So last night I killed my first player character as a GM. It was fairly brutal to be honest.

We were in Damned Cities, and the acolytes had gotten themselves arrested by Sanctum Enforcers. A short semi jailbreak later and the acolytes are inbetween an Undertow hit squad a force of Enforcers, and 3 Risen (Skarmen had arrived earlier in the day to try and "get the acolytes freed" read (Kill Khan and retrieve the last two mirror pieces))

The Undertow and Enforcers kill eachother, and the acolytes have to deal with the Risen. The guardsmen of the group who had earlier lost a leg gets lit on fire (one of the Risen rolled 97 on the Mutations table).

He just proceeds to burn for a few rounds until -5 hit points in which the players have dealt with the Risen and finally manage to put him out.

I asked the player if they'd have an issue with mercy killing, as I was willing to offer Cybernetic Ressurection to be completed by the next adventure.

Lessons Learned: Fire is terrifying in Dark Heresy.

Any GMs remember/ are willing to retell the story of their first kill?

In DH; my player never were unlucky or dumb enough to get killed; they got close a few times (hence why the tech-priest can no longer have grenades and they now have an unnatural fear of bows).

I did manage a TPK in warhammer 2nd ed. RPG when they party on route to Middleheim, met a witch Hunter in a village while investigating why one of the party somehow got his soul out of his body...long story short, the elf did not recognise the WH's autority, neither did the norscan barbarian, no cooperation, insults, they attack the WH doing his job, got beaten, the women got burned at the stake, the men hanged, and the elf taken away by his kin for judgement (i.e dead).

Did he not have any fate points to burn?

My first kills as GM were all from a pretty brutal session, a lot of which was my fault. We were just getting started and misunderstood several rules, mainly:

We didn't have the FAQ, and believed that Psykers could use a power and attack on the same turn.

We thought that burning a fate point would simply nullify the damage from any one attack.

And, lastly, as GM I thought I had a 'Good' idea.

We were running a mission in which the players would all be investigating what amounted to a haunted mansion. As they entered, everyone suddenly fell into their own private trap. I told all the players they would each face their own unique challenge, which was entirely private, and then took a few minutes with each player by themselves.

And then I had the Daemon of Tzeentch who was haunting their mansion offer each of them a Dark Pact.

And every freaking one of them except our Psyker (That's 4 out of 5) accepted. Did I mention that I was the one playing the psyker? One player wanted Gold, one wanted Power, one wanting Respect, and one wanted Ascension. So, I gave them all some corruption points and a mark on the palms of their hands.

Within an hour, half our team had been outed and the other half was close to it, or willing to kill those who had outed themselves. (Except the guy who wanted Ascension to Daemonhood, who had convinced everyone he was visited by a vision of the Emperor...)

Everyone threw down, and our Pysker (Me) turned invisible and started chucking grenades everywhere. Long story short, one player died (The one who wanted ascension), and two players were knocked out. I and one other were still alive, and he was disarmed. (Literally. His arm, the one with the mark, had been cut off and we assumed that had taken care of his taint.)

So, we tied up the unconscious people, drove back to town, and... While I was off looking for something (I can't recall what,) our armless guy tortured both of the heretics to death. So, when I got back and found out, I killed him.

That's when we decided to reset.

Did I mention this was pretty much my first session?

His fate point is burned being cybernetically ressurected, otherwise he'd have been alive but heavily burned, he was at the point of having his Toughness halved. It was all around a better decision to just die, we discussed it at length.

Am I missing something? Can a Psyker not manifest a power and attack in the same turn? As long as the threshold of the power is a half or less he can just use his other half to attack right?

Edit: I mistyped, he was at -7 wounds, that was the point where his Toughness was halved.

It's in the FAQ, I believe: His Psychic Power counts as using an attack.

Indeed it is, it's even in my personal notes into the book as well and yet I somehow forgot it. The psyker in our party is not going to enjoy that.

The first paragraph in the Using Psychic Powers section starting on page 161 should include the addition:

“Making a Focus Power Action is the psychic equivalent of a Standard Attack Action, and counts as such for purposes of determining what else a psyker can do in a round. Therefore, a psyker who uses a Half Action power cannot make another Half Action Standard Attack on the same round. A Psyker may manifest only one ability per Round with the exception of the Resist Possession power. A Psyker is required to roll at least one die to manifest an ability.”

His fate point is burned being cybernetically ressurected, otherwise he'd have been alive but heavily burned, he was at the point of having his Toughness halved. It was all around a better decision to just die, we discussed it at length.

Ah, so you didn't actually kill a player. I have been in a game where the Alpha Legionairre in the midst showed our Salamander's Tac Marine just exactly how devastating a full-auto barrage from a Heavy Bolter could be. The damage wiped him out, but he burned a fate point and came back with 0 HPs.

I would say that really killing a player in the 40k RPGs requires them to re-roll a brand new PC with new personality, motivations, etc. etc. Granted, you came really close to doing that.