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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    So I've been running a DtD40k7e game for... Gosh, it's been a year now. Oof. Well, any ways it's on pause due to the pandemic so I thought that I'd do a "let's read" of the two books (there's other cruft that people have made for it but I'm not using that and I don't care about it). I'll be typing as I read. I'm not going to cover every page in detail, but I will interject what I've done in my game and the lessons that I've learned through running it. I'll give a skim of what I skip too.

    If you haven't heard of DtD40k7e you can check it out on tvtropes or the 1d4chan wiki. Be aware of your risks at those time-sinks.

    Let's begin. With the first and main book, obviously.

    After the cover is the dedication and copyright page. CopyPasta:
    This is intended as a work of parody and should not be mistaken for a real roleplaying
    game. It's a monster made from the corpses of a dozen roleplaying games, animated by
    a vital spark that knows only darkness and terror.
    Of course it turns out to be a perfectly viable RPG. Mind I've been playing/running for 30+ years now and I like to think that I can learn from mistakes (mine and others). So not exactly a noob at this. Still, this is not a beginner or intro level game. You definitely shouldn't play if primary school level math scares you or is 'too hard'.

    Next, the table of contents. Boring. Skip. Although it does tell us there are 380+ pages to this thing.

    Then there's this page after the TOC but before the intro... It's a rant/screed. The author cops an attitude. Here, have a taste:
    Spoiler: Ranty Quote
    Show
    If you cry when you lose a character,
    get lost - you're going to cry. If it hurts your
    fragile sensibilities to see your favorite charac-
    ter get pounded unmercifully by horrorterrors
    from beyond the Crystal Spheres, you'd better
    look the other way...

    ... Few things are more satisfying than
    tearing apart an entire army with an Aasimar
    in powered armor, or slaying a dragon with
    death-defying acrobatics and sword skills. Try
    chaining together the special abilities of a few
    Swordsman Schools, or abusing Porte for fun
    and profit...

    ... This is a game made for you, by
    people like you. It's not a load of sterilized
    mass market drek designed by a room full of
    corporate meatplows. This is raw. This is bru-
    tal. This is DUNGEONS THE DRAGONING.
    So play like you've got a pair or put
    down the dice and go find a My Little Pony
    doll.

    Yup. Author rant. Whatever. Next!

    There's a page of setting fluffage. Every chapter starts with one of these. It's fine, they're ignorable. On the other hand if you actually read them they all turn out to be DtD40k7e versions of popular media. Well, OK, not this first one. It's set-up for the setting.

    Now the introduction. "What is a roleplaying game" part, boring and stupid. Oh, hey, dice info. It explains the roll & keep mechanic, forgetting to mention the it uses d10s. Although there was already a picture of a pile of d10s a couple pages ago. It does go over the fact that it's exploding dice (reroll & add) on a 10, so it's sort of implied. Talks about what you'll need, oh there's the ten sided dice mentioned. And how raises and checks work for degrees of success/failure.

    Chapter 2: Character Creation
    Starts with the section titles "Creating A Hero". Man, my guys did not end up heroes. They're sowing chaos, starting wars (that they don't stick around for), unleashing planet killing shadow-apocalypses, and allying with the worst monsters in the setting.

    Step Zero: Character concept. A paragraph, says the expected stuff.

    Step One: Starting Scores. Your stats. Pretty closely follows the WhiteWolf vamp/etc. games style. There are 9 abilities, each starts at one, you get 6, 4, 2 points to put into categories of scores. Interestingly the 9 abilities for a grid on the character sheet. There are three horizontal categories and three vertical categories. So you've got the usual physical, mental, social split. But there's also a power, fitness, resistance split. Select three for your primary, secondary, tertiary. No stat can go over 4 points in this step. Normally no stat can go over 5 (for general people style characters & npcs, some monsters are exceptions). Some characters can sometimes get stats to 6. Plus there are buff spells for temporary boosts. I suppose that you could take the six dot limit on the character sheets as a hard maximum, but going over 5-6 is sort of implied by certain abilities. In play it doesn't really matter, it's rare and never permanent.

    Skills, similar to the attributes, split into mental, physical, social. But no extra categories. You get 8, 6, and 4 points. Skills start at zero and can't go over 3 in this step. Some skills are 'advanced' or really 'trained only' type skills. But that's a bit vague and there are times when untrained checks make sense. Call it a guideline. We'll get to specific explanations of attributes and skills later. There's a sidebar/box text with alternate char gen via spending a starting amount of xp.

    Step Two: Choose a race. Select from WH40K and D&D races. Note that WH Eldar/Dark Eldar are in where as Eladrin/Dark Eladrin. There's side effects to this: one point to one of two stats, two free skill points in certain skills, your size stat, and a racial power. Some of the racial powers are actual magic powers, dragonborn get a breath weapon, some are basically bonus feats. Gnome is actually surprisingly popular, one each weapon and armor proficiency... any weapon/armor proficiency (there aren't pre-requisites but some feats are only in specific classes at specific levels, this racial 'power' skips past that).

    Step Three: Choose your Exaltation. Translation = What's Your Superpower? Choose from vampire, werewolf, atlantean, chosen, paragon, promethean, daemonhost. It is seriously your superpower(s). These are not balanced. Heck I wouldn't really know where to start trying to balance these concepts. That said werewolf does have an issue. We'll come to that later.

    Step Four: Starting Class. If you read ahead then you'll know that there are the pathed classes and some really basic classes. Basic classes have few/no prerequisites, but they aren't trash and there are a couple gems in them (Peasant allows for cheaper increases in all attributes, Initiate is the only place to find the Minor Magic feat that allows 1/2 price access to magic, several have skill specializations or +2 HP for completing them, not trash classes). They exist to allow you to enter the pathed classes if you came out with a character that doesn't qualify. We'll get to specific classes later.

    Step Five: Backgrounds. Start with stuff, status, allies, etc. You get 7 points and can't go above three in any one background during this step. These are actually important because they have real effects outside of combat (sometimes in combat too). Most people will be tempted to go with artifacts (magic items), wealth($$$), inheritance(extra stuff). But we've been learning that beyond putting a couple points in wealth the other stuff, allies, contacts, backing, status, followers, etc., is actually very relevant outside of combat. My players are sort of flailing around for how to do stuff because they are essentially rich, social pariah, mercenaries. It turns out that if you pretty much go with the default setting that there are social networks and knowing a guy who knows a guy is really quite useful. That said, holdings can get you a major spaceship or super-tank.

    It's also important to note that the players need to actually READ the backgrounds and think about them. One of my players just wrote down "Contacts:1". It came up every so often and I'd ask "Who is your contact?". I finally decided, based on some of the other backgrounds, that there's a sort of 3d graph of these things with the axis being availability, power, and response on a five point scale. Total the axis to rating*5, nothing can be less than 1. So his generic "contact" is availability 3 (widespread but not ubiquitous) + power 1 (general info, no specifics) + response 1 (you can look things up and maybe ask questions that might be answered sometime this year). Which works out to something like a subscription to an exclusive news/encyclopedia organization or a secret wikipedia for particular kinds of information. He has access in any civilized place with a public or semi-public computerized information network, but it provides information about people, events, and stuff, there's no asking a specific question and getting a reliable answer any time soon. This is a framework that I wouldn't use if he'd written anything down, it pretty much amounts to roll 1d10 once in a while and if it's 5+ you get a little bonus info bit. Essentially, if the player picks something like allies or backing, they need to actually say something about them or the DM just makes them up as it suits them. Which could turn out to be near useless for the character if circumstances change.

    Step Six: Alignment. I'm not really actually using this much, I think there have been two alignment checks the entire game so far. None of the characters are especially interested in it and they all tended to pick alignments that fit the character they're playing. It is important, and I would enforce it rigorously if someone was a Chosen, but these guys don't regularly get into situations where it would matter much. It's not D&D alignment. They took a mish-mash of D&D and WH deities, threw together a short sort of likes/dislikes list, and that's your alignment. Piss off your god enough and gain deformities, insanity, health issues. Very old testament, leavened with a bit of semi-subtle humour. The second book has more detailed lists (and a bit more humour in them) plus an option for unaligned people. Praise Vectron!

    Step Seven: XP. You get 600 xp to buy stuff with. The table in where is actually quite important. You also need to cross reference with the beginning of the Classes chapter. It tells you that too. Make sure people check the asterisks at the bottom. I had someone try to spend 400 xp to get three backgrounds at 5, that should take them about 700 - 800 XP. Magic, Sword Schools, Gun Kata, and your power stat are capped at your highest class level. There are ways to start a character having finished a level 1 class and entered a level 2 class (the gnome race tends to feature heavily) so it's actually worth mentioning the limit during character creation.

    As a plus this is the point that you can buy assets and hindrances, and you only buy them at char gen. Assets are non-specific bonuses that generally can't be gotten any other way. If you're in a combat heavy game Sand and Sturdy are really good buys. If you're in a class path that involves buying multiple weapon proficiencies then Academy will save you 100 XP at some point. Or you can spend 300 XP for +5 to disguise yourself and +3k1 to seduce anything. With not much work you can start with 10k7 for a social skill. So averaging 51 to 56, before adding something like re-rolling 1s. Incompetent, a starting character here is not... Unless you do something weird like have no weapon/armor proficiencies, wear power armor, fight non-mooks, have 1s in most of your non-physical stats, and never engage in any social or intellectual activities. But you have to try to get that off.

    Hindrances are extra XP for a hit to your character. They are completely optional. The most effective character in our game has none. All Thumbs is great if you don't need to make rolls with technology or science, and never plan on buying any skills in them. Bad Luck is OK if you don't feel the need to reroll anything. Grim Servant O' Death is probably my favourite, simply because it's a big "make me part of the plot" flag.

    Exalt Assets are just assets specific to particular exalts. Some are quite nice. Only paragons can have more than one. That's an important little rule tucked away in the asset section.

    Section Eight: Equipment. Choose from one of five starting packages. Warrior, misc., technical, dandy, spacer. Everyone gets a weapon or two, some stuff and clothing, usually an armor. This is in addition to anything you get from the inheritance background. Not too much to say about this part. It does mention the traditional RPG method of gearing up, kill'em and take their stuff.

    Section Nine: Finishing Touches. Derived statistics and stuff.
    * Size: Each point is about 0.5 meters of height. Roughly. Halflings are 2, humans 4, ork & assimar are 5.
    * Static Defence: D&D AC. The "did you get hit?" stat. 10+(3*dex+wis)-(2*size), so a halfling (racial power to use just dex for defence calculations) with the asset that gives them a +4 static defence and six dex can get to 46. That'd be such a dodgy bugger that people will just start saturating the area with explosives when you come along. The bottom is generally 6 but for big enough critters it can go negative. It matters sometimes, really.
    * Hit Points: 2*(Willpower + Con). Most non-exalt NPCs don't get the x2 multiplier. Running out of hit points is fun.
    * Mental Defence: Actually more like social/mental AC. 5 + 5*Composure. When we get to social conflict later you'll find out how to brainwash someone and change their alignment, values, etc.
    * Resolve: Social/Mental hit points, running out of these is how you get talked into doing stupid stuff while you're drunk. Willpower + Composure.
    * Speed: Str + Dex in meters. Times 6 for running. Just Dex for shifting without opportunity attacks.
    * Resilience: The boogeyman of combat. Take damage, subtract armor, divide by resilience, drop fractions, take the result as wounds. Generally between 2 and 10. I've been considering an alternative where resilience is subtracted from damage and then "HP" are your hit points * resilience. The 'hard' math would move from on-hit to during character generation/leveling and it would give almost the same result. The only issue would be crits. Crits happen when you run out of hit points. Any how, math -> Resil = (size + level)/2 -> ROUND UP -> +1
    * Hero Points: You get two. Plus one if you're human (that's their racial power). Plus one if you're a paragon. I think I've given out... two? Maybe only one. In a year of playing. Granted there's been a lot of not-very-heroic greed & stuff going on.
    * Bringing Your Character To Life: Essentially a half page of trying to get people to think about the character's backstory and how they fit into the world. You know, the part that 95% of all the players will ignore because they have their combat stats now and want to go kill stuff without considering that there could be any consequences to wholesale slaughter and nuking cities from orbit.

    Then there's a page of an example character being made, actually useful if you aren't familiar with the system yet. A filled out character sheet for the example character. And that's the end of the character creation chapter.

    Tune in next time for what all your attributes and skills do. Not really, just descriptions about what they are. What they actually do is in among the rules in different sections. But I'll be whinging about that stuff during the chapter, so no worries.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Subscribed to this thread. :-)
    Junior, half orc paladin of the Order of St Dale the Intimidator: "Ah cain't abide no murderin' scoundrel."

    Tactical Precepts: 1) Cause chaos, then exploit it; 2) No plan survives contact with...(sigh)...my subordinates.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    This should be a pretty fast chapter. Characteristics and skills. I'm not going to bother globbering on about what your strength stat does, etc. Likewise the drive skill ought to be fairly obvious.

    It begins by telling you that you roll stat + skill and keep the stat. This makes it sound like you can run on the stat and just trust high stats for everything, but that doesn't really always work out real well. On the other hand skills cost half as much XP to raise. Honestly 4k2 is perfectly fine for a lot of stuff. Heck, in our game a random prosecutor got a 4k2 charisma+academic roll of 84 to convict one of the PCs of piracy (it was a great closing argument). 6k3 is nice and respectable too, it's what good quality minion squads (we'll get there towards then end of the book) get to roll and even mid-high power PCs tend to respect those.

    Important bit: Specialties. Skills and attributes get a specialty at 4 points. If the DM approves the specialty and decides it applies to rolls then you reroll 1s for the skill or attribute. It turns out that the favorite acrobatics specialty is... dodging. And the favorite dexterity specialty is... dodging. 8k4r1 (roll 8, keep 4, reroll 1s) is "only" a +2 to the average of 34 for 8k4 at the 50/50 mark. Mathematically over a million rolls it isn't much. Individually in game it turns out to be important rather often. Getting to reroll a pair of 1s and getting an explosion on one of them is pretty nice for people. And, by the math is't so little over the long haul that I'm perfectly happy to let people reroll all 1s on any test that the can reroll any 1s on. Plus it was way way way easier to write a dice rolling app for that than for only rerolling ones on some dice and having to pick how many of them each time.

    Socials: Charisma, "innately likeable", "confidence and social grace", "force their point of view into a conversation". Fellowship, "appearance and ... self-expression", "coerce, manipulate, and bully". Composure, "emotional fortitude, restraint, and calm". So we have effect of personality, social interaction ability, and self control in three different stats. Composure actually turns out to be fairly useful, charisma is more first impressions and quick interactions, while fellowship is for more in-depth interactions.

    Mentals are intelligence, wisdom, and willpower. Wisdom has been cut down to effectively paying attention and comprehending what's happening. SO the guy who can hear faint sounds is no longer necessarily also iron willed and level headed.

    Skills: I'll note the usual stat associated with each one in parentheses, but if you give me a half decent excuse then using another stat is perfectly fine. All it takes is a tiny bit of effort and imagination to get me to allow a swap to a better stat, just a bit of engagement with the game beyond the bloody minimum outside of combat. You don't want to know how rare that is. It's depressing.

    Academic Lore (Int) -> covers all the stuff you'd think required book learning and research in a library or laboratory. Includes law and lawyering stuff.
    Acrobatics (Dex) -> includes a suggested specialty of "Totally Cool Awesome Gymnastics", that players will totally ignore for "Dodge" even if you can convince me (often not hard) that it's the same bloody thing in most cases.
    Animal Ken (Composure), Arcana (Int), Athletics (Constitution), Ballistics (Level), Brawl (Level)...
    Charm (Fellowship)-> Friendly diplomacy and seduction type stuff. Gosh, it might take more than one stat to be a social god.
    Command (Cha) -> only works on underlings and people you'd expect to obey orders anyways.
    Common Lore (Int) -> Stuff you learn by living or traveling somewhere. Includes local politics, criminality, sports figures, and where not to get your haircut. I've used this with Fellowship to do rumor gathering and bar hopping for information.
    Craft (Wis), Deceive (Cha), Disguise (Fellowship), Drive (Dex/Int)...
    Forbidden Lore (Int) -> The dark and illegal side of Arcana for most people. Frankly it's more for the dark and illegal side of all the lore skills. Can use charisma to fast talk impress cultists of your bona fides.
    Intimidation (Cha) -> noted that you could in theory use almost any attribute. The knife scene in Aliens for example would have used dexterity.
    Larceny (Dex) -> Illegal activity & stage magic acts. Covers all the picking plus safes, security systems, magic wards, etc.
    Medic (Wis), Perception (Wis), Performer (Fellowship), Persuasion (Cha), Pilot (Dex)...
    Politics (Wis) -> Not just politics & politicians but also dealing with bureaucracy and following the money.
    Scrutiny (Composure) -> Sense motive skill in D&D, but also social perception and 'ask the DM for a hunch' when talking to NPCs (then I call for fellowship).
    Stealth (Dex), Tech-Use (Int), Weaponry (Level)...

    Skills are pretty much self explanatory. Well, that was fast. Let's do races too.

    Assimar. +1 to Wis or Con, +1 to command and ballistics (apparently yelling at people and shooting them is their thing), size 5 (about 2.5 meters tall~ish). They get two bonus feats, jaded and fearless. Essentially they're immune to all fear and being pinned down by gunfire. Also they apparently don't reproduce... Guess what? They're WH40k terminators.

    Dark Eldarin. Guess what? They're drow. +1 charisma or dexterity, +1 to deceive and forbidden lore, size 3 (a bit smaller than a human). Hmm... 'depraved' is the 14th word in their description. I wonder how that holds up across all the races. Assimar have 'exist to serve' as words 3, 4, and 5. Well, we'll see. But the DE racial power is a 4m sphere of darkness, conjured as a half action, lasts 1 round per level, once per scene (twice at level 3, three times at level 5). No notes on where it appears. We've decided that it's self centered, like the dark eldarin. Not a bad ability but it turns out that when you pop a darkness people tend to just chuck a grenade at it.

    Dragonborn. No real defining descriptor early in the write up and not much else for me to say about them. +1 Str or Cha, +1 command and intimidate (racially good at being drill instructors?), size 5. Dragon breath, once per scene, works like a flamer (equipment: weapon) goes up to two uses at level 3 and three uses at level 5. A 20m cone (real-ish cones, about 45 degrees, not a quarter of the bloody map, not square, and includes a height consideration) of dodge or !FIRE!. That's... not an unimpressive amount of f-u. However I will note that flame weapons don't roll to hit, they have a user dexterity based target number to evade. Those who don't evade may end up on fire.

    Eldarin. 'Created as soldiers' is in the first sentence. +1 Wis or Int, +1 academic lore and arcana, size 3. Once per scene teleport twice your speed as a half action, two times at 3rd, three times at 5th (I'm going to call this the 'standard power advancement'). Must be able to see your destination. As a side note recall that speed is Str+Dex, so you're probably looking at an 8m to 12m teleport for starting characters. Apparently they actually have to walk through the warp for this? Nobody has played one so I can't definitively say how useful it is. But wait until my comments on the conjuration spells in the magic section.

    Elfy-welfy. Ok, ok. In the book it's just "Elf", but it's late and small children should be statted monsters in all game systems. Distant relations of the eldarin. +1 Wis or Dex, +1 perception and charm, size 3. Racial power is elven accuracy, once a scene reroll a failed weaponry or ballistics test, standard power advancement. What? No brawling rerolls? Well, it's a reroll you don't have to spend a hero point on and it isn't locked up in a 5th level class. Not bad, just shooty.

    Gnome. 'Religious reverence for technology', hrm. Although, there's a pretty decent explanation for why they're bad inventors. A species created as repair workers with muscle memory repair ability. So they don't actually understand much of the high tech they may be working with. Of course that's generic racial background, get yourself a couple 4-5 dot skills and a good high intelligence and rock on as a real inventor. Oh, +1 Intelligence or Fellowship (persuasive little buggers), size 3. Racial power is start with any one weapon and any one armor proficiency. That's attractive. Start the game knowing how to wear power armor and owning a suit of it through your backgrounds. Tempting. I think there are two backup characters who are gnomes.

    Halfling. "Short, lazy, and generally a criminal element", I like them already. That's why my game has a halfling Mafia, they own a pan-galactic pizza maga-franchise. It's hilarious, people are polite to munchkins in pin stripe suits with bad faux Italian accents. +1 Intelligence or Fellowship, +1 larceny and deceive, size 2. Recial power is using dexterity only to calculate static defense. Yes a starting 5 Dex halfling can have a (10-4+(6*5)) 36 static defense. Hard to hit. But that size factors into resilience too, so they tend to take noticeably more damage.

    Human. Word number 13 is 'clueless'. Welcome to the club hairy ape. +1 any one characteristic, +1 any two skills, size 4. Racial power is starting with one more hero point. That's one more reroll per session and one more change to escape certain death. Boring.

    Ork. Fight fight fight fight. +1 strength or willpower, +1 intimidate and scrutiny (scrutiny? racially better at sizing up enemies? better at guessing about other people's motives? what?), size 5. Racial power is to heal your level in hit points at the start of every combat. Useful if you see a bunch of fights in a sequence, not so much otherwise.

    Squat. It's a dwarf, bring on the short jokes. Word number two in the description is 'proud'. +1 constitution or willpower (yer getting those bonus hit points whether you like it or not), +1 craft and common lore, size 3. Actually just sort of average size among the races then. Racial power is counting your resilience as one higher for purposes of losing hit points. Since that's the only thing that resilience is for in this book so it's sort of always on-ish... yay fighty power?

    Tau. Word number two is 'mysterious', because frankly unless you're blatantly ripping off all of WH40K it's hard to write much about them. We're only ripping of some here. +1 Intelligence or Composure, +1 common lore and persuasion, size 4. Frankly I don't know how well any of that matches with WH40K lore, most of my exposure has been adjacent to the war game with friends into it and the older versions of WHFRP. Racial power is... if you successfully dodge a melee attack make a free withdraw action of half the normal distance... Checking... Well withdrawing is normally a full action that moves you your speed. So, a no provoke 1/2 speed move when you dodge. I guess that tells us where you're likely putting stat points.

    Tiefling. "The mirror image of the Aasimar", except more demony and with better fashion sense. Same fluff as assimar, just for the other side. No natural breeding, just indoctrination and mutation. +1 Dexterity or Constitution, +1 intimidate and weaponry, size 5. Racial power is re-rolling 1s on damage dice.

    That's all our races. Definite trade-offs in there. Your race matters most if you're getting a stat to 4-5 or a skill to 4. Getting to 4 gets you a specialty (reroll 1s when it applies) and getting the stat to 5 is worth 400xp once play begins. Assimar feats are OK, but the gnome feats rock out pretty well. Either one is free xp if you're taking a class that includes them and they both give useful stuff right out of the gate. The eldarins and humans have more non-combat applications for their powers, halflings and squats are a good defensive choices (dodgy or 'tough for the size'). The ork, tau, and tiefling powers are a little weak. They can only really apply in combat and then in pretty specific situations. Although the tiefling power is not terrible, if you grab a bunch of dice rolled for damage it can matter.

    Let's math that (actually I'm going to poke a brute force probability calculation program I wrote), I want to know what a 1s reroll is really worth. Statistically, out of a million rolls. The numbers are % of rolls at or below that point. I tend to compare 10/90 and 40/50/60, for my extremes and my normals. But that's too much typing.

    Spoiler
    Show
    Code:
    6k3 :: 10%/50%/90% -> 18/25/38 
    reroll 1s :: add +1, except at the 90% mark they add +2
    
    8k3 :: 10%/50%/90% -> 20/28/42
    reroll 1s :: add +2
    
    10k3 ::10%/50%/90% -> 22/31/44
    reroll 1s :: add +2, except at 90% it's +3
    
    6k6 ::10%/50%/90% -> 24/35/51
    reroll 1s :: adds +4
    
    8k6 ::10%/50%/90% -> 31/43/60
    reroll 1s :: adds +4
    
    10k6 ::10%/50%/90% -> 36/49/65
    reroll 1s :: adds +4
    
    9k9 ::10%/50%/90% -> 39/54/72
    reroll 1s :: +6/+5/+6, the +5 is probably a reporting artifact due to rounding of percentages and a not perfectly smooth distribution
    
    10k9 ::10%/50%/90% -> 43/58/77
    reroll 1s :: adds +6

    Well that was interesting, the reroll 1s value scales mostly in line with the kept dice. Rolled dice don't make much difference. In the aggregate it's not a bit difference. At the table it feels much bigger, much more noticeable. So, a minor math perk with an outsized emotional effect. Interesting.

    Something that I've skipped is that each race gets two pages. One page is the intro bit, stats stuff, and a picture. The next page is all fluff, no mechanics. A bit about the general physical qualities, a bit about their general psych/soci-ologies, and a handful of paragraphs about... well it's basically what a DM would want as backstory, it's sample heroes (no stats). A couple sentences about where they're from, how they got here, what they're like and what they want. Short, concise, useful. I wish players would do that. Heck, I wish players would do anything backstory-ish. At all.

    Next time it's the exaltations. They make much more difference in playing the characters than race does. Thus I'll have much more to say about them.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Is Ballistics a skill? It got left off the skills list if it is. And what is its melee attack opposite number?

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Is Ballistics a skill? It got left off the skills list if it is. And what is its melee attack opposite number?
    It's in there, I just skimmed the self explanatory skills into list parts.

    You have ballistics, weaponry, and brawling. They work differently from other skills, for attacking, feinting, and parrying you roll level+skill then keep skill, if you're proficent in the weapon. If you aren't proficent then you roll and keep just the skill.

    You can still roll them as normal skill+attribues for other stuff if it comes up, I think I called for ballistics + wisdom to correctly shoot a power coupling on an antigrav using a plasma gun to give an extremely temporary boost for a jump stunt.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    You know what I'm not doing? I'm not entering the last four sessions of game notes into my game log and writing up all the upcoming stuff. Although I did get the crazed crafter lich's challenge written up, along with doing the math to make sure that it is technically possible to to succeed and survive the drinking game.

    Stuff it. Let's start doing the exaltations.

    Starting with a page of general stuff about different exalts, they become them differently... Stuff. A note that each exalt is someone who is willing to use their powers. No such thing as a vampire unwilling to drink blood. No way to make someone stop being an exalt, you have to kill them. Huh, even the gods can un-exalt someone. Functionally immortal, immune to disease (true, well... the no rules for it kind of true, but if they're immune then you don't need rules for it), resistant to poison (actually not really an more than other people with decent Constitutions).

    Next page, exalt powers and the Tell. All exalts have static, always on powers and weakness. They all have a Power stat, capped at equal to your level. They all have a Resource stat, very important, amount and recovery are different for each and they can all spend them differently. But all exalts have a few ways in common to spend resource: heal a hit point, add a rolled die to a skill test, GAIN AN ADDITIONAL REACTION, recover from being stunned or dazed. I'm sorry, was one of those important? These are all essentially 'free' actions, but the healing can only take place outside of combat (there's an exception of course). This does mean that as long as you have resource left you are essentially immune to the two worst status effects in a game. Death is not as bad as stun-lock, you have other ways to deal with that.

    IMPORTANT: You can only spend resource points equal to your power stat each round.
    IMPORTANT: You can only spend resource points equal to your power stat each round.
    IMPORTANT: You can only spend resource points equal to your power stat each round.

    The tell is something I haven't really pushed too much in our game. I should start. Essentially it's a power display that gets stronger as the scene goes on and the exalt spends resource points. Vamps get more vampy (pale & fangy), werewolves get more wolfy, atlanteans get glowy and a spirit/avatar thingy, paragons just get more noticeable, chosen get a god symbol floating above them and an appropriately colored aura, promethians get more go-go gadget bits, daemon hosts get mutations (that go away after the scene thankfully).

    A single resource point requires perception+wisdom vs 20 to notice, two or three is automatically noticed, four or five resource points and they glow enough to read by or emit darkness sufficient to extinguish small campfires. Six plus... hmm, glowing avatar, bright enough to shine for kilometers, mortals stand in awe or flee screaming... I should have been using this. We had a vampire who would blow 12-15 resource points in a combat and then call for a blood drive when he got back to the ship (they paid bonuses). Should have been using this. I'll try to remember it in the future.

    A side note about mortal heroes and how to play a non-exalt. "Fragile and short lived". Sounds about right, but it's something you can do for a challenge. You just don't get an exaltation, power score, or resource points.

    First exalt: Atlanteans. Half a page of fluffy stuff. Powers. This is what we're here for. Magical Aptitude, start with a point in a magic school and that school counts as always being in class for xp costs to buy it up. Plus whenever they roll for Psychic Phenomena / Warp Crapola they get to roll twice and take either one or both effects. Prestidigitation, like the D&D spell, at will. Past Lives, all skills are treated as basic skills (may use untrained).

    Resource, called motes, charisma + intelligence + 2x power stat. When you spend a resource point you get a point of paradox. While you have paradox keeping a die with a 9 during a magic test causes you to immediately convert a point of paradox back into resource the fast way. Multiple 9s stack. Turing paradox back into resource the slow way is one hour of meditation per paradox accompanied with some special effects. The fast way is to roll for Warp Crapola. Hmm... Later in the magic chapter we'll find that keeping a 10s die forces a Warp Crapola roll at a bonus or +5 or +10 per 10s die kept. Of course you've got that whole roll twice and choose thing. Yeah, the original warp effects tables are way too small if you're using this one much.

    Power, called gnosis:
    1, choose 3 skills and you can go to 6 dots in them, plus you get a bonus specialty of Syrneth in each one. Yeah, I can see it now, arcana, ballistics, and weaponry/brawling. You dirty min-maxxers. There are a category of weapons that's specifically syrneth and the weapon skills are kept dice instead of rolled dice. Arcana may be a "knowledge" skill but it's really quite useful to everyone because most spell saves are arcana+stat vs the caster's casting roll.
    2, empower spell, spend a resource point and get 3 more rolled dice for the next spell you cast... Wait, it precisely says "treat your level and rank in magic schools as three higher for the next spell". Ok, that's a bit more bang for the buck. Fireball does 2k1 damage per level... No cap too.
    3, spend two resource points instead of a hero point to reroll any skill that you have a specialization (any specialization) in. Pretty good.
    4, maximize spell, BEFORE CASTING spend any number or resource points (so much for being limited to you power stat, at least for this) for each one spent count one die of the magic roll as a 10 (non-exploding). Well, you're going to get the spell off. Go high enough and it's essentially un-resistable if it has a save. But you can put out one heck of a warp effects roll doing this too. In fact you're pretty much guaranteed to.
    5, quicken spell, spend one resource point to cast a spell as a free action. "Yeah, I'm just gonna spend all my resource points on free action spells and frag all the dragons. You all take a break while I roll bunches of dice and tell you if the encounter turns into us vs a bunch of daemon lords."

    So. Good if you want to be a caster, good if you want to be the universe's best swordsman/gunman. You have dangerous choices to make and something that might, usually, often, sometimes, mitigate the side effects. Considering one of the entries on the Warp Crapola table is instant death...

    Then we get a page of common atleantean physical features, the tell, and almost a half page column on roleplaying tips and suggestions. Next page has a bit for the DM on how to work with or use an atlantean in the game. A bit of 'culture' and how several different races react to them (several different races were created by the Syrenth). Then a bit about how to adapr, change, re-fluff atlanteans. Like changing it to a possessing ancestor spirit or some such. Not bad, not useless.

    And I think that's all for tonight.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Patiently waiting to see more.
    My posting may be slowed due to new job.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Nice to know people are interested.

    Tonight's exalt: Chosen.

    Chosen by the gods "becoming less human and more a devil or god themselves. Many are devoted worshippers of their chosen deity"." So, we can go all 'god picked me as a champion and I pissed in his beer' about this. Ah, and of course we come with built in allies, enemies, and npcs with preconceptions. Not as backgrounds of course, just as fluff for the DM to victimize us with. Although if you're playing this game and you feel bad when your character gets kicked in the face you might be playing the wrong game. I did offer someone for their character to get a cybernetic neck that would keep their head alive for 2d10 minutes the next time they got beheaded. He survived.

    Let see, your power stat is capped at both your level and half your devotion score. Annoying, that's more xp to raise your power stat. Although devotion isn't especially expensive compared to magic, sword schools, or the power stat. You lose access to the higher powers if your devotion drops too low, but you don't lose the power stat points themselves. An important distinction sometimes. As long as your power stat is at least 2 you can lose a point off the power stat instead of burning a hero point to survive certain death. And since you can't buy hero points (I've given out two in over a year of playing, and one of those was probably being overly generous) but you can buy the power stat... Spend a resource point to replace any one rolled die with your devotion score, can't use this on an alignment check (alignment checks: roll 1d10 and if it's under your devotion score lose a point of devotion, rolled when you transgress against your religion, side effects at 5 devotion and less). As long as you're doing something for your god get a bonus on alignment checks equal to your power score. Man, Chosen of Vectron could be fun with that, especially coupled with the delusion that you're a prophet of Vectron (or is it a delusion?).

    Resource stat: Favor. Max of devotion plus power stat. Restored daily with a 'special ritual'. Hm... Choose right and your special ritual could be killing something while shouting the name of your god. Or... ork... Khorne... just fighting. Well, once a day any ways.

    Power stat is Favor. Powers are:
    1, overbeing, gain aura (armor/DR vs magic) equal to twice your power stat.
    2, divine protection, the first time each round you would take critical damage roll a d10 and if it's less than devotion then negate the crit. Well that's annoying, for the DM. Until you're out of hit points damage doesn't matter. Once you're out of hit points you start taking crits, and nasty enough crits can kill you. Buy your devotion up to 8 and 2/3 of the first crit each round just doesn't happen. People are going to have to get really nasty to take you down.
    3, prayer strip, when preforming your daily refresh ritual (probably not in combat though) make a prayer strip. May make one a day and have a number equal to your power stat. Prayer strips may be used as a.. point of favor... So it's an extra point of resource. Effectively doubles your power stat for resource points but these take longer to recover. Also may be used by anyone holding it as long as you consider them an ally. Nice.
    4, trial of faith, when you keep a 1 on a test that can have dangerous consequences (most of combat, long falls, tricky diplomatic situations, DM has final say of course) then recover a resource point. Max of one point per test. Well, if you're good enough at combat to keep some 1s then you can pretty easily recharge your resources.
    5, demigod, instead of adding a rolled die when spending a resource point on a skill test just add 10. if you spend 5 points you get a base 50 for 5 kept dice, might was well roll your other dice too since you could roll a 1 and recover one of those points.

    Well. You're a hard bugger to kill.

    A page of fluffy stuff. The tell is a glowing deity symbol that just gets brighter as stuff happens. Yadda yadda. Next page is the page of playing them, DMing them, and adapting... No bloody kidding you care about your devotion score more than the others. Nobody else has any mechanics tied to it beyond just not massively violating the tenets of their religion/morals. Here it caps you power stat. Ah, can't be cut off from the power. Takes more to justify changing alignment but that's still doable and you don't lose your powers for doing so. That's nice.

    DMing them. Yeah, easy. The exalt comes with built in allies, enemies, contacts, mentors, etc., that are wholly DM controlled and defined. Make your DMs life easy and play a Chosen. Comes with the plus that you're harder to kill than the "average" exalt. Just make sure to choose an alignment that suits how you want to play. Chosen in the culture is opposite altanteans. Those buggers don't have anything unifying, you have the opposite problem.

    Adaptation is notes as being harder to pull off. One option is to just be a young/fledgling god. That could be interesting.

    Eh, I'll do another. But chosen aren't going to be harder to hurt or challenge then anyone else (as long as they aren't level 5, power stat 5, and devotion 10), but they'll sure be harder to keep down and take out.

    Next up: Daemonhost.

    Oh, congratulations. You're a monster. "On the verge of death willing to give up anything to live". Hm, ought to be lots of them then. Souls fuse, willpower, stuff. You're possessed by a daemon and you asked it to.

    Powers include a free rank in a magic school and it always counts as in-class for xp costs. Spend a resource point to get your power stat added as rolled dice to a magic test.

    Resource stat: Essence, willpower + charisma + (2x power stat). When you spend a resource point you get a point of 'resonance' that you have to convert back. Free action willpower vs 10+(2x resonance). Success converts one back to a resource point, failure converts one back to a resource point, does a hit point of damage, and you have to test again if you still have any resonance. Great, you can cascade away your hit points when you're low on resource points. Oh, and keeping any 9s on magic tests while you have resonance makes you roll revert one immediately, multiple 9s stack. Well, I can see that willpower is a very important stat for us. Ah, gain a bite attack for 1k1 rending damage, for each hit point you inflict with this on a living creature you convert one resonance back into a resource point. If it's a helpless or willing target you don't have to inflict damage. Well that can be abused if you take the right background.

    Power stat: Arcanoi.
    1, daemonic (gee, ya couldn'ta guessed?), reduce all damage except that from magic effects and silver weapons, by constitution+power stat. Nice, free armor bonus.
    2, unnatural stats, you can take your stats to six. Dwarf, con, will, racial feat to use con for dex in calculating static defence. You can get tough, eventually. 500 xp to take a stat from 5 to 6. Eventually is the key word here.
    3, scorn earth, hover at will, move at normal speed in all three dimensions. Supernatural fly speed. Useful.
    4, not of this world, do not suffer the effects of critical hits unless they would kill you. So, crit immune unless it's a kill shot. That's really strong, although I'm not sure it's better than chosen's divine protection at power stat 2. They're both really good in different ways.
    5, black miracle, unless a a ritual is performed (and burning a hero point will "foil" it) the daemonhost regenerates out of the Warp, takes a week per point of resonance you have (if you know you're going down try to fill up on resource points, although with probably 16 to 22 that could be hard to do) to "find a new vessel". Stats stay the same (victim mutates, keep your skills, etc.), appearance can change if the daemon host want to. Great. You're a daemon. Almost literally. You horrible person, you.

    You are nasty hard to kill and keep dead, similar to the chosen but it takes longer to come fully on line. The willpower and charisma focus along with the magic school and the bonus dice on magic tests can make you a pretty good spell slinger, like the atlantean. Although you can't mitigate the warp crapola that you can call down nearly as well as atlanteans can. If you take a few points of followers you can refresh your resource points easily out of combat, or make a chompy melee brute character and get them back in combat. Which is actually quite like the vampire exalt. Notably if you're not afraid to lose all your hit points at suck up a bunch of crit 1 effects (note sure if it should be energy or rending type crits, energy 1 crits are temporary nuisances while rending crits can inflict fatigue and KO the character) you can just chain fail (probably) all of your resource conversion rolls to refill.

    Fluffy stuff. You look like a tiefling because of mutations. They only get more as you get more powerful. Unfortunately these are'nt the mechanical bonus type mutations, just "Hey! Demony guy here!" type mutations. The tell is... creeping tattoos? WTF? And more mutations, of course. Oop, there's a "special something" that daemons need to make a daemonhost. So they aren't swarming all over the place. Hey, all sorts of daemons "A Daemon of Khorne can be an honorable warrior just as easily as one serving Bahamut can be a bloodthirsty tyrant."

    Bizarre urges and desires drive them to acts that are immoral and criminal. Well then, normal murderhobo PCs?

    DM advice: "Discuss with the player just what kind of temptations they'd like to have, and include them once in a while." Plus daemonhosts of Order daemons tend to be mistaken for angels. Although apparently the general population of the DtD40k7e universe actually read their religious texts as kids, because: "usually feared and shunned by every culture, regardless of where they come from".

    Culture: None. Even daemons don't like other daemons.

    Adaptation notes.. include a reminder that some of the 'angels' in RL religions were originally described... interestingly. Also we could run as an entity of pure magic or an atlantean come back 'wrong'.

    So that's two hard(er) to kill exalts, both decent choices. The daemonhost can easily make a pretty good caster, Although the chosen can make a reliable caster with that ability to replace dice with static numbers. Get up to power stat 4 and you're bouncing tank rounds off your chest. OK, it'll sting a little, but still. The single most damaging vehicle weapon does 6k3+30 with penetration 20. That means it's ignoring your armor and averaging 55 damage. With stats and level at 4 they'll be... resilience probably 6, 16+ hit points, reduce damage by 8 if a daemon host, so take 8 or 9 wounds. That means we need to be at probably 5 hit points or less before we're in danger of dying from a gun capable of damaging starships. An anti-armor missile is just 5k4, barely half that damage. And even if it does kill you, you'll get better.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    All right, what have we got tonight? A short one.

    Ah, paragons. "Born with a supernatural level of talent and raw ability". Start with 2 more hero points, so two more re-rolls each session and two extra chances to cheat death. A +1 to the other racial stat option, the one that you didn't take which you chose your race. Never surprised. That's actually a pretty good perk. Gain one of your racial feats.

    Resource stat: Action points, equal to your level + power stat. Regained at the beginning of every game session.

    Power stat: Excellence.
    1, pressure points, at the start of a scene get 3x your power stat is points. That's also the maximum number of pressure points you can have. Spend any number of them to modify any skill roll. They just straight add to your number. Regain a pressure point when an opponent spends a resource, pressure, or hero point. It's another resource to track, but it turns out to be quite useful. Stops those 'missed by 1' issues.
    2, annoying long name of a power, whenever you try a 2 or 3 die stunt regain one resource point. Encouragement to stunt and not be a boring 'I attack again, buh...' idiot. Probably my biggest beef with the mainstream RPGs these days, when that's the best thing to do in basically all circumstances. Characters standing around and repeatedly punching each other. Boring.
    3, another long bloody name,at the beginning of your turn regain pressure points equal to your power stat. Real incentive to get to level 3 there as otherwise pressure points don't come back too often.
    4, stupid long power names, when stunting your dice explode on 9s and 10s. Significantly more powerful that it sounds. You're already getting bonus dice for stunting, so throw a 2 die stunt on a 8k4 skill and go from a 33-37 average spread with 25 at 10% and 49 at 90% to a 42-48 average spread and 29/66 for the 10%/90%. You want another basically +10 on your rolls? Don't be boring.
    5, tired of stupid long power names, when you stunt and succeed allies taking the same action get a bonus equal to the number of pressure points you spent (you're spending pressure points on this). Pull a stunt to shoot someone when you're standing at the head or an army with automatic weapons and spend your 15 pressure points.

    Lots of tools to make sure that you succeed at what you attempt. Good for dodgy type characters. On to the fluff pages. Physically "Elf Paragons are as Elfy as they come". Their tell is just becoming more and more noticeable. I'm not sure how I'd run that when they're trying to stealth and spending lots of resource points to do so. Becoming a paragon... you're born with it and there's no other option (by default at least).

    Playing a paragon is pretty much playing a classic action hero. No super flashy powers (unless you're really into magic I guess) just lots of luck and being really good at what you do. No standing still, you're seriously rewarded for stunting. For the DM just give them lots of props, scenery, and locations to stunt with. Be liberal about it. Expect them to succeed a lot. If they go dodgy instead of tanky, good dexterity and acrobatics, they'll be really hard to hit most of the time. On the other hand when you hit them they'll often feel it more than other exalts. I doesn't make them easier to take down though. They're really good at succeeding at dodge rolls. I have two in the party and it gets a little boring sometimes when they forget to stunt. They're not quite willing to go for that 4th power point, mostly expanding their skills. I've been starting to throw more and more stuff shooting or attacking every round them to try and keep them low on resource and pressure points. It works but it slows the game down a bit too. It doesn't help that, trained by years of modern style D&D, they don't really think of ding anything in fights but attacking all the time. Occasionally I get them to blow up important scenery by having an NPC use it against them, but that's just more attacking to deny the enemy assets. They don't try to do much with the scene. They're also deathly allergic to social situations for some reason. Mind flayers are causing them problems just by putting out press releases calling them allies. They just run away and wonder why people stop talking to them when the news catches up. Meh.

    Culture wise they're elites. Whatever they're doing, they're lucky and at the top. Adapting the paragon, they could be engineered super soldiers. Or just totally supernaturally dumb lucky. Not too much to go on there. They're really pretty wedded to the stunting mechanic for powering their abilities. Although you could say their abilities are powered by the stunting mechanic. Same difference really.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Next up is Prometheans. Let's see how fast I can type this. For a professional computer guy I don't get to actually do non-work computer stuff very often. But during a 5 minute compile and 25 minute stress test I can get a decent bit of reading and writing done. Let's see what I wrote today.

    "Made by the hands of mortals", 'I, Robot' here you come. Let's dream of some electric sheep. And get your mind out of the gutter while you're at it... Deviant.

    Powers: Construct Immunities. Fatigue, poison,disease, eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping. Heart replaced by a pyros reactor so you can't benefit from a bionic heart (that includes artifact bionic hearts). The biggie there is the immunity to fatigue. It's actually quite useful as fatigue is a faux damage mechanic that bypasses hit points to KO you. Which is a nice way of modelling several things including the fact that unarmed combat really does tend to be generally non-lethal.
    Refitting. No natural healing or spending resource points to heal. Instead its a craft+intelligence check, one hour per check, to repair one hit point or crit point. Target numbers from 15 to 25 depending on damage level. Destroyed limbs, body or head take 5 checks (and thus a minimum of 5 hours) to rebuild.
    Built. Don;t use the crit charts (kinda a sad face, those are fun) but track crits to limbs, etc. At 5 crits they're destroyed and need to be rebuilt. You can only die if you get to 5 crits on your gizzards (hit location, 1/10 change ber aimed shots). Getting your head or body destroyed KOs you until someone repairs you. Sounds like you might want to invest in some friends.
    Antisocial. Not actually the name of the power but its what I wrote down. -2k1 to all social rolls with non-exalts. Apparently other exalts are weird enough not to notice you acting a little off.

    Resource, pyros, get three times your power stat and regenerate one point an hour. Simple, easy. Starts with less then anyone but a paragon, ties for second least amount with the chosen at max. Still, no actions required to recharge, no downsides, and not too bad for management.

    Power stat, generation with a note that most promethians have to "return to the place they were born" to increase it. Back to the factory if you want upgrades buddy. Sounds like a good reason to get a ship and loyal crew with those backgrounds, then work them into your backstory as your birthplace. Although as DM I wouldn't actually make it hard to justify upgrading your generation stat anywhere with the appropriate level of magi-tech/mad inventors.
    1. Integrated armor, armor equal to power stat plus three. You start with medium-light armor and end up with heavy (8 is heavy but there's extreme and power armor after that for more). Treat all armor proficiency feat buys in classes as optional.
    2. Integrated weapons, gain power stat implanted and concealed weapons. Free action to 'draw' and can't be found with normal searches. "Say hello to my little rocket launcher!"
    3. Transhuman Potential, Spend resource points to get extra points in you stats that last for one roll or until the end of the round, whichever is longer. I don't recall if there was a scene limit on that, but I wouldn't let them carry over from scene to scene. Notably there's no limit on which stats.
    4. Recharge, regain resource equal to the wounds you take from energy weapons.
    5. Warstrider, for once scene a day double your size, +3 all physical stats, and all integrated weapons do +1k1 damage. So... add one to three to resilience, six hit points, three static defense, +4k1 more to melee damage. Yup, war machine.

    Looks, anything from normal to full RoboCop. Tells include go-go-Gadget and venting heat/plasma or steam. Becoming = building generally unique circumstance and invention and super-science. Usually person upgrade but maybe recently dead or whole made. Has a soul.

    Well, some of that mostly made sense. Or most of it made some sort of sense.

    Playing advice, promethians are usually a little weird or off. Animals can sense them as abnormal. Less afraid of bodily harm than most people ("just a flesh wound!", never more true than here). Often have backing from the people who built them.
    DMing advice, they usually have ties to a group or they've gone rogue and their original build group is an enemy. Be sure to throw a mix of stuff at them for both their strengths (tough) and weaknesses (usually social abilities).
    Culturally they're normally pretty tight with their creation culture but could be outcast/pariah like a walking nuke weapon.
    Adaptation notes, you can run them as an undead or pure robot pretty easily.

    Conclusion, tough and fighty. Has a social penalty, about -10 worth average-ish, but being able to throw +3k3 or more on a roll at power stat three can easily overcome that if you want. The 40%/50%/60% break points are 8k4 @ 32/34/37, 6k3 @ 24/25/27, 4k2 @ 16/17/18 and adding +3k3 to any of those is about equal to +20. Notably spell casting isn't "social" and it's not like these guys have any penalty to mental/social stats. For that matter since other exalts are probably your most serious opposition those social penalties don't apply there. Frankly I wouldn't apply them for dragons, daemons, and other full on monsters (who I may have added resource points/power stats to because the base daemon monster in the books is a bit on the weak side) either.

    TLDR: Terminator, RoboCop, Ghost in the Shell, Short Circuit.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    I should find my copy of Murphy's Rules, I'm sure some game statted small children as dungeon monsters or vermin or something.

    Ah, vampires. With archetypes ranging from hideous monster to glittery emo chihuahua freak. Let's see what's been done to them.

    "Horrors that drink blood", right so were going more for the Nosferatu vibe here. Considered the weakest of the exalts (that's highly debatable) they also have a bigger resource pool and often an easier time refilling it (absolutely true).

    Powers: Old money, 4 extra background points during character generation.
    Undead resilience, as from the monster/npc section [timeskip] Immune to eating, breathing, sleeping, stunning, and blood loss. I think we forgot about the stun immunity a few times during the game. Write your immunities down on your character sheet! [/timeskip], plus not killed by crits unless it's energy damage, explosion damage, silver weapons, or magic (so really just immune to crit death via non-silver rending and impact damage). Non-killing death crits (uh, crist that should kill the character but don't because vamp) just knock the character out until they spend enough blood points to heal the damage to a non-deadly level.
    Sunlight weakness, each round exposed to direct sunlight inflicts 1 wound of energy damage, all crits go to the body. Can be avoided by a heavy cloak and a wide hat, so we're really talking direct sun contact with the skin bits. Obviously a full body armor and helm or a void suit would work just as well. I'd file this as "not that much of a problem in most circumstances".
    Blood dependent. Well that's sort of the defining characteristic of vampires isn't it? Let see, gain a 1k1 rending melee brawling bite attack (can brawling be ranged? are we just being completests here?) with which you may choose to draw blood (may?) and inflict a level of fatigue while regaining a blood point. Knocked out creatures can be bitten once more, safely. After that any draining kills them. Also you lose one blood point a day and go into a coma of you can't. Yes, other people may stuff blood into an unconscious vampire, it just needs to be fresh.

    Resource stat: vitae, aka blood points. The gooey red stuff. It turns out that most people can tell what you're talking about pretty easily and that's good because I think this is part of where the 'one guy doing this on a dare' thing shows up in the proof reading. It swaps back and forth every so often in some places. But you get power stat x5, pretty much more than anyone else so far and with a higher cap than anyone else. Recovery was covered above.

    Power stat: Blood potency. Whatever, as it goes up you get more 'dead guy walking around' looking.
    1, Auspex, see in darkness and +1k0 to all perception tests. Simple, very useful.
    2, Dread, spend a blood point to gain supernatural Fear 1 for a scene. That's a TN 15 willpower test of flee/stay away with a minor penalty for having to interact with the source of the fear and some unpleasantness if you fail by 5 or more. Just to note willpower 2 (2k2) has about 72% chance of failing, about 36% chance of it being by 5 or more. Willpower 3 (3k3) has a 34% chance of failing and a bit less than a 12% chance of failing by 5. Willpower 3 as a baseline for PCs, remember that (there are crit effects that are sufficiently gory to throw a fear 1 test, try not to be scared by your own kill shots).
    3, Celerity, spend a blood point to gain an additional half action in a round. Heya, spend 2 to cast a spell, shoot someone, and take a full round total defence action. Nice way to set up some pretty serious combos with yourself. There are non-combat applications too, but lets be real, your players will never think of that.
    4, Potency, spend a blood point to get +3 strength for a scene. I'm of the opinion that this one won't stack.
    5, Dominate, as per the spell of the same name but you roll power stat (5) + charisma instead of a magic test. And no warp effects since it's not actually a spell... crap... Just noticed that there are no costs or limits. Well that puts it up there with the rest of the power 5 abilities, and it actually has real non-combat uses.

    Physical, cute, "the worst doctor can usually tell if someone is dead". Much more mobile than most dead people though.
    Tells, they vamp out.
    Becoming, anyone can become a vamp, yadda yadda yadda. Sire, childe (note pretentious e), gunk from VtM games. There's a box text that outlines how to do it in play. It boils down to burning off a point of your power stat in exchange for an ally 1 background made out of whoever got bit. Can't do other exalts and non-sapiens. I doesn't explicitly say it but I'd nix other stuff without blood and other undead. So, vampire cyber-aboleth anyone? Alas the vampire t-rex is out unless you make it much smarter first. Wait... Aren't there cyber implants that... Well there's an 'add +1 Int' in the second book, but I'm unsure if I'd let straight intelligence boosts count unless they went higher.
    Playing one, driven by hunger, animals won't do. "They have a strong nightlife". They make an excellent ship crew in the astral sea, no sun and they don't care much about the lack of life support. I mean, I'm sure it does a number on your hair and skin that'll take a gallon or two of moisturiser and conditioner to reverse...
    DMing, makes it rare that the party will do anything during the day. Yeah, no. We got laser guns and magitech. A fire extinguisher and some spray foam insulation to quick patch your void suit and they're good. Add in quick-set epoxy and some thick rubber patches if you're feeling paranoid. "Even if it's mostly safe they prefer to work at night", that's more true because of the seeing in darkness bit than anything else. Seriously, schlumpy was wandering outside on Athas during the day fighting teleporting murder elephants that cast fireballs. They're fine. Just remember to bring the fire extinguisher.
    Society, "closely resembles that of the classic image of the mafia". Cute. Reasonable too. Mention of dark space citadels in the astral sea where old, powerful vamps live.
    Adaptation, "Unfortunately, Vampires are a rather specific exaltation." Yeah. Although it mentions an alien blood parasite and a succubus variant as possibilities.

    My experience was that access to a medium-large spaceship crew with regular blood drives and monetary bonuses for donations pretty much alleviates the 'between away mission' issues and makes healing up pretty fast. The celerity power is strong, but vamps will burn through their resources fast with it. It also counts towards your 1/power stat resource use per round. Since that's also a limit on how many times you can dodge or parry (everyone starts with one reaction and exalts can spend resource during a round to gain more reactions, they're also used in multi-attacks) blowing everything on extra actions can be risky. The limit of 'can't take the same action twice' is very important there too. But that's all later in the combat section. Basically vamps have some strong options and a big resource pool but 1) it's hard to replenish in combat (that bite attack isn't anything special, it's brass knuckles level) and 2) it encourages them to burn through it fast. They can be pretty spectacular, but it tends to be short lived and leave them vulnerable afterwards. Although, the guy playing a vampire in our game isn't exactly known for restraint or long term planning. Someone more conservative can probably get a more steady burn or just throw down blood points only when they really need to.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Werewolves, our last exaltation. Big, hairy, screamy! Remember kids: Fur burns.

    Let see, described as a blessing or a curse. Stable cultures usually see them as threats. Highly capable in melee. Pack oriented. The usual werewolf stuff.

    Powers: Shifting, spend a resource point and take a full round action to turn into one of two forms. Wolf form is the basic shaggy dog story, +1k1 to scent perception, +2 dexterity, +1 size, and a 1k1 rending melee bite attack. Ok, seriously, this is the third bite attack option we've gotten. What gives with the mouthy bits? Vamp and were are reasonable, traditional even, but three different bite attacks? Anyways that translates into about +8 static defense, +2 meters move, and half the time a -1 resilence. It also doesn't say but there's a quadruped attribute in the monster section that ought to apply. It's just a movement multiplier for having more legs because usually that means those legs are built for speed. For number two is the warform, it's the big bitey movie werewolf. Beserk mode, may only advance and attack (you should probably be a bit lenient on that one, call it minimum one general aggressive half action each round? Otherwise it's really constricting). Can stay in warform for constitution+power stat rounds (I'd consider making that a minumum and upping the max to the entire scene, although there's no restriction about reentering it would take time and another resource point), get +2 strength size and constitution, 1k1 claws and 2k1 bite (MOAR BITEY!) that count as magic weapons, the Stuff of Nightmares monster trait, and any worn armor bursts and gets ruined doing armor points damage to you. No note on if that is before or after you adjust stats. So we're gatting +4 hp, +2 rounds of transform, -4 static defense, and +1 resilence out of this. Stuff of Nightmares is immunity to poison, disease, breathing, "most environmental hazards", bleeding, stunning, and any critical effect "other than one that would destroy them outright" unless the effect is caused be a spell, power weaon, or other "similarly unusual source". Some vague wording there, does decapitation by power fist count as 'destroyed outright'? While something like a sandsorm is definitely an environmental hazard... well no, raining acid and lava is probably not covered by 'most'.

    Lycan resilence, gain non-stacking armor equal to your power stat in wolf/war forms (fairly trivial). Cannot be killed by crits unless it is from explosive, energy, silver, or magic (well I suppose that solves the power fist question, it's impact damage), instead you get knocked out until you regenerate all critical damage. You may spend resource points to heal in combat as a free action. It doesn't say exactly, but it's implied that this is all when wolf/war formed. This wasn't written with a mind to sentence fragment style rules parsing. Definitely some unaddressed edge cases and interpretations.

    Spirit tongue, Free language proficency in 'spirit'. What, ghosts got their own language?

    Silver bane, you count as half size for resisting damage from sivler weapons or ammo. My first impression is that this is just a -1 resilence... Ok, I threw the math into a spreadsheet for this. Between wolf and war form changing your size we have a range from 1 to 7, levels 1 to 5, and the resilence calculation with it's "divide by two-round up-add one" sequence. At size 1 there's no change, at 2 & 3 there's a -1 half the time depending on odd/even math, at 4 & 5 it's always -1, at 6 & 7 it's split -1 or -2 by the odd/even math. I'm really tempted to change that to a flat -1 resilence versus silver. Or maybe an additional size stat (or simpler just +5) in damage for silver hits.

    Resource stat: Rage. Maximum of composure + willpower + level. Regain you power stat worth of rage at the start of each fight, or 1/night at moon rise (or local equivalent). That's... restrictive. You could try to game the per fight part, but a DM willing to let you do that would also consider other options.

    Power stat: Feral heart.
    1) Fast healing, when in wolf/war form heal one hit point a round or one crit an hour as long as it's not from explosive, energy, silver, or magic damage. Gotcha, keeping two interconected wound tracks going. Or tagging your injuries and regen Y/N. Nice but annoying sometimes, and why isn't it up with the lycan resilence or shapreshifting powers?
    2) Spirit sight, see into the local spirit world with a power stat + wisdom roll, no target number given amature editor fail. See lingering magical auras and past important events. Well, a plot detector power with few or no defined edges. Possibly a way to detect active spells ala ShadowRun astral perception?
    3) Quick shift, may shift to wolf/war forms as a half action instead of a full action. Quality of life ribbon power.
    4) Sacred hunt, do aritual and then solo hunt a 'superlative' animal, kill it, taste it's heart blood, and... for two resource point you can transform into this instead of the wolf form... Right. Considering how limp the first three powers are, if you clobber a size 14 'superlative' giant land squid I will totally let you rock this with all the brokenness that is twelve 10m long tentacles and acid-ink squirting. Considering the Spelljammer-esque loose definition of 'animal' among the apheres this could get fun.
    5) Spirit walk, power stat + willpower vs TN 20 to walk into the spirit world, may talk along a chain of hand holders. At will, no duration limits. Ok, so it's a get into-out of pretty much anywhere power. With maybe a 'look before you walk' in some places. As a note you'll have an absolute minimum of 6k5 whihc gives a 96% success rate. Although it did mention that it could be higher or lower under special circumstances.

    Hnrrg. That's a bunch of loose ends and partial definitions.

    Physical... They all have mithril and quicksilver tatoos? Heavy metal poisoning is normal for weres? I mean, they aren't immune to poison ouside of warform and they aren't getting tats in warform. Really, all of them? Any ways they don't all have to be wolves, other animals are fine. Cats, foxes, and dinosaurs are mentioned. Yes you can legit be a were-velociraptor, that's fine, the stats don't have to change for anything. Wolf form looks normalish, warform is obviously a monster,

    Tells, you turn all furry. Or the tatoos start glowing a lot. Glowy fuzzball, sparkly vamp, "Ma! Fetch my flamer! There's some freak here what needs teaching."

    Becoming, two ways to do it. First is being born. About a 25% chance for normal/were breeding, highly likely with were/were but prone to mental instability and beserk rages. Plot idea: government breeding program for furry super soldiers (mind control implants options), gotcha. The second way is that the goddess Luna just zaps you into a fur coat. Often in the middle of combat. Fickle b* god. On the other hand it sounds like she's got a way higher success rate with were exalts then the other gods have with chosen exalts.

    Playing one. Creatures of instinct, but not animalistic. Adaptable, independent, multiple solutions to problems. Feel uncomfortable in confinement like spaceships, but they adapt and are fine. Uncomfortable in cities, but they adapt and are fine. Really? Adapt, adapt, adapt? Reasonable to be a dabbler in lots of things. Strong cultural idea that strength comes from multiple sources. With all that melee brute stuff though, they aren't really pointed at ranged combat, magic, or anything else. Definitely not aimed at being a social or technical character.

    DMing for weres. Never unarmed (they aren't alone, ref atlantean-magic, daemonhost, promethian @ power 2+, vamp, and anyone who casts spells). Don't ignore the connection with the spirit world, although I'd note that it's pretty dependent on the player remembering they can do that too. The level 5 power makes them amazing infiltrators and escape artists. And I just realized that a 'superlative' mouse is a completely legit sacred hunt target. I presume that there's some level of inter-were teasing that accompanies that too. "Dude, a mouse? That must have been some epic hunt. What'd it do? Viciously nibble your toenail? You couldn't have gone for an elephant or something?"

    Society, tribes. There's literally two sentences.

    Adapting. Easy, other animals. Also possible is anything that can sort of 'battle mode' like a super soldier with bio-armor. Although I have no idea how you'd want to work wolf form into that.

    In my experience these guys are the actual weakest exalt. The rage resource is slow to regenerate, unlike all (most?) of the others there's no way to get any back mid-fight, and you can burn through really easily. The player who went with this ended up generally using one point to warform, and couple two or three in fight, then another to wolf form in order to run off and regen. Warform has basically no extra defenses beyond a hit point per round regen and resistance to impact/rending crits. A power fist to the gut can still break 1d10 ribs and knock you out (cyber-yeti bodyguards on combat drugs are a thing in my game). You're pushed towards melee combat (there's no restriction on using weapons, just attacking and advancing) but aren't really any more special at it that someone who bought power armor and a phase sword. Actually I'm wondering if dog-shaped power armor and the bite equivalent of a power fist, the just ignore warform, would work pretty well.

    They don't have any penalties, but then again neither do at least three other exalts, four when you consider that vamps can just use heavy makeup & clothing. Spirit sight is almost purely a plot power in addition to both player & dm having to remember it. Quick shift is literally the lamest of all the exalt power stat abilities. You could literally fold the level 1 & 3 powers into the base powers, put shifting + lycal resistance as the level 1 power, and it would not only be the same but it might read better too.

    I know what we can do for the L3 power, regain a rage on crits and any time you lose 2+ hit points or resolve (remember resolve? social combat hit points. yeah, lose resolve = gain rage, sounds good). That way the regen can at least keep up with more than the occasional scratch. Also the lycan resistance armor value needs a boost. AP = character level is honestly crap. Let's do power stat + constitution and explicitly always on even when not shapeshifted, so we're looking at startig around 3 to 5 and getting a maximum of 10, +2 in warform. Frankly they need more resource points too, not a lot more, but more. Our max values run from 15 to 25, and starting is normally around 5. composure + willpower + 2x power stat would put them in line with atlanteans and daemonhosts, or instead of 2x power stat it could be level + power stat.

    The other issue is that we have a bunch of loosely defined abilities here. Lycan resilience really reads like it should be only on while shapeshifted but it doesn't say that except for the armor and crit resistance, plus it is honestly a little weak for what it is supposed to represent. Energy damage isn't uncommon enough to make the crit resist an "oh wow" ability. As a minor spoiler the whole spirit world thing isn't developed hardly at all after this. I think there may be another two sentences hanging around outside the monster entry for ghosts.

    All in all I think you need to be nice to your werewolves and make sure that they keep getting those resource points back. Once they hit power stat 4 and do a bit of smart sacred hunting (gorilla, bird, shark, giant land squid, etc.) I'd stop worrying. But frankly be the time people are hitting power stat 4 in your game they're usually really hard to kill anyways and have lots of power. It feels like outside of pure melee combat the werewolf is going to be much more reliant on class/feat choices than other exalts. And man, that power stat 3 ability is just... that should have been in the shapeshifting section all along (it can still be at power stat 3, but it's not a worthy power stat ability). If you do utterly nothing else you should replace it with an in-combat regen rage points mechanic.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    I read the rulebooks years ago but you're the first person I heard that ran this game!

    (My sample character was an Aasimar fighter/paladin in power armor.)

    I'm quite interested in learning more of your sessions! Where are your session logs?
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    And I do agree that the right answer to the magic/mundane problem is to make everyone badass.
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    If you're of a philosophical bent, the powergamer is a great example of Heidegger's modern technological man, who treats a game's mechanics as a standing reserve of undifferentiated resources that are to be used for his goals.
    My Complete Tome of Battle Maneuver/Stance/Class Overhaul

    Arseplomancy = Fanatic Tarrasque!

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    The session logs are, sort of, in this forum section somewhere. The search function should find them. I think some/most ended up in a google doc. There should also be a link to the android app die roller/warp effects that I did. That thing is seriously useful for running the game (it's definitely still a beta version though, the text wipes on screen rotations).

    I really need to stop binging on dwarf fortress and write the next bit of this.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    After the last bit we have the DtD40k7e + sarcasm version of the Star Wars scene where Han gets hired to take some schlumps to Alderran. Eh.

    Next up is the class chapter. There's lots of lists in here and I don't feel like typing any of that in. I'll note some high points, lessons learned, etc. But if you want to read the lists TVTropes has links to the PDFs and you can read them yourself. Seriously, we aren't here for a review or academic discussion, we're here for the commentary.
    commentary...

    commentary...


    commentary...

    Great. An echo.

    Chapter starts with an intro page. Classes are packages that represent you character's training and work. It defines the powers and skills that you're focused on learning and improving. I suppose you could look at them as college courses, from remedial to masters then. They aren't your entire character or even necessarily your job, just your long term training path. The main thing classes do is restrict how you spend XP. You can (well, sorta, exceptions and all) only spend XP on the stats, skills, feats, sword schools, and magic schools in your current class. We have an editing error where the word 'feats' is left out somewhere. The feats are the meat of the class that give you most of your class abilities. You have to meet the prereqs for a class. You can only leave a class after buying all the required feats in the class. Once you leave you're in the new class and can't buy from your previous classes. Each class has a level and your character level is the level of your highest class.

    There's an alphabetical list of classes with one line descriptions. Nearly useless except as a very broad overview except... They marked all the first level classes. That's semi-useful for building starting characters.

    Leveling up and free study. There's a half page summary of basically all the class and in-class XP buying rules. That's nice and it's useful to read that after all the previous bits. It lays everything out in a concise and orderly format. Free study is what happens between classes. There's nothing saying that you must choose a new class immedately after finishing a class, and what would happen after you finish the fifth level of a class? Start anoth class path probably. But no, you can do some free study between classes. You can spend XP to buy optional feats from any classes you've finished, or raise skills, stats, magic, sword schools, gun kata (those are in the second book and I don't think they're mentioned anywhere else in this book, it's either an editing mistake or a teaser) from any of your previous classes. You can also buy up skills and attributes outside you classes at double the cost.

    Before we hit the classes and tracks (I've been calling them paths, same difference) I wan tot note something. I mis-remembered part of this during a game early in our campaign, plus I wanted to throw the occasional off-class feat onto some NPCs (building NPCs as characters is optional but often useful, you can always just make crap up), so I've allowed off-class feats to be bought at double price while in free study. This has had some consequences. First, because of one feat, anyone can buy the first dot of a magic school that's out of clss for the same XP it costs in-class. That's not a real big deal, except that conjuration is really popular because it has a 40m LOS teleport at the first level. Second, when a human paragon character buys effectively Lay On Hands (runs off spending hero points) for 200xp they basically replace all other hit point healing unless you really push them into making lots of rerolls during a session. Third, there are a couple pretty strong feats that, depending on how you rule spending resource points while using them, obsolete some other feats. There are some feats the is probably is better if they're gated by the higher level class requirements. On the other hand I don't think that armor and weapon proficency should be amongst them, which they are by default. I think you can only get power armor proficency (memory, will come up later this chapter) through a couple classes and at 4th or 5th level. Which may or may not be a good thing. I don't think having power armor and proficency at 3ed level is bad, but as written you can only get that by being a gnome or tech-preist (second book, first level, the 'any' almost could be a typo). On the other hand it discourages artifact power armor at first level, which is probably a good thing. People who start their characters with artifact power armor are probably assuming that they always get to wear it. Which has backfired on them on occasion when they couldn't and they didn't have any other concept of not dying except by heavy armor.

    Of course melta guns have armor penetration equal to power armors defense rating, and krak grenades and missiles aren't far behind.

    Dodging is good until you run out of resource points (or points per pound) to use it. And there is actually a meaningful tradeoff in resilence vs. static defense. So starting with artifact power armor isn't a huge deal, but it's something. I still think it should come online about 3rd level though.

    Any way, class tracks. Some classes naturally flow into others but you aren't limited to them, you can take any class you qualify for. Plus there are a few classes that don't appear on any track. Tracks have five classes each and are: assassin, barbarian, bard, cleric, fighter (hey, there's a class in there called 'Fight Guy'), guardsman (although the Stormtrooper class is perhaps a bit misnamed given current popular culture), magic user, paladin, and thief (ends in Stubjack, which a quick google tells me is a WH40K thing so there's no etymology of the word form).

    Then we dive into the classes with... Rat Catcher!

    Ahem, we start with level 1 classes that have no prerequsites. That are not, however, useless. particularly because if I recall correctly you can build a starting character that's already through them and ready to immedately be in another class at game start.

    So, rat catcher. Nice traditional adventurer start, rat killing. Also a WHFRP call back. You know it actually helps if your at least familiar with the assorted games DtD40K7e is based on, you have a better feel for what's going on. And if you do play WHFRP the dog as actually rather useful in addition to (nearly) nobody ever questioning if a person like you should be somewhere odd. Feats include common sense, obtain familiar, and basic weepon proficency. You get +2 HP on finishing the class. Good: Wisdom vs 15 to ask the DM if you're doing something stupid and it gives the DM a mechanic behind "are you sure you want to do that?". basic weapon proficency covers all the most common melee and ranged weapons. Two more hit points is a more than decent exit bonus. Bad: Obtain familiar has no rules or guidelines attached. As a pro that means you don't get players coming up with pre-built familiars/mounts (it's used for the paladin mount thing too) trying to game an edge or having convinently forgotten that you said not to use something or to ask first. It causes the player to talk to you about their character instead of throwing down a stat block to game with. As a con there's no rules or guidelines. You have to make up the rules yourself or just wing it.

    Scholar. Is actually pretty bad. Arguable the worst. Feats include eidetic memory, skill focus, and expanded knowledge. Exit bonus is a skill specialty in any skill. That's a perfect memory (depending on your DM style that can be good or bad), a specialty on each lore skill (can be different specialties), and two more specialties. You will get to reroll lots of 1s. Ah, the feat/class given specialties don't require 4 dots in a skill and you still get another specialty when you hit 4 dots in the skill. On the other hand there are no weapon or armor proficencies in the class. Good at knowing stuff tho.

    Initiate. Skills are academing and fobidden lore, medic, craft. Thats it, possibly the shortest class skill list available. Feats total out at +1k0 on soclials with a religous organization, +1k0 to hit 'heretics'/favored enemy, basic weapon prof, divine ministration (lay on hands, spend a hero point for -1 fatugue & +1d5 HP by touch), and minor magic. Minor magic is one dot in any magic school you don't have any dots in. As a feat it's 100xp, buying the first dot in a magic school is usually 200xp. You may well save up to 800xp taking this before taking a another casting class if you're planning on not being a total specialist spell caseter. Oh, and you get a skill psecialization on the way out. This is actually a great class to take if you just want to add some low level magic and decent healing onto a character. As it has no magic schools in it you can't advance beyond the first dot in magic from here, but once you hit free study you can drop 800xp for the first dots in other 8 magic schools. As opposed to, you know, picking up at least two other classs (I don't think any one caster class gets all the schools) and spending another 1600xp to get there.

    Mercenary. Pretty much the opposite of scholar? You'll come out with a total of light & medium armor prof, basic weapons, +3 HP, a new language, and +1k0 on soclia checks with menbers of a particular merc group (basically self defined or coop with the DM). Hey, perception and scrutiny are on the class list at least.

    Peasant. You're common as dirt and about as remarkable too. Ok, feats in clude unremarkable, sound constitution (thats +1 HP each time you take it), luck (1/day reroll), and common sense. There is no bonus for completion. Why don't I consider this at the bottom instead of scholar? If you know that you're in for a good long game, and since most paragons tend to be rather difficult to kill, it has all attributes as in-class. As attributes are your kept dice this means that over the long term you can become a very well rounded character no matter what class you go into next. On the other hand, that really is a long term plan. On the gripping hand i think all the classes only give three attributes in-class and those generally stay the same through the whole track of classes.

    And that's enough for now. We'll start in on the assassin track later.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Assassin classes track.

    Starting wiht the level 1 Sell-Steel, prereqs are stealth 2 and weaponry or ballistics 2. Not exactly hard to qualify for but they'll both crank up to 5 at the end, generally equalling the level of the class. The in-class stats are dexterity, intelligence, and fellowship all the way through the track. In-class skills are the weapons, thiefy stuff, several socials, perception, and pilot. But not drive? That's odd. Any way, same skills all the way though the track. Two sword schools are in-class, shadow hand and setting sun. We'll get to what they do later but suffice it to say that you get to build your own ToB style maneuvers by spending xp, although it's bascially limited to attack maneuvers. The class completion bonus is +1 to initiative, that's the same throughout the track too (init = 1d10 + composure).

    You have to take the improved feint feat, which is decent. Feinting is a half action that has you throw down an opposed weapons test. If you beat the target they don't get to dodge or parry. The feat has them take a -2k0 penalty even if they win the test. Plus the sneak attack feats work even if the situation doesn't normally qualify. Other than that it's just general dex sytle combat feats, no armor proficency, basic weapon prof required to take and optionally any other weapon prof. You also take two weapon fighting, opening up additional attacks if you take the multiattack action in combat. You'll usually want to take the ambidexterity asset/feat at character generation then too, although the penalty (minus one or two dice rolled) isn't horrible bad if you don't.

    Level 2 is Nighthawk, pretty similar. Requires improved feint to get in. Has you take light armor prof any sneak attack. SA is just ignoring half the armor of an unaware target but you have improved feint. Interestingly SA is a feat that gets better the more armor something has, effectively a damage bonus dependent on the armor rating. Far shot (don't much care about range increments) OR furious assault (do an all out attack, no dodge or parry untill your next round, bonus to hit, and if you hit and wound you get a second attack at the same bonuses for free), so you're pushed to choose ranged or melee.

    Level 3 and you're finally an actual Assassin, which requires you to know sneak attack. Backstab, bonus damage for ganging up on someone. Swift attack (as a multiattack make two melee attacks) OR deadeye shot (called shots at half penalty, -1k0 instead of -2k0). A run faster feat and quick draw.

    level 4 Freeblade is more of the same and requires backstab and quick draw. You take a +2 damage melee OR ranged feat (whoop-de-poo, yes this is crap), immunity to non-supernatural fear. All this time you've been having to take a skill focus feat each level and have the option to take another skill focus and any weapon proficency.

    level 5 Nihilator requires the skills at 5 each, the level 4 required feats plus luck and jaded. A couple damage bonus feats, interestingly you get improved backstab but not improved sneak attack in this class track. Counter attack, riposte when you successfully parry. Once a round free dodge, labelled as an extra reaction that can only be used to dodge, same effect. Assassin strike, which is kind of weirdly named. Once a turn when you make a melee attack you can also take a free move that doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity.

    So thats a lightly armored kill stuff class. There is a definite preference for melee combat, it doesn't have as nice a selection of ranged combat feats. With all the skill focuses you'll probably be interested in having a bunch of skills, or you could try stacking them all on one skill and cover all the bases there. But since I've done the math earlier just rerolling 1s isn't amazingly powerful on average. On the other hand it's memorable and good to have in play since it provides to opportunity to turn a fail into a success. There isn't any feat support for it but the skills definitely support scouting and social roles too.

    I'm going to skip around and do the thief track next. I want to see if there are any real break points where you can switch out after having followed one track pretty closely.

    Thief track starts with Outcast as the level 1 class. Requires larceny 2 and stealth 2. In-class stats are dex, int, and fellowship again. Gets the shadow hand and diamond mind sword schools. Completion bonus is +1 static defense. Missing by 1 isn't common, but it's definitely not a waste either. Skills are the same as assassin at a quick scan, with the addition of tech-use. Still no drive, but they do get pilot. Weird.

    Almost the same first level feats. improved feint, required weapon prof in melee2 (includes fencing weapons and something else I forget and won't bother to check) with optionals for basic (you want basic because you want guns at some point) and throwing, danger sense is literally 'never surprised' and is a pretty nice feat. ok, so after completing this you can skip right into nighthawk-assassin2 if the assassin track required combat skill isn't complete trash.

    Level 2 is Outlaw, requires danger sense which assassin track classes don't get. Sneak attack, light armor prof, two weapon fighting, evasion (on a dodge may move dexterity in meters, not provoking AoO explicitly and only from the peron you dodged) and one (optionally two) skill focuses. I'll state it now that you get the required and optional skill focuses every level of this track, but no further weapon proficency options.

    Level 3, Renegade, requires evasion, again no assassins allowed. Gives the same run faster feat and quick draw as assassin 3, also backstab, and weapon focus in fencing weapons (+1k0 attack). We're barely not a clone of the assassin track so far. however after finishing this you could switch over to assassin-assassin3 (the way I typed that seems redundant) as long as you have 3 dots in weaponry or ballistics.

    Level 4, Rogue, requires sneak attack. So level 3 assassins can get into this if they also have larceny 4. Improved sneak attack ignores all armor on a feint or unaware target. Other than that the feat list is the same as freeblade-assassin4 without the weapon feats. Interestingly I think you can get into nihilator-assassin5 from here.

    Level 5, Stubjack, requires improved sneak attack. Gives the 1/round free dodge, improved backstab, a small bonus damage feat, and fearless. Um, fearless is... interesting on this class. I wonder if there was a late edit that didn't get cross checked on the feat and which classes had it. Yes, you're immune to fear and pinning tests (there's a mechanic for keeping your head down under sustained full-auto suppressing fire), but it makes disengaging from combat or backing down froma fight rquire a willpower roll vs 15. Granted 15 isn't much, and by level 5 there's a possibility you've bought up your willpower (or not since it's not in the class stats) but unable to back down from a fight is odd on the thief chassis.

    So there are a fair number of swap points between the two tracks as long as you keep a combat skill and larceny up to par. On the other hand you could literally add tech-use to the assassin track skill lists and stick a few more "A OR B" feat and prerequsite bits in to come out with a single track that has essentailly all the same options. They're nearly the same classes in a bunch of cases. Luckily I think that these may be the most closely related class tracks in the book, the others (I seem to recall) are all much more varied.

    Interesting. I think, if I were doing a rogue type character, I'd take thief1, assassin2 & 3, thief 4, assassin 5. Danger sense, improved sneak attack, and tech-use is about all I think I'd want from the thief track that assassin doesn't have. Assassin1 and thief1 are pretty much the same, while assassin4 doesn't have much to recommend it in contrast to improved sneak attack.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    I did a bit of a re-read and, man, there's a lot of typos in there.

    Someone asked, a link to one of the threads that has links to the game log.
    Here's the first thread, turned into the prototype game log and petered out. https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...-Going-fishing
    Here's a second thread, second to the last post has the log and app links. https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...-Exalted/page2

    Now, back to the classes. The barbarian track.

    L1, Feral. Requires weaponry 2 and athletics 1. Obviously we're a melee class. In-class stats are strength, charisma, and constitution. We're winning triathlons and body building contests here. Completion bonus is +1 to all melee damage. Well that's pretty crap. Sure, at 5th level its like ignoring a flak jacket, but it's also a really really small bonus. Sword schools are stone dragon, tiger claw, and desert wind. Don't assume that sword schools map directly to the D&D ToB schools that they're named after. There are some thematic similarities, but... Example, the desert wind school allows you to use maneuvers with called shots and Syrneth weapons. Spend 100xp to build a simple maneuver that ,as long as you didn't use it in the last round adds +2k0 to a called shot attack roll with any weapon type that you know a sword school for.

    Any how, the requirements for weaponry and athletics will crank up by 1 each until at 5th level they're both 5. Also each level after the first requires the frenzy feat plus a feat from the previous level. Since nobody else gets frenzy on their class feat lists that means nobody can cross over into this class. Bleh.

    In-class skills are general barbarian-ish skills plus drive. Not perception though. Weird. Barbarians have an easier time learning to drive than thieves or assassins. Wtf.

    Feats are frenzy (full round to turn on, +1 strength & constitution, -2 intelligence & wisdom, must melee attack or advance, no parrying, lasts until the end of combat) which is pretty 'meh', danger sense (never surprised), light armor prof, power attack (take a number of rolled dice off your attack and add them to the rolled dice of damage, capped at your level), weapon prof any, and this and every level has an optional any weapon proficiency.

    I'll be honest, that's a pretty mediocre first level. You're a melee combatant with a couple minor bonus feats to take. Plus driving. I still find it odd that thieves don't get that while barbarians do (although I fully admin that chariots and war wagons are a thing so it's not just that barbarians get it).

    L2, savage, jaded, quick draw, +1k0 damage on a charge, +1k0 attack (weapon focus).
    L3, rager, +2 melee damage, furious assault (all out attack that wounds gets an extra attack), swift attack (multiattack for two attacks), and medium armor prof.
    L4, barbarian, the ability to parry during frenzy, true fearlessness, constitution check to resist stunning, and cleave (like D&D cleave, 1/round drop someone and make another attack).
    L5, heavy armor prof, lightning attack (3x multiattack, does not stack with swift attack), +1 'wound' done when critting (upgrades a crit result by one point), and true grit -> "Whenever you suffer critical damage, you may halve the result (rounding up)". True grit is not well defined. Halve the damage taken, halve the wounds, halve the crit level, halve the effect of the crit... You know, given how naff this class track has been so far and that you have to have taken it all the way (wait check that) I'd say halve the crit level rounding up after determining the crit. That means that you can't take more than a crit 3, ruling out nearly all instant death crits. Because frankly this class track doesn't impress me at all.

    Hrm. priest-cleric1 and gallant-paladin1 get powerful charge that's required for barbarian3, fight guy-fighter3 has crushing blow that's required for barbarian4, nobody gets battle rage required for barbarian5. So you can maybe get into the barbarian track from cleric, paladin, or fighter tracks if you've completed feral-barbarian1 first.

    Let's check out the fighter track.

    L1, Swordsman. Requires weaponry 2 and athletics 1, same as feral. Strength, constitution, and intelligence. That's different. Similar skills to barbarian except that they get perception, ballistics, and command in place of animal ken and acrobatics. Completion bonuses are +1 to-hit on all melee attacks. Well it's starting off better than the barbarian track. Sword schools are iron heart and white raven.

    Feats, we're looking at any weapon prof (required at 1 & 2, optional every level after that), light armor with optional medium armor, power attack, and always counting as lightly wounded for healing purposes (heal HP faster even if you're really heavily wounded, may not matter depending on exalt).

    L2, myrmidon, requires power attack, you can come in from barbarian1 here. Blind fighting, jaded, quick draw, medium armor prof required if you didn't pick it up last level, optional heavy armor prof, and the +1k0 attack weapon focus. Compared to barbarian you're getting heavier armor faster and can buy up ballistics.
    L3, fight guy, yes that's a good description of you. Requires blind fighting and quick draw, you can't switch to this class from barbarian because they never get blind fighting. You can get into this from assassin3 or thief2 (get the feats at 1 but can't skip levels from 1 to 3) though if your weaponry is 4 and athletics is 3. Gives swift attack (the 2x melee multiattack), weapon specialization (+1k0 on damage rolls), crushing blow (the stupid flat +2 melee damage) OR crack shot which is crushing blow's ranged attack twin, optional heavy and extreme armor proficiency, and combat insight. Combat insight lets you use intelligence in place of dexterity for dodging, or in place of your level for the aim action. Now I need to check the aim action... Right, I remembered correctly, aim doesn't reference level at all. In fact it's completely independent of all character stats (1/2 action gives +1k0 to hit next attack, full action gives +2k0 to hit next attack, don't get interrupted because it's sub-typed 'concentration'). So here's another editing error, although it's in a feat and I ran across it in the class lists.
    L4, fighter, requires swift attack and combat insight. Nobody other than fighter3 gets combat insight so there's no crossing into this class. Optional extreme armor proficiency, optional weapon focus, improved weapon focus for +0k1 on attack rolls, fearless, iron jaw (the Con vs. stunning feat), armor specialization (+2 to a category of armor), combat master (never outnumbered and never ganged up on, defeats back stab and a couple other things), and a 1/round free parry.
    L5, master fight guy. What? Our thesaurus caught fire and we didn't go get another? Fine, master fight guy it is. Requires combat master which nobody else gets. Gives counter attack (riposte on a successful parry), true grit (half crit thingy), 1/round reroll a missed melee attack, the triple multiattack, improved weapon spec again, and optional weapon prof and specializations.

    Well, you're a fighter. Good at it by 5th level, but still a fighter. You do have a use (if limited, but you can also use it in driving) for intelligence. You are tough, even more so on top of your exaltation. You could go barbarian 1, fighter 2 & 3, barbarian 4 & 5. I think that's probably the only continual level-up option between the two. Anything else and you have to go back and double up on first level classes to get frenzy from barbarian1.

    Let's think about that Combat Insight feat, since I'll almost certainly not remember it when we get to feats (and having mostly hit feats in the classes that'll be a pretty fast skim). Intelligence for dexterity for dodging and intelligence for ?level? in something. Well parrying and feinting both use normal weapon tests which use level, or there's the disarm action which is a dexterity+weaponry opposed check that disarms if you beat the opponent by 10+ points / two raises (works pretty well against gun bunnies / brawlers who don't invest in weaponry skill). I think it should be parrying. That builds on the general melee competence and defense of the fighter track and when you get the feat it wouldn't be insane for you to have a 4 intelligence, particularly if you have access to necromancy or illusion magic through an exalt or exalt-asset combo.

    Although going with replacing dexterity with intelligence for the disarm ability wouldn't be off either. In the lists of feats Combat Insight says that it replaces dexterity for some rolls without mentioning level. And you're already going to be good at parrying simply by virtue of the weaponry skill and your level. Heck make it both and it's still not an insane feat or anything.

    Still nobody getting power armor proficiency, and I kind of think that maybe the fighter track could have common lore in it.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    I just wanted to pop in to say I'm really enjoying this look into... I was going to have a witty line describing the system but I think anyone who has gotten this far has figured out what this game is.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    What about the Atlantean exaltation?
    Quote Originally Posted by GPuzzle View Post
    And I do agree that the right answer to the magic/mundane problem is to make everyone badass.
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    If you're of a philosophical bent, the powergamer is a great example of Heidegger's modern technological man, who treats a game's mechanics as a standing reserve of undifferentiated resources that are to be used for his goals.
    My Complete Tome of Battle Maneuver/Stance/Class Overhaul

    Arseplomancy = Fanatic Tarrasque!

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I just wanted to pop in to say I'm really enjoying this look into... I was going to have a witty line describing the system but I think anyone who has gotten this far has figured out what this game is.
    It is a April Fools joke taken way too far, and done with a straight face. It is also inspiration for all homebrew game designers to get their game out there. If this didn't exist, then I might not have done my own Transformers game.
    Spoiler
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    Warforged Upgrades
    Blade Lord Vestige
    Soulforged PrC
    Transformers RPG Now Updated as PDFs on Google Drive.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I just wanted to pop in to say I'm really enjoying this look into... I was going to have a witty line describing the system but I think anyone who has gotten this far has figured out what this game is.
    I believe that it was Glyphstone who referred to it as something like "Acid Trip: The RPG"
    Edit: I mean, I statted a giant daemon sandcastle on the back of an ancient spaceship as transforming into a giant sand daemon-cowboy complete with six shooter and lasso to fight other spaceships with. The players chose the other path, but I still had it statted and ready to go.

    Quote Originally Posted by Endarire View Post
    What about the Atlantean exaltation?
    It's up a ways nearer the beginning. First exaltation. Some exalts are tough, some are good at stuff, some are a bit of both. Atlantean falls into the 'good at stuff' category. Choose your sauce and awesome it.

    Quote Originally Posted by lightningcat View Post
    It is a April Fools joke taken way too far, and done with a straight face. It is also inspiration for all homebrew game designers to get their game out there. If this didn't exist, then I might not have done my own Transformers game.
    I'm... intrigued.

    Tonight's update.

    Bard track. I'm not going to compare this one to any others since I think it's pretty unique. Certainly a strong departure from the previous classes and still pretty different form the remainder.

    L1, Minstrel. Requires charisma 3, common lore 3 and performer 1. That's our first stat requirement and generally higher requirements that the fighty classes so far. The performer requirement will go up every level while the charisma and common lore requirements will be at four at L3 and five by L5. In-class stats are charisma, fellowship, and dexterity. In-class skills are about half the mental skills, two (acrobat and larceny) physical skills, and all social skills but animal ken and intimidation. Let's be honest, you know going in here that you were going to get a lot of face time. Medic, arcana, and politics are interesting add-ons though.

    You'll get access to two sword schools, white raven and diamond mind, and two magic schools, enchantment and illusion of course. Now diamond mind and enchantment fit nicely, being fencing weapon / feint focused and a charisma based magic school. White raven and illusion will be a little more difficult. White raven natively wants to use cavalry weapons and charging actions (but it can use the command skill which is probably why its in here), but you won't get proficiency in cavalry weapons so you'll need to take diamond mind in order to apply maneuvers to the weapons you know. Illusion uses the intelligence attribute, which isn't in-class here and thus is quite costly to raise without dipping somewhere else.

    The class completion bonus is something special though, a free rank in a skill that's lower than your current level. So on completing your first level you're getting the first rank in a skill you don't have. That's basically 500 to 600 xp worth of skills you're grabbing. Plus I'm pretty sure that it's not limited to your in-class skill list because it's probably the only way you're getting a combat skill up on this path.

    Feats: speak a new language, luck (1/day reroll), jack of all trades (nice), peer (+2k0 charm, command, and persuade with a group), and weapon prof melee-2.

    JoAT says, essentially, that you have at least one virtual rank in all skills. The wordy way is that you treat all skills as basic (ignore trained only requirements) and get +1k0 when rolling a skill you have no ranks in. The groups for peer are nice wide things like 'government', 'military', 'dwarves', 'criminals', and its a two die bonus too which can be a 20+ percent increase to hit target numbers at some points. Like, 3k3 to 5k3 on TN 20 goes from 37% to 72%, although that is one of the biggest increase points. The melee-2 group is fencing weapons, parrying weapons, and unarmed combat weapons. You're proficient with phase swords and power fists at first level.

    Not a bad start.

    L2, bard, requires enchantment or illusion at 1. I'll note here that this class path doesn't get the tested feat, so you're an unsanctioned sorcerer (the warhammer people know where this is going). That means that when you screw the pooch on a casting roll you have a much better chance of a spectacular death with collateral damage. It also tends to mean that after your first public display of casting the local law enforcement gets all shoot-to-kill-no-questions-asked if you can't prove that you're sanctioned.
    You get to learn another language (actually that's every single level in this path, you'll end up knowing at least 7), become a peer of a different group, catfall, light armor prof, and a skill focus. Skill focus is a required feat every level from now on, like the languages. You're going to be good at a bunch skills if we have to shove them down your throat.

    L3, skald, requires... A disgusting interruption of real life.

    The next day...

    L3, skald, requires enchantment or illusion 2, plus your ever increasing skill & stat requirement. In exchange you get another language, peer group, skill focus, +1k0 to hit with fencing weapons, and immunity to alcohol and drugs. No other class gets decadence, so this is your last chance to opt in from another class if you really want L4 and L5 for some reason. Which turns out to mean that if you picked up performer 3 at character generation you could sneak in from the magic user track L2 class.

    L4, swashbuckler, requires decadence (the immunity one form last level) and speaking 5+ languages in addition to last level's crap, Well that's gonna put a crimp in the magic users trying to advance here. You get fearless (again, being unable to back down from a fight without a willpower roll is a little odd for the class track). another skill focus, spell focus (+1k0 to magic tests in a particular school), and good reputation. Good rep is just the +0k1 version of peer and you can only take it for a group you have peer for.

    L5, master bard, requires charisma 5, performer 5, common lore 5, enchantment or illusion 3, fearless, decadent, and good reputation. For which you can take... speak language, skill focus, +1 HP, +1k0 to hearing perception, and a speciality in all the lore skills you have ranks in. Which are academic and common lore if you're staying with in-class skills.

    Who do I punch for this travesty of utter...

    After 5 levels, quite possibly around 3650xp... You are an OK enchanter, above average in some skills, probably quite good at most social stuff, very good at some social things with certain groups, and that's it. You aren't a death blender murder machine. You aren't telling reality to sit down and take orders. You're a charming linguist/performer. Sure, you can dump all your skill focuses into medic, politics, or tech-use and be really solid at most aspects of those. Without high composure, willpower, and wisdom you won't be a social combat god. You'll be quite good to excellent at some of it, mostly the offensive part, but not all of it.

    That master bark.. bard... feat list is just crap. Replace the heightened senses with armor of contempt (can't be forced to go against alignment in social combat), sound constitution with improved feint or improvisational magic (spend a hero point to cast any spell from any school that is lower than the level of your highest magic school), skill focus with minor magic or mental fortress (screw with mind reading magic automatically), just, just, just... Good feats! Not this one die on hearing tests and another language stuff!

    Grumble.

    On the other hand I realized how the combat insight feat works. Intelligence for dexterity for dodging is simple. The other bit should read 'when you take the Aim action, on the attack that benefits from it you may use your intelligence in place of your level'. So instead of rolling level+skill & keep skill, you roll intelligence+skill & keep skill. Good at low levels, less impressive at high levels. And just checked, only the L3 fight-guy class gets it. You need intelligence 4 to get any use out of it at that level. So looking back at the fight-guy stuff I still say let it replace dexterity for disarms. At least this way it's simpler to understand, simpler to use, and doesn't get worse as you level up.
    Last edited by Telok; 2020-05-13 at 01:14 AM.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    After the utter disappointment of the bard track classes lets see what's next. Ah, the cleric track.

    L1, Priest. requires academic lore 2 and forbidden lore 2. Those will eventually end up as five point requirements. In class attributes are willpower, wisdom, and composure. Skills, medic, arcana, the two lores, weaponry, intimidate, persuade, and command. Not too bad, if a little limited. The completion bonus at each level is +1 HP.

    Feats, pure faith (+2 on alignment checks, since those are 1d10 trying to roll over devotion a pretty decent bonus), powerful charge, hatred of heretics, light armor prof, basic weapon prof, optional melee1 weapon prof, and tested. Tested is a casting feat, clerics are casters, fits. It makes casting a bit safer by cutting the warp crapola roll "bonus" (if you keep 10s on a magic power test you roll on the warp crap table) from +10 per kept 10+ die to +5 per kept 10+ die. It also cuts you down from being able to overcast by 4 dice to being able to overcast by 3 dice. I think that cutting the tested overcasting down to two dice would be a bit better because, if you aren't terrible at approximating probabilities, going with that +5/die and not overcasting as much is pretty good. Of course in our game the guy who was the worst at gauging probability was the caster and like to overcast because it was "exciting". Yeah, that eventually killed him twice. Took a while though and he had fun doing it.

    Oh, and obviously there's access to magic schools, Abjuration, Divination, Healing, Necromancy, Transmutation.

    L2, preacher, required one rank in healing or abjuration. You can get in here fro the initiate base class and skip that troublesome tested feat if you feel that it limits you too much. Feats, peer, spell focus (if you succeed at casting a spell you get +5 on the result), +1 HP, medium armor prof, optional any weapon prof, and Virgil's guidance (buying devotion costs 1/2 xp).

    L3, cleric, requires healing or abjuration at 2. Feats, divine ministration (lay on hands), true grit (1/2 crits, early considering the warrior types didn't get it until 4 or 5), another spell focus, optional weapon focus, and channel energy. Channel energy is touch someone and spend up to your level in resource points to heal or harm them, one resource to one hit point. Touching an opponent in combat would require a brawling attack.

    L4, zealot, requires one of the two magic schools at 3. Feats, heavy armor prof, good reputation for your religion, +1 HP, optional skill focus, greater spell focus (same as spell focus but stacks), and absolution. Absolution is interesting, touch someone, spend a hero point, remove any one ongoing effect. With the caveat that stuff from gods, higher level exalts, and similar entities may be resistant to removal.

    L5, bishop, requires the two skills at 5 and one of the two magic schools at 4. Feats, fearless (characters in this class are almost certainly going to breeze past the DC 15 willpower test to not get into all the fights), armor of contempt (can never be forced to go against your alignment), greater spell focus, and purge the unclean. Purge is spend a hero point and choose an opponent that "represents the foe of your diety" (warp creatures, daemonhosts, and other chosen exalts "almost always count" and you know before spending the hero point if someone counts) and make an opposed willpower test. On winning "target is repelled a distance of meters away equal to twice your willpower" and can't approach for 1d10 rounds. Or perhaps for ever if you repel them off a cliff.

    Wear heavy armor, weild a decent selection of weapons, +7 HP for taking all five classes, you have some straight up healing power, a fairly flexible rebuking power, and you're a caster. Granted healing and abjuration don't sound like power house magic schools, but healing has some offensive spells in it (rebuke, holy weapon) and abjuration has shield (use a casting test to parry instead of a weapon test), dispel magic, and exploding runes. Seriously, if you can't have fun with exploding runes they you just aren't trying.

    All in all a solid caster. You're biggest issue will be that magic schools are expensive and you want several. Plus it's gonna cost you to raise ballistics and brawling if you don't want to be in melee.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Someone, somewhere, has Purged an enemy into the intake nozzle of a starship engine. Maybe one of your players.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Someone, somewhere, has Purged an enemy into the intake nozzle of a starship engine. Maybe one of your players.
    Not my players. They got to 3rd level classes and then started to diversify instead of going for higher power. Granted, they tend to run away from a lot of problems.

    On to the update!

    Ah, the shooty dude classes, the guardsman track. Not as shooty as the second book classes, but still shooty.

    L1, conscript. Requires ballistics 2 and athlete 1, at least one of them increases each level up to 5/5 at L5. In-class attributes are strength, dexterity, and willpower. Skills, ooh, short list. Perception, athlete, drive, ballistics, weaponry, command, pilot. Drive, fight, see, yell at subordinates. Simple. Oh, and access to the Iron Heart sword school. Bonus for completing each class is +1 on ranged attacks.

    Feats: +1 HP, optional +1 HP, light armor, any weapon proficiency, quick draw and jaded.

    L2, guardsman, requires quick draw and sound constitution. Feats: +1 HP, optional +1 HP (wait, those two are every single level of this class track, you're going to end up with +5 to +10 HP here), double tap (multi-attack for shooting), +2 ranged damage, far shot (no penalty for shooting at long range, does NOT make meltaguns shoot farther, that's what rocket launchers are for), medium armor, any weapon proficiency, optional any weapon proficiency.


    L3, sergeant, requires crack shot (the +2 damage), and far shot. Feats: more HP, hip shooting (d&d shot on the run, as a full action move twice your speed and take one shot anywhere along there), fast reflexes (reroll initiative), dead eye shot (1/2 penalty of called shots), weapon focus (+1k0 attack), optional heavy armor and weapon proficiency.

    L4, grenadier, requires dead eye shot (assassin3 qualifies). Feats: more HP, fearless, iron jaw, armor specialization (+2 armor with chosen type), hard target (when running or charging additional +2k0 on ballistic attacks at you), any weapon proficiency, optional weapon focus and extreme armor proficiency.

    L5, stormtrooper, requires dead eye shot and iron jaw. Feats: moar HP!, true grit (1/2 crits), sharpshooter (zero penalty for called shots), fan the hammer (multi-attack up to clip size or the number of reactions you can get, so a maximum of 7 rounds but you won't be able to spend resource/dodge/parry/reactions until next round), optional weapon proficiency and power armor proficiency.

    Congratulations Mr. Shooty McShooter you've finished the shooty shoot shooting classes. Go shoot something. Although the 500 to 1000 xp spent on more and more hit points is going to make you a bit tougher than you'd otherwise look.

    I feel like making an encounter with four or five stormtroopers now. I think that only the player who has been in the guardsman track will catch that it's a squad of level five elite shooters. I should not have them fan the hammer on twf-ed hand flamers, 30 dex saves is too many for people who won't use dice roller apps. Ah, no it's single weapon limited any ways. I guess fanning bolt pistols and grenade launchers at them would do. Plus we're looking at exalts to get the needed resource points to fuel it, so there's what, 20 HP each before we reach crit territory? Maybe three stormtroopers.

    Next up is the all powerful wizard class! Fomenting pages upon pages of discussion in the general gaming section. It's a good thing we don't care about balance here. Although I still think the bard track classes need a boost.

    L1, apprentice. Requires academic lore 2 and arcana 3, like all tracks those will get up to 5s. Class attributes are intelligence, charisma, and willpower. I think charisma is on there because it powers the evocation school, not because all wizards are charming and likeable people. If you want to up wisdom for the divination spells you'll either pay double or dip another class somewhere. In-class skills are another short list, the lore skills, arcana, scrutiny, and deceive. Apparently the ability to lie with a straight face is important to wizarding. Considering that "burn the witch!" is a perfectly appropriate reaction to loose spell casters, that's not too far fetched. Class completion bonuses are +1 on spell casting checks. Sorry, "focus power tests". Same !@#$ difference.

    You get access to 6 of the 9 spell schools: no healing, no transmutation, no enchantment. Huh, I guess that means that bard track classes are the only access to the enchantment school outside of the atlantean and daemonhost exaltations. Unless you just want one dot in it, then initiate for the minor magic feat can nab that.

    Feats: obtain familiar or implement focus (pro tip: there are no rules on the familiars, using an implement with the feat feat lets you reroll one die on every casting test which is a very good thing), eidetic memory (make the DM repeat all the clues because you can't take notes), foresight (spend 10 minutes thinking to get +5 on an intelligence test... illusions and necromancy are intelligence based... that might be better than I thought), spell might (take +2k0 on the casting check to get +10 on the result if you succeed in casting the spell), optionally tested (warp risk drops from +10 per kept ten to +5 per kept ten) and ordinary weapon proficiency.

    WP(ordinary) is special because ordinary isn't one of the proficiency groupings. Basic includes ordinary melee and ranged, plus unarmed, las guns, and primitive ranged weapons. On the other squad automatic weapons (light machine guns), daiklaves, and power swords are classified as ordinary. You aren't exactly hurting here.

    Ok, having double checked there's a subtle but important difference between spell might, (greater) spell focus, and (greater) spell penetration. All three only work if you successfully cast the spell. Then spell might adds +10. Spell focus adds +5/+10 for determining the effect of the spell, because stuff like mage armor gives more armor the higher your casting roll is. Spell penetration adds +5/+10 for the purposes of people making saves versus your spells. The necromancy spell Torment allows an arcana+constitution save vs. the casting roll or lose half your remaining hit points.

    L2, aspirant, requires foresight and two magics at 1 rank each. If you're coming from apprentice that's another 400xp on top of the 4 to 6 feats that you had to buy. But you can't get here through initiate because apprentice is the only class that has foresight.

    Feats: spell book (learn a spell in one of your magic schools up to the level you can cast, default you only learn one spell for each rank in a school), spell focus (+5 effect in a school after successfully casting), improvisational magic (this is a real power house feat, spend a hero point to cast any spell of a rank lower than you highest magic school but you still use the usual skill check), strong minded (1/scene reroll a failed willpower check versus a magic effect), wizard tradition (minor bonus rider effect on a school of magic), optionally tested (can't take this more than once) and skill focus in a lore skill.

    L3, magic user, requires spell focus and any two magics at rank 2 (200xp). You can get in here from priest 2 (or bard 4 I guess) if you have the magic ability.

    Feats: spell book, spell penetration (functionally -5 to a target's save vs the chosen spell school), wizard tradition, touch spell specialization (some spells are ranged attacks, level+ballistics, some spells are ranged touch, ballistics+dexterity, some are melee, level+brawling, the feat gives you +2k0 which is good because ballistics and brawling aren't on you class skill list), optional tested and another skill focus in a lore.

    L4, sorcerer, requires spell focus, one magic at 3, and two at 2. If you're keeping track that'll set you back another 500xp from the requirements of the last level. It's likely that at this point you notice that you're gaining levels more slowly than other class tracks. But you can still get into this from priest 3 or bard 4.

    Feats: spell book, greater spell focus (stacks on top of a spell focus), mental fortress (nope & deceive all mind reading attempts, I have no idea where this comes from), wizard tradition, and another optional lore skill focus.

    L5, master sorcerer (did someone trademark wizard or archmage or something?), requires spell penetration (only wizard 4 gets this feat), one magic at 4 and two magics at 3. Buying up the magic is another 700xp on top of the feats for the last level.

    Feats: spell book, greater spell penetration (stacks on top of your spell penetration choice), optional lore skill focus, spell mastery (choose a 3rd or lower spell, you can reroll the casting check once a round), archmage tradition (two options, choose one, nearby allies get a +5 to cast the same spell you just cast this round OR spend a hero point and your just cast spell repeats next round with the same choices and casting roll as this casting).

    So straight wizarding is all the feats (usually 4/level, one has 5 and you probably do want tested) plus another 1800xp for something like 4000xp to complete the track, not including any skill, power stat, and attributes you want/need to raise. Although, having checked, you can save I think 500xp by taking the daemonhost or atlantean exalt (or vamp/were with particular a asset-feat bought at chargen), taking the initiate base class, going into priest 2 (one of your magics needs to be healing or abjuration), then straight wizard after that. A bonus of that is that all your mental and social attributes will have been in-class and you have free study access to all magic schools except enchantment (unless that's you daemonhost/atlantean choice) after level 3. However, you'll miss out on improvisational magic.

    You can get through the cleric track for 3200xp with only healing or abjuration magics, 3000xp if you pick up the first rank from your exalt. While that's faster (and you can make one heck of a sniper with divination magics) and tankier (true grit, +5 hp, armor), you don't have anywhere near the breadth of magic capability.

  25. - Top - End - #25
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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Last class track in this book, the paladin classes. Lets see what a knight in shining armor looks like in this game. Ignoring for a moment that you can totally go with a chosen paladin of Malal, Khorne, or Nurgle.

    L1, Gallant. Requires weaponry 2 and forbidden lore 2. In class attributes are willpower, wisdom, and constitution. Skills, medic, academic, forbidden, arcana, weaponry, intimidate, persuade, command. Looks like a melee leader with a splat of knowledge... Right, arcana because its used in saving against spells. I think animal ken or drive, plus ballistics should be on the list too, but that's just a personal thought. The completion bonus for each class is +1 armor points while wearing armor. Hen, at level 5 that would put heavy leathers or a quilted vest on par with full plate or storm carapace. Not too bad a reward. Sword schools for white raven, devoted spirit, and stone dragon. More of a ToB crusader than a PH paladin.

    Feats: pure faith (+2 alignment checks), +1 hp, powerful charge, hatred of heretics, light armor proficiency, melee 1 proficiency.

    L2, protector, requires pure faith (can get in from priest 1). Gives +1 hp, medium armor, optional weapon proficiency, guardian (parry an attack on someone else within your melee reach and to take the damage instead of them), divine bond (full action summon an undefined 'steed' for 24 hours, if it dies you can't summon it again for 3 days), divine grace (may use charisma in place of willpower to resist "enemy or environmental effects", would be better if you had charisma as an in-class attribute).

    So, seriously, divine bond has literally no guidance or anything on the 'steed'. When I used an npc paladin I just up-armored a 'ferocious creature' from the bestiary and called it an armored riding tiger. Honestly it was a touch under powered with 3rd level characters on the board, not too surprising considering it's listed as a level 2 creature and exalts (npcs too) are a cut above normal threats. I'd say using the base ferocious creature stats at this level is ok, but up the critter a touch every level or by level 4 it's going to be a D&D standard horse in a 15th level encounter. You know the type, where the best thing you can do is duck behind and use it as cover from someone's quickened twinned chained disintegrate. Optionally since you're using the second book (you are, really) give them a 50 or 100 point vehicle to summon and up the points 25 or 50 each level. Ah, build the vehicle yourself with player input. Don't worry, we'll get there eventually. Just, it can be like letting someone build a 350 point Champions character with no limits, there are stop signs for DM permission on some of the powers for a reason.

    L3, defender, requires guardian and divine bond (no cross-classing in). Gives +1 hp, true grit, optional heavy armor, optional weapon focus, swift attack, divine ministration (hero point to lay on hands).

    L4, paladin, requires divine ministration (initiate & cleric 3). Gives +2 hp (yeah sound constitution is on there twice, separated by another feat), optional extreme armor proficiency, optional skill focus, good reputation with your religion, wall of steel (free parry), blade master (reroll 1 attack/round). The official bad a** weapon user level.

    L5, chevalier, requires wall of steel (fighter 4). Gives +1 hp, armor specialization (+2 ap one type), fearless, optional power armor proficiency, armor of contempt (social resistance), and death before defeat (spend a hero point to ignore a non-lethal crit, something that like 2, no 4 exalts have something similar or better).

    So, +6 hp, +5 AP melee bad as**ry, any armor but limited weapons, a steed without rules, a bit of damage mitigation, and some access to social skills. This has a few questionable choices, weirdly cross track accessible at level 4 & 5, and a bit lacking beyond hitting things with a stick. Goes really well on a human paragon though because they get +3 hero points and several abilities require them, plus it makes death before dishonour actually useful. Personally add a couple more skills and change constitution to charisma for the in class attributes, maybe throw a social feat or two in beyond the peer/good reputation as optional or as an OR choice on divine bond and a sound constitution.

    Now, I played around with character building a bit and came out with a decent (ok, rather optimized) starting character plus later class plan. Lots of options, lots of survival. Gnome Daemonhost, will 4, con 5, comp 1, wis 3, dex 2, fel 1, int 3 or 2, str 2(3), cha 2 or 3. Academic 3 forbidden 3, arcana 4, ballistic 3, drive 1, pilot 1, weaponry 1, craft 1, scrutiny 1, persuade 1, deceive 1, charm 1. Inheritance 4, wealth 2 or 3, other background 2 or 1. Feats/assets/hindrances before class: gnome (power armor prof, basic weapon prof), gifted (str, dex, con), sand, sturdy, veteran of the wheel, sloth, ailing, night terrors (drop these last two hindrances if it offends your RP, I'm iffy about including them myself), grim servant of death, high falutin', intolerance, slow. Equipment choice Void plus inheritance of power armor and a cyberwear/bionics from book 2, machinator array. Starting class initiate and take all four feats then level into preacher (cleric 2) and take two feats (or not if you skipped ailing and night terrors). Your magic schools are healing and anything else (I like conjuration but taking enchantment as your daemonhost pick is nice too). This is a starting character. 8 resource, 19(17) static defence, 6(7) resilience, 18 or 19 hit points. Level 3 will be magic user (wizard 3) and then cleric (cleric 3, for True Grit plus you already have some of the feats from initiate), then paladin 4 & 5. At level 3 all attributes will be in-class (the gifted feat gets the last 3) and you have free study access to all magic schools except enchantment (unless that's your daemonhost pick). Because of initiate you can grab paladin 4 before cleric 3 if you want to buy your power stat up to 4. While this starts off strong it is a long term build, magic is expensive and you'll want to buy up wisdom, intelligence, and charisma. Luckily you only have to have 2 ranks in two magic schools if you don't want to go further down that road (I like divination), plus I guess you could skip magic user if you don't want tested and the rest of the magic schools. I guess we should revisit this character after the feat chapter, the assets and hindrances are a big part of the fast start here.

  26. - Top - End - #26
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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    So, after reading this thread, I went and dug into the system to make a character based off of a character from some of my favorite books.

    Basically, the plan is a secret agent type of character, with a focus on social combat power, but able to help in a fight as long as nothing too scary tries killing him. I discovered in the second book that there are classes to facilitate this.

    Here is what I came up with:
    Gnome Paragon

    Start Deputy for some combat skill, then jump over to the Courier track to focus on winning social, etc stuff. Some of the feats in the courier line are perfect for a hyper, hyper-intelligent super spy, like "Just as planned."

    The point blank gun kata seems cool--use your kata on full auto!

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    As 3 or 4 dots in a combat skill are sufficent and you can get those at character generation being respectable in combat is more about weapon/armor proficiency and additional combat boosting feats.

    If you're using book2 you can nab the gnome's any/any weap/ac feats plus a peice of cyberwear by going through the first level of tech-priest. That frees you up to be any race.

    An xp pricey way to get general combat competence is via magic. Abjuration gets you armor, aura, and replaces parrys. Conjuration or divination to replace dodge. Conjuration, necromancy, or evocation to replace attacks. Plus optionally enchantment to make enemies fight for you.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    I know someone who has thought about running the game; would you happen to have any advice for first time DMs and players for the system?
    My posting may be slowed due to new job.

  29. - Top - End - #29
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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    Urg. There's a fair few bits that aren't really clear. I'll try a quickie rith now, some of our more memorable ones.

    Print outs. There are some ok summaries. I've written summaries of some stuff that should be in the google docs, tell me if it isn't. Stunting is one page, social combat is two, grappling works fine and is a column and a half on one page.

    Fear will come up, fail by enough and you need the shock/insanity bit. I need to do a summary for those. Know how good your players are at RPing their own derangements and insanities. Those are a part of the constraints on overcasting spells, you an be totally immune to fear and the warp will still f* up your mind.

    Unless you have chosen exalts or want it as a theme you can mostly ignore or go light on alignment. I called for tests twice in over a year of almost weekly games. You can just use it for massive screw ups once in a while.

    Try to get them to put some thought into bachgrounds. Wealth 5 can hit 30 about half? the time but what it is will affect how they can use it. Do they own 49% stock in all major shipping lines? Is it a hammer-space pants pocket full of unobtanium coins? Did Tzeench just happen to drop his debit card near them? Do they have a backdoor hack into the Sigil banking networks? This is especially important with allies, backing, and contacts.

    Combat. Use minions, they work and you can rep them on the map with dice. When doing any multiattack all the extra attacks cost a reaction each. Everyone gets one reaction. Exalts can use resource points to get more reactions. [b]You can only spend your power stat in resource points each round[/]. Any dodge or parry also uses a reaction. So multiattack competes with your dodge/parry abilities.

    Each combat round you get 1 reaction, 2 half actions or 1 full action, and one free opportunity attack. That's before feats modify things. Have enemies stunt. Realize the critters with resources should also have the relevant power stat and abilities, they usually need it. Also, have non-trash enemies stunt occasionally. It reminds the players they can do it.

    Very first fight I opened shooting a pc in the face with a frag rocket at 200 meters. It ended with 5 first level characters murderizing a level 3 halfling swordmaster and about 30(five groups) rating 2 minions. They suffered minor hit point loss and got a rocket launcher + officers sword out of it.

    I like statting big creatures as living vehicles. Be aware of the flying vehice drawback of on-damage test control or start falling, else everything will be vtol/antigrav all the way. There is missing detail and some odd spots in the vehicle rules. Missile count/ammo, ramming people and dodging that, etc.

    Space combat works fine. Out of combat it's individuals rolling or else they crowd source like 15+ dice into navigation and such. They'll be fine using their own skills and stats. If they really need crew to do something out of combat treat them as minions using crew quality rating as kept dice for group efferts and roll (2 x crew quality)k(crew quality) for stuff. Also put as many obstacles into space combat as possible, a couple moving ones are good too. Open space combat is boring, in crowded space they might forget to have anyone pilot and ram into an asteroid. Close also gives melee dummies something to do leading/repulsing boarding actions.

    Werewolves need some love. Covered that earlier. The DM needs a dice roller app. Get a scatter die too, grenades. Maybe make a wire/something template for flamers and suppressing fire.

    I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have.

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    Default Re: [Let's Read] Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6

    You know Telok, I have seen this situation before. You are accidentally setting yourself up to do a Revised version of Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th ed. v1.6. Which I, of course, eagerly await. 😄
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