Who's played Dark Heresy?

[Lord Herman]

Hooo boy. While pursuing an escaped psyker, the cleric in my campaign discovered the remains of one of Lorgar's warships at the heart of an Imperial space station (which he already knew was built around a - supposedly - cleansed space hulk). The surviving Word Bearer crew turned the wrecked ship into a great cathedral to the Ruinous Powers. And they've recruited quite a few followers from the millions of people living on the station. So he's now hiding in the upper galleries of a dark cathedral filled with tens of thousands of Chaos worshippers and almost a full company of Word Bearers.

I think the cleric will want to report this to his Inquisitor.

[Drglenn]

Hooo boy. While pursuing an escaped psyker, the cleric in my campaign discovered the remains of one of Lorgar's warships at the heart of an Imperial space station (which he already knew was built around a - supposedly - cleansed space hulk). The surviving Word Bearer crew turned the wrecked ship into a great cathedral to the Ruinous Powers. And they've recruited quite a few followers from the millions of people living on the station. So he's now hiding in the upper galleries of a dark cathedral filled with tens of thousands of Chaos worshippers and almost a full company of Word Bearers.

I think the cleric will want to report this to his Inquisitor.

Yea, that sounds like something that the Inquisition would mobilise a large portion of the sector to deal with (Including his own ship(s) and any nearby Imperial Guard and/or Marines he can get his hands on)

[gdiddy]

Basically, the narrative of this thread is an example of Dark Heresy's design and flaws.

You can play it really fun, and have lots of awesome Grendel-type stories, where the likelihood of failure is so high that when successes do happen, they're remembered forever. So great are these successes, you may be commemorated in an actual DH book.

Or you can obsess over how to beat it. You can beat it. But you end up as a "Mary Sue" who does everything better than the rest of the party, with no actual moments of cool, just constant joyless success.

The philosophies of the system and game are pretty well laid out on the table. It has the tools to make a broken character, but it's like jazz. If you make that broken character, you'll never know the fun the rest of us are having.

[jaybird]

Basically, the narrative of this thread is an example of Dark Heresy's design and flaws.

You can play it really fun, and have lots of awesome Grendel-type stories, where the likelihood of failure is so high that when successes do happen, they're remembered forever. So great are these successes, you may be commemorated in an actual DH book.

Or you can obsess over how to beat it. You can beat it. But you end up as a "Mary Sue" who does everything better than the rest of the party, with no actual moments of cool, just constant joyless success.

The philosophies of the system and game are pretty well laid out on the table. It has the tools to make a broken character, but it's like jazz. If you make that broken character, you'll never know the fun the rest of us are having.

This, so much. The psychopathic delusional redemptionist, the mentally shattered pyrokinetic, the foppish noble arbitrator, the dual laspistol-wielding rake...all of these and more are my PCs. They're optimizers, but they do it within their character archetypes. Lightning attack might be more optimal for the Redemptionist cleric, but Frenzy only lets him all-out attack, and by the Emperor, he's going to all-out attack with Frenzy, because that's just how much he hates the impure and unclean. At the climax of our last session he smote a Daemonhost over the head with a charm in his possession (I ruled that it had broken the Daemonhost's unholy runes, removing its armour) on a charge before chainswording it in the chest. End result was a Daemonhost-shaped scorch mark on the ground as it burned away back to the Warp and a Cleric at Critical 2 leaning on his chainsword, barely standing, while still defiantly roaring litanies of hatred and purification.

That's what Dark Heresy looks like in my head.

[Particle_Man]

Modifiers are you friend in combat.

Oddly, I had a meelee character that charged into combat. Friends would throw grenades but would be so bad at it that the grenades would bounce back and hurt them more than me!

What else, "fearless" sounds cool but can be a trap (sometimes you really need to cut and run).

It was fun, but don't take it seriously and don't fall in love with a character too much. They are mortal, they can be corrupted, they can go mad.

[Fearan]

It was fun, but don't take it seriously and don't fall in love with a character too much. They are mortal, they can be corrupted, they can go mad.

Unless, of course they are Darkholder Living Nightmare Psyker (which sounds awfuly similar to "Pun-Pun")

[WitchSlayer]

Unless, of course they are Darkholder Living Nightmare Psyker (which sounds awfuly similar to "Pun-Pun")

... Or an Ascension Tech-Priest.

[king.com]

Unless, of course they are Darkholder Living Nightmare Psyker (which sounds awfuly similar to "Pun-Pun")

Except for the whole, "entire division of the Imperial Inquisition dedicated to taking down these kinds of people and the vast array of technology used to do so". Kinda takes away their edge.

... Or an Ascension Tech-Priest.

Everyones pun-pun in Ascension...except for storm troopers

[Prophaniti]

I really enjoy the system itself. Good mix of randomization vs stats/builds, good balance, ups the importance of situational modifiers (which ups the importance of tactics and planning), and so forth. 'Course, the base system did that back in WFRP already, but I was pleased with most of the final product when they moved it to 40k. It's true that psykers can feel overpowered to varying degrees, depending on how your group plays. In our current Death Watch campaign the librarian likes to throw around Push-level Smites all the time, but this has caught friendlies more than once and rolled Perils a few times (mostly they opted to use a fate point to re-roll these, which is what fate points are for after all). And, frankly, it's about on par with what our dedicated melee or shooty characters can do with good tactics and rolls.

In Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader it's not too hard to balance these sorts of things, (got a psyker that's always one-shotting things? that's what cannon-fodder is for!) and even in Death Watch I've come very close to killing characters in one round without really trying. The thing that I've noticed is that the combat balance can be quite delicate, if your goal is to find that just right sort of challenge, where they feel pushed but not shoved, if you take my meaning. My recommendation most of the time would be not to bother trying to hit that sweet spot, but let it fall in the ballpark. If players are not using their fate points to avoid dying when they get caught by someone on overwatch or a grenade, then you're probably not challenging them enough. If they run out of fate points in the first few rounds of a fight, you're probably challenging them too much.

I had to laugh a bit at the person complaining that Death Watch is nothing but go here and kill that. Since the GM has full control over the construction and goals of any specific mission from start to finish, whose fault would that be? There are plenty of ways to snap the leash on a group whose first thought is to kill it with fire, even staying purely within canon. Indeed, a Death Watch Kill Team accidentally screwing over a system by glassing everything downrange would be entirely in keeping with canon, and humanity's luck in the 41st millennium in general...

[a_humble_lich]

Everyones pun-pun in Ascension...except for storm troopers

Oh god yes. I am just wrapping up an Ascension/Rogue Trader game and the last session the party took out:

• 2 Chaos Hellbade Fighters
• A large hoard of Chaos troupers
• A hoard of Chaos Traitor Marines
• A Warhound Titan
• An Ascension level Sorceress/Daemon Prince
• A slightly weakened Greater Daemon of Tzeentch (it had slightly fewer wounds than normal)
• A full power Greater Daemon of Slannessh

Now this was in two separate fights, and for the the first fight they were in vehicles, yet still.... At one point the Grey Knight managed to soak Warp Fire for 60 points of damage!