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Long story short, I have a DnD group that is set to implode. The group wanted to play evil characters, and half of the group betrayed and murdered the other half. Now, I need to get the dead half back in, but they want vengeance. The betrayers are more than willing to repeatedly kill the currently dead ones to survive.

Now, if my current games ends due to either inability to play or total party death, I'm interested in starting Dark Heresy. One of my players actually runs his own D&D campaign with almost all of my players in it, so we won't be missing out on D&D. Three of my players play 40k, and they've all expressed interest in DH. As I'm waiting to see what happens in my campaign, I have a couple of questions:

1. What books would I need to start DH? It seems that all I need is a core book, which would explain why it's $60. Would it be in my best interest to pick up the Creatures Anathema?

2. How easy is DH to play? I'm not so worried about myself or the three 40k players, but the rest of my players don't really game that much. I'll probably be the only one with a rulebook for quite a while if we do start (only half of the players between our two D&D campaigns have a PHB, and I'm the only one with a DMG or MM). Are the rules simple enough for that to work?

3. How many players does DH work best with? I currently have seven players in my D&D campaign, but there are several people that show up once in a blue moon. Will that be too many? Rounds in D&D can run a bit long.

4. How much combat is there in DH? I know this will vary a lot, but a good third of my players do not get involved in RP'ing at all (this is kinda helped lead to the death of half the party). Three of my players enjoy RP'ing and will try to invent opportunities to do it (much to the annoyance to the other members), but ,without a healthy dose of fighting, the other four may grow restless (could help thin the herd so to speak).

Thanks for reading and/or replying.

Having played for a few years and getting setup to dm myself at some point, I'll provide what insight I can.

1: You need at least the core book, however the inquisitors handbook is excellent as well and useful in the beginning. It adds more character options and gear, which is always a plus. Beyond that disciples of the dark gods and the radicals handbook are useful to dm's and players. The rest can be ignored in theory, but as a dm you might like the creatures book though it isn't required, at least in the beginning of the game.

2: It's damn easy to play, but sometimes hard to play well. You just roll a % dice and boom you do it or you don't, with varying degrees of success or failure. Actions are simple, but skills are slightly more complex, I recommend you as the dm go over all the skill descriptions in detail, there is lots of stuff you can miss. In all though, rules are very simple at their core level.

3: For player count you should shoot for 4-6 players. Each player should try to do something different, unless we are talking about combat prowess. Too many techpriests or other specific classes and cause problems for the party as each are tying to do their thing when someone else can do it just as well. Combat is both very quick and as a dm you can make it long.

Combat example: Your group of 7 is fighting 7 other gangers, initiative rolls are done and one player who, lets say, is an assassin runs to flank them with a flamer and fires a shot or was already hiding and just torches the poor suckers. Being on fire and having probably taken damage, they can't do much without a will power test. One or two players using full auto-capable weapons and the combat is over. This can take 2 minutes to complete easy.

4: Combat can be heavy or light, it depends on you as a dm and what the players want. Do they want lots of combat? Then it's easy to give. Do they want lots of investiagtion/interaction/roleplay? That can be arranged.

As a tip, have each player specialize in something. Other players can do the same sort of thing, but make sure a player knows that X is their job. One guy (normally techpriest) goes tech use, someone else focuses on knowledges/lores, someone else works on fellowship skills, ect ect. All players need to have awareness if they can buy it, and they all need to be able to fight to some degree.

There are skillls that ALL classes can use well in many situations. Don't overlook the skills they get and when they get them.

So long as all the players read the short section on actions in combat, and have a good idea of what their skills do, everything should be fine.

Edit: Oh yea, NEVER separate the party. I mean it's a given in all roleplaying games, but NEVER ever do so in DH.

What he said...

Also, when going to a new system you can save your self a lot of Q&A time by making a few scans of player useful info for them to peruse during their downtime. Skill list and skill trees, traits, equipment pages and combat actions and maybe weapon traits are the big ones I can think of off the top of my head. Then just toss them in a binder and let them have at it.

RustyKnight wrote:Long story short, I have a DnD group that is set to implode. The group wanted to play evil characters, and half of the group betrayed and murdered the other half. Now, I need to get the dead half back in, but they want vengeance. The betrayers are more than willing to repeatedly kill the currently dead ones to survive.

Kick out the ones who cannot play as a team. If all they want to do is fight each other, then let them, but let them do it elsewhere away from you and the people who actually want to play the game.

RustyKnight wrote:Now, if my current games ends due to either inability to play or total party death, I'm interested in starting Dark Heresy. One of my players actually runs his own D&D campaign with almost all of my players in it, so we won't be missing out on D&D. Three of my players play 40k, and they've all expressed interest in DH.

That's a good start. The scope of DH is such that your players are lowly underlings of an Inquisitor, so you as the GM can essentially play the role of the Inquisitor and tell them what to do and where to go. This avoids any smart-ass players who decide to say 'No!' to your carefully developed setting and who then run off and start killing one another. Doesn't you can tell them how to do everything, but it does mean that when you say "Go here and look for X", they damn well better go there and look for X!!! How they get there and how they look for X is up to them, but at least you've got a framework that they have to stick to, cutting down on the dick moves you seem to have described for some members of your group.

RustyKnight wrote:1. What books would I need to start DH? It seems that all I need is a core book, which would explain why it's $60. Would it be in my best interest to pick up the Creatures Anathema?

You only really need the core book, but I wouldn't play DH without at least having the Inquisitor's Handbook and the Creatures Anathema. The GM kit is also nifty because it summarises a lot of the tables onto an easy to use shield (most of the time I don't even use it to 'hide' my rolls from my players but just as a quick reference on weapon stats, special rules, what actions they can take, and so on).

RustyKnight wrote:2. How easy is DH to play? I'm not so worried about myself or the three 40k players, but the rest of my players don't really game that much. I'll probably be the only one with a rulebook for quite a while if we do start (only half of the players between our two D&D campaigns have a PHB, and I'm the only one with a DMG or MM). Are the rules simple enough for that to work?

The rules are complex but not complicated. What I mean by that is that there's a lot in there to learn, but once you've picked it up it becomes second nature. I played out three 'prologue' adventures before we started the campaign proper, using the prologue adventures to introduce the players to the world, their characters, and the mechanics of the game. We got a lot of rules wrong in all three games, but by the end of our first major session we had all the rules pretty much down, so we could concentrate on the story and developing the characters rather than how Full-Auto Fire with two pistols worked.

That said, read the Errata at the FFG website, and go through DH forum rules sub-forum. Yeah, the latter will take a while, but it cleared a lot of things up. And make sure that you know the rules. That's why I'd suggest that every player read the rulebook once and every GM read it twice.

RustyKnight wrote:3. How many players does DH work best with? I currently have seven players in my D&D campaign, but there are several people that show up once in a blue moon. Will that be too many? Rounds in D&D can run a bit long.

I had 5. I now have 4. 4 is much easier to manage. I wouldn't go above 5.

RustyKnight wrote:4. How much combat is there in DH? I know this will vary a lot, but a good third of my players do not get involved in RP'ing at all (this is kinda helped lead to the death of half the party). Three of my players enjoy RP'ing and will try to invent opportunities to do it (much to the annoyance to the other members), but ,without a healthy dose of fighting, the other four may grow restless (could help thin the herd so to speak).

As much as you want. You're the GM, so it's up to you to determine whether they're sneaking into a grand Imperial Library to steal some ancient text, or knocking down doors looking for a Cult Headquarters so they can kill them all before they summon a Daemon Prince.

So far, breaking down the 5 'Acts' that my campaign has (and keeping in mind that we're only part-way into the 4th act after a year of playing), we've had:

1. A mission to find out what has caused a Chaos Cult to resurface within the ruins of a crumbling mine. This had two distinct parts:

A Guard encampment where my players spent about 3 hours interacting and RP'ing with the inhabitants of the encampment.

The mine itself where there was a bit of exploration, a bit of fiddling with computers to gain more info, and a healthy amount of combat (about 4 major battles).

2. A mission to find out what the Adeptus Mechanicus had been doing inside that mine, by visiting a nearby Hive World and seeing if they could locate the second 'site' the AdMech in the mine had mentioned. This had 3 sections:

The small Hive village they met their Arbite contacts at, where the players spent a while talking to the locals, looking through the gun shop, buying drinks at the bar and even helping the barman fix his still!

A labyrinth of underground caverns build hundreds if not thousands of years ago that was once home to an ancient cult. Infested with spiders and even a few astral projections, at the end of it was a massive facility crawling with AdMech technology and the hideous mutants they were creating. That was a mostly 'horror' section with exploration and a couple of fights, leading to a big fight against the mutant hordes as they escaped the facility.

A return to the hive village where it turned out all the village inhabitants were cult members themselves, so they had to fight off everyone in the village (some 50 people - this is where we learnt the power of the flamer!!!) before escaping up hive with hundreds of mutants on their tales (very Dawn of the Dead-ish).

3. A mission to the Forge World where these AdMech had come from to confront their Magos and find out just what they hell they were up two. This had six sections:

The first was a pure railroad, where the players were lead from their hangar to a big council chamber where they met the Magos and two of his other leaders. They were then put on trial in a kangaroo court for crimes they did not commit and sentenced to death (rail roading is usually bad, but if you have a context that makes sense ie. a kangaroo court is a real life rail road, then I feel it is justified).

The players having to think their way out of the machine that is about to kill them, and then them escaping that section of the Forge World. Lots of combat here.

Them discovering a Tech-Marine in training, who enlists their services to help him locate his other two brothers who are also training on the Forge World, and the fight through the area they just left trying to find the lost Marine. Lots of combat here.

Fighting their way back to their ship, encountering the corrupted and mutated third Marine, and finally escaping the whole Forge World. Heaps of combat here.

Sitting on back on their ship in pursuit of the Magos who had escaped, the players had some down time to play cards, lead a Prayer service with the Tech-Marine, and even upgrade their Servitor. No combat at all in this section.

Then, aboard the same ship, fight off a boarding action by some raiders across multiple decks of the ship before finally stopping the explosives the raiders had planted from crippling them in deep space. Obviously, a fair bit of combat here as well - complex combats, taking places on multiple levels involving lots of enemies and NPCs. Man that was a difficult section to run...

4. With the raiders defeated, they now board the enemy ship and continue the pursuit of the Magos:

Counter-boarding action, taking the enemy ship and then using it to continue the pursuit whilst their previous ship undergoes repairs. A bit of exportation on the ship, learning how it caught them and what systems it has (and the Arvus Lighter it has in a hanger!!!), and then killing the remaining Raiders and Skitarii crew

Finally catching the Magos at a space station hidden inside a nebula. This section was equal parts combat and exploration as they moved through the dusty old station fighting off the last remnants of the Magos' Skitarii bodyguard before finally entering the sections of the space station that were overgrown with living tissue. They finally confronted the Magos, took him alive (in the most amazing crash tackle our Arbite has ever made!), and then were faced with escaping while the 'Coven' of Genestealers the Magos had awakened attacked them from all sides.

After meeting with their Inquisitor they are told to go to another planet to rescue and extract a very important Astropath so that he does not fall into the hands of the Genestealer Cult (now revealed as the enemy they had been fighting all along). They arrive at the world to find it already in the grips of the cult and a huge rebellion civil war, and must now stay for the long haul - this section is actually an entire sand-box map-based campaign within the main campaign, and it's where they're up to now. They essentially can move about as they please, engaging in as much or as little combat or exploration as they want. In the last section one entire part was simply sneaking into the Astropath's chateau in an attempt to rescue him, and involved lots of interaction tests and silent move/sneaking tests rather than combat. Then I made them fight a Broodlord. Damn thing nearly killed 'em...

And that's where we're up to. There has been a LOT of combat (Act III on the Forge World was wall-to-wall combat for a lot of it), but there have been a number of areas where there has been no combat at all (Guard Encampment, the Hive village (to start with at least), the ship they were on, moving about the city in the most recent part, keeping out of sight and not fighting everything they see). So it's easy to find a balance, and respond to your players wants and needs.

As I said at the start, you're the GM, so it's up to you to make that choice.

Hope that helps.

RustyKnight wrote:Long story short, I have a DnD group that is set to implode. The group wanted to play evil characters, and half of the group betrayed and murdered the other half. Now, I need to get the dead half back in, but they want vengeance. The betrayers are more than willing to repeatedly kill the currently dead ones to survive.

Now, if my current games ends due to either inability to play or total party death, I'm interested in starting Dark Heresy. One of my players actually runs his own D&D campaign with almost all of my players in it, so we won't be missing out on D&D. Three of my players play 40k, and they've all expressed interest in DH. As I'm waiting to see what happens in my campaign, I have a couple of questions:

1. What books would I need to start DH? It seems that all I need is a core book, which would explain why it's $60. Would it be in my best interest to pick up the Creatures Anathema?

2. How easy is DH to play? I'm not so worried about myself or the three 40k players, but the rest of my players don't really game that much. I'll probably be the only one with a rulebook for quite a while if we do start (only half of the players between our two D&D campaigns have a PHB, and I'm the only one with a DMG or MM). Are the rules simple enough for that to work?

3. How many players does DH work best with? I currently have seven players in my D&D campaign, but there are several people that show up once in a blue moon. Will that be too many? Rounds in D&D can run a bit long.

4. How much combat is there in DH? I know this will vary a lot, but a good third of my players do not get involved in RP'ing at all (this is kinda helped lead to the death of half the party). Three of my players enjoy RP'ing and will try to invent opportunities to do it (much to the annoyance to the other members), but ,without a healthy dose of fighting, the other four may grow restless (could help thin the herd so to speak).

Thanks for reading and/or replying.

1.Realisitically,you only need the core book to get started. Creatures is a great pickup,but you don't neccessarily need it to start playing. The Inquisitor's Handbook has a lot of interesting options for career paths and unique homeworlds,but some of the stuff in there doesn't seem to be game balanced properly. The equipment in the Inquisitor's Handbook is also great,and it tables off what equipment is available on what types of worlds.

2.It's not terribly hard once you get the hang of it. The hardest thing for the players is to remember what all their different Talents(the equivalent of Feats in D&D) do,because the way DH is structured,you can have a ton of them.

3.7 will be tough,considering it's a new system and you have to deal with a lot of questions and will have players constantly needing to look up stuff in the main book. With an experienced group,it's not too bad,but in the beginning,it could be tough with that many players.

4.Based on the prewritten adventure modules I've played in,DH tends to be a lot more about investigation than about combat. There's typically a lot of information gathering/scavenger hunting which leads into combat later on. Obviously,as the GM,you can tweak that somewhat,but DH probably will not play well as the equivalent of a D&D dungeon crawl. If your group leans that heavily towards combat,then Deathwatch would probably be a much better game for your group.

I've actually only just started playing DH, so keep that in mind for my answers.

RustyKnight wrote:2. How easy is DH to play? I'm not so worried about myself or the three 40k players, but the rest of my players don't really game that much. I'll probably be the only one with a rulebook for quite a while if we do start (only half of the players between our two D&D campaigns have a PHB, and I'm the only one with a DMG or MM). Are the rules simple enough for that to work?

It actually seems to be a fairly easy system overall. Everything is based on the same dice and there are some tables that you should have handy for a session (things like how long each action takes). It's also a very loose system which does seem to emphasize the fun aspects rather than things like rules-lawyering.

3. How many players does DH work best with? I currently have seven players in my D&D campaign, but there are several people that show up once in a blue moon. Will that be too many? Rounds in D&D can run a bit long.

I GM for two people, but this is a very small party. It looks like it's written for four players. Currently, combat has actually been pretty fast for us, partially because it is so deadly (the first session ended in a total party kill on accident, one of the PCs exploded and took out the guy who shot her).

4. How much combat is there in DH? I know this will vary a lot, but a good third of my players do not get involved in RP'ing at all (this is kinda helped lead to the death of half the party). Three of my players enjoy RP'ing and will try to invent opportunities to do it (much to the annoyance to the other members), but ,without a healthy dose of fighting, the other four may grow restless (could help thin the herd so to speak).

Well, without the ability to have healing magic (seriously, don't try to use the psycher as a healer, just don't) you can't do more than a couple fights before the damage taken becomes dehabilitating. Remember that the heavy duty combat class is guardsmen and lasguns and autoguns are just about the best weapons in the game (cheap ammo! >300 shots with an autogun to 1 bolter shell).

Also, remember modifiers. For the most part, characters will have a 1 in 4 to a 1 in three chance of succeeding on any given task. But if there isn't some kind of modifier for the action, you're doing something horribly wrong (range, laser sights, burst fire, and taking the time to aim for example). Also, keep in mind the ability to dodge and parry.

Vene wrote:seriously, don't try to use the psycher as a healer, just don't

Is this more of this 4Chan-esque TG-centric "Teh psyker will killz us all!!1" bullgak? We've got a Psyker in our group. He has Healing Powers. All my players are at Lvl8 except one at Lvl9. He's had exactly two points during the campaign where something has SERIOUSLY gone wrong with his powers, and he's burnt Fate Points to get out of it.

Psykers are fine. And the idea that they always kill everyone all the time is just exaggerated.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Vene wrote:seriously, don't try to use the psycher as a healer, just don't

Is this more of this 4Chan-esque TG-centric "Teh psyker will killz us all!!1" bullgak? We've got a Psyker in our group. He has Healing Powers. All my players are at Lvl8 except one at Lvl9. He's had exactly two points during the campaign where something has SERIOUSLY gone wrong with his powers, and he's burnt Fate Points to get out of it.

Psykers are fine. And the idea that they always kill everyone all the time is just exaggerated.

This was me fething around, and a lot of bad luck, but I was curious what would happen if I rolled the dice to see what would happen if a npc psycher I wrote up tried to heal a PC. He did heal 3 points of damage. He also rolled for perils and caused 15 points of damage on top of that.