My GM wants us to help him try out the more defined beta rules before they finish testing in a game with him, but I am noticing a small problem. It isn't very easy to get gear from the first glance, with no kind of a scale modifier (i.e. the amount, RT had a +30 for a single item) it makes it pretty hard to even get a Common Quality handcannon. Assuming an influence of 30 (20+5,5), it is a 20% roll for -10 scarce item. And pre-game there is no way to get anything above scarce (except a Poor Quality Rare item, which most folks wouldn't want). Getting items like a stablight (Abundant, +30), makes it a 60% chance, but in old DH this was 15 thrones IIRC, which was pitifully easy to get, now I will fail 4 times out of 10 to grab a basic flashlight. While "Magic Source of Money" may work better in RT and settings where money is not "tight", in Dark Heresy I liked the feeling of it, of acolytes having to be a bit cunning to make sure their cash reserves stayed in their pocket, because they couldn't carry vast amount of cash on them. And it is nice being able to purchase small items with a certainty.
Acquiring Items
Completely agree. DH 1 you could start with a pile of little useful items, now you can at most start with 4 extra. And since there's no rules for combining acquisitions, weapons and mods count as separate and eat your requisitions up really fast
Completely agree. DH 1 you could start with a pile of little useful items, now you can at most start with 4 extra. And since there's no rules for combining acquisitions, weapons and mods count as separate and eat your requisitions up really fast
Technically, you could start with an Influence bonus of 5 and get 5 items since spending starting XP happens before acquiring additional equipment. With your starting background gear plus 2-5 free items, starting characters should have a pretty good spread of gear.
I'm really confused why you're painting the problem as Influence, Cymbel. In DH1 you still had to roll Inquiry to find an item before you could buy it, which wasn't significantly easier. Also, there's a bit about the GM including availability modifiers they think are appropriate, so if buying a hand cannon or lantern should be easy the GM can add whatever they want to the test. If it can just be assumed that you'd be able to find a hand cannon for sale where you are you shouldn't even roll for it anyway.
Luckily i have my CRB at hand ...
In DH1 you had a table were the difficulty for the Inquiry test was determined by Availability and size of population of the placer where you are looking for something.
Items of Availability Abundance were automatically in range if the population was above 10k, and with 100k even Plentiful no longer needed a roll. Common items were +30 and Average were +20 ... rather easy to get. It took you about 1d10 hours (-DoS) to get something Average.
You just needed the money, and making your Acolytes work for that money was often enough the real adventure.
The 'No-Money' approach is fitting for Ascension or RT, but not for down and dirty little snitches that Acolytes really are.
@cps: Influence can't be increased by spending xp, so there's no way to start with an Influence Bonus of 5.
I let my players buy little items such as stablights, duct tape and ration packs without rolling if they're in a hive city or other area where such supplies are abundant. Influence checks to aquire those items would be required on fronteir worlds or other places that aren't as amply supplied.
@cps: Influence can't be increased by spending xp, so there's no way to start with an Influence Bonus of 5.
Oops, my bad.
The 'No-Money' approach is fitting for Ascension or RT, but not for down and dirty little snitches that Acolytes really are.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Abstraction of wealth is a great improvement over the bean-counting of DH1.
@cps: Influence can't be increased by spending xp, so there's no way to start with an Influence Bonus of 5.
Oops, my bad.
The 'No-Money' approach is fitting for Ascension or RT, but not for down and dirty little snitches that Acolytes really are.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Abstraction of wealth is a great improvement over the bean-counting of DH1.
I really think this is a matter of taste. I remember distinctly being told by one of my players that the things he enjoyed the most about one of the games I ran was 'You never forget the little things, it really makes the world come alive'. One of the things he was referencing was that I remembered that the party had to pay for food and drink wherever they went. In a game like whfrp he felt that really made the game work because adventuring was a career choice. It wasn't just 'we kill monsters to buy a better sword to kill bigger monsters'.
I admit this style does not gel well with being Inquisitorial acolytes (I've often felt that not having a similar requisition system to DW was a huge problem thematically for DH) but I still feel like the complete abstraction goes too far in the other direction.
It's not something you can really say is objectively 'better' is my point.
Edited by CailI personally prefer the current abstracted Influence system to individual Throne purchases partly because of the imbalance created by different character salaries in DH1. My players found themselves actively discouraged from playing several classes simply because they had terrible salaries. Our starting group consisted of a Cleric, Tech-priest and Assassin, three of the best-paid classes in the game; nobody even considered playing a Guardsman or Scum until the Inquisitor's Handbook introduced the Noble-Born background.
With the Influence system in DH2, this kind of imbalance was written out of the game, and the system allows for different interpretations of a character's sources of wealth. The Hive Outcast Desperado might acquire items mostly through reputation and occasionally pay back his debts when he's awarded a big bounty, the Noble Admisistratum Adept could use his family's vast mercantile wealth to buy items as needed (but only through mostly legitimate channels), while the Arbites Warrior might meet up with an old friend from the force and buy some items that were confiscated from some hive gangers. IMO, this is much more flavorful than just paying for everything out of pocket.
Similarly, I view the food a character eats and the lodgings they buy as more of an RP consideration than a financial burden. The Noble character might refuse to eat "peasant" foods that aren't served on fine china dishes, while the Feral one might be happy with a burnt slab of meat and a straw pallet with a roof over his head. If a player's background/home world suggests they would eat/sleep in a certain way, I like to encourage this kind of roleplaying rather than have players eat fungus off air-recyclers just to save Thrones.
Edited by Covered in WeaselsYeah, I agree the salary system was stupid. But that's a problem with the accumulation of wealth, not the spending.
The imbalance in the salary system had it's problems, but there is an imbalance in Influence too. Noble born get an increase to the stat, while feral worlders get a decrease. I don't want a return to the days of some PCs making almost nothing while the noble is rolling in money. Maybe a solution is to include a modifier based on population to the ease of acquiring items? Or some limited scale modifier?
As to the issue of rolling inquiry and spending time to find an item. I honestly liked that. It could be abstracted or RPed out and the DH GMs normally ruled out "If you found a spot for X, then you can buy related items there too." Examples include a gun store for guns, ammo and most weapon mods. Survival type store for camping/frontier world items, liquor store for booze, cigar-lhos and so on. And once we found a store, we didn't have to roll to find it again. Granted, they may be out of it or send us to another store, so we weren't always guaranteed the item, but it did cut down on the tedium and if you became a frequent shopper, sometimes you got a discount on an item or an extra magazine of ammo thrown in free. If you rolled badly sometimes you found an awful shop, with higher prices than normal. It is hard to abstract those examples to an Influence roll, and while I support it for being a way to do other things thrones couldn't and get items that couldn't just be "bought", it still lacks a lot of what the old system had. What about spending money to upgrade your gun or maybe even armor to Good Quality. Because simply getting a better version of the gear isn't the same as buying a new barrel and cylinder, getting it polished, having a new grip, upgrading it bit by bit, so it keeps the same spirit of the gun (extra important if you have a techie in the group, gotta keep those machine spirits happy).
Edit: Maybe the mods are slanted too low, but the only item acolytes can ever get for "free" (no roll needed), is Ubiquitous items, of which I can't seem to find many, besides the "Disposable Pistol" from ItS, which I will admit does amuse me more than a little
Edited by CymbelI used to be in favor of the monetary system but upon further experimentation and creative thinking found that it is more fun to use the acquisition system. The players in my group quickly became super wealthy just from salaries which was a major headache for me.
If you must have money in the game, I recommend that the character's Inquisitor give them a fixed spending limit and make other money such as credits or digital money require a biometric scan or something like that in order to loot off of bodies. If they can crack the scanner to steal the ganger's money than so be it, otherwise your subtlety just dropped as the authorities are now alerted to someone hacking a "bank account". Just an idea.
Yeah, the ideal hybrid of the two is a small expense account for lodging, food, drinks, small purchases, light bribes and so on. While bigger purchases are kept minimized with the Influence system. I agree with you that the other part is having opponents only carry small pocket cash and then "credit accounts" to minimize looting.
Well, i have currently only a DH1 group and i kinda use both systems.
Everyone has his salary which gives our Noble the usual advantage.
On the other hand the Arbitrator and Sororitas use their Lore Skills to requisition gear and funds from their institutions.
That has worked so far rather well.
The Noble can flaunt his riches and feel all smug and superior, the others use their skills and connections to borrow the necessary tools so that they do not fall behind too far.
Using shops like Cymbel has been a must for me in most RPGs so far, it makes the world feel more alive.
It really is the little details, isn't it? Like a shopkeeper yelling at your PC because they mishandled a gun and knocked over a box of cartridges (and didn't use the correct terms, partially because she didn't have SP training).
An additional note, I saw an earlier post talking about the lack of items that character generation gives you, for example not starting out with clothing for a lot of classes (or ammo for their gun). Can we have a longer list more in tune to classic DH equipment? Lots of choices, things set down to the details, fluffy equipment (writing kit or autoquill for adepts as an example, the latter may be superior, but the former works better for some). Not to mention the wonderful mementos, career and history. Every detail like this is wonderful for adding depth to a character.
Still have some serious issues with the ammo acquiring system/difficulty to acquire basic items.
In my group it's not the shopkeeper but our Tech-Priest. Every time someone goes to him to ask him something his first response is:
What did you break this time?
So far i and others in this thread think that a combination is a good idea.
A certain amount of cash for the smaller purchases (say anything below 1k)
and requisition system for more expensive or rarer items/services.
Sadly that limits compatibility with every post RT system, unless they want to make a large gear book of all those fun patterns and variants that make a player's life better. Not to mention the region specific gear.
As a side note, looking at rarity/price in the DH core, it frustrates me to no end to just have rarity be the price, some quick examples
Las Pistol Common 50
Lasgun Common 75
Needle Rifle Very Rare 1000
Plasma Gun Very Rare 3000
(24 and rare for a plasma flask for the plasma gun, 20 thrones each for needle rifle ammo and very rare)
Light Flak Coat Scarce 80
Guard Flak Scarce 300
Backpack Plentiful 10
Void Suit Plentiful 100
Pack of Lho Sticks Common 10
Medikit Common 150
Stummers Average 25
Pictcaster Average 100
Nothing comprehensive, but just because something is hard or easy to find, doesn't mean it is expensive or cheap off the bat. Like how a friend told me the Vanaheim Assault Shotgun is easier to get in the new system because it isn't the Scarce level of the Combat Shotgun (though the Vanaheim cost about 500 thrones).
Another thing that irks me is Good Quality being -15, which makes getting GQ items hard for starting (unless you want 2 levels lower than scarce, instead of one), but GQ has always been 3x price, like Best Quality is 10x price. So it made sense in RT that the GQ mod is -10 and the BQ one is -30. It costs 3x as much for BQ than GQ.
As a side note, for a future DH 2.0 book, I for one would also love an improved version of the OW Variant Equipment Rules. It brought some great ideas, but was a bit limited in options and a lot of stuff doesn't balance out well (Accurate + -5 shots for an autogun, well, you just made a 25 shot full auto sniper rifle (and with expanded mags, this problem is limited).
would like to see a thrown cost on items again. can still have the other ways to get items.
Just as a side note, the original rarity of the Vanaheim is almost assuredly a typo. How can a fully automatic shotgun with built-in laser sight and retractable mono-bayonet be MORE common than a combat shotgun? Our group houseruled the Vanaheim's availability to Rare.
I'd love to see Peer increasing Influence again. It makes sense and is a way to influence Influence directly with XP
Just as a side note, the original rarity of the Vanaheim is almost assuredly a typo. How can a fully automatic shotgun with built-in laser sight and retractable mono-bayonet be MORE common than a combat shotgun? Our group houseruled the Vanaheim's availability to Rare.
I shoulda house ruled it as "are you Skitarii or in bed with the Lathes? No? **** you, no Vanaheim". Oh god the horror. What were they THHHHHIIIINKING???
To be fair, it DOES say in the book about "A GALAXY OF GUNS" and how you are free to rename stuff and give them new stories. And I don't see why the Arbites don't have the top of line assault shotguns....
To be fair, it DOES say in the book about "A GALAXY OF GUNS" and how you are free to rename stuff and give them new stories. And I don't see why the Arbites don't have the top of line assault shotguns....
Because "Emperor Provides" is not a registered gun franchise in 40K... yet
.
Because the Arbitres DO have the best shotgun. Dat Vox Legi
The Vox Legi is an abomination and the warning for the problems to come with the Lathes book. Something new, that never happened before, magically better than most anything else shotgun wise and just....dumb.
If they had done some kind of combat shotgun (like the arbites one from Hostile Acquisitions) or the vanaheim, I don't think there would be much issue with it.