Ok so we unexpectedly had some time last night to do a short test of character creation with two of my regular DH1 players, there were also 2 other DH1 players within earshot but not activly building a character as they were doing other things - I mention them as they did add comments into the discusion from a more observers standpoint.

Two characters were created - a highborn, outcast, assassin and a forgeworld,Ministorum, Seeker

now I'm well aware that both of these characters break away from the "recomended options" between homeworld and background but as the players were both very experienced with DH and warhammer 40k in general I felt that letting them loose with all the options wouldn't be too bad.

Here comes the feedback bit (from the players);

• both were as happy as they are likely to be about the aptitudes, neither is a fan of the OW-style upgrade system - to quote "we want careers back" - but they are not as adverse to it as they were the beta1 talent trees
• they both wanted a more RT style approach to character creation as they felt the current open system makes it too easy to create a non-sensical character (I reference the seeker as an example, he eneded up with his lowest stat being perception, one of the most crucial to the role as far as we could tell)
• One of the "observers" did comment that he liked the fact you could create a flawed character through mixing homeworlds, backgrounds, and roles that traditionally shouldn't sit together
• none of the people involved felt that the assassins role ability was as useful as the Seekers one
• all players welcomed the divination chart, but they felt that it wasn't as good as the DH1 chart (I did press them for examples and they couldn't give me specifics)
• the two creating players felt that they didn't get enough free skills and talents
• One of the players specifically stated that if he couldn't have careers he would want a completely point-buy system like that found in cthuluhtech or cortex (for those not familiar with those systems or point-buy you get a pool of points to buy your attributes, skills, and assets (roughly the same as talents) which can be increased by selecting negative character traits)

Feedback from me as the GM

• we managed to build two characters in a little over 45mins, with neither player having seen the beta2 document before - thats pretty good going as normally it takes us a little longer than that the first time we try out an rp
• in opposition to my players I like both the open character creation system and the OW aptitude system - however I wonder if the free-choice character creation could potentiall open the way for easier power-gaming
• A reference table at the start of the background and role sections of character creation listing all the options would have been useful as a reference guide when my players asked me "what options are avaliable" at the start of char gen

And thats it so far, the only other thing I will note is my players have all told me that they currently see no reason to use DH beta2 over DH1, but they do prefer it to DH beta1 mainly due to the change in the wound mechanics.

More feedback as I bully them into playtesting

Regards

Surak

I agree that the characteristic rolling should have the option to assign rolls to each characteristic, otherwise you end up with people having a character in mind and rolling terrible stats for that role. They either are forced to abandon their character concept or play a character handicapped by their characteristics, neither of which is fun for most players (though there are some people I know who would jump at the chance to play a sage with low intelligence or a mystic with low willpower).

I agree too. Too much randomness here if you want to play a defined kind of character.

Also the lot of dice rolling has tendencies to be unfair between players.

I would like the point-allocation system to be improved.

Rolling stats straight down the line has never not been terrible - I'm surprised FFG wrote it into the rules the way they did. Use point buy or roll 11 and assign as desired if you absolutely need random stats.

We once used a quite complicated mechanism in excel to allocate the same average amount of point for everyone, but still allocated randomly on the characteristics.

But thats now more difficult with the Homeworlds + / - tendencies...

One could calculate random values with a defined sum for everyone - finally each player would have to assign the highest values on the "+" and the lowest on the "-". The other ones could be distributed freely.

Why would force them assign the highest to "+" and lowest to "-"? If someone really wants to play an intelligent but frail feral worlder or a sociable but dumb forge worlder, I'm all for it.

I've always just allowed the player to roll up 10 stats and then assign them to the areas that they wanted.

I've always just allowed the player to roll up 10 stats and then assign them to the areas that they wanted.

My GM allows this as well. However, he loves the randomness that the RAW character creation system of DH1 has, and for our current campaign, players get a "bonus" package of goodies (free characteristic advance, a free background, and some free gear), if we roll completely randomly for the entire character, including home world and Divination.

I've always just allowed the player to roll up 10 stats and then assign them to the areas that they wanted.

My GM allows this as well. However, he loves the randomness that the RAW character creation system of DH1 has, and for our current campaign, players get a "bonus" package of goodies (free characteristic advance, a free background, and some free gear), if we roll completely randomly for the entire character, including home world and Divination.

The ol' risk / reward method. Very creative, I like that.

Its been pretty fun, but can produce interesting results. My GM almost immediately regretted it when the campaign started with two Noble characters (we first used the Inquisitor's Handbook home-world chart as this was before Blood of Martyrs came out). They were able to use their superior stock-pile of thrones to by-pass a number of low-level encounters by having superior gear, but this eventually resulted in a number of noble intrigues and one of them perished in battle rather than be captured by a Chaos dark apostle.

I've found that rolling randomly only really works if the GM ensures that there isn't a great disparity across the characters. It is not at all inconceivable that someone could roll less than 10 for each characteristic and someone rolls above 10 for each simply because that's what the dice produced. In my Pathfinder campaign, I have one player who did not have a single stat above 15 at character creation (before racial bonus) and I had another that had three above because that's the risk of rolling randomly.

Personally, I will no longer be using any random method for character generation without a bonus package as my DH GM does. It's just not worth having the possibility of a large disparity between character starting strength as its so hard to overcome. This is even more true for a system like DH as it's just more deadly than a lot of other systems out there.

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to go through some character creation with a friend online and we're struggling with the 'starting wounds'. I dont have a copy of the beta and i cant see what he's looking at. Can anyone shed some light on this for me please?

Roll a 1d5, add it to whatever the homeworld says is the start

Fate points are trickier, you roll a 1d10, if the number equals or exceeds the (x+), you get the listed fate points +1

And like you said, almost in every DH/RT/BC game the GM has us roll the number of stats, then assign them as we see best. For DH2.0 this got a little more difficult (roll 3 sets of 3d10, make them a X high or Y low option, "-" stats get the Y, "+" stats get the X, each set can only be used once, roll 7 sets of 2d10, the 1d5 for wounds, 1d10 for fate, re-roll on any of those (though stats are the most common), then any extra rolls as dictated by divination or whatever).

As for powergaming, I can see that, but a bigger issue is the fixed aptitudes. I tried to make an arbites who was good at talking (Inquiry mainly), problem is that Seekers don't get Fel or Social, and don't get Perception at all, while seem to be more lore focused (and we have two roles that can do that, Sage and Chirugeon). If Hive world hadn't given me Per, it would have been a complete wash....I ended up going with Desperado, which seemed to let me be more versatile and closer to an actual arbites.

Maybe the solution is allowing more choices in Aptitudes? Or maybe keep it as is, but allow one "free choice" to give the final stamp on a PC.

As for powergaming, I can see that, but a bigger issue is the fixed aptitudes. I tried to make an arbites who was good at talking (Inquiry mainly), problem is that Seekers don't get Fel or Social, and don't get Perception at all, while seem to be more lore focused (and we have two roles that can do that, Sage and Chirugeon). If Hive world hadn't given me Per, it would have been a complete wash....I ended up going with Desperado, which seemed to let me be more versatile and closer to an actual arbites.

Maybe the solution is allowing more choices in Aptitudes? Or maybe keep it as is, but allow one "free choice" to give the final stamp on a PC.

Seekers have the Fellowship, Intelligence, Perception, Social and Tech aptitudes, IMO a very good fit for an investigator-type character. Maybe you accidentally read a different Role's Aptitude box?

.....Well, don't I feel silly, I must have grabbed the sage one when I did that comparison....anyways, it worked out for the best, Agility and Shooting are important bits for my PC.

Point-buy is bad because you tend to get min-maxed characters that don't make any sense as people (albeit this depends greatly on the player).

Then again, random dice rolling can also get characters that aren't close to what players want to play..

What I do is have random rolling and then allow the player to shift up to 3 points around per pair of stats (so any stat can be bumped up 3 points if another stat goes down 3 points). And if the stats are truly in contradiction to what the player wants (say, he wants to play a sage type and rolled minimum for Int) he can just reroll the whole set,

It works out pretty well. That way you don;t get "assassins" with horrible offensive ability but they don't all have maximum abilities in those areas and nil everywhere else..

That can easily be solved by just making the base stats before any points are spent sit at around the level you'd expect for common human competence.

So basically exactly how it is now.

What can be easily solved?

Point-buy is bad because you tend to get min-maxed characters that don't make any sense as people (albeit this depends greatly on the player).

Then again, random dice rolling can also get characters that aren't close to what players want to play..

What I do is have random rolling and then allow the player to shift up to 3 points around per pair of stats (so any stat can be bumped up 3 points if another stat goes down 3 points). And if the stats are truly in contradiction to what the player wants (say, he wants to play a sage type and rolled minimum for Int) he can just reroll the whole set,

It works out pretty well. That way you don;t get "assassins" with horrible offensive ability but they don't all have maximum abilities in those areas and nil everywhere else..

I have my players generate stats using the RAW, but I let them reroll the whole array if it doesn't fit their character concept at all. I've had no problems with this method in the past. In fact, I like the fact that you sometimes end up with some odd stats for your Role -- maybe the Warrior ended up with higher than average Intelligence, so he's a good deal smarter than a common soldier. IMO, these quirks help add variety to characters.

Point Buy

What can be easily solved?

The issue of characters who are 'unrealistic' due to base competence in their dump stats being ridiculously low. The point buy system as presented in this beta is actually incredibly limiting; it doesn't let you make wildly topheavy characters. The base levels the stats start at are entirely reasonable levels for base human competence, and you can only raise things by 20 points, if I'm remembering right. That's nothing.