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Hey everyone. I've been playing D&D 3.5 for a while and doubt I'll play any other RPGs much, but I was wondering if anyone thinks Dark Heresy is a fun game. I doubt I'd spend all the money but it does seem pretty fun to roleplay in the 41st millennium.

The DH material is superb. The game is very good but it's rather low-powered. IMO, you need people already invested in 40k background to have a good time with the game. Mores specific questions?

Wow awesome avatar. Anyway, I only have like two friends that would probably play so that's why I'm not that confident in getting it. The main thing I'd like to know is the different classes and character options.

DH character building doesn't work like d20 leveling at all. You use XP to buy abilities and talents. Which abilities and talents depends on what tier you've reached, which in turn depends on how much experience you have already spent.

Wiki has a detailed article here.

Thanks for the link. I like that level up system you described. I think it sucks that you have to buy a supplement to play as Adepta Soritas and that it's a hard career path to choose.

The sororitas is very cool. Honestly, the books are fun to read whether you get the chance to play or not. I played with an online group for while but had to stop because I got busy with work. I still enjoy browsing the books, however, and probably will continue to buy the supplements even if I can't get into another group or gather my own together.

Oh that's pretty cool to know I'm glad they're good to read in general. The Warhammer 40k rulebook seems that way too.

The rulebooks are great even if you don't use them - pages and pages of awesome fluff.

There's also the new one, Rogue Trader, which has higher-level characters (starting RT characters are the same as mid-level DH characters), and is set around a grander scope of space ships and setting up trade routes/fighting for territory/making lots of money/running or starting wars.

Same ruleset as well, making them work 100% with each other (except for the psychic power systems, which are oddly quite different).

It's a great game. In fact, I've got together 3 other people to play next weekend with a nice scenario I'm writing, a prologue to the bigger campaign that I've wrangled 5-6 people for.

It's a lot of fun even for people who don't know much about the 40k universe.
I started a campaign recently and my 3 players' only experience with 40k is Dawn of War compy game.
They're loving the game so far, and so am I.

I enjoyed DH. My favorite would be the critical hit tables, which are the most gory and detailed thing I've ever read. You don't even need the rest of the book, just wing it and when ever someone gets hit, roll for critical hit, and see what horrifyingly blood death the PC gets.

awesome to hear good things about this game. I may actually check out the copy at Barnes and Noble sometime soon. I really love the thought of roleplaying in the Warhammer 40k world.


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*That was supposed to be a smile*


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I just went to Barnes and Noble and checked out Dark Heresy again. It's such a high-quality book! It looked like a really fun game, but they didn't have that Inquisitorial supplement that I'm interested in. As hard as they make it out to be I really want an Adepta Soritas character.

There are a lot of supplements. What are you looking for specifically?

Inquisitor's Handbook - It's a bad name, as it's not really a book for the GM, more a book for the players. Has the Sister of Battle in it, plus loads of other ways of modifying existing classes.

Purge the Unclean - Big three-part scenario book.

Disciples of the Dark Gods - Loads of stuff for Chaos Cults and that sort've thing.

Creature's Anathema - Monsters, daemons, aliens, heaps of stuff. Awesome book.

Radical's Handbook (was only just released) - Rules for being on the radical side of the Inquisition, and turning alien weapons, heretics and daemons against the forces of the enemy.

Ascension (not out yet) - Rules for playing higher level Inquisitorial members, like the guys who make up an Inquisitor's actual retinue as well as the Inquisitor himself.

I'm looking for the Inquisitor's handbook because I'd want to make a sisters of battle character. I also thought I saw something about "informative contacts" in the description on the book of amazon. It reminded me of Deep Throat from X-Files, who I'm named after on this forum and I was wondering what it exactly meant by informative contacts. Also, it seems like a pretty cool book. Is it?

The last section of the book - Life as an Acolyte - details the rules for contacts.

They go over the "roleplaying" aspects of the contact, like how to meet one, how trustworthy they are, where you met them, their relationship with you and so on, plus specific rules for buying contacts, what contacts do (whether it's an individual, a group, if they have particular skill sets, are good for reducing prices, can get favours done for you, etc.)

You can even 'burn' contacts, by getting them to do something really useful that they don't normally do, or is very dangerous, but you lose the contact after that.

Those sound like awesome rules, thanks for the elaboration. Oh btw, is it really hard to play an adepta soritas like wikipedia deems it to be?

Wouldn't know sorry. Never seen the Sister played and haven't really looked over her rules.

Oh ok. It's cool. I just read that there were major challenges in the roleplaying aspect of using that class.

First off, DH is probably one of the more enjoyable RPG's I've played. I played a lot of D&D 3.0 and 3.5 and it definitely took some getting used to but now it feels a lot more organic. The gaming system tends to blend in rather than being a jarring transition like in DnD.

The Inquisitor's Handbook is sort of like a DND 3.5 splat book but without the ridiculousness. It also corrects some glaring errors in the DH weapons tables like the Hellgun and Powerfist.

Sororitas are fun to play. They will tend towards a very orthodox mindset and viewpoint so the party had best be VERY careful about expressing any radical ideas around them. Better yet not mention them at all. It creates an interesting split in the party as some will wind up playing "Keep the sororitas in the dark," to try and keep some plans going without her going all crusader on them. Aside from that play a sororitas as you like. Grizzled veteran, innocent little nun, anything in between. Hell play her as a nearly valley girl if you want to, just remember that in the end she gets a real kick out of lighting witches and heretics on fire and being anything less than incredibly reverent about the Emperor will have her reaching for her flamer.

That said, mechanics wise they are an interesting class, very much what you make them. They can either be very excellent medics (which most parties need more than they realize), a smooth talking operator for helping the party move through the upper echelons of society or other places, or a combat bulldozer. Just remember the first few thousand XP are going to be very generalist, and if you're going to go Hospitalier or Dialogous take all the combat talents you can get because they won't be coming back and vice versa if you're going to be a militant. And use your starting cash to buy a good weapon. The carapace chestplate is nice but being stuck with just a pistol isn't.

I really recommend the Inquisitor's Handbook. As mentioned it has Sororitas and more weapons, and contacts... but it also has tons more fluff, alternate levelling options, more Origins, more details on world types and what kinda additional gear can be found on them... It's filled with goodies.
Sororitas are about as challenging to play as D&D paladins. They say they're significantly more powerful than others but I think that's mostly a matter of using their Fate pts to power Faith abilities. Otherwise, they're nothing special. They start with a friggin laspitol for Emperor's sake. >.<

Creatures Anathema is great. There's not as many monsters as in say... a D&D monster manual.. but each is described in such details!

Disciples of the Dark God is really great, lots of informations on various evil societies and stuff.

The GM kit comes with a short (and hard) adventure, some rules and tables for new poisons and how to create your own xenos and a very awesome GM Screen.

And.. that's all the books I have so it's all I can say.
I do plan to grab that Radical book since my players are interrested in the radical side of things...

A lot of people focus on the chestplate and cowl which are very good bits of armor, however you've got nothing on your arms or legs.

Thanks a lot for the info guys when the paladin was mentioned it reminded me on how I'm usually a paladin for some reason, but in the campaign I'm DMing I made exceptions to the paladin code since my paladin is in a very special posistion. Anyway, it's good to hear that the inquisitorial handbook is good and that Soritas are fun to play and have a lot of roleplay opportunities. I still don't know if I'll get it since my friends and I play D&D so much but with Amazon's prices Dark Heresy could be worth a try.