Hi Dark Heresy Beta Testers! Update #3 is now available for download:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4319

We can't thank everyone enough for all the great feedback we've gotten during the beta process. As a side note, don't fret if we haven't immediately implemented suggestions posted or emailed to us. Many of them involve major discussions and testing on our end, and might be awhile in appearing. The effort you all have put into the beta testing is greatly appreciated, and keep it going!

The changes to character gen Fate is rather interesting... takes the stat out of the players choice somewhat, but still just in there with a potential extra point.

Well thank you for the AAT edit.

The Adeptus Astra Telepathica background now loses Sanctioning (which moves to the Mystic role) and instead gets a nice little ability to reduce the Perils of the Warp risk at the cost of a Fate Point.

Sanctioning is a very big deal in the fluff and in a lot of scenarios. Restricting it to AAT background was quite limiting if you ever wanted to run a non-default set-up game, e.g. not Inquisitorial Acolytes, or if you wanted a less radical Inquisitor as your mentor. It meant that either the GM had to gloss over the issue or you were strongly pushed toward AAT. Now AAT is the best background for psykers if you really want to be the most psyky of psykers, but it's now cool to make psykers with different backgrounds more easily. An Imperial Guard psyker for example, or whatever other backgrounds FFG care to release in the supplements (some of which I'm sure will suit psykers).

Simple thing but it makes me really happy because it makes chargen backgrounds more flexible.

Blade Dancer and Gunslinger simplified into a single Talent. Meh - I don't really care. A bit of a granularity loss but most characters will probably favour one of ranged or melee over the other and if they didn't, well 1200XP was a lot for two similar talents, anyway. I'm cool with that. But my Slaaneshi cultists can no longer parry sword blows with their whips? Awwww.

And I see Dire Avengers have been downgraded from Nightmare (after they got their Storm quality back) to just Really Horrible again.

YES!

Thats what I call an update.

Great work, guys. Honestly - great work done.

So the Update 2 was indeed only a short-time weakness caused by gencon and now you are back in your full impressive strength.

The Emperors light shines on you again and His hand guides yours.

Excellent update.

Good to see that recoil gloves have been made harder to get. No more starting character dual welding lasguns.

Armory: RoF remains very iffy. 1/2 is rarely worth the AP expenditure, and still makes absolutely no sense when preventing you from aiming. If it took that long to set a long-las and fire it because you have to aim, you'd be getting aiming bonuses. Even the wildly variable damage on plasma weapons is of little worth compared to a solid volley of hellgun, particularly given the wound system as it is.

The Upgrade system remains highly wonky. Again - Optics or your counterweight breaking off at 0 is perfectly sensible, your blade no longer being monomolecular because you went from 3 to 2, or your laspistol exploding up a size category, doubling in weight and going from six to twelve max shots in the charge pack? Bit silly.

Suggestion: Just have scopes and backpacks [burnt out, holes in it, or other "you're just lucky it didn't decide to cook off" events] or counterweights blown off at 0, and give a static maximum number of upgrades, say two, plus optics and ammo backpack separate. Simple, and keeps the idea without going crazy.

Item quality itself should be part of status in a better way; A "Best" quality item simply happens to be able to suffer an additional slice of damage before getting disabled, Poor's on the verge already. From there re-introduce small bonuses [don't screw ranged this time?]. Especially, say, for Armour:

The new max-Agi isn't... bad, but I would suggest allowing item quality affect this. Is a perfectly crafted, high quality, tailored-to-you suit of flak really going to impede you as much as off-the-shelf-one-size-fits-ogryn stuff patched together? Even -5 for poor +5 for high quality would be a decent enough start. Still, Way better like this than the flat agility bonus you had last time. Not that it's too different, but, feels more right?

I still find the risk to psychic powers to be dangerously high. Certainly harkens back to the days of Dark Heresy, but generally makes using powers a bad idea. The chance is slightly lower than in DH1 for sure, but also jumps straight to Perils of the Warp. It also gets more, not less, dangerous the better you get at it - a beginner stands no chance of here-be-demons??? But a Primaris level guy is one doubles-roll away from exploding into a warp portal for TPK if he can't fate it down, and tends to be corruption-zoning anyways, for mutations everywhere in sessions? That's just **** near BACKWARDS.

Emphasis on the amount of corruption getting thrown about. There's nothing that's passed sanctioning if you could mistake a single combat for a fantasy session of "let's lick this glowing skaven rock and see what happens" once you tally up the costs. One corruption per person PER melee attack? You could go from 0 to chaos spawn in a single horde.

Psy powers tend to be kind of on the short range of things, and the value of the power sets right now varies greatly.

Biomancy: Heals, has the best currrent psyker attack [one with an actual RoF], Pyromancy USED to be interesting in Only War, with Sunburst, but now sunburst is just some PBAoE method of wasting your friends for the same effort you could just inferno off your enemies, fire shield's too weak to ever matter, molten beam's now just plain weak, and inferno seems to cost 4AP [3 + 1 for rate?]? The whole thing seems just uninspired.

Telekine Shield is cheap, but will do nothing early on, both it and dome are questionable wastes of your action points - dead enemies are generally worth a lot more than possibly maybe eventually reducing the damage of an incoming attack by A point and then utterly collapses.

You can, and have, done better than this.

The new max-Agi isn't... bad, but I would suggest allowing item quality affect this. Is a perfectly crafted, high quality, tailored-to-you suit of flak really going to impede you as much as off-the-shelf-one-size-fits-ogryn stuff patched together? Even -5 for poor +5 for high quality would be a decent enough start. Still, Way better like this than the flat agility bonus you had last time. Not that it's too different, but, feels more right?

I like that idea a lot - especially because it works with armour being damaged/improved during gameplay (both mechanically and thematically).

As for upgrade-breaking-wonkyness, is this ultimately a question of "Upgrades" being labeled wrong? "Compact", at least to my mind, is not an upgrade. You don't take a weapon and make it smaller - you make a smaller weapon to begin with.

At first glance, Reinforced (debatable) and Compact are the only real offenders here (maybe Mono - I'm not sure on the fluff for that one; is it a field with a generator? If so, the generator could be damaged, I suppose). Maybe it'd be worth to separate these from the Upgrades category, and specify that you can only get these when acquiring the item from new - not after the fact.

It'd be great if quality also applied to other gear. No thoughts on it right now, but I hope I'll get back to it when I have more time.

The new max-Agi isn't... bad, but I would suggest allowing item quality affect this. Is a perfectly crafted, high quality, tailored-to-you suit of flak really going to impede you as much as off-the-shelf-one-size-fits-ogryn stuff patched together? Even -5 for poor +5 for high quality would be a decent enough start. Still, Way better like this than the flat agility bonus you had last time. Not that it's too different, but, feels more right?

Oh, nice one. I'm quite in favour of little effects from quality like this. I feel it really helps establish the decaying, revere your equipment religiously ethos of the Imperium.

One thing, though... that means a best-quality Bodyglove is no different from a normal one (and what does a poor one do? 95?).

I don't like exception-based rules, but I also don't like rules that have no effect. Hmm.

Well thank you for the AAT edit.

The Adeptus Astra Telepathica background now loses Sanctioning (which moves to the Mystic role) and instead gets a nice little ability to reduce the Perils of the Warp risk at the cost of a Fate Point.

Sanctioning is a very big deal in the fluff and in a lot of scenarios. Restricting it to AAT background was quite limiting if you ever wanted to run a non-default set-up game, e.g. not Inquisitorial Acolytes, or if you wanted a less radical Inquisitor as your mentor. It meant that either the GM had to gloss over the issue or you were strongly pushed toward AAT. Now AAT is the best background for psykers if you really want to be the most psyky of psykers, but it's now cool to make psykers with different backgrounds more easily. An Imperial Guard psyker for example, or whatever other backgrounds FFG care to release in the supplements (some of which I'm sure will suit psykers).

I am not so sure. This change seems to have simply flip flopped what a player can create, while introducing a rather large lore gap in my opinion.

The change allows a non sactioned psyker to have an AAT background! (Take AAT, Select any role other than Mystic, Purchase Psyker elite advance). I cannot beleive that an organization, whose sole purpose is to ensure there are not non-sactioned psykers would allows someone to go through their whole program and leave without being sanctioned. Sure perhaps they snuck out or broke out or whatever... but THAT should take an exception to the rules/story not be enabled by the standard.

Furthermore, I also think the change simply flip flopped what you can or can not build. Now, rather than not being able to build a sanctioned psyker with a non AAT background, you seemingly can not have a non-sanctioned Mystic? So how exactly do you build a rogue Mystic then?

With the Rules:

Sure you can take anyone of the other roles and add the Psyker elite, but you lose the benefits and alignment of what the Mystic role gives you.

Outside the Rules :

Sure you could take Mystic and then choose/agree not to gain the Sanctioned Trait. That however, leaves the player giving up something with nothing to counter balance the loss (actually they take on a higher risk in 'rogue' status).

While not as clean, it seems that sanctioned should be a guided choice... something like:

• If you have an AAT background and you are a Mystic you are sanctioned.
• If you select Mystic without an AAT background you can choose to be Rogue (and get some minor psi perk, which is offset by the major storyline risk) or you can get the sactioned trait (which means that while you did the whole AAT thing <the only way to get sanctioned> your Non-AAT background still guides you more than your time with the AAT).

The non-sanctioned AAT example could well be a nascent psyker whose abilities only manifested once they left the AAT and joined the Inquisition.

The non-sanctioned AAT example could well be a nascent psyker whose abilities only manifested once they left the AAT and joined the Inquisition.

Sure thats another example that I would add to the 'rare' but conceivible category, a category overly encouraged by the change. 99.9% of the time a psyker who has a AAT background should be sanctioned.

We also have the issue of not being able (within the rules as written) to have a non-sanctioned mystic (which any player who really wants to make a pure psyker is going to want).

Yeah, Mystic shouldn't be inherently sanctioned, I agree there. Honestly, wouldn't it be easier to just make it a choice? Take sanctioned for a significant negative trait due to the general horribleness of the sanctioning process, keep the 2d10 corruption for unsanctioned psykers.

You could argue, that a mystic has a certain experienced level, which a non-sanctioned rogue psyker not yet has.

For me that is acceptable.

As for the non-sanctioned AAT - it is the same as with sanctioned non-AAT psykers:

The chosen background is not the only station of a characters history.

He might have served in the AAT in his young years and was very influenced.

Later he was at another station, when his powers first showed themselves.

Not impossible at all.

Although I admit that my preferred choice to this problem would have been a choice of two options when getting the psyker trait:

A.) Being unsanctioned - get CP and be carefull !

Or

B.) Get a negative sanctioning side effect as in DH1, but be sanctioned and save; maybe even pay additional XP for this option or alternatively give unsanctioned a discount on the psyker package

The new Fate Points mechanic is my favourite change. My players will love it as well.

Merging Blade Dancer and Gunslinger is good idea I think considering the cost of the talent.

I like the new effects from Burning and the change in the Burning condition. Much more lethal as it should be.

I like the change to First-Aid as well.

As mentioned above tying up Sanctioning to Mystic is not a good idea as you can't have rouge psykers. But this is minor too me as I like the change to AAT. I look forward to more changes to char-gen and roles. Maybe change assassins' and warriors' special ability to something fate triggered as well. Do you feel like adding extra step or two maybe?

I would like to see more influence from quality on the equipment in the upcoming updates.

Great update guys. Thank you.

The thing once again though, is that a characters role should be 100% agnostic of their social standing in the world. It speaks only of their natural abilities and tenancies going forward. Mystic is already iffy because it gives the Psyker elite advance, but its kind of necessary.

You could have a hive world imperial guardsman, who calls himself a rifleman, have the role of Sage.

You could have an imperial world ministorum member, who calls themself a priest, have the role of Desperado.

Role is there purely to represent a character going forward. It does not represent their background. Putting Sanctioned in the Mystic role goes quite strongly against the spirit of these rules.

Should Sanctioned be only in AAT? By no means!

Sanctioned seems best to leave as a 200xp Elite Advance, mentioned in the Psyker Elite advance and strongly recommended for players. Recognize that Elite Advances fall under "complete" control of the GM, so there shouldn't be any fear of odd metagaming here.

It could still remain in AAT as an option for that OR the newly listed (and pretty nifty) bonus AAT now gives.

Obviously, AAT shouldn't always give Sanctioned, as it can have non-psyker members.

I agree with the bit quoted below, and would even add that it can only be taken at character creation.

Sanctioned seems best to leave as a 200xp Elite Advance, mentioned in the Psyker Elite advance and strongly recommended for players. Recognize that Elite Advances fall under "complete" control of the GM, so there shouldn't be any fear of odd metagaming here.

I am not so sure. This change seems to have simply flip flopped what a player can create, while introducing a rather large lore gap in my opinion.

The change allows a non sactioned psyker to have an AAT background! (Take AAT, Select any role other than Mystic, Purchase Psyker elite advance). I cannot beleive that an organization, whose sole purpose is to ensure there are not non-sactioned psykers would allows someone to go through their whole program and leave without being sanctioned. Sure perhaps they snuck out or broke out or whatever... but THAT should take an exception to the rules/story not be enabled by the standard.

I don't think that's right. How on Earth are you purchasing the Psyker Elite Advance? This can only be acquired via the Mystic role or through very special GM approval. Ergo, you can't get a non-sanctioned AAT psyker. Nor could you with this change anyway - Sanctioned is tied to the Psyker Advance now.

Yeah, Mystic shouldn't be inherently sanctioned, I agree there. Honestly, wouldn't it be easier to just make it a choice? Take sanctioned for a significant negative trait due to the general horribleness of the sanctioning process, keep the 2d10 corruption for unsanctioned psykers.

No . Because Sanctioning is a very big deal in the setting and the game is by default about being Imperial Agents. If the default is not to be sanctioned then all you'll get is either ignoring of the setting or endless badblood between GMs who try to enforce the setting and players who keep whining that it's an option in the rules. The situation becomes even worse following the other suggestion that it should be purchased as a 200XP advance which amounts to an immediate XP penalty for any psyker who doesn't want to be a heretic that half the Imperium would burn on sight and the rest wants to pack into the Black Ships. It's bad for role-playing (restrictive to PCs), rankles with the fluff and will just cause player irritation with GMs like me who try to keep the setting unaltered.

The Imperium, for the most part, is like Salem in the Witch Trials and an unsanctioned psyker is a witch. By all means if players specifically want to play an unsanctioned psyker let them drop it, but don't encourage it. It's like those flaws in other role-playing games, e.g. the one in Shadowrun that means you can't retreat in combat or where you have a dark secret making you a traitor. It's one of those things that backs a GM into a corner and forces them to either ignore it / engineer that it wont be a problem, or massively alter a game / kill a PC because of it. I hate those kind of extreme flaws that are so bad that you can't use them and they become free points under threat of being a killer GM.

The default game is agents of the Imperium. Radical Inquisitors may make use of unsanctioned psykers, but lets just keep them sanctioned as default because that's how they should be for 99% of PCs and doing otherwise will inevitably lead to acrimony and problems. I don't know a player who would resent starting the game with me as GM saying: "by the way, pay 200XP or I'll probably kill your character". Nor do I want to run every game set on some remote agri-world where no-one will know the difference or have every campaign have their mentor as a radical inquisitor who just happens to be fine with employing someone who is an unsanctified doorway to the warp and who most of the Imperium believes should be burnt to death.

EDIT: From the DH2 book:

Those psykers who never underwent this testing and training to help ensure the safety of those around them are deemed rogue, fugitives from Imperial law should they be discovered . [...] Most end their short days in a fiery pyre or as a Daemon’s plaything, but some become mighty forces for damnation or salvation.

I don't want to be locked into some death spiral with a player because they resent me treating unsanctioned psyker for what it is.

I don't think that's right. How on Earth are you purchasing the Psyker Elite Advance? This can only be acquired via the Mystic role or through very special GM approval. Ergo, you can't get a non-sanctioned AAT psyker. Nor could you with this change anyway - Sanctioned is tied to the Psyker Advance now.

This is incorrect, any role can purchase the Psyker advance by buying it for 300xp (and meeting the other prereqs). The Mystic role simply makes it free and removes the Prereq need.

But heres the beauty of it, besides a few talents, and the Inquisitor elite advance, this system is modular enough to not have a requirement that PCs represent agents of the Inquisition.

We were locked into it in DH1, but no longer.

@Knasserll: If your players are that petty, then I got nothing for you.

I just see that if we want to have Sanctioned removed from AAT (since we do want non-psyker AAT characters), then our only "real" option is something outside of the role system.

I still strongly believe that social/organizational standing should not be tied to the role system. That is for backgrounds, homeworlds, and elite advances. Roles purely exist as these game constructs to tell us how we spend our XP.

I agree with the bit quoted below, and would even add that it can only be taken at character creation.

Sanctioned seems best to leave as a 200xp Elite Advance, mentioned in the Psyker Elite advance and strongly recommended for players. Recognize that Elite Advances fall under "complete" control of the GM, so there shouldn't be any fear of odd metagaming here.

As XP at character creation is limited, I would make the costs not in XP butvin a penalty like it had in DH1 sanctioning effects

I agree that Sanctioned shouldn't be tied to Mystic but rather as a separate Elite Advance. As things stand now, I could create a wild shaman (Feral World, Outcast, Mystic) and somehow be sanctioned.

By separating Sanctioned from both Mystic and AAT, it would allow the full range of character options that people seem to want. Sure, give it some small xp cost, maybe AAT characters get it for a discount.

If you're going to have a penalty for taking it, the penalty for not taking it should be greater, too - even if it's just spelling out how bad it can be for unsanctioned (maybe you get Enemy (Witchhunters)?). An alternative penalty for unsanctioned psykers would be to invert the new AAT bonus - roll 2d10 and take the highest when rolling for Perils - although this would create problems for those rare unsanctioned AAT psykers.

I don't think that's right. How on Earth are you purchasing the Psyker Elite Advance? This can only be acquired via the Mystic role or through very special GM approval. Ergo, you can't get a non-sanctioned AAT psyker. Nor could you with this change anyway - Sanctioned is tied to the Psyker Advance now.

This is incorrect, any role can purchase the Psyker advance by buying it for 300xp (and meeting the other prereqs). The Mystic role simply makes it free and removes the Prereq need.

No. Any role can purchase it with GM special consent. It is an Elite Advance. Read the text for that. You cannot just purchase an Elite Advance like you would others. The book is very explicit on that. The only method of getting it by the book, other than special GM approval, is to have the Mystic role. Seriously you are wrong in this. What you've done is just look at the pre-requisites in the advance itself. You also need to read the rules under Elite Advances generally.

But heres the beauty of it, besides a few talents, and the Inquisitor elite advance, this system is modular enough to not have a requirement that PCs represent agents of the Inquisition.

We were locked into it in DH1, but no longer.

@Knasserll: If your players are that petty, then I got nothing for you.

I just see that if we want to have Sanctioned removed from AAT (since we do want non-psyker AAT characters), then our only "real" option is something outside of the role system.

I still strongly believe that social/organizational standing should not be tied to the role system. That is for backgrounds, homeworlds, and elite advances. Roles purely exist as these game constructs to tell us how we spend our XP.

It's not about my players being petty. It's not really a problem with players at all. It's something that crops up in all sorts of game systems and it's the problem if the Nuclear Flaw. I gave an example from Shadowrun and there are others. Basically a flaw do bad that you can't use it. Often it becomes free points for a player for that reason. The Imperium is a xenophobic, highly religious, purity obsessed setting. You get world's and places within it that are less so but mostly if you're an unsanctioned psyker you're basically someone that a mob would have no problem stringing up. Sanctioned psykers are distrusted and hated enough by mankind. An unsanctioned one is a person with a legal death sentence hanging over them and due process probably means someone claiming they were turned into a newt.

It's a Nuclear Flaw that a GM cannot make use of because doing so radically alters the adventure and possibly the campaign.

It's also wildly unfair to players to saddle them with a 200XP cost just to not have their character be hunted down. Nor to put the GM in the position of having to deal with a Nuclear Flaw that constrains the game and role-playing choices. Sanctioned should be a free, default that any psyker character gets and which they can choose not to have if they know what they're doing or it suits the non-standard campaign the GM wants to run.

And currently the only way of being a psyker by the book is to choose the mystic role so that's where it should go. Or you could put it with psyker itself.

To people wanting psyker with other roles, well you can with special GM permission allow it to be purchased. That's clear in the book. By default not though, and that's about game balance. There are warrior psykers in the fluff. And they are better than just warriors. A psyker PC needs to be balanced against a Warrior or Assassin PC. I expect more roles will be published in the supplements which make include some sort of warrior mystic, possibly with different psyker powers. But anyway - you can have non-Mystic psykers. But the GM has to approve it.