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Why not have something like the LeMarchand Boxes from Hellraiser? If left entirely alone the device is dormant, but the process you go through to use it is also the ritual to awaken the power bound to it. Perhaps it spells out the true name of a demon when the pieces slot together, or forms some piece of mystic architecture when the parts are aligned. If its a weapon, it doesn't do anything until its splashed in blood, something like that. If the owner is a serious collector he might have all sorts of other peculiar toys and contraptions, any one of which could camouflage the object's true nature. You could even have it on display next to something that looks really suspicious but is actually a harmless fake - the owner thinks he has an authentic Dusk Bloodwitch doll, infused with the soul of a bound heretic, but what he really has is a couple of sticks bound in twine sold to him by an enterprising Rogue Trader for an extortionate fee. Any probing of the display gives results that something isn't right, but most people leap towards the really obvious authentic looking artefact at the forefront rather than the boring stuff at the back. You might want to have a look at the entry for Ateanism in Disciples of the Dark Gods as well. That's entirely about a method called the Eris Transform someone accidentally stumbled onto to creates sublime works of tainted art, and how those works spread. Maybe some genius has a come across a copy of the Eris Transform, and is using it to build a masterpiece. The works that the players stumble upon are definitely wrong in some way, but the artist wasn't skilled enough at that point to make them actually warp-tainted. That neatly explains why the Inquisition didn't step in - if they did hear anything (and there's no guarantees that they would in the first place), anything they found were early works that weren't actually tainted at that point. Babbage fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 9, 2013 |
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Mar 9, 2013 22:21
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Alternatively, have it somehow fall into the hands of an artist who incorporates it into his most recent work. Maybe he's renowned amongst the upper, and he's avant garde, using the strangest materials - including xeno items - and methods to achieve specific effects and emotions. In comes a dagger/gem/hilt of a sword/etc in his latest shipment from a Rogue Trader or the like, and he feels drawn to incorporate it. When the work is done, it has the stated effect - anyone who looks upon does feel genuine despair or horror or something similar. That way, anyone who does notice it, charts it up to artistic genius. EDIT: More or less beaten.
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Mar 9, 2013 22:24
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Something else possibly to consider is the flects from the Ravenor trilogy - they were a kind of psychic drug which mostly gave people cool hallucinations, but on occasion, would corrupt people horribly - they turned out to be shards of glass from a modern skyscraper city on a world in a warp rift which had been shattered horribly, and the shards were infused with the warp - mostly the (relatively) innocuous bits, some of them, horrible daemonic poo poo. Not sure where to go with the concept, but maybe riffing on it will help.
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Mar 10, 2013 11:23
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Night10194 posted:I mean, to this day, we're not clear on whether or not you pay the cohesion cost for a power once per mission, once per encounter, or once per use on stuff like Bolter Assault or Furious Charge. How do the rest of you run that? I'd really like to get my Sergeant on occasionally but things just feel so unclear and our GM has grown to hate the mechanic dearly. The FAQ clears it up a little but basically some of them are active all mission or until you choose something else, those are generally the Sustained ones and you pay that cost each time you activate it, so generally once. Most of the rest are sustained: no and say "until the end of the turn" or "may make a melee attack", those will usually last one turn and if you want to use them again you pay again. Some powers also last the rest of the combat but are still non-sustained but I can't really think of any off the top of my head. It's a shame your GM doesn't engage with the ability a bit more because things like Bolter Assault or Strongpoint are really strong and thematic. For example: Your Kill-team starts the mission patrolling around looking for an objective and the squad leader activates Tactical Spacing. You pay the one cost and everyone now shares their reactions, so whoever is on point can use a whole heap of reactions if they stumble into something. It's sustained so you just declare you're keeping it on forever and it just stays on, no further need. Later on you're in a fight and you declare a bolter assault and the dudes nearby with bolters join in, that costs you 3 cohesion and after your action it's all over. Everyone loses the Tactical Spacing, even if they didn't join the bolter assault as you're the one who started it and was sustaining i, so it just goes away. You could restart it but you'd have to pay the cost. If you wanted though, someone else could call the bolter assault whilst you kept sustaining the tactical spacing, they'd all use their assault and then could rejoin your tactical spacing next turn at no cost. But yeah absolutely a heavy bolter devastator will make a mess of most things and Deathwatch is a game where you need a pretty confident GM with a good grip of the game to make interesting encounters because so much stuff is easy to one shot (or one full-auto-burst), including Hordes. It might seem a bit weird to give your GM encounter building advice but I find multiple elites (3-5) and 2-3 Hordes is a pretty manageable encounter and you can just flat out tack on a Master if you want the fight to be a real deal, don't get stuck in the trap of having a boss fight be a solo encounter because your team can do a lot of stuff.
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Mar 10, 2013 13:24
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quote:All these good ideas drat, guys, holy poo poo  Yeah, I think I'm going to go with a bit of each idea, maybe incorporating it into an automaton servitor in some cathedral on a corrupted world (so the daemon won't feel so restricted in the church). Now to figure out whether I merely want it Tainted, or if it should be a full-blown Daemon Weapon...
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Mar 10, 2013 14:55
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Or you could take the classical approach to tainted artwork: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP2JPwbtq0g
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Mar 10, 2013 15:07
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Question for fluff hounds: I know Chaos can corrupt/possess pieces of technology, and I'm thinking about using this in my Deathwatch game - some new model Tau stuff has a very unfortunate circuit layout that makes it easy for Chaos to corrupt them (either Khorne or Slaanesh, not certain yet). Are there any particular rules for using/fighting corrupt technology?
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Mar 10, 2013 17:35
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Kill it with fire? Kill it with fire usually works.
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Mar 10, 2013 18:29
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thespaceinvader posted:Kill it with fire? My plan at this point is for the Manta the players are on to rendezvous with a Tau research ship fleeing the system with its labs and cargo bays full of captured Imperial personnel, equipment, and research on reverse-engineering them. Something will go wrong when the ship jumps into the warp, though, almost certainly due to something the Tau brought on board. The Sus-an Membranes on the kill team will kick in, rendering them comatose and allowing them to pass for dead. Then they'll wake up on the doomed research ship when it finally bursts back into real space, its systems thoroughly compromised by a warp entity when they stayed in the warp longer than they should have. The kill team will have to fight their way through the research ship, rescue what Imperial personnel and relics that they can, and find their way off or summon help. Resistant the Tau might be to warp effects, but "resistant" is not "immune," and something's taken an interest.
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Mar 10, 2013 19:04
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Cythereal posted:My plan at this point is for the Manta the players are on to rendezvous with a Tau research ship fleeing the system with its labs and cargo bays full of captured Imperial personnel, equipment, and research on reverse-engineering them. Something will go wrong when the ship jumps into the warp, though, almost certainly due to something the Tau brought on board. The Sus-an Membranes on the kill team will kick in, rendering them comatose and allowing them to pass for dead. Thing being (if my lore memory is correct) is that the whole point of the Tau ships is that they don't go into the Warp. Rather, they slingshot off the side(s?) of it to get around very slowly (comparatively) but without actually getting into areas where the Imperials would need Gellar fields. Having said that, if whatever the Tau stole/got/borrowed/etc. was important enough to a big enough daemon, what I think you could do is have the daemon just encourage a small, localised warp storm on top of whatever system the Tau ship's in. You could then fox your players when they expect to have travelled to the middle of the Tau Empire as the storm passes only to have them in dead space between systems because they just didn't go very far thanks to the combination of Tau drives and warp-buggery. It then has the added bonus of potentially having Imperial help very close by but in absolutely no shape to help right away because they're dealing with the aftermath of the storm too (and you can have a lot of fun with that).
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Mar 10, 2013 19:20
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Well, they *almost* enter the warp, it wouldn't be too odd if at the closest point something jumps across.
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Mar 10, 2013 21:05
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Well, the plan is that the Tau tech interacts weirdly with one of the Imperial relics the ship's been studying. Something I intend to make a point of is that the Imperium really is far more technologically advanced than the Tau. The Tau can provide a greater level of technology across the entirety of their civilization than the Imperium can, true, but the Tau civilization is orders of magnitude smaller than the Imperium, and has existed for barely a fraction of the time that the Imperium has endured. Against the Imperium at its most advanced, with all its capabilities brought to bear, the Tau might as well be armed with bows and spears. The Tau truly don't understand what they're meddling with, assuming that it's all as primitive and ornamental as it looks. It is not, particularly with regards to the Warp. This campaign will be the undoing of the Tau in the Jericho Reach, brought on by their own arrogance in playing with forces and technology beyond their comprehension.
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Mar 10, 2013 21:12
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Just reading through Ark of Lost Souls, and I have to say that I love the depiction (spoilers: threats encountered in the main adventure) of the Enslavers. You really get the sense that as bad as a typical Enslaver infection is, this one is one of the truly ancient ones that once devoured the entire civilization of the Old Ones and all but a few other sentient races far before humanity existed, and more than capable of starting an Enslaver Plague on a galactic scale if given half a chance.
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Mar 10, 2013 23:57
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Cythereal posted:Question for fluff hounds: I know Chaos can corrupt/possess pieces of technology, and I'm thinking about using this in my Deathwatch game - some new model Tau stuff has a very unfortunate circuit layout that makes it easy for Chaos to corrupt them (either Khorne or Slaanesh, not certain yet). Are there any particular rules for using/fighting corrupt technology? Oho, you're in for a treat- both Dark Heresy and Deathwatch have quite a few enemies that are just what you need. Hell, I can practically outline a plot for you: The Tau Ethereals in the Reach decide to reopen research into this 'Warp' stuff all the cool kids are talking about, which was why they kidnapped all the Imperial personnel in the first place. Unfortunately, that first little jump infected their main computer, turning it into a Irradial Cogitator (Deathwatch: Mark of the Xenos, Page 88). When poo poo started going down, the Tau onboard the ship sent in their battlesuits first, and while you can shoot daemons, you cannot shoot the Warp- and the battlesuits along with their owners were infused with Chaos energies, turning them into creatures similar to Slinnar War Machines (Mark of the Xenos, Page 92). There were also Techpriests onboard the ship, kidnapped or working with the Tau, and they too were washed with Chaos energies. Depending on how much they were exposed to, they run the gamut of all the creatures from the Forbidden Science chapter of Creatures Anathema. Pay especial attention to the Logi Daemonis in Creatures Anathema (page 23); they could be the most common form of enemy around, or combine its powers with those of the Irradial Cogitator. Bonus points if you include a single Tau scientist who's breaking, if not completely broken, apart thanks to everything he knew being proven wrong. You could use this mission to hammer in the necessity of everything the Imperium does and is.
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Mar 11, 2013 01:20
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CommissarMega posted:Oho, you're in for a treat- both Dark Heresy and Deathwatch have quite a few enemies that are just what you need. Hell, I can practically outline a plot for you: The plot stuff is unnecessary. I'm quite happy with what I've planned. I was looking more for examples of adding a possessed/haunted template - for example, a Tau drone network possessed by Khornate spirits, or a daemon of Slaanesh animating a Crisis Suit without a pilot inside. I don't have Creatures Anathema, though, just the core book. Or what might happen if a fire warrior grabs a pulse rifle now inhabited by a minor daemon of Nurgle.
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Mar 11, 2013 01:31
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Yeah, Creatures Anathema and Mark of the Xenos is a Gods(s)send. You might also want to look in Rogue Trader's Stars of Inequity; there's a random treasure generator there, along with various templates you can apply so said treasures. Some of these templates are obviously daemonic in nature (can't remember the specific pages though- maybe 88-92), and would be of great help. EDIT: That being said though, Irradial Cogitator + Logi Daemonis would be the perfect thematic villain for Tau Gone Warp. CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Mar 11, 2013 |
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Mar 11, 2013 03:35
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Another idea for the villain of this doomed Tau research ship occurred to me: a Soul Grinder. Going after something like this strikes me as right up an ambitious Soul Grinder's alley, particularly since I intend to start dropping hints that Slaaneshi forces are taking an interest in the Jericho Reach. Namely, Fulgrim is aware that the Imperium messed with EC gene seed to create the Dusk Guard, and took it as a personal offense. The interference of him and his followers is what lead to the Dusk Guard's destruction. Now that the Tau are messing with Fulgrim's flesh and blood again, he is not a happy camper. I'm seriously debating Fulgrim being the ultimate villain of the campaign, considering it a direct and dire affront to attempt to resurrect his Legion in service to anyone but Chaos.
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Mar 11, 2013 04:00
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Are there any rules for Tesseract Cube Labyrinths?
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Mar 12, 2013 16:29
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So I played my first session of Dark heresy last night (I can't remember the last time I did anything for 9 straight hours) and it was pretty bomb. We managed to start our mission and very quickly realized we were missing some necessary items in our group: -comm-beads -first aid kit -grenades are there any other "standard" items anyone makes sure they have before starting a mission/campaign/whatever that you would suggest?
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Mar 13, 2013 21:51
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I usually try to start with as many stummers as I can afford. The noise-cancelling things, if I've thought of the wrong name.
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Mar 13, 2013 22:01
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Yea, those are Stummers and they are really useful. The bonus is huge. The opposing item is Screamers, although I find that more often you are trying to avoid notice than spot someone sneaking up on you. I usually make sure that people have some sort of Glow-globe or lamp. A lot of the time you end up heading into pits/tunnels/abandoned hive passages where you will need some light.
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Mar 13, 2013 22:14
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So my Rogue Trader just asked me "Can I have my ship just shoot these guys from orbit?" when I had a huge horde of Rak'Gol attack him and his crew in the Edge of the Abyss adventure. I was so proud. I posted the end of scene text in chat just so we could laugh at it. Instead of building a barrier the whole place was glassed by sunsear macrolasers. then the RT turns to the archaologist/overseer and says "I expect the dig to continue as soon as the ground solidifies"
Liesmith fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Mar 14, 2013 |
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Mar 13, 2013 23:34
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Liesmith posted:So my Rogue Trader just asked me "Can I have my ship just shoot these guys from orbit?" when I had a huge horde of Rak'Gol attack him and his crew in the Edge of the Abyss adventure. I was so proud. I posted the end of scene text in chat just so we could laugh at it. Instead of building a barrier the whole place was glassed by sunsear macrolasers. then the RT turns to the archaologist/overseer and says "I expect the dig to continue as soon as the ground solidifies" Now he is a real Rogue Trader. That moment they realise they can solve a problem with overwhelming firepower means the game can really kick it.
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Mar 14, 2013 04:05
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lonelylikezoidberg posted:So I played my first session of Dark heresy last night (I can't remember the last time I did anything for 9 straight hours) and it was pretty bomb. You are very right to want grenades. You want all the grenades. Incendiaries, frag, krak if you can get it, all the grenades. Even smoke will help a lot. And Hallucinogen grenades are made of hilarity. I remember we had a Sister of Battle who loved those things to death once; her favorite part of combats was seeing what hallucinations she could give enemies as nightmarish visions of hell before she set them on fire.
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Mar 14, 2013 05:06
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My character, rolled randomly for most everything in the Dark Heresy book is a Feral World Guardsman (The job I chose) with tanned skin, blond hair and blue eyes, tribal tattoos and thinks a layer of dirt on his skin will help repel evil spirits. This is my first Dark Heresy campaign, but not my first RPG...and when I see the picture of the guardsman along with the description of a Feral World and "Dirt Ward", instead of Neanderthal, Conan, or Mad Max based character, My first thought was the theme song for deliverance and the phrase "Yeeee-HAW!" So yes, I made a hardcore redneck in the 40K universe who's basically a blonde Rambo and sounds like Larry the Cable Guy. Quarl "Shiv" Jarr ended up surviving every adventure without taking any sort of critical damage or disfiguring traits. (Though he ended up with 22 Insanity points, from flubbing a CRAPLOAD of willpower tests...) My entrance into the campaign was following the adventure straight out of the back of the main Dark Heresy Manual The Crow Father, involving a Demon possessed priest in a little no name colony who had a weakness for wounds to the eyes. The people from that previous group involved an Assassin (Who made the "lucky" savior shots), A Cleric and an Arbitrator. My Guardsman and another new guy playing a Psyker join for a mission briefing with Inquisitor Vraak, who discusses an obvious piece of Xeno-tech recovered from the Aftermath of the last mission. Our mission involves infiltrating the Noble Circles of a planet where a friend of Vraak has called in a favor as his Niece has gone missing with a new church group called the "Joyous Choir" Notable oddities with the choir is that they have "happy-meters" which they use regularly on their members, who then go missing. One of these happy-meters was recovered by our inquisitor and the circutry perfectly matched the xeno-tech recovered from previous mission. Heresy is afoot! We hit the planet, meet the nobles who will act as our cover-story and hear about this cult and a drug they pass out to the noble circles called "Farcozia" Notable instance comes when my character has to play the role of a bodyguard infiltrating a hoity-toity ball and needing to become presentable. ("I can't wipe off my protective crust!") Our psyker uses Deja Vu when I say I'll just wipe off the upper layer that shows between the gaps in my armor, which causes me to keep wiping until I'm fully clean. I panic and say "OH God! The lice will be able to dig in and lay eggs!" The Arbitrator takes out a can of spray and uses it in my general direction. I shout "THat's not where the are!" and grab the can out of his hands before sticking it down the back of my pants and letting out an "Ahhhh" and it hisses across my backside. Needless to say, most of the group is rolling with laughter at this point or going "Oh dear god" between giggles, but everyone laughs harder when our psyker just chimes in again "Deja Vu" Whereupon my redneck guardsman ends up emptying the entire can of lice-off/bug-spray in his pants. I then meekly ask to find the bathroom. Now, I wish to god I could have come up with this on my own, but I basically ripped it off from a "Stupid Facebook update" picture I had seen recently and it fit too goddamn perfectly. With clean pants and skin, I make my way back to the meeting with our nobleman aid with a perplexed look on my face. At a lull in the conversation I raise my hand and everyone else (DM included) make a face just waiting for the newest shoe to drop. Picture with the thickest hillbilly/texan/southern drawl you can. "Scuse me your lordship...ness...but while I don't really think it's my place to question your high-falutin ways, I gotta ask...Why do you have a drinking fountain in your bathroom right next to your toilet?" At this point everyone went "Oh my loving god" while our DM, still in character of the nobleman nodded to a servant saying (slightly horrified) "Get somebody to clean the bathroom, now!" and that's where I'll end my story for now. janusmaxwell fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Mar 14, 2013 |
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Mar 14, 2013 18:32
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Took the time to read through this thread, and it has been good for getting some pointers on my upcoming first GM session. To give a little background I have been a pretty big fluff nerd since I heard about 40K back around the days 3rd Edition began in the table top. I was clued into the setting by some friends who knew me to be a huge starcraft fanboy. I flirted a bit with the table top game, but just could never get into it due to the time/money required from a kid just getting into high school. Despite this I completely fell in love with the setting finding it superior to what blizzard had created. I proceeded to read as many novels as I could including all the famous Abnett books, and less quality work like Inquisition Wars. My hunger for information on the setting was so extreme that I would purchase the codexes just to read the fluff, and even got my hands on the Index Astartes books(except 4 which is really rare). Anyway, I have a good amount of time invested in role-playing games like: AD&D, Pathfinder, Exalted, and Hunter: The Reckoning, but due to work and seperation from my usual nerd group for a good five years the release of all this 40K role-playing material completely passed beneath my notice until about 3 months ago. I am not really sure how this happened considering I read the Horus Heresy novels religiously, and lurk around on the Black Library thread in the Book Barn section of the forum. Anyway, I proceeded to buy 3 of the 5 core rulebooks(DH,DW, and OW), and the first two chapters of the Apostasy Gambit. On top of this I downloaded PDFs of literally every supplement that applied to Dark Heresy in an attempt to get spun up on the setting and rules as best I could as quickly as I could. This all being Dark Heresy is the game that I plan on playing to begin with, because it strikes me as the most interesting of the settings. Judging from the comments on here I have already decided to run with the most current rules on combat published in OW, mainly because I fully agree that the idea of getting a bonus to hit while firing on fully automatic is really stupid, and encourages a spray-and-pray mentality. For now I plan on running with the Dark Heresy salary system, but at the same time will likely go out of my way to ensure players have access to weapons as long as they have the required talents, and have been making an attempt to save their money for rarer/powerful ones such as melta and plasma weapons. I am still unsure if I want to use the consolidated skills list presented in OW, and if anyone has any experience with using that in DH I would appreciate the input. Campaign wise I am looking to stick to pre-gens simply because they provide an excellent framework to start with, and I have been rather impressed by how well the writers have come up with contigency plans for player stupidity. At the moment I am really liking Edge of Darkness as a perfect way to introduce people to DH since it has equal parts horror, intrigue, and combat with a sandbox oriented setup. For there I plan on pushing into Illumination (should they be successful I plan on having them meet their Inquisitor), and then into the three Purge the Unclean scenarios that the poster above me has mentioned he just started. For anyway that has experience running these campaigns I would love to know what ideas the players came up with that really derailed the mission, and secondary/tertiary plans you came up with to counteract some of their more hair-brained ideas. I am not the kind of person who wants the scenario to be linear but at the same time a good number of the people playing don't have a lot of experience with 40K and I'd like to do my best to prevent them from making fatal mistakes they would not commit if they were more familiar with the overall universe.
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Mar 18, 2013 07:33
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"Oi, wotz up?" I'm roleplaying an ork in our new Rogue Trader campaign and I thought I'd ask here to see where to find all orky tech and weapons to drool over as we go about. Being a freeboota means my big lug needs to constantly be hunting down more gear, or at least that's how I'm playing. Are any of the Deathwatch books a good idea for looting?
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Mar 18, 2013 10:41
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Bavius posted:"Oi, wotz up?" Koronus Bestiary has some cool ones, obviously Into the Storm, theres a list of Ork upgrades in Hostile Acquisitions. Koronus Bestiary also has some Dok upgrades. none of these are priced, but I just had my ork player buy his dok upgrades with teef. Now he's planning on going down to the nearby ork infested planet, slapping some boyz around, and using their teef to buy some more stuff during downtime.
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Mar 18, 2013 12:28
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Uroboros posted:I am still unsure if I want to use the consolidated skills list presented in OW, and if anyone has any experience with using that in DH I would appreciate the input. Here's my input: don't do that. It will be a humongous pain in the rear end for a bunch of never played before Dark Heresy players to transfer their skills to Only War. It will mean that some of them get hosed over while others get huge advantages because all their skills are consolidated into one skill with only one small cost. And how are they even gonna level up if they can't just look at a list and pick skills off it? This is a tremendous hassle you are setting yourself up for. Also, it will gently caress up your calls for skill checks if you are using premade adventures, because some of those skills won't exist. Use the black crusade or Only war combat, thats smart. Don't gently caress with skills, it's way more trouble than its worth. BTW Rogue Trader is the best 40k RPG
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Mar 18, 2013 12:32
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Liesmith posted:
I am more interested in the intrigue/detective setting, and small band of acolytes seems like it will be easier to manage without having to worry about ship board politics, or explaining the details of space travel in 40K to people who are having a hard enough time understanding that people possess a dark ages mindset in the year 41,000+. On top of this while Rogue Trader seems to match the Dungeons and Dragons concept(IN SPACE!!!) more than all the other RPGs, I am trying to go with the characters having some sort of focused goal(other than MONEY! WOO!). My role-playing groups are notorious for back stabbing and people going out their way to murder the rest of the group because such and such wants to play a sociopath. Dark Heresy at least hangs the notion of the worst pain and suffering imaginable to anyone who dares cross the Inquisition, while still giving players plenty of room to be amoral by tossing their actions under the heading of "For the Emprah!". Then again I don't know if I have anyone in my group stupid enough to execute their navigator. Personally as GM I just would've killed off most of the group at that point due to the mutiny that would surely follow such an action... I will take your advice on the skills system, although I had yet to take the time to see how much the skill changes would favor one class over the other, but a simple glance seems that most of the consolidations are under physical/social skills with almost zero consolidation of lore skills, which I figure it is already hard enough to convince people to take knowledge based skills, because fighting is at the heart of nearly every RPG in the world. This means that convincing people their Scholastic Lore (X) is just as useful as SHOOT-GUN (X) when it comes to making a new character is already hard enough without giving the shooty guys anymore big advantages.
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Mar 18, 2013 17:17
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Uroboros posted:I am more interested in the intrigue/detective setting, and small band of acolytes seems like it will be easier to manage without having to worry about ship board politics, or explaining the details of space travel in 40K to people who are having a hard enough time understanding that people possess a dark ages mindset in the year 41,000+. On top of this while Rogue Trader seems to match the Dungeons and Dragons concept(IN SPACE!!!) more than all the other RPGs, I am trying to go with the characters having some sort of focused goal(other than MONEY! WOO!). My role-playing groups are notorious for back stabbing and people going out their way to murder the rest of the group because such and such wants to play a sociopath. Dark Heresy at least hangs the notion of the worst pain and suffering imaginable to anyone who dares cross the Inquisition, while still giving players plenty of room to be amoral by tossing their actions under the heading of "For the Emprah!". Then again I don't know if I have anyone in my group stupid enough to execute their navigator. Personally as GM I just would've killed off most of the group at that point due to the mutiny that would surely follow such an action... yeah, one of the fundamental changes is that where a guardsman might buy Pistol Weapon Training (Las) and then buy Pistol Weapon Training (Bolt) when he's a bit better. characters in later games get to buy pistol weapon training (universal) and be good with every kind of non-alien hand weapon. It's a huge difference. Liesmith fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 17:49
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Uroboros posted:I will take your advice on the skills system, although I had yet to take the time to see how much the skill changes would favor one class over the other, but a simple glance seems that most of the consolidations are under physical/social skills with almost zero consolidation of lore skills, which I figure it is already hard enough to convince people to take knowledge based skills, because fighting is at the heart of nearly every RPG in the world. This means that convincing people their Scholastic Lore (X) is just as useful as SHOOT-GUN (X) when it comes to making a new character is already hard enough without giving the shooty guys anymore big advantages. Thing is, Dark Heresy is an investigation based game. Your Lore skills will often be more important/useful than your combat skills, because DH combat is scary as gently caress and you want to avoid it as much as possible. Even in combat, using Common Lore (War), Scholastic Lore (Tactica Imperialis), or Forbidden Lore (Cultists) could all give you and your comrades bonuses when fighting cultists or whatever. Dark Heresy is about the Inquisition, and in the Inquisition a little knowledge is more dangerous than any number of plasma weapons.
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Mar 19, 2013 18:57
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FFG really brought it upon themselves by giving characters a choice to spend their XP between "hitting a guy an extra 2-3 times per round" or "adding +10 to your Scholastic Lore (Chymistry) checks." I'm sorry, but the first option is way more fun every single time. That's why I love WFRP 3e. There's an Education Skill and a Folklore skill. If it involves yer fancy book-lernin', if it ain't one, then it's t'other. I really do not know what they were thinking when they put in the four hundred or so skills in 40K RPG.
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Mar 19, 2013 19:58
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Lore/Knowledge skills are always kind of a pain in the rear end, especially when they compete directly with more practical skills. I mean, even if you aren't trying to be a combat monster and mangle everyone in sight in two rounds, it can be hard to pass up skills like Security or Stealth or Scrutiny to take a Lore skill. I think that it requires a lot of understanding between players and GM as to what sort of information is going to be needed and that it WILL be needed for players to invest heavily in those skills. It's not like this is the only system with that problem though, it's just irritating that it keeps cropping up.
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Mar 19, 2013 20:05
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If I'm looking to introduce a Temple Assassin into a Deathwatch game, where should I be looking for the best rules to base it on? Any suggestions at all?
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Mar 20, 2013 12:00
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Karandras posted:If I'm looking to introduce a Temple Assassin into a Deathwatch game, where should I be looking for the best rules to base it on? Any suggestions at all? Vindicare Assassin is a fully statted class in the Dark Heresy: Ascension supplement, and Ascension also has the stats for an Eversor in the NPC/Adversary section. Both have appropriate equipment listed as well (including weaponry on about the same scale as stuff the Deathwatch gets). That should at least give you a solid jumping off point for putting together something of your own. Which you probably do want to consider doing since a starting Ascension character and a DW Space Marine aren't really comparable and you might end up with some issues depending on the XP level if you just ran it straight. For example, the Temple Assassin will have an absurd range of skills and combat talents compared to a starting Space Marine and will rarely be hit by anything (since they basically start with an 80-90% chance to dodge and Unnatural Agility goes a long way towards avoiding autofire), but in the unlikely event that they do get hit while using their standard/thematic gear they'll get totally pasted by stuff most starting Space Marines yawn at until they can take Unnatural Toughness (x2) at the XP equivalent of Deathwatch Rank 4 (DH Rank 12- 25,000-29,999xp). Hardly insurmountable problems, but definitely things to consider.
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Mar 20, 2013 12:24
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LGD posted:but in the unlikely event that they do get hit while using their standard/thematic gear they'll get totally pasted by stuff most starting Space Marines yawn at until they can take Unnatural Toughness (x2) at the XP equivalent of Deathwatch Rank 4 (DH Rank 12- 25,000-29,999xp). Hardly insurmountable problems, but definitely things to consider. A little bit of the Marines having to keep the Vindicare out of harm's way at first is thematic. Although you can excuse all sorts of great armor and protection fields by having the Assassin use "specialized kit for battlefield conditions." Or just give the class Unnatural Toughness for something like the cost of the trait for the class normally +1-200. Maybe also take a look at how human and Space Marine characters are balanced in Black Crusade.
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Mar 20, 2013 13:23
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Thank y'all for the pointers regarding Deathwatch. Last night the party killed the Slaaneshi Soul Grinder leading the invasion of the Tau research ship and escaped in a Thunderhawk that had been captured by the Tau along with a contingent of Imperial Guard, techpriests, and a Princeps of the Adeptus Titanicus who had been imprisoned on the ship for interrogation and experimentation. They left the foundering Tau ship to its doom, and were subsequently rescued by an Imperial grand cruiser that had been looking for them. Thing is, this particular ship has a senior Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus on board, and she's very unhappy. She wants to... question... the survivors. The Ultramarine, Iron Hand, and Imperial Fist were all okay with this, but the Raven Guard, Salamander, and Space Wolf in the party decided to gently caress that, the grunts and AdMech boys were prisoners who fought to escape. They also now have a servo skull rigged up with a laspistol that's doing its best Mr. Zurkon impression. Decided to end the game last night with the kill team about to enter the Inquisitor's chambers. I, and the two players familiar with 40k, reminded everyone else present that it's standard Imperial procedure to eliminate non-Astartes witnesses to daemonic incursions for some drat good reasons...
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Mar 20, 2013 15:13
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Cheers for the advice. I'm actually looking at statting up a Distaff-esque agent somewhere around the level of a Culexus as an adversary. The problem of a million dodges and then a single hit flattening someone is pretty apparent in DW and I've got some ideas around it. Thanks for the advice re Ascension but I've had to do some pretty heavy reworking of Ascension characters in the past to fit them into deathwatch (Holy poo poo Ascension psykers are The Real Deal) and I was hoping I wouldn't have to do it again but maybe I'll have to.
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Mar 20, 2013 16:19
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Any tips for roleplaying in Black Crusade? I'm having difficulties grasping my characters in this game, partially because I'm not very good at playing a bad guy. I'm currently running as a renegade/former stormtrooper.
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Mar 23, 2013 07:33
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