Do chem-hunters not start with any armor or clothing?!

That's how Slaanesh cultists roll!

Exept chem-hunters are not slaaneshi aligned. This is such a weird oversight which i feel has been a problem with this RPG line from the start.

something similar in only war: there's a grenadiers regiment that gives the regiment the folowing equipment: auxillary grenade launcher and +1 to each type of grenade. Except a regiment's starting equipment is a laspistol and no greandes. Wich mean you either have to strap that greandelauncher to a pistol and/or upgrade that laspistol to a lasgun and buy greandes with your other points

or you just roll your eyes at whole mess and take a standard infantry regiment (starts with lasgun and 2frag and 2 krak grenades) and buy an auxillary greande launcher.

Haha I never picked that up. Of course all characters start with basic clothes of whatever fashion/look you want to go for, for your character however I guess if you want an armoured chem hunter you need to use one of your infamy acquisitions at start up.

Me: "Well, my new character comes from the world of Power armor: its a fallen forgeworld run by hereteks, and everybody wears power armor, so for my standard outfit-"

GM: "NO!" * Hits me with Mallet-of-Munchkin-slaying.*

I'm sure he would allow you to wear a big suit made of plastic bubble wrap that you could paint to look like power armour.

You could be the meanest **** cosplayer in the cosmos!

I've seen some pretty decent space marine* cosplay so it might actually work. -Until the shooting starts

* I'm not gonna abreviate space marine to "SM" this time: SM cosplay does sound a bit kinky.

Chem hunters get some pretty crap starting gear in comparison,yes. Unfortunately, the archtypes were "not meant to be balanced".

Chem hunters get some pretty crap starting gear in comparison,yes. Unfortunately, the archtypes were "not meant to be balanced".

That's just lazy design! If i wanted to play "unbalanced" i'd play World of Synnibarr.

I've seen some pretty decent space marine* cosplay so it might actually work. -Until the shooting starts

* I'm not gonna abreviate space marine to "SM" this time: SM cosplay does sound a bit kinky.

Yep if you play an SM cosplayer they may mistake you for a Slaaneshi cultist

Cultist-chan! squueeee!

something similar in only war: there's a grenadiers regiment that gives the regiment the folowing equipment: auxillary grenade launcher and +1 to each type of grenade. Except a regiment's starting equipment is a laspistol and no greandes. Wich mean you either have to strap that greandelauncher to a pistol and/or upgrade that laspistol to a lasgun and buy greandes with your other points

or you just roll your eyes at whole mess and take a standard infantry regiment (starts with lasgun and 2frag and 2 krak grenades) and buy an auxillary greande launcher.

I'm not saying BC is unique in this regard, OW has some pretty broken stuff too. Or only FFG RPG's, but it's still annoying.

But to have an archetype that already doesn't start with great gear not start with any armor is kind of weird and sounds like a major oversight.

They get the standard acquisitions.

They were made for RP not balance and you will get gear its not impossible to get. Look at the frost father if you want to look at crap gear when you start.

Playing either of those in a party with space marines is less than fun, because you can't even borrow the marine's weapons RAW. Basically, the balance is "watch the rest of the party do stuff, be bored and wait until you don't have **** gear so you can try and catch up, all the while wondering why they haven't killed you, because you're effectively useless".

That's not really conductive to RP. Some effective and nasty low tech weapons options which both start with would have fixed that. There's also no reason they can't have decent armour from scrap (Mega-armour is a thing after all) or one of those fancy Messian bikes. Except they don't.

Honestly, adding one of the vehicle options from the low tech settings for their respective archtypes would have done a lot in terms of making them more viable, especially in a mixed party. Chem hunter is by far the worst, though. The frost father has an upgradable, BQ weapon, at least, that is easy enough to shill the GM as a legacy weapon and remains viable late game because you can slap a power field on it later. So he'll at least be able to do some damage. The chem hunter, though...****, until he gets a completely (!) new set of gear, he's effectively useless in a party with the rest. That's not "RP based", that's an RP inhibitor. That's bad design.

The Frost Father gets a cool mount too in the form of a Xuransh.

Mind you if you are playing a mixed party with humans and CSM chances are the CSM are going to outshine the humans regardless of what archetypes are picked. In my campaigns I usually play one or the other.

I really dislike the old "they did it for RP reasons!" canard. While I respect making rules to match the fluff (that's the standard I try to hit with my own house rules), people treat it like a get-out-of-balancing-your-game-free card. If Frost Fathers and Chem-Hunters aren't balanced with Chaos Marines for fluff reasons, then one or the other of them is not an appropriate starting character. If you want a game that includes both, release a supplement that explicitly features lower powered characters and strongly discourage a mixed party with the more powerful Chaos Marines. Fluffwise it makes no sense for goddamn heretics to be lugging around dead weight on their blackhearted exploits. Even if they're Walter White-esque anti-heroes they are extremely unlikely to have their redeeming soft spot be for the motley crew of ruthless warlords and depraved lunatics they rub shoulders with.

The Frost Father gets a cool mount too in the form of a Xuransh.

Mind you if you are playing a mixed party with humans and CSM chances are the CSM are going to outshine the humans regardless of what archetypes are picked. In my campaigns I usually play one or the other.

Not really. I actually went through the humie archtypes again and looked them up. Here's the power creep...

Slaanesh: Power weapons, carapace armour, plasma guns

Tzeench: Chain-, bolter and power weapons, carapace armour

Techpriests: Power weapons, solid armour

Nurgle: mediocre armour, poor quality guns...

Khorne: Primitive weaponry, autoguns, no armour

Take an archtype from Tome of Fate or Excess, and you're perfectly viable in a marine party. You'll do damage, you'll have fat minions or psyker powers that do and soak damage, and you'll generally be fine. Tech priests in general do well, as well. I ran a heretek in an otherwise all marine party once that fairly easily outgunned them, because Operate+Tech Use+Trade Armourer=OP. Add psyker abilities on top of that and it just gets lulsy.

Then comes the divide.

The Nurgle archtypes, with the exception of the tech priest, can barely hold their own in a party with a marine. The khorne ones, though, especially after applying a certain bit of errata that nerfs bullrushed lightning attacks considerably? Forget it.

Damage, with the melee nerf in the errata, is largely gear dependant, and they completely lack the soak options that make nurgle even partially viable. End result is:

Khorne humies suck at fighting.

-> Complete system failure.

Take Light Power Armour as a starting acquisition. One Problem solved.

Your primitive Great Weapon not keeping up? Make it a Legacy Weapon! Yes, you'll never be able to do exactly what your Space Marine counterparts can do, but who cares? You can go places they cannot. And it shouldn't be a competition, anyway.

But if you absolutely must balance it, institute the houserules that Hordes do less damage to humans, and put greater target priority on the Space Marines.