Specialist (Mechanicus) essentially bundling up the old speak language (Techna-Lingua), Common lore (mechanicus), forbidden lore (mechanicus), scholastic lore (archeotech), and probably trade (technomat) to boot. it's simpler, easier and therefore better.

What I'm not fine with is claiming any ability at servitor maintenance from specialist (mechanicus) when you don't actually have medicae or tech use - you bought specialist (mechanicus) for remembrance and linguistics skills. If you subsequently buy medicae or tech use, then go right ahead; there's no reason to demand you buy a specialist talent a second time.

No one is advocating that players need to increase BS for each individual gun because a sniper rifle shoots a lot differently than an autopistol.

Not sure of the new edition details - I don't have the book in front of me at the moment - but isn't that essentially what the different weapon training talents are?

I was using the chapters thing purely as an example. What was more meant is taking things in the other direction - a Specialist (Imperium) - akin to common lore (Imperium) could be argued to cover just about everything to the point of absurdity, which is just as ridiculous.

That said, I wouldn't consider even a Specialist (Adeptus Astartes) not knowing a chapter history as being a bad GM. You would recognise a marine (obviously) and, assuming codex-ish heraldry, be able to make intelligent assumptions about company, specialisation, campaign history, and rank, probably recognise honours like marksman's honours or iron skulls, and know 'famous' chapters and or those who operate nearby (e.g. storm wardens for calixis or the wardens if near the maelstrom).

Assuming you'd have heard of, much less know much of the history of, a chapter you've never had dealings with seems a bit much to me. But - and this is a big but for someone with an inquisitorial acolyte's resources - you'd know where to look to find out .

Ignoring marines, the same thing could be said for specialist (Inquisition) - there are levels of scale involved in knowing much about the inquisition as a whole (and how it's organised in theory), the sector conclave (and how it works in practice), the individual Ordos and Factions, the cabals and groups within said factions, individual inquisitiors and cells, and so on; there comes a level of granularity that a more refined specialist scope would be needed - so specialist (Reliquary 26) or specialist (Tyrantine Cabal) because it's not realistic for someone outside the super-secret-handshake-club to know things which are nevertheless commonplace knowledge to those inside.

For a first level character, I'd say his access to that knowledge would let him perhaps recognize some demons, or their alignments within the chaos spectrum. As they level up or gain more access to more detailed knowledge, increase the fidelity of their access.

I'd also add insanity and definitely corruption due to the warping nature of this knowledge.

In general I wanted to add, that the Remembrance/Specialist change was something I liked about the Beta so far.

I like it better than the old Lore system.