Yes, this seems normal.

A sound is made of a synth part and a sample part. The default sounds are made of only the synth part – they don’t use the sample part.

The default chromatic mode of an empty kit is ‘samp’. Since there is no sample part used on the default sound, the chromatic mode has no effect on the sound. If you were to assign a sample to the sound, then chromatic mode would work as you expect.

By selecting ‘syn’ you are setting the chromatic mode to control the synth part of the voice, and by selecting ‘syn+samp’ you are setting the chromatic mode to control both the synth part and the sample part of the voice.