/40krpg/ 40k RPG General

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I've been hoping for something like pic related on RPOL.net, but no luck so far. If you find something, I'd be interested AF.

Well, I'll post something if I find something worthwhile. However, I guess I'll be reading the DH rule books first, being a noob & all.

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One of the players in the Dark Heresy group I DM wants to make a special snowflake characrer that fights with his bare hands. The problem being that he want to use two talents from Rogue Trader to make his character more viable or stronger. I am kinda opposed to this, considering we have not been playing for very long, and it seems unfair to let him have talents from a different system whilst everyone else is restricted to the core book.

Am I being stupid about this? what are your thoughts?

1d10 impact damage with no pen is overpowered, don't do it

Which talents? Are you sure they're not after talents from Only War?

>feral worlder is a highborn house
>fine ass chairs around
>best craftmanship
>a fight breaks out
>feral worlder uses chair to beat people
>it is now a 1d10-1 damage, proven (3) with +10 to hit weapon

>best craftsmanship ming vase
>must be a better than average improvised weapon
... Mate.

Maaate.

How bad would it be in a game with mostly lvl 4-5 characters? My main objection is that by giving him acces to Rogue Trader talents, I am opening a whole can of worms with the other players

it concerns Unarmerd Warrior and Unarmed Master talents from Rogue Trader

Absolutely disgusting from the player. If melee is important mono-upgrades aren't expensive or rare. Shock weapons work well if bladed are too dull for him.

About the only point he has IMO is that rank 1 Rogue Trader characters should be equal to rank 5 DH ones, page 34 in RT.
You could slap some prohibitory harsh requirements to take it since those talents aren't available to rank 1 RT characters.

>"Can Veeky Forums make the worst adventure module known to mankind?"
SO, is there any nice (or awful, to keep the theme) homebrewed adventure module for the 40k rpgs?

Unless your feral world has an ancestral martial art that uses living room furniture, and design their chairs accordingly, no.

>SO, is there any nice (or awful, to keep the theme) homebrewed adventure module for the 40k rpgs?

There isn't. We considered making one last thread.

I've looked into that argument that the player himself also made, that a rank 5 DH character is the same as a rank 1 RT one, and there is a bit of a problem with that I think. The talent he wants only appears as an option at rank 5 for 500(!) exp in Rogue Trader, so if we were to convert that to DH, his character would need to be at least rank 10 before he could even touch it.

I am not gonna allow it, there are plenty of builds that could be used to make viable melee characters, and if he wants a special bare-hand fighter thats his issue.

Nobody on darkreign or ffg's forums made one either?

IMO,we could make it work. A brainstorming session to paint the scenario in broad strokes, then each user makes an encounter/npc in his corner, and we discuss it again together.
Sure it will be broken, but that's half the fun.
Or maybe someone disappears with the idea and comes back in a few months with a polished adventure.

If Veeky Forums manages to have decent chapter creation threads or storytimes from time to time, a module doesn't seem too far fetched.

>I've looked into that argument that the player himself also made, that a rank 5 DH character is the same as a rank 1 RT one, and there is a bit of a problem with that I think. The talent he wants only appears as an option at rank 5 for 500(!) exp in Rogue Trader, so if we were to convert that to DH, his character would need to be at least rank 10 before he could even touch it.
Personally, I'd look at their alternative options at the current rank, and whether the option they want is equivalent, overpower, underpowered, or has any particular merits besides combat efficiency.

Claiming "special snowflake" status on 1d10i unarmed alone stretches it beyond the point of "I don't like how thing works" to encompass "I'm grumpy a player wants a non-standard sub-par thing".

Alright. Basic structure of the module.

>players get mission to find out why tithe is shit lately on crap planet
>find out that a lowly clark, somwehre deep in the archives of the city, is moving decimal points
>clark is in debt to guy, who is in debt to guy, who is/ chain of debt, basically
>warlord is using tithe to fill ins private army
>when confronted, freeboota crashes party and his weirdboy starts zapping players and other guys around
>freeboota is angry his promissed 3 regiments were not delivered
>now its krumpin time

Amazingly enough, DH2e has the same talent, built into the core book, and it is not overpowered at all.
OP claiming it's special snowflake to be able to fight decently well with your fists is fucking outrageous.

OP here, I'm honestly not quite convinced that it would be super highly OP or anything, it would end up being about as effective, or slightly less so, than a normal mellee character I think,

My problem with him taking these talents is this: if I were to grant him these talents from another system than DH this would be unfair to the other players in the group. Considering we agreed to stick to the core book for the time being as we are relatively new to the game, and we're gonna introduce the Inquisitors Handbook after the current story-arc. If I would grant him acces to this other book/system I have to also grant it to all the other players.

I've honestly been considering making an adventure module of sorts out of my homebrew Black Crusade planet that I featured in two unfinished campaigns.

> it would end up being about as effective, or slightly less so, than a normal mellee character I think
Compared to a melee weapon, unarmed costs more xp, does less damage, comes with 0 pen, and has no weapon traits.

> this would be unfair to the other players in the group
If the other players want clearly underpowered options, too, they should be allowed that.

>Compared to a melee weapon, unarmed costs more xp, does less damage, comes with 0 pen, and has no weapon traits.
But with lightning strike, double tap, whirlwind of death, two weapon master, death dealer, precision killer and a some other shit you could totally pretend to be Kenshiro.

It's not fair that you guys are talking about fist fighting literally a day after I have been watching Fist of the North Star.

Feral world out cast assassin? Stack weapon skill, toughness and perception? Pick fieldcraft from the outcast background and use the extra fieldcraft from assassin to get defence, then somehow deal with the expensive weapon skill advances.

I think it would work well on some frontier world/ freeport that pays only lip service to the imperium due to being so close to pirates and xenos and trying to stay in the good graces of everyone.
The imperial presence it limited to a handful of corrupted, burned-out or fallen from grace adepts, the governor is on full damage control towards everyone, and warlords conspire with aliens and independantists to gain power.

The players arrive, they have to clean house before figuring who's behind all that, fighting obstructive bureaucracy and useless bootlickers as well as attempts on their life in a first time (investigation)
Then they go up the food chain and can blow up the accumulated steam by blasting baddies (intervention)
And finally the freebootaz arrive for a big final battle. We'd have to foreshadow that part a bit.

Not sure a freeboota would want human regiments, though.

Cause he couldn't get the hat he wanted ofcourse. And what other payment will an ork accept anyway?

To fight and kill them ofcourse

don't have to be orkz or freebootas though.

Can be boring human pirates or somesuch instead

>But with lightning strike, double tap, whirlwind of death, two weapon master, death dealer, precision killer and a some other shit you could totally pretend to be Kenshiro.
Or, hear me out here, you could get all that shit, but use a power sword instead of a fist, and be roughly 5x as effective with at least 2k less XP investment. Unarmed fighters can be very effective, but your best bet is to play an ogryn pro wrestler suplexing orks, not being Kenshiro.

I wanna make a hiver worlder that hits people with a baseball bat.

Best craftmanship truncheon, possibly adding mono, or just a warhammer, or great weapon and it's just a really serious baseball bat. Great weapon is probably a bit silly.

steal a power-maul from an arbites.

It's not orks.

The local Necron captain was promised living chess piece for his Cartesian chess game.

He comes to collect.

I've never understood how a GM could make so much continuous combat even vaguely interesting.

the flying dutchman in 40K. I like it.

Why does the Crusader role in DH2 have Knowledge as an aptitude?

Where does that become relevant to the guy who seems otherwise geared for tanking and hitting fear rating with melee weapons?

For that matter, why are Chirurgeons swole tanks with Strength and Toughness?

>I shall tend to your wounds with my Emperor-blessed muscles

>I've never understood how a GM could make so much continuous combat even vaguely interesting.

Did you read the rest of his adventures? I'm going to take a wild guess that he is a popular GM with a cult following. ;)

>For that matter, why are Chirurgeons swole tanks with Strength and Toughness?

No clue what you're on about, since I'm not into the game yet, but:

>Toughness

You need to be alive to treat people. You'll be exposed to all kinds of nasty shit while doing so.

>Strength

Gotta be able to carry your patients to safety and restrain them if necessary?

>necron in DH
You want a TPK, don't you?

Know thy enemy?

Pulled a few favors and dropped her with an Adeptus Sororitas convent. Fairly certain she'll show up as a character once another player's character gets killed, and with a sizable bucket of insanity points to start with.

When did mono-clubs become a thing? And why don't people realize that such a thing is retarded?

>The mono upgrade may be applied to any Low-Tech Melee weapon, but when applied to close-combat weapons that do not use an edge (e.g., hammers, mauls, etc.), it is treated differently. Game Masters are encouraged to come up with interesting definitions for non-edged weapons with the mono upgrade. For example, a hammer with the mono upgrade could be defined as having a pneumo-shock enhancement. The in-game effects remain the same.

One thing I liked in BC was the crazy pirate courts. I would enjoy some of it in a DH game.

The one in the center. Seems same size than the smurf on left. Is a also a spinach mareen? I see no recognizable heraldy asise of Ich bin Inquisition.

Inquisitor, Xenos Puritan named Emil Darkhammer.

a quick questytion. I know I've never seen them used anywhere but on Chimera turrets and Sentinels, but will it be horrible to allow a single multilaser as a sponssoon weapon in an "laser only, final destination" OW regiment ? imagine a Leman russ with long barreled twin-linked lascanon as turret, lascanons or multilasers as sponsons, etc.
fluffwise, i know it is not seen in official codexes, though I'm sure a Sollex heavy-influenced army could be justified. Crunchwise, how does it sound ? too OP compared with flamers/ heavy plasma/ heavy bolters sponsoon or hull weaponry ?

The struggle to stave off oncoming death is the interesting part. Limited supplies, need to improvise solutions, possibly making a difference your next character will live long enough to see, and potential for gallows humour. That's the draw.

You can have sponsoon autocannons, don't worry about the multilaser being OP.

I do know that autocanons is amongst the Holy trifecta od OPness, but it doesn't means that a choice other than Autocanon can't be a tad too much.

Any way, an other question :
- do we have any clues of how many shells and ammo each IG vehicule has on board, for say, the battle canon, or an earthshaker ?
As well, how much promethium/ sacred onguents this bloody vehicles guzzle up ? I don't need precise numbers, but an estimate number could be nice canon wise, for supply depot attack/defense and logistics shenanigans.

What the hell should i read to run a rogue trader game? You know other than the DMG and PHB

Into the Storm
Stars of Inequity
Koronus Bestiary
Edge of the Abyss
Battlefleet Koronus

These are the "all-purpose" splatbooks, I'd say.

Where can I find good tokens and topdown vehicles, and other assets for a 40k RPG game?

To add to this, the books you REALLY need are the Core Rulebook, Into the Storm and Battlefleet Koronus. These flesh out all the rules you need for most game types.

Stars of Inequity has tables for planet generation and a bunch of exploratory plothooks, and a kind of crappy colony system. Also has random loot generation tables, which is kind of neat.

Koronus Bestiary is a list of beasts. Use as needed. A Monster Manual, if you will.

Edge of the Abyss talks about famous worlds, legends, people and so on. Mostly fluff.

Navis Primer has more psychic and Navigator stuff. Useful if you have an Astropath or Navigator, can be ignored otherwise.

Hostile Aquisitions is for illegal stuff and piracy. Some fun stuff, but ultimately not that useful unless you're heretics.

Faith and Coin has really wonky balance, but aims to expand on church, pilgrim and other holy work. Steer clear until you can understand why it's so whack.

The Soul Reaver has rules for Dark Eldar and the adventure is kind of eh.

Are there any tools i can download for making running the game easier?

Your meaning escapes me entirely.

There's a Stars of Inequity generator available, and probably a few pre-calculating character sheets if you need 'em, but not much else.

community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/80016-stop-breaking-your-teeth-stars-of-inequity-system-generator/

I'm planning on running my first 40k RPG soon, a brief Only War campaign with a squad of Guardsmen going up against Tau and some Orks to rescue an Imperial official. What should I expect? How should I prepare?

Tau weapons will skullfuck normal guardsmen.

Servitor IRC bot is always helpful

Servitor IRC bot?

I noticed. It's a shame that the Tau in the rulebook are balanced to fight Space Marines when in canon they go against Guardsmen almost as frequently. I'm already planning on bumping down the damages significantly, or having them fight lighter Tau infantry.

Various scenarios, probably.

Having nothing but a board and some positions needing to be fought over and minis that don't ever stop showing up would get boring as fuck.

Giving honest-to-God objectives that can be achieved and then change, and thus change the locale, tactical situation, and sometimes even foe can be rather engaging, especially when your objectives are connected and allow a flow of successes or fails to show actual progress (or lack thereof) in a wider narrative.

You can even throw in a "survive for X turns," mission without it getting stale if it were, for example, defending something you just lost a lot of characters trying to take from a counter-attack. Knowing the cavalry (literal or figurative) is on its way may or may not spice up the narrative; as would the potential narrative of knowing that there is not only no cavalry, but your GM is not afraid to kill your characters.

The whole point of tau weapons are they can one-shot basic guardsmen. It's not supposed to be fair. Nerfing them is being disingenuous to the setting.

They don't oneshot basic guardsmen in the lore itself. They're only so powerful in Deathwatch because everything in it is balanced to fight Space Marines. If they didn't do so much damage the players would feel overpowered, even more overpowered than Space Marines are meant to be.

>The whole point of tau weapons are they can one-shot basic guardsmen... Nerfing them is being disingenuous to the setting.
Just like the point of plasma guns is that they can one-shot standard marines, right? Nerfing them would be disingenuous to the setting...wait, you say plasma guns can't one shot marines? Damn, then I guess that ship already sailed a long time ago!

If we're going on "what can realistically oneshot something" nearly every weapon in 40k can oneshot basic infantry realistically. Even lasguns, shotguns, and bolt pistols if the target isn't well-armored. If you're not a Space Marine or some elite monster or encased in a heavy battlesuit or given heavy shields, you die very, very quickly. But an arsenal of weapons that kill everyone in one hit would make for a boring and frustrating RPG.

>Just like the point of plasma guns is that they can one-shot standard marines, right?

Plasma weapons on Maximal inflict 2d10+8 Pen 12. Your average marine has 15 wounds, 10 armor, and 8 TB. Roughly 25% of the time, you WILL kill the marine in one shot.

S7 AP2 will kill a marine in one shot 83% of the time.

Pulse weapons inflict 2d10+3 Pen 4. The average guardsman has 10 wounds, 4 armor, and 3 toughness bonus. Roughly 50% of the time, you WILL kill the guardsman in one shot.

S5 AP5 will kill a guardsman 83% of the time.

Math might be a little off, but it's close enough. Yes, it is reasonably valid to expect a one shot from a weapon. It is not as often as tabletop, but the chance IS there. And even if a one shot doesn't happen, the target will be severely fucked up.

What about two shots?

>Your average marine has 15 wounds
Hahahahaha, no. Your average Marine will have 20-25ish Wounds, CSMs statted as antagonists tend to have 30 or more.

Ah, 20 wounds, you're right. You would need to roll max damage on a single hit with a basic plasma gun in order to one shot a spess mareen due to its unnatural toughness.

On two shots, you're guaranteed on downing a spess mareen on average damage (10.5) and above. But you're not really one-shotting then, in that case.

>You would need to roll max damage on a single hit with a basic plasma gun in order to one shot a spess mareen due to its unnatural toughness.
Don't forget that as Elite-tier enemies, Marines get Crit Damage and have True Grit applying that Unnatural Toughness *again* to their crit damage. Getting a Marine down into crit can be relatively simple. Getting enough crit damage in to actually put them down is another matter entirely.
tl;dr: FFG adhered to Marine fluff and made Marines hilariously, disproportionately hard to kill compared to their mechanical status as tabletop butt-monkies.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Servitor_Bot

How to RP an Astropath?

Someone who finds an odd comfort in being constantly connected to his fellows in the Warp, but knows that he's a part of a society that barely tolerates him because of his connections to the Other Realm. At the same time, he knows that the equivalent of turbulence may well end in his death.

So in the end you're probably likely to see Astropaths as emotionally invested in their fellows, particularly their cross-Warp "pen pals," while maintaining an overall fatalistic and abused (possibly meek? possibly defiant?) demeanor.

>How to RP an Astropath?
You might have been a noble, or a feral worlder, or a hive ganger, or whatever. But you were a psyker, and you were grabbed by the Imperium and shipped to Terra. You failed your tests to be a Primaris Psyker, but you weren't one of the rejects who got thrown into the Emperor's feeding tanks. Instead, you were shown the Emperor in his full awful, terrible psychic glory, inspiring terror and awe in equal measure, and it was so glorious it melted the eyes right out of your fucking sockets. You can still see it now, the light of the Emperor is always dancing behind your eyelids.

Your purpose is to use your telepathy to communicate, the ONLY way ships and systems can talk to each other at FTL speeds. This means you need to listen to the warp. This is much like putting your ear to the sea to listen for whalesong, except the sea is made out of shouting and teeth and blood, and it occasionally rises to swamp and kill you. It isn't a fun experience, but it is absolutely fucking essential.

So if i only have 3 players. I should just build the rest of the crew right? Such as navigator, arch-militant, seneschal?

Does every rogue trader ship need all of these roles?

ER...

You know that was retarded of me i know navigators are 100% needed. But i meant more like seneschal and void master.

My way of balancing Tau for Guard campaigns is to have the basic Tau troopers only deal 2d10 with no pluses. A lasgun with 1d10+4 with on average deal 9-10 damage, while a Tau's rifle will on average deal 10-11. To make up for penetration I usually let my Guardsmen fight Pathfinders or other lightly-armored Tau with Fire Warriors and others being rarer. I like high lethality campaigns, but I don't like them being unrealistically or uncanonically unbalanced. That being said if they fight a Tau in a Hazard Suit or an Ork Nob or something it'll be unbalanced properly.

There are no real mandatory roles in an RT game. If you don't have a player to fill a specific role, there are generally NPCs about that act in a get-you-by manner. For example, if you have no navigator, there's generally an npc navigator who never comes out of his room and just does his thing. They don't really need stats, and can be treated as narrative objects.

The only one that is arguable is a RT because dat warrant, but even that can be made as "agents of a RT who is too old / sick / busy to take an active role in things." So yes, you can make NPCs to fill in the gaps, but they shouldn't be as active as the players.

>Does every rogue trader ship need all of these roles?
Sort of. You should at least know who fills each of the primary ranks and have a short blurb and description about them. For example
>Lord-Captain: Bob's character, the RT.
>First Officer: Vincent Brimble. Extremely, absurdly British. Magnificent, enormous moustache. His main purpose is to argue with literally everything Bob says to make sure Bob has a clue what he's fucking saying.
>Enginseer Prime: Joe's character.
>High Facotum: Herschel Abramson. Short, no hair, wears heavy robes and carries at least three datapads at all time. His job is to steer the players towards good fiscal decisions and be promptly ignored as they buy gold-plated multimeltas for their personal guards.
>Master At Arms: Malcolm Terris. A former Guard sergeant-major. Has not yet accepted he's an officer now. Yells at everyone for little or no reason.
>Head Astropath: Nicholas Smarrel. Inordinately creepy. Constantly turning up when spoken of. Never speaks above a whisper and tends to float around the ship instead of walking. Definitely not secretly possessed.
>Head Navigator: He has a name, but everyone just calls him The Navigator. Never seen or spoken to, ever, operates solely through servants. The Navigator's quarters do have a suspicious giant fish tank made of opaque metal, though...
Etc.

The thing though is that the Tau have quality vs. the Imperial Guard's overwhelming quantity.

Yes, this is true. It is also true that players generally don't like bringing three spare completed character sheets to the game because they die in a bare handful of hits and are expected to make that up with numbers. It's a perfectly legit play style, but not one everyone enjoys.

Don't underestimate the common Guardsman. In lore and in the games you can do some amazing shit. I've seen Conscripts bayonet down Nobs, Guardsmen in the RPG melee Fire Warriors and win, and other characters survive impossible odds.

With their suits, pulse rifles, and drone recon aside, a Guardsman and a regular Tau trooper are pretty evenly matched in terms of skill, though the Tau tend to get more training thanks to the caste system. Still, battles between Tau and Guard aren't curbstomps in lore. Both sides win some and lose some, and I like to make that apparent in my RPG games.

That being side, I do like lethality. It makes your players really think about what they're doing and it makes them value every action they take, which results in a funner and more memorable experience most of the time, at least from what I've experienced in games I've played and heard from players in games I've run.

It's why to me the Guard is my favorite faction/"race", and I love playing as them in the RPG. It's a fresh break from D&D's high-leveling heroes who get by thanks to feats, magic, or superhuman strength. As a Guardsman, you're a regular guy, just an average joe. If you win, survive, and do badass things, it's because you truly are a badass. Clever, tough as nails, and indomitable in spirit. That's what makes an Imperial Guardsman cooler, tougher, and more "epic" than even a Space Marine in my eyes, on the tabletop, in the lore, and in the RPG.
Bringing extra character sheets is part of the fun!

>melee Fire Warriors and win
That isn't exactly a crowning achievement.

Getting into melee is, but beating them there isn't.

Are forge worlds still built? Like are they still building new ones?

One of my players goals is he wants to find and use a Imperial Knight... how well this will go over im unsure especially because he might just get unlucky and die.

How should i go about this? He was thinking of colonizng a world solely to make a forge world. But also i could just give him a broke down imperial knight that he has to slowly rebuild but like could maybe use it in cases of raiders targeting the ship who are in the hold or something or firing blasts out the airlock or some shit.

Thanks!

Forge Worlds are still built. However, barring extreme circumstances, you're not going to become a knight. For that you need to be born into a Knight House on a Knight world. They don't just give out Knights.

Yes, Forge Worlds are still built. But it requires an appropriate planet and centuries of work on the part of the AdMech. Finding a suitable world and handing it over to the AdMech, with appropriate compensation, is a worthy goal. The Knight is actually a bit trickier.

Knights are gene-coded to their owners. Those that are deemed unworthy to assume the throne of a knight dies rather painfully when they try to interface with it. If he wants to get around that, it'll require some highly advanced and highly illegal and heretical genetic manipulation on his part.

Are there any cybernetic enhancements I can use as a Psyker in Rogue Trader? The core rulebook doesn't have anything as far as I can see

So... i just told him if he somehow manages to get a knight without perishing in the process *unlikely*
he could try and somehow delete the imprints so he can use it. *Also EXTREMELY unlikely*

Also i doubt there are even stats for the damn thing in dark heresy or rogue trader. They are really deadset on this but it may not really come up

> somehow delete the imprints so he can use it.
That's some heresy against the omnissiah right there.

So whats the best fucking way to learn about the mechanicus? So fucking with machine spirits is heresy? I was thinkinh of hiving him massive corruption for attempring any of this shit

Just what is this character in the first place? Are there any other PCs affiliated with admech?

Those talents are available to Ascension level characters, so RAW he can't have them until he's reached the appropriate level.