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

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Not that people here don't seem to be hapoy to help but asking lots of questions that are right there in the book, when you own the book, is a bit disrespectful of their time.

I'm sorry.

At the same time, though, knowing how the game works on paper doesn't quite communicate what I should expect from the experience of play, and that's really what I'm looking for, since my primary RPG experiences have been 3.5 D&D games where the intricacies of how to play a given class take up a book's-length worth of forum posts and the majority of character creation options available to you are useless garbage that will punish your character because you didn't know what the optimized choices were.

I've kind of carried that fear into other games I've played, and because of WHFRP's fearsome reputation, I didn't want to just make a character flying blind and just picking what I thought looked fun only to be the weak link that gets the party all killed because I didn't optimize to compensate for potential bad luck.

[LCP]

Eh, it's fairly easy to miss the lore effects. I've been making up a wizard character for some time now, so it was easy to comment.

It's fairly easy to miss a lot of stuff in 4E - a lot of interconnected rules are kind of spread out through the book without much rhyme or reason.

@Archpaladin Zousha, I wouldn't worry too much about the deadliness of the game. The expected outcome of combats might be different from more 'heroic' games, but the meta-currencies (Fate, Fortune etc.) give you leeway to make mistakes without dying or getting permanently maimed, and 4E has twice as many meta-currencies as previous editions, so your safety net is pretty strong (particularly if you play a human).

If you want an extra level of insurance, play a gold wizard - you can burn armour points to completely negate crits, and gold wizards can wear metal armour without penalising their casting.

[Lord Torath]

How do people feel about the Deathwatch Double Team talent? On the surface, it looks pretty good: an extra +10 on top of the regular +10 you get for outnumbering an opponent, and if your buddy also has it, it becomes an extra +20 instead. All well and good.

But for a space marine, not many opponents are going to withstand one full round of melee attacks from you, so your buddy will have his opponent dead before you get a chance to double-team it. Those opponents that survive your buddy's attacks are going to be the big things, like carnifexes, hive tyrants, crisis suits, greater daemons, and eldar exarches, almost all of which have the Combat Master talent, which means they're never outnumbered.

Am I better off passing on this talent?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

It's fairly easy to miss a lot of stuff in 4E - a lot of interconnected rules are kind of spread out through the book without much rhyme or reason.

@Archpaladin Zousha, I wouldn't worry too much about the deadliness of the game. The expected outcome of combats might be different from more 'heroic' games, but the meta-currencies (Fate, Fortune etc.) give you leeway to make mistakes without dying or getting permanently maimed, and 4E has twice as many meta-currencies as previous editions, so your safety net is pretty strong (particularly if you play a human).

If you want an extra level of insurance, play a gold wizard - you can burn armour points to completely negate crits, and gold wizards can wear metal armour without penalising their casting.

Something that crossed my mind as I'm re-reading the Magic chapter. If an Elf wizard has multiple Lores of Magic, do they get the Lore features of BOTH on a given spell? And how does that work if the Lore features contradict each other, like how Ghyran removes the Fatigued condition while Shyish inflicts it? The game seems to assume a Wizard PC will only ever have access to one Lore, either because they're human or because they got themselves killed before they could move on to another Lore?

[Destro_Yersul]

Were it me, I'd say that you only get one, and you choose which it is when you cast the spell.

[Aneurin]

So magic got stuff added to it as the editions changed?

And how do those school benefits work if you're playing an elf (High or Wood) who can ostensibly learn from multiple ones?

Something that crossed my mind as I'm re-reading the Magic chapter. If an Elf wizard has multiple Lores of Magic, do they get the Lore features of BOTH on a given spell? And how does that work if the Lore features contradict each other, like how Ghyran removes the Fatigued condition while Shyish inflicts it? The game seems to assume a Wizard PC will only ever have access to one Lore, either because they're human or because they got themselves killed before they could move on to another Lore?

You only get the effect on a Lore spell. Which includes Lesser spells learned for that lore. So your Petty spells don't benefit from your Lore effect ever, as they're not from your Lore.

Similarly if you had, say, Life and Death as Lores you would only get an effect from one of them on a spell that was learned as part of that Lore. You only ever cast with one Lore at a time - they don't mix.

So, you have to learn Arcane Bolt as a Life spell to get the Life effect. Even if you learn it as a Death spell as well, you still only get the effect of whichever Lore you chose to cast it as (either Life or Death, but not both). If you have it only as a Life spell you can't cast it as a Death spell, etc.

Does that makes sense? I'm not sure I explained very well.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So what you're saying is you could theoretically learn the same spell multiple times from different Lores applying the benefit of the Lore you learn it as, but that'd probably be a waste of XP?

That makes sense.

[Aneurin]

So what you're saying is you could theoretically learn the same spell multiple times from different Lores applying the benefit of the Lore you learn it as, but that'd probably be a waste of XP?

That makes sense.

Pretty much, yeah. You can learn Arcane Bolt several times, but each instance would have a different effect to it.

That can be useful for versatility (sometimes you want to use Entangle without, for example, setting your target on fire as you want them alive and non-crispy), and by the time you're doing this the experience cost isn't particularly noticeable compared to buying almost anything else, but I'd say it's generally not as good as getting a different spell that better suits the effect.

[Morty]

The scenario is admittedly pretty unlikely to come up, since you have to master an entire lore first before learning another.

[Lord Torath]

Does anyone allow their players to use energy weapon ammo clips as Improvised Explosive Devices?

A lasgun clip has 60 shots which do 1d10+4 each, which is a total destructive power of 60d10+240. Puts the 1 kg demolition charge's measly little 3d10 to shame.

[The Glyphstone]

Easy. That 1d10+4 is concentrated into a 1cm radius wound area (napkin estimate).

A demolition charge has a blast radius of 1m.

A 1m radius circle has a hemispherical surface area of a little over 6m^2, so that lasgun charge packs energy is being diffused evenly over roughly 60,000 times the area it would normally deal damage to. [(60d10+240)/60000] is negligible.

[Anonymouswizard]

Does anyone allow their players to use energy weapon ammo clips as Improvised Explosive Devices?

Not that anybody's actually asked, but I'd allow a Tech-Use (or Tech in W&G) test to turn one into one. A very difficult test if gone under pressure, but possible.

A lasgun clip has 60 shots which do 1d10+4 each, which is a total destructive power of 60d10+240. Puts the 1 kg demolition charge's measly little 3d10 to shame.

Think of it another way: a lasgun deals damage in a tightly controlled beam, whereas our grenade is throwing out energy all around. We can easily cut the damage by an order of magnitude just because we're not delivering all our energy where we want it (EDIT: that's cutting it by an order of magnitude when blowing up right in your face, splash damage should be even less). We can also ask if the lack of shrapnel will affect it much, and many other questions, and I don't know anything about explosive devices but I could see you being able to logically reason it down to less damage than a demolition charge.

Basically, against a single target we have a lot of waste energy, and I'm not even sure what the effective radius of this explosion will be. We could probably be more efficient by making it into a shaped charge (with, of course, a harder check), but I really have no idea how explosives work. It might be worth it if there's a daemonhost on the loose and you don't have any actual heavy weapons, but having the battery explosively discharge and be better than actual explosives should not be simple for the characters.

[Max_Killjoy]

However, the energy cell likely doesn't release its energy as light when it "malfunctions", it likely releases it as kinetic energy (including that in the fragments of the casing) and a pulse of thermal energy.

It might be more illuminating to compare the total energy that has to be stored in a battery to get 60 "instantly" damaging laser pulses out it, with the energy stored in common small explosive devices such as hand grenades, a small brick of C4, etc. And from everything I've read, it would take a massive leap in energy storage density and release speed to make even a shoulder-fired laser weapon capable of doing lethal immediate damage workable. Compare that with how violently damaged lithium-ion batteries can fail, and crank it up orders of magnitude.

[LeSwordfish]

Part of a point of a lasgun is it's reliability. If the cells were capable of exploding with enough force to wipe out a squad, it wouldn't have that reputation.

[Lord Torath]

The Astartes Plasma gun is actually nastier: 40 shots per clip at 1d10+12, totaling 40d10+480. But it requires extra requisition and renown, where as every guardsman is packing three or four clips of lasgun 'ammo'.

I suspect Shoggy's GM (he of the All-Guardsman Party) allowed it (possibly at decreased effectiveness), because Twitch was always snagging the team's laspistol packs for use as IEDs.

[LeSwordfish]

I simply dont think you can compare damage potentials that way. If you take all the propellant out of a clip of saault rifle rounds and set light to it it'll make a pretty nasty bang but not as nasty as being shot with an entire clip. Getting that extra destructive potential out of the same energy is what the bullet, the gun, and the entire field of ballistics is for.

(And from a more prosaic note, as a GM I am absolutely not letting you get 400 damage out of a 1-throne item, jog on.)

[Glorthindel]

Also, I'm not entirely sure how easy overloading them is; I'm not sure if they followed the lore on this, but I believe it mentions in the first ed rulebook that in a pinch you can partially recharge lasgun ammo cartridges by throwing them in a fire, so they can't that easy to cause to explode!

[Grim Portent]

Also, I'm not entirely sure how easy overloading them is; I'm not sure if they followed the lore on this, but I believe it mentions in the first ed rulebook that in a pinch you can partially recharge lasgun ammo cartridges by throwing them in a fire, so they can't that easy to cause to explode!

IIRC you can recharge las batteries with fire in DH, but it halves their clip size when you do. There was even a special sanctified battery pack you could buy that was supposed to have been charged in a holy flame on some shrine world, I think it was from Blood of Martyrs.

On using las cells as improvised explosives, I'd let them deal 1d5 damage base, with another 1d5 per 2 additional las cells strapped together, with a -10 demolitions check to make them blow up in the first place, with a further penalty for every 2 additional las cells added to the bomb. Failing by enough degrees makes it explode in your face while trying to prep it. Just off the top of my head. Not sure how I'd scale the Blast quality for it. Generally speaking if you want a bomb, buy/requisition a bomb, las batteries, promethium tanks, overloaded plasma and so on are clunky last ditch things that are as likely to blow your fingers off as they are to work the way you want them too.

A kilogram tank of promethium only explodes for 1d10, while a flamer does 1d10+4 per shot with a clip of 6. Which is my reference point for improvised explosives.

[druid91]

I mean, they CAN detonate. There's multiple stories where they are rigged to short out and detonate. But the question is how much damage it would do and IMO the answer is 'not much unless you're literally holding it.'

Alternately, I'm curious, has anyone had a PC use the Cult Magus career from the Enemy in Shadows companion for WFRP 4e? How did it turn out?

[Guizonde]

re: the las pack explosive.

it seems my team is pretty crazy-prepared when it comes to plans, and they are aware of last ditch guardsman tactics, due to having an actual guard vet in the team. this means i have to plan accordingly.

in the lore, it is said an overloaded charge pack in a lasgun is enough to breach a chaos dreadnought's front casing (gaunt's ghosts, book two, ghostmaker, the chapter in which mkoll is a boss). according to 3rd and 4th edition rules (the ones i've got the codices for), that means resistance 10, or equal more or less to reinforced vehicle armor. so, pretty potent, and enough to send a regular car to hell.

in other books and excerpts, overloaded charge packs are used to booby-trap doors, which roughly means at least a diameter of 1 meter, logically.

as a trade-off power-to-ressource expended, i'd just go with the lasgun's damage stat, so 1d10+3, no penetration as an energy blast with a diameter of 1 meter (as per the dark heresy 2nd edition rules). not regularly capable of breaching reinforced vehicle armor, but it's possible if unlikely. but more than enough to give somebody a very bad day.

or if you want to go "terrible kaboom", make it as strong as a frag grenade (2d10X according to second edition dark heresy) with a blast diameter of 1m. this would make it fit closer to lore. overpowered? maybe, but keep in mind it would require a very hard tech use or "knowledge: imperial guard" check, and suddenly you're short a power pack. i'm very stingy with ammo packs, since most of the team packs las and knows how to plug them in to a wall-socket. a team member losing a power pack permanently divides his ammo capacity by 3 while being unsure of when resupply will come. just that alone makes it a potential but costly manoeuver.

[Lord Torath]

re: the las pack explosive.

it seems my team is pretty crazy-prepared when it comes to plans, and they are aware of last ditch guardsman tactics, due to having an actual guard vet in the team. this means i have to plan accordingly.

in the lore, it is said an overloaded charge pack in a lasgun is enough to breach a chaos dreadnought's front casing (gaunt's ghosts, book two, ghostmaker, the chapter in which mkoll is a boss). according to 3rd and 4th edition rules (the ones i've got the codices for), that means resistance 10, or equal more or less to reinforced vehicle armor. so, pretty potent, and enough to send a regular car to hell.

in other books and excerpts, overloaded charge packs are used to booby-trap doors, which roughly means at least a diameter of 1 meter, logically.

as a trade-off power-to-ressource expended, i'd just go with the lasgun's damage stat, so 1d10+3, no penetration as an energy blast with a diameter of 1 meter (as per the dark heresy 2nd edition rules). not regularly capable of breaching reinforced vehicle armor, but it's possible if unlikely. but more than enough to give somebody a very bad day.

or if you want to go "terrible kaboom", make it as strong as a frag grenade (2d10X according to second edition dark heresy) with a blast diameter of 1m. this would make it fit closer to lore. overpowered? maybe, but keep in mind it would require a very hard tech use or "knowledge: imperial guard" check, and suddenly you're short a power pack. i'm very stingy with ammo packs, since most of the team packs las and knows how to plug them in to a wall-socket. a team member losing a power pack permanently divides his ammo capacity by 3 while being unsure of when resupply will come. just that alone makes it a potential but costly manoeuver.

A chaos marine dreadnought has a front armor of 37 according to Rites of Battle (p190) and a structural integrity (read: hit points) of 35. 1d10+3 is not going to scratch that. Neither will 2d10.

[LeSwordfish]

Gaunt's Ghosts play pretty fast and loose with other lore (for one thing, I'm pretty sure Abnett uses "Dreadnought" to mean pretty much whatever he wants. Hard to imagine the kind of Chaos Dreadnought they had back then climbing a chimney for instance).

[Delta]

And I'd be rather careful to use "it worked in a novel one time" as justification for anything, in general. Yes, if it worked in a novel one time, it's worth taking a look at it, but there's enough crazy stuff in many novels that shouldn't necessarily be considered canon.

[druid91]

And I'd be rather careful to use "it worked in a novel one time" as justification for anything, in general. Yes, if it worked in a novel one time, it's worth taking a look at it, but there's enough crazy stuff in many novels that shouldn't necessarily be considered canon.

The Alpha legion once dodged a Nova Cannon with their impressive dodging skills.

[Guizonde]

A chaos marine dreadnought has a front armor of 37 according to Rites of Battle (p190) and a structural integrity (read: hit points) of 35. 1d10+3 is not going to scratch that. Neither will 2d10.

that'll teach me to speak without knowing there's actual stats for dreads. here's what i was thinking: a dark eldar raider (side armor 10 in 3rd edition) has side armor 25. a dread had the same armor on the tabletop. i assumed that it'd be the same in dark heresy. so my reasoning was "welp, it's crazy unlikely, but it gives an idea of the blast". for me, a las power pack hit about as hard as a krak grenade.

[comicshorse]

I've been playing a Explorator in a 'Rogue Trader' game and having recently clocked up a win the Captain is allowing the P.C.s a bit of a shopping spree. What gear would be good for a Engineering/research based Tech Priest ?

(Already got : Power axe,
Boltgun (W/ Red Dot sight)
Servo Skull
Grapple Hawk
Enforcer light Carapace Armour
Multi-Key
Micro Bead
Combi Tool
Data Slate
Auspex )

[The Glyphstone]

What's your limit on rarity or Profit Factor?

[comicshorse]

What's your limit on rarity or Profit Factor?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
We're not using Profit Factor (the GM hates it). Generally we'd get 1 ultra rare item, a couple of tricky-to-get items and a few common

[Destro_Yersul]

Get yourself some bionics. There's a few really good ones in Lathe Worlds if your GM doesn't mind cross-porting equipment.

[Anonymouswizard]

A workbench that automatically adjusts to your height. Just so you don't have to stop working between cutting your weak flesh legs off and the new metal ones arriving.

To be more serious, anything that replaces weak flesh or improves your abilities. Get the microbead implanted in your head and claim to have developed machine telepathy! Replace half of your brain with a machine spirit! Or just replace your arm with a better arm!