Hello,

I was wondering if any veteran roleplayers of the Dark Heresy world could speculate as to the statistics for a Lord of Change in the Dark Heresy world. I am unsure of how they would convert from a model in the Warhammer Fantasy tabletop game. I do not have the book "Creatures Anathema" so if it is in there I will most likely pick it up. But surely it would have a lot of daemonic powers and warp abilities. I just wanted to see what it could conceivably look like on paper.

Thanks!

Nasty in a word.

There is a lord of change in the WFRP 2E book Tome of Corruption, replace the WFRP 2E specific skills and talents with their DH counter parts, add Daemonic and Unnatural Strength, Willpower and Perception (x2) and watch the PCs die!

Another possibility is waiting for Ascesion, which preview promises rules for Greater Daemons... (ouch)

When in doubt follow this age old GM's rule..

1: Roll Dice

2: Ignore Results

3: Screw over players however you see fit.

Velvetears said:

And if the players find out you're doing that, they'll become less inclined to play, because you're obviously railroading them...

Varnias Tybalt said:

One has mastered the subtle art of railroading when the players think it was all their own idea...

DocIII said:

Perhaps, but I disdain such manipulation. I used to be a pretty manipulative person in the past, but that just made me feel lonely and a lot more arrogant than I am now.

I prefer to make the proper preparations for scenarios but then stick to the rules as often as possible to keep things fair.

Hence my method of going about would be to prepare stats for a Lord of change on beforehand, instead of just arbitrarily fudging dice rolls and their results as I go along. The players (who incidently are my friends as well) desreve to know if I intend to basically throw all the rules out the window from the get go, and it is rather tacky and unfair to keep up the pretence of using dice rolls and a rulebook when you're really just arbitrarily making up the results as you see fit.

A skilled GM doesn't have to use GM veto too often in my opinion. A skilled GM has all the relevant stats and preparations finished before the scenario starts and can with confidence stick to the rules without having to fudge results and railroad the players.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Or not, given that that is the Cthulhu method of huge horrible creatures of death too. Sometimes things just can't be beaten by "mere" humans.

And not having stats is sometimes sensible for a plot-relevent NPC. As soon as you give something stats, the PCs can kill it, and probably will.

Well, that's what npc fate points are for! You can make something "killable" and then still be able to bring it back from the dead if all the PCs did was toss it off a cliff or the like.

oh wow guys, heh not really what I was going for.

I'm not the GM it's actually for my own character. I am playing an Adept with the "The Name I Know" starting package out of the Radicals Handbook. The GM decided to roll a dice for what chaos power the god would be from and the power the demon would have. It turned out Tzeentch and Lord of Change. He told me to come up with a storyline for this Lord of Change to speak to me. He gave me a brief rundown of what it was capable of. He said these things are capable of changing reality. I usually write stories for my characters including background information and things of that nature. So I was thinking that this Lord of Change was conspiring for me to know part of it's name for the last 50 years, since before I was even though to be born. Then I was going to have a series of journal entries explaining the characters thoughts. My particular character is heavy into the Forbidden Lores of course none of the other players in the game know about my character history.

Ahh, fair enough then.

I'd have said a full on Lord of Change would be way beyond the level of daemon generally covered by "Thy Name I Keep", if only because a Lord of Change is severly overpowered compared to anything anyone else can pull out of their hat, but whatever.

Still, since it usually just assists you, and as you said, they can change reality, can you really put stats to that? What does giving it stats achieve that saying "this is the general sort of stuff it can do" won't?

yeah, I understand as far as stats for me it's more of what it could conceivably know. Like if it had Daemonology +30 then I could ask it a question in hopes of getting an answer I can understand. Though, I think the GM said the knowledge familiar would be a seprate entity. Not to say I could not ask something of this Lord of Change directly. At least the GM mentioned this demon has selected me for a reason that is unknown to me.

I would probably depict it via a halucinogenic sequence which inflicts a good portion of insanity points and corruption on the PCs present, leaving whatever the desired result was in the wake of its visitation or conveying information via a soul-rending flash of mental contact. Likewise for major (possibly) unaligned daemons such as the Radiant King.

Otherwise, it might simply send a relatively minor incarnation of itself, in the form of a rather nasty unbound daemonhost.

Hodgepodge said:

hey, I like that! that is a great idea!

MILLANDSON said:

The Imperial Guard consists of "mere humans" and they kill greater daemons all the time (at least in the table top game). Sure they usually use the assistance of psykers, several thousand of lasgun shots and probably the odd ordnance weapon here or there. But through cooperation and the use of heavy weapons, "mere humans" CAN KILL greater daemons, and this includes Lords of Change.

As for the Cthulhu method, I have the rulebook for Call of Cthulhu and even Cthulhu himself has stats in that book. Sure the stats are ridiculously high and he'd probably be impossible to kill with weapons of the 1920's (save for the repeated barrage of an armada of battleships perhaps), but he still has stats.

MILLANDSON said:

If they do that then I don't ee any harm in it. Intentionally refusing to give certain NPC's their own statsjust to keep them "immortal" smells too much of railroading in my opinion. Read through every pre written cenario that FFG ha released. Pretty much every plot-relevant NPC has their stats described and there's nothing stopping the players from shooting those NPC' in the head as soon as they see them. It's their choice to make, not the gamemaster's...

Varnias Tybalt said:

CoC isn't the only Cthulhu game out there. I know Trails of Cthulhu has no stats for him, because, as with many of the more important figures in the Cthulhu Mythos, there is no way to kill him/them. They transcend the petty human understanding of "life and death".

And as a GM I'd ignore the stats for Cthulhu and the other Elder Gods, etc, in CoC, because they are plot points, not characters (in the same way that a Lord of Change would really be a plot point), and as such can't be killed by normal means.

Plus, tabletop game=/= roleplay game. They have to allow Greater Daemons to die in the tabletop game, same as how the C'tan can die in the tabletop game. I'd still not give them stats in the roleplay game though, as they are pretty much as close to minor gods as you can get.

MILLANDSON said:

C'Tan are actual gods. Greater Daemons are just that, daemons, not gods. If Khorne himself decided to enter the battlefield it would be a different story, but a bloodthirster of khorne is not a god or even a minor god, just a really powerful warp manifestation.

I don't agree that greater daemons has to serves as plot points rather than characters. Evil masterminds with fate points or perhaps servants of even more powerful and evil masterminds perhaps, but not unkillable demi-gods.

Though considering the stats I'd give any greater daemon, the only viable tactic to actually "stop" such a thing would be the traditional "shoggoth approach". (hope to god that the monster in question is hiding in a cave, bring lots of explosives, light the fuse and hope that the collapsed cave/mine is able to keep the monster trapped forever)

Well, the C'tan call themselves gods, but they are just incredibly powerful beings. Of course, to an average person, any sufficiently advanced or powerful being would appear to be a god, just look at the Emperor for that.

MILLANDSON said:

But then you gotta ask yourself: what is a god? If we're talking about an immensly powerful being calling itself a god, and everyone else beholding it call it a god as well then is it a god or is it just a powerful being suffering from pretentiousness?

At least with chaos, the distinction is clear. Bloodthirsters, Keepers of Secrets, Lords of Change and Great Unclean Ones are all just labeled "greater daemons". Their "lesser" counterparts are considered to be Bloodletters, Daemonettes, Horrors and Plaguebearers. The gods however go under the names Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle.

WIth the C'Tan there is no middleground. They call themselves gods, so do their servants and even their enemies (even if their enemies don't really believe them to be gods).

Ahhh, but there are ranks of power amidst the Greater Daemons and some of them have been / are being / will be worshipped as gods...

Once upon a time, the C'Tan were just big star-eating jellyfish.

From what I've read, the C'Tan do vary in raw power. The Nightbringer is depicted as unable to safely face other C'Tan in direct combat, but by far the most clever. The Void Dragon, if I remember correctly, is said to be unusually powerful amoung the remaining C'Tan.

Although it is rarely mentioned in 40k, there is occasionally reference to daemons powerful enough to be considered lesser Gods of Chaos. Considering that the Warp had birthed Gods before the four, it certainly could again.

Of course, the Emperor, who was and perhaps still is more powerful than any other known deity, did not consider any of these beings (or himself) divine. It is simply a mortal term, and the sense we use it in is actually very acculturated to post-Enlightenment interpretations of Christianity. I suppose the fastest way to put it would be that our word "divine" reflects what we think of when we use the term god, whereas most polytheistic or even monolaterialist cultures used their parallel terms to denote one or more class of what we would call spirits.

Theologically god or God supposedly has one or more of the following characteristics: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.

If this theological viewpoint is used then there are very few or no gods at all in 40k universe. One could make arguments about possible omnipresence on powerfull warp-beings or omniscience of the Emperors will, but all other qualifiers are right out.

I don't think GM should be forced to make stats to every powerfull creature in the game because in some cases we are getting close to "natural phenomena" category of things... Even though things like stopping a tornado or completely obliterating (and I really mean Deathstar-obliterating) a planet would be possible in 40k, I see no reason to write up "wounds" or "toughness" to Hive Ambulon or F5 level tornado. I don't think players should feel "railroaded" if they can't kill God of Chaos because there is no stats... They don't ask how many wounds Hive Ambulon has either, don't they?

As on original question, I'd still be tempted to build stats to Greater Demons since they are still well within the power levels of DH. Okay, maybe at the extreme upper end, but still within the power levels.

I'm surprised that no mentioned the other time a god shows up in the TT and that's the Eldar Avatar. Of course it's only a localised, limited, embodiment of Khaine but technically Khaine is there. Now I can't find mention of it on the Internet but I'm fairly sure I remember the C'Tan (as they appear on the TT game) are 'Avatars', which is why you can 'kill' them. So the C'tan in their natural form still might be your giant space jelly-fish.

On a more practical point I was wondering at what point creatures started to get unnatural strength and toughness of x3 or more and kind of thought of a Carnifex as an example. So that might apply to greater Demons (or unnatural stat + deamonic, do they add or multiply?). And with the LoC's legendary magic skills which would directly translate as two powers per turn very high willpower (if not unnatural) and immunitry to perils of the warp. Plus mindbending terror which their doesn't even really seem to be rules for (many lesser creatures already get high ranks of fear).

I am a sucker for including the stats for evything, for completeness sake but really I'm having trouble seeing where I would fit in any tangible contact with a greater demon.

Well in the fluff the only things that seem to take down Lords of Change are Astartes wielding a melee weapon with a name based on the following formula. "Weapon Type" of "Primarch Name". Anything that does not meet the formula of astartes + primarch weapon tends to end up dead in a very messy and painful way.

Thats a pretty good place to start anyway (and most likely end).

llsoth said:

Ha ha.

But the only weapon with that formula I'd trust to take down a Greater Deamon is 'Leman Russ' and 'Battle Tank' and even then I wouldn't give it great odds.