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I knew this was coming after all the changes in the later 40k line from Fantasy Flight. Dark Heresy 2nd Ed Beta
I am more than a little tired of buying 40k rpg books so I think I will pass on this.
Lol. Yeah. First edition still works fine for me.
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If my gaming group wants to change 1st ed., we would simply use the rules in the later books.
How significant are the changes looking? I haven't checked out the beta test.
I noticed the mention of more flexible skills. I think that skills are as flexible as the GM allows in general. Also I noticed they mention an action point based combat system. It sounds like they are trying to simplify combat, which I think might be a mistake. I like the fact combat, as it stands now, is deadly. That why you have the rule of burning Fate Points. In general I have not liked the mechanism of action point based systems. I don't mind points being used for adjusting what happens, i.e. Fate points, but to have a whole combat system based on points does not seem fun to me.
$20 for a beta pdf? o.O
Ah, that's better. Especially if the DH2 pdf isn't as ridiculously overpriced as the DH1 pdf.
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How significant are the changes looking? I haven't checked out the beta test.
While the percentile dice system is still at the heart of the core mechanic, Dark Heresy Second Edition introduces a number of core upgrades, changes, and improvements that make it incompatible with first edition Dark Heresy.
At the risk of being clichéd, I never asked for this. FFG had a perfectly fine system working for 40k Roleplaying, that had benefited from years of iterations and improvements. All we needed in a new edition for Dark Heresy was to use the Only War rules and give them a Dark Heresy theme. Boom, done.
Instead we get a bunch of unwanted and unneeded changes. Woo.
I'm familiar with the Dark Heresy Rules, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch rules, and I realize that all the 40k games are supposed to be compatible. What tweaks did Only War make that make it different than Dark Heresy?
It sounds like the new Dark Heresy rules won't really be compatible with the rest of the systems, which is probably a big turn off for people who have lots of 40k books. Is that the case?
It's not going the way of Warhammer 3e or Star Wars with all the custom dice and such right?
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I'm familiar with the Dark Heresy Rules, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch rules, and I realize that all the 40k games are supposed to be compatible. What tweaks did Only War make that make it different than Dark Heresy?
It sounds like the new Dark Heresy rules won't really be compatible with the rest of the systems, which is probably a big turn off for people who have lots of 40k books. Is that the case?
It's not going the way of Warhammer 3e or Star Wars with all the custom dice and such right?
Only War (and Black Crusade before it) changed the combat rules a bit, as well as streamlined your skills and talents. Generally speaking, Only War is trivially compatible with Black Crusade, while you need to do a few tweaks to make it compatible with Deathwatch/Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy.
And yes, it's a big turn off. The 40k Roleplaying System was fine as it is, and there's still plenty of things to explore in the Dark Heresy line. It's also still a young system, Dark Heresy only came out in 2008! I don't see any advantages of switching to this new system.
Thankfully though, it doesn't seem to be going the way of custom dice.
It is also a new setting. Calixis apparently wasn't original enough so they made up a new sector to settle their game in, which sounds, from the vague description we have of it, suspiciously identical to Calixis.
I've only managed to skip through the PDF so far, but chargen has seen some changes at least. First of all, they've dropped careers. Instead, your character is made up of three parts: Homeworld (where you grew up. Gives modifiers to your starting traits), Background (what you did before being recruited by the Inquisition. Determines your starting skills/abilities) and Role (essentially the kind of character you want to play. Determines the xp cost of characteristics advances and skill increases).
For the most part, the system actually looks pretty good for creating interesting and varied characters. The only slight "huh?" moment for me is the Adeptus Astra Telepathica background. This is basically the Psyker background. The writeup keeps referring to you as a psyker, you get psyniscience skill and you get the Sanctioned trait. So, Adeptus Astra Telepathica is the sanctioned psyker, right? Wrong. See, the AAT doesn't actually get a Psy score, so they are, by default, not psykers. They are sanctioned non-psykers, I guess. In order to actually be a psyker, you need to either pick the Mystic role, which gives a Psy rating, or convince your GM to allow you to buy the ability to be a psycker as an elite advance.
Additionally, since Mystic is a role, it's available to everyone. So anyone can be a psyker. But there is no way to get the Sanctioned trait except by having the Adeptus Astra Telepathica background... so I guess there's a lot of unsanctioned psykers out there (as an aside, the only disadvantage of being unsanctioned is that you begin play with 1d10+10 corruption points and that everyone in the galaxy wants you dead :p).
But psyker kerfuffle aside, I rather like the new character system.
Another thing I really hope they will change, is how Degrees of Success are calculated now. Originally, in Dark Heresy, you had a degree of success for every 10 you beat your target number by. One of the many many games (Black Crusade maybe?) made this a little more intuitive by saying that you start at 1 degree of success, and add extra degrees of success for every 10 you beat the target number with.
DH2E does it slightly different. If you succeed on the roll, you have one degree of success (same as BC). Then you subtract the ten digit of the target number from the ten digit of your roll, and add that to the degree of success. So, we have an example where:
Target number is 39. You roll 40. You have (1 + (4-3)) two degrees of success.
Target number is 40. You roll 41. You have (1 + (4-4)) one degree of success.
Now, I haven't played with the system, so maybe I shouldn't be too quick to judge, but the mathematician in me wants to cry. I really hope they go back to using the BC system - it didn't randomly decide that beating one target number by one is better than beating another target number by one.
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But psyker kerfuffle aside, I rather like the new character system.
No, it actually makes sense. Want to be a Sanctioned Psyker, pick the Adeptus Astra Telepathica background and Mystic role, and you're fine. Rogue Psyker? Pick any other background and the Mystic role.
The only oddity comes if you wanted to take the Adeptus Astra Telepathica background and any other role. Which doesn't really make sense.
And yes, there's lots of unsanctioned psykers out there! The Inquisition's work is never done.
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Yeah, with all the other 40k books I own, I generally have all I need to run an adequate campaign. Currently I use Only War's version of crits and righteous fury, I use Rogue Trader for any spaceship battle type stuff, Deathwatch for horde rules, and between the various splat books amongst them I have all the adversaries I need.
Fantasy Flight mentions that they do not want to make a second edition for the other books...but the changes being made in Dark Heresy 2nd Edition are significant. They are a lot different than other 40k books. Going to Action Point system for example is a pretty big change , so I foresee this being the beginning of an entire redue of the 40k line. No thanks not at 60$ a pop per book. I bought into it once, but not again.
To be fair, its an old system. DH was not even designed by FFG and they have made revisions of the core rules 4 times now. DH has a tone of splat books some not good at all, so yeah maybe its time to try another system. You already have 5 versions of the Base DH system, a system your company did not design.
No,it uses the standard d100's.
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Not only that, we'll still have books coming out for the other lines, fully in the knowledge they they're going to be obsoleted soon once they update the core rules on those other lines to the 2nd Edition rules.
No RPG book is obsolete, as long as you have access to the core books for that system.
I promise that the Fantasy Flight police will not arrest you for playing DH 1e after they put out 2e.
I like DH (a lot) and I am looking forward to the coming edition wars.....which is ironic considering 40k ;>
Anyway, thanks for the info.
I like DH (a lot) and I am looking forward to the coming edition wars.....which is ironic considering 40kI thought in space no one could hear you complain?
Hi there..you seem new to 40k :)
I am not really surprised, honestly. Fans have been asking for a 2e for years at this point. And they have pushed the current system pretty far with 5 versions of the same base system. I am not sure why people find it so shocking they would take a stab at something new and designed totally in house.
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As there appears to be some knowledgeable folks on this thread, I have a question.
I have never played any of the 40K RPGs, but I have recently brought Deathwatch and wanted to add in some Dark Heresy stuff to allow females to take part. Should I look for the current Dark Heresy book, or wait for second ed??
Basically to allow female characters in Deathwatch, it looks like I need three of the current books; the Core book, Ascension and Blood of Martyrs. Do I have that right??
If I do get the three books, how compatible are they with Deathwatch??
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As there appears to be some knowledgeable folks on this thread, I have a question.
I have never played any of the 40K RPGs, but I have recently brought Deathwatch and wanted to add in some Dark Heresy stuff to allow females to take part. Should I look for the current Dark Heresy book, or wait for second ed??
Basically to allow female characters in Deathwatch, it looks like I need three of the current books; the Core book, Ascension and Blood of Martyrs. Do I have that right??
If I do get the three books, how compatible are they with Deathwatch??
If you want female characters in Deathwatch, that means you should use female Space Marines. Which is as easy as going 'there are female Space Marines'. You can do more than that in the fluff if you want, perhaps examining the changes to Astartes traditions if they had females in, for example, but you don't need to.
From the books you mentioned, it seems you want to add Sisters of Battle into Deathwatch though. Which is going to be tricky. The power levels involved are wildly different, even if you use a Dark Heresy character who's gotten towards the end of her advancement track.
Just use deathwatch as Uzzy says. Dh even with Ascension is well below Deathwatch level of gonzo power. I would just homebrew some SoB stuff and use Dw only. The other books are really not useful for what you want when ya can dig the fluff up online anyhow.
All space marines are male, but don't let that stop you. It is your world and your game, so do it like you want to. Ignore the people who have no imagination to go beyond the fluff. Enjoy the game as you want to run it.
Was not Blood of Martyr's the one that was really oped for the line? I recall there have been two version of Sisters of battle for DH, one was fine and the other was broken as all hell. Been a while and I simply do not recall which book had which.
@ Sanwah, yeah Space marines being all male because ya know..females are weak and have cooties is something many 40k fans are rabid about. The rest of us call it stupidity. In may games I handle 40k space marines like Battletech elemental. You have both male and female with no difference in the process to create them. I could see all male chapters, just as I could see all female chapters, but most IMO would be mix. They want to best recruits, which sex organ they happen to pee with should not matter.
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Was not Blood of Martyr's the one that was really oped for the line? I recall there have been two version of Sisters of battle for DH, one was fine and the other was broken as all hell. Been a while and I simply do not recall which book had which.
It's a tricky one really. The Sister of Battle in Inquisitors Handbook started off with fairly typical gear, but could become horrendously overpowered later on. Also, the Sister of Battle career path tried to encompass the militant orders as well as the non militant ones.
The Sister of Battle in Blood of Martyr's, however, starts with power armour and a boltgun, which was enough for plenty of DM's heads to explode. But as they advance, they're a lot more restricted as to what they can obtain, as they have no income and only get weapons from the Ecclesiarchy, giving up anything else they obtain. Furthermore, the Sister of Battle career just sticks to the militant part, the non militant orders being represented by alternate career ranks in the book.
Of course, it's understandable that some DM's should lose it at the idea of a starting Dark Heresy character packing power armour and a boltgun, but it's important to remember that Dark Heresy is an investigation game, not a combat game, and having a character walking around with power armour and a boltgun will attract the wrong kind of attention very quickly.
Investigation be damned, DH has a lot of bloody combat. You are expected to fight, expect to kill the heretics. The game is about hunting them down and removing them, for ever.
So yes, the BoM version is Oped as hell for the game its made for. The bad thing is they are under powered for even Rogue trader, much less death watch. for me in my version of 40k, Sob do not exist, they have no point except to be a cheap female space marine knock off..oh yeah with very stupid boob armor.
Regardless, it simply is not worth the cost for the Book, when Deathwatch itself is the only one needed to run female space marines.
I picked up a hardcopy of DHII the other day. It's quite a bit different than the beta. They got rid of the whole action point thing that they were experimenting with in the beta, and combat looks very much like the Only War rules. The character creation stuff looks like the biggest change. That and how psycher powers work. It's a great looking book, and from what I've read I like the changes. I haven't had a chance to play it yet though, but I'm looking forward to giving it a go.