By the way, Dez, if you want super god-like Marines, just convert the setting over to White Wolf: Scion rules! Then you can have your Marine split mountains and absorb nuclear attacks to your hearts content! :D

I'd certainly love to see people getting in to the Exalted mindset for Space Marines.

Space Monkey said:

I don't think the rules can handle having normal humans with stats that go much passed what they are now, that was my point. If you increase it by 10 in RT you can end up with humans almost as resistant as marines and who can carry comparable weights.

But like I said there is around 45,000 XP worth of advancements for each career in DH. If you took a balanced spread of talents, skills, and stats, you'd only get 5,000 XP to spend on stats. You can almost max that out on a single stat depending on its XP progression. So, simply increasing the amount of XP available to purchase advancements allows for more character development and skill without having to up the stats past areas they weren't meant to go. A human with TB7 will on average suffer 1 wound from a lasgun and maximum 6 from a shot discounting RF. Give them flak and they are virtually immune to lasfire. Hence why I don't think it will happen that way.

Hellebore

So it seems that flexibility is more of an issue rather than power-scaling of the Dark Heresy system?

Kage

Kage2020 said:

I don't know if flexibility is the word  for it, because the system with its elite advances is pretty flexible... but more there is a limit on how flexible you can be.

Simply put, the hard cap on advancement strikes people the wrong way, especially when they have this really cool character concept, and then as they progress they find themselves having to pick and choose skills and limit their characters not because of simple choices, but because they suddenly find themselves up against a hardcap and having to determine if said skill or said attribute pick is going to stop them from developing their character the way they want to.

And that's even before you start talking about combat monsters and over the top gonzo characters.  Its very hard to expand your character in fun, non-combat ways because you have to choose to fight against a hardcap and being useful in the story.  Want your character to be an excellent singer or dancer... well that there depending on your class can be minimal 300 exp just to get singing +20 assuming that your class even offers that chance.  Get a class that for some reason states that your character never sings, and it becomes an elite advance, and assuming your GM is being generous and charging only 150 exp for the skills, its now 450 exp.  That's also assuming you're lucky and all the skills are normally 100 exp.  Most of them the initial pick is 200 exp then 100 exp for the follow ups, making it 400 exp for a singing +20.  And that's SINGING, which arguable comes into play very minimally in an actual game.

But if you want to flesh out your character you have to take it, but that's 450 exp you're taking away from something else that can be more useful in your average game, aka talents.  This wouldn't be so bad with an open ended system, but with a hardcap system it can become frustrated.

Even more so if you want to play a God-type character where your character has every combat talent in the book, has elite combat attributes, AND can make a killer cherry mouse, all while reciting the Imperial Creed... from memory.

Make matters worse is that the Inquisitor's Handbook has the beginnings of power-creep raise its ugly head with the new alternate paths.  These paths can be a liability because often then restrict you from taking skills from your original pick without paying +50exp per skill, and that can be a HUGE investment of exp, again taking you owe so much closer to that hardcap with very little return.

So while the game can be very flexible with elite advances... that very same flexibility is its drawback since every elite advance takes away the ability to flesh out your character in meaningful ways, due to a very hard cap.

Which is why I'm looking forward to Ascention, to at least raise that stupid hardcap, and allow me to continue to DEVELOP my character along meaningful lines, and make him 3 dimensional instead of constantly fighting the fight between 2-dimensional usefulness and 3-dimensional living breathgin character.

All of that doesn't require an increase in the STAT cap though surely? I think a stat cap increase would cause more harm than good across the game as a whole.

Although DH states that 15,000 XP is sort of the end of the game, you can still run your characters past that with no real problems.

I think that simply allowing more advances to be taken will provide growth without mucking around with core stats.

Hellebore

I think it more important to consider results.

How many mook gangers should a PC be able to beat up. Work from there.

Depends what the stats of said mook ganger is. If they are all WS/BS15 then quite a lot. You don't need WS70 warriors to do that.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Exactly. One of the reasons I quite like that Minion rules have found there way into DH's Creatures Anathema (by way of a another popular pen and paper rpg which shall remain nameless).

What ARE the minion rules? Has anyone been able to have a look to find out? Is it just 1 hit point monsters or what?

Hellebore

At the risk of drawing the ire of our hosts...

You have 2 levels of minions. The basic level is functionally the same as the original True 20 Minion rules, they die if they get wounded, etc. The advanced minion is more complex and tougher, able to take more than one wound, but I don't remember the exact details. They are very good, simple, rules that would allow some great "desperate stands against hordes of enemies" moments.

My FLGS had Creatures Anathema in stock today. I had a chance to glance through it. Two big thumbs up BTW.

Xathess Wolfe said:

You had me at... erm, no, you didn't have me at all.  Thanks for taking the time to explain that, though.  It kind of reinforces my first impressions of the system that I have not developed through playing, but I shall leave it at that.  Obviously system-related materials is not going to be something that I'm overtly able to talk about insofar as it addresses the characters... erm, but there we go.  

Kage

And while minion rules are definatly important combat and for combat gods, the rules for social conflict with minions is equalably important, which is what I'm hoping will be expanded as well later.  Because while its all great and good to determine relative powerlevels for Guardsman and Space Marines via mook/minion rules, it doesn't work so well for social characters like certain builds of Psykers, Clerics, Scum, Arbitrators and definatly Adepts.

While no one likes their combat being bogged down with minions that take 4 hours to kill, no one likes to bog down their stories either with having to spend hours of having some Inquisitor interrogating some 1 die mook either.

Xathess Wolfe said:

So, apply the same rules: one success wins. Your Inquisitor is interrogating a mook, make an Interrogate check. You succeed. he breaks and spills everything he knows. No fuss, no muss (well maybe a little muss). The only problem then is the annoying need to roll a 30 or less on a D% but fixing that little flaw requires slightly more modifications to the overall system.

LuciusT said:

Oh I agree its fixable and doable with a number of houserules, but I guess my point is that a gamesystem's powerlevel shouldn't strictly be based upon how many people you can kill in 1.2 seconds when the game system isn't all about combat.

While combat is important, its not the only thing in powerlevels that need to be concidered when designing a game.