WH40K Coversion Rules to Black Crusade

The group recently converted our WH40K Dark Heresy characters to use the newer, cleaner rules of Black Crusade.  The following is the conversion rules we used, as well as some of the rule changes that would impact what our characters had brought with them and how they operated.  Let me know if you and yours have done something similar or if you have any questions about what is below.

General

• There are no more ‘simple successes/failures’ if you succeed or fail by less than 10, that is one degree of success, and every full 10 is another degree of success.
• Good quality Armor does not give 1 AP to the first hit of the round anymore. Now it gives a +5 to Charm or Intimidate checks, depending on the look, armor showing off your trophies would give the bonus to Intimidate, while well kept up gleaming plate would grant it to Charm.

Combat

• Standard attacks now have a +10% to them as default
• Aiming helps non-single shots / melee attacks
• Semi Auto has no modifier anymore but is a half action
• Full Auto has a -10% but is a half action
• Fatigue only affects Weapon and Ballistic Skill tests, not all rolls (-10% as per usual)
• Lightning and Swift Attacks have changed to mirror the Full and Semi Auto Attacks, see Talent section below

Skills

Notes

• Untrained skills that can be used untrained now have a -20 untrained penalty, no half characteristic

New Skills

New skill = Old skills that are replaced

• Acrobatics = Acrobatics and Contortionist
• Athletics = Climb and Swim
• Awareness = Awareness, Lip Reading and Search
• Charm = Charm, Blather and Performer
• Commerce = Barter, Commerce and Evaluate
• Deceive = Deceive and Disguise
• Logic = Logic, Gambling and Tactics
• Linguistics (Certain Language) = Ciphers, Literacy, Secret Tongue and Speak Language
• Medicae = Chem-Use and Medicae
• Operate (Type of Vehicle) = Drive and Pilot
• Parry = New Skill, if you have a WS of 50 or your class has ‘cheap’ WS increases you get it
• Stealth = Concealment, Silent Move and Shadowing
• Survival = Survival, Tracking, and Wrangling
• Tech-Use = Demolitions and Tech-Use
• Toughness is now used for Carouse

Conversion

• For individual skills that you have that are now combined (Demolitions and Tech-Use, for example), set the new replacement skill to the highest level you have of the old skills.
• New skills go up to +30%, if you have the Talented (Skill) talent, increase that skill to one level up from what you have from the first step

Ascension Mastered Skills

For the Mastered Skills one of three things will happen; the mastered skill will work as it did, the mastered skill will not have an array of skills it effects (the combining of the skills above already did that part of the mastery), but it will bump your rating to +20% as per usual, or the mastered skill will become obsolete, as it combined skills that are combined in other ways now.

• Athletic Mastery – Masters skills Athletics and Acrobatics
• Commerce Mastery – Only effects the Commerce skill now
• Common Lore Mastery – No change
• Cryptological Mastery – Obsolete (see Linguistic Mastery)
• Decadent Mastery – Obsolete (see Scholastic Mastery for the Gamble part, and Charismatic Mastery for the Performance part)
• Charismatic Mastery – No change, includes some Decadent Mastery
• Driving Mastery – Gives +20% to all ground based Operate skills
• Fieldcraft Mastery – Combines Navigation (Surface) and the new Survival Skill
• Forbidden Lore Mastery – No change
• Investigation Mastery – No change
• Linguistic Mastery – Loses the Lip Reading Section (see Observation Mastery) and now includes the Cryptological Mastery
• Observation Mastery – Only effects Awareness and Scrutiny now, other skills already included through Awareness, also takes Lip Reading from Linguistic Mastery
• Piloting Mastery – Gives +20% to all non-ground based Operate skills
• Scholastic Mastery – No change
• Shadow Craft Mastery – Disguise already included in Deceive, otherwise no change
• Stealth Mastery – All old skills now Stealth, gives +20 to Stealth
• Tech Lore Mastery – Now effects Tech-Use and Medicae, as other skills are rolled into those
• Warp Lore Mastery – No change

Talents

• Crushing Blow – Add half your Weapon Skill Bonus to melee damage instead of +2
• Lightning Strike – Weapon Skill check -10%, one hit per Degree of Success up to a max of the attacker’s Weapon Skill Bonus
• Mighty Shot – Add half your Ballistic Skill Bonus to ranged damage instead of +2
• Swift Attack – Weapon skill check, one hit for the first Degree of Success, then another for every two additional Degrees of Success up to a max of the attacker’s Weapon Skill bonus
• Weapon Training is now based on Weapon Type, not Class, so you know how to use all Las Weapons or none. Basically if you have two styles of a type (pistol and basic, let's say), then you would have that weapon type trained.  If you only have one type, then either you have that weapon fully trained (if you are a class that has high weapon aptitude, like a guardsmen,) or you keep just that specific weapon and type until you get another type.  If you are in Ascension and have Pistol Expertise, then that will stay the way it is.

Traits

• Unnatural Characteristic is now additive, not multiplicative. When you succeed with am Unnatural Rating in the Characteristic you add a number of additional Degrees of Success equal to half your rating. A rating of 3-5 is equivalent to the old x2. Unnatural Speed is gone, as Unnatural Agility now does increase movement ratings
• Daemonic will also have a Number Rating that adds to the Toughness bonus and stacks with Unnatural Toughness. A rating of 3-5 is the same to how it was in Dark Heresy
• Brutal Charge will have a number rating that is the amount of bonus damage made on the same round as the charge instead of a flat +3
• Multiple Limbs will have a number rating that adjusts the modifier instead of a flat amount from Multiple Arms
• Quadruped no longer multiplies movement rates, but rather adds a +2 for every extra pair of legs
• Toxic deals damage to anyone who successfully attacks the creature with Toxic, also has a number rating which is the penalty to the Toughness test equal to -10% times the rating

Weapon Qualities

• Concussive (X) – Rating times 10 is the penalty to the Toughness check, old weapons are a (1) Rating
• Felling (X) – Reduces the Unnatural Toughness of the target by X, old weapons with Felling (1) should be a rating of 3-5 to match the changed Unnatural Characteristic Talent
• Flame, Spray – Old Flame quality is now these two qualities. Something that has a chance to set someone alight is Flame, where something that you don’t test Ballistics has Spray, old Flame weapons have both
• Primitive – No longer a weapon type, now has a number rating with is the max damage on a rolled d10
• Reliable – Now jams on a natural 00 roll
• Scatter – At point blank range adds +10% to hit and +3 damage, at short range adds +10% to hit, and at long range or above takes away 3 damage to a min of 0
• Shocking – Character is stunned for number of rounds equal to Degrees of Failure on the Toughness test, not half the damage taken
• Snare (X) – Now has a number rating, Agility test is at a penalty of X time 10% to not be entangled, old weapons are Snare (1)
• Toxic (X) – Same as the Toxic Trait above, old weapons are Toxic (1)
• Twin-Linked – Double the weapon’s RoF, wielder can choose to either get a +10% to hit, or score an additional hit if they get at least one successful hit
• Unbalanced, Unwieldy – These weapons can no longer be used for Lightning Attacks

Psychic Powers

I am not going to go each of the powers, as there are just too many, but here are the main conversion points:

• Starting at an easy (+30) Willpower Test, each range of 5 in the Threshold (TH) increase the difficulty of the Focus Power Test (a Willpower Test).
• So a power with a TH of 7 would be a Willpower Test at+20, while a TH of 27 would be a Willpower Test at -20
• Anything that modifies the TH now changes the Focus Power Test
• Power Well, which used to add to the dice rolled, now decreases the difficulty by one level (Power Well 1 would make a -10 test go to 0, and Power Well 2 would have a -10 test go to +10)
• Mastery of a discipline decreased the TH by 5 in Dark Heresy, so now that decreases the difficulty by one level in Black Crusade rules
• All psychic powers have the Concentration subtype.  Any that work on an unwilling target also have the Attack subtype
• Range is now a function of the Psy Rating level the power is activated at.  What we did was take the static range in the Dark Heresy series, and divide it by two.  This is the range factor for the converted power, so something that had a range of 20m in Dark Heresy is now 10 x PR in meters.  This was kind of a judgement call, doing it this way made some similar powers between the systems pretty close range-wise, but some powers were closer to the old Dark Heresy value divided by three.  My group went with dividing them all by two, though, since it made the math a bit easier, and it makes the PC a bit more capable, so why not
• Powers that were sustained in Dark Heresy are still sustainable in Black Crusade.  Most are Free to sustain, but the rules to have multiple powers active still apply.  Black Crusade does this differently since there is no Threshold anymore, but it does work the same after the above conversion rules are done.  Some powers in Dark Heresy say they take a full or a half action to sustain, so that would still be the case after the conversion
• All overbleed is gone, things that were overbleed of 5 are now for each additional Degree of Success, and those that are overbleed of 10 are every other extra Degree of Success
• Powers that required an opposed Willpower Test after the power was activated now use an Opposed Willpower Test as their Focus Power Test, so the secondary WP Test is unnecessary. 
• As a general rule, anything that used the Willpower Bonus in the power now uses the Psy Rating that the power was activated at.  This could be the number of targets, or the number of minutes or rounds the power lasts, all dependant on how the power works