So, my gaming group just started playing DH, and we are two sessions in. We have a total of 6 characters, and are all still Level 2 characters. We have starting gear, with a few upgrades (most everyone has a flak vest, we have about 3 flak grenades, but mostly we have pistols, lasguns, autoguns, with mostly standard ammo).

With that in mind, my dilemma relates to trying to figure out if the risk/reward ratio that our GM is using is appropriate, or needs a gentle prod to be "rebalanced"

In our second adventure, we played for a total of 7 hours. The first 2 hours or so were spent trying to get information from an Adeptus Terra Adept, a Commisar, and a AdMech Magos, all of whom were unhappy with the others. We ended up getting the info we needed, and ended up in an active war zone. We had to fight through about 15 generic heretic scum with autoguns, and a sandbagged heavy stubber. We took some damage, but noone was into critical yet. We then had to storm a building with 4 more cultists (who all died from a flamer stuck through a window) and then 4 mutants, each with about 17 wounds. At this point, my Guardsman was into critical damage, and our assassin was 1 point away. We finally broke into the datacrypt we were after, only to happen upon the demon with a toughness bonus of 10. Half the party went into shock, and it was only amazing dice rolls from a 9 round hit with the an autogun and 2 handcannon shots with damage rolls of 10(from the adept, no less!) that put the thing down.

After 7 hours, 3 characters in critical damage range, and several corruption and insanity points later, we each got about 300xp.

As this system doesn't have a "threat rating" system, or "monster levels", its hard to really get an idea how balanced this scenario was. Certainly, the group was very close to losing multiple characters, and the non-wounded characters all accrued insanity or corruption, and were shocked enough to be mostly combat ineffective. I like a good, tight challenge, but this felt like the risk:reward ratio was too weighted to risk.

Thoughts from the community? Should I gently say something (notably, this is a friend with a PhD whom I have been playing games with for 19 years), or is this a relatively balanced thing that my group is just not used to yet for this rules system?

Thanks in advance!

Having not been in attendance of the game in question it is hard to give you a definitive answer here. Having a few of the heavy-hitters on your team battered and bloody at the end of a mission is not that uncommon in my experience, and at least once per mission one or more of the characters will have an "I am SO dead!" moment. My sessions run very long since we only manage to fit in 1-2 games per month due to conflicting work and school schedules and I don't really use the 200xp/4 hour ratio; I calculate xp in a more organic method that mashes together threats encountered, information obtained, objectives met, mysteries discovered, awesome roleplay, clever ideas and so on. Then I tack on a little bit of bonus xp if certain players really went above and beyond to make the game a better experience.

Given your description of the game you played (not a complete picture) which sounds like mostly just a series of combats I would have probably issued between 300-500xp. Have some faith in your GM. He is the one working hard to put together fun games for your group and it is rather time consuming to do a good job of this. Combat against hive-scum can be fairly predictable and not that special unless it is driving the story forward since it simply proves what we all already know: Inquisition field teams kick major butt! Kicking the snot out of a hive gang that deliberately attacked, interrogating the leader and revealing who hired the gang hit and then moving on to gather intelligence on the villain who arranged all this... Now THAT is more meaty as adventures go, at least from an Inquisition angle.

Talk to your GM. I don't know if the game was "imbalanced" or not (I personally don't even try to balance the game and wouldn't know where to begin as I'm of the opinion that it's a cold dark universe and life will more often be short and full of suck as opposed to fair and winnable, but that's just me). What I do know is role-playing is a communal effort and a good story needs a good GM who knows what the players will enjoy and players who know what the GM's goals and aims are with a story/game and are willing to assist the GM in this. This means communication between both players and GM is essential.

I always end my sessions by getting some feedback from my players, what they enjoyed that session and why, what they didn't like and why, and what they'd like to see in the next session. This helps me insure I give the players the game they want to play and we focus on things that we all like as opposed to me forging on blindly while my players silently play on in a game they don't care much for.

So, talk to your GM. Don't whine at him or her, don't ***** at him or her, and don't gripe and moan about him or her. Just talk to your GM and let him or her know your concerns, but also let him or her know what was most fun for you during the game so they have a better idea on what direction the game needs to go to insure everyone has as much fun as they can. Granted, the GM probably won't do everything exactly how you want, it's always a compromise as there's many other things a GM has to consider (not the least of which is their own fun, the fun of the other players as well, as well as keeping a long view of the story), but any GM worth their salt listens to his or her players as their first concern is running a fun game for all involved.

As already said: such things are hard to judge if you haven´t been there.

But even with all the damage any mayhem, I would say 300xp is quiet alright.

You were into a fight in a warzone. A combat heavy mission in it´s own right. This means there will be blood. Yea, this guys head lots of wounds (the mutants), but this alone isn´t making a challenging opponent.

Daemons are feisty, for sure... perhaps you should talk to him about that. A smaller one would have been good as well. But in the end, you got 300xp.

In my last session, (me = GM) my group where on Dusk on their way to a village. They were attacked at night by packhunting giant skorpion creatures; at the village, a sniper open up fire on them and they had to fight a bunch of mutants double there number, one of them a tough little beast. Six hours of game and they got...

[30 xp] for the encounter with a bunch of pack-hunting giant scorpions after midnight
[30 xp] for beating the mutant marauders in the village
[30xp] since they where mindfull enough to capture one of them alive for interrogation
[40xp] since they mad sense of some runes encarved in the church that was site of a slaughter (some corruption points here for study of the runes)
[50xp] because they gave really good roleplaying scences

=============================================================================================================
In my books, you might have ended up with

[30xp] for getting the information at the start of the adventure
[50xp] for the first frontline battle (heavy stubber nest included)
[50xp] for the storm of the house with the four cultist and the mutants
[30xp] again for breaking into the datacrypt (if this was a real challenge, it might have been more)
[80xp] for the demon, he seemed to be tough
[100xp] as "bonus" for having the mission accomplished (aehm..what was your mission??)

totals into 210xp. perhaps 250, I know nothing about this daemon besides his hi Tougnhess score.
In addtion, I tend to give between 20xp and 50xp per session for roleplay.

Monospot said:

I would agree that 300 xp is a bit cheap, because as recommended abstract method in the rulebook, PC's are usually awarded 200 xp för each four hours of gameplay. If you played for 7 hours (in real world time that is) then you should at least get 400 xp each (since it's nearly 8 hours of gameplay time).

Of course, the GM is by no means forced to use this abstract method and my dictate the exact amount of xp awarded and this is something that you as a player will have to respect. Remember, the harder the xp are to get, the more you will treasure them.

Also, remember that Dark Hersy isn't a game where you get xp for each "bad guy" you kill (a la World of Warcraft), but XP awards are mostly based on roleplaying efforts and cunning and inovative ways of solving problems and using your skills. From the sound of it, it sounds like your characters mostly shot their way through most of the scenario. Not that im trying to complain of your efforts or anything, by an chump can point a firearm and pull the trigger until their enemies goes down. It's not a lot of roleplaying involved when shooting things, nor is it a particularly cunning approach to problem solution.

For all we know, your GM might not even had the intention for you to shoot your way through your adversaries. The reason why you managed to kill them all might have been because you were a rather large group (6 player characters, even low level ones, can be quite deadly combatants if they use the correct tactics during combat), but your GM might wanted to see if you would take more creative solutions to getting past these heretics rather than just shooting your way past them. And such creative solutions might have awarded you more xp.

Anyhow, as for threat rating, the setting is the grimdark and deadly future of the 41st millenium. The GM shouldn't feel too obligated to scale the threats according to the player group. If you feel that it is "unfair" to be assaulted by a mob of charnel daemons, then consider that life is rarely fair at all. Especially not in the 41st millenium. Also remember that sometimes you have to run away from a fight in order to complete a mission. A group of dead acolytes who thought it would be "valiant" to fight a last stand against overwhelming odds haven't gained the Inquisition anything at all.

If the adversaries seem to powerful, and you notice that you have to spend and burn fatepoints like they were candy, then perhaps a tactical retreat might be prudent. If the GM decides to punish you for retreating during overwhelming odds, then you might consider having a debate about the threats your PC's were pitted against.

If he's pitting you against a greater daemon of Khorne, and only let you use cardboard armour and spoons for weapons then it's safe to assume that your odds aren't just "unfavorable", they are flat out impossible. If you get punished for running away when it might be necessary to do so to stay alive, then you might need to ask your GM why he's trying to kill off your characters.

An overwhelming sense of risk of dying is necessary for this kind of setting, and some characters dying from time to time might not always be a "bad" thing. But when it is fairly obvious that the Gm is trying to kill all of your characters, it goes to question if the GM actually wants to play at all. Without PC's there's not much playing to be done after all...

One question: why were you alone? If this was a warzone and you were chatting up a magos and a commissar then the option might have been there to get some backup, like some Guard or Skitarii. Sure, they'd be meatshields and would probably literally get eaten by the daemon, but they'd take the brunt of the shooting so you don't have to. If the option's there and you don't expect to face much mind-warping stuff I think it's always good to try and see if you can get a few npcs to accompany you if you know you're heading into major combat. An Acolyte's job isn't to get shot when someone else could.

The xp amount seems about right to me. I tend to give xp based on results rather than time played.

There was a lot of combat in that session. What does the group have in the way of healing abilities? A psyker, or anyone with the medicae skill? The amount of healing available to a group radically changes the difficulty of combat encounters. I'm assuming your group has little to none.

I'd say that overall this session was a little too tough for your group, but not too much. You did after all succeed without losing any of your team.

macd21 said:

It does sound like the situation was tough. But as a general rule of thumb, the exact "toughness" of any battle can largely be determined how many fate points the PC's had going in, and how many fate points had to be used and/or burned during the encounter.

If every character had to burn one or several fate points in order to avoid certain death, then perhaps the battle was a little too rough for the particular group of acolytes to handle. If the group only had to use a few fate points (like 1-2 in the most extreme cases, and some not having to use any fate points at all), then the situation wasn't too tough.

Fate points are a really good measuring stick for this, most of the time.

Graver said:

I've been trying to do this for years, but it seems that I keep getting players, who when asked to give feedback on the game and how its going they just go "oh its great" or something similar. Then months later I find out they've been griping and seething when I'm not around usually over some little point I would have gladly altered had I know there was an issue. Getting feedback from players has been like pulling teeth for me.

As a player in a DH game, also having had the character at 0 wounds, 1 fate point left, and still a whole room or two of baddies to go, I'd have to say you might be...laying it on a little thick? 300 xp is by no means a small amount , depending on how far along the career tracks your character/s is/are. When it's only 1k between rank ups, that's a pretty heavy sum. Even now, with my character breaking 7K (I think, don't have my sheet available atm) that's a beefy chunk of XP to be spending on upgrades.

I'd ask you what did you think was wrong?

• If it was the xp then ask the GM what method he is using. Some GM award xp at a set rate that even applies to players not at the session. Put it this way. You got 3 advances out of that mission. Fair? (Personally 300-400 seems about right, I use the ~200xp per 4 hours rule of thumb)
• If it was the level of the opposition then well. How were the players at the end of it? How many fate points burnt? From the sound of it it was hard but fair in that you all survived. If it had been a case that all players burnt a fate point & some two then it would have been too hard.

If you enjoyed it then nothing to worry about! However I do understand about the old reward in seeing you character grow. What I'll I would suggest is speak to your GM about how the campaign will develop with the characters. He may have a idea to share with you, he may have an idea he cannot share with you, he may have no clue or may ask you how you'd like you character to advance. Communication is the key.

Whether you have 200, 300 or 500XP won't make too much of a difference.
If your GM says you got 200XP then that's what's appropriate for the power curve he wants the campaign to progress at.

I've had a GM give 1000 XP a session in DH (the campaign died out after 3rd or 4th session due to unrelated circumstances, though). That meant that we were quickly growing more than competent in skills and going from zero to hero in no time at all.
It was almost unsatisfying to advance so quickly as one never thought: "Dang, I need Y XP to progress to the next rank and get this Skill/Talent I've been waiting for for the last Z sessions."

As for springing a daemon on you... depends on how he did it.
If you had no warning and it was essentially a random encounter, I blame bad storytelling.
If you had warning and/or there's a plot to uncover relating to it, then that's great.
If you had warning, though, I'm wondering where that Heavy Weapon Support Team and horde of guardsmen you surely took control of from the IG/PDF/whatever to go face it?

I minor point I think should be made, the system does have a threat rating. It's abstract, but it exists.

Each adversary has a two word threat rating. The first word is the type of threat (xeno, malleus, hereticus, obscura) and the second is the level of threat (minimous, minoris, major, extrema, terminus).

The descriptions of the threats are a bit hard to interpret. For example threat level minoris means a minor threat to the PLANET not to an individual. Moreover the type of threat, and the circumstances can change the difficulty greatly. Making a balanced encounter can be a bit of challenge, and even if you do the dice might not go as you expect.

A 7 hour session that ended in seriously injured (but not dead, and without burning fate point?), plus IP and CP doesn't sound very unbalanced. Challenging, yes, but that's what makes this fun.

If the issue is the exp awarded I'll echo everyone else: talk to your GM. and add this: don't whine, don't demand. Ask how what method (s)he used for exp, express your opinion politely, then accept the GMs decision and move on.