FFG wrote:Bridging the Imperium

Recently, we announced Daemon Hunter, an upcoming supplement for Dark Heresy. A powerful resource for campaigns featuring the servants of the holy Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition, Daemon Hunter features information and background on the Ordo Malleus in the Calixis Sector, the Daemon hunter’s trade, and the Malleus armoury. Last time, we looked at the tragic events that might lead to an Exterminatus. Today, Dark Heresy’s developer took the time to share some additional details on this exciting upcoming title.



Salutations Acolytes!

With Daemon Hunter on its way I thought I’d take a moment to discuss one of the biggest challenges presented when creating the Grey Knights rules. Penned by Owen Barnes, Chapter 6 presented a few difficult creative choices. I’m very proud of how the team found creative answers that just kept giving GMs and Players new tools, rather than limiting options.

Versatile Characters

The first hurdle was power level and theme. As Space Marines, the Grey Knights are clearly as powerful as Deathwatch characters, armed with the best the Imperium can provide. Thematically, however, they are pure Inquisition, fighting Daemons and threats to mankind at the behest of the Holy Ordos. The answer was to build the Grey Knights to function in a Dark Heresy game, but include assistance to make them easily adapted for use with the Deathwatch Rulebook.

The biggest difference between Dark Heresy and Deathwatch are the Psychic powers. Rather than write two separate systems, the design team built many (if not all) of the Grey Knight psychic powers with an Overbleed that allowed the power to affect additional squad members. Combined with the Brotherhood of Psykers talent this allows a unit of Grey Knights to focus their energy on one Pyschic test that is likely to affect them all. This same talent functions differently when using the Deathwatch Rules, allowing the group to gain the effects of the Overbleed (thus boosting them all with Hammerhand, for instance). In this way, the main difference in the two systems core mechanics is bridge, allowing the Grey Knights to feel like Space Marines, but function in both game systems.

Careers within the Holy Ordos

The next challenge was determining which careers to include. After all, a Grey Knight is a Grey Knight, regardless of whether or not he is wearing power armour, terminator armour or strapped in to Nemesis Dreadknight. What’s more, many of the appropriate careers have already been presented in Deathwatch. This gave the design team a lot of freedom to present new information. The three careers unique to the Grey Knights are presented in full detail, compatible with the Deathwatch rules and designed to function alongside Ascension-rank Dark Heresy characters.

While Grey Knights have Apothecaries, Librarians and Techmarines, we focus on the Strike Squad Grey Knight, Purgation Squad Grey Knight and the Purifier. These careers are all a group needs to send a squad of Grey Knights into the thick of battle in service of the Holy Ordos. Campaigns with Acolyte-level characters might uncover a threat so terrible that their patron Inquisitor must take drastic action, allowing the players to take up the mantle of a squad of Grey Knights responding to such a dire situation.



Epic Campaigns

Entire Grey Knight campaigns are also possible, either using the Dark Heresy or Deathwatch rule system. Justicar Maligante commands the strike cruiser Righteous Dawn in his pursuit of his named adversary, the Lord of Misrule. The Grey Knights under his command serve the Inquisition in a variety of ways. The Ordo Malleus calls upon them to pursue threats along the Spinward Front. The Righteous Dawn is one of (if not the) fastest vessels in the Calixis sector, so no military force can respond as quickly to a daemonic incursion the Grey Knights.

Next time, I’ll talk a bit about the quarry of the Grey Knights and the Ordo Malleus... Daemons! After all, what book on hunting daemons would be complete without villains?

Black Crusade, an upcoming roleplaying game that offers players a new perspective on the conflict between the Imperium of Man and the forces of Chaos, will be on store shelves in the third quarter of 2011. Today, we’re pleased to present a preview from Andrew Hoare, one of the writers for Black Crusade. Among other contributions, Andrew wrote about the mechanics for Corruption and Infamy. Thanks, Andrew!

No roleplaying game about playing the nefarious servants of the Ruinous Powers would be complete without a system for awarding player characters with the ‘gifts of the gods’. Many such gifts boost a Heretic’s abilities, each successive blessing granted turning him into a living manifestation of the dark majesty of Chaos. Others are capricious or unknowable, for no mortal can truly wield the raw power of the warp without succumbing to random mutations of mind, body and soul. The ultimate goal of any true champion of the Chaos Gods is to attain the ultimate gift – Daemonhood – before too many such mutations turn him into a gibbering, thrashing Chaos Spawn.

All of this and more is addressed in the form of the rules for Corruption and Infamy, which we’ll take a look at here.

Corruption

Corruption is a measure of how steeped the Heretic is in the fell energies of Chaos. It could be thought of as a means of gauging how ‘favoured’ he is by the Ruinous Powers, but that would be misleading, because even the most powerful mortal is but an insect to the unknowable denizens of the warp. Rather, Corruption measures how much of the dark blessings of Chaos the character has earned. Corruption is measured on a scale of 1 to 100, with a Heretic moving along the ‘Corruption Track’ by earning Corruption Points in a similar way to amassing Experience Points. Various deeds earn the Heretic Corruption Points, and upon reaching various thresholds he has the opportunity to gain the blessings of the Chaos Gods.

The gifts of the Chaos Gods take the form of mutations, and many of these have a two tier effect. Such mutations have a primary effect, which applies to every character that gains it, and a secondary effect, which is applicable to characters dedicated to a particular Chaos God. For example, a classic Chaos mutation is the Additional Limb, the primary effect of which is to grant the Heretic the Multiples Arms Trait. If the Heretic is dedicated to Khorne, the new limb bristles with bony spines, granting attacks made with it the Tearing quality. If he is dedicated to Slaanesh, the limb is so lithe and dextrous in its movements that its attacks are carried out at +10 to the character’s Weapon Skill. If the Heretic is dedicated to Nurgle, the limb oozes necrotic slime, which grants its attacks the Toxic (1) quality. A character dedicated to Tzeentch is gifted with a limb that darts and writhes in such an unpredictable manner that he can use it to Disarm opponents as a Free Action.

Infamy

Infamy describes how, well, ‘infamous’ a character is. It determines how feared he is, how legendary the tales told of his deeds, and the esteem in which other dark champions hold him. A character’s Infamy stat has several uses in the game, one of the most important being as a marker of the resources available to him. Instead of spending money to gain resources (for the denizens of the Screaming Vortex barter in nothing but souls) the player characters are able to obtain weapons, armour, services and the likes according to their Infamy. Especially infamous characters can simply demand whatever they want from the fearful inhabitants of the Vortex, while less infamous ones must beg, steal and borrow the tools they need.

Apotheosis or Spawndom

There is one key instance when both Infamy and Corruption come together, and that is when the characters approach the final stage of their careers. At the beginning of the campaign, the GM decides the relative ‘difficulty’ of the story arc. Characters are judged or held to account by the fell denizens of the Warp when they reach the stated Corruption threshold, which is generally 75, 90 or 100 Corruption Points. Depending on how much Infamy the characters have amassed throughout their brief service, they might be judged wanting and be reduced to seething, howling Chaos Spawns. If they have amassed a high level of Infamy when they reach the Corruption threshold, they may – just may – have attained the ultimate favour of the Ruinous Powers and be granted the gift of Apotheosis, becoming a mighty and eternal Daemon Prince, the ruin of worlds and ultimate foe of the Imperium.

Most characters will never become daemon princes of course, and the majority will die before the risk of being reduced to a Chaos Spawn presents itself. Those who attain 140 Infamy before reaching 100 Corruption face another fate, one that the GM may handle directly through a drastic change in the direction of the campaign, or indirectly. Such characters have the chance to lead a Black Crusade, amassing a mighty army of heretics and fiends and descending upon the weakling Imperium of Man to reduce all to ruins.

And this is the point of Black Crusade – the path to glory is truly strewn with the shattered bones of those that sought to wield the powers of Chaos without considering that all but the strongest fall by the wayside in the process. Only the very strongest survive, those willing to gamble all for power and immortality. Campaigns have a set time limit, determined by the GM and the players, and the characters burn brightly, if briefly as they rise to ultimate power. Only at the very moment of their judgement, when they reach their pre-arranged Corruption threshold, do they discover the ultimate fate of their very souls. Whatever the result, it can be guaranteed that GM and players will have many tall tales to tell as a result!

H.B.M.C. wrote:You're also assuming that Insanity and Corruption function in Black Crusade like the do in the other games.

FFG wrote:



“They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. Like clay, I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies, and machines such that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines, and they shall know no fear.”
–Prelude, The Codex Astartes (Apocrypha of Skaros)

The Deathwatch team is pleased to present the latest update to the Deathwatch Living Errata (v1.1.1, pdf, 720 KB), now available on our support page. This document has been expanded from the original to cover all current Deathwatch supplements, and to provide answers to many frequently asked questions.



Additionally, this latest version includes an Appendix with updated rules for all Deathwatch weaponry. A new weapon special quality is introduced and many of the stats for current weapons have been re-worked. These new rules have been included to provide a more streamlined play experience to Deathwatch players and GMs alike, and are completely optional.

H.B.M.C. wrote:You are a truly charming indivudual and an asset to this thread and this forum.

H.B.M.C. wrote:You know what, I'm happy to eat crow here:

What mistakes have I 'defended'?

And these damned-well better be mistakes Baron, and not your own personal bias against 40K fluff and how you think it should be.

H.B.M.C. wrote:As someone who's yet to even play a single game of RT, I can't say much about the subject. If I’m wrong about how I thought rules worked initially, then ok, I probably was. I don’t know – I haven’t played the game yet, so I can’t tell.

And I don't know what your fluff concerns with the Jericho Warp Gate are, nor do I really care. Nothing I’ve read really tends to indicate the secret of the Margin (SP?) Crusade and what the Warp Gate is as being ‘stupid’. If the idea seemed silly to me at first, I have been convinced otherwise.

But please, when you’ve got a real ‘mistake’ that I’ve ‘defended’, like the way some rules were worded, or some skills in an alternate career, you just let us know.

BaronIveagh wrote:BTW: as a former elected official: nice dodge.