If we can move beyond the trolling and trawling, i'd like to put in some constructive criticism.

I believe that 'Titles & Honours' is a good concept to be working with so lets roll with that. Now while the system in place in Deathwatch was nice, it was still built into a class, and table based system. To port it truly to Black Crusade i feel we need to move away from giving existing Talents, Traits and Skills either reduced cost or earlier access (by removing requirements) but instead focus more on situational bonuses and modifiers.

For example,

Title: Skulltaker

Cost: 250xp

Requirements: Must be aligned to Khorne, must have decapitated an emey leader in melee combat.

Effects: Your legend has spread far and wide and many are the force you have broken by quite literally cutting off the head of the snake. Whenever you kill an enemy leader with a called shot to the head and spend a moment to revel in blood and gore as you retrieve the head (A half-action), you recieve a +10 bonus to all Intimidate test against allies of the fallen foe and you are treated as if you cause Fear 1 (increase your existing Fear rating by 1 if you already have one).

Now this sort of proposed scheme doesn't force non-aligned characters into an alignment, doesn't give the character a specific Talent, Trait or Skill all the time as the Fear and Intimidate bonus are situational - you aren't always going to be able to get to the enemy leader and decapitate them. It's also a fairly cheap expenditure to earn yourself a role-opportunity with the title and things needed to earn the bonus.

It should be easy enough to make some of the higher level titles and honours have an Infamy requirement as well as alignment and other requirements. Some may even require you to be unaligned.

I think this looks like a pretty cool idea although at higher levels I wouldn't be afraid to hand out some special abilites and stuff to come with the Title.

This new take (and terminology) looks good. However, I wouldn't be surprised if we see something like this when the inevitable players' book for Black Crusade comes out.

I think if you stick to Situational Modifiers (+/-10 to certain tests, etc.) you'll be better off than if you give Skills and Talents (which creates hiccups in the current allegiance/mark system).

HappyDaze said:

To be honest I don't think that we'll ever see a Player's Handbook in the same manner that, say Dark Heresy, had one. Instead I think that kind of stuff will be spread around in the deity-specific books that will be coming up for us.
 

Gurkhal said:

Possibly, but I still wouldn't count out the idea of an 'unaligned' players' expansion. TBH, I'm a little disappointed that they haven't revealed a bit more of the upcoming release schedule yet.