So, i've been hunting through the beta book and don't see any sort of comparison of power level to the other games?  Anybody have an idea of where characters in only war stand in relation to rogue trader, dark heresy, deathwatch or black crusade?

 Considered to be roughly equivalent to Dark Heresy starting characters, though the OW fellas will likely have better gear.

Plushy said:

Spot on.

Guardsmen start with 600 and specialists 300 xp (correct me if im wrong, ive not looked at the pdf in ages now). This puts them perfectly on a par with DH characters and massively under-par compared to RT, DW and BC.

Also their gear feeling better would be because OW is a combat heavy military game. DH is an dark, horror themed investigative game that can go sessions on end without combat sometimes. Also power creep… 

I think you guys are correct with the starting power level however I don't believe the xp scales in the same way. From what I can see OW requires roughly 2x the xp to purchase the same sort of advance that you would be able to in DH.

For example most people are paying 100xp for a sound constitution advance in DH where they would be paying 200xp in OW unless they were specialized. When I ran DH it generally worked out that people would buy something once a session or once every other session and DH recommends 200xp per 4 hour session. OW says to give your players 400xp per 4 hour session and so far I've been doing that and my players have been purchasing at the same rate of 1 advance every session or every other.

The other thing with OW war though is that because the players can buy whatever advances they want they could hold out for that advance that costs a ton and so be well behind a DH character in terms of power very quickly. It will all balance out in the end but it very much depends on exactly how your players spend their XP.

As has been said though they all can have a character with gear far and away above anything a DH character could get even by rank 4 so it tends to balance out. Heck a storm trooper even without equipment I think is heads and shoulders above any DH character you could make. The other thing is OW uses a point buy while DH characters are rolled for(unless you house rule of course) which also makes characters that can be largely above the DH power curve.

The difference being thought that in OW, alot more doors are opened to the PC. Step Aside could theoretically be purchased within the first 2k-3k XP a character gains. Lightning Attack isn't too far off. Fearless isn't too terrible either for certain regiments.

Any given skill is just a few hundred XP away.

Sure, some things may be more expensive, but its offset by pretty much having 0 barriers of entry beyond straight XP costs, being a Psyker, or having Mechanics Implants - everything else is in reach and there is no arbitrary class restrictions (e.g. the Heavy Gunner could buy Lightning Attack).

Overall, I would say OW characters are a bit more "accelerated" than a DH character, but things can end up costing more. Its just a matter that "high end" talents can (and most likely will) crop up earlier. Still, by the time a character is capping out in DH, they're probably still on par with OW counterparts.

As far as trying to run a game with OW and DH/RT/DW characters, its difficult to say exactly what troubles you may hit. Probably the worst part would be disdain among players, unhappy that the OW PCs have access to talents they're still dreaming about. There are some attempts to bring all the systems in line Plushy (hope I got the name right), has a thread floating around in general that tries to cover this; much of that looks fairly solid.

The big thing players should keep in mind between systems is the power of the organizations they represent.