Skills:
The first thing to note is that the skill list appears to be much smaller in this edition compared to the first, but looks can be deceiving.
First edition had 48 skills, 19 of which were basic that all characters could use at half their charactersistic value for the skill if they were not skilled in that skill. The remaining 29 were advanced that had to be learned before being able to use.
Second edition has 20 skills that all characters start off at rank 1 in, which means they only have a -10 to use. Hopefully this will help a lot so that gaming sessions dont have the problem of PC's never basing skill checks, which could be an issue in first edition.
Of those 20 skills they are all broken down insto subskills that can be used against the main skill and all skills now have differant characteristics that can be checked against in differant circumstances. In total there are now 55 skills to use.
Each skill is broken down into the following information:
Characteristic to be checked
Averaget time to complete
Its use
How to use if opposed
How to use if a re-check.
The re-check is new and really cool as it tells you if you can re-check at all and lists the penalty for failing and the exact page number to go to find rules concerning that penalty.
Talents:
Instead of Talents being seperated by your Career Path that you chose in 1st edition they are broken down into Talent Trees. There are now 11 talent trees that all characters have access to. They are:
Defence
Investigation
Melee
Mental Fortitude
Mobility
Pilot
Ranged
Resilience
Social
Technology
General
So each of these talent trees has path that must be followed to gain each talent that branches out to new talents after you aquire the prerequisite talent. Some of the trees have more talents than others.
Not only the trees path restrict you though. You still must meet other prerequisistes like you had to in 1st Ed. There is still an EXP cost and charactersistic prerequisite to meet.
This system helps to round out the characters instead of pigeon holing them into one set path. Now you can finally get that Tech Adept that actually is a little tough, and doesn't just get killed in the first firefight.
Traits:
There are now traits in Dark Heresy to bring it more in line with the rest of FFG 40K rolplaying games. These are not something that you can acquire with using experience points. These are all things that are granted from either a piece of equipment like a jump pack letting you have the flying trait, or from a corruption giving you extra arms or to basic things like blind or deafness.
Armoury:
Gone is the income system seen in 1st Ed. Now you only use the requisition system which bases acquiring an item on availability and craftsmanship only and can be modified by trading an item as well.
There are only modifiers to a d100 test based on you Influence characteristic for each of these things that effect the requisition test and they are really straight forward and listed on a table. The only thing is that when trading an item to assist with the test you must trade an item that has a lower availability than the one you want... (I dont reall like this that much, but guess it is the only way to make sense) but for each degree differance in availabilty you gain a degree to your test.
Also, if you fail a requisition test for an item that has a negative modifier you lose group sublety in points equal to the tens digit of the modifier (more on this later).
The Armoury is also quite expanded compared to 1st Ed. It appears that the weapons available are roughly the same, but weapon upgrades, custom ammo, armor, force fields, tools, vehicles, and the service to find a ship has been added or increased.
Part 3 of 5
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