[Dark Heresy II Beta] So, is anyone else in?

[Asmodai]

Two days ago the Beta went into the blue yonder, and FFG is again showing their lovely business practices by charging us for the privilege of play testing their material! Yay.

I like that they cleaned up a lot of chargen stuff and opened it more akin to Only War/Black Crusade. However some of the stuff is rather... out there. Untouchables are very Touchable right now, you can play an Inquisitor out of the box (well, almost),for some uncanny reason being unskilled is having Rank 1 in a skill now, talents have been placed into EoE style trees and the one thing that i seriously dislike is the fact that the new system is not compatible with the old one :P

The new system is the same for interaction, but combat and vehicles are rather... wonky. Let's just say that they thought it was a good idea to shift the system to action points and that you now resolve your actions by spending action points according to tables and their interactions with the weapons you have. The multiple attack/hit system is even more different, with the roll directly deciding how many attacks you hit with, and wounds were removed for directly applying critical effects (which start lower, and get inti ludicrious gibs around a total of 30).

There will also be a new setting, the Calixis sector is out and the Askelion sector is in.

I'm currently looking into trying out the AP rules with my group, but the first comments of my players were not very happy. Has anyone else tried it, and do they have any impressions they would like to share?

[Asmodai]

Oh and I didn't note it specifically, but armor penetration and weapons are totally out of whack right now - to the point that Meltaguns can barely penetrate priestly robes :P

I'm guessing this will be changed quite a bit in the next iteration.

[Maugan Ra]

Hmm. I'm... considering getting involved, since my current group of Deathwatch players have expressed an interest in trying Dark Heresy at some point.

That said, the fact that the Beta costs money to participate in is rather annoying, as I'm not sure whether I want to drop twenty quid or so on a half-finished product, later discount or no.

That said, Action Point combat does sound intriguing, if very easy to horribly mishandle... any further information you'd be willing to share with regards to the wound system? The Critical Damage tables have always been some of my favourite parts of the game, and the idea that every hit will now hurt in some way is... intriguing.

[Asmodai]

It works like this, you have to pay X points based on weapon and manouver you use. When you do, you make a single attack roll and then each degree of success counts as an extra hit on the target. The hits are resolved on the "Damage table" for Body, Head or limbs. It goes up to 31, and 31 is pretty much ludicrous gibs, while everything up to 10 is minor effects. The thing is that every wound you got gives a +5 bonus on every subsequent damage roll.

What is rather absurd with this is the fact that a single shot weapon is never better then multiple hits. I can hit you with a Thunder hammer or Vindicare rifile once, and i'll do less damage then if I hit you with a sword two or more times :P

[Dead_Jester]

I am currently in the middle of testing it, so far, the changes to combat don't look too great (and aren't backwards compatible) while the rest (new Influence, Subtlety and Chargen systems) are pretty good and backwards compatible.

The new Corruption rules however... let's just say the average life expectancy for acolytes is around 3 minutes, and most psykers would be shot before they leave Chargen for being tainted mutants.

If you want to see more comments, the FFG board have a section dedicated to the Beta; the response is pretty negative, but their have been headway into making suggestions and improvements.

[IdleMuse]

I had a game of this just last night! As a long, long term DH player, I found it refreshingly different. I love the combinations that can be come up with by mixing the backgrounds, roles, and home planets (I'm playing an Forge World Ad Mech Assassin, for instance), much more flexible than DH1's 2-variable system. And I like the cleaner method for buying up skills; I always found it odd in DH that certaint things were missing from some classes.

I also love the action points system! So in all, a big fan of the changes so far. Obviously it isn't finished yet, there are some things that just don't add up (like fists being better than knives) and a whole bunch of coordination errors (bonuses and costs being different in one place than another), but I hope the beta process knocks these out.

[Wroth]

The thing about the beta is that they are also looking for feedback on their forums. They want people to break everything so they can figure out what works and what doesn't. They want it to end up well.

Though I'm not in, I just read the boards once in a while.

[king.com]

I am currently in the middle of testing it, so far, the changes to combat don't look too great (and aren't backwards compatible) while the rest (new Influence, Subtlety and Chargen systems) are pretty good and backwards compatible.

The Influence and Subtlety system are still a big mess of bustedness and seems like a huge pool of 'hey GM, just make this up!' which given FFG's track record will probably never be resolved. Character creation seems good but really messy (like the mystic being currently a bit pointless because of how the stat to discipline thing works).

EDIT: Subtlety is a great idea in principle but how does it get used? You lose subtlety for buying items but the effect is that you alert the enemy so in practicality you either play it as 'well this is something you would beat anyway' or 'you lose because they ambush you with 60 cult members'. Your influence is impacted by this so your encouraged to be subtle but then the game seems to want to give you full inquisitorial authority right off the bat, so why don't you just use that like a club every time? If you use it the plot either advances (so nothing ultimately changed) or fails (which as a GM your not going to do). Ultimately it seems like it wants to be a 'hey heres a side system that might be cool to use if your doing something specific about it' but again, it doesn't show how it should be used in that way. The adventure seems to imply that you straight punish people for being overt despite handing them control over an Imperial Navy vessel.

Influence is a mess too given how its still got the hold over problem of 'one unlucky player who never passes acquisition rolls gets screwed'. Additionally its still got the Throne income problem of 'how much does the GM want them to advance today, X amount? They get X amount of Influence/Money after this'. This is important given the game currently compares clearing the backwater planet nobody cares about in the adventure to be equal with banishing a greater demon or alternatively that screwing up in a social situation amongst high society 5 times would be an equal loss as declaring exterminatus wrongfully on a planet.

Honestly the system is going to require as much GM eyeballing as the previous version just with way more book keeping because of all the damage -> table lookup combat.

Combat is super busted aswell but those are just numbers so I don't think its worth commenting on. The game seems like im going to cherry pick a couple of ideas from and then leave it.

I personally dislike the AP system but thats mostly because its just more work for a GM to be tracking stuff I don't really care about and operated under the assumption "every single mook just aims/shoots + dodge every action"

I think the 'adventure' at the back of the book is a really bad idea when you essentially are introducing a ton of narrative systems and not actually showing how this is supposed to play out in a scenario. The make your own adventure would do better in a GM guide or a scenario book but as THE example they are using to show you the systems its a really dumb idea.