Hive said:

The only thing I've heard about is Tome of Blood being the next supplement for Black Crusade. I'd love to hear more.

Plushy:

You have been writing DH 1.5 in the "Only war" Forum. I think FFG should pick your thread up and develop it!

EDIT: Soul Reaver, a Rogue Trader adventure supplement, is rumored to have rules allowing players to create and advance Dark Eldar Kabalite Warrior Characters, and these could very well be used as the basis of home-brewed Eldar Character creation rules.

Did we really need a fifth "stand-alone" game, or was it just a case of "we'll get the core rules banged out in a concise and comprehensive rendition sooner or later"? Going into the fifth redesign of the rules do we really need to be asking them for a sixth? I'd rather have supplements than rules. I already have enough rules to choke a hippo. Actually, I have enough supplements to choke five hippos, but that's not the point. Sure, people will buy an Eldar-based game. People would also buy a Tau-based game, an Ork-based game, and/or a Squat-based game. A supplement the size and price point of the Inquisitors Handbook could easily cover Tau and Eldar, and additional supplements could be released focusing on those PC races…but the question remains- does FFG produce yet another $60 core rules set, or get the rules situation ironed out with Only War and put the following on the back of each Tau/Eldar/Ork/Squat release: "A copy of the Only War Core Rules is needed to use this supplement."

As an aside; if FFG pulls another copy/paste stunt like they did with Hostile Acquisitions they're gonna find me standing on the front door of their offices, waiting to personally ask to have my money back. That was a lame release. Lame.

There are plenty of customers left so the line isn't over.

We've got Hereticus and Malleus, I would like an Oros Xenos book please.

Interrogator Z

Plushy said:

Four new games have been released that work along the same lines. You can call them revisions, but each game is designed to have it's own relative power level, it's own feel and it's own particular niche in the 40K universe. I don't buy the argument that each new core book is a 'revision' of previous ones. They're all pretty similar, and they are based on Dark Heresy as produced and printed by Black Industries, but the new games, starting with Rogue Trader had taken off in a different direction. I keep hearing complaints about the DH psyker rules, but agree with Bothrian that the real problems don't tend to arise except at the upper power levels. I don't think overbleed is disgustinly powerful like some people have said, because rolling enough dice to get massive overbleed comes with alot of risk of rolling 9's. Plus, that's an interesting part of the charachter of 40K, the capriciousness of the warp; you can be incredibly powerful, but it will probably only cost you your soul. No biggie.

One thing that irritates me is how people on the forums want to change everything to Black Crusade. I've never played it, partly because I don't think it sounds that interesting, partly because I don't really want to dole out the money for a game I don't think sounds that interesting. All the rules for BC are probably fine for BC, but that's another game, it's a game that mixes space marines and normal humans in the same group and tries to balance it all out. What's good in that game might not necessarily be good for other games. Of all the games in the line I've played, DH continues to be the most unique and flavorful of all because it does have unique rules and mechanics for Psychic powers and such. The blanket WP test for any power, then it does exactly the same thing every time is so frigging boring it makes me want to hang myself. Not to mention the warp is supposed to be completely unpredictable, and since you can do any power pused or fettered and that's the only thing that changes the effect of any particular power is absolutely in violation of all the fluff, even fluff in the FF books themselves.I know they don't have it in DH, but at least DW I know has a talent that allows you to essentially choose what effect you want your psychic phenomenon to be, so in the exceedingly rare occasions where one comes up, unless you roll a perils of the warp, you end up with the same pointless, boring, repeated phenomenon.

As far as Tech Priests being supposedly all-powerful now, we should all keep in mind that they are anEmpire within an Empire. They are a complete entity unto themselves, and most of the stuff I've seen in the new book are incredibly unlikley to be seconded to the Inquisiton. The AdMech is one of only a few institutions that the =I= has no real jurisdiction over, after all; so as a GM, I would feel no qualms saying "no" to anything in that book.

In short, there are some clunky things, and the experience of the other games could probably improve DH in general in any "system update", but by and large I disagree completely with you on the point that it's miles behind, I would argue that in the subsequent lines alot of the flavor that makes the 40K universe interesting and unique has been lost and turned into vanilla whitebread boringness.

Kainus said:

Yes, this is definitely something I would like too.

Lionus said:

Which is why people use their reasoning faculties to deduce which changes would be good and which would be bad for their particular game. Like it or not each game has been a revision of the previous ones, slowly weeding out faults in the system. BC made more radical changes than the previous two revisions, leaving something that is quite different from DH while retaining much of the core mechanical concepts. I've effectively converted my DH campaign to the BC system (I'd already come up with houserules that ended up being exactly the same as some of the BC rules - great minds think alike!) and I have to tell you it's a great improvement.

macd21 said:

Exactly!  The reason many people see the DH psyker rules as broken is because they are! FFG has used some variant of the current (psyker) rule system since rogue trader. The Only war Sanctioned battle psyker character is nothing less than a rewrite (or revision) of the DH sanctioned psyker. I'm not sure how much clearer they could be without publishing Dark Heresy 2.0!

Like I said before, I haven't played Black Crusade, and also have not played Only War so I can't honestly say what I'd like better. I'm glad it  works for you guys to mix the rules, and that you get enjoyent out of the game. I understand the point that each line is a refinement of previous rule sets, and accept that. It is still true that they are seperate games, and do not require the others to function. Planting charachters from one game directly into another doesn't really work smoothly, even though it can be done.

Speaking only to the psyker system, I heard that you don't like the DH method, and say it's broken. It is true that they can be very powerful, but also come with pretty intense problems and setbacks. I always thought the balanced each other out pretty well. No one made any comment in reguard that the FF psyker system is incurably boring and generic. It totally takes all the flavor out of the Warp and despite all the fluff talking about how dangerous it is, and how short and troubled the lives of psykers are, those characters are pretty charmed in the FF system. From what I've seen they still get pretty powerful, but don't have as many drawbacks as in DH.

As to how much "clearer they could be" by redoing the sanctioned psyker to the battle psyker, you're assuming there's agreement that the old system is broken, but my point is that it isn't that simple. You believe it is, and I think differently. Powerful yes, broken no. Definately interesting and does a good job of portraying the randomness and hazard of the Warp.

Plushy said:

Lionus said:

Nail on the head, mate, with a Thunder Hammer!

The Rogue Trader psychic revisions made sense… For Rogue Trader. They represent a much less powerful category of psyker when compared to the top-of-the-line Primary Psykers represented in DH, Psykers who were too weak to serve without having their souls bound to the Emperor become Astropaths, and the Astropaths presented in Rogue Trader are the exceptional examples of their kind, their powers are safer because of the overkill measures used to armour them against the Warp, and they pay for that in both power and narrow specialisation.

Next take Deathwatch, Librarians having a still more stable, but even narrower range of powers than Astropaths made sense also, their reduced width and breadth of power when compared to Primary Psykers is a direct result of the extreme levels of control and restriction that they bind to their formidable minds and souls, for one of their key duties is to reliably predict the future as accurately and safely as possible on behalf of the Chapter Master and the Captaincy. Librarians work quite well in the game without being *too* weaksauce psychically, but they still rely heavily on their wargear and their Brothers, as they should. Considering Deathwatch is the first and only game in the line so far that set out to make each PC class balanced, that's a good indication of the success of the Deathwatch psychic rules *for Deathwatch*.

Black Crusade is where you really start to see the "improvements" fall flat, they sit at a level that is both safer and more powerful than anything previous, despite being servants of the Dark Gods, you expect power unto that of the Primary Psykers and more horrifying and potentially devastating powers and techniques, but also even greater peril. Being confident that you will be completely fine while Pushing high end powers, before you've even picked up the dice, is a strong indication of going too far in the opposite direction.

From the earliest lore to the present, those few human beings strong enough and talented enough to serve the Imperium as Imperial Psykers have burned the brightest, and payed the heaviest price for their gift-curse. Each to their own, but post DH Psychic rules undeniably lack soul and elan. If I wanted to play a warp energy accountant, I'd play Black Crusade: Administratum edition.

Azraiel said:

Were they? And if they were, they utterly, utterly failed.

borithan said:

I've read a few different horror stories about Librarians who could not roll Perils of the Warp. Assault Marines also got shafted. 

Assault Marines shafted? Personally I would hold them to be the most broken after Librarians, and they don't even have special powers to jusify it.

Deathwatch is the kind of game where almost every class is broken in some respect or another.

Devastators? See Heavy Bolter.

Tac Marines? See Storm Bolter.

Assault? See everything related to melee.

And so on. The only one that isn't obviously OP is the Apothecary.