/40krpg/ 40k Roleplay General

I'm sure someone at some point will make one, but no idea when that will be

That depends on the composition of the prisoners. If there are enough Voidborn among them, the idiots will be quickly subdued.

I never understood this. Aren't imperial ships clad in like 10 meters of adamantium? Let's say that is only valid for ships bigger than a cruiser. At least 1 meter thick armor in a frigate would be the less necesary to sustain a direct hit from a macro. I don't think there is a portable weapon strong enough to depresurize a ship (maybe vortex or focused melta...)

The space between the outer and inner hull wouldn't be pressurized to prevent explosive decompression if and when the outer hull is damaged. The down side is if the inner hull is compromised, a somewhat rarer occurrence comparatively, Bad Things happen.

>story time
Alright, bear with me. I'm typing as I go.

This is a Black Crusade campaign that recently started up. It's a classic opening: We're all prisoners. We're on an Arbites prison ship, probably en route to some penal world somewhere. Most recent arrest was pretty much all crew on a trader smuggling guns.
Party consists of:
>Maximilian, very compact and muscular disgraced noble from Sephiris Secundus. Very bitter, but charismatic. Arrested on suspicion of gun running. Mechanically an Apostate leaning toward Khorne.
>Dimee, "Cat", tall-ish vain young noble lady. Supportive bordering on boot-licking. Smooth-talking and charming. Was on smuggling ship. Also a witch.
>Juan Baptiste Valentine, the most French posh pirate you could think of. Small black beard and moustache. Very upset about his position. Don't they know who he is?! Mechanically a Renegade leaning to Slaneesh.
>John Smith, some huge, weirdly nihilistic bloke that keeps spouting "wisdom". Seems to be missing something. Apostate leaning toward Nurgle, I think. Suspected accomplice of arms smuggling.
>Augustin Uri, tall and slender with some serious passive-aggressive issues. Obviously nervous. Has some weird augmentation that's almost unnoticeable. Was employed on the smuggling ship in exchange for passage. Heretek with Tzeentchian leanings.

I should point out I was playing Uri, so this'll be told mostly from his POV. Also important is a piece in his backstory, where he's a known associate with the Tennenites and wanted by the AdMech due to forbidden research into Silica Animus. Before this, he was an undercover agent for the Techsorcists, although not one himself. This will be important.

>Cont.

>Juan
>French

Sure it isn't Jean?

>disgraced noble
>boot-licking. Smooth-talking and charming lacky
>French posh pirate
>huge, weirdly nihilistic smuggler

And you didn't play rogue trader?

Probably. I can't spell, I guess.

Jean wants his damn ship back, so it's not out of the question.

We've been in this cell for a week, with the wardens being incredibly cruel, humiliating and starving us for no reason but for their enjoyment. We grew tired. As the lights went out for "night-time", we decided to break out. Bending up the bars using a bed leg and some sack cloth, we snuck out and onto the watch-platform. Since the door was armoured, we figured maybe we could crack open a window and get in that way. It's just that they were on the second floor.

And it's now that we discover that Cat's a witch, as she picked up the table leg with her mind and swung it against the glass, pushing her powers

Triggering a roll on Perils.

Causing Mass Possession in d100 metre radius.
>roll
In a 100m radius.

The party was OK, except for Maximilian, who got possessed by a Bloodletter (we think) and went berserk. The rest of the cell block and the wardens? Less luck. After chucking the possessed Max through the window and letting him make short work of the enforcers, we break out onto the ship, dressed in a looted Arbites Judge armour and stolen fatigues, we bullshitted our way forward. In the aftermath of the prison break, we also erased ourselves from the local prisoner register. We even managed to pick up our stuff from the evidence locker (although it's in a box. Not exactly Arbites standard gear). All was well until a checkpoint with palm scanner foiled that brilliant plan. Luckily for us, that's when the Eldar Corsairs decided to show up.

A macrocannon hit shook the ship, giving us just enough time to defeat the twelve (!) Arbites officers and their murder servitors and escape. More smooth-talking follows, where we bluff ourselves to the bridge proper. Our plan was to get Uri into the ship cogitator and get us some permissions (namely, all of them), but shit hit the fan even harder when friggin' jetbikes showed up.
>Cont.

"That's when the Eldar Corsairs decided to show up"

I can only imagine how well this interaction is going to go

The combined armory in the OP was recently updated to have a decent chunk of the DH2 stuff, just missing enemies without and beyond.
The shits making these threads never bother updating the OP pasta though so you wouldn't know it.

This causes even more chaos, as the Arbites struggle to set up a good boarding defence.

So we get on the bridge when I'm struck with an idea. A lie so good it's pretty much truth, because that's exactly what it is.

Digging out the 20-year old cognomen he had as an undercover agent (registered under the name Charles André), I convince the Magos Juris on the ship that a dangerous and insidious heretek under the name Augustin Uri was loose on the ship. He's suspected to have rallied his cellmates to escape and he has probably already erased his name from the cellblock registers. If you look into your backups, you'll find him there still. They've infiltrated the ship and may be trying to compromise the cogitator and possibly even rally the prisoners to some kind of obscene ritual. I, however, can secure your cogitator, assuming you can grant me access.

And it WORKED. I suppose being under that amount of stress makes you kind of stressed out.

Not only that, but I gained full administrator access to the cogitator.
Thus:
>Open every holding cell
>Wait 30 sec
>Open all doors between holding cells and arms storage
>Show "Guns are in cargo bay 18-F" on ALL terminal screens (even the ones on doors)
>Wait 2 minutes
>Forkbomb

Then, we made our excuses and ran and hid. I have no idea how this'll pan out, but we sure caused some lower-case "c" chaos. We expect the corsairs, looking for cheap slaves and loot, might think twice if suddenly the ship population tripled, the new ones being angry, armed hardened criminals. Then there's the ??? step. Then we take the ship.

Don't blame me, I just copied the OP pasta from the last thread

bump

What system would be best for running a small group of IG that get tossed into insane missions all across a sector. There will be space combat, exploration, diplomacy and a ton of killing.

Only War

Seconding this. Only War PCs can get up to a lot of insanity, even leaving aside the fact that they might start the game with DAH BEHNBLAHDE. Krak missiles covereth a multitude of sins.

Basically I want to run a 40K version of Moby-Dick with a mad Imperial Navy admiral chasing a pale, massive Tyranid bioship that splintered off from a larger hive fleet and began to diversify itself from an extends period away from its mother fleet. I'd like to follow it up with some more retelling a of classic stories of the players are cool with that.

The only problem is I've never used space combat like that I an RPG before so I'm not sure how it would work.

Well, ship to ship combat is in Rogue Trader. Unless the PCs are bridge crew, though, what they will be doing during void combat is repelling boarding actions, putting down minor mutinies, running rescue ops, and helping repair crews. Also dealing with whatever crawls out of the Black Holds. The game would be claustrophobic and frenzied, plenty of cover, short ranges, and likely large numbers of adversaries.
If they are bridge crew, then Rogue Trader, adapt to fit.

Thanks!

Rogue Trader is particularly adapted to have the PCs run multiple characters.

I tried it after reading the Darkstryder campaign for WEG's Star Wars that has a design similar to rogue trader, and it works pretty well, especially with medium-to-high mortality campaigns.

And this way it prevents the Rogue trader and the Navigator going planetside to explore every ruin.

>The shits making these threads never bother updating the OP pasta though so you wouldn't know it.

Because nobody bothered giving out the new version number so it CAN be updated, scooter.

>Then there's the ??? step.

Seems like there's always one of those, huh?
Sounds like a blast, I'm going to have to get my group to play sometime.

>Seems like there's always one of those, huh?

No plan is complete without one.

I am so stealing this (and possibly porting it over to a modified DH, since we have the actual book for that) for when I next need to GM.

>he wants to prevent the rogue trader and navigator going planetside to explore every ruin

My seneschal died three combats in a row because he had no melee skills

It's called Dodge and a pistol. Or possibly a few armsmen to hide behind.

I'm planning on playing a Senechal in a game my buddy is running. Is dual wielding 2 (at least) Good craftsmanship Plasma pistols viable, or should I stick with hellpistols/bolt pistols?

plasma isn't super good, but it'll do enough.

last time I played a seneschal I went with an inferno pistol. was hilarious.

The Range on that is an issue if I'm dual wielding it, but theoretically I could use a hellgun instead for longer ranges. Certainly a thing worth considering. Thanks for the advice

yeah I didn't dual wield it, just kind of kept it as an uh-oh button in case somebody got up in my character's grill.

I'm guessing it worked?

let's just say there were a few times when the rest of the party heard a wimpy-sounding scream followed by a roaring blast, and then arrive to see my poor fellow calming himself down from panic with a pile of ashes that used to be some threat or another on the ground in front of him.

unfortunately sometimes he missed. don't do that; the inferno pistol only has three shots a clip.

Yeah, that sounds like it could be an issue. The dice gods either love or hate me, there's no middle ground

Genestealers don't give a fuck

Then you didn't use enough armsmen.

And besides, any that don't survive unharmed can be turned into servitors by your friendly neighborhood Explorator

Really, there's no such thing as "enough" armsmen.

Have you ever taken 90% casualties? Not like on an expedition, I mean the entire ships crew. That happened every time we had a space battle

That doesn't sound sustainable

>One of our favorite NPCs crashlands in the middle of enemy territory
>Head off in a tank to go save her
>Find a barrier of 20 traitor guardsmen and 6 Leman Russes in the way
>Psyker uses Invisibility on the tank, gets a peril that causes a giant lightning storm to appear around us
>Ogryn uses Intimidate
>All this combined puts all the guardsmen into a catatonic state

gg no re

>that pic

Welp, found MY next Only War character.

I just realized that none of the specializations in OW actually give any of the Linguistics skills.

Which I find hilarious, as that means that there are illiterate; Commissars, Ministorum Priests, and Tech-Priest Enginseers in Deathworld and other non-literate regiments.

I always waived that bit for those specializations, just for sense's sake. Though not always the one from Highborn that makes them illiterate in Low Gothic, because that's just too goddamn funny sometimes.

This is why the rules for mixed regiments for specialists exist. That and playing Rogue Trader House Guard regiments with noble-born dynasts as a dedicated officer corps commanding locally raised troops is fucking hilarious.

Your ship would be a hulk long before this point unless you get decapitated/ depressurized every combat.

>Pah! Low Gothic, if you cpuld call it that, is but the commoner's tongue! Something to be 'Spoken', much less 'Written', by gutter trash and filth.
>My Lord, I've a note!
>Well, what's it say?
>I know not, 'tis written in the 'Language' of the commonfolk.
>A pity. But not really, best be off to where the Emperor commands us to be.
>Inside the note was a hastily written plea for help and reinforcements, as well as a warning regarding the Ork forces being nearer than first thought. How it ended up in the hands of the nearby Highborn regiment is a mystery, and a truely saddening event as they were to soon find out. But not really.

Not him, but I mentioned it a couple threads ago. It's also in the filename if you click the Mediafire folder link.

Ah, okay, will note that sucker down then for next time.

What sort of homebrew and homerules do you use?

Ogryn get Low-Tech weapon training
Backpack ammo/power packs use the DH 2e rules
No more than 2 Support Specialists per squad
Specialist gear consumables and ammo are replenished same as regular issue gear, but none of the hardware itself is

...and a few other clarifications to regimental kit selection that I'm having a little trouble recalling at the moment.

I have several entire google docs full of homebrew fluff, gear, and ship components, along with several equipment patterns native to my homebrew sector that all follow broad thematic lines, including:
>Raider Pattern: A semi-official term for garage war gear made by voidborn, for voidborn. Tend to be deadly as shit, cripplingly short-ranged, often unreliable. Also covers a wide sampling of weapons and wargear given unsanctioned modifications that put them in this category. Examples: Void-sealed flak armor covered in ripper spikes to tear open enemy voidsuits with, massive-bore shotguns solid enough to beat people to death with.
>Iniquitous/Iniquity Pattern: Also only semi-official, a catch-all term for unsanctioned technology that can and will get you hanged or servitorized for possessing.
>Sanctis-Pattern: Produced by the local extreme conservative sect of the Cult Mechanicus, Sanctis-Pattern gear is usually bulky, ugly, and even downright regressive-looking, but it will never, ever, EVER fail on you. Period. No matter what you try to do to it.
Along with the usual local world patterns and manufacturing house trademarks, it works pretty well, IMO.

Ok, how much XP would an Only War Character get if they were going into a Deathwatch game, and is there a place to find all of these sort of XP Conversions.

Why the hell would a guardsman get into a DW game?

Basically just having different sorts of characters in one game, ranging from inquisitors, rogue trader personnel, Space Marines. Also, I want to know to be able to make comparable NPC's, like really badass Guardsmen.

It is a fuckton easier to port a marine into other games considering kill marines are a thing.

I meant XP values more than the game itself.

That is pretty difficult to do considering how different the DW exp tables go and how the OW costs in terms of advancements go.

Ok, the default game is going to be Only War after looking at mechanics and such, what would be the best way to put a space marine in said game, give the guards more XP, or some other action to help out the little guy just a bit?

5000 exp and 30 logistics is a good start.

>YES ACCEPTABLE

Is there anything in DH2 that allows you to better duel wield basic weapons?

The GM and I homeruled a conversion of the cybernetic resurrection to revive a character from a previous campaign at character creation, giving it strength and toughness in the 40s off the bad, but agility so shitty I had to spend all the experience from first session on two agility upgrades to be able to walk or run like a normal human being. So far I had to rely on just waddling towards the enemy like a zombie or wait for them to charge me. A big silent armoured cyborg zombie with a big hammer and later chain axe.

Anyway, next time I'm thinking about throwing some points after shooting. I had figured I'd pick up some ballistic skill and bulging biceps and lug around a heavy stubber or autocannon. Until I figured it would be fun to wield a shotgun and an autogun or bolter or whatever like Terminator, because fuck it, I'm already a slow cyborg with retard strength. So is it doable without taking penalties so massive that I'll have more luck throwing the guns at them?

I wouldn't allow it unless you cut them down massively.

FFG wisely got rid of the hilariously broken bullshit that was recoil gloves and their vague description being read as "dual wield lasrifles with normal accuracy, lol" instead of the much more niche "don't need to be stupid strong to one hand a hand cannon"

>FFG wisely got rid of the hilariously broken bullshit that was recoil gloves

Wait, when did they finally fix that?

I always rather liked Recoil Gloves as 'Can 1 hand a basic weapon but can't TWF with them'. So you can go with the Bolter + Power Sword that turns up on a lot of models.

I think you can technically one hand basics still, but I'm pretty sure they made it clear no dual wielding two basics. Bolter + CCW should be fine.

And honestly, any GM that lets their players dual wield basic class weapons deserves whatever happens to their campaigns.

Anybody here had good times or !FUN! with an OW regiment that had the Incompetent Leadership or Doomed drawback?

IIRC You can fit almost a platoon of men in a standard ship-to-ground transport, HOW did you even get your seneschal into melee?

Yeah, but those guys don't really give a fuck if you're halfway competent in melee either.

So, I'm trying to write up a campaign for Deathwatch.
Basic idea is that the Kill team is responsible for halting an Ork Waagh, delaying and sabotaging it as much as possible so that proper Imperial response can be brought against it.

The first couple of missions would follow this pretty straightforward. They'd first rescue a Deathwatch scout captured by the Orks on a world mere days from falling, then they'd help fight off the first strikes on a second world, and the third mission and general end to the first arc would be a mission to destroy several of the Orks more capable space ships to slow the progress and buy themselves some time.

Now, at this point I'd want my players to find some evidence of Alpha Legion involvement, though not quite so blantant. They'd find evidence of someone watching and studying the Orks in secret, with no clear idea of who it is.

From here, I'd work on bringing the Alpha Legion to bear as the hidden threat. There'd be more and more clues that the Legion is involved, with several closer and closer encounters. I'd finish this one with a mission that involves an Imperial Garrison, where the Kill Team is sent on some pretense of a mission(I haven't decided what). At this point, the Legion would arrive with a Kill Team of their own, disguised as the party. They'd use this chance to accuse the Kill Team of being heretics of some description, and force the Kill Team to sneak or fight their way through Loyal Imperial forces to confront their imposters, and finally have a direct link to the Legion.

Act three would be about balancing dealing with the Legion and the recovering Orks, as the Legion seems to work towards some mysterious end. I'd want the Legion to appear to be helping the Orks, or at least convince my players of this. Of course, the truth would be that the Legion is doing everything it can to stop the Waagh, and that the Orks are really just pushing that hard. I'd want to finish this in such a way that the Kill Team is in a position to stop the Waagh,
or at least disable it temporally, likely due to some Legion plot on the cusp of activation. The players would then be faced with the choice of either using the Legion's plans to stop the Waagh they are sworn to destroy(leaving the Imperium at the mercy of whatever the Legion had planned after the Waagh is stopped), or leave the Imperium stuck in yet another terrible meat grinder against a foe they can't reasonably defeat, something the Legion has been trying desperately to stop.

That's the overall plot, but what I'm looking for is both some simple missions to fill in the gaps, and some ways to get the Legion involved, overtly and covertly. One of the things I wanted to try and do is have the Legion alternate between avoiding the Kill Team(as their missions coincide, so as long as they don't counter each other they work towards the same purpose) and actively attempting to destroy the Kill Team(More common after they begin looking for Legion involvement, but as stated above, the first overt run in with the Legion is when they attempt to use Imperial forces to murder the team). This is half because I have it in the back of my head that there's more than one cell of Legion involved in the campaign, and they are working at cross purposes. I think it's a neat idea, but only for myself, I don't intend to drag it into the game. It will just make the plot that much more complicated, and I think it would just make the plot twist not nearly as interesting. I do want to keep it in mind, however, to make the Legion's actions that much more convoluted.

So I guess any ideas for how to show off some of the Legion's shadow hanging over various events combined or various missions the Kill Team can run would be awesome.

Incompetent Leadership:

Deployed to reinforce a feudal world the 13th Heavy Infantry was set down at a rough field base outside the city Kiergrade. City was held by loyal forces. Traitor forces and cultist were mustering and gathering strength on a broad plain and a set of towns to the west. They would attack within a month.

The 13th is siege infantry and could have rendered Kiergrade effectively unassailable and shatter the feudal world host when the attack came, then follow it up with a counter attack. That's what the tactica imperalis would say. That's what someone that could only beat a Total War game on Easy would say.

Regimental leadership could not beat a total war game on Easy.

He immediately broke the 13th into squad sized units to advance on as broad a front as possible into the open plain in an attempt to win faster. Most squads met nothing. Our squad was one of the ones that, out of support from the rest of the regiment, was attacked by more then two hundred primitive cultist and cavalry.

youtu.be/RGENWAK9i08?t=43

We had to hold out for sixty hours in a increasingly ruined abbey until reinforcements could march to us.

Magnificent.

How would I make a calm abnormally serene Psyker?

>A character using a recoil glove can fire a Basic weapon with one hand without the normal 20 penalty
Nope.

Well, I'm happy either way, as long as FFG NEVER EVER makes that level of mistake again.

Did give rise to one fun quote.

>Sergeant: Fall back, there's too many of them!
>Grunt: You can't say that, the commissar will shoot you for cowardice.
>Sergeant: Flak, right!.. Everyone, double time! Assault and secure that abbey! It's of vital strategic importance!

I'm pretty sure they are going to do just that, every time, forever more. There's even artwork of a guy with two hotshot lasguns.

>“Inquisitor Stryke, now it’s your turn, tell us a joke.”
>“It’s not fitting for a inquisitor to make people laugh, but very well, I will try.”

>“At the capital of Hive world Heimdal there was a huge concert celebrate the great saint Celestine. Acts performed hymns and songs in the honor of the emperor and the saint. After an exquisite performance on harmonica the announcer presented the next act and a family of a father, mother, son and daughter takes the stage. The announcer ask them what their act is called. But before they could answer the air shimmers and a demon of Slanesh appears. It chop of the head of the annoncer with a claw so that blood sprays all over the family. Then it rips of the clothes of the father and chew of his genital. The daughter screams in horror until the demon slashes the mother’s belly open and strangles the her with the entrails. The son frozen in terror defecate so that his legs are covered in brown stains. The demon proceeds to peel out the eyes of him and eat them before he chops of both the arms and legs of his screaming victim. You may be asking yourself, ‘why didn’t the family run when they saw the demon appear in front of them?’ Perhaps they were frozen in horror, perhaps the demon’s wicked power kept them in place, anyway that’s another story. So the demon is licking up the blood and shit from the floor when suddenly a Grey Knight enters the scene and with one swift stroke with his force sword banish the demon back to the warp. The Grey Knight then sticks his chest out and proudly announces: ‘I call it The Aristocrats!’”

>That picture
Nope.

Aren't those usually on guys with power armor though?

Yeah but it's not like power armour lets you do it.

SM armour does last I checked.

I'm pretty sure it autostabilizes heavy weapons, so wielding one basic weapon doesn't seem out of the question

bump

I'm trying to improve my combats as a GM. I've run a shedload of campaigns and I feel like I've got a hang of character driven stories, PC/NPC interactions and NPC/NPC interactions, but I feel like I always let myself and my group down with combat.

So I ask, both players and GMs, has there ever been a combat that you've felt "That was a good fight", not a lucky RF that one-shotted a guy or bad luck that turned an easy combat deadly.

Would I be meming too hard if I made a Blood Raven for Deathwatch and named him brother Dismas?

The base mechanics of a fight are the most boring parts. A good fight uses scenery, tactics, unusual circumstances, and generally has memorable action. You also want to run fights quickly and know when to bend the rules in the name of fast and exciting options. My favorite three combats to run were the following:
>Fighting off enemy attack craft in the middle of debris-strewn freefall following orbital insertion
>Storming and mouseholing an apartment building full of angry gangbangers.
>Fighting through a dead, zero G station while protecting critically injured friends after the sudden yet inevitable betrayal of the jackass pirate ally.

Those do sound pretty exciting.

As the guy asking the question, I'd have to say the best combat I ran wasn't because of the locale of the fight but because of the NPC dynamics it established.
the Tl;dr is that the players fought a rival Inquisitor in a desert and eventually managed to capture her. Valkyries were flying about overhead as their rival deployed stormtroopers in an attempt to capture a mutually beneficial objective. But when I ran it, I just felt bored I guess. Maybe I'm just not seeing it through the lens of the players.

Well, don't throw in fights for the sake of it, I'd say. When a fight happens in our games, it tends to be a BIG event, the GM has a whole map drawn up, we might spend all or most of a session on it.
Some of the cooler ones:
>Making a last stand with a Tau Commander against a huuuuuge wave of Tyranids while we desperately tried to get a pickup.
>A fight on the bridge of a ship against a Plague Cult Psyker who was summoning Plague Bearers to fight us. The Nobleman Assassin literally got his guts ripped open, was at max fatigue but kept himself walking with stimms. He hero-staggered about, firing his flame pistol into the daemons and helped drive them back.
>Fighting a living statue on a Warp-tainted planet, and killing said giant statue by dropping an even bigger column on it.
>Half the party fought a Necron Lord within his tomb, while the other half fought a rival Inquisitor and his bodyguards, with a gunship providing him close air support. The Psyker and I dealt with the Inquisitor, while *our* Inquisitor managed to jump onto the Gunship before it got skyborn and wound up cutting her way into the cockpit and taking control of it. It was rad.