Dark Heresy Second Edition

This page refers to the newest edition of Dark Heresy. For the first edition, see Dark Heresy.

Dark Heresy 2nd Edition
RPG published by Fantasy Flight Games
Rule System	d%
No. of Players	3+
Session Time	10+ minutes
Authors	Andrew Fischer
First Publication	2014
Essential Books	Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Game Master's Kit Forgotten Gods

And lo, on 0556013.M3, the gods did decree to place upon us Dark Heresy 2nd Edition.

Dark Heresy 2nd Edition is a repainting of Only War to make it palatable for hunting heretics and daemons. As such, it has ported many aspects from Only War, which makes it varying degrees of both awesome and/or fail, depending on who you ask.

They have added and statted out Graviton Guns (Pistol and Basic) for DH2nd. 1d10+3 or 6 Dam, Pen of 6 or 8? And the Graviton Trait means anything wearing armor that is shot by the weapon immediately takes the number of the armor rating as Damage? In other words, God-Emperor save us...

Already infamous for having a fucking horrendous binding. Seriously, this shit was falling apart weeks after it was released. However, FFG showed their This Guy-ism by sending out free copies of the books to those who bitched.

Character Creation

The Class system is now 3 levels deep. This can allow for some pretty ridiculous characters, like a Feral World Tech-Priest or a High-born Assassin, but if you've got good players it can be pretty neat-o, too. Since the roles are generic, if you have an idea of what kind of character you want to play, like a Tech-Priest or a Bolter-bitch, you can pretty much make it with the new rules.

Homeworld

First is the homeworld for your first aptitudes, fate points and homeworld bonus. The homeworld bonuses are a mix of old standby's from the previous edition and some new ones. For example, primitive weapons in a feral worlder's hands no longer count as primitive and are actually considered "Proven (3)". Homeworld choices are:

Feral World, Forge World, Highborn, Hive World, Shrine World, Voidborn

Background

Next, you pick your background to determine starting skills, talents, equipment, background bonus, and background aptitude. Background bonuses are mostly new stuff; for example, the Adeptus Administratum background bonus is "Master of Paperwork," which means requisition tests for anything are one level easier, with Near Unique becoming Extremely Rare, Very Rare becoming Rare, etc. Background choices are:

Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Ministorum, Imperial Guard, Outcast

Role

The last level of character creation is your "Role", which determines the last of your aptitudes along with a talent and role bonus. Most of the role bonuses are geared around added bonuses for use of fate points in game, with the two exceptions being Mystic and Desperado. Role choices are:

Assassin, Chirurgeon, Desperado, Hierophant, Mystic, Sage, Seeker, Warrior

Elite Advances

There are three elite advances in the core book. Psyker, Untouchable , and... God-Emperor help us all... Inquisitor. Yes, Inquisitor is now a class that can be achieved with specific Talents, which are fairly re-donk. For example: Jack/Master of All Trades: For the low low price of 450/600 XP or 900/1200 XP, (depending on if you have the knowledge attribute) All non-Specialist skills which are unknown to your inquisitor will jump to Known, and then all Known skills become Trained.

Differences from 1st Edition

• Character creation is very different, being a reskinning of Only War's for Inquisitorial twats. Whether this is good or bad, you decide.
• Like the majority other of the FFG 40kRPGs, there is not a codified system of money; rather, DH2nd does away with singular thrones and uses a stat called Influence that's used in a similar way to Rogue Trader's Profit Factor mechanic.
• The technical term used to describe the PC party is now "[Inquisitor Name Here]'s war band", which is pretty bad, but when compared to Dark Heresy's "The Acolytes," just take your pick.

Splat Books

• Game Master's Kit: Standard stuff, comes with a screen with some meh art and handy rules on the other, and a book containing a fairly entertaining adventure in the charnel houses of Hive Desoleum.

• Forgotten Gods: Three-part splat in which the warband tries to stop some cultists from resurrecting some ancient gods. It starts in the wastes outside of Hive Desoleum, leading onto a Rogue Trader's ship and ending on some BFE cemetery world with lots of trees. Allows using the three locales visited in the adventure to be used as new homeworlds for character creation.

Warhammer 40,000 Role-playing games made by Fantasy Flight Games
Dark Heresy - Rogue Trader - Deathwatch - Black Crusade - Only War - Dark Heresy Second Edition