TheRPGSite

To kick off my attempt at running Dark Heresy, I want to run a simple combat. I'm thinking of some malcontents in an abandoned Hive Cathedral, or somewhere suitable. BUt I am not sure how to balance it, or what foes to pick for 2 rank 1 characters (psyker and assassin). Nothing too taxing, a simple combat affair to familiarise us all with some rules.

One trope of DH is the dull trip between planets. What if someone on ship has a hankering to kill the PCs?

Or maybe the ship gets boarded by tyranids and while the space marines take on the genestealers, some little ripper bastards are stalking the halls and the PCs need to deal with them.

Hmm...any tyranid may be too much. Maybe the boarders are orks, still scary tough, but the PCs can plug them in a firefight.

That isn't a bad idea but i think i'd rather it be set on a planet, besides I think orks would be too tough.

The ship idea is good, but go for the middle ground and give 'em a creepy hullghast or two to chase around in the dark of the ship.

I not own Creatures Anathema. I was thinking of using the mine part from Shattered Hope. My main concern is balance. It would be a shitty deal to have the players overwhelmed in what is an exercise in learning combat!

Couple of cultists with 25-35 in Characteristics.  Basic weapons like lasguns and clubs will suffice.

For base level antagonists, go with that - more characteristics tends to mean an experienced or dangerous enemies.

Well-built and equipped Dark Heresy characters can usually take on between 2 and 3 times their number of human opponents so long as there's good cover.

well they have tatty clothes and las pistols. What more (along with their faith in the Emperor) do they need?

Figure if an Inquisitor actually wants his acolytes to survive & succeed on their first mission he's got to supply them with between 500 and 1000 creds worth of gear, each. That gets them things like decent weapons (long-las, autoguns, grenades, custom mods) and armour (Flak or better), basic detection equipment like auspexes, flashlights and magnoculars, with some pocket money to procure other items as needed (gas masks, rope, medical supplies).

DH is much like Shadowrun or Traveller where PC equipment is critical.

I was going to allow them to spend their starting money on common or greater availability gear from the book. I'm just going by what the book says. I have no idea how things will play out.
That's not going to be anywhere near that kind of money (certainly not for the psyker).

Oh bloody hell, i've just discovered the errata file.

Oops.

Ok, so i've come up with an overview of a small scenario. Effectively a dungeon crawl through a small lunar facility. All I need is to find a suitably sized map of such a facility I can use. It shouldn't be too big as this isn't even an adventure, just a series of quick combats, a plot twist/final fight, the end.

On the moon called Murgos, shot out of its original orbit and pulled into that of a Warp rift, a Tech Priest agent of the Inquisitor, Binarius Thule, needs to be rescuing after transmitting a coded message via Astropath to the Inquisitor’s headquarters.
The content of that message explains that the experiment has reached a critical stage and must be transferred offworld. The moon is starting to tear itself apart due to instabilities in the nearby rift.
The acolytes are dispatched as the only nearest agents of the Inquisitor to rescue the Tech Priest. They are not briefed as to the nature of his work, nor are they even made aware of its existence. They have no information regarding Thule’s work at all.
Unbeknownst to the Inquisitor, and thus the acolytes, Thule is corrupted. He is now Heretek; his work with the experiment and the close proximity to the Warp has opened his eyes to a different reality. He has new masters now and they are eager to receive the experiment.
To that end he wants escape from both Murgos facility and the reach of the Inquisitor. All he needs is safe passage. This is easily achieved so long as the acolytes do not discover, prior to reaching him, he has turned. Unfortunately for him they will learn this fact early on in reaching the facility with the presence of a psyker and the availability of clues.
The rescue process is also hampered by the presence of malfunctioning servitors, hereteks loyal to Thule and some minor warp entities, including mutants that are the result of his work now freed from their prisons by the failing facility. There is also a time limit: the facility is collapsing and the acolytes are pressed for time.
Thule will assume the acolytes are none the wiser unless they declare their position. Upon reaching him they will be presented with a choice: Thule can transport them all off the moon by means of a Teleportarium device, or they can attempt to kill him (of course he will resist).
The choice comes down to this:
If they kill Thule their escape will take much longer; they have no hope of operating his technology to reach his vessel.
If Thule learns they know of his treachery he will attempt to escape. This results in combat the same as if the acolytes attempt to kill him; however he has a brief window to escape.
Should he escape or should the acolytes kill him, they have to make their way back through the facility to their rendezvous shuttle in time. This is an extremely tight window of opportunity.
Thule cannot teleport them to their shuttle; his device will only transport them one way – through the rift to a waiting shuttle of his own. The acolytes can only imagine what will happen to them as Thule will have the upper hand. They do not understand his teleportarium device and will only know that it is pre-programmed to a set destination and cannot be changed.
Furthermore, the facility was designed to be shielded from the Warp. As it is failing, there is a chance that certain rooms will be have their protective blast shields down. This means that, while not directly exposed (the facility remains pressurised and airtight for the moment); the rift can be seen through the windows. This is not a good thing as it has a hypnotic quality if observed for too long causing mental disturbance. Thule knew this and the acolytes are briefed prior to arrival.

If there are any holes in that twist I haven't planned on and what suitable clues I can provide that will lead the 2 acolytes to discover Thule is now heretek then speak ye here. Thanks.

So if he has a shuttle on the other side of the Warp and wants to join his new masters why does he need the party?  Why did he call them??  I either missed something or it just don't fly with me.

Rather he needs them as an an offering to his new dark masters, especially the psi.  His experiment is the mechanism he will use to subdue them.  A weak creature of chaos used as a power cell for a corruption ray, its connected to a machine so they need to be in the right place, cause he only has a few shots before the creature is a wasted mutated hulk.   The corruption stuns the crap out of them, makes the Psi more likely to perils of the warp when they tap the warp.  They also gain some corruption if they are hit multiple times.  Once they are all his he plans to take them to the warp.  

Or he just wants to show the imperium, and the inquisitor that he is their doom and shove it in their face he escaped.  So he is waiting, tries to take them with to offer to the dark masters, else he is gone.  unless some one can figure out how to stop the teleport.  

At least thats what I would do.

Oh and Its my first post hello rpg site

Or he didn't call for help, but someone else did. That person got murdered by Thule between then and the arrival of the acolytes and as such discovering his body is the simple clue (or the catalyst) at least to revealing Thule's treachery.

This is only meant to be a very short interlude primarily based around combat. Consequently the station needs to be small, have a few mobs, and then the boss encounter. The point of which is ultimately a fight with Thule, but with the acolytes believing they don't know he's evil.
He offers them a quick escape route they know they can't take knowing that he's a traitor. So back they go through a collapsing station with perhaps one more big fight and then free.

Quote from: Spinachcat;493771One trope of DH is the dull trip between planets. What if someone on ship has a hankering to kill the PCs?

There is a hilarious scene in Mitchell's For the Emperor, in which a mutiny breaks out on the ship and the protagonist has not simply to dissolve the violence but also steer the delicate diplomatic situation that ensues.

You'd have to read it to know what I'm on about, but if this situation could be rewritten as a scenario I think that could be interesting. The point of combat here would not be so much for the PCs to kill people on deck as to contain them, knock them out, etc., and then face these very people again in a court hearing on the ship.

there is nothing hilarious about the 41st millenium!

Ok, time is running short since I actually want to do this encounter this evening, but procrastination and lack of ideas are my middle names.

I'm thinking of changing it so the acoluytes know Thule is a traitor (though he remains unaware they know he knows).
They turn up kill some things and when they reach him find that he is in mid conversation with a traitor marine ship in high orbit. The acolytes will see the ship appraching mid way through.
The upshot is the marines are there to take Thule and his experimental warp gate into custody. The acolytes don't stand a chance against them, but the only way to escape is to use the gate. Doing so puts them right back into the shuttle they arrived in.
Rewind...when the acolytes land (accompanied by a tek servitor/mcguffin) the psyker gets a moment of extreme unease and nausea before the shuttle behind them takes off with two people aboard. Of course it's them escaping, but they don't fully realise that and are left thinking 'how the fuck do we get away?'

How many foes would make a suitable quick learn-the combat encounter?

2-4 opponents with both sides in cover.

I think wel'll keep it right simple.
The acolytes will arrive and be escorted into a central lab right beneath Thul's private lab/office. They will be made to wait which is of course a trap. He knows they are coming for him, but they don't know he knows. He gloats that his new master, Lord Carrion, will be most pleased with his experiment.
The acolytes then get to fight 2 vomit throwing mutants. If that's not enough to stop them then they will be ambushed (or attempt to be) as the Traitor ship docks, a heretek in the guise of Thule's personal servitor.
If it looks like the servitor is about to get KO'd Thule will escape by activating the device and opening the warp gate. Through it he goes to Throne knows where, after which point the nature of the gate will shift (ie they can't follow him directly). At this point the Astartes are fast approaching and Carrion's terrifying voice is booming around the station vox.
Close examination, via a Psyniscience roll, will show that the cockpit of the acolytle's shuttle can be seen through the rift. If not they see nothing except a miasma of colour. Either way it's through the rift (which seals behind them - it's transient in nature, natch) or fast talk a group of 10,000 year old Imperium hating god men!

I really like the Heretek scenario idea. I absolutely going to use that. Its got a  nice confined dungeon crawl, ticking time bomb and some mystery as well. I would amp up the weirdness ala Aliens so the PCs don't realize that Thule is a bad guy and keep trying to rescue him.

Once the PCs got to the moon, I'd have Thule play up the helpless victim via occasional vox broadcasts to lure the PCs away from what he's really doing.

I do like how they see their future selves leaving in the shuttle. However, I don't know if Throne fearing Inquisitors would choose entering a warp gate vs. a honorable death without risking corruption.

For the first time in many moons (not far off a decade) I not only did some roleplaying (there have been a few all too brief interludes as a player in the interim) but ran a game. That game was Dark Heresy. I've been and still am collecting the 40k games for the best part of this year. I daresay this will be the last rpg collection I will ever undertake. Back in the day SHRPG's were the games I'd collect, along with a love of the oWoD, in particular vampire and mage. I've made it my 'hobby' to collect the 40k lines as a whol as they are gorgeous books.
Prior to last night's return to the saddle my two players and I had, last week, created characters with a rather haphazard intro to the 40k universe they were much less familiar with than I. this was supplemented with a barrage of emails containing background references during the week. I think these went down well, it's hard to tell sometimes. One of my biggest concerns is getting them to play the setting 'right'. This probably sounds like arrogance, but one of the conditions of playing 40k is playing it right. It is a setting with a lot of depth, but can easily seem adolescent and ridiculous given its source as a wargame ostensibly aimed at teenage boys. The baroque and grim nature of the medieval + tech setting has a lot of superficial contradictions that can be hard no0t just to portray buyt to appeal.
So the two characters are an Imperial Psyker and an Assassin all starting at rank 1. this is important because, while limited, it allows me to start things off on a simpler footing rather than throw enormous and complicated threats at them off the bat. The learning curve is a little simpler. Dark Heresy seems to be a reasonably benign system, in terms of complexity, but one that front loads a fair amount of detail with an equally fair amount of charts and tables, some of which can be memorised (hopefully by me).
It was a nice gesture to see that one player had actually (and quite correctly IMO) devoted much of his time during the week at work to not doing his job but printing out some handouts for me, various charts and tables. It's curious because he's also a player that has an unfortunate tendency to joke about (which, again unfortunately, he did). More on that later, but first the encounter itself.
I chose to run a very quick, simple, encounter; three staged fights aboard a research facility and a neat, if I do say so myself, plot twist. An exercise in introducing us all to the combat rules and the broader resolution system. So the backstory:
The acolytes had been charged with heading to a small research facility on the moon, Murgos, orbiting a warp anomaly. The station is run by a tech priest known as Binarius Thule, a more higher ranking agent of the acolyte's master, the Inquisitor. They had been charged with 2 things: recover Thule's work 'the experiment', and kill Thule. This latter because the Inquisitor has learned Thule has been corrupted – always a possibility when working with the Warp.
The acolytes arrive and are ushered into the main hub, a largish lab, of the complex, over which looks Thule's personal space. But before they get there, and just after they disembark, entering the station proper, their shuttle, the only means of escape, suddenly departs with 2 figures aboard. The psyker receives a momentary spasm of psychic unrest accordingly. The reason will become clear.
Within the laboratory they are told to wait. In the centre is a large cogitator altar projecting a holographic image of the nearby anomaly into which are plugged 6 servitors, 3 seated on either side. They attend the machine and babble numbers and data meaningless to the acolytes. On each of the right and left walls are 3 stasis chambers, 2 of which are occupied by mutants. There are two cogitators attached to each bank of 3 chambers monitoring them. This is a trap. Thule knows they are coming. He appears at the window and says something pithy before the chambers open and the 2 mutants, with their ability to vomit corrosive bile, inch forward.
This leads to a fight the acolytes win, followed by a tech priest armed with a las pistol intended to be Thule's personal guard. His appearance is masked by the cogitator altar projecting the arrival of a traitor astartes suddenly. The stakes get upped and the guard attempts to use this as a means to ambush the 2. He succeeds in getting in before the psyker.
As he is dispatched a flash of light and colour signals Thule activating his 'experiment' a warp mcguffin allowing him to escape. While the acolytes head up to investigate and thus find no trace of Thule, they see the device, the rift (though which they can see the cockpit of their shuttle), and also hear the arrival, on station, of traitor marines (whom they have no prayer of defeating), and leap through... into their shuttle and escape as their earlier selves watch that same shuttle depart!
Well, I thought that was cool – and it seemed to work. In fact I was almost concerned they were too unsure of what the rift was and were going to instead face off a small number of traitor astartes!
Before dissecting the event properly, I think it went reasonably well. I felt as confident as I had ever been running a game. Perhaps more so because I knew it was a short encounter. I have decided, and it was agreed, that in the process of learning these rules I would much rather look stuff up and get it right, than do what every game has previously and emphatically advised: make something up on the spot, don't break the flow, and look it up later. That's perfectly good advice, but we are old enough and ugly enough to understand what we want, and along with running 40k as 40k, I intend to run the game and learn the rules properly. If that means slowing down the first few games then we are all fine with that. I think that's a good thing.
That said it didn't slow down much at all. Initiative is simple and decisive, actions seem to resolve quickly. Of course there are a few things I forgot – Righteous Fury for one (though I can't remember if it actually came into play and certainly didn't when I suddenly remembered the rule half way through). Likewise for psychic powers.
The most important thing I did overlook was that damage inflicted is reduced by Toughness bonus and, where appropriate, armour! This is quite a big thing, though the characters didn't get hit by the enemies due to their abysmal attack stats. Even so, the fights seemed reasonably balanced. The enemies weren't too weak and, fortunately, not too strong. It took a good few attempts to knock them down, and this included me haphazardly measuring the distance from their spawn point to the characters who were able to shoot at them in the meantime. The two creatures were simple mutants given the Corrosive Bile mutation and an unarmed attack. The acolytes used las pistols (aided, in the psyker's case, by his powers) and were able to knock them down with damage, a couple of critical effects, and then finish them off while helpless. The tech priest was much the same only he also had a las pistol. No enemy had any armour anyway and they were all simple threats (minima). There's probably a ton of other rules I forgot or misinterpreted. I did add degrees of success to damage because I couldn't find the rule to say otherwise, and I'm not sure I was correct to do so, but it was important to explain the degrees of success rule. It didn't break the game.
Now to discuss the specifics:
As I mentioned one player is prone to jocularity. This is the biggest problem I have in gaming. It's very hard to know how to deal with because you're playing with friends and everyone enjoys a joke with their friends. It's a boundary thing. I didn't let it get in the way, but in a greater level of adventure, which I hope to run, things could be problematic. It isn't a case of deliberate disruptiveness, but just a personality thing – and who, after a hard days work, wants to be told to stop messing around when with friends. This is 40k, not the comedy club! In the grim darkness of the far future, there are no jokes!
He played the psyker and was fond of using, on his turn, a combo of two half actions thus: unnatural aim (psychic power) and then a half action attack. This is quite potent and, aside from the risk of rolling a 9 and incurring a psychic phenomena/peril of the warp, there seems to be no limit to his use of psychic powers. Again this wasn't a balance issue, but there seem no limits on psychic powers – no points pool to pay for, no endurance limits or such. I wonder if I've missed something. He certainly understood the risks (actually I think he was curious to see what happened if he fucked up and incurred a backlash – again that's not the right attitude for a longer term game).
Combat was only conducted using ranged attacks from the acolytes except in one instance. One mutant attempt a melee attack but failed miserably due to having one of its legs critically mashed up by las fire. As a result the assassin favoured a half action aim then half action attack. I did wonder whether there was a full action attack option for guns they could have tried, but I think the full attack, iirc, is for melee. It now occurs to me that I didn't make use of half actions for their enemies. So overall I think the level of opposition was pitched right and would, had things been run more smartly by me, have been a slightly more challenging affair. But that works out well for the purposes of learning, especially as time was a factor (it was getting late when we wrapped).
Interestingly I had to make a judgement call on one action as the assassin wanted to manoeuvre beneath the mutant to sort of slide between his legs and kick his legs away from him also getting out of the psyker's line of sight. I couldn't find anything in the combat actions similar to this and so regarded it as a tactical manoeuvre and gave +10 on his WS attack (which he fluffed). Was there a more appropriate type of action?
There were a few other rolls. I used awareness to notice a few details and psyniscience, really just to show what they did. A couple of minor plot hiccups (they wanted to take the device with them, which I didn't allow and didn't want to but sought of put myself in the position where they thought it possible).
The psyker has the shadow on thy soul background from the Inquisitors Handbook and so, in transitioning the warp at the end, I thought it would be cool for him to hear the voice of the daemon he had previously encountered (as per the background) come to try and claim his soul, but they were both through (of course) the rift before any real harm. Just a bit of background, with the daemon screaming 'no!' as they escaped.
It will be interesting to see how a proper adventure/campaign progresses. Hopefully the nature of the 40k universe will come through and they will be inspired to really get into it full tilt, hopefully with a little less jocularity. However, I'm prepared to accept things as they are. GM's can't mould players into something they want them to be and as a learning curve that's ok. I also didn't have the full errata to hand, so there's' probably a few little issues overlooked.

You should just start buying minis already.

All you really need is Warhammer.

helpful.

nice wall o' text, too :rolleyes: ;)

I had a lot to say. Honestly, isn't that a bizarre attitude to take in a discussion forum about a hobby based around several hundred page rulebooks. :D

Quote from: Blackhand;494229You should just start buying minis already.

All you really need is Warhammer.

Not really. E.g. our group uses AT-43 minis in our Deathwatch game.




I'm not kidding. I haven't got a camera myself but one of the other guys has. Once we got pics I'll post them here. I'm sure all the GW fanboys like yourself are going to go apeshit. ;)

In defense of myself, I should say that I use a GW marine to represent my own PC. But that one mini is literally the only GW equipment on the table. We play on a 2 by 2 meter area for our runs, and it's AT-43 galore including terrain.

Quote from: Windjammer;494317Not really. E.g. our group uses AT-43 minis in our Deathwatch game.

I'm not kidding. I haven't got a camera myself but one of the other guys has. Once we got pics I'll post them here. I'm sure all the GW fanboys like yourself are going to go apeshit. ;)

In defense of myself, I should say that I use a GW marine to represent my own PC. But that one mini is literally the only GW equipment on the table. We play on a 2 by 2 meter area for our runs, and it's AT-43 galore including terrain.

I didn't say all you needed was Games Workshop.  I've eased off that line in the last couple of years - but the circumstances of the world have changed.  Now there are tons of great manufacturers you can buy stuff from, not just GW.  In past years, GW was just the best (and really it still is).  

Now there's enough stuff out there to make it worth looking elsewhere, which is (shamefully) a recent development.  Also, a lot of these are cheap enough to be able to mass lots of them, which makes them relevant across a lot of different games.

You know what I'm about?  Wargames Factory.  Holy shit, have you seen the new samurai set (http://wargamesfactory.com/webstore/rising-sun/samurai-warriors)?  

We have tons of minis from Reaper, even some HeroScape minis made it into the game boxes.  I'm not really much for Mantic, but whatever.  They're cool I guess.  Check out the stack of helpful links on our gaming blog and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I'm not against other miniatures at all.  I'd totally like to see some of the stuff you have done for your Deathwatch game, as I've browsed AT-43 and Dust minis but I've not seen them compared or paired with other minis.

Also, I'm all about Warmachine.  Getting me a Lancer for Lt. Caine, as I'll be representing Cygnar in our 2012 campaign which starts on January 1st.  Also, as the Rogue Trader in my buddy's campaign - I used Lt. Caine as my character.  A Gun Mage was our Arch-Militant, and a Reaper (Boris) mini was used for another buddy.

I will leave you with an anecdote.  The club is involved with 8 different miniature games these days.  They are divided into two groups, what we call Schedule 1 and Schedule 2.  We voted which games go where on the schedule, group concensus.  S1 campaigns get more time devoted to them, and more players / prizes.

The 4 S1 games are all GW games.  Of the other 4 games on S2, 1 of them is GW.  Meaning: 62.5% of game titles are GW, and almost 75% total playing time is spent on GW games.

This doesn't include the rp games which run the gamut, but WFRP and 40KRP (it doesn't matter which title) are the preferred games.  People just love that shit, and with good reason.  It all jives together great.

I'd agree that the 40K rpgs run more smoothly with at least a whiteboard, and position markers of some sort, whether figs or something else.

I'm not entirely sure why we are discussing miniatures. Some people like using them, soime don't. DH is no different in that regard.

Eventually you'll figure it out.

Probably.

What on earth are you whittering on about?