/40krpg/ 40k RPG General

So I've ran my first couple sessions of DH2E and I'm noticing something. My players with Accurate weapons are basically murderfucking the enemy with some lucky rolls and insane damage, while the Imperial Guard player who tried to roll up a total badass is falling behind in the damage dealing.

Are there penalties on sniper-type weapons at close range? Is there something I can do to set this guy up better? He's got a lasgun and a sword, is there some way to make them better beyond mono and red-dot sights?

Slightly related, I found rules for shooting INTO melee, but not rules for being engaged in a melee but firing at a target outside of it. Any advice?

Unless if it is actually in melee, no. Have more enemies, but make them weaker. Tox dispenser and higher power settings on the lasgun. Accurate weapons are good for taking out one (1) target every turn, remember that.

Unless if you're shooting into another melee, no penalty.

Also, accurate weapons get the insane bonus only if they aim. If the guy has to move, it's just a regular gun.

Thanks user, I was eyeballing that one. Inescapable Attack might go well with all of that too.

Blademaster is fantastic. You'll never miss.

Navigator with 50 Strength/Toughness, Fear (1), Regeneration and 16 wounds, here. In our first session, we encounter an artifact-possessed Navigator with power fists slinging psychic energy everywhere and raising the dead. The Void-Master drops her gun, and charges the big bad unarmed in an attempt to remove the offending artifact, getting herself surrounded by three zombie crewmen in the process. The next turn she's knocked unconscious and set on fire by a hellgun blast, whereupon we drag her burning body into a side room and seal the door.

The only one who got shot more than the Void-Master was me, but between soaking 12 damagefrom armor and toughness and regenerating 1 wound a round, I came out unscathed, while she had to use her last Fate point to get back to -2 wounds after being treated by our medically-inept medicae.

How do I politefully tell her to let me do the stupid melee shit?

"Let me do the stupid melee shit."

Crushing Blow, Devastating Assault, One On One, Inescapable Attack, Double Team, Blademaster, Hammer Blow, Swift Attack, Lightning Attack or Whirlwind of Death for attack.
Hardy, True Grit, Combat Master, Step Aside for defence.
Get Ambidextrous and Unarmed Specialist if you want to rekk shit with your BEAR HANDS.

>No Frenzy and Battle Rage

I'll definitely be picking most of them up eventually, but what should I go for first? Crushing Blow seems like a no-brainer since it's so cheap for me, but what next? Maybe something to provide extra defence? Thanks for the reply by the way.

This, Frenzy has downsides but with Battle Rage it becomes amazing.

Also to consider is that the bonuses and penalties from Frenzy are to the characteristic itself, not tests meaning that you get +1 damage and soak at least. +2 damage if you have Crushing Blow and your WB is an even number.

Step Aside and Devastating Assault.
Also these

Last session I DMed the party got captured by a Genestealer, they got out and their Inquisitor got them medical attention after two other medical stops failed to spot anything wrong.
My question is how many Corruption Points should I assign? I don't want to be a dick as I shouldn't have put two starting characters against a genestealer but they should probably have some from xeno filth infesting them like that.

Give them ~5-8+1d5 Insanity points instead.

No Corruption, that's moral and warp taint.
However I'd give them semi-persistent toughness or willpower damage.

Thanks, sounds like their souls are safe for now.

How does looting work in Dark Heresy?

I am aware of the setting and that we aren't your classic "adventurers", and we get income which we use to buy things, but what about the stuff we acquire without exchanging currency (you know the way)

We take only what we keep? Or items that are merely valuable and not useful can be sold off? Or we have to acquire an in-game fence?

It works on the basis of 'what can you get away with' and 'what will the GM allow you to get away with'

Ask him about his attitude and policy towards this kind of shit

I'm thinking of running a dh game based on rooting out heretics while recolonizing a world? Has anyone done a game that has revolved around colonization before?

I think Colonization is more of a Rogue Trader ting than Inquisitorial, but still, Stars of Inequity is the only book that comes to mind.

Which exotic melee weapons? Chain and power and what else?

Unless you go for a specific build and/or are a --psyker, power weapons are pretty much the king of close combat, though it's probably useful (and fluffy) to make sure you've got a decent number of WT talents for when you can't get your hands on, or lose your ability to use that nifty power sword. Chain, low-tech, power and maybe shocking are good bets.

Rogue Trader deals with colonization, but the rules lean towards a tantrum spiral, which makes sense since it assumes your colony is out in the middle of fucking nowhere with no readily available Imperial infrastructure to prop you up. What is more appropriate for DH than colonization, is containment. A planet, or even system wide cordon and quarantine. Labor camps going up, purging out nests of heretics/abominations, making sure no one in the chain of command (or 3rd parties) are cutting corners, smuggling things out, harboring fugitives. Consider what was the root of the planet going to shit, why the Imperium is devoting time, manpower, and resources to reclaiming it as intact as possible (lot of wiggle room there), and what comes after. Finally, no matter what made things in this part of space go to shit, it prolly corrupted people. Now, the Imperium is throwing more men at the problem, which means more targets for corruption.

Is there any way to keep a chaos spawn alive that doesn't involve 24/7 maintenance?

Leave it in the warp?

Stasis field?

Carefully and systematically reorganize it into a room-sized flesh carpet with a maw, hooked into warp-shock generators and Sarcosan wave generators that constantly revive necrotic tissue and regularly shoot it full of warp-lightning to keep it alive and in unspeakable agony?

It is a chaos spawn, it is in unspeakable agony simply by existing.

What's your favorite ordo of the big 3 and puritan or radical?

But what's the point of having one if you can't add to its torment?

Puritan Malleus, there's something to be said about those not only wilfully, but diligently ignorant to knowledge that would drive them to Chaos.

A lot of 'things man was not meant to know' vibes and actually quite commendable by some points of view, at least for the pragmatic puritans.

That would be like adding spikes to a room filled with d3s and Lego blocks.

What's the point?

Radical xenos, make all the meat shields you can of the other aliens, or more idealisticly, peace one day, sustained peace

How do I 40kify the 2014 Gaza-Lebanon conflict without going full /pol/ or oversimplifying the nature of the war? I want to dump my DH group into a situation where they need to purge heresy against a backdrop where everyone involved on all sides is questionable at minimum, with none of the factions involved expressly being the heretical group in question.

dump your DH group into a situation where they need to purge heresy against a backdrop where everyone involved on all sides is questionable at minimum, with none of the factions involved expressly being the heretical group in question

but don't make it the gaza-lebanon conflict of 2014

ordo chronos

I kind of like Radical Xenos and Puritan (preferrably Monodominant) Malleus. Both are great for fucking with what your players expect or can get around. A monodominant Malleus gives no shits and doesn't compromise, making him extremely useful as a roadblock in a campaign, although not an antagonist.

Radical Ordo Xenos, though, make for fun neutral NPCs. Gain their trust and you can use them as backup but also as a buyer for rare xenotech. Alternatively, somebody to dump it to, should it be unsellable and dangerous.

Radical Xanthite teaching, of the Ordo Hereticus.
Chaos is a tool and it should be used. It is especially delicious to use Chaos in fighting Chaos. One of my characters I am playing in a BC campaign is a Radical Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor that is masquerading as a Pirate Prince and building a network of assets and resources to wage war on Chaos warbands in the Screaming Vortex in order to (secretly) help the Imperium.

>>a Radical Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor that is masquerading as a Pirate Prince
So he's the captain of a ship, raiding other ships and planets to make money and empower himself, in charge of a crew of dangerous and evil malcontents. I'd say he's not so much 'masquerading as a Pirate Prince' as 'A Pirate Prince with pretensions of purity'.

That's what most Xanthite Inquisitors end up being unless they die, user, servants to Chaos that firmly believe they're doing the right thing and stopping Chaos.

Corruption is a hell of a drug that can drive people into serious delusion.

clearly, the only solution to combat the Star Killer is to revive the Astral Knights from their graves and fight on once more

How I use tyranids?

My idea is to set the setting in a hive city and have a small splinter fleet land on it and swarm inside. Less about facing a horde on the front lines and more things coming through the walls.

My group hasn't decided on which game we're doing yet. This is less a question on how to use them in a system and more about how to display/use them accurately as a gm/storyteller.

have you ever watched Alien (or the sequel)?
do that.

Had this up in the doppel-thread that died, but r8 my infiltrators mates.

I've been making a lot of Guard units lately.

Definitely run it like a mix of Xenomorphs and Zerg. Tyranids are supposed to be really scary. They're stealthy and frightening, but when they do decide to strike they strike with overwhelming force. They don't just come out of the walls, they drown the people in the rooms.

How do I figure out if a monster is going to rape my Rogue Trader's party or be a mild inconvenience between dinner and supper? So far I'm running published adventures straight-up but I want to inject a little extra into them using monsters from the bestiary and other books, but I'm worried about picking a new beast too strong or too weak for the players.

Is there any quick way to figure out a monster's power vs a group of average rank X?

Well, part of his backstory is that he was recruited as an orphan and trained up in the Inquisitorial version of a Cognitae school, then volunteered to have his mind locked and wiped before being sent into the SV. Our first session had him raiding a shrine world and coming accross a trigger word that unlocks his true memories and mission and now he is stuck in a 'dual-mindset'. But he is slowly and surely slipping, as evidenced, among other things, by the fact that Slaanesh is positively thrilled by the turn of events and is showering her gifts upon him.

I heard FFG was dropping the line. So what does that mean for future editions of the products? is another publisher/developer going to pick it up?

Might well be Games Workshop itself. Either way, I doubt that they can just republish the old books. We'd be looking forward to Dark Heresy 3rd Edition.

So I had 3 player master race perfect number of players, but now one guy is dropping out. This game is Rogue Trader, a player is taking over to do a run of BC, and I was going to go forward with an Only War game.

So now we're down to 2 players and a GM, so Only War is probably not feasible. Especially as the leaving player in question REALLY pushed for it as an armored regiment, but now he's dropping and nobody else is really into the TANKS idea.

Now I'm torn about what system to use. My Only War storyline is somewhat salvageable into other lines with some work, but it might be better to just scrap it entirely.

Which system works best for a GM and 2 players? We'll probably try to recruit but I'm not optimistic considering we go full NEETmode and play 4+ hours a day 4 days a week.

Probably more Rogue Trader, no?

> Fairly powerful characters
> Makes sense & can afford to hire elite NPCs
> Large supply of mooks to throw at things, provided they do so intelligently.

I mean, I won't say no to that, but I really don't care much for the Class system RT has. I considered Deathwatch but I've never touched it and I'm worried 2 isn't enough.

Are you playing online or meeting up locally? I am currently looking for a game, any game.

Deathwatch is really heavy into combat and shooting and slashing opposed to investigation, from my experience. Bear that in mind.

Local, sorry.

And I'm aware of that, but that's kind of how these guys lean anyways.

It's ok, no harm in asking.

If they are in for the 'hack 'n' slash kill everything and then maybe ask questions' gameplay then nothing beats a space marine Kill Team.

Keep in mind their utter lack of self-preservation. Tyranids don't know fear. They don't care if they get shot, they don't care if they could die. Most don't even have the facilities to process such. All they have is their drive from the hivemind, and the hivemind says KILL CONSUME REPEAT.

I haven't played DW either but I understand that 2 is probably not enough either unless it's really run very carefully. Someone was telling a story of a 2-man DW game they had where one guy was trapped on a planet, surrounded by xenos/chaos (and low on gas) while player 2 was up in a space station, desperately trying to keep an space-station superweapon working and raining down judicious (not to mention accurate) orbital death in order to keep their compatriot alive.

I'm going to try running a game of BC for the first time soon along with it being my first time DMing
is there anything I should keep in mind?

Chapters:
Each Chapter introduces new mechanic(s) for using the system in a specific manner, as well as suggesting starting characteristics, XP and equipment for different power levels, also limits or expands species/home world/background/role choices.
Inquistion Acolytes - introduces subtly and influence
Chaos Acolytes - introduces alignment
Imperial Soldiers - introduces regiments, and comrades
Rogue Traders - introduces ship roles, and profit factor
Deathwatch - introduces Space Marine Chapters

Character Creation:

1. Choose Chapter (Space Marines/Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Cultists/Rogue Traders/Inquisitors/Only War Guardsmen)
2. Choose Species (Human/Abhuman (Ratling/Ogryn/Navigator (maybe?)/Xenos)
3. Choose Home World (gain traits/talents/skills/equipment)
4. Choose Background (gain traits/talents/skills/equipment)
5. Choose Role (gain traits/talents/skills/equipment)
6. Generate Divination
7. Generate Flavour (name, superstitution, demeanor, quirk, height, weight, age)
6. Generate Characteristics
7. Spend XP on aptitudes/traits/talents/skills.
8. Acquire Equipment

Skills
1. Gain skills from home world, background, role, divination, chapter, species, GM discretion and XP.
2. Gain skill from multiple sources (excluding XP) and improve skill by one rank.
3. Gain skill from multiple sources (excluding XP), and skill is already at max rank, gain Mastery (Skill).
4. Gain skill from multiple sources (excluding XP), and skill is already at max rank, and have Mastery (Skill), gain Talented (Skill)
5. Gain skill from multiple sources (excluding XP), and skill is already at max rank, and have Mastery (Skill), and have Talented (Skill), gain XP worth Veteran of skill.
6. Spend XP on skill, XP costs determinted by aptitude and rank, can only roll skill when it is Known, must buy each rank progressively:
Rank 0 - Known - -20
Rank 1 - Inexperienced - -10
Rank 2 - Trained - 0
Rank 3 - Experienced - +10
Rank 4 - Veteran - +20

...more to come, char limit

Making an Action:

1. Choose appropriate characteristic
2. Choose appropriate primary skill(s), if any
3. Choose appropriate secondary skill(s), if any
4. Choose difficulty
5. Roll

Eg: Avoiding damage from incoming melee attack, player chooses to jump out the way or chooses to block the attack
1. Agility/Weapon Skill
2. Evade skill
3. Acrobatics skill or Athletics skill at -20
4. Challenging (+0) difficulty
5. Roll

Eg: Finding information about recent space battle between Imperium and Dark Eldar in Koronus Expanse: player could learn via gossip and vinetrails or studying information. Gossip on battle is looked down on so Fellowship at -10.
1. Intelligence/Fellowship (-10)
2. Lore (Imperial Navy)/Lore (Dark Eldar)
3. Lore (Imperium)/Lore (Xenos)/Lore (Voidcraft)/Lore (Kornous Expanse) at various, ie -30, -20, -40, -20.
4. Hard (-10) difficulty
5. Roll

Enemies/Reinforcement Characters
All enemies use the same rule system, and are identical regardless of which Chapter you are making use of, all talents, traits, skills and actions are identical, meaning no confusion when playing between Chapters.
Reinforcement Characters, which are intended to be temporary would not make use of Chapter rules (instead any equivalent benefits would be represented in their stat block), and therefore be usable between chapters too, allowing the use of a Space Marine in Deathwatch, Only War and Dark Heresy without rewriting the stat block each time.

Equipment/Vehicles (incl. ships)
Equipment is also consistent, equipment have expanded traits that modify rarity based on Chapter. Example: Husk Rifle would have Dark Eldar trait, making it easier to acquire for Dark Eldar, and harder to acquire for others. Astartes Power Armour would have Astartes trait, making it nigh impossible for even the wealthiest Rogue Trader to acquire, etc.
New equipment rarity tiers, including Relic = specific (low) count of in universe, eg original writings of a Saint. Relic's are not usually rolled to acquire, rather gained in adventure or as rewards. Many relics (especially books) may have non-relic copies, which are inferior but similar.
Acquiring equipment has a number of modifiers (similar to Rogue Trader acquistions (optional/GM discretion?)). Primarily rarity, craftsmanship, and scale. Secondarily on locale and ability to acquire, location, population, connections, tests, time, etc.

---

Thoughts?

My intention is to write everything in a single PDF, and then I will go through all of the adventures that have been made and modify them to be run with the new system, making it easy for new players to pick up.

Black Crusade is the highest power you can get in the entire 40k line. Remember that they have to get there first.

There is an assload of non-errataed errors and blunders in both the core book and splat books. Use logic and common sense.

If at all possible, don't mix human and marine parties because the ensuing combat encounter balance will just be a headache.

DO mix human and marines because the RP inbalance will create fond memories.

Question about Only War: Do regiments with Grenadier get extra grenades for the aux launcher as per reloads per weapon rule? And also do the ones that get the grenade launchers get two reloads for those?

>Thoughts?
Just stop while you're behind. Nobody cares, and we've already told your ideas are awful and pointless, so you're just jacking yourself off at this point.

What are the more extravagant purchases your characters have made, /40kRPG/? My RT Seneschal just found a locally grown coffee they like, and bought eight crates of said coffee beans, freeze-dried and vacuum sealed, for their own personal use, so that they'd have plenty of it out in the field and while exploring. Because fuck recaff, I deserve real, non-processed coffee.

Gave this a skim. I can't really comment on rules as I'm not big into Only War, but from a fluff perspective these guys feel very much like what old Inquisitorial Storm Troopers were. /Are, I can never keep whether or not "Scions Tempestus" have replaced Storm Troopers straight.
Anyway, I like the Metal Gear vibe, but considering an Inquisitor is involved in their training, why not refer to them as a special Inquisitorial detachment rather than a regiment of Guard? They seem to be highly specialized to do the sorts of things Inquisitors and other cloak-and-dagger types would need them to do. Guard Regiments are usually more front line types. Sure, you've got regiments like the Catachan who do Guerrila stuff, but they're still supposed to be out in a warzone for long periods of time. The Scorpions feel like they'd be likely to leave once the ground operations actually started, unless they were desperately needed to hit some particularly juicy target.
Maybe consider amping up the Inquisitorial angle? Does the Inquisitor who supervises their training have a particular Ordo or faction? It could be fun if they wind up at the disposal of seemingly sympathetic Inquisitors who actually want them to do some horrible thing. Maybe they've been subverted by Recongregators in the past and torn apart peaceful, stagnant, loyal systems in the name of strengthening the Imperium?
Heck, playing with the Metal Gear vibe, a fun campaign might involve the squad slowly realizing that high command is operating under some very shady orders and not giving them all the details, and then slowly realizing they're just pawns in some Inquisitorial politicking. They could even be trying to re-capture a Dark Age of Technology Warhound Titan from some renegade Hereteks!

Anyway, I like them. My 40k is about 30% Metal Gear at any given time, so kudos for the nice source material.

Hmm? What's awful about it?

It's definitely not pointless considering how much demand I've seen for a single system.

Their Planetary Governor provides them as an official tithe and the planet's now-Royalty Inquisitor is only "helping," train the tithe as a "favor," basically taking advantage of his new cushy lifestyle after a lifetime of service. He considers training these guys a good enough cause that it doesn't bother his sense of loyalty either, and I'm not sure I'd disagree with him. They're technically Guard and thus are--de jure, not necessarily de facto--only on the periphery of the Inquisition's jurisdiction.

The reason I made them Guard was more purely fluff than anything else. I guess I didn't want them to be just a different kind of Inquisitorial Stormtrooper, and they originally started out as stealth commandos for the Guard. The societal infiltration was still there, but the fact that their training was supervised by an old "retired," Inquisitor and their "cleansing," operations that cause them to often be seconded to Inquisitors and Interrogators was something added to their lore spur-of-the-moment as I was writing about them.

As far as what they do during the Imperial assault itself during invasions, after they hit their targets that they could reach during that particular night, they spend the rest of the time reporting very detailed coordinates of enemy positions and reports of their movements from behind enemy lines. Thus they can allow for airstrikes or artillery to directly strike objectives that were too difficult for them, and if it turns out there's something that they missed on the night of (a swiftly-installed AA battery, for instance), that gives the invasion trouble, a Lord General could command an action on that target and the Scorpions are in a position to do something about it from behind enemy lines.

1/2

I like the idea of amping up the Inquisitorial angle, but I think I'm not going to do that in the core fluff and do that during the campaign itself when I put the players through it. The missions I've mentioned in their lore section aren't the only ones they can do, after all. My above post outlines stuff that wasn't in the document (but will go into it, thanks for asking me questions that made me fill in details I hadn't considered), and maybe your mission suggestions are exactly the sort of thing an Inquisitor might "borrow," them for. After all, their annals are full of missions that are more black ink than anything else.

I haven't considered their training Inquisitor's Ordo, but I probably should. I'm going to give that some thought.

And yeah, there was a lot of inspiration from Metal Gear. Thanks for the compliment on that, I think it has the right amount of pulpy adventure with tactical espionage that can feel very at-home in Warhammer.

Just kill me already, this is boring as all hell.

Looks fun

Is this a not-so-quick reference?

>war...has changed

So what are my chances of being able to play Black Crusade as a solo player with a GM. It is going to be sneaking and intrigue. Lots of thievery and plotting. Any chance for me to judt stack the odds by playing a charismatic socialite and just use things like the poison nail? Are there landmines or other types of traps available in this game? I hsven't read the whole armory section yet.

Tech-Use on any explosive.

So I will need a heretek. I will see if I can swing for an AI minion, or perhaps take a less face type approach, and go heretek myself. Thanks for reminding me of that.

At least you remembered that minions can fill in for things you lack. If you go the psyker route, get a Tantor Mimic Mask.

Looking to put RT and DH 2 together for an upcoming game and I want the rules to be printable. Working my way backwards from DH2 so I know what I need to update and what not.

It's more work than I expected it to be and I've just been reformatting text so far.

I feel like I might need more than a few helpers if things go to crap. And I was thinking about being the apostate to make bring a sneaky and suave bastard easier.

But using Chaos to fight Chaos just creates more Chaos. And I don't mean that in some "you're as bad as they are" gay way, I mean that in literally you're just spawning more Chaos.

The irony is a radical ordos xenos inquisitor probably has enough knowledge of the warp via Eldar or anti-warp weaponry via Necron to combat Chaos effectively.

I'm planning on adding a supremacy armor, because my players dont know when to run, so i want to see how they deal with the the meanest of the mean

how would i stat it?

I think the riptide was statted in the Tau splat for RT.

Oh wait, just use that for weapons, the actual stats of the thing are absolutely pathetic for what it is supposed to be.

It's not supposed to be a +5/-5 for Homeworlds, user. It's a roll twice, keep the better/worse roll.

Oh right, I'm so used to point buy I forgot about that change.

Ignore him, he's a shitposter. You're doing the Emperor'a work user! I especially like the sound of what you're doing with the equipment tiers, as the current distribution makes no sense to me.

>Rank 0 - Known - -20
>Rank 1 - Inexperienced - -10
For what purpose?

That's kind of the point. I'm not saying my character is perfect, more that he is dead on one of those inquisitors that thinks Chaos can be tamed.