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Hi all,

I'm completely new to RPGs, but I've always wondered what it would be like. Now that Fantasy Flight had a sale on some of its RPG books I finally cracked and got myself the black crusade book. Half hoping I can convince my friends to give it a shot, but if not, I figured it would still be nice for some extra chaos lore.

So I'm still reading up on character creation and I'm at the point where I can buy experience and gear. But the armoury doesn't seem as clear cut as to what I can buy.
Can I really buy anything at all in the entire armoury chapter provided it has a final acquisition modifier of (exactly?) -10, including any armour or weapon or drugs or tools, implants, etc regardless of archetype?

And then there is the matter of upgrades/downgrades. It was my understanding that you could for example buy any upgraded weapon assuming it stays within that -10 acquisition limit. Including armour customization in the case of power/terminator armour for example.

I don't necessarily plan on doing this, but for the sake of an example...would this be legal/correct as part of character creation?

I have 26 infamy as part of the character creation, so I can buy 2 of anything in the armoury that costs -10 aquisition.
So I want to buy a bow, which is plentiful aka +30.
I then add a venom drip to automatically coat arrow tips with venom, this makes the bow common (+20)...although as a side note... I have no idea where to find those venoms. They don't seem to be listed in drugs?
Still room to breathe, so I add a melee attachment, say blades at the top and bottom or even mounted at the front like a katar. Now it's +10.
Now that it has a blade attached I can make it a mono filament blade turning the bow into a +0 cost.
So finally I add an extended magazine to bring it to -10 acquisition.

Since I'm only getting one though that add +10 again, so I make it a good quality bow bringing it back to -10.
I know the venom drip and and mono blade aren't technically allowed, but I'm not sure exactly how absolute those limits are either. It makes sense in my mind for this scenario. Would this be illegal in terms of rules, but a GM might let it slide? In this case the venom only applying to the bow and the mono only applying to the spear (profile) when using it in melee.
Apart from the dubious upgrade part, is this allowed or are you supposed to buy an unmodified weapon from a the table that happens to come out at -10?

Either way though, all of that is only one of my possible items right?

So I could still buy common light power armour or poor power armour and then customize it since i got it for the first time. The only difference seems to be the strength bonus? I don't see any restriction on wearing power armour for humans vs the light variant. I only found a rule for preventing the use of legion power armour. And since there is only weapon training, and no armour training I wouldn't even have to spend xp to use it?

Your GM would be the only person who could answer the "is this allowed?" question. Otherwise, the limits are set in stone. A Venom Drip applies only to bladed Primary or Chain weapons, which a bow is neither. The Extended Magazine is also pretty useless, because the bow has a 2 Full reload time, having an arrow clipped to the side of the bow does not improve this.

Speaking from experience, I wouldn't carry a bow in a BC game anyway unless the entire game was set on a Feral World against naked savages, because any armor is really, really, really good against Primitive weapons.

Those points aside, you have the mechanics for obtaining starting equipment down. Choose an item, modify it to get it to no more difficult than -10, and "buy" it.

No Talent or Skill is required to wear Power Armor. Legion Astartes armor require you to be a Space Marine but, otherwise, Power Armor is designed for human-sized wearers.

Also, so you know, Venom Drip gives the weapon Toxic (0) as a default. You can load other toxins into it if you want to to gain their rules.

As for other toxins? You can make them up, or weaponise the diseases from Tome of Decay.

Thanks all, only took me several days XD but I finally went with a grav chute and helmet augmentations to highlight the fact that he was a storm trooper.

Though I have trouble seeing how the the bow would be so bad of a choice. You carry multiple weapons after all and the bow is silent, so good for sneaking around. Not everybody will be fully armoured right?
Wouldnt' you be able to use the arrows for makeshift ladders or just to wedge into a crevice or so to make a climbing a wall or so easier. Or maybe attach stuff to the arrows, like messages or to coat them with poison or drugs to shoot through a water stream or something along those lines during a banquet of some decadent lord.
I imagine they'd be useful for a trapper, and you could always craft a bow later that doesn't have the primitive qualifier if the GM is ok with it right?

The bow is Primitive, and only does, what, 1d10 damage? That's an average of 6. Since it's Primitive, any armor that is not also Primitive gets double its AP against its damage, so common Flak gives 6? 8? points of armor against the bow.

Further, since it's a ranged weapon, I don't believe the bow is granted any of the SB of its wielder (it should in most cases, but I do not believe it specifically grants it), so it's a flat-out 1d10 against the AP and TB of the target in an attempt to do damage. Someone with a TGH of 35 and 3 AP Flak is going to be soaking all but the hardest hits from that bow (3x2 AP=6, +3 TB= 9, so you need to do 10 or more damage to even scratch them).

Woa ok, that's indeed quite the drawback Oo. Where does it say that they get double? I knew the bow could only cause 6 damage at best due to primitive(6) but the double AP is news to me.
Wondering what Else I might have missed...that's kinda huge XD

I was actually mis-remembering BC rules from FFG's other 40K RPGs, in which Primitive weapons work the way I described.

In BC, specifically, the Primitive Quality (described on page 150) is assigned a number. In the case of a bow, this is 6.

That means that when you roll that 1d10 damage roll, any roll of 7+ is treated as if you rolled a 6. If you roll a 0, you still get to test for Zealous Hatred, but the "max" damage a dice can cause for a bow is 6.

So against someone with 3 AP and a 3 Toughness bonus, your arrow actually can't hurt them, unless you roll a Zealous Hatred and get bonus damage.

Well... If he had a crossbow with explosive bolts I would consider taking it

Whilst perhaps a little too 'pure' for Black Crusade Heretics, there are a bunch of bow/crossbow themed weapons and ammunition types of Enemies Within, the first supplement for Dark Heresy 2.0.

If you're dead-set on playing a model with a bow, I would consider making combat a last resort. be sneaky, stealthy and let others get up front in a firefight. You might also wish to consider using the bow for other things. For example, and these might not be suitable for every setting ... arrows with "non-combat" heads such as listening devices, or using the bow and arrows to place tripwires, climbing ropes, ziplines, etc. All of those would need to be sorted out with your GM, of course, but a little bit of lateral thinking can be helpful.

The bow was just meant as an example, pushing the boundaries of what I thought might be possible/allowed. Though I did entertain the though for a bit.

Since I was going for a bit more of stealthy approach anyway and a bow seemed quite suitable for that. Not in its default form, but being so "cheap" I would have been able to upgrade it significantly.

Being able to douse the arrow tips in all kinds of venoms and drugs made for some entertaining thoughts lol. But the grav chute and helmet augments just screamed storm trooper so I went with that.

Not that any of this really matters, since I highly doubt I'll ever get the opportunity to actually play, but hey, I enjoy creating chars so it was still fun.