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Hi there !
As some of you may know, I'm currently playing a Dark Heresy campaign (in fact, there are 2 GM, me and a friend, so I can play sometimes, too).
Thanks again for the help you provided me.

But, as sad as it is, the campaign will soon be over. So I thought: why not to explore the other side ?

My group have a lot of fun with DH, even if there are a bit "brutal" (killing NPC, etc...).

Did you try Black Crusade ? Was it good / bad ? I guess the rules are the same, they are, to my mind, a good ruleset.

It would be a short campaign (my group prefer multiples short campaigns).

Thanks !

Black Crusade is great, but needs some forethought put into it. Space Marine characters will always simply be better at combat, generally dramatically so, and thus a decision needs to be made about what kind of campaign people want to run and what people want to play.

What the non-Space Marine characters are good for is anything that involves basically not alerting everyone to the gigantic twisted heretic super soldiers walking around. There's a lot of things that, realistically, CSM's could not accomplish on their own, particularly without sending out instant gigantic alerts to various Imperial military forces, resulting in an overwhelming response. For instance, with the Hand of Corruption campaign book FFG released, when I ran my players through that, the CSM's just couldn't walk up to everything and curb stomp it, no matter how impressive a Space Marine is, three or four are not going to take an entire IG regiment, entrenched and on alert with armor and air support, by themselves. That would result in a TPK. The non-SM characters worked to subvert and corrupt the officers instead, bringing them under the influence and eventual control of the party as opposed to attempting a suicidal attack.

For the most part, it does play similarly to DH, and you can make it far more brutal, but does have some additional party and campaign considerations.

Interesting.
Glad you liked it !is
How is the imbalance between the different gods ?

 godardc wrote:
Interesting.
Glad you liked it !is
How is the imbalance between the different gods ?

Depending on how your campaign runs, the gods will not be drastically more powerful than one another. Tzeentch and Slaanesh tend to benefit in Social environments where as Khorne and Nurgle benefit combat environments as assumed. Imbalance tends to come when your PCs stat their characters out with all the traits from a single god (I've seen a Psychic level 14 sorcerer of Tzeentch before.)

 godardc wrote:
Interesting.
Glad you liked it !is
How is the imbalance between the different gods ?

I don't recall there being much, as Tactical_Spam noted, they generally just specialize in different things.

It is very good, and very good fun. It helps that Black Crusade also includes a lot of 'tweaks' from the original Dark Heresy rules, all of which are improvements to my mind.

~ There are no 'levels' - every skill and talent is available to any character, the only restrictions are prerequisite talents and minimum characteristic levels.

~ Full Auto Burst is no longer the 'default' option for combat - now standard attack gets the +10 to hit, semi-auto +0 and full auto -10, so full auto is better for easier shots (like hordes) but is fairly useless for a difficult shot (as it should be). Plus, they're all half actions, so you can move or aim and use them.

~ 'Zealous Hatred' replaces Righteous Fury for the 'if you roll a 10' effect. Rather than extra wounds, it means you do a minimum of 1 wound, and cause a D5 roll on the appropriate critical table. Importantly, it's not restricted to only important NPCs. As a result, your players are likely to walk out of a major fight still more or less okay but covered in numerous minor critical wounds like blood loss from a leg, temporary loss of the use of an eye, that sort of thing.



Be warned that Black Crusade characters can quickly become absolute monsters at whatever they specialize in. A Slaaneshi Apostate can be just as dangerous as a Space Marine - not in a straight fight, but where the latter requisitions "two clips of bolter rounds" the former will respond by requisitioning "a company of mercenary stormtroopers".

In short campaigns it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Although, as with high end Dark Heresy, you can make ridiculously powerful characters, especially with psykers.