After about a year of playing DH (everyone is on the cusp of or at rank 6), I'm having a (other RPG) deja vu moment.

In the end of our last adventure, we were "kind of" coerced into jumping onto a train fleeing the town we were in. The town was being bombarded by a Chaos Cult's rogue guardsman force with tanks (easier to bombard the town that way.) The only viable exit from town was boarding the train area, which the militia were using to make their final stand against an invading Sisters of Battle force. We end up bribing our way past the militia so we could jump onto the train with the suspected cult members. On our way back to the main Hive of the world we're on, we fully expected to to take down the cult members on the train.

The GM asks for our toughness attributes..... should have known something was going on at that point.

After a few minutes of tactical discussion, the group Cleric (me) and Psyker pass out. The Guardsman and Adept are next followed by the Assassin and the Tech Priest. We attempted to break a window on the train to air out the train car, but it was too late.

Next we have dreams of being on an operating table and having needles poking us.

Here's the Deja Vu moment...

We wake up in a giant gladatorial arena pit with a bunch of random people. No Weapons, No Gear. Just gray Fatigues.

We end up getting out of the pit while protecting the other prisoners and killing off the beasts that get unleashed on us. Now we have improvised weapons for most of us, a few piddling weapons for the rest taken off of a dead arena guard (stub gun, dagger, laspistol.) Our Psyker finds out he has a psychic inhibitor implanted into his skull, our Tech Priest's non-essential systems are offline, and we're walking through a giant metal dungeon...somewhere. Most likely in an underhive based on what we've seen so far.

Needless to say we're in a deep pile of doo-doo.

While the story part of what we're going through is cool. I lament my lost gear and two of our members abilities have been completely negated. The player of the Psyker is ticked off (Lost his force sword and his psychic abilities.)

Does this situation scream "Holy Cliche D&D Adenture Batman" to anyone else?

I'm not knocking the GM too much. He's a great storyteller... Just venting over nerfing of the party.

How does anyone else feel when placed in this cliched situation?

Hey, at least he threw you a small bone and you didn't wake up naked ;-)

I'd prefer my noble ecclesiarchy robes and mesh armor, but thanks for the cheery thought Graver.

Okay. Here's my take on this:

I don't want to knock you for venting. Sometimes, it needs to be done. So don't take this as a reprimand for doing so. It's more of a fresh set of eyes with which to view the situation.

First of all, I want to support the GM's decision here. A player's gear should never become more important than the character themselves, and if you're playing a game with a very high level of gear quality, it may have been the case that the GM felt like that was happening. Especially if any of that gear was acquired unintentionally. In that same vein. There IS an upper limit to how good gear can get. There eventually becomes a point when it isn't really possible to get better gear. If you were approaching that point, the GM may have decided to set the clocks back in order to preserve the hunt for the better weapon which, I think, we all enjoy.

Alternatively, you may not want to consider your gear a lost cause. I can't really say, because I wasn't there, but unless your GM said point blank that your gear is gone, you might still stumble across it. There's more than one reason to deprive your acolytes of their gear. I recently had mine go on a mission to a feral world in which they left behind all their weapons in order to go undercover. It wasn't because I wanted to rob them of their gear, but more because I wanted to see how they operated without the comfort of their eviscerators and hellguns. (And I dressed the Tech-Priest up as a leper, it was awesome.)

Instead of lamenting over the loss of your toys, instead, rejoice in the opportunity to demonstrate the resourcefulness of your characters. It's a classic for a reason. It's a good way of directing focus on a specific type of dynamic, and creating a new and fresh challenge for characters who tend to mow over anything and everything. Have fun with this, its a great opportunity.

Just my two thrones.

P.S.

Unless you're Metallican. Then it is entirely in character for you to be swearing up a storm.

P.P.S.

The GM did not nerf you. You are not your gear. You are just as good as you were before you lost your gear.

Man, most of my players have all shelled out for respirators so that would be much more unlikely to happen to my guys.

Well, I think your GM did fine and not necessarily about taking your gear. One of the most annoying things I think can happen to a group is to get really overconfident. You're fighting dark and powerful forces for the soul of mankind and if the GM doesn't actually make that fight challenging at times then he isn't doing his job. You say that you expected to take the cultists on the train but you can't always make that assumption. I think he handled that well.

Also, what exactly was going on? You said that the town was being attacked by heretics and SoBs at the same time. Why? If it was that the militia were suspected heretics then I'd say you faced a reasonable consequence of trusting them but why weren't the SoBs attacking the heretic tanks? Were they after you?

LOL, ROFL, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Thats Hilarious, In my campaign as soon as I took over from my brother the players ended up "You wake up completely naked on a cold concrete floor, you are bruised and battered, the assasin has a bandage around his arm but is fine and the psykerhas a bandage around his head. Surrounding you is a 3m enclosure of solid stela bars that go from the floor to the roof and behind them is a squad of armed Storm Troopers in Inquistorial purple." Oh and by the way the psyker couldnt use his powers because one of the assasins had been made an untouchable!

Oh and to get them them there I destroyed thier Arvis lighter ( or thier Aquila lander whatever it was ) thier ATV with heavy stubber and their bike with side car - Oh and All thier call gear, Also cos I was previously playing an Arbite his legs got broken and he was removed from play.

They were then escorted naked a short walk through a ship and to a fresh pair of clothes and thier new Inquisitor... Oh and thier previous so called allies were actually the murderers of their former Inquisitor.

Sounds like the exact start of my group's trip through Tattered Fates. We woke up, sans all gear, with a bunch of other semi-naked strangers in a fighting pit just as ravenous beasts are released into the pit.

Fun times, and believe me it was nail-biting (and fun) to try to figure out how to fend off beasts (and later other enemies) using sand and bones and wrenches until we could loot some gear off enemies. We got quite creative at using body parts and equipment as various improvised weapons/armor.

Now we're on a side adventure to claim our gear, which had been sold off to a Dark Eldar pirate. Hell hath no fury like an Acolyte stripped nekkid of his cool toys.

Kas said:

I may be reading this the wrong way, but you certainly seem to be taking a rather excessive amount of delight in depriving your PC's of their gear. That might be the wrong approach to take when handling the game. Making sure the PC's are okay with being deprived of resources is just as important as keeping the balance of power in check.

But hey, if your PC's are happy, to each their own.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, Untouchables are born, not made. You couldn't make someone untouchable any more than you could make them a psyker. (I am not a 40k guru, I could be wrong here.)

dvang said:

It does sound rather familiar. In fact I'd bet money on your GM having sneakily inserted you into Tattered Fates. Which means that being stripped of your gear and thrown into a pit shall soon be the least of your worries. Having read the scenario myself I'd advise you not to worry about the cliché nature of the circumstances/nerfing of the group. With any luck you'll be in for a good time.

The Boy Named Crow said:

Spook? ;-)

Yeah, this looks like the default intro to Tattered Fates. It's also completely acceptable under any circumstances. He is not picking on the players or bullying them. He is presenting them with a challenge - can you get out of this situation without all your fancy toys? The idea is to strive to overcome the odds, not whine about it.

The Boy Named Crow said:

A sculptor might be able to make a decent statue using a sharp rock, but he won't be able to create nearly as intricate a piece as if he had precision tools.

A sculptor will also have serious difficulty, if not near-impossibilitiy, creating his works if he has his arms and legs removed at the shoulder/hip.

Similarly, when your job is dealing death (as it is, at least to some extent, for most given acolyte cells), that one can still kill doesn't mean one will still be as efficient at the process. When it comes to dealing death, precision and potency ARE an aspect of what makes you good, and both skill AND tool quality are going to contribute to that. A psyker who can't use his powers, though? That's not just taking away the best tools, that's taking away someone's limbs and throwing them into the deep end of the pool - I play a psyker, and I know I'd be seriously frustrated to have a character whose primary focus was arbitrarily snuffed.

Part of playing the game is, in fact, gathering the tools of the trade for your character. Yes, one's items should not define a character... but neither should the raw skills, talents, and physical and mental characteristics. A high strength or a skill with a blade in each hand is merely another tool of the character, one that takes a bit more effort to separate from the Character him/herself. If any of the character had woken in the pit with both legs amputated, would they still not be nerfed? What if the adept was given a lobotomy? Still not nerfed? What if the Metallican Gunslinger had both hands removed?

Taking away the acolyte's items (and especially abilities, like a Psyker's powers or a Techpriest's augments) is a powerful GM tool, but one that should be used carefully and with more purpose behind it than "Because I said so." The point should be to advance the story in a way that will make that adventure fun, exciting, and enjoyable. Its not a tool that should NEVER be used, but anyone using it should be aware of the sorts of frustrations it can cause.

If I were to condense this down to something legible and intelligible, I'd say this:

If you're going to take toys away, do so in a way the players will still have fun the way THEY want to have fun. Doing so arbitrarily should be practiced with caution.

A4 - In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords, goes down in game-group history as (one of) the biggest arsehole acts

Yup, sounds like Tattered Fates. Enjoy the ride .

The Boy Named Crow said:

The Boy Named Crow said:

Not entirely but it was fun to see how they handled it in and out of game...

It wasnt actually to establish a balance it was simply for RP value and to establish myself as the new GM of the campaign, but I also returned much of their stuff but they still are missing quite alot of things.

Actually he was made an Untouchable because of heavy experiments he went through... Leeway with the rules you know. It has added tension between my Psyker and the assasin as it was meant to. cos he has to stay 3m away from the assasin at all times to use his powers, my brothers play both the characters so the assasin is always trying to hug the psyker, its so hilarious.

Graver said:

Okay. Point.

Still, I am unaware of any instances of Untouchables being artificially created. The closest thing I can think of would be having some kind of psy-dampener implanted in them to negate powers around them.

Usual Suspect,

I don't disagree on any particular point. In fact, your concluding point is pretty much a version of the same thing I say all the time, which is that the first and foremost duty of any GM is to make sure his players are having fun. Before anything else.

That comment was more of an afterthought than anything else. Consider me corrected.

EDIT:

Kas,

Ah. Gotcha. I am fully in favor of bending the rules to suit your needs.

macd21 said:

I'm getting that impression that we're in tattered fates.

I DM'd D&D for many years and intentionally avoided taking the PC's gear away from them and putting them in a pit because it's a tired and overdone ploy. Funny enough, finding out that it's an adventure put out by FFG takes some of my frustration off of my GM. At least he's not the one that came up with the lame idea to hook us into the adventure.

All his prior adventures were self made and were pretty darn good. I thought he'd lost his touch.

Thanks for the info.

The Boy Named Crow said:

Anyway, I'm really not lamenting over me being nerfed. I'm really tied up in my skills. It's hard to nerf me unless you start applying -30 mods to all my social skill rolls. Putting an inhibitor on the psyker and deactivating the Tech priests toys is mainly what I consider nerfing.

Obviously, we can get new equipment. I still miss my cool old stuff though.

Actually, upon rereading your post I have to say something about that Psychic inhibitor. TF takes away Psychic powers with drugs, and I say that's fine. However, giving an implant is a bad idea I say. The Guardsman is back to his own self once he gets some armor to wear and some guns to shoot but the Psyker could have to wait weeks for proper invasive cranial surgery to take the thing out. That has to be annoying for the player.

numb3rc said:

The Hobo Hunter said:

Hilarious? The OP's psyker's player doesn't seem terribly amused, nor would I if my psyker were in the same situation.

A player's character need not be the star of every encounter, but being a downright hindrance for several weeks of gametime is a bit overmuch.

Actually, we don't know for sure if it was a surgical implant, although he has taken damage while trying to cast and we did have dreams of surgery occurring while we were out cold after the train incident.

The inhibitor is mainly our inference.

Also, we found a dagger that makes the Psyker feel queasy when it gets near him. After studying it all we've been able to determine is that it's a best quality mono-dagger.

Anyway, we're barely into the adventure. I really hope we find some ways to get our abilities and equipment back.

If this is tattered fates, forgive me if I stop looking at the thread. My GM has mentioned a very keen interest in running Tattered Fates, and I fear I've already heard too much...

My poor Psyker...

Unusualsuspect said:

Giving people everything they want isn't going to be giving them the best game. Sometimes horrible things happen. That you don't want them to be happening heightens the tension and gives you the drive to combat them. The beginning of Tattered Fates takes acolytes out of their comfort zone and dumps them neck deep in trouble. Unusual circumstances and having everything they relied on yanked out from underneath them heightens the sense of danger and forces them to adapt to their situation. I'm **** sure that if/when I pull these events on my players they won't be happy, but I'd bet money on them enjoying what follows. I won't spoil the adventure but, while it is a traditional **** move to rob a group of their resources, it works well in this case.