Only war has some average IG guys - not the chosen of the inquisition !

Exactly, random IG nobody is not the person an Inquisitor will be collecting as an acolyte. The one who's a cut above the rest, who shows promise, that's the one they'll be recruiting.

Why exactly should this snowflakeness be expressed through Characteristics? Isn't it enough they have specialised skills and talents, and access to some wicked, wicked toys?

This system has never been D&D, and it really doesn't lend itself well to a wide range of Characteristics or anything much in the way of Characteristics growth.

And as others have pointed out: Fate.

Oh, I hadn't thought of having the Throne Agents recruiting acolytes. That resolves a big part of the disconnect in my mind- Eisenhorn and Ravenor are surrounded by extremely skilled agents. Why would another inquisitor have a warband of bumbling dunces like the PCs? But if each member of the ]['s warband has their *own* pile of raw recruits, that's a bit more believable.

Plus the Inquisition is one of the most diverse organizations out there. Ravener and Eisenhorn are Action Hero, get **** done personally Inquisitors. I imagine many Ordo Xenos Inquisitors run a gigantic web of contacts that spread throughout a sub sector.

I find it hard to believe an Inquisitor and his 5 tough pals alone could patrol even a single hive, rather then an entire world or beyond. It only makes sense that they would have multiple cells.

Plus look at Codex Inquisition. Those Malleus Inquisitors hire ordinary folks to die in droves for them.

Edit: Wow this posting system is atrocious. Everything I post comes out mangled.

Oh, I hadn't thought of having the Throne Agents recruiting acolytes. That resolves a big part of the disconnect in my mind- Eisenhorn and Ravenor are surrounded by extremely skilled agents. Why would another inquisitor have a warband of bumbling dunces like the PCs? But if each member of the ]['s warband has their *own* pile of raw recruits, that's a bit more believable.

Plus the Inquisition is one of the most diverse organizations out there. Ravener and Eisenhorn are Action Hero, get **** done personally Inquisitors. I imagine many Ordo Xenos Inquisitors run a gigantic web of contacts that spread throughout a sub sector.

I find it hard to believe an Inquisitor and his 5 tough pals alone could patrol even a single hive, rather then an entire world or beyond. It only makes sense that they would have multiple cells.

Plus look at Codex Inquisition. Those Malleus Inquisitors hire ordinary folks to die in droves for them.

Edit: Wow this posting system is atrocious. Everything I post comes out mangled.

Your posts look fine on my screen.

Only war has some average IG guys - not the chosen of the inquisition !

Exactly, random IG nobody is not the person an Inquisitor will be collecting as an acolyte. The one who's a cut above the rest, who shows promise, that's the one they'll be recruiting.

Why exactly should this snowflakeness be expressed through Characteristics? Isn't it enough they have specialised skills and talents, and access to some wicked, wicked toys?

This system has never been D&D, and it really doesn't lend itself well to a wide range of Characteristics or anything much in the way of Characteristics growth.

And as others have pointed out: Fate.

Every second RPG has something similar to fate points

And wicked toys ? Really ? In my DH1 campaigns with original money rules, the acolytes where happy if they could afford ammunition. They looted enemies to survive and constantly threatened their inquisitor to quit because of bad payment.

And what are specialized skills worth, if your characteristics are too low to use them effectively.

Your posts look fine on my screen.

It should, after 4 separate edits. It's mostly the quoting system, and how it drops your quotes to normal text if you go back to edit

Ah, I see. I agree the quoting system is a little weird.

And what are specialized skills worth, if your characteristics are too low to use them effectively.

Wut? Skill ranks add much more to a test than characteristics... +10 instead of +5 - they are literally twice as effective!

1 charactersitic gives a boost for several skills.

Therefore a +5 on 1 characteristic is worth more than one +10 on 1 skill.

It should, after 4 separate edits. It's mostly the quoting system, and how it drops your quotes to normal text if you go back to edit

Your posts look fine on my screen.

The button in the top left of the post window will let you edit the raw BBCode. I find it's a lot easier to format things with the tags visible.

1 charactersitic gives a boost for several skills.

Therefore a +5 on 1 characteristic is worth more than one +10 on 1 skill.

Yeah, but you need skill advancements sooner or later anyway (because of the -20 penalty for untrained use). It is not like you can just take +0 on all skills and get the rest from the characteristic.

I would throw out that from a gameplay standpoint your characters are rolling the dice any time they are doing something interesting. As it is now, your average schmo fails at doing something interesting over 2/3 of the time. You're making non-combat rolls something like 10-15 times a game, meaning only 3-5 successes outside of combat. Depending on combat, you'll make maybe 20-25 rolls, at 6-8 successes a combat. This is for the average character. Dark Heresy does not have a failing forward system in place. Degrees of failure exist, but are unevenly and rarely utilized by the rules. Most of the utilizations serve to severely punish the players. Combat is even worse, because a player failing a roll means "nothing interesting happens". Is it fun to have hilarious mishaps with a grenade bouncing off the wall back at you? Yes. These things only happen by accident and random chance in DH, though; most of the time that grenade will harmlessly fall into a ditch. The interesting moments of failure don't come from the ruleset, they come from creative GMs and players. The reason they come up in dark heresy is that failure occurs so often that people get bored and try to make it more interesting. You can still do that kind of thing with more competent characters. Hell, you can have partial successes exist that combine failure and success along with total failures. Again, though, the RAW do not support any kind of interesting failure. Reducing the characteristics results in less interesting things happening. The interesting results of failure are entirely within the players' and GM's hands with this ruleset, and if they're going to stick with it, they should not play to its weaknesses.

As far as fluff goes, the imperium is filled with billions upon billions upon billions of people and the inquisition has almost unparalleled authority and access. They can afford to find qualified people to work for them. If you want flawed characters, give them personality problems or interesting backgrounds. Sure, the inquisition is going to have plenty of contacts, but those aren't the kind of people who knowingly or specifically work for the inquisition.

Perfect solution in my oppinion.

Offer 2 scenarios for two kinds of campaign styles: Rookies and Agents

Here is a rare event: Gaunt and I are on the same page here! I can honestly see both styles of play. I would even say that the total value of the "Elite" agents of the =I= could total about 5000xp. (Whatever it costs to advance each characteristic +5 plus higher skill lvls) which makes these "Elite" agents the equivalent of a RT's crew. I prefer beginning DH players on the low end so 20+2d10 + 600xp is fine by me! I think it is very much a matter of taste. To drag out the tired old D&D analogy; Many groups I played with HATED first level games and thus rolled higher lvl characters! That's fine as long as everyone is on the same page but, I would not want to limit the game to the "Elite" characters.

And one thing: don't dare to set up something like Ascension again .

Two options for character generations in the core book are perfectly enough.

Ascension was fairly fine in concept though, it was the absolutely terrible execution that made it a bad book.

As even Inquisitors are integrated into the Core book now, and players do play "Sages" and "Hierophants", all it needs is 2 starting power levels to make most people happy.

And Ascension was something I'd prefer to forget about.

Nice idea maybe, but carried out in such a bad way that it wins my personal "worst supplement" price.

Very close to The Emperors chosen.

It seems that highend-level-supplements are cursed.

And one thing: don't dare to set up something like Ascension again .

Two options for character generations in the core book are perfectly enough.

Ascension was fairly fine in concept though, it was the absolutely terrible execution that made it a bad book.

I actually agree with both of you

The fact that we have Inquisitors playable right out of the core book in DH2, combined with the flexible advancement system, means the worst parts of Ascension (outrageous careers and "better psychic powers") are simply not necessary. I don't mind if they one day publish a book dedicated to high-level play with an Inquisitor in the team, as long as they don't try reinventing the wheel on character creation/advancement.

One the main topic: I think acolytes should be chosen from amongst the best of their kind; exceptional individuals chosen from the various organs of the Imperium and integrated by the Inquisitor into their personal team. I think the current character generation rules do this excellently; a starting character is clearly (for instance) an Arbites with the skills you'd expect an Arbites to have and the natural talent (i.e. Characteristics) to become more. I like that power-level and I think it works.

On the new sub-topic; I think the new Reinforcement system, on top of the ability to play Inquisitors and the improved starting competence, really makes Ascension unnecessary.

If you really want to play a Vindicare assassin or a Gamma+ level Psyker or something else that throws balance to the wolves, you now have the option to burn some Influence and bring in the big guns for one session. Awesomeness gets to happen and the game-breaking character gets put back into the box before he makes everyone else feel irrelevant. I think it's a really cool elegant bit of game design, that.

One the main topic: I think acolytes should be chosen from amongst the best of their kind; exceptional individuals chosen from the various organs of the Imperium and integrated by the Inquisitor into their personal team. I think the current character generation rules do this excellently; a starting character is clearly (for instance) an Arbites with the skills you'd expect an Arbites to have and the natural talent (i.e. Characteristics) to become more. I like that power-level and I think it works.

On the new sub-topic; I think the new Reinforcement system, on top of the ability to play Inquisitors and the improved starting competence, really makes Ascension unnecessary.

If you really want to play a Vindicare assassin or a Gamma+ level Psyker or something else that throws balance to the wolves, you now have the option to burn some Influence and bring in the big guns for one session. Awesomeness gets to happen and the game-breaking character gets put back into the box before he makes everyone else feel irrelevant. I think it's a really cool elegant bit of game design, that.

I agree with most of this. I tend to prefer the lower stat range primarily for cross compatibility reasons. In actual game play I don't really see where 20+dice or 25+dice makes much difference. The XP awarded at char. creation is important though and I would want to keep that fairly low in the basic system. Gm's should feel free to add more xp if their game requires it but it shouldn't be the basic starting point.

In average a +5 on characteristics is a huge change !

Its ~300 XP (a little more or less, depending on the aptitudes) * 9 = 2700 XP difference.

And that is still not really a correc t calculation, as it indirectly hightens the costs for all following (more expensive) steps.

And it also sets the max cap 5 lower for each characteristic.

I still like low power but an errand boy with 25+dice won't kill my game. Gaunt would you be ok if 1 or 2 Characteristics could go high, say 10 higher than the cap, but everything else was at the 20 limit?

I ask because most games have some sort of (I don't know what to call it but something that gives you a power boost like Sharp Shooter in OW or BCs whatever you call them) and I can see the DH version giving a stat boost.

I definitely would be open for a broader scale - if the average remains about the same.

I still do think though, that 2 given options in the Core book would be ideal for everyone.

Rookie +20, 500 XP

Experts +25, 1000 XP

NPCs stats stay the same, just the threat level calculation needs to offer an alternative calculation.

The 2 options thing feels off to me unless we give the +20s one more set of +5s to buy (I'ld like to keep the max level the same) but if that's all we can find wrong with it it can't be a bad idea.

If the max-level is lifted to 5 increase from 20 onwards, I could live with that I think.

The first increase should not be too expensive though (maybe increase 1&2 should cost the same).

In that case every GM could easily scale the starting level by giving different amounts of starting XP.

Rookies: 500 XP

Experts: 3000 XP

It should be noted that Ascension was for those characters who advanced so far in Dark Heresy it usually meant "game over you win". Ascension allowed such characters to continue their careers; even progress to the rank of Inquisitor. It also allowed for you to instantly create ascended characters from the get-go but my brain often went into meltdown just thinking about it.

With Ascension came a whole new level of game play. Now things could be introduced that would otherwise spell the doom of the acolytes. As much as I love big scary bad guys, I just couldn't bring myself to send the poor acolytes into the heart of a Genestealer Cult. Even one Genestealer, played well, can spell certain death never mind a whole brood of them with broodlord, magus, hybrids and cultists. Being a little Odo Xenos minded, I once considered an attack on Commorragh.....I wouldn't send any but the best of the best acolytes into that nest of sadists.

Even though I'm the #1 fan of Average Joe starting acolytes, I feel there needs to be room for both them and more competent acolytes. My approach has always been:

Inquisitor and Retinue

Acolytes

Potential Acolytes

Inquisitor and Retinue are best described as being the Ascension level characters.

Acolytes can be Rogue Trader level characters and you'll hear no complaint from me.

Potential Acolytes are ye olde Dark Heresy puny weaklings who may, or may not live passed their first game.

No offense, gals and guys, but did we really need another thread discussing the very same thing? We have that discussed in the Not Convinced thread, in the one Tim started, in the one Gaunt started commenting the update changes...

Yes, we do. Whether starting player characters are incompetent idiots or useful agents of the Imperium's secret police force is a hotly contested issue and is arguably the most important issue for we, the beta testers, to discuss. No further issues can be addressed before this is put to bed as the entirety of the system rests on its answer.

Just so this isn't an empty post, here's a quote from the rulebook:

Inquisitors do not choose their Acolytes at whim. The player characters in Dark Heresy are a cut above the rest of humanity, and fated for a greater destiny.