Only War in 5e? [Warhammer 40k x D&D crossover]

[druid91]

So, I remember a while back I saw an elaborate set of homebrew for 3.5 to represent the idea of a band of Imperial Guardsman getting lost in a 'feral world' due to warp trickery. Said feral world was in fact, your bog standard D&D setting. With wizards and dragons and goblins. The idea always stuck with me as a hilarious idea for a campaign. A bunch of Guardsman without backup, nothing but a transport ship, their flashlights and cardboard armor, attempting to survive and bring the humans of the world to the light of the emperor while dealing with all the zanyness of a D&D world.

And I've been thinking about it, and it seems totally doable within the core rules of 5e.

Players would be restricted to.

Class
- Fighter.
- Rogue.
- Sorcerer (Wild Mage variant, because psykers are a bundle of crazy.)
- Wizard (Artificer Variant, for Enginseers. Any 'spells' would have to be fluffed as bits of technology.)

Race
- Human (Obviously)
- Warforged (Again, for aforementioned Enginseers. Refluffed as cyborgs)

But in return, they would get.

- Laser rifles for EVERYONE. At 1st level, that's a major advantage.
- One lucky soul would get to be a commissar. That lucky soul would get a sword of sharpness, and a laser pistol rather than the rifle. As well as the hat.
- A single grenade launcher and x amount of grenades. This would be a limited resource.
- And one Valkyrie Gunship*
- Some sort of medium armor. I'm thinking a breastplate.

*Actually just your standard airship. They took the ship, but forgot the ammo for it's armaments. Or possibly have the armaments expended doing something awesome at the start of the campaign.

Thoughts?

[Submortimer]

I like this quite a bit. Especially that hat.

I'd allow warlocks too. in fact, Re-fluffing a warlock to have all it's powers come from gadgets could make things real easy to fit into the game world.

[Alikat]

I wouldn't have them forget the valkyrie ammo. I'd have them use it all to kill an ancient red dragon or something similar as they arrive. Have lots of people see it happen, use it as a plothook, why commoners would follow their new religion, why the bad guys are after their powerful 'artifacts'. Though by human lore in 40k even simple weapons and vehicles can actually be millennia old artifacts lol.

Space Wolf for life.

[Anderlith]

I'm tempted to recommend that the hat gets magic bonuses on intimidate & persuasion... but then it would just feel like a magic hat, idk.

Half Orcs & halflings should be allowed as abhuman Ogryn & Ratlings
I like the hat.

[Inevitability]

I suggest allowing at least a few more races, but requiring a refluff. Let someone play an elf, call it a dextrous human. Let someone play a half-orc, call it an extraordinary strong human, etc.

[xroads]

Race
- Human (Obviously)
- Warforged (Again, for aforementioned Enginseers. Refluffed as cyborgs)


You could also include:

Elves - captured Eldar prisoners now forced to work with the Imperials for common survival?
Dwarves - 40k history includes references to an old race of abhumans called squats. Based on the description they sounded a lot like space dwarves.

[Zyzzyva]

You could also include:

Elves - captured Eldar prisoners now forced to work with the Imperials for common survival?
Dwarves - 40k history includes references to an old race of abhumans called squats. Based on the description they sounded a lot like space dwarves.


They were space dwarves, and they actually existed as a race in the early days; they've retroactively been wiped from the universe because GW realized they were kinda terrible.

http://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/3/2055/1294853073212.jpg

[Alikat]

If I remember right they were wiped out in one of the first tyranid wars.

[xroads]

They were space dwarves, and they actually existed as a race in the early days; they've retroactively been wiped from the universe because GW realized they were kinda terrible.


Sounds about right. It's been awhile since I read about them.

In general, "abhuman" can be used to reskin many of the base PHB races as 40K Imperial Troops.

The exceptions would probably be Dragonborn & Tieflings, who would probably be classified as "mutants".

[WickerNipple]

I would love to play in this campaign -- in fact I may even steal it. My regular group will be starting something new in the not tooo far future when we wrap up our 4e campaign.

A few thoughts:

I'd either go far more restrictive or far less. A squad of IG isn't likely to be carrying an Enginseer around with them, for example. If the goal is a story about a random lost squad they rarely have a lot of variety.

However you could just as easily open it up really wide -- doing a Rogue Trader or Inquisitor campaign would let you refluff basically anything for D&D. Eldar, abhumans, anything.

But if I were going to do an IG squad...

I'd give a party like that one Rogue, one Ranger and eight Fighters probably.

The ranger is the special weapons guy with the grenade launcher. He has x20 uses of Volley until it runs out. When he levels up and aquires the power for real he figures out how to make substitutes out of whatever unobtanium this place has.

The rogue has the party sniper rifle and could have a camoline cloak (of elvenkind).

The hat could provide two dice for the use of the battlemaster Rally maneuver.

One of the fighters should get the healer feat for free. Heh I'd probably have another of the fighters get the running gag of dying horribly every week til you prune the squad down to the number of your players.

If you wanted a bit more variety you could attach a specialist like an imperial pskyer /enginseer to the unit.

Not sure I agree on Artificer for an enginseer. I think Warlock is more appropriate. Limited spell selection means they'd only have a few different pieces of technology, as opposed to Wizard where he might need hundreds. A rechargable power supply explains Warlock recharge mechanic as well as it's gonna get. And he's got a plasma pistol for that eldritch blast... Plus I think you should hold wizard/sorcerer for potential encounters with chaos / real psykers.

Imperial Psyker should definitely be a wild sorcerer. I'd be wary about giving wizard to anyone who hangs out with the likes of guardsmen.

Important to remember that lasgun powerpacks do have a limited # of shots, but they can be recharged from the valk or even by being tossed in a campfire for a few hours (voids the waranty, but several stories discuss it.)

I'm late for dinner but I really love this idea, has all my gears werkin. I really might steal it and try to talk my group into it next. We should compare notes if it all works out!

[druid91]

I do like the idea of spending the valkyries ammo on something dramatically appropriate at the start of the campaign.

As for the enginseer wizard, I've actually rethought that a few times, and don't particularly like it at this point. My idea was to do as much as possible without too much refluffing or homebrew. Refluffing a wild sorcerer as an imperial psyker is easy. There's no cumbersome changes like their would be with the enginseer wizard idea.

I still like the idea of using warforged to represent heavily augmented characters. But at the same time, without the representative enginseer, don't see where it would see use.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Don't forget the Chaos cultists that were also thrown there, somewhere else on the world.

Or the player who is secretly a spy for the Inquisition or High Lords of Terra.

Or the internecine feud between Orcs and Orks.

Or the knowledge cult extracting information from a captured servo-skull and using it to trick the guardsmen