My thoughts from the first read through,
these DO NOT come for any additional play-testing as yet, hopefully we will get chance tonight
Things I’m glad to see the back of;
- Talent Trees – They were a good idea, but they felt a little too restrictive
- Woundless combat – love it or hate it as you will, the original beta combat system was the thing that made my players refuse to play.
Things I miss from beta 1;
- Role-based skill costs – Those simple little tables worked really well, and as far as I can tell were universally liked. They may have needed a little bit of tweaking (assassins having stealth as one of the most expensive skills comes to mind) but they would have worked fine. I’m going to assume that we lost them due to FFG getting rid of the talent trees, all in all I can live with the Aptitude system (expect me to be making a DH2 version of my Aptitude Calculator at some point soon).
- Action Points – This was another surprise to me, I thought these were fairly well liked by the majority and added a bit more variety to combat. This being said I don’t have a problem with half and full actions, especially in their BC/OW/DH2 form.
Areas for concern;
- Minor Psy Powers – ok I’ll admit these could be pretty broken in DH1, but removing them has drastically reduced the utility of psykers, perhaps a “utility” psi discipline could be added to cover the old minor powers.
- The number of psi powers per tree – we’ve gone from 10 powers per discipline to 9, which may not sound like a lot but some of the powers that have gone were some of the most used ones (mind scan, psi blade, regeneration) and some of the new ones seem a little forced (Gateway creation as part of Telekinisis??)
- Influence/money – It’s been debated before on this forum, I still feel that there is room in DH2 for both hard cash and Influence peddling – the thread we had on this during Beta 1 covered the pro’s and cons nicely so I don’t really thing it needs repeating again here.
Other thoughts
- Character Creation – I’m glad they kept the Beta 1 style of character creation, it gives a nice variety for players and GM’s, but I do wonder where “Imperial World” went for those who want something a little more generic. I also miss Mind Cleansed from the old Inquisitors Handbook, some of our groups most memorable characters have had this background and it would be great to see it make an appearance again at some point.
- Reinforcement Characters – an interesting concept, but one that my group will be reluctant to use as they tend to get very attached to their characters.
- The Narrative Chapter – I’m glad this stayed, it was one of the most useful things added in Beta 1 and one of the most glaring omissions from DH1.
- Elite Advance Packages – It’s good to see them in the core rulebook, but im not sure if I entirely agree with the way they’ve done Untouchables. In my mind, from the fluff I’ve read, an Untouchable should be immune to Psi and Warp based abilities – not have a few extra talents that make him a little more resistant to warp-spawned powers and make psykers standing too close a work a little harder.
I know this is all very much personal preference but I want to give my honest opinion, both good and bad, on Beta v2 in the hope that we can, as a community, help make the best version of DH possible.
I welcome well thought out discussion and debate, but can we please try and keep it civil after a few rather personal posts I’ve seen here recently, it would be a shame to see these forums go the way some others have.
Regards
Surak