Yeah - but thats because in most (not all!) situations, a failed charm or knowledge test will not be as bad as a failed evade test.

You might get a second chance on a bad first impression - but a bullet to your head wont give you the same favour.

This more or less sums it up. As someone put it, your ability to play a certain character is predicated on that character not dying, and as such, it's natural for people to take precautions against death.

This tends to get either downplayed or exaggerated by how much the system is perceived as violent and lethal. 40k, being a cross between Call of Cthulhu and Space D&D, is (rather accurately) perceived as very lethal, and as such, people are extremely prone to invest in character survival. At the same time, it's not exactly against the feel of the setting for people to be paranoid and combat-ready regardless of their occupation, so the phenomenon is less disruptive in 40k than it is in many other games.

You "could" try to also make failing at other skills/characteristics deadlier not really sure though if players accept that in any way *lol*.

What about Death-by-bad-choice-of-words when talking to another Inquisitor.

Or Death-by-not-managing-to-recall-the-knowledge-how-this-daemon-can-get-banned.

Players seem to accept an unlucky shot to the own head much more easiliy as reason of death, than other "narrative" consequences.

Other reasons are easily seen as "unfair".

Funny - if you think about it.

Yes, a player's ability to play a certain type of character does hinge on that character staying alive, and yes, a failed Charm test is not as inherently dangerous as a failed Evasion, but these are two examples of the "hidden" mentality I was talking about.

Start thinking everything in the 41st Millennium is resolved with lethal violence, even a failed Charm test, and then plan better and play better, and you can avoid or even escape...escape, flee, run, extricate, quit...many lethal confrontations. If the 41st Millennium is so Grim and Dark and scary-deadly, why do Acolytes not run when outclassed, outmatched, or if the dice simply roll boobs up on them? Because the mentality is a paradox: we want to fight, but we're not willing to die if we fight.

Thats because a "won" conversation lets you feel good - but a won battle lets you feel like the hero.

There certainly are those conversations that are great opportunities to shine, but they are a minority.

Furthermore, a victory is always sweeter, if the risk, that existed on the way to it, was bravely faced and overcome.

If the 41st Millennium is so Grim and Dark and scary-deadly, why do Acolytes not run when outclassed, outmatched, or if the dice simply roll boobs up on them? Because the mentality is a paradox: we want to fight, but we're not willing to die if we fight.

"There is only war" is more than a catchphrase; it's a philosophy upon which the setting is built.

People who want to approach violence realistically in their games have other titles where such approach is more supported, like Call of Cthulhu. Dark Heresy is a game about space murderhobos on a mission from god, and avoiding violence is generally outside the paradigm of the game.

I disagree with both of you.

There are only more opportunities to shine in combat if that is what the GM and Players make of it. It can just as easily be about investigation, and politicking, with very little combat at all, if any. Not saying that's how I'd play it, but there should be just as much opportunity for Intelligence to make a difference as for Toughness.

Obviously outmatched, outgunned, and outnumbered, I'd choose to quit the confrontation, make a better plan, and come back later for another try. If it means a failed mission, the Inquisitor is likely to kill me for quitting anyway, but in that scenario you technically don't get a chance to "play it out"...you failed, you're dead. Kill me for failing because I saw merit in discretion being the better part of success? I doubt it.

Dark Heresy is not about war. It's about investigation and eradication. Only War is about there only being war, and yet many GMs and Players clamor for non-combat role playing scenarios. The game is not meant to be a PnP combatfest. Combat is an unfortunate possibility in Dark Heresy, not its foundation.

Rules-wise, DH is D&D In Space! with murderhobo characters and Inquisition playing the role of mysterious questgiver. There's so little support in the core for other styles of play, it hurts.

Considering DH2e places a huge focus on subtlety rules, and has a big chunk of the PDF dedicated to investigation and social mechanics, I'm not seeing your point. I mean, sure, combat does have the lion's share of the pagecount, but that's largely due to the fact that combat needs much more rigid ruling than anything else you're likely to encounter in a session,

Not saying combat should always been the main focus.

Just saying, combat is most likely the one thing to take your character out if you dont put your stats at least a little in favour of it.

And different from social encounters and investigations, combat is sometimes much harder to avoid and much more sudden to start (by NPCs or players).

Also, the "escape option" in some cases is rather a theoretical option.

It is not like there is an escape button to click or something.

Judging from my experience as a GM I have admit that I have no problem with "power gaming" in a 40k rpg, in regards of combat skills and as long as it does not violate the fluff/believability of the game world. (Well my players can try to bring the assault canon to the high spire party but good luck getting in..... or having an interesting meeting with their puritan inquisitor wearing xenos amour... ) In the end, when my players have to deal with combat encounters on a regular basis it is plausible that they concentrate on their survivability. If you like it differently a way could be to make fewer of them or make them easier/avoidable.

There was a very similar to situations in another rpg I play, where you have access to a broad range of social skills which were widely ignored because of the importance of combat and survival skills like climbing, swimming, first aid etc. where bad dice rolls could kill you. Had some clashes there with a gm because my thief was concentrating on his combat skills and wearing amour and weapons instead of skilling lock picking and pickpocket.

His opinion was I should not push my combat skills so high while neglecting my cliché thief skills. My reply was that in the last three adventures we had to fight armored knights, huge ogryns and similar. They beat the **** out of us and because of that my character became a better fighter and is now more concerned about his protection.

In addition i think that my gm believed that because I have chosen a thief when creating the character, my char has to stay a thief for the rest of his life. I was of the contrary opinion, that the job I have chosen was more of a background package representing my characters previous life and now, I am an adventurer and can skill whatever I think is adequate.

I therefore see character development in rpgs in the light of Robert E. Howard's Conan who was not only a feral barbarian warrior but also thief, pirat, mercenary and even king during his career.

I think there are 4 ways to deal with the situation of combat skill focus in an average group like mine which loves combat encounters but also would miss non combat aspects of gaming :

1.) As some proposed already, make failed social tests/knowledge tests more meaningful: This needs some work on the side of the GM and should be discussed with the players beforehand to avoid surprise and frustration. I am not a big fan of intentional deadly social/knowledge encounters but more of seeing them as important support skills for eventual combat situations. Examples could be gaining support like allies or the access to certain items, ammunition etc. Others could be vital information like weak points of the enemies, possibilities for surprise attacks or other kinds of intel.

Of course failed tests could imply of the opposite, so you will be surprised by an ambush etc. In my last session I designed an adventure for my BC group which uses ship combat rules from RT where the characters had first to use their knowledge/social/investigative assets to gain enough advantage before finding going to deal with the enemy ships. I gave them from the start on the possibility to go for the enemy but that they had better chances if they do their homework first. This adventure turned out to be a lot of fun and was very well received by my players cause it had good mixture of different gameplay elements with the potential for every character to shine because every skill test had meaning for the outcome.

2.) Make winning social/knowledge encounters more rewarding in the sense of prestige. So combat is an own subsystem of the game, following this a social/knowledge combat system is thinkable with different, maybe even deadly outcomes. Interestingly such a system was introduced with Black Crusade (ToE). I think it is a little ironic that this came with BC because one would think the chaos perspective is the most power gaming addictive. In the Vortex, survival of the strongest is a core principle, everything is about accumulating power and dominating others, supported by the lack of common law through social structures. Nonetheless its quite interesting to read. In my group there is at least one Slaaneshian character which is very powerful on the social side. I am looking forward to test this system in the future and I would really like to see similar concepts in DH 2.0.

3.) Another option could be to use a very limiting rank system similar to DH 1.0. So you need to spend a certain amount of EXP before being able to choose from the pool on the next rank. After buying all the combat stuff from your current rankpool you have to burn exp on noncombat skills before you have access to the next rank. I am not a big fan of this system cause its restricting and does not help to give non combat skills more meaning.

4.) Just drop Experience Points. This is the most radical approach. Do it like in Call of Cthulhu (or other BRP games) and introduce learning by doing. So if a characters successfully uses a skill he is allowed to roll d100. If he rolls higher than his actual skill he gains +1d10 or 1d5 or 1 or whatever in that skill. The higher he gets in that skill, the harder it gets to increase it further. Through this system character planning, power gaming or spending exp in skills that you seldom use is avoided.
Further the characters grow with your groups style of play, if you do a lot of combat they become better fighters, if you do a lot of investigative or social adventures they will increase these skills. I believe this system to be the most "realistic" representation of learning and skill increase in regards of p&p role-playing games. I am thinking about using it in my next game which might be an Adeptus Arbites game with the atmosphere of Judge Dredd based on the core mechanics of OW. I just have to figure out a system for characteristic advances and talents without Experience Points.

Considering DH2e places a huge focus on subtlety rules, and has a big chunk of the PDF dedicated to investigation and social mechanics, I'm not seeing your point. I mean, sure, combat does have the lion's share of the pagecount, but that's largely due to the fact that combat needs much more rigid ruling than anything else you're likely to encounter in a session,

1e had a total of one and a half page dedicated to investigation and interaction rules, with skill descriptions more vague than in D&D. Combat rules took well over 20 pages and about half Talents in the core were combat Talents.

The ToE approach of Black Crusade is indeed not the worst...question is:

Is complicating social encounters worth it, to balance out Combat ?

The ToE approach of Black Crusade is indeed not the worst...question is:

Is complicating social encounters worth it, to balance out Combat ?

It is if you like playing games without a lot of combat.

I don't really buy DH1 was D&D in Space. DH is about rooting out and purging heresy and stresses the importance of intel and knowledge. D&D is about killing monsters and stealing their stuff. I guess you could play DH that way but there are better systems for games mostly consisting of combat.

The ToE approach of Black Crusade is indeed not the worst...question is:

Is complicating social encounters worth it, to balance out Combat ?

It is if you like playing games without a lot of combat.

I don't really buy DH1 was D&D in Space. DH is about rooting out and purging heresy and stresses the importance of intel and knowledge. D&D is about killing monsters and stealing their stuff. I guess you could play DH that way but there are better systems for games mostly consisting of combat.

How exactly did DH1 stress the importance of intel and knowledge?

At it's core, it's a game about a random group of people gathered by a mysterious, powerful figure to embark upon various tasks in his name - tasks that more often than not involve dealing with dangerous things that need to be exterminated. Taking stuff is optional, but it does happen as long as the stuff isn't clearly heretical - y'know, the same way a Good D&D party will pass up on looting and using that +5 Sword of Ultimate Evil.

I've seen great campaigns full of investigation and intrigue in various incarnations of D&D, yet few people object when you describe it as a game of killing monsters and taking their stuff. Likewise with DH - the setting is ripe with potential for intrigue and investigation, but sooner or later, combat is inevitable.

I just meant it can be a little much, if you have both complex combat rules AND complex social interaction rules.

I agree though that it would be quite hard to minimize combat situation, if your group is not one that focusses on that as well.

My issue with social combat rules is codifying social interactions is a hell of a lot trickier than putting physical combat to rules. Tome of Excess kind of highlights this, in my eyes. It really did feel like a rap battle simulator; just a back and forth of trying to one up each other, which isn't really how most social situations play out.

It is definitely something for dramatic social encounters, but not something for the everyday chat.

The best social rules I've seen so far are in White Wolf's Machine God Chronicles. All the "social combat" systems I've seen that try to bring the principles of physical combat into social encounters end up extremely ill-fit to model how actually convincing anyone works.

This is because most social combat systems are built to have conflict. A heated debate, arguments, rap battles, and the like. We should call it for what it really is. Social conflict and frankly social conflict does not represent all social rolls. The rest should be called social interactions.

This is because most social combat systems are built to have conflict. A heated debate, arguments, rap battles, and the like. We should call it for what it really is. Social conflict and frankly social conflict does not represent all social rolls. The rest should be called social interactions.

I agree with you but I would call it social encounters in contrast to normal one-skill-roll social interactions like barter or intimidate tests. In addition I think the an important characteristic for a social encounter system is, that it is deeply integrated in the core game from the beginning instead of an add-on in a latter sourcebook like in BC. (In addition it should also be widely used in the officially published adventures.)

Further it needs to be slim and intuitive to use, able to adapt to different situations, be it the before mentioned discussions, rap battles, mass persuasions or court hearings. Because of that it should also be non restrictive regarding the scope of certain interactions where single rounds could stretch over weeks and months.

The most important part would be that the whole group can participate and is able to team up to reach a certain outcome: Even if the dim-witted brute might not lead the conversation, he could still support the charming silver tongue through his intimidating appearance. Thus nobody gets bored on the gaming table, nothing is as bad as lengthily actions where some players might be excluded because of their characters skill set.

In the end social encounters should be at last as rewarding as combat encounters with a meaningful outcome and exciting dice roles.

The ToE approach of Black Crusade is indeed not the worst...question is:

Is complicating social encounters worth it, to balance out Combat ?

It is if you like playing games without a lot of combat.

I don't really buy DH1 was D&D in Space. DH is about rooting out and purging heresy and stresses the importance of intel and knowledge. D&D is about killing monsters and stealing their stuff. I guess you could play DH that way but there are better systems for games mostly consisting of combat.

How exactly did DH1 stress the importance of intel and knowledge?

At it's core, it's a game about a random group of people gathered by a mysterious, powerful figure to embark upon various tasks in his name - tasks that more often than not involve dealing with dangerous things that need to be exterminated. Taking stuff is optional, but it does happen as long as the stuff isn't clearly heretical - y'know, the same way a Good D&D party will pass up on looting and using that +5 Sword of Ultimate Evil.

I've seen great campaigns full of investigation and intrigue in various incarnations of D&D, yet few people object when you describe it as a game of killing monsters and taking their stuff. Likewise with DH - the setting is ripe with potential for intrigue and investigation, but sooner or later, combat is inevitable.

Not really? D&D has every character class described around how they engage in combat above all else and each is designed to participate in it. If you run a game with an adept, a psyker, a scum and a techpriest its pretty easy to have virtually zero combat going on. You have the adept for example who is entirely dedicated to knowledge. That seems like a colossal emphasis on intel and knowledge to have an entire class whose job it is to acquire intel and knowledge. Yeah combat happens but to compare it to D&D levels of combat where everything around it is a strap on is kinda ridiculous.

For more examples you have ->

Combat being extremely lethal throughout all of your characters life emphasising a need to avoid it at all costs

Players are expected to be mostly poor and under equipped and given the unnatural/horrific/tainted/alien nature of their opposition, rarely have the opportunity to improve gear dramatically unless your specificity overriding the default rules to give it to them

Character levelling provides far more non-combat advances than combat advances requiring almost all characters to spend a significant amount of XP improving their non-combat skills over combat skills if they want to participate.

The entire tagline used to describe the game is 'Investigation, Action and Horror', if you consider that Action is the equivalent of combat its supposed to make up a 1/3 of the game. Normally you can discard this tagline as just being an advertising slogan but then they go out of their way to make their first scenario book about those three attributes creating an investigation, an action and a horror scenario for each.

Yea the game has combat and tends to have combat but not necessarily D&D levels of 'the game is built to do combat'.

Good thing is - those who loved the Beta can still use it. =D

But it will still have those problems it currently has, because it is no longer being worked on. If you are going by that standard, those who wanted an OW-rules version of DH could have still used OW with the Dark Heresy stuff people had made.

I'm honestly not sure I can justify buying Dark Heresy with the OW rules in it. I already have Only War, and have already used it to run a unit of Inquisitorial Acolytes. Why would I need a new book for £40 for that? I would have spent that on a new set of rules that actually changed things, though.

I didn't like all the changed in DH2, but at least it was different, and the wound system was a hell of a lot better than the current 40k RPG one.

It also means [insert length of time here] of closed playtesting and then beta playtesting on top of that, to refine the system they'd written, was entirely pointless. If I thought that they were going to scrap the main changes (which I liked), I wouldn't have bothered, I'd have just played a proper campaign rather than building stuff intentionally to try to break the system.

Guess this is probably the end of me buying the 40k RPG core books, or at least a non-purchase of DH2e for me, which is a shame given I own every single 40k RPG book released up until now.

Am I the only one who is in no way interested in a catch-all 40k book? I like games having a narrow, specific focus, and I think trying to do too many things would just mean it'd end up doing a lot of things poorly instead of a few things very well.

Nope, I'm in the same boat. I don't mind games with one universal core book, I love nWoD, but then they all live and work in the same world and are of comparable power. However, I also like oWoD and the 40k line, because you can have stark differences in power level, without one set of universal rules getting in the way.

Am I the only one who is in no way interested in a catch-all 40k book? I like games having a narrow, specific focus, and I think trying to do too many things would just mean it'd end up doing a lot of things poorly instead of a few things very well.

The problem being that the seams start to tear when you're doing crossovers, which is a very, very, very likely thing that you'll be doing one way or another in the 40k universe.

The vast majority of the rules are already interchangeable. A unified ruleset would just exist as tear-prevention, so to speak.

Narrow focuses to accommodate the facets of the galaxy would be what all the supplemental Campaign Scenarios would be for.

Never once done a crossover with the 40k RPG, and no one I know IRL (well over 200 roleplayers, given I've been involved in the gaming societies of 3 different universities) has ever run crossover 40k games, and 40k games have always been equal to the number of DnD or Pathfinder games. The themes for each game just become diluted and bland with mixed with each other.

Not really? D&D has every character class described around how they engage in combat above all else and each is designed to participate in it.

<Snippage>

How is this any different in DH1e? DH2e Adepts are D&D Rogues, Tech-Priests are D&D Fighter/Mage/Rogues, and Psykers are Warrior/Wizard/Cleric/Rogue/every-other-class combined.

Combat lethality is besides the point. DH1e is designed for shorter campaigns. D&D isn't. If you want an example, look at the CP/IP mechanics. Whether you have combat at all, character death is more frequent and career lengths are shorter than in D&D.

Under-equipped & under-powered characters is an extension of the campaign length thing. DH1e is built for D&D levels 1-13, roughly, compressed into fewer ranks and with the name level stuff stripped out. The fact that the optimal way of gaining gear in DH1e RAW is to murder-hobo away, should maybe give you an idea of just how D&D-like it is designed to be.

That you can use DH1e, D&D, and Monopoly to play horror, mystery, investigation & intrigue-centric games, in no way demonstrated any of those rules systems were designed for any of those things. If you want to see what a rules system designed for those things might look like, take a look at the Gumshoe system.

In terms of non-combat role playing functionality, the difference between DH1e and D&D is a tiny one: DH1e social skills work on player characters.

And that's it.

DH1e very much is designed to facilitate D&D in 40K gameplay. That you can use it for other things doesn't mean it was designed for those other things.

In fact, this exact design focus is my biggest issue the beta. Yes it would be lovely if they scrapped WFRP and designed a new system that can actually do the full range of 40K stuff without needing 5 differently geared and thus incompatible versions of the same set of rules. And yes I'd definitely do a little happy dance if Toughness Soak died in a fire. But more than those things, I want a DH2e that is built for intrigue, horror, investigation & mystery. One that also supports longer campaign play with, to go with D&D, the name level stuff.

If it's such a big deal Acolytes don't blow their cover early, why don't we have a much better system for handling this, one centred far more strongly in the behaviour of individual PCs? Other RPG systems have done this, it's nothing new.

If PCs can live to become Inquisitors and other 1%'ers in the 40K universe, why don't we have systems for running minnions, establishing power bases, HQ's, dynasties and so on? Other RPG systems have done this, it's nothing new.

What about tech levels? If ever a setting was begging for a formal mechanic for running extremely different technological levels alongside each other, 40K has to be it. And hey, this particular thing has been around longer in RPGs than the 40K setting has.

... I'll end my ranty-rant here. It just.. infuriates me that DH2e is so devoid of ambition and direction. I mean, for a game with 5 different lines, there's practically no difference between them in terms of themes. Pretty much all the differences between them come down to power scaling.

I'm honestly not sure I can justify buying Dark Heresy with the OW rules in it. I already have Only War, and have already used it to run a unit of Inquisitorial Acolytes. Why would I need a new book for £40 for that? I would have spent that on a new set of rules that actually changed things, though.

........

Guess this is probably the end of me buying the 40k RPG core books, or at least a non-purchase of DH2e for me, which is a shame given I own every single 40k RPG book released up until now.

It seems to me that the argument that DH2 will now just be Only War with the Inquisition is like saying Rogue Trader was just DH with spaceships, or Deathwatch was just RT with Space Marines, or Black Crusade was just DW with Chaos, or Only War was just BC with Guardsmen. Each game system has apparently included enough new background and rules to justify your purchase of each of them; how is DH2 now the magical cut-off point?