[MarcoSkoll]

Well, I headed down to the club on Monday evening to do some more playtesting.

The changes I'm looking at to close combat seemed reasonable - reducing the attack penalties and reinstating a dodge bonus did make going for the counter-attack more of a gamble than it was in the last IRE release.
I'm not convinced I've hit the final version yet - boosting dodge too much may potentially make it too good at countering manoeuvre actions, but we'll see.

When it came to testing the psychic powers though, I have no gorram idea.
I did put two high level psykers in the game to try to maximise the amount of testing, but while you'd think that two witches throwing high Psy Rating powers around throughout the game would result in someone failing at least one Hazard roll, the little sods refused to bow to the law of probability.
Their success rates felt considerably above a statistical average, with the only real exception being that Maya's Psychic Shriek consistently failed to actually affect targets (And not because she was failing to cast it, but because the targets kept fluking their Wp tests, despite being at a considerable penalty because of the Psy Rating used).

One thing I feel safe about drawing conclusions on is that I need to adjust Blinding Flash to reduce its effective area, as Maya did throw a small supernova into the middle of a combat. Although a Psy Rating 4 Blinding Flash should be pretty effective, distant targets were rolling on lower numbers than felt right.

[MarcoSkoll]

Not a massive update, but I've uploaded the pictures from said playtest game with some brief captions. (The captions don't mention everything - there were quite a few more psychic powers used than explicitly detailed).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcoskoll/sets/72157684277372572

[Thinking Stone]

Well, now that my introduction post is done, time to share some of my observations!

MarcoSkoll, I downloaded your most recent version of the Inquisitor Revised Edition and had a bit of a tinker! Whilst I've not had nearly the level of experience as you or others here have, I did notice a few things as a relative novice.

The first was for the free close combat reactions. I do really like the fluidity and mobility of combat now, and the range system works very well, I think. As a fencer myself, however, I did wonder if the unlimited chains of reaction counterattacks that your rules seem to imply (to me, at least! Maybe I misread them?) should be limited.

I think the first free reaction is appropriately realistic and should be kept, but I kept thinking that even very skilled fighters are going to have to take some time and thought to restart their attack—so perhaps subsequent reactions should require the spending of an action point? So that would mean A attacks, B gets free reaction to parry and succeeds in getting a counterattack. B counterattacks and A gets free reaction to parry and succeeds in getting counter attack. A (counter)counterattacks and B may choose to react but this reaction will not be free.

Unless, I suppose, the reactions continue to be opposed rolls from the opponent's previous WS tests? (Which might naturally limit chains enough, and is justifiable).

My second set of thoughts is based on my novice Inquisitor experience! Of course, one gets to know the rules better as one goes along, but I think most would agree that the organisation and description of the rules has always made them hard to conceptualise for a new player, particularly since reactions depend a lot on what the acting character does (so you have to know what you're allowed to do and how to do it!).

Part of that could be addressed with a layout change/summary. An initial section showing the structure of an Inquisitor turn before you explain Actions could be useful, so that people know exactly what actions are supposed to be from the start. A list of 'official' action types you can use might be helpful, too (e.g. Movement, Shooting, Engagement for actions, Overwatch etc. for reactions).

Since you've already done an excellent job of cleaning up so much of the terminology, I did also think about the implied difference between Movement actions and other Actions. Maybe it would be useful to formally name two categories of actions: Continuous actions (like Movement is currently, though maybe it could be used for automatic fire, and/or any similar continuous activities) and Discrete actions (like most other actions currently are, e.g. shooting, aiming).

Either that, or you could remove the confusion of why Movement is different altogether by just saying that you work out how far you want to move and then treat each Move as an individual ('discrete') action—though this would remove some of that interesting uncertainty.

Of course, all this is just friendly observation and commentary! But this is exactly the sort of project I always thought Inquisitor could benefit from! (Apologies also for the ramble-y-ness).

Thinking Stone

[MarcoSkoll]

Unless, I suppose, the reactions continue to be opposed rolls from the opponent's previous WS tests? (Which might naturally limit chains enough, and is justifiable).

In all cases, you'll need to win your parry (not necessarily easy, as you now have to beat your opponent's roll) and by enough to earn a counter attack, so counter attacks are by no means automatic.

That said, we did find in the Dark Sphere playtests that counter-attacks were a bit too frequent. We did like some of the circumstances where it happened, where a couple of fights were brutally turned around by a defender counter-attacking right at the start of the combat (because now, their counter attack has a chance to roll well and be really difficult to defend against, unlike in the original rules, where the first attack of the turn is always easy to defend against), but we wanted it to happen a bit less.

This was a bit of an oversight in the statistics I worked on, as I'd not really considered just how much allowing counter attacks against failed attacks (which I felt was fairly vital, otherwise you have the really weird mechanic where experienced fighters leave more holes in their attack!) swung the balance between dodging and parrying back too far towards parrying. (Whereas before dodging was often the safe choice).

The rules as put out haven't yet been amended with any of the revisions I've been working on. Thus far, in the WIP v0.2.4 rules:

- I've reduced the attack penalties on weapons. In the currently released v0.2.0.3, the attack penalties averaged out at about -10, but in v0.2.4, attack penalties have been shifted to an average of about 0. Aside from the fact this should improve compatibility with existing weapon profiles, it shifts the balance back towards the attacker a bit.

- Some form of dodge bonus will be reinstated. Maybe even back to the full +20 from before*, in order that dodging is more reliable than parrying.
* Although I need to test this, as dodging will still ignore reach penalties - that's a deliberate choice. I want each option to be better in different cases in order to avoid the same stagnancy that happened in 1stEd.

I do really like the fluidity and mobility of combat now, and the range system works very well, I think.

I've said it before, but I was actually shocked by how well it worked when I started doing playtests.

None of the changes to the system felt particularly drastic when I wrote them, but from the very first playtests, it was clear that this was an entirely different beast.

so perhaps subsequent reactions should require the spending of an action point?

There's two issues here.

Firstly, this would considerably defeat the merits of parrying, as it's supposed to be an additional risk in order to get a free action (I perhaps failed on this as far as the percentages in v0.2.0.3 thought). While I can see there are uses to being able to get an attack in early, it's much less tangible than a free action.
Secondly, outside their own turn, characters don't have action points. Spending actions from a turn they haven't had yet does complicate the rules (and gets really weird if they should be stunned and therefore don't get that turn) and if I expect players to use reserved reaction points, the wording on the Engaged state has to get a lot more complex (and the whole state becomes a lot less useful).

That said, I have had a few possible thoughts about potentially providing bonuses for using actual reserved reactions rather than Engaged reactions - theoretically the free action from counter-attacks can be used for the "Wary" action, allowing a character to save reserved reactions. So a character could then choose to forego an attack in order to increase their chances at defending, so you might see fewer chains of attack/parry/counterattack.

Part of that could be addressed with a layout change/summary. An initial section showing the structure of an Inquisitor turn before you explain Actions could be useful, so that people know exactly what actions are supposed to be from the start. A list of 'official' action types you can use might be helpful, too (e.g. Movement, Shooting, Engagement for actions, Overwatch etc. for reactions).

A fair suggestion.

Ultimately, I intend to build up proper summary pages and quick reference sheets, and will do an example turn in the vein of the one you see in the original rulebook. However, I'm not pursuing these during the developmental stages, as they'd have to be redone with every rule change and could potentially lead to inconsistencies if I fail to update details.

Maybe it would be useful to formally name two categories of actions: Continuous actions (like Movement is currently, though maybe it could be used for automatic fire, and/or any similar continuous activities) and Discrete actions (like most other actions currently are, e.g. shooting, aiming).

I was going to say that would confuse things because of the existence of "Continuous" as a term in the rules already, but apparently I've already written that out. (Originally it referred to a kind of reaction state where you could react repeatedly - for example, Engaged was said to put a character in a "continuous" melee reaction.)
The entire system of various action "flags"/"categories" went through quite a lot of revisions. Things like the "defensive" and "passive" flags saved a lot of headaches. Rather than trying to describe what kinds of reactions were simultaneous or what actions couldn't be reacted to, just saying "this, this, this and this" straightened it out fast.

With this case... I'll have to think about it. I'm not sure what other cases it would really apply to very well, so I'm not sure if it really needs to be a universal category in the rules rather than just saying "movement is a special case".

Movement is handled differently in the rules because you need to have the number of actions vague to as a work around to avoid pre-measuring. (With something like full-auto, it's not like you open fire without knowing exactly how many targets you're firing at).
That's why I've had to treat it a bit different for the purposes of when reactions happen, because having to figure out where each exact move starts and ends would slow down the game. (And that's, as far as possible, something I'm trying to avoid).

[MarcoSkoll]

It's taken me a while to think around how I wanted to handle stats of 100+ in the margins of success of IRE, where the number on the dice represents a roll's margin of success.

Two initial thoughts were:
- Don't bother. Just say that they're getting the benefit of being able to take penalties and still pass by massive margins of success.
However, it does feel weird that a Space Marine can be easily beaten on a strength test.

- Add the amount the characteristic exceeded 100 added back onto the margin of success.
This makes the rules more like they used to be, where rolling a 90 with a character with S 120 still meant a pass by 30.
However, it also means putting more maths back in, and it also keeps high stats nastily powerful in a system where succeeding by large margins has become more important.

After some thinking, I'm currently looking at this idea:

Margin of success with characteristics over 100
In the event that a character has a stat that exceeds 100, either naturally or due to modifiers, then if the roll was successful (such as not automatically failing by rolling 96-00, see the Automatic Success and Automatic Failure paragraph below), then the character may elect to use the stat's remainder over 100 as their margin of success, up to a maximum of 50 points/5 degrees of success

For example, Battle Brother Artemis has Strength 145 in his power armour. When required to take a strength test,  he rolls a 32 - a respectable margin of success, but as the roll was passed, he can instead elect to succeed by 45 (the amount his strength exceeds 100). As this beats the margin of success he would otherwise have had, he elects to pass by 45 instead.

If Nug, an Ogryn with Strength 182 were to roll the same pass of 32, although his strength exceeds 100 by 82 points, he would be limited to passing by 50 points. While his massive strength would allow him to pass by at least 50 points even if he were taking a moderate penalty, he will still have to get at least somewhat lucky with his dice to pass really well!

This seems a reasonable compromise - it means the characters will get to pass by least a reasonable margin, but not by a massive margin.
I felt it still had to be capped to stop high stats being entirely unbeatable, but the number of times that characters will exceed a stat of 150 is going to be fairly thin on the ground (and they will still be getting the benefits of being able to soak a few penalties and get a decent characteristic bonus).

~~~~~

Another idea I'm potentially looking at is adjusting the way that characters can delay their actions.

As in IRE, any reactions characters are holding are automatically lost at the start of their next turn, it's possible that players will want to end up endlessly delaying to try and keep their reactions.

I'm not certain how big a problem this could prove to be, but I've got a few ideas of different severity as possible answers (should it prove necessary to reign it in at an event).

- Delaying automatically costs the character a stored reaction.
There's less point in delaying to save reactions if you'll lose them. This could be reasonable, as it'll discourage characters from delaying to hoard their reactions.

- Delaying means that a character must act at the Speed value they delay to.
If a Speed 6 character wants to go after a Speed 4 character, they will have to be Speed 4 this turn.
This is a potentially viable penalty, but it is harder to keep track of (GMs tend not to count down Speed categories like is stated in the original rules, and knowing the way it's actually played, it could get complex with the oddities of some character's speed values, injury, etc), and it feels a more drastic change from the original rules (potentially heavily penalising the way some characters are played).

- Delaying automatically costs the character 1 speed for the turn.
If two characters get into an endless cycle of trying to delay after each other, one of them will eventually have to chicken out.
However, this has similar problems to the above.

- Delaying automatically forces a character to go right to the end of the turn.
No more jumping in at any point (although it's possible that a skill, a la one of the proposed fixes for Lighting Reflexes, could allow characters to go whenever).

I think this is my favourite, as it's simple, makes it easier for the GM to keep track of ("Delayed characters" can become a standard end of turn thing), and although characters aren't hugely penalised, it may still be enough of a drawback at times to make players to think a bit about whether delaying is a good idea. (Currently, there are no real drawbacks to delaying, and I often watch games where it feels like players are, intentionally or otherwise, exploiting this by queueing up several characters for co-ordinated carnage where opponents get little chance to intervene).

It would also make it harder for players to use meta knowledge to try and wear down an opponent's reactions. ("He's got two reactions, but I'd rather he used those to try and evade Jaxon's lasgun than Covenant's Psycannon, so I'll have Covenant wait...")
Although I don't anticipate a lot of players doing that kind of thing, I certainly wouldn't complain if the exploit was less viable.

Thoughts?

[MarcoSkoll]

I headed down to the club again last night to run another playtest (reusing "The Reactor" from the London GT as the scenario), which had some beautifully dramatic moments, including Kronen dropping two characters in their own turns, Evelyn managing to pull off some very fluky reactions, and Lyra missing wildly with a graviton grenade (it clattered into a heap of oil drums and launched them almost back at the originally intended target...)

I didn't have a Space Marine on hand to test the rules for 100+ stats, but I did test out the rules for delaying characters automatically waiting to the end of the turn, which I was quite happy with. It certainly simplified the process of keeping track of those characters, and meant that characters had to consider delaying a little more carefully rather than just doing it with impunity.

There were a few issues that sort of showed up:

~~~~~

- Characters being attacked from behind
IRE states that characters must be aware of an action to react to it (in order to stop characters doing things like evading shots from behind), and that after an action has entered the execution stage (i.e. dice are being rolled) it's too late to declare a reaction.

However, a case came up where a character had to choose between either having to fail their pinning test (and thus be able to turn around as they dive) or stand there like a lemon while being shot repeatedly from behind unable to spend any reactions they have.

There's two possible fixes that come to mind:
- Allow a character to turn towards their attacker (or at least attempt to) if they pass their Pinning test.
- Change it so that passing the pinning test also allows a character to attempt to dive to cover, rather than having to choose to fail to do so. (This is a fairly significant difference, because Pinned characters are only allowed to use Defensive reactions). However, I don't particularly like this, as I suspect this option would become overly popular - given how often people want to take cover anyway, an option that lets you not be Pinned would be a no-brainer.

~~~~~

- Semi auto fire
IRE has deliberately made rapid fire more effective against close-in targets (no more cases of a Storm Bolter being unable to hit a barn from the inside) and more challenging against distant ones.

However, seeing it more on the table makes it clearer that it has been affected by more than just long range, but all difficult cases. Before, it was possible to wildly fire at a weaving target while you ran across the street and possibly hope for one of those shots to get a natural 5, but that's less the case now.

The full-auto implementation sort of avoids this by disregarding most penalties, but semi-auto can become very inaccurate against difficult targets, and it doesn't feel as dramatic or realistic to be firing one shot at a time when you're hoping for a lucky hit.

As far as solutions, I could look at adopting some of the alternative semi-auto solutions I proposed - the current version of semi-auto in IRE is something that is partly as it is so that it can help test the mechanic for full auto weapons (which are somewhat rarer)., rather than because I'm necessarily expecting it to be a final solution.

The simplest of the alternatives I looked into would be handling it as in the current LRB, but with a sliding semi-auto penalty of -5 per 10 yards (or part) range. (Making short range accurate, but long range much less predictable).
This does however mean that bursts of multiple shots would again call for every shot to be rolled, rather than the somewhat quicker "exploding dice" roll for the entire burst IRE currently offers.

The other possibility is to keep IRE's current semi-auto fire, but cap the initial roll at a minimum of 5x the rate of fire to emulate the auto-hit band of before. For example, Semi(4) would always have at least an initial 20% chance of a hit, broadly the same as the minimum ~18.55% given by the chances of rolling at least one 01-05 across four D100 rolls.
This would probably be quicker in play and the percentages seem fairly fair, although it feels a little mechanically odd to have rolls with what are essentially increased auto-success chances.

Thoughts?

[MarcoSkoll]

I'm looking at expanding the Psychic Powers section, with general rules for Daemonic Possession (which can potentially occur as a Perils of the Warp result, or through misuse of a daemonic weapon*), Sorcery and Psychic Nulls.

*Possibly, the current IRE rules for daemonic weapons might have to be rebalanced slightly to make possession less likely, as I've decided to make Possession a bit nastier than it is in the LRB, with a penalty to regaining control. (Although, as characters will generally lose less Wp in IRE, it may balance out?)

It's possible that Sorcery and Psychic Nulls will end up moved to a supplement rather than being in the core rules, but they do need to be thought out one way or another, as the original Pariah rules won't be very compatible with the IRE psychic rules.

I've opted, at least in this draft, to make Psychic Nulls affect Psy Rating, rather than being a penalty to the psychic test like they are in 1st edition. I felt this was probably more appropriate, and it also helps make them feel different to Nullification - Nullification is beaten by skill, Nulls are beaten by raw power.

Daemonic Possession
On badly fumbling a psychic test, a psyker may find themselves possessed by a daemon, although daemonic possession may also occur in other cases, such as by a character wielding a daemon sword.

While a character is possessed, control is passed over to the GM (or another player, if appropriate). The character should act in a self-sacrificing, destructive and chaotic fashion - lashing out at allies, deliberately provoking conflict, carrying out casual murder - but cannot deliberately directly cause themselves harm (they cannot choose to jump off a building or shoot themselves in the head, for example).

They will also gain a random Daemonic trait, and the Possessed trait while they are possessed.

They will remain possessed until they pass a Willpower test at -30 in the Recovery Phase.

Sorcery
Not all characters who can manipulate the warp do so through innate psychic talent - some instead must rely on the deeply blasphemous art of Sorcery, shaping aetheric energies through dark ritual and arcane practices.

Characters can have a Sorcery Rating, allowing them to use Sorcerous Powers.

Sorcery uses the same basic framework as Psychic powers, but when using Sorcery Rating:
- Sorcerers test against their Sagacity rather than Willpower
- When calculating the Hazard for using a power, a character counts twice the Sorcery Rating being used.
- Sorcery requires the character to be able to gesture and incant the ritual, so the character must have at least one free hand and be able to speak. (Although some very talented Sorcerers may be able to invoke their powers through sheer will, but more on that in later versions of the rules!)

Although both rare and exceptionally dangerous, a character is permitted to be both a Sorcerer and a Psyker. In this case, they can combine their Psy Ratings and Sorcery Ratings if they wish.
They may test against either Willpower or Sagacity, although the Hazard for the power is still doubled.

Psychic Nulls [Experimental]
An exceptionally rare mutation within humanity, psychic nulls (also known as blanks, untouchables or pariahs) are a formidable weapon against the energies of the warp. Valued and reviled in equal measure for their soulless natures, untouchables can absorb and nullify the energies of the warp.

These characters have a Null Rating, expressed as a dice roll.
A weak psychic null might only be Null Rating 1D3, a formidable blank would likely have a rating of 2D3 or 3D3, but a Culexus Assassin would have an obnoxiously high Null Rating such as 3D6.

If any psychic power (friend or foe) is used or targeted near a psychic null, then roll the dice that relate to the Null's Rating, subtracting the full number of yards between the null and the power's user or target (whichever is closest). Should this result in a negative value, the Null is treated as having rolled zero.
For example, if a null has a Rating of 2D3, and the power is targeted three yards from them, they should roll 2D3-3.

This value is immediately applied as a negative modifier to the Power's Effective Psy Rating, reducing its effect. As detailed in the Psy Rating section, should a power's Effective Psy Rating fall to zero or less, the power is entirely negated.

Similarly, if the target of, or a psyker maintaining, Persistent powers is near a Null (or Nulls) in the Recovery Phase, roll again - should this equal or beat the Psyker's Psy Rating, then all associated Persistent powers are immediately nullified.

More powerful Psychic Nulls will also generally cause an intense distrust in any nearby allies - the more extreme their nature, the more abhorrent they are to those around them. This will be addressed in a future update.

~~~~~

Outside of psychic powers, I've also opted to modify IRE's system shock rules to keep them streamlined:

Level 1 System Shock (10 damage from one hit) is now a +20 Toughness test
Level 2 System Shock (15 damage) is a straight Toughness test
Level 3 System Shock (20 damage) is a -20 Toughness test

(Previously in IRE, a character needed 1, 2 or 3 tests for each of these, with a +20 toughness bonus to the test if they started below their System Shock Value).

I'm reasonably happy with this, as although flattening System Shock to 10 damage means that high toughness characters will often now have to take system shock tests (as opposed to almost never against common weapons), the toughness bonus for the first level of System Shock means that they still remain fairly resilient, while also keeping lower toughness characters from repeatedly fainting. (Certainly, in the past, I've had to recommend against really low toughness characters, because they've got such a hopelessly huge chance of fainting that they're not fun to play or play against).

I chose to remove the bonus for being below the System Shock Value - it was an unnecessary complication, mostly put in there to keep SSV relevant in IRE. (The value is now not used in IRE, but I've elected to keep it mentioned in the Characteristics section to help players keep their characters back compatible with the LRB).

[MarcoSkoll]

So... power weapons.

These represent a common issue in the game, although not just for the reason people initially assume. Although the high damage stat is obviously a balance concern, the fact they have a 75% chance of destroying an opponent's weapon in a parry actually makes it very difficult for any opponent whose weapon isn't immune to face off against them - and forces interminably dull endless dodging.

With IRE deliberately trying to push to make close combats so they're not an endless dodge-fest, I think this needs to be adjusted. While I'd definitely like to keep it a concern, in order that characters have to fight against different weapons differently, the fraction needs to come down a lot.

Currently, the easiest option in mind would be to make it so it only applies on a Critical Attack or Parry - i.e. one where the hit roll ends in a 1, making for effectively a 10% chance (assuming both the hit and parry are successful, anyway).
This is simple, but I'm not sure if it's a big enough risk. 10% risk is the kind of thing where I suspect players will largely assume it's not going to happen, meaning its effect on games will only happen when it actually destroys weapons, rather than because players are worried about it happening. (At least to start with. Maybe players will get more cautious as they realise that a 10% risk over several attacks adds up).

Although it will make things a little more complex (having a weapon where the critical effects have different probabilities in different cases) I'm wondering if this should instead be made a Critical (2) effect, pushing it up to a 20% chance.
For very rough probabilities, this will probably mean that each turn of close combat (assuming two broadly competent characters with a typical speed) has roughly an evens chance of destroying a weapon.

Obviously, a 10% chance would instead put the chance as roughly evens for every two turns of combat.

Which of these feels better - or do people think that the chance should be kept pretty dang high, meaning that losing your weapon is actually almost the primary threat of fighting against a power weapon wielder?

Anyway, again - looking to hear from you (although it does seem that this thread has largely just turned into me talking to myself).

[Cortez]

The weapon destruction thing is definitely one of the biggest issues when facing a power weapon wielder. Your proposal seems ok, although I'd probably go for ~20% chance and not as low as 10%.

[MarcoSkoll]

Yeah, something in the region of 20% currently feels about right. High enough for a power weapon wielder to try parrying, hoping it's going to happen, but low enough for their opponent to try parrying, hoping it's not going to happen.

I'm currently looking at this as the wording for the rules:

If a power weapon makes a Critical(2) roll when either successfully parrying or successfully being parried, then the opponent's weapon is cut in half, and can now only be used as an improvised weapon. If the weapon was already only an improvised weapon, it is outright destroyed. (Should an opponent be electing to use the haft or butt of a weapon as an improvised weapon, it is not considered to be only an improvised weapon the first time it is cut in half).

Note that the parry must win any opposed roll to count as successfully parrying, and this effect does not apply if the attack is dodged instead of parried.

Power, Shock, Daemon and Force weapons are immune to being destroyed in this manner.

As you'll note, I've elected to make it that it cuts the weapon in half rather than outright destroying it first time. This is still a significant penalty, but means a character isn't completely helpless if their only weapon gets bisected.
(And there are certainly a lot of cases in film where weapons get cut in half and the hero still stabs the baddie with what's left of it).

As far as the section in brackets up there, I should add the context that IRE's armoury allows any close combat weapon to be used as an improvised weapon if the character desires - this is largely because of the change to the reach mechanics (and to carry out the goal of adding more options to close combats!) so that a character can, for example, try to clobber someone over the head with the hilt of their sword if they've not got enough room to swing it properly.
As I didn't want to discourage use of this rule, I've deliberately noted that a weapon used in this way won't be outright destroyed by the first hit by a power weapon.

[MarcoSkoll]

Inquisitor Revised Edition V0.3.0 Alpha release: http://www.mediafire.com/file/6sd56yqo6q0uemf/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-0+Alpha.pdf

Please report any errors or complete nonsense to me so that it can be tidied up into a full fledged release.

Major revisions to consider since the last version (V 0.2.0.3):

Actions:
- At least for this version, a character choosing to delay their actions now automatically sends them to the end of the turn order (unless they have the new "Swift" ability). While I want to still give characters the option to wait, I've felt at times that players are (either intentionally or unintentionally) managing to stack their characters up for co-ordinated carnage that leaves little option to respond.

Because of reserving reactions, when you go in an IRE turn can be even more important than in the LRB, so I don't want players deciding that with absolute impunity.

Reactions:
- The circumstances for leaving the Engaged state have been reworded slightly to make the state slightly less exploitable.

Movement:
- Minor tweaks. Sneaking is less hazardous, and falling now only stuns the character for one turn (although they can still be stunned for longer by being badly injured by the fall)

Shooting:
- An alternative version of Semi-auto (closer to the original) has been put in for people to try.
- I've added a set of rules for trying to shoot at completely obscured targets (sort of "I know there's someone behind that flimsy barrel" circumstances).

Close combat:
- The attack penalty of most weapons has been reduced in order to put the attackers slightly more on the upper hand.
- Parrying now has to beat the attack's margin of success by at least 20 points to result in a counter attack. Flattening the margin makes it easier to keep track of, and making it a bit higher than it was on average previously should slightly reduce the number of counter attacks (which was considerably higher in IRE than the LRB, given that counter-attacks are allowed against missed attacks).
It's possible I may re-revise the exact margin in future.
- Dodging again gets a +20 bonus, but only against attack type actions. (To stop it being constantly used against opponents trying to manoeuvre).

Psychic Powers:
- Failing the Perils of the Warp test if a power is fumbled now cancels the power, to compensate somewhat for the number of powers that now don't automatically fail because of a Risky Action.
- The Perils of the Warp test now uses the same modifiers as the original psychic test (making using complete long shot powers a bit more risky).
- Maintaining Persistent Powers is now Hazardous (although only one level of Hazardous), and hence has a slight possibility of causing psychic phenomena or Perils of the Warp.
- The Nullification rules have been extended to allow Nullification of existing Persistent Powers.
- The chance of a non-psyker resisting a Psychic powers is now slightly higher so that it's not a complete shot in the dark for characters to try it.
- Some rules for Daemonic Possession, Sorcerers, and Psychic Nulls.

Injury & Damage:
- Levels of System Shock have been simplified to modifiers on a single test, rather than multiple tests. All use of the original System Shock Value has been removed.

Communication & Psychology:
- Characters are now limited to one action of considering a persuading character's offer per turn, so that persuading a character means something more than them just standing around contemplatively and not actually doing what they were persuaded to.

Abilities:
- Too much to address. I believe that almost all original rulebook abilities (although I realise I've left out at least Spit Acid) have been brought into the IRE rules, as well as some other common and related abilities.

Armoury:
- Changes to Close Combat weapon stats, as well as rules for Chain, Shock, Power and (some of) Daemon Weapons.
- Armour section. Mostly as in the LRB, other than adding in a note about Power Armoured characters being larger targets, slightly reducing the awareness penalties for helmets, and updating the shield rules for the LRB.

[Cortez]

Psychic Powers:
- Failing the Perils of the Warp test if a power is fumbled now cancels the power, to compensate somewhat for the number of powers that now don't automatically fail because of a Risky Action.
- The Perils of the Warp test now uses the same modifiers as the original psychic test (making using complete long shot powers a bit more risky).
- Maintaining Persistent Powers is now Hazardous (although only one level of Hazardous), and hence has a slight possibility of causing psychic phenomena or Perils of the Warp.
- The Nullification rules have been extended to allow Nullification of existing Persistent Powers.
- The chance of a non-psyker resisting a Psychic powers is now slightly higher so that it's not a complete shot in the dark for characters to try it.
- Some rules for Daemonic Possession, Sorcerers, and Psychic Nulls.

I agree failing the perils of the warp test should cancel the power. Makes things a bit riskier. I really don't like the loss of 3D10 willpower though especially as you're planning to use the same difficulty modifiers as for the psychic test. That puts us back to the situation where one failed test means no more psychic powers for that game, thus discouraging purely psychic characters.

Making long shot or high difficulty powers more risky could also have a negative effect on the game especially for ranged powers which in the original rulebook quickly become unusable. One thing I liked about IRE was it allowed for the 'Hail Mary' power without having a ridiculous risk of your psycher being turned into a vegetable.

Not a fan of persistent powers being hazardous. It might only be a low chance but it will penalise any pure psychers who are heavily reliant on psychic defences to stay alive (such as the old Isabella, before she was warped in the recent campaign).

Nullifying a persistant power is a good idea, although I think it should need line of sight.

Not sure about resist for non psychers. Most of the powers that target people have some sort of resist built into the power. Will this be as well as that or a universal rule instead of power specific ones?

For demonic possession Wp -30 is too high for the recovery test. Even very powerful pschers (80wp or higher) will have only slightly better than 50% chance of escaping possession and probably worse especially considering the -3D10 wp you're proposing for failing the perils test. I'm assuming this also covers possession by other means than just the perils table (Daemon swords etc.)

Sorcery rules look good.

Psychic nulls look interesting. Not completely effective but pretty nasty.

[MarcoSkoll]

I agree failing the perils of the warp test should cancel the power. Makes things a bit riskier. I really don't like the loss of 3D10 willpower though especially as you're planning to use the same difficulty modifiers as for the psychic test. That puts us back to the situation where one failed test means no more psychic powers for that game, thus discouraging purely psychic characters.

The thing to consider about this is that this is the only way in IRE that characters are commonly likely to lose Willpower, characters can recover Willpower, and generally Perils are massively less likely than in the LRB.

A character has to be doing things like throwing around Psy Rating 5 powers at around a ~30% chance before they're in the same ballpark for a chance to trigger Perils of the Warp as fail a risky action.
And this is still assuming that the Psyker doesn't have the new "Favoured by the Warp" trait, which is intended to help protect characters that really have very little in their arsenal but Psychic powers (such as my own Maya Avens, who other than having about thirty psychic powers to choose from has a compact laspistol and BS 47).

In this case (assuming no Favoured trait), the expected Willpower loss for attempting a Psy Rating 5 power at 30% chance is 5.8 Wp. (Averaging all possible outcomes, both successful and failed).
Trying it under the LRB, (for which we have to assume a Speed 4 character, because Risky chances vary with speed) and that expected loss is 11.4 More or less double, which comes from possibilities like a ~7% chance of passing the risky action, but then failing the test by 60 points or more and thus losing 6D10 Willpower.

As Perils is now the only one common source of Wp loss, I thought I had to turn it up a bit, because to be honest, even rolling badly on 2D10 Wp loss isn't that disastrous to many psykers.

Not a fan of persistent powers being hazardous. It might only be a low chance but it will penalise any pure psychers who are heavily reliant on psychic defences to stay alive (such as the old Isabella, before she was warped in the recent campaign).

I'm not absolutely certain about it myself (so perhaps it should be in orange text), but IRE is still an work-in-progress project being written primarily by a single person - the only large playtesting team I have is the community. Otherwise it's just me with spreadsheets, and occasionally playing against myself.

While the theory and spreadsheets are often effective, they don't give an exhaustive sense of how something feels on the table - never more so than with IRE's close combat rules, where somehow I ended up being surprised when the rules did exactly what I'd designed them to.

This means that some of the rules that make it into the release versions are experimental - things that might work. If they don't, then the hope/expectation is that players will give feedback and then house rule them until the next version.

The thing is, it does feel "realistic" that maintaining a power while under the stress of a combat situation has some risk (beyond simply failing to maintain said power), and now that borrowing the Psychic Phenomena system from Dark Heresy offers a mid ground between "Nothing" and "Your brain explodes"
If it proves too problematic, it might be tweaked - possibly into a "Mini-hazard", possibly by making it so that it's automatically Phenomena rather than Perils, or whatever - or removed, but one of the problems with IRE so far has been that psychic powers can become quite dominant.

Nullifying a persistant power is a good idea, although I think it should need line of sight.

Nullification has a 5 yard range and characters will still need to be aware of their target, so I don't imagine that's a major issue.

Not sure about resist for non psychers. Most of the powers that target people have some sort of resist built into the power. Will this be as well as that or a universal rule instead of power specific ones?

This is a universal rule (and actually existed in the last version of IRE). The issue is that without something, psychic powers become largely exempt from the Reaction system, exacerbating the fact they're already fairly formidable in IRE.

I may need to fine tune the balance (it occurs that "half willpower" may be better than -20, so that high Wp characters don't have a really easy time of it, but it's also not impossible for low Wp characters to resist).

Short of completely redressing the balance of psychic power difficulties in IRE (and therefore causing back compatibility issues with the original rules) or slapping a broad -20 penalty across all psychic powers, it's proving quite a challenge to have hit the mid-ground where psykers aren't penalised for even thinking about using their powers but where they aren't completely overpowered gods.

For demonic possession Wp -30 is too high for the recovery test.

Possssssibly, but the problem for me is that almost all of the rare few times I've seen daemonic possession occur in a game it usually goes...

1) Daemon possesses character.
2) Daemon gets one or two actions of moving into position to try to do some damage
3) Daemon gets expelled at the start of the next turn
4) Character drops the daemon weapon.

... which isn't exactly thrilling.

Maybe things will be a bit different with IRE making possession both a bit more likely and less predictable (between Perils and the adjusted daemon weapons, it's now a case that it can happen at any time rather than just when the character already has reduced Wp, so avoiding it isn't just a case of dropping a daemon weapon), but I would like to see it as a bit more of a threat, where other characters actually have time to worry about it before it's over.

Possibly it should be -20 rather than -30, but I do think the roll should be somewhat penalised so that it's not always completely transient.

Psychic nulls look interesting. Not completely effective but pretty nasty.

It's experimental right now, but they did need a large overhaul to bring them into line with the updated psychic rules having split psychic prowess into both Psy Rating and Willpower.

[MarcoSkoll]

Evening, Inquisitors.

Following up from the release of the V0.3 release of the Inquisitor Revised Edition a few weeks ago, and with the Guardian playtest event at WHW only a little over a week away, a few details have been adjusted to create V0.3.1.
These changes are relatively minor, an adjustment of a few modifiers in the psychic rules, and no longer vetoing conversations with hostile characters (you can try - doesn't mean they'll necessarily want to talk though!)

This release includes the normal colour coded edition, as well as a more printer and e-reader friendly edition that just uses black (although it does still include the cover art), and an updated crib sheet (which summarises most of the changes from the official LRB to help veteran players adopt the new rules).

Colour coded Edition:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/sc3d624bdoz231u/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-1+%28Colour+Coded%29.pdf

Codes:
- Red: changed from last IRE release (in this case, since V0.3).
- Green: Experimental/WIP
- Orange: Both the above
- Black: None of the above, but IRE differs from official LRB
- Grey: Essentially the same as LRB.

Printer Friendly Edition:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/4o8wtodtwde2fks/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-1+%28Printer+Friendly%29.pdf

Crib Sheet:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cqb8lqdpp8faedz/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+Crib+Sheet+V-0-3-1.pdf