Now, I've heard that Dark Heresy is a very lethal game. Only problem is, when I'm playing it with my online group...It dosn't seem to be. I'll give you an example.

Last session, the groups Psyker (with an auto pistol, fire selector and laser sight) and the feral guardsman (big sword and flak armour) took on a squad of 7 Law enforcement officers (I used the Enforcer profile but gave em combat shotguns.) Now, these 7 officers were all stood, execution style, having caught up with the PCs escepades, Initiative was rolled, it went like this:

Psyker, Enforcer, Enforcer, Guardsman, Enforcer, Enforcer, Enforcer. So, the Psyker takes his turn and fires full auto, 2 shots hit, 2 Enforcers had their heads detonated. Bam bam, pop pop. So, it was the guardsmans turn, he takes a full move towards the officers with a reckless regard for saftey. He arrives 2 metres away from the remaining 3 officers, who all fired their shotguns semi auto at him. All 3 got 3 hits each, but at the end of it, the guardsman was only on 2 wounds...

Now, that's what concerns me. He's your standard guardsman, TB 4 and Flak Armour but...he took 9 shotgun blasts at pointblank (with scatter an' all) and he survived? Psykers turn, he fires full auto and blows all 3's heads off. I think the combat is certainly lethal for the opposition but...for the players it seems relativley risk free (excluding the guardsmans last run in with an inactive meat grinder ^^)

So yeah...am I doing combat right? I have this feeling I'm not :S

cyclocius said:

Scatter is absolutely lethal... so long as you're unarmoured. Guard Flak Armour is excellent armour in its own right, especially for a starting character, and makes characters significantly more resilient (contrary to its virtually worthless presence in the 40k tabletop game, where Flak Armour is a formality). The average shotgun blast deals 1d10+4 I damage per hit (approximately 9-10 wounds, before reductions for armour and toughness), which means that 9 hits can, on average, bring a guardsman with TB4 and Guard Flak to 0 wounds in a single round, but too much below that average and the guardsman is still standing...

It sounds here like you simply rolled somewhat poorly against a target that shotguns aren't best-suited to deal with (an armoured one). Not a big deal, just a little unlucky.

Play on it. Let it lull your players into a false sense of security. They'll realise their mistake soon enough.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Huh...Okay thanks

Just so they don't get too carried away I might have to target the Psyker next time >.>

cyclocius said:

Oh, always target the psyker as soon as he's identified as such. Psykers should never have an easy time of things...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

No, I feel he's been getting away rather easily ^^

I've had a few people act in awe of him, a few uneasy glances, but never outright hostility

From what you described, the combat was done properly. For all the talk of the lethality and grittiness of the system, it really isn't all that lethal... I guess it's more lethal then Exalted or most forms of D&D, but it's still low on the lethal list.

Most of the lethal nature doesn't come from one or two it kills from weapons (unless were talking some of the xenos, daemons, snipper attacks, or heavy weapons) but from the prolonged withering away of the characters wounds through long engagements (unless they have a psyker to heal them up in which case...).

Graver said:

Ah right, I can only presume it's lethal from what it says on the blurb and places, I've not done any other RPGs, I considered Cthulhu but no-one in my area was even slightly interested in a roleplaying game where it was generally better to run for your life and try and forget everything instead of hose it with gunfire ^^

Want to make it more lethal? Drop the toughness bonus damage reduction ... everyone dies. (when I first started playing the game I had missed that detail ... it was brutal)

Seriously, though, the game is dangerous in both directions - either the pcs get ganked quickly or the enemies do. If you want to make it more dangerous don't use the mook rules save in large combats and give all your enemies 10 wounds and damage reduction for their armor/toughness. (3 average TB, 4 average AP for guards) Then use them intelligently; dodge if they have it, cover, feints, stances, called shots, targeting the psyker/tech priests, coordinated shooting at the heavily armored targets, etc. If your pcs can do it, so can their enemies.

Jack of Tears said:

It's the last part I ALWAYS forget I remember the TB, Armour, all that, but their moves seem to consist of the odd dodge here and there, maybe a dive for cover...But no suppresive firing, no overwatches :S

Our group started off using the book's damage rules, but then switched over to more lethal set of home rules. Where you can only absorb damage with wounds equal to your toughness bonus before it goes right into crits on that body part. We keep track of the crits on each body part separately. So, your character don't just implode when your run out of wounds, because the crits don't stack up as fast per body part. In the end a character takes allot more crits, making combat effects on characters look more real, but can take many times more crits before they die (as long as it's spread out all over the body). So an average guardsman getting hit for 16 damage would take 4 in the armor, 4 in toughness, 4 in wounds and then take 4 crits to the body part that was hit. It makes better weapons way more dangerous because they will have a better chance for causing critical damage per shot.

We also half toughness against energy and explosive damage. (makes lasguns good against tough stuff and bolters worth it).

The reason we did this was because we get way cooler damage results from attacks. Also If you start taking critical damage it won't stack and end up killing a character form a stray 1 damage going into a previously uninjured limb.

So, if you feel like the book's combat is too soft you can spice it up like we did. We have been doing it like this in our weekly game sessions for almost a year now and never looked back.

If you dont feel that combat is lethal enough, you can have a weapon's AP apply to TB too. It doesn't seem like much at first, but once bolt/plasma/melta weapons come into rotation you'll see the difference. Seems a bit more in keeping with the gritty feel of Dark Heresy. It also streamlines the math you have to do for mooks.

Catachan said:

We did try this houserule I believe, I personally really liked it, but the Players disagreed. They had an issue with a laspistol killing them in 1 shot to the leg, I didn't personally, it felt a bit more dangerous to me but :S

I have a problem in the same way one of my players is a Arbitrator with a TB of 4, 16 wounds, True Grit, Hardy, and always run arounnd in armour of between 4 and 6 AP.

it is a little rediculus to experience what that means in combat:

the arbitrator gets hit by a plasma blast with called shot in the head at blank point range (damage roll 10+6 penetration: 6) so no armour, minus 4 for TB and the rest to his wounds

other PC: "you should be dead that shot would have evaborised you!"

Arbitrator: "Nah, I am cool is is nothing really, just a scrath (and in three days I am back to ful wounds without psychic or medical assistance)"

It is practically impossibly to hurt him coupled with the fact that has 5 fate points (awarded to all through warious hard missions but the others have burned some of theirs). there is practically nothing I can do short of sending daemons at them around every cornor which isen't funny, and I cannot really balance it course the other players need screen time as well and anything i sent that can hurt the Arbitrator will kill the others at a glanse.

any surggestions other than stop played with the PCs and demand the roll up somenew ones would be very appriciated.

Uthak the primitive screwhead (Guardsman from a Feral World) in my game has the ungodly stats of TB 6, W: 21 with a long list of hard-ass talents. He is almost indestructible, but it gives us a laugh. He's a bit like Jaws from the old James Bond movies. Blow up his house, and he picks himself up from the rubble and brushes off some dust..

Tetragon Tanebrae said:

The problem isn't the character persé, its the plasmagun. Add another D10 damage, remove Recharge, modify Overheats. If the weapon is fired every round Overheats applies, if you wait one round for a 'cooldown' it doesn't.

Now. This will hurt your other players also, ALOT, but hey its a plasmagun! You're supposed to fear these things as the brutal space marine killers that they are. Just keep shooting him in the head.

Tetragon Tanebrae said:

I've yet to pit my players against plasma or melta weaponary ^^ But next session...now that'll be fun

I'm going for an Arena battle, with the players vs a Xenos beats created from the GMs toolkit, with the PCs using an assortment of primitive melee weaponary

Should serve as a reminder that they're not indestructible

cyclocius said:

Good thing you tried it out. For a laspistol to kill you it would have to be with righteous fury, or they all have a toughness of 1 and no armor... lol. You could always arm the enemies with bigger guns... all of a sudden the poor wasteland raiders pull out PLASMA CANNONS! See how they like them apples.

Or you could make it harder to heal wounds, that way they will hate taking wounds even more. Doing this will make it seem like you are trying to intentionally kill their characters, and might upset them.

Catachan said:

Yeah, it's the last part that gets me, the part that makes it seem like I'm out to kill them :S

The Psyker in particular, he's the best roleplayer in the group, the others are all capable, they just don't seem as into it as the Psyker, I try involving them all, and the Psyker comes up with a way out of it etc etc. So, when I directly try to make things hard, or making a few rules clear, he gets a bit...annoyed :/

I've made the heal power cause pain, nothing wound worthy, but RPing pain to represent that someones flesh was just knitted back together abnormally fast, often without regard for broken bones or anything beneath. It's good for a short term fix but after that...

The basic thing yo need to look at is armor+toughness of the PCs vs the pen+dam of the bad guy's weapons. A flak vest and a 4 toughness is 8 soak. Which vs a weapon doing 1d10+ with no pen isn't impressive. Average rolls are ~7-8 damage. On the other hand a 1d10+2 with 2 pen is an average 9-10 damage.

Also consider if the PCs are always able to wander around in full armor, and weapons. Some of the most lethal combat in my games is with compact stub weapons and no armor.....

Now, I dont know what the stats are for Enforcer NPCs in the book ... but unless the damage rolled on the autopistol shots was real good I don't think it should have killed an NPC with a single hit.

I would expect the Enforcers to have some minimal armor, probably flak. They should have a TB of 3 or 4. The Enforcers should also have near 10 Wounds each. So, you're looking at about 3-6 damage negated per hit. Chances of an autopistol doing more than 10 damage pre-reduction are pretty small, so factoring in TB and armor make it even less likely. So, anyway, it's hard to say but I wouldn't expect a single autopistol hit to normally kill anyone (barring fury). Of course, firing full-auto putting multiple hits on a single target that I can believe taking someone out in a single turn.

cyclocius said:

You had very bad luck. Statistically, you would expect to roll every value between 5 and 14 once with 10 shots at 1D10+4 damage each. Versus a soak of 8 (armor 4, TB4) that still leaves 4*0+1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21 damage. Your 9 attacks should have made an average of 18.9 damage, enough to push a low rank Guardsman deep into critical damage. Just to illustrate how much off you were off the expected value.

Chester said:

Ah...that'd be why then, we're all late rank 3, early 4. Meh, he just took down a 7 metre tall space gorilla in an arena. I think he's just a rather lucky player at the moment. The Psykers not, he died (burnt a fate point) and now his arm is just a sausage of ruined flesh and bone hehe.

I had the same thing more or less in my group, until I realized you need to give the NPCs the same options as your PCs have.

I mean; let them use autofire and allout attacks instead of standard attacks as you might expect from minions and lowlevel adversaries. Let them use talents, special weapons, pinning, and nifty equipment, let them dodge and use the critical hits table for them once they reach 0 wounds. And most of all let them think and prepare, and you will go a long way evening out the odds and making combat more intense.

Or have the enemies have a Psycher or Sorceror, and use Compel to turn the players against each other.

Our Psycher went down real quick when the Eviscerator-wielding Guardsman turned it on him ...

Flamers, firebombs, and other things fire. Remember if you are on fire you need to make a will roll to not scream and try to put it out. Also once you are on fire armor doesn't help.