Dark Heresy Second Edition

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Imperial Overlord
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Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Imperial Overlord »

Dark Heresy was the first 40K rpg and it was followed by Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, and Only War. Over the years the game mechanics have been tweaked and modified as well as new features introduced to suit the groups being covered by the game. This has resulted in both refinement of the system and drift away from the original mechanics and as such Fantasy Flight Games decided to do a second edition of Dark Heresy. Here's my review.

Over View: It's an improvement over the original. If you like the idea of being part of an Inquisitor's crew (or being an Inquisitor) and confronting all the overt and covert enemies of the Imperium then this game is for you. The nitty-gritty details follow.

Art: The usual high quality in the Warhammer 40K style.

Layout and Organization: Generally good, with a table of contents and index. Everything is dealt with in well organized chapters.

Game Mechanics:
Dark Heresy runs off the standard 40K 1d100 system, which while not my favorite mechanic, is quite serviceable. It differs slightly from the one presented in Only War as there has been yet another iteration of reflection and tweaking. Importantly a problematic issue of how skills and game mechanics interact is partially relieved in Dark Heresy. The baseline difficulty for "normal" skill use is generally using the skill or ability in combat, which means that some GMs, especially novices, will default to excessively high difficulties for more routine non combat skill use as the baseline difficulty in the 40K systems is challenging. In this edition, each skill is accompanied by a small table that gives examples of using it at various difficulties which helps ameliorate this problem.

Character Creation: The game supports both point buy and random stat roll character generation. Players choose their Homeworld (Feral, Highborn, and Voidborn are examples), Background ( such as Adeptus Administratum, Imperial Guard, and Outcast), and Role (Assassin, Seeker, and Warrior to name three. They add up the bonuses and modifiers and then have 1000xp to round out the character. This includes the ability to purchase the Psyker (free for Mystics) and Untouchable elite advances allowing for such characters as unsanctioned hiveworld gunwitch (Hiveworld+Desperado+psyker elite advance), Adeptus Arbites Investigator (Arbites+Seeker), Secutors and Skitarri (Admech + Warrior), and Imperial Guard medic (IG+ Chirugen) and so on and so forth. This is obviously much more flexible than 1st edition with its rigid roles and I should note that its easy to create and customize new Homeworlds, Backgrounds, and Roles with the information at hand. Overall, character generation can be quick and easy and yes, you start with better gear than in 1st edition DH (unless you're IG in which case you stay about the same).

Gameplay: This section is vastly improved over 1st edition and very helpful for less experienced GMs. Advice on how to set up and handle social and investigation encounters is presented. Additionally, the challenge the players face of managing their characters' ability to work the machinery of Imperial power to do their bidding (Influence) versus the need to keep a low profile so their enemies don't suspect their presence and hide/bolt (Subtlety) is addressed in considerable detail. As one tends to interfere with the other, the players are when and if to change tactics to accomplish their goals.

Background:
There's a good section on the background of the Imperium and its institutions and another on the Inquisition. There's a great intro short story by Dan Abnett. Unfortunately, while several interesting locations are covered in some detail, the sample sector falls flat.

NPCs and Gear: A fairly good gear list, covering graviton guns, Chimeras, and power armour as well as personal force fields and doses of Slaught and Spook. There's a very broad NPC list, some of it of the mook and boss variety as well as a diversity of people and creatures one could encounter on the worlds of the Imperium.

If you have questions, ask them.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Brother-Captain Gaius »

I am very relieved to hear it seems to be mostly an improvement. I was extremely put off by the original plans for 2nd Edition, because I have a huge stack of original DH books (including Black Industries printings) that I wanted to see updated to the Only War standard as gracefully as possible rather than being made completely obsolete were my group to update to 2nd Edition. While that still seems to be the case, I'm glad to hear that the system is good, since a lot of what I was seeing from the original version of 2nd Edition was not so great.

How is combat? Is it mostly in line with Only War, or completely overhauled?
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

I'm glad to hear it's been made easier for novice GMs, as I'm planning on running my first campaign soon in DH, so if it is as good as you say I may as well bite the bullet and get the 2nd ed book rather than borrowing my mates first ed one.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Imperial Overlord »

Combat is very close to Only War. They experimented and then discarded radically changing the combat system in the design phase. Most of the material in your 1st edition DH books will still be relevant as the mechanics are still close, with the notable exception for the career advancement based stuff as the open ended Only War style careers make them obsolete. Gear, enemies, sector information, etcetera is still useable and the career material can be translated to Only War style specializations with a reasonable amount of effort. You should still be able to get some use out of the old source books.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

That's good to know. But my friend and I were planning on splitting the cost of 2nd edition anyway, and since I don't have 1st edition already, I might as well.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by xthetenth »

I'm kind of torn about the combat. Part of me really liked the new system for combat from a mechanical standpoint, thought it would be very neat to play with and didn't much care about losing a bunch of legacy stuff that wasn't even close to internally consistent or decently balanced. On the other hand, by Only War the combat system was pretty good and more straightforward to run than I think the beta would have been.

I like what I hear, I'll probably pick up a copy.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Imperial Overlord »

xthetenth wrote:I'm kind of torn about the combat. Part of me really liked the new system for combat from a mechanical standpoint, thought it would be very neat to play with and didn't much care about losing a bunch of legacy stuff that wasn't even close to internally consistent or decently balanced. On the other hand, by Only War the combat system was pretty good and more straightforward to run than I think the beta would have been.

I like what I hear, I'll probably pick up a copy.

The combat system was an interesting idea, but brutally fucked. It did away with wounds completely and went straight to a critical hit table. That in of itself wasn't the problem. The issue was low results had little effect, but each damaging hit increased the severity of any subsequent damaging hits by 5. The intent was to have players receive wounds of increasing severity as they were injured. In practice that meant that autofire weapons were order of magnitude more lethal than anything else because of the number of hits they could generate. A direct hit with a shotgun or melta gun, even with high damage rolls, would inflict minor injuries but several crappy hits by an autopistol that barely did any damage once armour was accounted for were extremely lethal.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by xthetenth »

Yeah, the inter-weapon balance was ridiculous, I agree there, but getting on the crit chart early was nice because it gave a visceral feeling to the damage and honestly the FFG 40k crit charts are a standout feature of the system. I think if they made a good change to even out the balance between the weapon types but still keep some of the inherent protection against getting a character wrecked in one shot, the result would have been a system that mechanically was and would feel dangerous without as much danger of one side getting wrecked if the GM didn't balance things right. It might well have been more than one good change away though now that I think about it.

For reference, I ran a game of RT that started kind of highish and got quite high end, and I delivered a good few combats that just weren't challenging in the slightest, and generally felt a bit scared to really push combats because the really high end weapons were likely to plow right through the crit chart (I generally worked from the idea that I'd want to come close to or actually land a crit if the battle was supposed to be a hard one). That might be a problem of HP pool ramp especially with the crit chart staying the same size getting outpaced by the growth of damage, though.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Imperial Overlord »

xthetenth wrote:Yeah, the inter-weapon balance was ridiculous, I agree there, but getting on the crit chart early was nice because it gave a visceral feeling to the damage and honestly the FFG 40k crit charts are a standout feature of the system. I think if they made a good change to even out the balance between the weapon types but still keep some of the inherent protection against getting a character wrecked in one shot, the result would have been a system that mechanically was and would feel dangerous without as much danger of one side getting wrecked if the GM didn't balance things right. It might well have been more than one good change away though now that I think about it.
It's a nice idea, but highly problematic in setting with inferno pistols and bolters which should wreck people in one shot. Ditto shotguns at close range against people without heavy body armour, etcetera etcetera. It would have been tricky to fix.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

Out of curiosity, how easy is it to learn the game mechanics from a GM's point of view? I've played first edition and a few other RPGs before bu never as GM.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Gunhead »

Imperial Overlord wrote:
xthetenth wrote:Yeah, the inter-weapon balance was ridiculous, I agree there, but getting on the crit chart early was nice because it gave a visceral feeling to the damage and honestly the FFG 40k crit charts are a standout feature of the system. I think if they made a good change to even out the balance between the weapon types but still keep some of the inherent protection against getting a character wrecked in one shot, the result would have been a system that mechanically was and would feel dangerous without as much danger of one side getting wrecked if the GM didn't balance things right. It might well have been more than one good change away though now that I think about it.
It's a nice idea, but highly problematic in setting with inferno pistols and bolters which should wreck people in one shot. Ditto shotguns at close range against people without heavy body armour, etcetera etcetera. It would have been tricky to fix.
Fixing it would have been easy, but it would have started from the admission the combat system was borked, tossing it and building something that isn't sucktastic. From what I've seen, all they did was cut of pieces from Only War and Black Crusade and gum them together which might make the pile of crap peppermint flavored but still not edible. But hey, I guess I'm an eternal optimist since I thought they could get something right, after five tries. Oh I'm being unfair. Never really looked into Deathwatch. Like I care, it's from the same people, probably sucked all the same.

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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Imperial Overlord »

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Out of curiosity, how easy is it to learn the game mechanics from a GM's point of view? I've played first edition and a few other RPGs before bu never as GM.

Fairly easy. It's a reasonably straightforward d100 system where you try to roll under your target number and the book does a good job of explaining how the various pieces of the system work.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

That's good to know. Thanks.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by White Haven »

Read up on it, have your players read up on it, and then scrimmage a few times to iron out the rules in a no-stakes test game. As IO said, it's fairly easy to learn.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

Good advice, thanks!

I can always include it in-game as "training sessions" before the actual game start.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by White Haven »

Honestly, I wouldn't do that if your group is totally new to the system. Just grab some totally bog-standard generic NPCs, parcel them out, and go at it. Gets people into the mechanics quickly and easily, and that'll make things a bit easier on them when they're actually designing characters afterwards.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

True. I'm not sure what experience most of the group has (in fact I'm not certain who is actually participating yet) but I'll take any advice I can get.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by xthetenth »

Scrimming a combat with NPCs and maybe a premade or something should be plenty to get the actual mechanics of the game down well enough that people can have a rough idea of what they're doing building a character, and if you're worried about GMing, a premade or something would probably be enough to get you into thinking ahead and so on.

I believe I ran my third or fourth session of 40k RP and that turned into a relatively successful two year thing, so it's not that hard to pick up in my experience.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by White Haven »

And when in doubt, kill Coffee in the first session.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by xthetenth »

Yeah, that's a good point.

Understand the ramifications of a point blank ambush on lightly armored guys with a shotgun, and if you decide to do that, have the guy with the most fate take point.
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Re: Dark Heresy Second Edition

Post by White Haven »

Or perhaps the guy with some form of actual armour worth a damn. That works too.
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