Hello everyone, I just finished writing up my first Dark Heresy supplement, Humanity's Shield. It includes new Abhuman homeworlds, regimental backgrounds, alternate ranks, and equipment. I always love to get feedback, so let me know what you think! I will say that this guide is meant to be powerful, largely due to the power jump that occurred with the last official Dark Heresy supplements and a desire to make my options be on par with them. Thanks for the interest and happy gaming!

Humanity's Shield

-Lodge Blackman

Impressive work! I just have skimmed the text so I'm not ready to make any detailed comments, but why do you have listed Multilaser as a new weapon? It's in the Inquisitor's Handbook, p.173 (Heavy, 250m, -/-/10, 3d10+3E, Pen 4, Clip 60, Reload 3Full, 50 kg* (* without power backpack), cost 2000, Scarce).

Interesting, Only War was originally supposed to be a Dark Heresy supplement.

Jargal, I totally missed that in the Inquisitor's Handbook. I'll take that out in the next revision! Thanks for the feedback!

ThenDoctor, it was, and it was a really useful guideline, I tried to stay as true to it as was possible.

What do you all think of the homeworlds and backgrounds? I'm worried they might be too powerful in comparison to some of the others.

9 hours ago, LodgeBlackman99 said:

What do you all think of the homeworlds and backgrounds?

Ogryn and Ratling homeworlds look a bit underpowered compared to Only War "Shield of Humanity" versions. Backgrounds, on the other hand, are very powerful. Most backgrounds from official books give you 2 Skills and 1 Talent, sometime Characteristic bonus in exchange for Insanity or Corruption. Your version with 4-5 Skills and 2 Talents are at the level of Class Starting Packages.

Now reading Alternate Ranks and I think that +10 and +20 skill advances for 100 XP are too cheap. Look at official Alternate Ranks, +10 and +20 are at 200 or 300 XP category usually.

Thanks for the feedback Jargal. That was a good catch on the backgrounds, I think I was mentally balancing them against Proven Innocent (BoJ 39) and Thy Name I Keep (RH 37), which give a total of +27 attribute points and a wound for 100XP and a skill, two talents and potentially every Lore skill in the game trained for 400XP respectively, but those are outliers. I'm thinking of changing it to 200 XP per package, Skills (Choose Two), and Talents(Choose One), removing everything but cosmetic gear additions, and adding 1d5 insanity to represent the horrors of war. That brings it in line with the Hive Gang Member background in The Book of Judgement (page 38). I may also add in that skills not selected during character creation may be purchased later for 100XP, and Talents may be purchased later for 200 XP regardless of class selected. Think that would balance out better?

The Alternate Ranks are actually based off the pricing in Daemon Hunter, The Book of Judgement, and The Lathe Worlds, if you look those Alternate Ranks have skills priced at 100 for the most part, and this guide is basically designed to give a bit of the same to classes other than Tech Priest (since The Lathe Worlds did give them such a huge power boost).

Thank you again for the feedback! I really appreciate the help going over the guides. Let me know if anything else jumps out as a glaring problem.

-Lodge Blackman

Both Proven Innocent and Thy Name I Keep have serious drawbacks that compensate their overpowerness. And The Lathe Worlds and, especially, Book of Judgement are criticised by many for imbalance, I prefer to be closer to Inquisitor's Handbook with power of additional character options. Good examples of war backgrounds are, IMHO, Soldier of Margin Crusade and Tranch War Veteran from IH.

BTW, I think you forgot to convert OW Felling (4) of Triplex burst mode to DH Felling (1). Also Trade (Armourer) tests in DH are more difficult (IH, p.240, table 9-4) than in OW.

I doubt converting to DH1 is a good idea when post-BC has greater flexibility and only needs a fix for burst attacks, but…

IMO "Non-Imperial" should not always apply. There are different worlds, and as Guardsmen a lot of them should be indoctrinated or otherwise more compatible than "wild" tribes. Then there are e.g. Ogryn prison guards or dockhands - Emperor-fearing, trained for something, but not trained with Ripper gun.

On 28.04.2017 at 11:56 AM, Jargal said:

Ogryn and Ratling homeworlds look a bit underpowered compared to Only War "Shield of Humanity" versions. Backgrounds, on the other hand, are very powerful. Most backgrounds from official books give you 2 Skills and 1 Talent, sometime Characteristic bonus in exchange for Insanity or Corruption. Your version with 4-5 Skills and 2 Talents are at the level of Class Starting Packages.

Perhaps it's better to split background packages between variant home worlds (Survival, most Common Lore, etc) and separate advancement package (Weapon Training, etc) - "Recruit Training" or better "Regiment Training: [regiment]" (they have specific tweaks, especially Training Doctrines). With variable XP costs balancing more/cool options. This leaves background package for greater variety. And can fix Ratling's and Squat's starting advancements/kits, too.

On 4/30/2017 at 5:52 AM, Jargal said:

Both Proven Innocent and Thy Name I Keep have serious drawbacks that compensate their overpowerness. And The Lathe Worlds and, especially, Book of Judgement are criticised by many for imbalance, I prefer to be closer to Inquisitor's Handbook with power of additional character options. Good examples of war backgrounds are, IMHO, Soldier of Margin Crusade and Tranch War Veteran from IH.

Unbalanced or not, I wanted this guide to be on par with those books and provide a bit more powerful options for the players like the last releases for the system. With that in mind do you think it stacks up to about the same power level as The Lathe Worlds and Book of Judgement?

I'm definitely going to change the Backgrounds a bit, and don't forget that the Homeworlds selected don't include the Background Packages, which can grant you a lot more flexibility. Additionally they're a bit lower-key because Only War has a much higher starting power level than Dark Heresy does, so I was trying to balance them with the other Dark Heresy starting worlds.

On 4/30/2017 at 5:59 AM, Jargal said:

BTW, I think you forgot to convert OW Felling (4) of Triplex burst mode to DH Felling (1). Also Trade (Armourer) tests in DH are more difficult (IH, p.240, table 9-4) than in OW.

D'oh, I totally did. Good catch! And why does the difficulty of Trade (Armourer) Tests matter? For the minor tweaks for Customization keeping the difficulty the same as it is in Only War seems to be a good baseline, and I'm trying to make it so that the Guardsmen can do it themselves without having to rely on a Tech-Priest too much.

On 5/3/2017 at 11:50 AM, TBeholder said:

I doubt converting to DH1 is a good idea when post-BC has greater flexibility and only needs a fix for burst attacks, but…

IMO "Non-Imperial" should not always apply. There are different worlds, and as Guardsmen a lot of them should be indoctrinated or otherwise more compatible than "wild" tribes. Then there are e.g. Ogryn prison guards or dockhands - Emperor-fearing, trained for something, but not trained with Ripper gun.

Perhaps it's better to split background packages between variant home worlds (Survival, most Common Lore, etc) and separate advancement package (Weapon Training, etc) - "Recruit Training" or better "Regiment Training: [regiment]" (they have specific tweaks, especially Training Doctrines). With variable XP costs balancing more/cool options. This leaves background package for greater variety. And can fix Ratling's and Squat's starting advancements/kits, too.

In my experience the Alternate Ranks provide more flexibility for less XP cost, and allows for easier entry into the system as new players don't have to reference so many different tables when creating their characters. I also like that Dark Heresy 1E, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch all work on the (roughly) same power scale and can be integrated with each other. It's more of a preference thing than anything else at the end of the day, but mathematically there's more flexibility in the Rank system.

Non-Imperial can be purchased away with the "One of the Masses" Elite Advance on page 27. Without that it's meant to reflect that the Abhumans have a slightly different outlook on society than their Imperial Counterparts. You're right about the acclimatization though, I'm going to add in that at the GM's discretion that it can be taken for no cost at Character Creation.

Thanks so much for the feedback! I just finished the revisions and going to upload the revised draft in a few minutes. Let me know if anything else jumps out!

-Lodge Blackman.

8 minutes ago, LodgeBlackman99 said:

With that in mind do you think it stacks up to about the same power level as The Lathe Worlds and Book of Judgement?

I'm definitely going to change the Backgrounds a bit

Well, even in unmodified version it isn't broken, just little overpowered for my personal tastes, so in general everything is fine.