We're coming to the end of a Grey Knights Dark Heresy campaign, and may well be following it up with Black Crusade.

I was sitting down yesterday with one of the new players, who's going to be cameo-ing as the daemons, using Daemon Hunter to generate a Greater Daemon and his herald.

My first response for the Greater Daemon was " Okay. So, we've killed everyone in the party ..." *

but the Herald didn't seem bad.

Left me wondering about putting a Daemon character into Black Crusade.

Now, obviously, I could use a Tome of Decay possessed, but I was wondering about an actual, loose, daemon. My big concern is what they're like in terms of relative power to the basic and advanced archetypes. Has anyone else used Daemon Hunter custom daemons much and/or how did it go?

* Take 1D5+Wp bonus damage per turn spent within point blank range or melee. This from a greater daemon with Unnatural Willpower (x3) giving it a Wp Bonus of 24. Even in terminator plate, that's going to sting....

Personally if I were to do it, I would create appropriate new races and archetypes based on the rules in Daemon Hunter rather than use the rules in Daemon Hunter unaltered, as they were designed for a different purpose. You may have to tweak the balance a bit but I don't think it would be difficult.

You could use the rules there as well for inspiration in creating new talents and traits that would be available for daemon characters. We use the Daemon Hunter rules sometimes to generate daemons as antagonists in BC, but not as PCs. If you do come up with some house rules I'd like to see them.

On a side note, unnatural characteristics work differently in Black Crusade, so the greater daemon would not do that much damage (unless you are using the BC rules and its WP is 210). They add to a characteristic bonus in BC, not multiply the bonus as in DH and DW. I'm guessing it's natural WP bonus is 8, so the total with Unnatural characteristic 3 would be 12, so it probably wouldn't zap the characters to death with its aura. Sometimes it's hard to keep all the rules variations in your head - we only noticed last week that True Grit in BC is totally different from DW.

My only issue with this idea is the Daemon would need a way to remain in the Materium. Being in the vortex helps a bit, but it would need an anchor of some sort. I actually had a thought similar to this. I came across the idea of binding said daemonic character and make it a Daemonhost. BAM. Not quite the same thing yeah, but he wouldn't have to worry about simply getting banished into the Warp and POOF, new char time.

Technically, the daemon doesn't have to be in realspace all the time, right? The group is bound to have lots of downtime in-between the action, so they could just make it so that they summon him or her any time the group actually plays.

Perhaps their base also includes a special "insanctum", a chamber of sorts where, using arcane rituals and/or blood sacrifice, the veil between warp and realspace is intentionally kept thin enough to allow the daemon to maintain corporeality with much less exertion. Would be ideal for audiences and planning sessions.

Alternatively, you could "abuse" a binding ritual to keep the daemon chained to realspace, but not to trap him at a single spot, but rather to just close the door back into the warp. The downside is, of course, that the daemon could not leave such a sanctuary, unless you give it the means to disable the wards itself. But then again, who is to say that the daemon is indeed the group's master, instead of being in a pact with one of the player characters, and sworn to serve him/her?

Balancewise, I wouldn't worry too much, as long as you play it smart as Catullus sugested, and alter the rules to get something playable without breaking the game - but as far as party composition is concerned, I see this as no different than CSM vs Humans. Except that a daemon has more limitations.