Jargal made a good case for acolytes not being meant to fight serious menaces like daemons themselves. OK some players might like beating a daemon for those big XP awards but yeah, others might think it's more important to warn local authorities about a major menace.

So how do you go about calling in the cavalry if you find something that takes a lot of power to deal with?

Adeptus arbites are an obvious first choice. Especially if dealing with normal heretical filth or even xenos. With flamers they might deal with minor daemonic issues. Same with local PDF. But if you call them in to deal with even minor daemonic issues they may all end up being killed for security reasons.

With daemons, a force of adeptus soritas might be a good choice.

I'm not talking about using influences to bring in someone, BTW, I mean alerting local authorities to do their jobs. Any ideas on that?

I'm not sure I understand.

You're not talking about using the reinforcement system for exactly what it's for?

Regardless if you really want to warn a local Adeptus of a threat they need to deal with you'll need to show that you're Inquisitorial agents so they don't laugh you out or lock you up in a cell for spouting heresy. Which would at the very least be a major hit on Subtlety.

For my campaign, it depends on how they approach things. If they just go into a precinct office and say "Hey, there's bad things happening over there; thought you should know", it's going to depend on how credible their story is to whomever they speak to. Like ThenDoctor said, they might get laughed at or locked up; and even if they are believed, they might then get cut out of the rest of the investigation.

On the other hand; if they can bring to bear some proof of whom they work for and go into the precinct office and say "Hey, we need 100 of your grunts placed directly under our command for an operation which we are not at liberty to discuss further", then they're definitely going to need to make an influence roll.

Ok, to be clearer: what I'm asking about it not about requisitioning a SoB, space marine or even a grey knight. This is about the players contacting the Chief adeptus arbites and saying something like "In 18 hours at the beginning of the feast of the emperor's ascension, 10,000 chaos cultists will commit a mass suicide rite in the depths of the under hive, where they are already gathering. This ritual will allow creatures from the warp to enter their bodies, possess them and create a daemon army that will, in a blasphemous mockery of the feast of the emperor's ascension, devour this hive and every living soul in it. You need to Marshall a force to go in their and kill most of them before this can happen right emperor damned now."

One trope in gaming is the kill point meme. The big baddie has a kill point you have to put a shot into to save the day. The (autocensor won't let me say the word) in smaug's armor, the death star's thermal exhaust port, the one charismatic cult leader with the bullseye on his forehead. That kill point meme has a long white beard. I wanted to change it. By the time the acolytes get involved the big baddie has grown beyond having a kill point. The plot is in motion and ten thousand cultists are already committed to it. Even killing the hierophants of the cult won't stop it now. All that will is killing several thousand culters before the appointed time, period. The players cannot do it. Only a massive amount of force will. The players win by getting that force to mobilize and act. The characters get to watch the fireworks, and possibly go thru the ashes and collect any nasty relics that shouldn't be left laying around.

I kinda wanna break the kill point meme here. Try something different.

I imagine now a party that fabricates evidence of the presence of a heretical cult by committing murders that look like ritual, because they don't have enough real evidence or authority to command local forces... grimdark, yes.

That's an excellent point Jargal. I have to remember it. Good call.

On 10/16/2017 at 2:47 AM, Jargal said:

I imagine now a party that fabricates evidence of the presence of a heretical cult by committing murders that look like ritual, because they don't have enough real evidence or authority to command local forces... grimdark, yes.

Hey jargal, while you served up a great plate of 40k grimdark with this idea, let me add a little special 40k sauce to it. A priest working with the players knows they are right but knows that the arbites are hard to convince, so he offers up his own congregation to be killed in order to provide proof to help the players convince the arbites. Maybe he has a small temple with a small congregation of the poor, elderly, orphans, etc and he offers them up to the players. Maybe he even has a stock of "emperor's mercy" on hand he mixes into a batch of communion wine he passes around to his flock to make grotesquely mutilating their bodies easier for the players and desecrates his own temple to spare the players the sin of doing so.

But in then end the faithful congregation was spared the horror of being devoured by daemons, their deaths served to defeat evil and they died in grace. That's grimdark a'la 40k!