/40krpg/ 40k Roleplay General

I believe they're called a GoWrite. Roll up dry erase boards are easy to make if you have a print shop with a big laminator near by. Just pick out what you want printed on it first cause it will add marginal additional cost to making it. (Like hexes or square grids.) And it should be cheaper for than buying one outright at an office supply store.

Well if you don't put some consequences for being a murder blender in a situation that a diplomat or a hero would have been a better option, that falls to the GM for not thinking that far ahead.

Coulda talked the guy put of his hidey-hole, coulda interrogated him with a ration bar and a cup of recaff since the fuckers been in that pillbox for 2 days now and you just mulched the trench a half hour ago. Too bad. You tossed a grenade in there and set off an ammo dump for a nice flamer and the guys heirloom plasma pistol. And nevermind that all too important Intel thats now a burning tapestry resembling your wanton destruction.

Trying to build a Deathwatch character and I'm little confused on the exp spending and character advancement. For the initial 13,000 exp, is that only to be spent on the generic Space Marine advances, and then any exp after that is spent on your specialty? Or can you spend it on the generic advances, generic deathwatch advances, specialty, and chapter advance from the start?

These 13K are not for you to spend; they are already included in the starting character as means to compare him to DH or RT chars. For the advances, you should earn more.

Such a mentality also fits with DH given how low subtly groups can act.

You get basic training and geneseed implants worth 12000 XP. You have 1000 XP to spend on your Chapter table, your Speciality Characteristics table, and the Rank 1 Speciality/ General Marine/ Deathwatch tables, plus the assorted psychic power tables if you're a Librarian. (Chapter, Codex, Divination, Telepathy, etc)
Carefully check the tables before buying anything. A lot of stuff in General Marine comes stock, like Dodge, and was only included because FFG was thinking about including Chapters with different starting packages later but never did. Some other stuff will appear on multiple tables at different costs, like early access via Chapter sometimes being more or less expensive than the General Marine cost.

The most important thing to do with your 1000 starting XP, though, is to select a Deed out of Rites of Battle. You can only take one, and only at character creation, but they're fluffy pieces that grant two to three times as much stuff as you'd normally get for their cost.

i managed to get my character pregnant while playing Dark heresy, does anyone got any advice for playing a pregnant character ?

Does the average imperial citizen know about the existence of the Inquisition?

Yes, otherwise what good would flashing the rosette as a seal of authority be?

does no one here have experience with playing characters like that ?

Someone probably does, but you might need to check the thread for another game to find one. PC pregnancy doesn't seem like it would come up as often in 40k as it does in fantasy or generic post-apocalyptic settings.

Then just translate what sort of penalties and changes they say for their game over to DH.

you are probably right, pregnancy isnt a recurring theme in Dark heresy....

Been playing an only war campaign for over a year with my buds, my Priest I'd been playing from the beginning met his end.

>holding defensive position in a ruined factory on a hill overlooking the east side of a city
>ended up being the only thing between an army of cultists, traitors, and mutants and our command HQ due to a daring surprise attack
>We held the line while they repositioned and worked out getting us support
>First wave we wiped out before they reached us, just a huge rabble of cultists with little more than pistols and miscellaneous weapons
>then came the traitor guard that was bad
>then came the mutants, that was worse
>but we were all veterans and we had the support of a small company
>In the end it was just our squad and two heavy bolters we had what was left of the men on
>that was when our radioman got word for us, we had valkyrie fire suppourt on the way, we just had to smoke/flare/mark the enemies position
>we prepared ourselves for the next attack, but we couldn't have prepared for this
>Sarge sees a SHITLOAD of cultists, and much worse, a full squad of traitor marines, all covered head to toe in blood wielding chain axes
>heavy bolters light into the cultists as they charge the hill
>our squad desperately fires into the oncoming horror
>two out of the ten of them actually goes down from the six of us shooting, the rest are nearly upon us just outside the ruined front of the factory, won't take them long to get in
>I grab the Sarges flares, and tell him and the rest of the boys to run as fast as they can, and not to look back
>he says hell no, if we do this we do it together
>but thats not the Emperor's plan for our squad, and a shepard must always protect his flock
>sucker punch him and land a crit, knock him out, rest of the squad carries him off sprints out the back
>I turn to the blast doors

continued...

I had the idea of doing a game in pre unification earth, right around the time the emperor began building up to take over. The idea was to initially disguise it as a post apocalyptic campaign, but two questions I wanted to ask were what system would work best for this and how could I go about keeping the post-apoc guise going until it's time to reveal where they are? Could something like this even work with people who know warhammer lore well?

Sno if you read this don't you dare spoil it

wonder when will the going back reach so far back people will play Delta Green with Chaos Daemons instead of Lovecraftian squiglly things.

What does grox taste like?

Veeky Forums, my kill team are failures. They have failed three missions in a row due to their own ineptitudes. So far, a city-sized prometheum tank has exploded due to thinking explosives was a good idea, an imperial governor has died because "killing enemies before they can kill the governor is a good idea, so we'll leave the governor alone while we kill everything outside", and a relic power blade was lost to the TAU of all races, when one member tossed it at the battlesuit and said, "lol we'll get it later, the tau don't even use melee anyway," as the Tau collected their fallen comrade and flew away. I have on my hands the Adeptus Retardus, and they shall know no common sense.

Instead of just killing them, since they do realize that there were better options in hindsight, I'm having them go on a quest to understand the duty, valor, and history of the Astartes. After reading one of the republican commando storytimes, I'm sending them to Isstvan V, site of the dropsite massacre, to reflect and repent. I have a good idea of how to describe the surroundings thanks to storytimes, but what are some places and things I can have them see or do on Isstvan V that can really hammer home what they are, their history as astartes and imperial servants, and how important it is to not fuck up in lolrandumb ways?

Get them some best quality cranial implants.

Good old First Edition Dark Heresy. I had an Arbiter that rolled mutation on his divination. I rolled on mutation and got a result that eventually landed me rolling on the Deamon Host Table. I got the creepy but seemingly human result. He freaked out the whole party except our slightly retarded tech priest. The GM thought the whole situation was hilarious so he told me to keep quiet about it. When I soaked a point blank shot from a melta gun there were questions. The character naturally denied anything was wrong with him. If anything was wrong it was their lack of faith in the Emperor and their loose interpretation of his sacred laws.

HELP!

I have major writers block and I DM a game in an hour. I need ideas to help spure my creativity.

So my players are playing BC and reached the frontlines of a renegade force. The renegade force is currently digging trenches around the nearby city and preparing to defend the city. So the PCs meet the commander and are told that the imperials are staging to do a massive offensive to strike before they have time to fully set up their defenses. The commander wants the PCs to go out into the battlefield and locate a lost promethean shipment. They need it for the coming fight.

So the players set out in a desert environment, past the frontlines in a planet-wide war, to find a lost convoy of promeathen cargo.

What the fuck kind of events do they run into along the way?

Sand

Sandworms

Sand

Sandstorm

Sand

Heat-induced hallucinations

Sand

>Isstvan V

Does it even exist anymore?

The last official fluff of it came from 2nd edition, where an ultramarine successor reconquered it, and then it was left barren and blockaded.

landmines
deserters
a wild demon hungry for souls that will disguise as their ally
orphans trying to survive (one of them is a latent psyker)

that's all I came up with

So, I'm thinking about running a Heresy era Marine game where the characters start as loyalists at Istvaan V, get airlifted out with the Raven Guard, and fight through some of the major battles of the period.

However, 1st ed Deathwatch is kind of a mess. Has anyone made a 2nd ed DH / OW hack of Deathwatch?

Locals. Like Bedouins or something.

Oasis.

Oasis daemon.

Mirages.

>After reading one of the republican commando storytimes, I'm sending them to Isstvan V, site of the dropsite massacre, to reflect and repent.
Oh wow, I'm honoured
Normally I'd question spending years for a pilgrimage (in fact I did in Commando), but three failed missions and a relic blade lost to the slitfaces seems worth some deep contemplation, and if you need combat without weird psychoactive dreamscape shenanigans their pilgrim ship could always have a gellar field flicker along the way and let in hullghasts or something, or they could get boarded by some very unfortunate pirates of whatever species. Eldar Corsairs are good eating (and Dark Eldar make the most hilarious snap crackle pop noises when they go down), but regular humies' reactions when they realize they've boarded a ship with Astartes on it could be priceless.
Radiation, raiders, minefields, acid rain, a Warp-tainted statue/fountain in the middle of the desert, heatstroke, a sandstorm that seems to hunger for flesh, an Imperial supply convoy, Imperials trying to recover the prometheum cache...
If Imperials have gotten to the cache first, they've got their work cut out for them, but on the plus side, free recovery tank! Probably an Atlas or a Trojan, and quite possibly slower than whatever means they have of hauling it back, but mercifully easy to track even in the desert.

Yup. A few of us have even made Legion rulesets.

As someone who's never DMed before, are the modules included in the rulebooks good starting points? If not, what do you suggest doing?

Which line are you thinking of running?

I was going to do Dark Heresy, but after reading that Elric storytime I want to do Black Crusade.

>Black Crusade as your first 40k rpg
Do you have someone you can talk to who has experience with running any 40k rpgs?

I'm running a xenos oriented DH2 campaign and my players are expecting me to rehash Ork/Eldar/Tau/Nid/Necron lore. Do you guys have any good minor or homebrew xenos plothooks and lore?

...

Elric? Gimme source

Is there something wrong with that? The major players will still be there, my players just know the setting very well and think they can't be surprised.

Sounds hilarious and awesome, do continue.

Actually id like to hear anyone's funny campaign stories.

Here

how did they get preggers

>Not sure between starting Dark Heresy 1e and 2e? Pick 2e.

Why? Because it is "new"?

Because it is better in every way but the sector it takes place in.

I like having cash money to start with. I means you can get some basic gear straight off the bat without it being a big thing that your auto-success gear acquisition wasn't pushing the limit of what you can acquire.

hey guys, im a gm new to the 40k universe, i know a bit about the law but nothing about the table top game. one of my players want to know if he can use a heavy thunder hammer in our death watch game, i think its a really cool idea but i said only if the player was a terminator and weilded it two handed because a normal thunder hammer is two handed for your average space marine. i found a picture of the table top rules and i was wondering how i would convert them into the RPG? also was i fair to make it two handed like that?

like sweet tender beef

Rogue Trader

Is there a good excuse for a Tech-Priest or Navigator to decline fealty to the Lord-Captain and still be considered a high officer?

Add 3 or 4 to the damage and pen of a regular power hammer?

what about any special rules? it has an instant kill rule, the lore says its supposed to one shot a carnifex, an extra 4 damage doesn't really seem enough

tech priest no, the rouge trader owns his own ship, its not on rent like the imperium ships, so the tech priest has a vested interest in serving his rouge trader. that said he would also have to serve his higher up magos if they were on board and he could be reclaimed, but while the rouge trader is the highest in comand on the ship, then the tech priest serves the lord captain or what ever your title may be. the navigator can fuck of when ever he or she want, you are renting the navigators, you have to pander to him or her, you litterally cant fly with out them and the definetly know that, its why the emperor sits on the golden throne, he hated the power they had and the dangers warp travel could cause, so keep buttering up your navigator.

So what if an Engiseer Prime (the main Tech Priest) denies fealty or fulfilling an order by the Lord-Captain?

engine seer is way lower than a magos, put him into line, he has no right to do that, consider the act of sabotage and have trusted guards on standby to replace his brain with a plasma volley. the tech priest sounds like he doesn't know his place, as a rouge trader you could hire a magos if you wanted, maybe not an arch magos, but a magos for sure, you could find archeotech that will have you in the pockets of the mechanicum for life, the enginseer will see to the engine and make sure its running, he doesn't have the authority to recreate technology or even invent technology, his only function is to put more coal on the fire, very low on the ranks and very easily replaced.

Ok, thanks for the info.

Cash money makes no fluffy sense though, like the fact you can just save up for a fucking power weapon is bizarre, then there's the whole hopping planets all the time thing.

>without it being a big thing that your auto-success gear acquisition wasn't pushing the limit
What? I don't understand what you're trying to even say here.

DH1e you can buy a microbead for 20 thrones. The value of 20 thrones is always 20 thrones.

DH2e "An Acolyte can make a number of selections up to his starting Influence bonus value from Chapter V: Armoury, each of which can have an Availability of Scarce (–10) or better."

Microbeads are Average (or Common for Administratum). You could have taken something Scarce. You didn't push the limit of your purchasing power, which means you've wasted that selection's potential.

No real grandiose issues until about 5 months in.
At that point, you ought to relegated to light work, because the odds of miscarriage rise dramatically.

So yeah, then take something Scarce. Acquisitions in 2e usually come down to
>Scarce armour
>Scarce weapon
>then a weapon mod or piece of gear that's close to Scarce as possible if you have Influence 30+
You either then get given gear by the GM for your first mission (microbead etc) or you go procure that yourself for your first mission. Why would you ever need to start with a tertiary piece of gear like a microbead, and especially take that over a weapon?

Throw Slaught or Demiurge at them.
Remember there are many, many unknown/lesser xenos out there, and some of them are far worse than the big 5 in terms oh god what do we do.
You know what? Throw Hrud at them. Fuck'em.

With 5+ DoS on the attack roll, the weapon adds 3x the users strength bonus to damage.

>You could have taken something Scarce
That doesn't mean it's something your pc would need or want, user.
Stop taking the powergamer's look at it. The only scarce acquisition that I think is damn near necessary is photovisors for a combat character.

Avoid combat.

Because if you're not going to use the cornerstones of the setting, why bother using the setting? maybe you want eclipse phase more?

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_sentient_species
Go nuts.

If you do use the major xenos present them in a new light rather than the 'generic' way GW does. GW doesn't present it as much now (or have forgotten it) but 40k is more of a mythical fantasy setting than it is a sci-fi setting. So don't be afraid of using mythological or fairy tale themes and archetypes for your aliens. Particularly with the varietes of the Eldar as their mythological influences are still plainly obvious.

Like, in a Rogue Trader campaign I'm planning in a homebrew region. The local Eldar Corsair Princes are presented as the Fair Folk. Otherworldly nobility that steal people to their fay realms in Wild Hunts that ride across the sky on steeds that howl like the damned (jetbikes) and whose ships ride on storms in the void cloaked by otherworldly mists.

Presentation is important, particularly to veterans who think they know everything about the setting.

>you need to do X or you are playing the game WRONG
Naw, get fucked, mate.

>Why would you ever need to start with a tertiary piece of gear like a microbead, and especially take that over a weapon?
The point was precisely that the newer system encourages you to choose the weapon *over* it.

I'm afraid not. Is BC too complicated do you think?

I doubt anyone thinks it's *more* complicated, but it is easier to strip away the veneer of game balance, and there's the ever present possibility of the game turning into chaotic murderhobo / PvP.

Sorry, I don't see the problem with that. Like I said your GM can give you stuff if they see it as a problem or you just try to acquire it at the start of your first mission.

What do people usually do to alleviate that? Could I have, say, a daemon curse them so that if one PC kills another they'll all die?

The different compacts can help alleviate the worst of it, but the base setting of BC is very dog eat dog, and don't be surprised when the most ambitious, ruthless player rises to the top at the expense of the others.

Not related, but I always liked the character concept of an admech double agent embedded in the party who ultimately betrays them at the moment of their triumph. He accepts that this assignment means his life is forfeit and the best he can hope for afterwards is conversion into a battle-servitor.

It is unlikely there would be enough left of him to make a servitor.
Even less likely he would remain loyal to the end.

Do any of the DW books describe the layout and environs of a normal Watch Fortress?

The Lex article someone else posted is a favorite of mine for this, but I've been working on a homebrew one to fuck with my Deathwatch players. I know some of them hang out here, so I'll just say that my favorite minor race on that page of canon ones is by far the Thyrrus.
Fuck off, minor xenos appear in 40K fluff entries all the goddamned time. It helps add to the scope and majesty of the setting that the Imperium isn't dealing with the same shit all the time, but it's embattled by literally everyone else in this fantasy kitchen sink of a tragic space opera.
>a normal thunder hammer is two handed for your average space marine
It actually isn't. They can be one-handed, both on tabletop and in Deathwatch.
A heavy THammer is, however, two-handed. Someone around here made stats for Codex: Deathwatch stuff and I promised to rustle them up for the locals; I have an hour before I have to go to work, so I'll do that before I go.
Slap on an effect that when the weapon scores Righteous Fury, the target must take an immediate Toughness test or die. There is precedent in the Deathwatch Champion advanced speciality.
>being able to save up money makes no fucking sense, you should have a fixed amount of items capped at a certain rarity
You're an idiot.
Erioch is the only Watch-Fortress with much fluff description, going by Lexicanum, but it's not the Imperium's only Ramilles-Class Star Fort. Beyond that I'm unsure, but I do wish you luck.

That's disappointing.

>Slap on an effect that when the weapon scores Righteous Fury, the target must take an immediate Toughness test or die. There is precedent in the Deathwatch Champion advanced speciality.
By Black Crusade, this is formalised into the Decay weapon quality.

What does the inside of a starship's Navigator chamber actually look like? I am trying to make up some nice writeups for what my player's workstations on the starship actually look like but a quick scan through the Navis Primer as well as google have not turned up anything

youtube.com/watch?v=hGJVq2kT0S8

This BFG:A cutscene includes one, but I wouldn't really say they're that homogenous in design. Particularly considering how mutated Navigators can get.

I personally like making them similar to the tanks Dune Navigators are kept in.

...

One of my favorites is "A massive, opulently empty chamber with a huge brass tank of some kind in the center that cannot be seen into, tended to by blind servants and some trusted servants speak for the Navigator, who is never actually seen."

But that's for NPC navigators, not PC ones.

Thank you anons this is exactly what i was looking for

Are Tech-Priests and other auxiliary careers under authority of the regiment officers?

In the field, yes.
In terms of logistics and command, they are beholden to their parent organization.

>You're an idiot.
Care to clarify?

What kinds are there? What are they like?

Demiurg are rock golem dwarves in space.
Hrud are Skaven in space.
Slaught are a mix of worm-that-walks and the flood from halo

Preferring abstract representations of acquisition over an actual currency system is a matter of opinion, but thinking that being able to save up money is bizarre and unfluffy is pretty goddamn stupid.

Why don't rogue traders normally go for the navigator's tower during boarding actions? If you kill all the navigators, you prevent them travelling safely in the warp and you can loot the warp charts which are said to be worth quite a lot.

Ah see you're breaking my statement down into individual components and ignoring a crucial part of it. Saving up in and of itself isn't bad, it's saving up to buy something like a power weapon or equally insanely rare item.

I feel like there's likely a sort of gentlemen's agreement that Navigators should get special treatment in those cases. Those that would kill Navigators like common crewmen might see their own dealings with Navigator houses go sour very quickly. Ransoming them back to their houses should be a-okay and more profitable to boot.

Demiurg are basically a throwback to Squats, the old space dwarven race cut from the setting way back.
Hrud are... bad news. They are a hive based race that emit an entropic, time dilating field around themselves.
Slaught are arguably worse. A powerful, high tech race made up of acidic worms that are natural blanks.
This.
It's just as silly as any argument you can make about influence without the ability to say "Influence automatically accounts for who you know, personal status, the leverage and debts you have on others in order to grease the wheels and acquire rare equipment".

Just invent your own. I've invented 5 for my Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Only War kitchen-sink campaign. Along with an entirely new subsector.