Hand of Corruption has a serious problem in that it assumes the NPCs go from "amazingly competent" to route the party into one course of action (infiltration) to "selectively deaf, dumb and blind" when it comes to the actual infiltration act. Also, suddenly necrons. It's really not well thought out. I'd grab the premise of "suck an imperial planet into the warp" and let the players pick the world themselves, and the modus operandi.

Given that my players made characters designed to blend in better with Imperial society, I found running Hand of Corruption to be immensely fun. The tonal shift thinking that the PCs have won to finding out they have a new and terrifying foe is a great one. It starts off with investigation and social skills, and escalates to high-octane combat, so it has something for everybody.

The general gist of it sounds really good, but the details are terrible. The first question that we asked was "Why a penal colony? Why not -any other- planet?". Apparently the rite was very specific there. But alright, we rolled with it. We spun a whole sideplot about getting inquisitorial credentials and inserting ourselves into the command structure. We later found out the adventure apparently assumes we would incite a prison riot during which, somehow, the judicial palace could be occupied for several hours to prepare a rite, instead of inviting all the relevant targets to dinner and ritually sacrificing them in our chambers.

Then we read the actual text of the rite. Our DM did a double take. We did a double take. We decided the right was idiotic, insulted three out of four chaos gods and we'd be better off dedicating the world to one in a giant bloodbath.

What our DM omitted, but later told us about, was fun stuff like:
-The only canonically corrupted arbite we know of (credit to Slaanesh)

-Slaaneshi heretics and psykers at large in a cult compound in an imperial high security prison (seriously, a fuckhuge, organised cult with sorcerers all in one house, and the guards magically don't notice? Oh, they have guns, too. Prisoners with guns. And the guards don't notice or don't care. This is atypical negligence for the adeptus arbites to the point it comes over as a typical case of "I want this in the module so the NPCs are going to be selectively stupid and overlook it, plausibility be damned")

-Slaaneshi cults in the transit station we completely missed because they thought we were the inquisition

-The other gods barely get mentioned; the text of the rite actually insults all of them except Slaanesh, by offering them "ironic" things. In our 40k, Khorne is not known for his sense of irony, and a wording that can be construed as an insult to him is not a wise thing to do. We made our own rite.

- A...slaaneshi (seriously, another one? There are other chaos gods, dear author) rogue trader who smugglles in stuff using his contacts and somehow has access to a manufactorum. How? Why? How does this fit to a fleet presence in the system rivalling the one above Scintilla?

And then the big boss fight against the necrons that somehow, the massive imperial mining operation failed to notice.

Our conclusion was that whoever wrote this needs to lay off the crack pipe and open other books than the Book of Erotic Fantasy.

What we did instead:

There was no snowflake of a corrupt arbite.

The prisoners were a largely controlled bunch, with bomb collars as appropriate and varying degrees of security. None of them had weapons beyond a shiv, because prisons have stuff like security scanners at regular intervals, and they pick up auto- and lasguns fairly quickly.

None of them were psykers. I'm sorry, that's just retarded. Psykers do not go to penal colonies. They get executed.

The mechanicus was insular, unhelpful and, as we later found out, partially under the thrall of the necrons and purposefully obscuring their presence, while they integrated imperial gellar field technology into their own, posing a direct threat to Chaos by being able to create warp-killing bubbles through study of human tech. We assumed this in turn was the reason the world had been selected by "the gods" rather than a more attractive one.

We spent considerable time working our mojo on people who were actually worthwhile and decided to convert them, rather than sacrifice them (battlesisters aside, they wouldn't turn, of course). So our sacrifice was a massive bloodbath among the defenseless prison populace and the loyal til death adeptus arbites instead.

We burned some favours with chaos space marine warbands to purge the necrons in force.

I can't remember the numbers in my head, but the population is 10 million, the garrison is 10,000 plus arbites and sororitas. That leaves a HUGE population to govern by a rather small number of people. So I could see small groups manage to smuggle minor stuff around, afterall it's not just a prison complex. It's a city with mining and manufacturing capablities.

A psyker or two being there, in a universe where minor accidents by the beurocrats can mean armies don't get food, doesn't seem unlikely but they'd have to be of such guile to avoid overt detection. Though this shouldn't be common, and i could easily see it cut in order to make the world more grim and avoid the "grim derp" wibe you seem to have gotten from the adventure.

Alot of slaanesh, okay, a bit sad that only god gets pushed but also glad that if that's the case then it's good old slaanesh as he seems to be the least popular of the four. I'll have to input a few of my own NPC's to balance it I suppose.

Book of erotic fantasy? Slaanesh is way more then eroticism, are there erotic features in the adventure? What? I don't follow.


sounds like it's a decent starting form at least, just needs some fixing. Like most premades I've had.

Book of erotic fantasy? Slaanesh is way more then eroticism, are there erotic features in the adventure? What? I don't follow.

The BoEF is a fan made book for DnD detailing erotic acts in that game.

Book of erotic fantasy? Slaanesh is way more then eroticism, are there erotic features in the adventure? What? I don't follow.

The BoEF is a fan made book for DnD detailing erotic acts in that game.

And stats for how much damage a charcter can do with a wooden buttplug. Ugh why did i pick up this book?

I did edit it a bit myself. I made up some NPCs to represent the other Chaos Gods. There was Crazy Steve (First name Crazy, last name Steve) who wore a tinfoil hat to keep the conspiracy rays out which amplified his psychic powers. There was a doctor obssessed with cleanliness who loved to experiment by pumping diseases into his subjects, and I turned Ramla Yang into blood-drinking Khorne cultist who took over the cathedral and turned it into a haven for the Blood God.

The reason that the Slaaneshi Rogue Trader is able to operate fairly freely is because the manufactorum district they control has been abandoned. As for smuggling stuff past the guards, they keep all of their old prisoner effects in lock-ups, and you'd be amazed at what people can smuggle. People smuggle vodka disguised as Windex and then filter out the blue dye when it gets to its destination. People make crossbows out of toothbrushes. Human ingenuity is best when faced with adversity.

And stats for how much damage a charcter can do with a wooden buttplug. Ugh why did i pick up this book?

Looking at it from a purely mechanical standpoint it's actually pretty solidly built. It's an interesting exploration of a side of role playing that just doesn't happen at a table...ok metaphorically speaking at a table other than the all to common teenager approach to the subject material full of snide jokes, innuendos, and groin measuring contests.

Book of erotic fantasy? Slaanesh is way more then eroticism, are there erotic features in the adventure? What? I don't follow.

The BoEF is a fan made book for DnD detailing erotic acts in that game.

Book of erotic fantasy? Slaanesh is way more then eroticism, are there erotic features in the adventure? What? I don't follow.

The BoEF is a fan made book for DnD detailing erotic acts in that game.

And stats for how much damage a charcter can do with a wooden buttplug. Ugh why did i pick up this book?

For some reason I now feel rather old, because that just sounds juvenile and dumb. But, apart from the IRL insanity points, I thank you guys for informing me.

Eludriel, I'll defineatly be using the your nurgle doctor and I'll also be adding some other characters who worship the other gods. Or simply chaos undivided, in some manner.

It might also be a good idea to put the necrons in the central focus of the plot, and not have their arrival be a surprise, but their rise something your characters' respective patrons wish to prevent. The "aliens among us" theme our DM changed it to, with 'cron-controlled techpriests researching away, was fairly neat. If it'd had been part of the campaign from the get-go, rather than put in at last minute, it would've likely been ten kinds of awesome.

Pfft. Considering that Nurglish psykers get everything related to their art at DOUBLE price, while Tzeentchian at half price, I find it quite natural that many psykers tend to favour Tzeentch.

Cheap and powerful Nurgle power only marginally offset this.

There needs to be a system overhauling to fix that issue.

Still, one can always buy the psykery things while they still tzeentchy(or at least unaligned) and go nurgle. Or slaanesh.

It's just that they should realize what other deities have in store. And that it still can be competitive to tzeentchy staff.

As for the "error of their ways", well, a good party of tzeentchian psykers can vanquish a great many things. Including psykery-immune Khorne bastards with a right know-how. A good one.

Pfft. Considering that Nurglish psykers get everything related to their art at DOUBLE price, while Tzeentchian at half price, I find it quite natural that many psykers tend to favour Tzeentch.

Cheap and powerful Nurgle power only marginally offset this.

There needs to be a system overhauling to fix that issue.

Still, one can always buy the psykery things while they still tzeentchy(or at least unaligned) and go nurgle. Or slaanesh.

It's just that they should realize what other deities have in store. And that it still can be competitive to tzeentchy staff.

As for the "error of their ways", well, a good party of tzeentchian psykers can vanquish a great many things. Including psykery-immune Khorne bastards with a right know-how. A good one.

It's why the alignment=xp cost system doesn't really work out very well. The system fix is using OW-style Aptitudes for costs.

The biggest problem is that if you want to be a good psyker in the BC rules, you're pretty much most of the way to Tzeentch by default.

The biggest problem is that if you want to be a good psyker in the BC rules, you're pretty much most of the way to Tzeentch by default.

This. Given that pretty much all of the psyker-driven advances and talents will give Tzeentch allignment, the best you can hope for is to stay unalligned. To solve this issue, I allow the psykers/sorcerers to declare a chaos god they want to end up alligned to during character creation. During gameplay, any advance/skill/talent alligned to the desired god gives the 2 points towards that god rather than 1.

They are also free to change during the campaign if something sufficiently important happens such that a new god draws their attention - or vice versa.

Indeed. I kinda had the experience with a OW-fixed BC, and it was much more manageable.

I've just recently started with this system, but I think that I agree that there needs to be some sort of fix to the alignment system. For now, my plan is to keep the rules in the book, but I'll add the caveat that any roleplay which exemplifies the service of one of the gods (not "swinging an axe at something" for Khorne, but something more like charging multiple opponents and calling a shot to the head of the most powerful, then taking the time to collect the removed head), will result in the character gaining one alignment point with the appropriate god. If I feel the need to further adjust it, I will, but this seems good enough for now.

Leto, as much as the OW system has alot of advantages (such as psykers being allowed to be whatever they want) it also has alot of issues for me. It tends to pigeonhole characters so bad. It's fine if everyone plays different classes/archetypes but once two pick the same they tend to end up almost carbon copies, since most players want to buy the cheapest upgrades. But yeah, so far it's going good.

One psyker got warplock after killing himself (lost some infamy there), another burned all his equipment and lost his psychic ability for several hours and the sorceror and khornate is threatening to kill them before they kill everyone. So things are working out! The most common word now is "fettered".

Hmm, interesting discussion.

We could give Psykers/Sorcerers the following extra ability:

"You may purchase Tzeentch aligned Characteristic advancements and Talents as if having the "Allied" costs."

OR

"You may purchase the Willpower Characteristic advancements as if having the 'true' costs and Tzeentch aligned Talents as if having the "Allied" costs. "

OR

"You may purchase the Willpower Characteristic advancements as if having the 'true' costs if the Characteristic that represents your god is equal or higher than Willpower. You may also purchase Tzeentch aligned Talents as if having the "Allied" costs. "

I'd then use the alignment tweak that Traejun mentioned:

At least Nurgle Psykers/Sorcerers will be on to par with Slaanesh's.

And yes, I consider this to be the biggest flaw in BC.

Is it really a big problem that the god of psykers has more bennies for psykers than other gods? This strikes me as not a problem with the rules but a problem with the fluff: People don't want there to be only one god of psykers. That doesn't make it less of a problem, but it does mean the problem is different from the one that's being discussed. If you don't want Tzeentch to have a monopoly on psykers, then rather than buffing up every other god, just break his monopoly. Move relevant talents into the unaligned category, replace them with other things. Change his psyker-related benefits to things that are more to do with backstabbing.

The only issue for Nurgle psykers is that Willpower is expensive after you've aligned and that the Nurgle powers, while flavourful, are kind of meh. But it's not like you're forced to only buy Nurgle powers, or getting a bunch of Willpower advances. Hell, buy the WP advances before aligning to Nurgle if you can/want to. Will likely save you some xp.

The problem is alignment shouldn't be based on what talents/skills/advances you buy, but rather what you choose to do with them. FFG erred in Black Crusade when they tied alignment to the advances the way they did. They corrected that error when they evolved Only War's aptitude system.

The problem is alignment shouldn't be based on what talents/skills/advances you buy, but rather what you choose to do with them. FFG erred in Black Crusade when they tied alignment to the advances the way they did. They corrected that error when they evolved Only War's aptitude system.

I would agree to this. FFG genuinely seems to get a bit better with every iteration of their d100 system, so as a general rule I'd recommend updating every part of the game that translates directly to whatever the latest rules are. I don't actually have DH2 yet, but the pattern would be that it's better still than Only War.

The problem is alignment shouldn't be based on what talents/skills/advances you buy, but rather what you choose to do with them. FFG erred in Black Crusade when they tied alignment to the advances the way they did. They corrected that error when they evolved Only War's aptitude system.

I would agree to this. FFG genuinely seems to get a bit better with every iteration of their d100 system, so as a general rule I'd recommend updating every part of the game that translates directly to whatever the latest rules are. I don't actually have DH2 yet, but the pattern would be that it's better still than Only War.

On the whole, Black Crusade was a step back, I think. Sure, a lot of people like freeform better than class(career)- and level-based advancement, but they're really more a matter of personal preference/playstyle. Freeform can be fun, but when it's badly done, it's not a good thing, and Black Crusade's freeform was poorly executed.

Frankly, I'd like a bit of a combination between career-based and freeform. The career-based component would give discounts for career-related advances and perhaps have some career-specific advances/features/specials, and then there's be a freeform system for general advances, and anything not on the career lists.

I'll admit I may be a bit biased in BC's favor because I like Chaos. And certainly BC suffers from more editing problems than some of the other lines, and being entirely fair I haven't gone back and double-checked exactly which neat new mechanics appeared in which books. I just know that there's a lot of good improvements between BC and DH.