/40krpg/ 40k RPG General

Asking form last thread.
>what is the typical life cycle of a regiment, I know the number in front of a regiment is usually its founding, but do regiments ever retire or are they constantly kept going with fresh recruits?

It's really not well touched upon. Foundings are mentioned, and sometimes regiments that get wiped out get reactivated with a new founding, but given 40k is about war peace and retirement isnt touch on. Feel free to go crazy with what you want because we don't really get much to go on beyond old canon in passing note.

See

I've been thinking of doing a DW mission where the killteam assaults a Tau space station for info. Any thoughts?

I just finished the Ciaphas Caine first novel and it does mention in there that the two initial regiments that were combined before he joined both had "Long standing traditions stretching back centuries".

So rough guess regiments exist continuously with new recruits replacing casualties on a fairly standard basis, with regiments only ceasing to exist in one of three circumstances.

1) The regiment's operational strength is reduced so low (potentially even to 0) that any attempt to reinforce it would require as much work as making a brand new regiment, or potentially even more as they bring the fresh recruits and the (very few) vets together. So its just disbanded for ease.

2) The regiment is part of a regimental joining. This is where one severely depleted regiment is merged into another existant (and weakened) regiment, in which case the smaller regiment is officially disbanded.

3) The regiment is 'retired'. I recall years ago there was a guide on making a PDF army in a white Dwarf that talked about how often when a planet was conquered IG regiments would be left behind to form the basis of the new planet's PDF and settlers, in this case the regiment is listed as no longer active.

So outside of those three circumstances, regiments could continue indefinitely. Indeed many regiments are listed as having centuries old traditions, despite the incredibly high attrition rate of the IG.

A lot of regiments just gather up new recruits as they go. For example the Tanith took on multiple "waves," of recruits from their campaigns, and it resulted in three different cultures mingling about in this one regiment; eventually they all reached a sort of equilibrium, though each person retained at least some of their individual cultural aspects. This was seen as something of a boon to the Ghosts after a while, as they were afraid that memories of what it was to be Tanith would die with them; while these newcomers weren't Tanith and never truly could be, their adoption of some of the culture eased the pain a bit.

>the Tanith
Are not a good example, since it was utterly impossible for them to get new recruits any other way. Most regiments aren't going to be as enthusiastic about mixing unless they, too, have Lost Home World.

>assault for info
Seems like a bit of an oxymoron. But it could be fun to let the players plan a major assault including feints and what not to try to obfuscate their actual intent. Like plan the attack when an Ethereal was onboard so the Tau focus most of their effort defending it rather than the computer core.

Would the imperials even be able to interface properly with Tau computer systems? You could have the something like the AdMech give the killteam an ancient and malevolent machine spirit that can crack open any computer security system, only to find out its scrap code and it infects the entire station.

Thanks Anons this helps alot.

The situation could be used to encourage social conflicts with the defenders. Like they need to interrogate Tau just to figure out the layout of the station; or they broadcast misinformation to confuse the enemy; or they discover loyalist prisoners and have to decide whether to rescue them, or blam them for suspicion of collusion.

No problem. Have fun.

I tell this one on here a lot, but it really was the most memorable.
We were an elite Schola Progena tank regiment, very WW2 Germany with snappy uniforms and a firm regard for discipline and belief in our own superiority.
We specialized in knife fighting. To the extent that we took skills to make ourselves better knife-fighters, and spent points to ensure we had cool high quality knives in everyone's kit. In a Tank Regiment.
Anyway, we didn't make it past the LZ. We encountered some Orks and light vehicles and made short work of them, but quickly realized that the rules for firing full auto were different and the only person who could shoot straight was also the driver, who we needed to take evasive action.
We wound up in a duel with a War Wagon, blasted away at each other, and eventually it rammed us and blew our tank sky high. While we could have all burned fate points to survive, we thought being blown up in the LZ was just too perfect a way to finish the game, and so our illustrious tank crew joined all the other noble martyrs of the Imperium.

gonna start running a black crusade campaign for my group, dont have any experience with the system, any issues or broken bullshit i should now about beforehand?

>black crusade
>any issues or broken bullshit
Bwahaha. Yes.

care to elaborate? or do u enjoy being useless?

re: point 3... IIRC Gaunt's Ghosts were threatened with point 1, experienced point 2, and were offered point 3 in recognition for their actions in the Sabbatine Crusades... the kicker being the bittersweet (or bitterly ironic) fact that as a regiment specialising in stealth and scouting, they'd never have the numbers or equipment to conquer a planet.

guess I'm just mentioning this to point out that it seems ill defined within the Imperium itself.

Not that user, but in general BC has problems with its alignment system. Being a Nurgle psyker is almost impossible, almost all Tzeentch can do is psychic bullshit, playing a Slaaneshi swordmaster is way too hard. In short, the alignments pigeonhole you into the most stereotypical expression of your god and nothing else. This also leaved Unaligned seriously shafted.

Also, psykers are still stupidly powerful and never mix Legionnaires and human heretics.

And that's just some of the mechanics, not to mention the role-playing issues that tend to pop up.

You are on the internet, user. Not hard to type in "Black Crusade" rpg balance issues.

>or do u enjoy being useless?

Never saw if anyone answered, but is there any extra psyker support for Only War?

How would it work if you imported the DH2 advancement system into the game?

You'd give players 4 Aptitude choices they could make to define their character, then their career gives them an additional 2, and finally their alignment grants them 1 more. If their alignment aptitude gives them one they already have, they may swap it for an alternative characteristic based one.

So for example:
Champion - Leadership and Defence
Chosen - Offence and Defence
Forsaken - Fieldcraft and Finesse
Sorceror - Psyker and Defence
Apostate - Social and Leadership
Heretec - Tech and Knowledge
Renegade - Finesse and Offence
Psyker - Psyker and Knowledge

Then:
Khorne - Strength
Nurgle - Toughness
Tzeentch - Willpower
Slaanesh - Fellowship

Some talents aren't in BC that are in DH2, but it'd be easy enough to come up with a answer.

You'd be better off exporting the few parts you want to use to DH2e.

This is all pretty good advise, but I disagree that there are roleplaying issues.

Don't be a shit.

>Don't be a shit.
Just because it's not spoon-feeding doesn't mean it's not good advice. There's a lot worth reading through, it's already out there to find, and user could come back with more in-depth questions if he bothered to start with a modicum of effort.

Are these the best sourcebooks for the 40k setting or what? You don't even need the wargame books anymore. GW should steal all their writers.

GW only cares about Nu-canon now. They tossed out all their good fluff to sell toys for children. They don't care about FFG'S work beyond odd references in timelines.

And they have a regular boatload of autists who hiss and boo at every bit of FFG lore as "not muh grimdark"

>that there are roleplaying issues.
It's tricky. Honestly, I kind of like Black Crusade despite its numerous faults and I've never had much of a trouble with the roleplaying angle, but I'm fairly certain it's because my group is really good and into it. I'm afraid it'll be too easy to either slip into chronic backstabbing disorder or grimdark edgemaster should you either be new to roleplaying or just not cut out for it. It demands a certain level of players to not cause it to spiral out of control, I fear.
Either way, if you think your group could handle it, bring it up. It IS fun.
Although in our group it tends to devolve into Shadowrun 40k - Chaos Edition, especially at lower levels.

Yeah, autists like that are total potatoes.

Turns out Calixis is plenty grimdark without being grimderp.

Askellon, I can't say that for. It's pretty awful.

What's so bad about Askellon?

A GM friend asked me for help. He's gonna run a game where the players are resistance fighters against imperial forces in a system that as just been rediscovered by the Imperium.
The setting will be a contemporary world with limited interplanetary traffic and orbital industries.

Any idea on how imperial colonization would run, and which factions would be part of it? I'm guessing navy, guard, arbites, missionaries, admech, administratum... Any other I've missed?

With warp travel, being deployed half a galaxy away and imperial bureaucracy mixing things up, I could see a commander recruiting locals.
After all, the IN main recruitment method seems to be press-ganging the nearest habitated world, and they still seem to have decent cohesion.

We once played a OW regiment that was basically the french foreign legion, absorbing the remnants of regiments fallen below fighting strenght into a single unit. The campaign never made it past the third session, but I liked the idea.

IRL, it's fairly common for some militaries to disband a regiment and reassemble a new one with the name, flag and traditions of the old one when the need arise.
So you can have traditions stretching back centuries even if your unit was created two years ago.

It could make for a fun plothook: A regiment was erroneously mmarked as "disbanded", and the guard raised a new one as a result.
>the two iteration of the 663th Poikan infantry see the other as stealing their name and can't stand being mixed up.

It's way less developed, and far more 'vanilla' 40k. Too much of the lore and published adventure material centers primarily on Hive Desoleum, with Forgotten Gods veering off into some adventures in other locales that, admittedly, turned out fairly interesting even if the Forgotten Gods trilogy ends with Chaos hijacking the plot rather than being something original or cool.

Calixis took a lot of material from a lot of sources in 40k lore, and worked it into a cohesive region with a lot of plot hooks WITHOUT making it 'so developed and with so many characters the PCs can't afford to do jack shit' like in, say, Forgotten Realms. Askellon simply didn't do it anywhere near as well, in my opinion.

Plus, rampant grimderp in a lot of the Askellon sector's backstory and other material, like the Vaxi Atrocity (which was kind of retarded in my opinion).

Ever get the problem of players wanting to stray from canon? Like someone wanting to go Kerrigan of the Tyranids and shit? God that pisses me off so much.

Yes.

It's fucking retarded.

It's one thing to go Your Dudes and add to the canon, it's another entirely to start actively fucking with the lore in certain fundamental ways.

Alright, I have a bit of a weird request. I'm playing a fallen Factor of the Lathes in my BC game. While being all negotiating is fun, I want to go one step further and rule from the shadows with political misdirection, planting evidence, assassinating key targets all to destabilize governments for his own goals.
Essentially, I want to run the conspiracy-version of a CIA spook.

Has anybody got some reading or podcasts on the subject? I know you know a bunch of weird shit, and odds are a bunch of you are from /x/.

No podcasts I know, but what I do:

>Degrees of separation from any field ops - If you need a motherfucker murdered, or framed, or hire a guy to hire a guy who can in turn hire a third guy to hire an assassin or someone who can plant shit for you. Then have someone else, hired the same way, quietly disappear the guy who did the job and the person you hired to hire him, so nothing leads back to you. Have party members cut out the same links in THAT chain for you so your support network is totally shielded - someone good at never getting caught would do the job, so high-Agility, high-Stealth PCs would be ideal.

>If there isn't an insurgency ongoing, find ways to start one 'naturally' without any kind of direct involvement. Hitting food supplies and generally trying to make it look like the planetary government has completely gone off the rails and is actively pushing the citizenry past its usual amount of oppression would help with this. If you have a telepath in the party, this would help too.

>Lots and lots of shell companies owned by shell companies, which in turn own more shell companies. These shell companies will provide the necessary financing for insurgent operations through various back-channels. Co-opt local mafias, crime syndicates, underhive gangs, and narco-guerrilla movements. Avenues of dirty money are almost as good as the real thing.

>Co-opt insurgencies and resistance movements. Find ways to make contact, offer to prop them up, corrupt them to Chaos if at all possible, and then find ways to spark that into a full-on civil war where groups you control or have the support of make up one side, and at least part of the other.

>Provide active support to both sides to make it look like you're the last person in the world who might be behind the whole thing, then position yourself JUST such a position to conveniently survive when one side's leadership gets wiped out by a terror strike or something as things escalate.

It's tricky but doable.

Any advice for a first time Astropath Transcendant? Specifically about the starter powers near the beginning?

Hold the phone

>Like someone wanting to go Kerrigan of the Tyranids and shit?
That would be impossible. There's no "Overmind" of the Tyranids, there's no top of the synapse occupied by a single mind. The Hive Mind is just the sum total will of the race, acting in concert from the hive fleet down to the level of the individual warriors. At most, you could have an alpha level psyker temporarily shouting out the hive mind and taking over the synapse net of a single hive ship, but good luck with that, and it's extremely likely to drive you insane and/or cause an exploding head. It's also orders of magnitude less than what Kerrigan has.

>Hold the phone
But they are the phone

How fucked would your party be if he showed up?

It depends on how fast Lord-Captain Archibald Turnpenny could call down an orbital strike.

I recommend going the party buffing route. Remember that there are more powers in Navis Primer.

Beyond fucked.

Post your regiments /40krpg/.

131st Royal Vestan Dragoons “The Deadly Dandies”
Characteristic Modifiers: +3 to two of the following characteristics Fellowship, Intelligence, or Weapon Skill. +3 Weapon Skill, -3 Intelligence.
Starting Skills: Common Lore (Administratum), Inquiry, Linguistics (High Gothic), Parry or Dodge
Starting Aptitudes: Toughness
Staring Talents: Air of Authority or Peer (Nobility), Die Hard, Lightning Reflexes
Fluency: Do not start with Linguistics (Low Gothic), but capable of verbal communication if it does not require a skill test.
Duty and Honour: -10 to all Charm, Inquiry and Deceive Tests when interacting with non-Highborn.
+10 to all Charm, Inquiry and Deceive Tests made to interact with other Highborn.
Abundant Resources: +10 to Squad Starting Logistics Rating.
Well-Provisioned: +10 to Logistics tests for Vehicle parts for maintenance.
Honour Bound: Members of the Regiment must pass a Difficult (-10) Willpower Test to ignore a formal challenge or insult to their honour.
Wounds: Characters from this regiment begin play with –1 starting wound.
Standard Regimental Kit: Each player character starts with the following.
1 Combat Shotgun and 6 reloads (Main Weapon)
1 Suit of Best Quality Imperial Guard Flak Armour
1 Chainsword and 1 Knife
4 Frag and 3 Krak Grenades
1 Chrono
1 Uniform
1 Dress Uniform
1 Set of field gear (rucksack, mess kit and water canteen, poor weather gear, blanket and sleep bag, set of basic tools, rechargeable lamp pack, grooming kit, set of cogtags, Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer, and 2 weeks good quality rations)
1 Chimera Armoured Fighting Vehicle per Squad
Favoured Weapons: Plasma Gun and Autocannon

Home World: The Highborn of Vesta (3)
Commanding Officer: Colonel Boarwood (Sanguine) (2)
Regiment Type: Armoured Close Assault (5)
Doctrines: Die Hard (3), Well-Provisioned (3)
Drawbacks: Honour Bound (-4)
Total Cost: 12 points

Cascadianfag, I finally made a document that has a minor section for each of my many regiments. There's one listed in the Table of Contents that's not on there yet, but that's because I'm still working on it and don't feel comfortable putting them in yet.

What do you prefer for your Ordo Malleus games:

>Warriors in golden armor blazing away at the darkness puritans

or

>Binding Daemonhosts and using whatever is available to save the world for one more day.

Personally, I prefer
>Sneak in silently, murder everyone, burn all the evidence, make sure everyone who died is deleted from all Imperial records forever, vanish again

>Warriors in golden armor blazing away at the darkness puritans
to
>Desperate heroes scrambling against forces that completely outmatch
and then
>Binding Daemonhosts and using whatever is available to save the world for one more day.

>T7

He's only as tough as my explorator's castellax. We have felling weapons. We can take him.

Feudal World-style armor bump.

What item would you not let your players put in their IG Standard Regiment kit?

My players all wanted powerswords, which I was reluctant to allow. That said getting monoswords is surprisingly expensive.

Our DH 2e party hog tied a necron warrior.

This was on our second combat encounter of the entire campaign.

that doesn't make any sense.
Necrons travel in groups, and can obliterate tanks with their gauss rifles.

Furthermore, they can phase through walls, how can ropes hold them?

This implies your GM doesn't understand either the setting or the Necrons.

>Hog tied a necron warrior
>Strength 45
>Unnatural Strength 4

This. This is how you do it.

The players should never be able to point to exactly when they crossed the line, but given enough time, it should be clear that their past selves would probably burn their present incarnations.

Anyone have any examples of this in action?

Well, wraiths can phase. Warriors don't tend to do that.

Go read the Eisenhorn trilogy.

39th "Shivborn" Savlar Chem Dogs

The Shivborn are close quarters specialists of the Chem Dogs. Pulled from the cell block known as Cutthroat Country, where exceptionally violent prisoners and those that have drawn the ire of the guards are kept. Vicious attacks are commonplace and most of the time are unwarranted. Members of the regiment are paranoid and capable knife fighters by necessity. Due to their status as a penal legion not enough shotguns are available for everyone to have one. As such a number of recruits have taken to appropriating rescue axes to use as main weapons.

Characteristic Modifiers: +3 Agility, -3 Intelligence, +3 Toughness, +5 Weapon Skill
Starting Aptitudes:
Starting Skills: Dodge OR Parry, Intimidate, Linguistics (Low Gothic)
Starting Talents: Enemy (Adeptus Arbites), Lightning Reflexes, Paranoia, Peer (Underworld), Rapid Reaction, Street Fighting

Wounds: +1

Favoured Weapons: Flamer, Heavy Bolter

Standard Regimental Kit:

Per Character: Combat Shotgun and 4 reloads OR Mono Great Weapon, 2 Knives, Mono War Knife, Stub Revolver and 12 bullets, Imperial Guard Flak Armor, 3 Frag Grenades, 2 Krak Grenades, 2 Smoke Grenades, Inhaler, 3 doses of Frenzon OR 5 doses of Stimm

Per Squad:

Larcenous: Members from penal colonies have an inherent understanding on using the black market. Gain a +10 to acquiring illegal/contraband items via logistics

Scum And Villainy: The regiment only has 15 points worth of equipment when determining standard kit.

Untimely Inquiries: Whenever the regiment fails an operation, the squad fails to complete a mission/achieve a critical objective or everyone gets caught in a scandal the local arbites come down hard. Every member of the regiment takes a -5 to willpower tests until the interference concludes due to the stress that they cause.

Thanks user!

Considering I'm a Thousand Son Sorcerer, not very.

Beyond belief.
Inquisition didn't teach us to die for nothing though, so we run, as far and as fast as we can.

He has more wounds, is faster and has psychic powers coming out the arse. I don't think that's a fair comparison.

I mean, stats aren't entirely comparable, tabletop to RPG. In the RPG, he'd have not merely Unnatural Toughness on top of a lot of it, he'd have Daemonic too, which is not reduced by Felling, and not to mention, you know, all the other Daemon Prince on top of Primarch shit.

Bumping.

What are some good Only War plots you've seen

ogryn sniper? fo' shizzle.

If I wanted to run an all-dreadnought deathwatch game, what kind of missions would they go on? Is there enough room for variation to avoid doing basically the same thing over and over?

Depends. Are you allowing contemptor, dorito, and leviathan patterns?

Would the average watch fortress have access to those?

Forge world said that they did on facebook. No real word via errata yet.

Then yes.

Deredeo ranged specialists. Contemptor combat monsters. Leviathan tanks. Castaferrum generalists.

it can work

But what kind of missions would warrant a team of dreadnoughts?

A team of helbrutes.
A team of riptides.

That doesn't really seem like it would make for a fun game.

Bump

Agreed. At a certain point, you're beyond anything the rules were meant to simulate, and just blocky walls of ceramite rubbing against each other. Boring.

How exactly do reinforcement characters work in the warband of an inqusitor? I get that you can only directly use them after using your influence, especially autonomus powers like a hive noble or a rogue trader, but what about long term companions of the inquisitor?

For example, if an ordo malleus inquisitor has a grey knight in his warband, how does he interact with the rest and how is he used as an RC?

Alright /40krpg/, newcomer here. You know any good places online to find an Only War game to join?

Browse roll20 regularly.

I don't think any solid rules ever got laid down. Personally, if the players know a character and have interacted with him and forged a relationship with them (Maybe they've given mission reports to a member of their Inquisitor's Deathwatch retinue, for example), I'd discount the costs compared to calling in a stranger using Inquisition resources.

The tradeoff is that the players have less control of that character. If they call in Generic McSpacemarine of the Deathwatch, they have a lot more freedom and control of McSpacemarine than they do of Aurelius Florentine the Charming Ultramarine Sergeant, who they've interacted with before.

no fun faggots

So there's literally no way to make this fun?

Well, they fight and sleep. Do with that what you will.

Are there rules for jumping out of a moving vehicle?

Thanks, I can work with this.

Time to get this inquisitorial party started.

So, longstanding question for sidearms: bolt, or plasma?

Not unless you want to damage the integrity of the setting.

So you're telling me that you can't think of any possible way to make a party of dreadnoughts fun.