Warhammer & 40K RPGs Thread III: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Heresies?

[Marlowe]

You expect me to make Operate:Aeronautica tests to see past the end of my nose? Man, you're strict.

[Malak'ai]

Only if you choose to pilot the craft with your teeth .

[Marlowe]

Well, realistically. There's a talent called "Hot-Shot Pilot" which would cost me 450 exp plus requires rank 2 in Op:Aero for a total of 650.

However before that I want Awareness and upgrades to BS and AG at the very least.

As for Scrutiny, I'm already the pilot, the medic, and a gunslinger. Someone ELSE can put points into the "sniffing at corners" skill. D's character should have it anyway. It's a Penal World Homeworld Bonus.

[Malak'ai]

He does have it, though it's a skill all Acolytes should at least know so they don't get hit with the -20 penalty, though it's completly up to you when you want to spend the XP to get get it.

[Marlowe]

We shall see what happens when we accomplish some stuff, kill some things, and get some experience to spend. Currently we're just juggling soap bubbles about what we might like to advance. Which appears to be approximately everything.

I'm thinking GW went and wrote themselves into a corner a little when they went for this percentile system.

[Incorrect]

Hi everyone (sorry to interrupt you two)

As a GM I generally like to use minions in combat. In D&D terms that would be creatures with 1 hp and evasion.
Does anyone have a good idea for using this concept in Dark Heresy/Only War?

Im thinking something like:
1 wound
4 TB
2-4 armor, to taste
30% dodge
Attack ?

I want them squishy enough to easily die when attacked, but offensively strong enough to be relevant.
What is a good balance for something like this?

[Malak'ai]

It was Fantasy Flight Games that wrote the system dude, not GW themselves, but in general I kinda like the D100 system, bloody easy to calculate and variables for how well you succeed, or how badly you fail.

[Malak'ai]

Hi everyone (sorry to interrupt you two)

As a GM I generally like to use minions in combat. In D&D terms that would be creatures with 1 hp and evasion.
Does anyone have a good idea for using this concept in Dark Heresy/Only War?

Im thinking something like:
1 wound
4 TB
2-4 armor, to taste
30% dodge
Attack ?

I want them squishy enough to easily die when attacked, but offensively strong enough to be relevant.
What is a good balance for something like this?

First of all, what kind of opponents are your Acolytes going up against? Ork? Chaos? other Humans?

[Destro_Yersul]

Hi everyone (sorry to interrupt you two)

As a GM I generally like to use minions in combat. In D&D terms that would be creatures with 1 hp and evasion.
Does anyone have a good idea for using this concept in Dark Heresy/Only War?

Im thinking something like:
1 wound
4 TB
2-4 armor, to taste
30% dodge
Attack ?

I want them squishy enough to easily die when attacked, but offensively strong enough to be relevant.
What is a good balance for something like this?

I'm pretty sure Deathwatch has rules for Hordes. Let me check how they work.

Ok, so they have Magnitude instead of Wounds, and you get a size bonus to hit them. Any hit that does damage reduces Magnitude by one. There's a bunch of other rules, but it's ultimately intended to provide a way for weak enemies to be a threat to space marines, and to have a lot of enemies using just one statblock. You could try something like that.

Alternatively, you can just apply the 'no crits for unimportant NPCs' principle, and have most things die when they hit zero wounds. Lots of stuff has 10, or so, which is easy enough to knock off with a couple good hits.

[Wraith]

Im thinking something like:
1 wound
4 TB
2-4 armor, to taste
30% dodge
Attack ?

I want them squishy enough to easily die when attacked, but offensively strong enough to be relevant. What is a good balance for something like this?

Honestly, I wouldn't even go into that much detail. TB4 is not insignificant, and adding armour to that actually gives them an amount of survivability that surpasses even some PC's!

In the past, when it comes to hordes of mooks I have just used a houserule that I refer to as "Parry-or-Die".
They have 35% WS/BS and an appropriate weapon - usually a club or sword and a pistol or rifle - and after that you ignore their wounds, TB and armour; if they get hit, they either parry or dodge the blow or they die outright. Occasionally they might not even get that, if a PC blind-sides them with a shotgun at point blank range, so your players will get the satisfaction of laying waste to cannon fodder.

It means that they are hitting a reasonable amount of the time, for a sensible amount of damage (usually d10+2 or 3) so a sensible player will be wary of them striking back, but the bookkeeping is much easier if you just roll a 1-in-3 and get rid of them in one go

The reason that I suggest doing this, is because unlike D&D it's quite a bit harder to stop your antagonists from doing damage without invoking DM caveat. In D&D, if you want to give the players an easy time, you give your gremlin enemies a dagger; d4-1 damage isn't so scary, and is generally easier to justify in context. Gremlins are small, weak and don't have access to any bigger weapons, right?
In DH and WFRP, however, everyone rolls a d10 and (especially in ranged combat, which is a lot more prevalent in DH than in D&D, in my experience) consistently adds a modifier or takes AP into consideration, and it's a bit tougher to find an in-character reason to say "well, this guy just does less damage" without directly fudging the dice.

Unless you're completely okay with fudging the dice, of course. Just be aware that adding more enemies - even pathetic ones - can often turn out to be more dangerous than one tough opponent simply because their damage output increases much more quickly.

[The Glyphstone]

The other Danger of using swarms of mooks is reaction stripping. Characters who aren't Tech priests are heavily dependent on their Dodge or Parry to avoid damage and they only get one reaction per turn.

[Aneurin]

It was Fantasy Flight Games that wrote the system dude, not GW themselves, but in general I kinda like the D100 system, bloody easy to calculate and variables for how well you succeed, or how badly you fail.

Actually, the first Warhammer game (1e) was made by Games Workshop, farmed out to, uh, someone else, then it went to Black Industries who did WFRP 2e and Dark Heresy 1e, then FFG got it and they did most of the Dark Heresy splats and every line since.

Hi everyone (sorry to interrupt you two)

As a GM I generally like to use minions in combat. In D&D terms that would be creatures with 1 hp and evasion.
Does anyone have a good idea for using this concept in Dark Heresy/Only War?

Im thinking something like:
1 wound
4 TB
2-4 armor, to taste
30% dodge
Attack ?

I want them squishy enough to easily die when attacked, but offensively strong enough to be relevant.
What is a good balance for something like this?

As has already been mentioned, there's Hordes in Black Crusade and Deathwatch, but there's also the formation rules which are a bit slicker and more human-friendly than rules meant to challenge Space Marines.

Essentially, the rules let you treat a squad (more more enemies) as a single entity for the purposes of shooting. The formation gets a bonus to hit based on its numbers, and a bonus to be hit. Every DoS on an attack lets it land another hit up to the number of creatures in it. Every hit that lands on it that passes the AP and TB of its members inflicts a single casualty; more for Blast and Spray weapons.

Has rules for leaders and unique foes inside a unit, like a special weapons trooper or something. I don't remember those too well. Comes with morale rules, too, which is nice.



That said, I don't really see the need for minion-style enemies - part of the point of the system is that pretty much anyone's a threat, no matter how good you are a drunk with a knife could still end up killing you if you're (very) unlucky. But a kitted out, trained set of acolytes or guardsmen will go through a soft target like a power sword through butter if they're prepared. When the PCs have a bit of experience and some decent gear (especially when they get to bolt weapons) they're going to tear through things like underhive gangers, cultists and random citizenry like they're not even there provided they don't blunder into an ambush (at which point they get a pointed reminder that autoguns and shotguns may be cheap, but they still hurt at point-blank).

I only use the formation rules as a handy way to manage moderate scale conflicts, really, since I run Only War as a war game and sometimes there's a lot of NPCs doing stuff.

[LeSwordfish]

The more I think about it, the more i'd actively advise against the horde rules. Hordes get bonuses to damage and their attacks can't be dodged, which means they can shut down a PC that's not running around in Power Armour very fast.

[Marlowe]

Yo, Szofiya's backstory. Malak'ai wanted it typed so it's easiest to post it here.

Spoiler

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So, once upon a time Jiona was an unexceptional, peaceful system on the fringes of the Imperium. It had a single, unexceptional habitable planet, a few unexceptional Gas Giants with many, many utterly unremarkable moons, and a large but not exceptional amount of asteroids.

Then the Waaughlet of the Ork Warboss Grimloque Da Thrasher turned up. And the Imperial Navy subsector fleet turned up to fight them. And the 1776th Imperial Navy Reserve fleet turned up and as a result of a paperwork error got mistaken for a Chaos fleet and found itself fighting both other fleets. And lots of incredibly stupid heroism and vulgar displays of power went on for some months. And then the battle moved on as all six sides (Grimloque found himself facing a rebellious subordinate, the subsector fleet split into "Stop shooting at our own guys!" and "Keep shooting our own guys so they can't report us for shooting at them!" factions, and some Eldar thought it was a game and joined in) left the system chasing each other, leaving Jiona a wrecked shell of a place and Jiona Prime ecologically devastated after the crashing of several capital ships and at least two Ork Roks.

And then some warp storms cut off the whole place for the next few decades. Because that helped.

Let it be reckoned though, that while the rulers of Jiona might have been a scheming, murdering, untrustworthy, ruthless and overdressed bunch, they at least were properly paranoid about this sort of thing. Some millions of Humans survived the Days of Fire on asteroid outposts and moon bases, and some tens of million more survived on Jiona Prime itself in fortified bunkers. Because if you live on a planet in this Universe and you don't have a bunker ready to jump into you're just asking for it.

Of course, this didn't really help a lot since the ecosystem of Jiona Prime was basically trashed. It was also infested with Feral Orks. Who were really no help at all. After several years of totally futile attempts at trying to make a go of their ruined homeworld the remaining Humans of Jiona were evacuated or evacuated themselves into space.

Over the next few decades an entirely Voidborn culture emerged, Humans making their own way to live as Humans do on Asteroids, in constructed habitats of various designs, on icy moonlets, and for the really daring the more livable of the hulked capital ships left drifting in the system.

When the Imperium reestablished contact almost their first action was to deal with the feral Orks on the planet by blasting it into a blackened cinder. This action occasioned some comment by the people of Jion (or Xeon, or Zyon, or whatever they were calling themselves at this point). Possibly as a result of this the Cult of the Emperor never really got reestablished in Xeon (Or Jeon, or Zion. Or whatever) and most Xyon (...I give up) are somewhat cynical, verging on skeptical, of the concepts behind it. Of course, most of them are smart enough not to mention this where there's the slightest chance of anyone from outsystem hearing.

Fast forward a few hundred years and Szofiya Maklaran (pronounced Sophia MacLaren) was born on Wyomyness Spinner; a thirty-mile long spinning cylinder in space illuminated by great big mirrors giving the inhabitants lots of direct sunlight (pasty-faced freak INDEED!). Wyomyness is a fairly new habitat by the system's standards, although quite old enough to get suitably grungy, grimy, labyrinthine and dystopian. Because it would be terrible for an acolyte to come from anywhere nice.

Szofiya's father was some guy. Most of them are. Exactly which one is unknown although Mum can name a few candidates. Quite a few candidates, many of them Imperial Navy or Rogue Trader or Perfectly Legitimate Businessmen and now presumably outsystem.

Mum Maklaran was a Vox-Entertainer, an exciting job that's a lot less glamourous than it sounds. In practical terms it means that from a fairly young age in Szofiya's life her mother was absent on tour for months at a time and returning home with new and exciting men and new and exciting drug addictions. This gave Szofiya ample opportunity to fall in with the wrong crowd. And so it was to be.

Well; there are worse crowds to fall in with than the Scrapdragons, an unruly, woolly-bully, mostly teenage branch of Wyomyness's Salvage Guild. Szofiya's life with them was unexceptional and uneventful. Steal first laspistol. Get into fight with rival salvage gang. Make first kill at thirteen (she was aiming for his leg. Damn poor-quality weapons). Go out and help salvage space junk (no shortage of THAT). Help Mum get over her latest addiction. Study medicae here and there to help with that last. Get addicted to Stimm at fifteen. Get detoxed and swear off any drug she doesn't know how to brew herself, you know. Normal kid's stuff.

This happy, carefree life eventually started to get more and more complicated as the Scrapdragons and other Totally Legitimate Wyomyness business organisations became more and more intertwined with the doings of other, larger and more annoyingly mysterious Totally Legitimate Business organisations, some of them run by people from outsystem. And so, after the death of her Mother from natural causes (yes, I know. Natural causes. A huge shock to all), Szofiya elected to go outsystem herself and see what's so great about this "Outsystem" place anyway.

She has since worked, sometimes as a lander pilot, sometimes as muscle, sometimes as a medic, on a number of Totally Legitimate ships engaged in Absolutely Honest work in places that she is careful to remain vague about.

She's not entirely clear on what drew her to the notice of the Inquisition, but whatever it was, she didn't do it.

Not lately, anyway.

[Incorrect]

Honestly, I wouldn't even go into that much detail. TB4 is not insignificant, and adding armour to that actually gives them an amount of survivability that surpasses even some PC's!
In the past, when it comes to hordes of mooks I have just used a houserule that I refer to as "Parry-or-Die".

That is an interesting thought. It certainly results in some very squishy minions. Very much akin to how I would do it in D&D.

The other Danger of using swarms of mooks is reaction stripping. Characters who aren't Tech priests are heavily dependent on their Dodge or Parry to avoid damage and they only get one reaction per turn.

Very good point. On one side I like the fact that a group of opponents must be eliminated quickly and efficiently or else they will melt you. On the other side, of cause it needs to be balanced or it will be a quick TPK.

As has already been mentioned, there's Hordes in Black Crusade and Deathwatch, but there's also the formation rules which are a bit slicker and more human-friendly than rules meant to challenge Space Marines.

I didn't know about the formation rules, I will look it up the next chance I get.


As an actual example I recently used minions in an introduction battle for a group.
Some humans had been infected by a fungus, and was compelled to attack the characters.
I gave them 1 wound (no critical) and 9 Damage reduction. For the first few enemies it felt like a normal battle. Small hits did nothing, but then a big hit killed them. But the last enemy was hit by a lot of small hits, and kinda felt immortal. Of cause this can happen with normal enemies as well.
In the end the last minion was held down and head shot, which was pretty cool anyway.

[Malak'ai]

The more I think about it, the more i'd actively advise against the horde rules. Hordes get bonuses to damage and their attacks can't be dodged, which means they can shut down a PC that's not running around in Power Armour very fast.

Having gone back and looked at the Horde rules from DW, the only thing I'd use them for in DH2 would be for things like Snotlings and possibly Nurglings, things that would have really bad chances to hit, and do minimal damage, even with the Horde bonuses.
Hell, I personally doubt you could really call Snottys combatants, more like moving obsticles at try to chew your anckles .


(Haven't actually seen a stat block for Snotlings, just a rough estimation based on the stat block of the Gretchen in RT:ITS).

[LeSwordfish]

Having gone back and looked at the Horde rules from DW, the only thing I'd use them for in DH2 would be for things like Snotlings and possibly Nurglings, things that would have really bad chances to hit, and do minimal damage, even with the Horde bonuses.
Hell, I personally doubt you could really call Snottys combatants, more like moving obsticles at try to chew your anckles .

You say that, but I'm in a WFRP game where a small group of them killed several NPCs and took a Fate point off our Priest.

[Wraith]

Actually, the first Warhammer game (1e) was made by Games Workshop, farmed out to, uh, someone else, then it went to Black Industries who did WFRP 2e and Dark Heresy 1e, then FFG got it and they did most of the Dark Heresy splats and every line since.

There's a little bit more to it; Nothing that GW does is ever so simple.

For 1st Edition, Games Workshop hired Hogshead Publishing to make their RP game and various supplements through the early-to-mods 90's.

Hogshead closed in 2003, and the rights reverted back to GW. They opened Black Industries as the RPG sales/promotion arm of BL Publishing, their publishing division which also includes Black Library. Second Edition WFRP was actually produced by Green Ronen Publishing on their behest.

Black Industries produced Dark Heresy and was promptly shut down 2 days later for being unprofitable. FFG produced everything since, including WFRP 3rd Edition and DH 2nd edition, until this time last year when Cubicle 7 were commissioned to produce 4th Edition WFRP.

All in all, it's been a long and hard journey for the WFRP/DH games to get where they are now - that's why near-pristine copies of WFRP 2nd edition occasionally go on eBay for about three times their RRP.
Long may the new era reign, hopefully.

[Delta]

There's a little bit more to it; Nothing that GW does is ever so simple.

To prove that point you missed out on Ulisses which took over the 40K license from FFG and will produce the new "Wrath & Glory" RPG this year.

[RagingBluMunky]

Only if you choose to pilot the craft with your teeth .

Quick! Someone make an Ork that does just this!

As for why, he obviously needs his hands free for more Dakka!

[Malak'ai]

Quick! Someone make an Ork that does just this!

As for why, he obviously needs his hands free for more Dakka!

Or both his hands are the Dakka... Kostom Shootas infact .

[Sinewmire]

That said, I don't really see the need for minion-style enemies - part of the point of the system is that pretty much anyone's a threat, no matter how good you are a drunk with a knife could still end up killing you if you're (very) unlucky. But a kitted out, trained set of acolytes or guardsmen will go through a soft target like a power sword through butter if they're prepared. When the PCs have a bit of experience and some decent gear (especially when they get to bolt weapons) they're going to tear through things like underhive gangers, cultists and random citizenry like they're not even there provided they don't blunder into an ambush (at which point they get a pointed reminder that autoguns and shotguns may be cheap, but they still hurt at point-blank).

This. Very much this.

Dark Heresy works best in a noir style game, and my friend's character Castella, a defrocked Sister of Battle faced demons made flesh, heretic inquisitors and mostrous Mechanicus tech-heresies. Castella died after getting caught in an unlucky gunfight. A couple of gangers with autoguns mowed her down after she kicked down their door. A pointless, glamourless death in a squalid drug den for a true hero of the Imperium.

How Warhammer 40,000 is that?

I love the Dark Heresy system because it *does* support Winter Soldier level badasses... but if you catch someone by themselves and out of armour, then a determined man with a gun will very likely kill them.

[Malak'ai]

I know this has been asked before, but I can't remember which iteration of this thread it was in, so going to ask again.

Spoiler: Enemy Weapons. Marlowe stay out.

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For Tau pulse rifles and pulse carbines, the only stats I could find are in DW: Mark of the Xenos. In that profile it says they are 2D10+2 pen 2. To bring them down to DH level, would 1D10+4 pen 2 be alright?

[Destro_Yersul]

I know this has been asked before, but I can't remember which iteration of this thread it was in, so going to ask again.

Spoiler: Enemy Weapons. Marlowe stay out.

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For Tau pulse rifles and pulse carbines, the only stats I could find are in DW: Mark of the Xenos. In that profile it says they are 2D10+2 pen 2. To bring them down to DH level, would 1D10+4 pen 2 be alright?

Spoiler: weapons

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There are also stats in RT: Into the Storm for tau weapons, and they're actually stronger there (2d10+3 and AP4). These are supposed to be Bolter-equivalent weapons, so I don't think it's unreasonable to keep the original profile. You just have to make sure not to use too many, and to give the acolytes a lot of cover. If you want something that still evokes Tau while having a less threatening statline, especially if you're giving it to human mercenaries, you could always use Kroot Rifles.

[Malak'ai]

Spoiler: weapons

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There are also stats in RT: Into the Storm for tau weapons, and they're actually stronger there (2d10+3 and AP4). These are supposed to be Bolter-equivalent weapons, so I don't think it's unreasonable to keep the original profile. You just have to make sure not to use too many, and to give the acolytes a lot of cover. If you want something that still evokes Tau while having a less threatening statline, especially if you're giving it to human mercenaries, you could always use Kroot Rifles.

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It's for Tau Pathfinders, but seeing how most weaponry in DH, apart from things like heavy weapons, plasma and melta weapons are 1D10+X, I was going to try to keep things in line.

[Marlowe]

I'd like to request an enemy dual-wielding a hot-shot laspistol and stub automatic, no armour, no ambidextrous or two-weapon wielder, and a Toughness and Ballistic skill of 22 each, thanks.

[Malak'ai]

I'd like to request an enemy dual-wielding a hot-shot laspistol and stub automatic, no armour, no ambidextrous or two-weapon wielder, and a Toughness and Ballistic skill of 22 each, thanks.

Do you want fries with that, maybe a shake as well?

You'll get what I've planned out for you .

[Marlowe]

...David Hasselhoff AGAIN??

[Destro_Yersul]

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It's for Tau Pathfinders, but seeing how most weaponry in DH, apart from things like heavy weapons, plasma and melta weapons are 1D10+X, I was going to try to keep things in line.

Spoiler

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Well, there is a 1d10+X statline for pulse carbines, in the DW errata, but it's 1d10+12 Pen 4. If what you want is something a little lower power than that, but still with a 1d10+X statline, then I might go with the 1d10+4, but keep the AP4 and give it Tearing. That way it remains a very dangerous weapon, but is not something capable of producing massive damage output.

[Malak'ai]

Spoiler

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Well, there is a 1d10+X statline for pulse carbines, in the DW errata, but it's 1d10+12 Pen 4. If what you want is something a little lower power than that, but still with a 1d10+X statline, then I might go with the 1d10+4, but keep the AP4 and give it Tearing. That way it remains a very dangerous weapon, but is not something capable of producing massive damage output.

Sounds like a plan!