Dark Heresy 2nd edition Beta is out

[bilateralrope]

With regards to sniper weapons, are these complaints regarding the inability to one-hit-kill being made by complete goddamned idiots who don't know how amazingly destructive the Accurate weapon trait is? I think they are. I really, really think they are. Because 'throw another couple d10s at the problem' with a good roll is most definitely capable of one-shotting a vast panoply of assholes.

This is the accurate trait for DH second edition:

The weapon is crafted for precision attacks, with finely
crafted las lenses or finely honed steel. Attacks made with
this weapon gain a +15 bonus from each Aim action made
before the attack, instead of the normal amount.

There are no extra damage dice in second edition, and the damage rules have been changed.

The way damage works in DH2E:
- Calculate the damage done after toughness/armor.
- Take the damage done. Add +5 per wound, +10 per critical wound.
- Take that total and look at the wound effects chart for that damage type and location to see what happens.
- Target gains a wound. If you rolled righteous fury, it's a critical wound instead.

There are no instant death effects below 25 on the wound tables for I or E damage. Sniper weapons can deal 20 damage at most, and that is before the targets damage reduction.

There doesn't seem to be a hard limit on how many wounds you can take.

[White Haven]

Ah, fair enough, I misread things and thought the complaint was regarding DH1. Disregard.

[Serafina]

Any decent sniper will have Crippling Shot (+5 to wound results) and Eye of Vengeance (gain additional damage equal to defense value).
That way, a Sniper Rifle with Amputator Shells used against a Crime Lord will do 1D10+18 damage after defense value.
That's at least a 19, and rolling at least a three will inflict blood loss, very likely knocking the target out.


But yes, even with that its currently not possible to kill a uninjured target with a single shot from a sniper rifle. If the target already has a wound or two, it's way easier - there, high-damage weapons are great for putting a target down. But in a single-shot sniper situation, they are at a severe disadvantage.

[bilateralrope]

The first beta update is out. It seems FFG listened regarding the Sniper Rifle. It's damage is now 2d10 with a penetration of your perception bonus and it has a quality that triggers righteous fury on an 8+, which should be helpful as most enemies will die to any RF hit. However the Long-Las got its damage reduced along with nerfs to all las weapons.

[Cykeisme]

This is probably nitpicking, but saying that the average 1st edition character can only hit the broad side of a barn ~30% of the time is not really correct.

Shooting a barn would not be a "Challenging +0" task.

Now picture trying to shooting a fully mobile enemy combatant who is aware of you, under combat circumstances, from a weapon's medium range band (say, 100-200m), with a single shot from a rifle.. the conditions that would give a +0 modifier to the BS test.
Does a ~30% success rate seem unrealistically low for that?


Agreed, there are a lot of modifiers that frequently come into play, but after the a session or two all the common positive modifiers from circumstances and actions (point blank or short range, semi-auto and autofire, aiming etc) quickly become second nature.

So having terrible success rates due to ignorance of modifiers might be an issue for groups who are completely new to the system (for a while), or with groups that don't really read their books.

Shockingly, it's apparent the problem of people not reading their books must be pretty common, if FFG is making a deliberate effort to address this in their 2nd edition!

[bilateralrope]

I've been thinking about the switch to action points and I've decided that I like it. For the other 40kRPGs, if your character had no reason to move or activate abilities, your only choice in combat is which fire mode you use on your weapon. If you had room in your turn for an aim action, you used it. Then you fired. Then you had reactions to avoid incoming attacks.

For DH2 in the same situation you have to allocate AP between:
- Giving yourself a better chance to hit. Since evade is an opposed test, this could still be relevant if you get your WS/BS above 80 (which is possible)
- Putting more shots into the target.
- Saving AP for evading enemy attacks.

My biggest problem with DH2 right now is that I can't see any reason to use las weapons after the latest update. For most, the difference in availability between the las weapon and an SP/Bolt weapon that is superior in all ways is only -10.
Worst though is the long las vs sniper rifle. With 2d10 damage and a quality that triggers righteous fury on 8+, it has a 51% chance to deal a critical wound. Which will kill anything that isn't an elite enemy. Plus the sniper rifle is reliable while the long las isn't.

[Serafina]

The issue with Sniper Rifles wasn't damage - it's the way wounds work.
Killing someone doesn't work via wound-depletion, but via getting a 29+ on the wound table - and since there's only two categories of wounds (normal for +5 and critical for +10), low-damage hits scale better than high-damage hits.
That is, if i hit you 6 times for 1 point of post-DV damage, you'll most likely suffer gruesome death because i get a massive modifier to the wound-roll. But hitting you twice for 15 points of post-DV damage will only inflict grievous injuries.

Now the two examples above are pretty extreme. Nevertheless, introducing a rule that turns hits of a certain severity into critical wounds would help (propably somewhere around 20 damage or so). It'll increase the lethality of high-damage weapons and lead to a faster demise of Novice- and Minion-NPCs.

[Justice]

What's your problem with d100 itself? Or is it something with the way its handled in the 40k system?

I do agree with Gunhead that d20 is generally more manageable if you are going with something with a linear progression; % systems are needlessly granular for little real gain (What's the appreciable difference between a 44% skill and a 45% skill? Is there a real point to measuring the difference?). Though I'd argue that the linear progression % systems are kind of irksome; since every number has an equal chance of coming up, it's harder to get more consistent results from skills compared to a bell curve systems. Bell curve systems (Ex: GURPS, which has you roll under your modified skill on 3d6) also make it so modifiers matter more in the middle rather than at the extremes: An expert is likely to be able to shrug off a few negative modifiers that will really impact someone who is merely competent, and there's little change when you suck because, well, you really suck and weren't likely to do much anyways. But I suppose that's personal preference on my part.

Question: I'm not as deeply-invested in the system, but how is the new setting? From what I understand, they are changing over to a sector that is supposed to be rather different than the Calixis Sector (Older, with very few Inquisitors). Anything interesting on that front?

[InsaneTD]

They haven't released much about it yet. The "fluff" section doesn't exsist yet. I haven't had a chance to have a look at the pre-built adventure yet.

[Justice]

They haven't released much about it yet. The "fluff" section doesn't exsist yet. I haven't had a chance to have a look at the pre-built adventure yet.

Ah, darn. Always interested in more fluff, though I do like some of their non-traditional game mechanics like Influence (Which is apparently similar to Rogue Trader's Profit Facto). The Subtlety mechanic seems to be more of a codification of what would traditionally something at the GM's discretion, but it's a framework for newer GMs to work with. Also, a humorous combat result from a recent playtest:

This isn't so much a full review as me collecting my thoughts on this new edition.

So far, the combat system is hilariously broke. I mean literally hilariously. The Hell Party was falling out their chairs laughing, bad.

Beginning of the combat, the Jenny the Adept shot a Novice level npc in the unarmored face with her shotgun.This only reduced him by one wound. Had the same shot been made against an NPC that used the Wound Tables, it would have resulted in a bruised forehead. This was not due to a poor roll, but due to the fact that mooks cannot die to a single shot of any type, including a meltagun, unless it's a Natural 10, causing Righteous Fury.

The combat went on a while longer with more logical results, but then Jenny the Adept took several shots from a heavy stubber, all in the same turn, with only some bruises to show for it, and then was stabbed in the foot by a dying mook with a knife who was laying prone on the floor. I had to re-roll this, as originally the mook hit her in the head, without leaving the prone position on the floor. Without throwing the knife. Also note that this is just a regular knife. Not a power stiletto or anything fancy. It promptly severed the adepts leg. Not because of a particularly good roll, but because the wound table result got a +20 bonus from the bruises on the adepts chest, taking the wound from being another bruise to a severed leg.

At the same time Jenny the Adept looses her leg, James the Guardsman was going at a Masterclass NPC unarmed. Using his high Agility and Strength scores, he both avoided being hit, and landed enough punches on the target through it's defense in one turn that on the next turn he only had to land a single punch, detonating the Masterclass NPCs skull with enough force that the skull shrapnel killed two nearby npcs, and the adept, who was blasted apart completely by the single piece of flying skull fragment, like she had swallowed a grenade. She wisely decided to decided to burn a fate point, avoiding that.

[White Haven]

I...think it's safe to say that the combat system needs a little work, then.

[bilateralrope]

Lets be fair here. Only one of those things can't happen in DH1: Mooks requiring two hits.

As for the rest:
- Shotgun* hit only leaving someone bruised. In DH 1 if the shotgun hit didn't deal any critical damage, the damage is only superficial.
- Target the left uninjured from a heavy stubber, followed by a deadly knife hit. Dealing wounds in DH1 only deals wounds. You don't get any nasty effects till they run out.
- Prone target stabbing someone in the head. Both games use a random chart for hit location, with no circumstances modifier.
- Heavy weapon doing nothing serious, followed by a weak weapon for a nasty finish. Easy. Get the heavy weapon to take them as far up the crit damage table as you can without permanent damage. Then get a few points from the knife to hit 10+ on the crit chart. You don't even need righteous fury.

I'm also wondering if the playtest applied the heavy stubber damage correctly. The way I understand it is that if you get hit multiple times from one attack, the wound penalty from the one hit apples to all subsequent hits. But it sounds like the playtest used the wound penalty from before any hits landed for all hits.

*It should also be mentioned that the special rule on shotguns has been changed from one that grants extra hits, to one that hits everyone in a cone. Which really reduces their effectiveness even under the DH1 damage system.

[Gunhead]

So, damage is still borked in DH 2.0 and it's borked in a similar way it was in 1.0. Yay for pages and pages of tables.

-Gunhead

[bilateralrope]

Here's hoping that FFG actually design a good GM screen this time. Meaning one that has the wound tables on it, instead of the weapon tables taking up a large chunk of the screen.