Has anyone already done the work to give Dark Heresy 1.0 Careers aptitudes? If so, I would be interested in seeing what those are.

I've not actually did anything like this before you created the topic, but seeing as I thought it should not be hard to do, this is what I whipped up on the quick:

• Adept : Defence, Intelligence, Knowledge, Perception, Social
• Adepta Sororitas (Militant) : Ballistic Skill, Leadership, Offence, Weapon Skill, Willpower
• Adepta Sororitas (Non-Militant) : Ballistic Skill, Intelligence, Leadership, Perception, Willpower
• Arbitrator : Ballistic Skill, Defence, Offence, Perception, Weapon Skill
• Assassin : Agility, Ballistic Skill, Finesse, Perception, Weapon Skill
• Cleric : Fellowship, Leadership, Offence, Weapon Skill, Willpower
• Guardsman : Ballistic Skill, Defence, Fieldcraft, Offence, Weapon Skill
• Psyker : Intelligence, Knowledge, Perception, Psyker, Willpower
• Scum : Ballistic Skill, Defence, Fellowship, Social, Toughness
• Tech-Priest : Intelligence, Knowledge, Strength, Tech, Willpower

I gave everyone 5 Aptitudes instead of the 6-7 in Only War in order to increase diversity. In all fairness, given the different focus in Dark Heresy, I feel as if some of the non-characteristic based aptitudes could be split up into different specialisations - for example different types of Knowledge.

Going from 6-7 to 5 doesn't increase diversity, it increases the costs of advances across the board and splitting aptitudes into more specific ones would do that even more so.

I'm not a fan of Aptitudes and hope they don't make an appearance in DH2. The purpose they served was effectively to make the table provided by Role in DH2 and it's simpler to just have a table with advance costs.

I've honestly never seen the need for varying the costs of advances anyway, be it via roles or aptitudes. All it does is restrict people from making their characters diverse, something which is already discouraged simply by the fact that being a jack of all trades means you're not particularly good at any of the things you can do. I'd argue a flat cost for advances works fine.

Going from 6-7 to 5 doesn't increase diversity, it increases the costs of advances across the board and splitting aptitudes into more specific ones would do that even more so.

I'm not a fan of Aptitudes and hope they don't make an appearance in DH2. The purpose they served was effectively to make the table provided by Role in DH2 and it's simpler to just have a table with advance costs.

If more Aptitudes are added then each character could have more but there could be some odd overlap if it's not done well.

Going from 6-7 to 5 doesn't increase diversity, it increases the costs of advances across the board and splitting aptitudes into more specific ones would do that even more so.

I'm not a fan of Aptitudes and hope they don't make an appearance in DH2. The purpose they served was effectively to make the table provided by Role in DH2 and it's simpler to just have a table with advance costs.

If more Aptitudes are added then each character could have more but there could be some odd overlap if it's not done well.

Plug in those aptitudes into the only war cost calculator and tell me the results look reasonable.

Going from 6-7 to 5 doesn't increase diversity, it increases the costs of advances across the board and splitting aptitudes into more specific ones would do that even more so.

I'm not a fan of Aptitudes and hope they don't make an appearance in DH2. The purpose they served was effectively to make the table provided by Role in DH2 and it's simpler to just have a table with advance costs.

I've honestly never seen the need for varying the costs of advances anyway, be it via roles or aptitudes. All it does is restrict people from making their characters diverse, something which is already discouraged simply by the fact that being a jack of all trades means you're not particularly good at any of the things you can do. I'd argue a flat cost for advances works fine.

So a Forge-world techpriest should have as hard of a time learning Tech-Use as a knuckledragging feudal-world guardsman?

I don't have any problem with class specific skills/talents or even different costs to them. Realistically speaking, the acolyte's career path would absolutely influence what skills/talents that he or she developed in their life. With the exception of a few skills/talents that are unique to a career path, I would allow a player to pay double the xp for a skill that they would not otherwise be able to purchase.

Perhaps a skill/talent that is within a character's aptitude costs half as much as it would if the character did not have the aptitude for it.

Aptitudes increase diversity because the higher cost of advances/skills/talents discourage the player from deviating to the path their character, by way of their background and origin, is meant to have an easier time walking. That a character is allowed to learn other things at all is already opening the system up for customisation based on additional experiences.

The end result is that you likely won't end up with a group of "Jacks of all Trades" but rather specialists. Unless everyone opted for the same archetype.

Let's compare this to DH1, DW, or RT where characters are locked into a fixed progression, where their level would tell them what they were able to learn when, or what they were allowed to learn at all. And even here you already had things cost differently depending on your chosen class.

I mean, really ... if every skill, talent or characteristic would cost the same regardless of background - why have classes and archetypes at all? Give people a bunch of points a la Shadowrun and let them spend it freely on stuff. I don't have a problem with this approach either, but to me it seems like an "all or nothing" approach.

Another option would be to do it like the German fantasy RPG Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye), where there are no classes or archetypes either, but rather "backgrounds" - packages of characteristics and skills that represent what the character did before becoming an adventurer. After this, you buy what you want, with the cost determined solely by "the higher the score, the more you pay for the next step". Backgrounds just have you start out with a specific skillset it would take a lot of XP to achieve otherwise.

I think there's about ~200 backgrounds to choose from, too. Anything from pikeman to knight, fisher to farmer, and prostitute to thief. ^^

Character generation is basically "choose race -> choose culture -> choose profession", then spend a few remaining points on skills and equipment.

I've honestly never seen the need for varying the costs of advances anyway, be it via roles or aptitudes. All it does is restrict people from making their characters diverse, something which is already discouraged simply by the fact that being a jack of all trades means you're not particularly good at any of the things you can do. I'd argue a flat cost for advances works fine.

You honestly have an excellent idea here and I'm shocked that I never thought of it. With the introduction of special abilities that each class has, players can still have a feeling of specialization, but a much more streamlined character creation and advancement ruleset. I'm already in the middle of a DH2b campaign, but if I could, I would implement it immediately and let you know how it functioned.

Another option would be to do it like the German fantasy RPG Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye), where there are no classes or archetypes either, but rather "backgrounds" - packages of characteristics and skills that represent what the character did before becoming an adventurer. After this, you buy what you want, with the cost determined solely by "the higher the score, the more you pay for the next step". Backgrounds just have you start out with a specific skillset it would take a lot of XP to achieve otherwise.

This sounds a lot like how I'd like to see Dark Heresy go. As far as I'm concerned, your background should remain just that; background. Homeworld, career, and whatever other steps get added in the mix should give you a solid base of skills, talents and other traits you can't really get anywhere else, but once you're out of character generation, advancement should open up completely. I totally understand realism issues of "a Forge-world techpriest [having] as hard of a time learning Tech-Use as a knuckledragging feudal-world guardsman", but I think it's a minor issue in the face of how much removing advancement limits really opens up unique character concepts.

As long as you've got a very roleplay oriented group who aren't just going to minmax their characters and pick all the best toys due to the lack of restriction, it works very well. Not something I'd expect to see in any published FFG book, but I thought I'd throw my opinion into the discussion anyway.

I totally understand realism issues of "a Forge-world techpriest [having] as hard of a time learning Tech-Use as a knuckledragging feudal-world guardsman", but I think it's a minor issue in the face of how much removing advancement limits really opens up unique character concepts.

And to be fair, a skill system could override such concerns by simply letting the Tech-Priest have a "head start" at the relevant knowledge areas, where other archetypes would have to invest lots of XP to just catching up before even having a chance to be on the same level.

This could necessitate, however, expanding said skill system beyond the big +10 advances so as to increase the gap in XP without actually increasing the gap on the d100 scale compared to what we have now.

I wonder if it would work if we split them up into chunks of +5 or +2, or even just have people buy single points ...

Of course, there is the concern that, for many players, it might still feel "not 40k enough" if anyone but a Tech-Priest even has a chance of catching up to their level, considering that these differences represent decades in specialised learning and access to restricted knowledge. Some groups might not bother, but for others this could be a little "out-of-universe".

Yeah, I can definitely see people having issue with my idea not being '40k enough'. I mean, I've seen people who still think career paths ala DH1e and RT are the best way to handle things. But from my point of view, DH characters aren't really techpriests, or guardsmen, or arbitrators anymore. They're Inquisitorial agents, and as such have much more opportunity to expand their horizons in terms of training, which I think an open advancement scheme works best for. I definitely understand the arguments against my ideas, though, and I don't really expect to see what I want appearing in any published FFG material. Still, that's what houserules are for.

I loved low level DH but hated the career paths limits, more so when the alternate ranks showed up (I liked the idea but it just didn't work).

Despise fixed path advancement. Love the aptitude system. GM's can and should restrict skill choices when it doesn't make sense ("Just when did you have a chance to learn that"). I always hated how a team could go through the same mission, but not be able to learn the same things.

Despise fixed path advancement. Love the aptitude system. GM's can and should restrict skill choices when it doesn't make sense ("Just when did you have a chance to learn that"). I always hated how a team could go through the same mission, but not be able to learn the same things.

Aptitudes don't give the power to the GM, they keep it within the ruleset. A GM saying no is a very different thing.

He's got a point, though. With Aptitudes, the GM is less forced to say "yes" when it makes sense to throw the (original) rules out of the window (a process sort of made official as "Elite Advances") because of common sense.