New Dark Heresy Player, Fed Up With Scum

[Brom]

I recently GM'd and I had a two person group, an Arbiter and a Scum. The Scum player felt useless. I'm not sure why, I thought I did an okay job balancing social encounters with combat.

I must admit we're all new to the system, though, so I don't know how to give any career it's moment in the sun. It's not like D&D Rogue's where I can say, ''Here's a locked, trapped chest under water between a set of prison-style bars in a vault. Make an Escape Artist check to get between the bars, an Disable Device check to disable the trap, and Open Lock to pry it open!" and he gets to be badass.

I just don't know how to give different classes stuff tailoring to them, because...what tailors to different careers?

[Trekkin]

If you're running the game as a series of encounters, there might be a problem giving Scum their time in the limelight. They really shine in finding things; hint every so often that he may want to slip off into the underhive and see what can be discovered regarding the current phenomenon they're presumably trying to shut down. Nobles have servants, crime bosses have underlings, and everyone has that friend of a friend, and they all congeal into this uncertain mass from which goods and information may be procured by Scum through a combination of skulduggery and fellowship. In short, when the trail the acolytes are finding drifts off, the Scum is ideally positioned to pick it back up out of the dregs of society.

That said, if the player feels more like they're useless in combat, try the Assassin class; it's still roguelike, but not so socially focused.

[Zen Master]

Frankly no one needs to be useless in combat in Dark Heresy. Anyone who invests in either autofire or shotguns (or autofire shotguns!) can do the most incredible amounts of damage. Get to point blank range, crank up the autofire, and destroy stuff in gory displays of blood and guts.

I haven't actually played a scum - but the way I read the class, it's a great alrounder that also has everything needed to be deadly in combat. Or combine it with a Metallican Gunslinger for instance.

[Psyx]

Scum are fine, but very social characters. They need RP-based things to do, and lots of them.

[misterk]

Dark Heresy isn't a system where you want to spend all that much time in combat to be honest, as its not teriffically tactical. Perhaps you're just having too much combat? How does a usual session go?

[for an example one shot I ran recently, the party were tasked to track down a rogue psyker. Trying to find information the party canvassed flats near to a killing from the previous nights. One of the party members decided the best way to find out information was to break down someones door and point a gun at a family at about 6 in the morning....

Eventually the players tracked the psyker down to having been kidnapped by a local gang, encountered a fight club, made their way through only to see the psyker sacrificed, and the magus explode into a daemon. My only disappointment was that the players killed it too effectively....]