Woke Up With No Weapons in a Dungeon...has this ever happened to you?

By LeBlanc13, in Dark Heresy

Posted at

LeBlanc13 said:

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?

Heh, yep. This just screams 'Scourge of the Slavelords', from way (and I do mean waayyy) back in 1st ed D&D. lengua.gif

I feel your pain. That was quite probably the single most frustating gaming moment I've ever had. enfadado.gif

But on the other hand, when we finally won through to confront the icky-vile slavelords and take them down, that created an immense sense of accomplishment ... and satisfaction. gui%C3%B1o.gif

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Personally, I would have dosed the hell out of the Psyker with Torpor (minus 4 effective Psy still shuts him down), as dampeners tend to get overloaded when applied directly to a Psyker. This way, as the drug wore off he could begin regaining his connection to the Warp; which is still not always a good thing. Most of our gear was pretty reasonable. We were still mostly using stub and las weapons. LeBlanc13 had a flamer (out of fuel) and I had my devious bolt pistol (jammed it second time I fired it and never got to use it again). Armor-wise I think the heaviest was the guardsman's light carapace; but don't quote me... And I had filter plugs and the Tech-Priest his implanted respirator. We were not expecting to be gassed, but some of us were expecting to be gassed...

Anyway, so here we are, on this train, plannng on how we're gonna assault our way to the front. Then it's suddenly nap time. Yay if I didn't feel like a drone from Portal or something. Nothing for it but to find and kill the persons responsible for us being here and try to keep the last three NPC survivors alive and safe; I have a slight altruistic streak, even in 40K.

Now we just need a multi-tool and a medkit and we'll be in a much better situation. I can pull the circuit interrupts from the Tech-Priests more extreme implants, and we can remove the dampener from the Psyker. At least, that would be the best order, since the Tech-Priest with his mechandendrites active has a better Medicae percentage than I do... Funny, the Adept being back up to the Tech-Priest for Tech-Use and Medicae, but not being reliant on implants to be good at them.

But our biggest concern, that no one has voiced, is food and water. We've been wondering around for several hours now with no signs of consumables yet.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Posted at

Unusualsuspect said:

The Boy Named Crow said:

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.

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.

Arms, legs, brains, etc, are not equipment and items, they are part of the character, so saying removing equipment is like removing part of a character's body is just absurd. The character is still the character without weapons, you just have to think smarter is all. If all the character is to the player is the stats, and not the personality, the emotions, etc, then, in my book, I'd have failed as a GM.

Character > Stats.

Posted at

MILLANDSON said:

Arms, legs, brains, etc, are not equipment and items, they are part of the character, so saying removing equipment is like removing part of a character's body is just absurd. The character is still the character without weapons, you just have to think smarter is all. If all the character is to the player is the stats, and not the personality, the emotions, etc, then, in my book, I'd have failed as a GM.

Character > Stats.

Agreed. And that scenario (mentioned in my previous post here) was my first experience of that in RP'ing. The overwhelming sense of accomplishment when we won through in the end ... even without all our shiny toys and flashy spells ... was incomparable! We did it! We ... not our shiny toys and flashy spells! It was an amazing epiphany for me. gran_risa.gif

Dang! This is making me feel old! lengua.gif

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Brother Praetus said:

But our biggest concern, that no one has voiced, is food and water. We've been wondering around for several hours now with no signs of consumables yet.

-=Brother Praetus=-

What do you think the 3 civilians are for? The human body is after all 70% water.

gui%C3%B1o.gif

Actually, knowing that this is a published adventure gives me a sense of relief in some ways. Our GM is deviously clever and I'd rather face an adventure created by FFG with limited equipment than I would facing some of the devilish plans created by him. No equipment versus one of his average encounters will wipe out all of our fate points and kill us 7 times over. He really gives us a good challenge.

Bro Praetus is right, though.... food will be an issue.

Posted at

LeBlanc13 said:

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.







To a Moritat Assassin, for example, taking away his swords is just as crippling as forcing the Scum to be mute, or the Techpriest to have his bionics fail. You are reducing the character's ability to perform their role from a mechanical standpoint; whether that stems from equipment or natural talent is irrelevent IMHO. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing to do this, just that I believe it's an objective fact that removing gear for certain characters can have the same effect as 'natural' abilities for certain others.

Posted at

You know, I did face this situation in D&D once.

We spent hours pouring over books creating our characters. The equipment selection was the most agonizing. Then we get the the beginning of the adventure, the DM tells us all of our equipment is missing as we're all in the dungeon of a prison strapped to the walls. All of that time shopping and we never got to use any of the stuff. He could have said don't bother purchasing equipment, but no.... he sat there and watched us gleefully purchase everything we'd need and then took it all away.

Any wonder why I'm a little frustrated. Instead of doing that in character creation, this is all stuff we acquired through adventuring in game. None of it was easy to come by and it was all WAY more expensive than what was listed in the book. I've just got a fear that we're going to start over broke and won't ever see any of our stuff again.

As for our Psyker, he and the Tech Priest slaved over making his Force Lathe Blade for 6 months of game time. They invested all of their cash into making it. Now, after only using it a few times, it's been sucked away from him. I'm surprised he didn't throw down at the table. He invested a lot of real time to designing and planning out it's creation with the tech priest. He scrimped and saved his earnings while everyone else bought some pretty cool gear.

I really hope, if anyone gets his equipment back later, it's the psyker.

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After the adventure, scramble together some contacts (hell, now's the time to call upon your Inquisitor), and start searching as a sidequest.

Lathe weapons are near-unique works of art, exponentially so with Force qualities worked into them. It can't have gone far...

Posted at

MILLANDSON said:

Unusualsuspect said:

The Boy Named Crow said:

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.

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.

Arms, legs, brains, etc, are not equipment and items, they are part of the character, so saying removing equipment is like removing part of a character's body is just absurd. The character is still the character without weapons, you just have to think smarter is all. If all the character is to the player is the stats, and not the personality, the emotions, etc, then, in my book, I'd have failed as a GM.

Character > Stats.

They are a more permanent part of a character, but could just as easily be removed in the scenario given. Is the character any less of who he is, personality and emotion-wise, if he got a leg cut off? It can be replaced with bionics, can it not? How is THAT part of the character necessarily more integral than his items, given they are just as much a tool used to further the acolyte's purposes as a bolter held in that hand or the greaves guarding that leg?

Is a man's soul to be found in his legs, or his arms?

That said, that's just a more extreme version of the "remove tools of the character to create greater difficulty/suspense" tool the GM is suggested to use for Tattered Fates. What I REALLY felt was on par with cutting off a character's limb was the (supposed) psychic inhibitor implanted into the psyker, and to a similar extent, the disengaged augments on the Techpriest. If its just drugs, then I'm less annoyed given their impermanence, but for a psyker, his psychic ability is MORE important than just about any other limb he has amd its removal would be far, far more a devastating event to the character than it would to the player.

As for the Character > Stats bit, that seems a bit of a straw argument to me. A character's emotions and personality are (generally, depending on GM and players) important... but so are the stats and equipment that let a character's capabilities shine and define what a character is capable of doing in the universe. If you hold MERELY the personality and emotions of the character as important and all else unimportant, than you wouldn't blanche at removing a gunslinger's hands or an assassin's legs (Talk about straw arguments... but I think it makes my point, no?).

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.

I agree that horrible things can add tension and give greater meaning to a now hard-fought victory. I'm not saying necessarily that Tattered Fates' method is a **** move, and I can trust other's judgment on how well it fits with the adventure. I AM saying, and you seem to be agreeing with me, that it CAN be a **** move if it isn't performed carefully.

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Double post? That's odd...

Posted at

The Hobo Hunter said:

After the adventure, scramble together some contacts (hell, now's the time to call upon your Inquisitor), and start searching as a sidequest.

Lathe weapons are near-unique works of art, exponentially so with Force qualities worked into them. It can't have gone far...

Like Chuck Norris, we don't find our Inquisitor. He finds us!!

Luckily, our inquisitor doesn't know how to round house kick like Chuck!

Hopefully we'll get the Lathe Blade Force Weapon back. Frankly, on the rest of the stuff, I wouldn't mind gaining some other equipment and most of what we had really was very replaceable stuff.

It's funny... when you look at our characters, Brother Praetus and myself are probably the ones that should be complaining the least. All our abilities are based on skills. Common Lores and social skills mainly. Also, both of us are of a Noble background so when we do get out, we can call in a favor to our respective families. My family gained their wealth illicitly through strip-mining operations and coercing competitors into bringing their businesses into our fold.

Kind of useless to have contacts based on nobility and ecclesiarchy ties while in the underhive though, huh?

Also, I'm wielding the Best Quality Mono Dagger that right now that we found upon leaving the gladiatorial pit, so technically, I've got the best weapon in the group....sad really.

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LeBlanc13 said:

Also, I'm wielding the Best Quality Mono Dagger that right now that we found upon leaving the gladiatorial pit, so technically, I've got the best weapon in the group....sad really.

gran_risa.gif I'll see yout best-craftsmanship mono dagger and raise you a stub revolver w/4 shots. I hate melee... Too many variables to account for. Only recently did I even bother to pick up melee training primitive (got tired of only having a 4% chance to shank a heretic).

But honestly, there are only a few things I would really like to get back; medkit, mesh-laced administratum robes, combi-Armegeddon/pump shotgun, Hax-Orthlak MkIV "Thollos" Autopistol, and my mono combat knife.

Aside from the Psyker, the assassin had some of the best stuff. Hard to come by and rather expensive toys.

-=Brother Praetus=-

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Unusualsuspect said:

As for the Character > Stats bit, that seems a bit of a straw argument to me. A character's emotions and personality are (generally, depending on GM and players) important... but so are the stats and equipment that let a character's capabilities shine and define what a character is capable of doing in the universe. If you hold MERELY the personality and emotions of the character as important and all else unimportant, than you wouldn't blanche at removing a gunslinger's hands or an assassin's legs (Talk about straw arguments... but I think it makes my point, no?).

I wouldn't blanche at removing limbs, etc, from characters, but those are slightly more permanent losses than items, which is why the two are entirely different.

And if you think it's a strawman argument, then we'll have to agree to disagree. I've played Guardsmen that have turned out to be awful at combat, assassins that were about as sneaky as a brick through a window, and psykers with awful WP, and I had fun playing each and every one of them, because, ultimately, the personality of the character is more important in what stats they have. If a character's personality is fun to play, it doesn't matter what they are good/bad at doing, because it's fun.

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This reminds me of my character I play with. The one constant that I've always had, was a bolt pistol from I believe the second session I've played him, more than a year ago (14-15 months of real time). Everything else has changed, been switched around. But Orday's bolt pistol has seen him through thick and thin, giving him a chance everything.

Now, from a GM perspective with this little debocle we're having, I'd say the equipment is nothing to a character, unless that is all the character is. But from my playing side, if I ever lost that Bolt Pistol, I don't know what I'd do. I've been thinking about even sewing it to his hip or implanting it inside of his bionics. The good side to it being taken away though, is if it was taken away by somebody, I know that my character would attempt to hunt him down through the jaws of hell to get it back.

The bolt pistol is his only friend. And he could not stand losing another of those.

td;dr I agree to disagree, mostly. In extreme circumstances I can see taking away equipment as bad if there is no motivation behind it other to antagonize.

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In the case of the tattered fates scenario, both the removal of the equipment and the psychic inhibitor make sense. To not remove them would be ridiculous. Doing so would be a given in any scenario where the players are taken prisoner. And 'PCs are taken prisoner and have to escape' is a totally valid adventure scenario.

Usually there should be an opportunity to recovere the equipment - the bad guys are hardly going to throw it all in the trash disposal, after all, especially as it's gonna be high quality stuff.

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macd21 said:

In the case of the tattered fates scenario, both the removal of the equipment and the psychic inhibitor make sense. To not remove them would be ridiculous. Doing so would be a given in any scenario where the players are taken prisoner. And 'PCs are taken prisoner and have to escape' is a totally valid adventure scenario.

Usually there should be an opportunity to recovere the equipment - the bad guys are hardly going to throw it all in the trash disposal, after all, especially as it's gonna be high quality stuff.

However, in the TF scenario anti Psychic drugs are used. Around the time the cell gets some decent stuff back those drugs should be wearing off and they'll be a chance for everyone to rearm. However now the Psyker is going to have to find a surgeon who doesn't ask questions and have to deal with potentially hours of downtime when they recover from surgery.

I think it's fine to take away stuff sometimes if they can recover it but a cranial implant is over the line I say if all that happens to the others is that they just get their stuff taken away. Even the Techpriest can repair his implants himself.

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numb3rc said:

However, in the TF scenario anti Psychic drugs are used. Around the time the cell gets some decent stuff back those drugs should be wearing off and they'll be a chance for everyone to rearm. However now the Psyker is going to have to find a surgeon who doesn't ask questions and have to deal with potentially hours of downtime when they recover from surgery.

I think it's fine to take away stuff sometimes if they can recover it but a cranial implant is over the line I say if all that happens to the others is that they just get their stuff taken away. Even the Techpriest can repair his implants himself.

I agree that Torpor would have been a better choice; as stated previously reducing his Psy by 4 shuts him down just fine. However, the Psyker is not going to need to look too far for a chirurgeon. That's kind of what my Adept does. And from what has been described, the implant is not so much cranial as it seems spinal; least ways, from what I've been able to tell so far. A little more complicated possibly, but at least I shouldn't need a bone saw.

As to the Tech-Priest, he can't reach the circuit interrupts on all of his implants... As I mentioned before, get me a medkit and a multi-tool and my Adept is the one getting people back up and running. Without his medicae mechadendrite functional, I'm actually a slightly more competent medic than the Tech-Priest.

I am the "Swiss Army" Adept; trained in 20+ advanced skills; one being Medicae +10, and all of two basic skills. Though, I also speak and read Eldar... Shhh... Xeno-Archivist is a neat alt rank.

-=Brother Praetus=-

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Well I'm not talking about Torpor, though that is often a good choice. Tattered Fates has a "No Psychic powers but no other effects for 1d5 hours" drug that they use that I think would have been a good option. Torpor would leave you flat on the floor with all those -20 wp tests.

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numb3rc said:

Well I'm not talking about Torpor, though that is often a good choice. Tattered Fates has a "No Psychic powers but no other effects for 1d5 hours" drug that they use that I think would have been a good option. Torpor would leave you flat on the floor with all those -20 wp tests.

Yeah, I'll admit that I kind of overlooked that bit. Though mechanically the rest of the effects would be perfect; especially since I think he's only TB 2 or 3, so a long duration would be 7-8 hours... Some of our stats in this group are truly sub-par.

-=Brother Praetus=-

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About half our group got REALLY subpar stats and the other half got stellar stats. It's funny how the law of averages works out. Unfortunately I'm always on the end that gets poor stats. It doesn't matter anymore. I've upgraded myself to better stats now. Took a while now though.

I don't think we've been able to do a proper diagnosis of our Psyker friend though. I didn't notice incisions on him, but when he did try and cast a spell it ended up causing a point of damage to him. I have no idea what that means, but it can't be good. Anyway he may or may not have an incision. It does seem that our psyker friend tends to get picked on for his character choice a lot.

Anyway, I look forward to Wednesday night now to see where this leads.

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LeBlanc13 said:

It does seem that our psyker friend tends to get picked on for his character choice a lot.

That's kind of standard. Psykers are powerful, but have to suffer for it.

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LeBlanc13 said:

About half our group got REALLY subpar stats and the other half got stellar stats. It's funny how the law of averages works out. Unfortunately I'm always on the end that gets poor stats. It doesn't matter anymore. I've upgraded myself to better stats now. Took a while now though.

It's okay man, I didn't roll anything over 15 for my characteristics, and even the 15 was really just 12+divination.

But hey, I'm of the opinion that roleplaying>rollplaying, so it all seems to be working out.

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Aye, it is like the start of Tattered Fates. My psyker woke up there with no contact with the warp and stripped down to rags. He later put himself in harm's way in that arena only to have the youth he was trying to save torn apart, showering him with blood and body parts.

Needless to say, this was not a good time for said psyker. He took a bit of a sabbatical afterwards. He's back now, though!

But returning to your original venting, I'd say it depends on how it all wraps up. At the end of all that trauma, my psyker was greeted by (what the Inquisitor refers to as) his acolyte - an arbite who had raised the alarm when the psyker failed to contact him - and the Inquisitor himself... along with the group's gear, salvaged from the black market. It was a poignant moment, and went some way to smoothing ruffled feelings at the preceding harsh treatment. If your GM has some great and cool event at the end of all this, maybe you'll feel your character grew as a person through adversity?

And speaking of nudity, another psyker of mine got captured and stripped of his armour (which, being a Templar Calix, was just an armoured bodysuit). Unfortunately, also being a feral-worlder, he wasn't actually wearing anything underneath it...

One learns from every encounter, and that day, he learned that you should always wear underwear!

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Niqvah said:

One learns from every encounter, and that day, he learned that you should always wear underwear!

Or, you can be like the Terminator and just take someone elses.

Edit: Oh, and in regards to the fact that Psykers are powerful. Um, not really early on. Minor psyker powers are horrible. The definitely don't outweigh the cost of rolling nines on the casting roll. Now, however we are starting to see some cooler powers coming out and when our psyker uses his lathe blade force sword he rivals our Guardsman wielding his two handed mono-axe.

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LeBlanc13 said:

Edit: Oh, and in regards to the fact that Psykers are powerful. Um, not really early on. Minor psyker powers are horrible. The definitely don't outweigh the cost of rolling nines on the casting roll. Now, however we are starting to see some cooler powers coming out and when our psyker uses his lathe blade force sword he rivals our Guardsman wielding his two handed mono-axe.

Depends which ones you pick. The Fear one is broken and can easily turn battles all by itself. Some of the others are pretty great. But most players just take healing and distort vision to keep themselves and the group alive until they get access too more powerful abilities.