|
I wouldn't buy the RT book just for fluff, if you have no intention of ever running a game.
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 06:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 21:42 |
|
|
Hot Dog Day #82 posted:I know you guys are on a tear with the current discussion, so I am sorry to interrupt! I just have a simple question: if I'm interested in learning more fluff about Rogue Traders is it best for me to buy the RPG book? Similarly, regarding the supplements, are there any that are more fluff heavy than the others? I wouldn't suggest buying any of the TTRPG books for their fluff. E: Admittedly, I'm currently in one of my moods where I decide I hate the 40k RPGs, mind, which will probably change in a year or two, so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Mar 4, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 06:59
|
|
|
Pharmaskittle posted:I wouldn't buy the RT book just for fluff, if you have no intention of ever running a game. Seconding this, The Black library thread people can help you find books that will fill you on the lore AND be more interesting to read. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3494493&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 07:17
|
|
|
That said, you should try to get your friends into playing tabletop games. This applies to everything, not just 40krpg. Getting your friends who you already like and want to spend time with to play pen and paper games is much much better than trying to strike out into roleplayer genpop through boards at your local game shop or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 09:21
|
|
|
Pharmaskittle posted:That said, you should try to get your friends into playing tabletop games. This applies to everything, not just 40krpg. Assuming you don't live in the boondocks and have a game shop. Converting the few friends I've made since moving to my little slice of non civilization was hard, but worked. Too bad they only want to play pathfinder.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 14:12
|
|
|
Werix posted:Assuming you don't live in the boondocks and have a game shop. Converting the few friends I've made since moving to my little slice of non civilization was hard, but worked. Too bad they only want to play pathfinder. You can't expect taste in backwoods hillbillies.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 14:49
|
|
|
Clanpot Shake posted:You can't expect taste in backwoods hillbillies. Like me these folks are also transplants to this backwoods shithole from actual civilization. Hell, one has a half painted imperial guard army. I've been trying to leverage that into playing black crusade, but so far hasn't worked. At least one of them is GMing pathfinder now. The real backwoods hillbillies have no interaction with outsiders and see pen and paper RPGs as for devil worshipping nerds.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 16:24
|
|
|
Unfortunate. I can only imagine what meth would bring to the elfgaming experience.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 17:19
|
|
|
Ronwayne posted:Unfortunate. I can only imagine what meth would bring to the elfgaming experience. Black Crusade would hit a little too close to home.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 18:01
|
|
|
I'd buy the RPG books just for fluff. Used though; FFG books ain't cheap.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 19:44
|
|
|
Pharmaskittle posted:That said, you should try to get your friends into playing tabletop games. This applies to everything, not just 40krpg. Oh I wish it were an option! I just moved to a new city and haven't had a chance to strike it out and make nerdy friends yet, but that is certainly on my list of things to do. Also, I'll save myself some dollars and will pass on the books for now. I kind of figured that would be the answer to my question, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Thanks, all!
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2015 20:20
|
|
|
Can promethium melt steel beams?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 04:38
|
|
|
Ronwayne posted:Unfortunate. I can only imagine what meth would bring to the elfgaming experience. Not meth, heroin is the big thing. I'd imagine with heroin elfgaming would be a lot more laid back than usual.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 05:11
|
|
|
frajaq posted:Can promethium melt steel beams? What doesn't the Inquisition want us to know!?! (Between 900 and 1200 C depending on where you measure, enough to cause phase changes and completely compromise structures, but probably not melt most steels. Partial melting depends on how much carbon and other stuff is in it, but you will definitely lose important heat treatment effects.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 06:47
|
|
|
Werix posted:Not meth, heroin is the big thing. I'd imagine with heroin elfgaming would be a lot more laid back than usual. Oh poo poo, everything old is new again.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:01
|
|
|
For DH2, is a warrior techpriest feasible? Also, is there any way to get a weaponised mechadendrite that fires something other than a laspistol?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:17
|
|
|
Yes, and you can fire any pistol from it, I think you just gotta get that pistol first and attach it. I assume most GMs would let you do that at game start if you got another pistol with your free aquisitions.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:28
|
|
|
In DH2, ballistic mechadendrites only allow laspistols.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:42
|
|
|
 That's something to get together with your gm and ask to loving ignore, like losing an entire magazine on a jam.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:42
|
|
|
Yeah, our tech priest has, I think, a plasma pistol on his. I haven't dug into tech priest aptitudes myself but, while they seem to be a little bit less beastly than in previous lines, you can definitely make a combat character with them. Flesh Is Weak is one of the most bonkers talents in the game, and they of course have much better access to physical enhancement cybernetics than any other class. Depending on your GM, you might even get away with even swapping some of the aptitudes out to drop intelligence for a physical aptitude and play a skitarii, which are basically super augmented mechanicum soldiers, if that concept cranks your tank.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:43
|
|
|
Ronwayne posted:
Yeah it's dumb because all the other editions let you put any compact pistol in it, and machinator is just any pistol or melee. It's a significant investment on your part, you should get a Dr. Octopus gun arm.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 07:45
|
|
|
The less you pay attention to the strict structure of the badly organized and frequently goofy rules as a player and GM and the more you just say "we're going to do this because it sounds better and more fun" the better a time you will have with the Warhammer RPGs. This forum has an entire group of posters with a monk-like devotion to slagging 5E D&D but if they got a load of some of the problems in the DH line it would probably blow their minds. Black Crusade has splatbook archetypes that are thousands of XP more powerful than the core book archetypes for raisins, that's what you're up against here. As far as looking for good places to absorb fluff--GW's ongoing implosion has made that harder and harder to do. The Lexicanum is useful but it's an encyclopedia, it doesn't really give you a sense of what the universe is like. Grammar could use some help too but that's any non-Wikipedia wiki. There's nothing that really draws you into the setting. The 40K Wikia is somewhat useful, but for any in-depth subject, whoever's editing it is just pasting complete plot summaries of every book in a row that had something to do with the subject matter, plenty of bad grammar included, and then calling that an article, so it's mostly unreadable. It's approaching Wookieepedia levels of detail bloat for the setting's important characters. The codexes are really expensive and largely army rules, but they do include an in-depth background of each faction written with a bias toward that faction. The core book explains the setting in detail. The various Dark Heresy line RPG books have a lot of in-depth explanation, but a lot of the fluff also deals with a specific sector region that the game uses as the main setting, and just talks about that. Occasionally GW releases an art book and these are pretty fun, though it's GW-anything so it costs an arm and a leg. Take whatever you think would be ridiculous to pay for a GW book and add $10. The novels are extremely un-even in quality and on average on par with D&D setting novels.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 08:21
|
|
|
I think a lot of 40KRP's problems come from being developed first as WHFRP2e In SPAAAACE with Space Rat Catchers and Space Peasants for a base system, then being given to a studio that was more interested in the adventures of Killfuck Soulshitter, Destroyer of Worlds, leading to a base mechanical backing that is primarily about terrified semi-normal people trying not to die of dysentery and is not actually that well suited to the concept of the later games in the line.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 08:35
|
|
|
I used to play a Secutor, specifically because their array allows other pisols than las. Also, you should just ignore it if it suits the purposes of your game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 08:49
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I think a lot of 40KRP's problems come from being developed first as WHFRP2e In SPAAAACE with Space Rat Catchers and Space Peasants for a base system, then being given to a studio that was more interested in the adventures of Killfuck Soulshitter, Destroyer of Worlds, leading to a base mechanical backing that is primarily about terrified semi-normal people trying not to die of dysentery and is not actually that well suited to the concept of the later games in the line. This, so much. Going from base canon, the imperium is not in any way as advanced as it always is in Rogue Trader sourcebooks, for instance. It's just one of those things that has changed a lot, and you can view it as you want to.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 08:50
|
|
|
Tias posted:This, so much. Going from base canon, the imperium is not in any way as advanced as it always is in Rogue Trader sourcebooks, for instance. It's just one of those things that has changed a lot, and you can view it as you want to. That's not what I mean at all. I mean the base mechanical system for the RPG is predicated on the idea that you're going to be relatively average people who spend a lot of time with lasguns and flak armor. Then every single sourcebook past the original has been about going very far beyond that, which doesn't actually work fantastically well with the original mechanical backing. Killfuck Soulshitter's adventures could be just as fun as Shitfarmer Bob's, but they should probably be in a system designed for them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 08:57
|
|
|
One thing to remember about 40K is that it's really big, and everything has happened somewhere. Some planets are nice to live on or really high tech, others are depressing feudal or stalinist shitholes. There is a space USA planet, Elysia, and it's a much different place compared to other worlds. If your story needs a well-off society with glittering high imperial technology to serve as a backdrop for your political intrigues, or a massive hive spire of towering factories and racy underworld dealings for your gothic noir mystery, then that's what it is.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 08:59
|
|
|
Rather than just chat up the thread about SYSTEM PROBLEMS I thought I'd post the background info on the gameworld for a Black Crusade game I'm working on. Yes, I say just world, because early on I'm limiting it to one planet to give the game a sense of scale as the characters advance in power. I'm also working on a very AD&D-like treasure table to replace anything in the Infamy system beyond a certain rarity level, because in grappling with the Infamy system I decided it wasn't appropriate for players to use it to get the really good items. The background for this is that most of the players rolling chaos space marines have chosen Slaanesh as their god of choice, but we also have at least one Magister Immaterial from Q'Sal and a Nurgle-focused heretek. Someone half-jokingly explained that they'd like the warband colors to be pearlescent (partially because she is basically going to play an anime character) and I explained that not only was that perfect for a Slaanesh-focused warband, but that anime and Black Crusade can make surprisingly good bedfellows (almost everyone is relatively new to 40K). I can also post my house rules when I get done to receive commentary on that. I guess what I'm looking for here are any ideas other people have to spice up the world. BACKGROUND “If the path to salvation leads through the halls of purgatory, then so be it.” - Ahriman, of the Thousand Sons Arkon Secundus is an accursed deathworld in the Jericho Reach, long under the sway of the forces of Chaos. Long ago it was a bustling hiveworld of the Imperium, but the last days of that age passed away in centuries beyond counting. When the warp storms cut off the Jericho Reach, some calamity befell Arkon. Whatever happened, it transformed a world of untold tens of billions into a tomb of horrors. Like most hiveworlds, the planet is completely covered in habspires that reach from the depths of the planet’s inner crust into its upper atmosphere. There is only skyscraper built on skyscraper, formerly containing cramped living spaces for billions of people, for the Imperium’s chief manufacturing output has always been its countless citizens. Only the upper stratosphere of the planet’s habitable space is ever exposed to its purple, orange, and yellow suns, leaving most of the world in eternal darkness. This is fortunate, for the rays of Arkon’s suns are the very touch of doom. The suns’ energy interacts with Arkon’s atmosphere to cause frequent radiation storms. These storms, no doubt tinged with the touch of Chaos, roll over the upper surfaces of the world at random. Exposure to the storms might mutate traveling ships and all their occupants into gelatinous blobs of putrid flesh, destroy the ships utterly, or envelop them in magical rifts that leave them adrift in random locations on the planet. Only at great need do ships traverse the surface of the planet, and leaving is impossible. Attempting to cross out of the atmosphere into low orbit causes ships to violently vaporize, though ships and drop pods are curiously free to enter—if they can avoid the storms on the way down. Thus the planet is of little practical use to those forces of Chaos bent on war with the Imperium. It has alternate purposes, however. Occasionally, when a warlord tires of a particular underling, he sentences them to exile on Arkon. This is considered a more creative and lasting punishment than mere death. On other occasions, demented Dark Mechanicum scientists drop live test subjects into the atmosphere for research purposes, unconcerned with their fate should they successfully land. There are some daring or desperate enough to travel to Arkon willingly. This is sometimes to escape a more powerful rival’s wrath, but more often it is an unlikely quest for glory. Because Arkon was once a hiveworld containing tens of billions of people and features on star charts dating to the Thirtieth Millennium, it stands to reason that archeotech from the Dark Age of Technology is hidden on the planet. What’s more, exposure to warp storms and other phenomena over thousands of years has made it a trove of arcane secrets, waiting to be exploited by an ambitious sorcerer of the dark gods. These are the theories, at least. And who is to say it is not so? The radiation makes communication between the surface and low-orbiting ships almost impossible, leaving many mysteries, and occasionally atmospheric phenomena besides radiation storms are seen, renewing interest in the world from clueless outsiders. Communication that does reach listeners in orbit has led newcomers to make planetfall, only to discover that they were deluded by some trick of the Warp—they find that their brethren sent no such message, sent a different message, or are long dead. Their reinforcements are now trapped with them, whatever the case. Communication from Arkon seems only to arrive when and how the gods will it so. In fact, there are treasures on Arkon, as its thrice-damned denizens know. However, the ageless eons have left more behind than priceless archeotech and unknown dweomers. The deeper one travels into the habspires, the more ancient the evil. Not all of Arkon’s tens of billions died or disappeared. Some remain as dwellers in darkness, and they guard their secrets jealously. The human mind cannot grapple with the evil that sleeps within the sunken halls of Arkon’s underworld. Such petty concerns as insanity and unspeakable horror are counted lightly among the lost and the damned—their concerns with one another are more pressing. Thousands of refugees from the endless war in the Jericho Reach now inhabit Arkon, driven by fate. There is no known way to travel off of Arkon, even by sorcery, so such rogues are stuck in close quarters. Heretics pursue bitter grudges with their erstwhile comrades even when given free reign over the infinite expanse of the Warp itself; when confined to a single planet, they are more ravenous still. No heretic has yet proven worthy of ruling Arkon, but many warbands fight for supremacy and survival. These warbands strike from hidden bases or travel nomadically through the depths in small cruisers, hoping to pillage hidden holds or discover the planet’s secrets. There is scarce-little time to worry about escaping Arkon when one must first conquer it. Some residents survive simply by establishing trading posts and therefore becoming too valuable to slay outright. Trading posts often have heretics from the Dark Mechanicum to thank for their stock, or are based on ancient factory-forges that have been partially restored and made capable of producing goods, such as bullets or mechanically-separated cockroach meal. Trading posts often double as drinking holes, the chief purpose of which is for warbands to recruit replacements for lost crewmen while they enjoy swigs of battery acid and filtered urine. Whether all this is preferable to fighting in the meatgrinder against the Acheros Salient depends on which heretic you ask. HERETICS OF NOTE CROEN THE PEDDLER “Yes… You will do nicely.” A heretek of particular tastes, Croen the Peddler is an influential figure in what passes for politics on Arkon Secundus, though it is more of an economic magnate than a ruler. It is unclear when or how Croen arrived on the planet, but it is reasonable to guess that it has been a resident for a long time, perhaps centuries. Croen operates out of a habspire called the Rookery, which it and its supplicants have modified into a fortress of despair. Croen holds court in the uppermost part of the spire, which now crawls with hundreds of tiny clockwork robots that infest every corner of the domain like roaches. They are accompanied by a number of automated defenses and traps, such that any visitor is well aware of their peril should they attempt to threaten or harm Croen or its servants. Croen’s lair is a patchwork of grotesque machinery constantly under modification and testing. Croen and its servants are most interested in the creation of various servitors and cyborgs, and it works to automate the process of converting normal humans into a “more effective chassis.” It draws subjects from a pool of hundreds of captives. These are trapped in the deepest bowels of the habspire, a prison lit only by the watching eyes of servitors and various clockwork horrors. These prisoners are collected from humans that Croen deemed interesting specimens and had the further misfortune of not being branded as another warband’s property. Croen does not have to look far. The Rookery is strategically positioned around many ancient factory-forges that are at least partially functional, thanks either to Croen and its minions or mere chance. This makes the area around the Rookery the major population center on Arkon Secundus, because habitation of the area is made considerably easier by the supply of goods created by these forges. Several physically-connected trading posts have sprung up with Croen’s blessing and protection, dealing in food, fuel, ammunition, and slaves. As a result of this steady supply, several warbands are de facto agents of Croen’s will. The Peddler’s own interest in trade can only be roused by the trading of esoteric off-world knowledge or archeotech that can be put to use in its experiments, at which point it may be convinced to part with some of its more potent creations. Other minor powers have arisen to challenge Croen’s dominance, and occasionally planetary phenomena and deep-dwellers disrupt the regular business of the Rookery and its satellite posts. Thus Croen sometimes makes deals through its agents for warbands to accomplish special tasks on its behalf. Croen does not especially favor any faction over the other for a number of political and practical reasons. ERMORD THE WASTER “Welcome to Arkon Secundus, slime! I have come to reap your taint!…What?” Ermord the Waster is the leader of a warband of chaos raptors on Arkon Secundus known as the Pit Vipers. A devotee of Khorne, Ermord is well-known to locals because he vox-casts a never-ending stream of grandiloquent and incomprehensible prayers to the Blood God, threats of doom to those who lack proper deference to said God, pronouncements of war that are essentially reports on the doings of other warbands, and prophecies of ill omen that double as semi-reliable weather reports. The Pit Vipers leave crude offerings to Khorne in their favorite haunts that also serve as broadcast emitters, and make regular patrols across long distances. They often harass new arrivals on Arkon, incinerating any women and children who wander too far from their crashed ships for sport, and pulling pieces off the wreckage to fling at other hapless newcomers in disdain. They retreat at the first sign of serious resistance, with Ermord announcing his triumph and the weakness of his prey. It is not long before other warbands triangulate the signal and appear on the scene if the new arrivals have not scattered or hid themselves before then. The methods by which the Pit Vipers nearly always arrive first at the scene are a mystery. The Pit Vipers are considered an annoyance by some, but the vox-cast is so ubiquitous that it has become regular listening for many, either for information or entertainment, and part of the way of life on the planet. THE VISIONARY "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." The chaos lord known only as the Visionary is one of a number of accomplished warlords of the Flawless Host, a renegade chapter of space marines dedicated to Slaanesh. The Flawless Host consider themselves infallibly magnificent, and suffer not those lacking in their sense of martial, physical, and aesthetic perfection. For the Visionary, achieving these virtues on a personal level means abusing his body and mind with foul narcotics. The Visionary spends much of his resources searching for drugs and chemicals to meet his random fancies, the more refined and grotesque the better. He has many agents working in various parts of the Jericho Reach and Koronus Expanse, their only mission to sate his fickle appetites via a large smuggling operation. Rarely, when motivated by something beyond the reach of his network, he sallies forth with his warriors to obtain something personally, laying waste to planetary populations in the way as an afterthought. He combines and enhances his prizes with the aid of his slavishly devoted apothecaries and sorcerers. There is no conceivable substance that he will not eat, snort, inject, or inhale. He routinely cuts his latest formulae with the bile, brain matter, or bone dust of a hated foe or imperfect servant, along with some sort of fuel or radioactive material. His experiments in mulching captives into various edible substances are endless. Owing to his habits, the Visionary is ever in an unpredictable state of mental and physical debauchery. Subordinates who treat with him may find a cold, preternaturally focused thinker, a reveling hedonist, a psychopath who murders by whim, and everything in between. Without fail, however, he is a tactical savant who most often achieves victory through inscrutable or hopelessly counter-intuitive strategies. A long string of successes has propelled him to the rank of chaos lord at the cost of others’ fortune and glory. He promotes, punishes, and executes subordinates at random, with only his fellow chemists safe from his whimsy. Thus, many other marines become restless and disenchanted at his leadership. Of late, the Visionary has stationed his cruiser, the Dissolution, in orbit around Arkon Secundus. There he contemplates his next maneuver in the war for the Jericho Reach, or perhaps waits for a pre-ordained moment. Other warbands find the Flawless Host insufferable, so the Dissolution is under no duress to help repel the hated Imperium. In the meantime, several chaos space marines have either escaped to Arkon to be rid of him, or because they were exiled or sent there on some improbable mission. All are now beyond his dominion and thus likely to join or form another warband. LOCAL FACTIONS AND PHENOMENA OF NOTE DEEP DWELLERS The lower reaches of Arkon Secundus are haunted by the deep dwellers, sub-human creatures who traipse through the world’s tunnels and crevices. Some appear to be black shadows, others repugnant mutants, and still others appear to have cybernetic enhancements. There could be any number of explanations for the creatures, but they seem to all work together and have the advantage of great numbers. They are the main obstacle to archeotech expeditions, and most have decided not to bother on their account. Those who plumb the depths learn to do so as stealthily as possible, or they do not return. A small number of deep dwellers can turn into a swarm unless explorers deal with the first group efficiently and then move on quickly to avoid further harassment. Chaos space marines can deal with a great number of the creatures, but if the deep dwellers disable transportation or escape routes, the situation will rapidly grow dire as more terrible and ancient denizens are roused. DRIFT WORMS The Drift Worms are adherents of Nurgle known for lairing deeper in the recesses of Arkon than any other known group. Their day-to-day activities and exact methods of survival are a mystery, but they maintain monasteries to the Plague God to which all are welcome in time of need. However, the monasteries are islands in a sea of strange horrors that have claimed many wandering warriors, and dealings with the Plague God come at a price. NIGHT LORDS The Night Lords warband operating on Arkon Secundus is notable for being one of the few who have no peaceable dealings with any other group on the planet. They attack anyone and everyone in lightning strikes, using the spoils to sustain themselves, and are a growing nuisance. They will hunt easy human prey, but prefer antagonizing other chaos space marine warbands. PERFIDIOUS REX Perfidious Rex is a space cruiser easily identified by its markings as part of the original Emperor’s Children fleet dating back to the Heresy. However, that is the only thing that is clear about it. The Rex appears at random in broad daylight in the skies of Arkon Secundus, something which should be impossible for a number of reasons: One, it is far too large for atmospheric travel, and two, it appears immune to the planet’s radiation storms. The Perfidious Rex makes no attempt at communication or attack, floating silently through the sky before disappearing by some trick of the Warp for days, weeks, or months. No attempt to board the vessel has ever been successful. Between multiple competing warbands, the radiation storms, and the Rex’s seemingly impenetrable hull, all those who have tried have failed, and most have met with dire misfortune in the attempt. Even Croen the Peddler has given up on the idea of learning the ship’s mysteries, and the vessel has earned a reputation as a herald of woe. Though some swear they have seen signs of life on the ship, others forsake it as an illusion or psychic echo of some forgotten event. CHARACTER BACKGROUND IDEAS There are a number of good explanations for how characters ended up on Arkon Secundus, or are about to go there. Condemned by the Flawless Host. The Visionary found your aesthetic standards wanting, decided you were annoying, or was taken by a flight of whimsy, and sentenced you to exile or death by stranding you on Arkon Secundus. Perhaps you meant to rebel against him with others. Commanded by the Flawless Host. The Visionary has a special task for you on Arkon Secundus. Whether he expects you to succeed, or even ever to see you again, is another matter, but Slaanesh wills it, or so he says. Curious Magi. In the radiation storms and mysterious phenomena surrounding Arkon Secundus, you see the hand of the Gods and the great mysteries of the Warp. You are certain that the planet has some magical power for you to harness, if only you could study it more closely. Dark Mechanicum Test Subject. You were shot into the planet via a specially-created test craft or torpedo designed to monitor certain effects on the vehicle and/or your body as you made contact with the planet. Now that you survived landfall, your life, death, or ultimate destiny is of no further concern to the ones who sent you here. Desperate Explorer. Most archeotech is already claimed by one chaos lord or another, and they aren’t giving it up, so opportunities like Arkon Secundus are the only path left to you if you wish to possess such power. You might have enough hubris to believe you can actually escape somehow as well, or finding archeotech might be enough in and of itself. Glory and Infamy. With no great deeds to your name, you are never the less determined to rule Arkon Secundus to show your worthiness to the Gods, and your arrival amounts to a religious pilgrimage. On the Run. You ran afoul of your own chaos faction, or your original group was destroyed by another that is not content until they finish the job. Thus you willingly escaped to Arkon Secundus to avoid their wrath. Spawn of Croen. You have forgotten how you originally arrived on Arkon Secundus, as once Croen the Peddler got its hands on you, it transformed you into some mechanical horror. You were fortunate enough to be of some further use to the heretek, or he has become bored with you and moved on to other projects. Tricked by the Warp. You were lured to Arkon Secundus by communication from the planet’s surface that reached you in space, motivating you to visit the planet with urgency. Now that you are here, you find that you were deluded by the powers of Chaos and must forget the life you had. Vengeful. Your most hated enemy of old is somewhere on Arkon Secundus, and you will stop at nothing to destroy him.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 11:37
|
|
|
While some of that is good and cool (I liked the Khorne lunatics being basically radio show hosts), I'd like to return to the SYSTEM PROBLEMS: Our group talked a lot about one of the stupidest talents in Dark Heresy 2nd edition tonight, Inescapable attack. Now for those that don't remember (or don't own the book), it's the really, really good t2 talent that lets the attacker give minuses to the opponent's dodge and parry rolls - to be precise, -10 ten per [b]every degree of success[/b in the attack roll]. Everyone except the minmaxer in the group agreed that the talent was horseshit, and we ended up nerfing it by making it called shot-only, indirectly buffing called shot. It had been nagging at least me and the GM out of the group for a while, and the rest who found out about it felt it was complete bullshit as well, since it very easily completely destroys the greatest defense both PCs and NPCs have - enemy with that and lightning attack or an automatic weapon could just completely destroy a PC with no chance of survival except with a Force Field, and vice versa. Has anyone elses groups done anything about that talent?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 23:42
|
|
|
SpiritOfLenin posted:While some of that is good and cool (I liked the Khorne lunatics being basically radio show hosts), I'd like to return to the SYSTEM PROBLEMS: Not that it's not a bullshit talent, but the text does specifically list out all of the actions you can use them with and full/semi-auto, lightning and swift attacks are not listed. Only standard attacks (and a few others) that only give you 1 hit no matter how well you roll. Back in the beta, they changed the way dodge worked to basically make every attack like this. The way the math works out, it's way easier to stack bonuses to attack than it is dodge - the result being that attacks made by anyone at least competent were impossible to avoid.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 23:50
|
|
|
Oh whoops. Still a bullshit talent. Also why on earth would they think that would have been a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 23:52
|
|
|
SpiritOfLenin posted:Oh whoops. Still a bullshit talent. I challenge you to point out a single good idea in the DH2 book.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 23:56
|
|
|
Why does that exist when feinting is a thing? Or is feinting not a thing in DH2?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 23:57
|
|
|
Clanpot Shake posted:I challenge you to point out a single good idea in the DH2 book. Role and other origin bonuses are cool and good (mostly). edit: also feinting is still a thing. That talent is the stupidest idea.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2015 23:59
|
|
|
Feinting doesn't work for ranged attacks. Honestly going to some system that doesn't use limited reactions would probably have been best, but until then we've got the mess of sufficiently competent characters having Perfect Defenses against one or (with Step Aside) two attacks per round. Parry isn't hard to bring up with the ubiquity of Balanced weapons and the fact that it scales off your attack stat anyway, while super-Dodge is mostly in the realm of Eldar and Dark Eldar. There was one point in my Black Crusade game where I put a few Harlequins in a solo combat against the party psyker, and things rapidly boiled down to a flurry of misses. To his credit, the psyker had a fair bit of damage reduction and stealth; the Harlequins just had stupid-high Dodge/flip belts/Step Aside. (Things ended when we collectively realized the problem and decided that the resident Lord of Change was going to make an entrance.) Edit: Basically, Inescapable Attack is correcting a symptom but not the cause behind it. NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Mar 6, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2015 00:06
|
|
|
If players are using "overpowered" talents then you just lie harder about rolls and make their opponents tougher. Or kill their PC in a funny and interesting enough way that they're not mad.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2015 03:12
|
|
|
Man, i dunno, my favorite Only War pc was a dodge monkey who by the end of the campaign, with the assistance of those unnatural AB boosting drugs could've dodged a direct tank cannon hit, so I'm pretty okay with it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2015 03:27
|
|
|
I didn't notice this new Inescapable Attack talent before when reading DH2. Honestly just change the amount per DoS to 5 instead of 10, and increase the requirements to Ballistic Skill 50 or Weapon Skill 50, Perception 40 instead of Ballistic Skill 40 or Weapon Skill 40, Perception 35. At least that's how I would try to fix it in my game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2015 03:32
|
|
|
Anyone share my view that dodge is kind of a poo poo mechanic? For being a single skill it's disproportionately powerful, and indeed as was mentioned the most powerful defense available to a character. Wounds, toughness and armor play a part, but the biggest factor is a binary "Do I have dodge?". That's boring. It also makes "Do I have the aptitudes for dodge?" one of the biggest deciding factors of whether a character is good at combat. As a band-aid I'm thinking of having every PC start with a level of dodge. There's other reasons I don't like it. It usually doesn't present any interesting tactical choice (it's a foregone conclusion that yes, you do use dodge this round) and just causes an extra roll, and as an unnecessary extra factor makes estimating hit chances at a glance that much more difficult. Part of the problem is the type of combat I like to run and play. I think the books assume a combat encounter should have a large amount of useless mooks backed up by a few more threatening enemies. In that case there might often be multiple enemies firing on you each turn, so dodge does present a gameplay choice, (which one do I dodge?) but in my group's experience all that sort of combat results in is a four hour slog through all the useless mooks. I tend to cut that out and just have a smaller number of enemies, each of them seriously threatening and closer to the PCs in power level. A while back I tried to think up a fairer and more gameplay-interesting replacement for dodge but I came up empty. I don't wanna just remove it - then I'd have to do some sort of system-wide adjustment to make combat slightly less fatal overall - and it's hard to come up with something simple and elegant that fits with the current system. I'm curious if anyone's got any ideas or interesting house rules for dodge.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2015 06:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 21:42 |
|
|
Yes. Dodge is a annoying mechanic, particularly as for some reason they didnt decide to let parry give you bullet deflection abilities. Ultimately it is not as dumb as Aptitudes because dodge pretty much does what it says.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2015 06:52
|
|
