Update time! Here's the changelogs. Changes to the core book and to Liber Heresius this time.

Dark Heresy Corebook - LINK -

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Changelog 1.4 –

• Photo Visors nerfed slightly. Now you must pay extra for the anti-photon qualities.
• Added the Hoverer trait to coincide with the Xenos Threat Briefing: Tau 1.0 release (Drones use it) .
• Armour Soak values have been tweaked slightly; the soak provided by power armour has been reduced across the board. Previously power armour made you a bit too tough; it trivialised even powerful weapons like bolters. This change should make things slightly more reasonable, without defanging power armour too much. Specifically, Light Power Armour now provides 3 Soak (although this is effectively 4 when you factor in the +1 brawn), and Power Armour provides 4
• Eviscerators now have Breach 1, and their cost appropriately increased. This is to reflect their role in the lore as anti-tank weapons.
• Changed the characteristics provided by the Penal Colony homeworld. Previously, there was no Home World which provided 3 Cunning. Now there is; as a tradeoff, they start with 1 Intellect. Seemed the most appropriate, penal colonies aren’t great places to get an education.
• General typo corrections and formatting fixes.

Liber Heresius - LINK -

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Changelog 1.1 –

• Armour Soak values have been reduced here too to bring them in line with the core book’s 1.4 values. Heavy Power Armour now provides 5 Soak, and Terminator Armour 7
• Changed the cover art, now it matches the others in the line.
• General typo corrections and formatting fixes.

We finally had our first play last saturday.

In general people liked it, and gameplay was fluent.

Minus occasionally checking what people can do with Advantages and Threats (some were new to the GNS/SWRP system.)

We houseruled a few things. For example I gave everyone the background and role traits (cut to fit GNS) they had in WH40k 2E. (They really loved that.)

Our Psykers weren't happy with the Characteristic distribution. Because Willpower was so important, and now it's not that important, anymore.

One pointed out that a Biomancy psyker could be easily "op" due to the fact that Brawn is used for many combat-related skills.

And people were disappointed with how Lores are managed.

We decided to houserule that by the following:

Each Lore topic is its own skill again.

Characters gained (INT+CUN)x5 Lore Experience during character creation to level up lore skills independently.

And we decided that further gains (after creation) of Lore skill ranks can only be gained via ingame plays. Like spending time in libraries or with people to profit from their knowledge.

Also, more General Skills are needed.

A social character has to get many skills if he tries to not be entirely useless during combats (or other situations).

Because a social character also has to get the skills to defend against other social skills.

Balance is a bit off. Maybe re-implent skills like Demolition, Logics, and a few others.

Aside from those, and some minor things, people had fun, it felt 40k, and we're keeping it.

Thanks for the feedback! It's a big help. I'll try to respond to your comments in some detail below.

• The background and role stuff sounds great, although it's not something I'd personally be interested in implementing. I'm generally a fan of keeping character creation options as open ended and open to interpretation as possible, and I feel like the role bonuses kinda run counter to that. If any were particularly interesting though, I'd consider adding them as talents.
• The Psyker characteristic distribution is pretty intentional. Psykers need Discipline to perform well, and their Corruption and Strain thresholds are particularly relevant to them due to their constant need to spend strain, and increased Corruption risks. Because of that, I think having a Psychic Discipline tied to Willpower would make that Discipline much more appealing than the others, which I'm trying to avoid. As for Biomancy, it's definitely a solid point, but I don't think it's particularly broken. Out of all the disciplines, it makes sense for Biomancers to become brawny combat beasts if they choose to go down that path.
• As for Lores, distinct skills for each lore topic is, in my opinion, very counter to the design philosophy of Genesys. It's mostly a matter of taste, though; there's merits to both approaches, they just appeal to different people. Personally I'm likely going to keep my lore system the same as it is currently; at most, I'd consider dividing it up into three or four skills instead of two. Sounds like your solution was pretty well thought out though, glad it worked for you.
• As for the skills list, I'm pretty strongly against adding very niche skills like Demolition and Logic. They don't feel like they'd come up frequently enough to be justified as their own skills. That's mainly down to my own philosophies as a game designer though; I've always gravitated towards systems with smaller, more general skill lists rather than highly specialised ones. I could see the case for adding one or two extra skills, but it'd have to be a pretty **** convincing case.

Let me know how it goes over future sessions, really eager to get more feedback from actual play.

@Tom Cruise

I get why you did things like you did.

Just pointed out what my team didn't like, and why.

Heh, we're different a lot. I personally think, having those Background and Role traits make the careers feel more different/unique from each other. So do my people.

And the lore thing: One of my players explained it to me with the words: "You also don't spend experience on credits/thrones or contacts. That's stuff you earn ingame." Was convincing for me to houserule the lores. Of course I'm not demanding you'd change that. It's just how my players prefer it. And as long as everyone is having fun, then the mission is accomplished.

I get the psyker distribution. I personally don't mind it and actually like it. Can't please everyone.

The skill is where we're different again. While I, of course, don't like skill bloating, there should still be some balance. And Genesys' social aspect demands many skills.

Next session is in a few weeks.

I guess the argument for the heavy skill needs as a social character would be that as a combat focused character you've got to dump a lot of XP into talents to pose any active defense; skill ranks don't really do you any favours. Meanwhile for social characters it's basically the opposite.

Love the work. Been swamped at work so haven't gotten to read the new ones in detail. I know, even without reading them all, there will be stuff I unabassadly steal for my campaign which is on hold until all my RL traveling is done.

Just wanted to say great work love it as always.

GMTron

So, I'm currently chipping away at a vehicle expansion, trying to figure out what vehicles are worth including.

Doing ground vehicles for now, will focus on air vehicles after that. Here's what I've got so far:

• Chimera Armoured Transport
• Goliath Truck (with Rockgrinder variant)
• Hectin Autocarriage (Generic civilian car)
• Leman Russ
• Rhino
• Scout Sentinel
• Taurox
• Veloxic Bike (Generic civilian motorcycle)

I'm not really looking to put stats to every single variant of every Imperial vehicle; the goal is more to have a representation of every generic vehicle archetype, with a few customisation options so that GMs have a solid base to work with.

Anything you think isn't represented in the current list so far?

7 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

So, I'm currently chipping away at a vehicle expansion, trying to figure out what vehicles are worth including.

Doing ground vehicles for now, will focus on air vehicles after that. Here's what I've got so far:

• Chimera Armoured Transport
• Goliath Truck (with Rockgrinder variant)
• Hectin Autocarriage (Generic civilian car)
• Leman Russ
• Rhino
• Scout Sentinel
• Taurox
• Veloxic Bike (Generic civilian motorcycle)

I'm not really looking to put stats to every single variant of every Imperial vehicle; the goal is more to have a representation of every generic vehicle archetype, with a few customisation options so that GMs have a solid base to work with.

Anything you think isn't represented in the current list so far?

Outside of Astartes vehicles like Predators for your Elites book, I can't think of any generic ground vehicles that are left. Will the Chimera include the Hellhound and acid-hound (whatever it's called)? Also will you include boats and speedoo's?

Boats and speeders are definitely on the agenda. Currently the civilian autocarriage has a speeder variant, but I might provide stats for an actual military landspeeder as well. And a boat or two sounds like a solid idea.

Any chance you might do space ships? Generally rare in most DH games, but I feel like it wouldn't be hard to do with pre-existing SWRPG ships, just with more guns and maybe add ship traits like Rogue Trader has.

Space Ships are definitely something I'd be interested in doing, but probably not in this release. Gonna focus on more human scale vehicles for now (largest I'll probably do is a land raider) and then have a separate book for ships.

A Land Raider would be pretty nice addition.

Off topic a little - I didn't get a chance to play the DH stuff that FFG did, but always wanted to do a 40K game back in the day when we played WFRP 1st ED. Were there a lot of must have adventure ideas in the Deathwatch material for playing marines? I'd like to do something with them eventually, but they are so powerful I have a difficult time thinking what would be balanced adventures. With such destructive power, things could be too easy or good sideways fast for a party trying to find that balance.

I've never really looked into Deathwatch's material in too much detail, but it did have a handful of adventure books produced which are probably worth looking through, even if just for inspiration.

By the way, on the note of vehicles, I've got some houserules for the existing Genesys rules I'm planning on integrating. Thoughts on these?

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For the most part, the vehicle rules for Dark Heresy follow those outlined in the Genesys Core Rulebook, on pages 220-231. However, some key changes have been made to ensure these rules fit the Warhammer 40,000 setting appropriately.

Hull Trauma and Scale
In the Genesys vehicle rules, Hull Trauma for vehicles operates on the planetary scale, with 1 point of Hull Trauma on a vehicle being equivalent to 10 Wounds on an individual. In Dark Heresy, this is not the case; 1 Hull Trauma is equivalent to 1 Wound.

To go along with this change, planetary scale weapons use the same damage scale as personal scale weapons; being planetary scale simply changes the scale of range bands the weapon uses, and interacts with the Critical Hit rules detailed below.

This change was made to allow personal scale weaponry to pose a serious threat against vehicles. In Warhammer 40,000, power weapons, melta guns and other infantry level weapons are capable of laying waste to battle tanks, and the Hull Trauma system laid out in Genesys makes this difficult to model well without making such weapons an instant kill against anything that isn’t a vehicle.

All other rules regarding the planetary scale still apply; 1 point of Armour is still equivalent to 10 points of Soak, and range bands are still measured on a larger scale.

Critical Hits
As personal scale weapons have the potential to cause considerable damage to vehicles under these modified rules, it’s important to address the issue of Critical Hits and vehicles.

The rules for this are fairly simple. Only personal scale weapons with the Breach quality can inflict Critical Hits on vehicles. Personal scale weapons without the Breach quality can never inflict a Critical Hit on a vehicle, regardless of their crit rating. The Vicious quality of personal scale weapons does not ever apply to vehicles, however. If a personal scale weapon without Breach causes a vehicle to become incapacitated, it simply becomes inoperable without suffering the usual Critical Hit.

Planetary scale weapons are unaffected by this change; they can always inflict Critical Hits on vehicles.

Ramming
Ground vehicles can ram into characters, potentially causing catastrophic damage. This requires no special action or maneuver; simply driving through space occupied by the target is enough.

Any character at risk of being struck by a vehicle may perform a Coordination check as an incidental to evade, with a number of difficulty dice equal to the Speed of the vehicle. If failed, the character suffers 5 damage for each point of Silhouette the vehicle possesses, and suffers an immediate Critical Injury. 10 times the Vehicle’s current Speed or Silhouette (whichever is higher) is added to the Critical roll’s result.

I found the default Hull Trauma rules didn't allow for power weapons and meltaguns to be modelled very well; they were either way too ineffectual against vehicles, or way TOO effective against characters.

11 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

I found the default Hull Trauma rules didn't allow for power weapons and meltaguns to be modelled very well; they were either way too ineffectual against vehicles, or way TOO effective against characters.

I assumed that doing two separate stat lines for power weapons would be easier while allowing for easier integration of DH vehicles into Genesys and other modules.

So, for example, having a stat line that is "Melta (Anti-personnel)," and "Melta (Anti-vehicle)." They're the same weapon, but whatever stat you are using is determined by what you're firing at.

The Tauros would be nice to have, since it is supposedly a common utility vehicle on frontier worlds. Maybe Land Crawler (civilian tractor) could be useful to have?

Bit of feedback on the War Zone homeworld, wouldn't 1 intellect make more sense than 1 willpower? A war zone doesn't seem like a place for the weak-willed, and it is seems unlikely you would get a proper education there.

Great work overall, gonna have to find a group to play this with!

Really nice work. I have two things I'm wondering about:

1. Am I missing something or is the Wyrd advance just really bad? 10XP is the same as cross class first rank for any psychic discipline, which just grants more.

2. Plasma seems pretty weak. Same Dam and Crit as bolter, a few points more pierce but also Gets Hot, which doesn't really fit the fluff. Did you consider giving it a stronger overcharge mode (and only Gets Hot when using that mode)? Plasma having a weaker, safer firing mode is a thing both in fluff and in the most recent (and also the first) edition of the 40k miniature game.

I'll definitely include the Tauros, and the Land Crawler is a nice idea, I like having some more civilian representation in the vehicle selection.

As for the War Zone homeworld, you're 100% right honestly, I can't for the life of me remember what logic I was using to justify the 1 willpower (shellshock, maybe?) but it's pretty shaky logic. Intellect doesn't feel like a perfect fit, but it's probably better than any of the other options. That, or I could just drop it to flat 2s across the board, but I like having a 3 Agility world, there's no other representation for that in the books.

So, I've been going through the core book trying to spot things I'd like to change or fix up. Few things have jumped out at me. How do these proposed changes sound to people?

• Ranged weapons now run out of ammo with 1 Despair or 4 threat. I feel like the current Despair-only rules don't really work too well with the emphasis I want to put on resource scarcity. 4 threat stills keeps it a fairly rare occurrence, but not one which only happens once in a blue moon (1/12 odds on a die type which rarely comes up on ranged attacks is pretty unlikely)
• Lore Skills. I'm thinking of splitting it three ways, rather than the current two. I'm running my own campaign now, and I'm finding Scholastic Lore is a bit too catch-all. It covers a **** lot of stuff. Returning to Dark Heresy's original Common, Scholastic, Forbidden triad might work well; Scholastic Lore also covers a lot of what the Logic and to some extent Scrutiny skills used to in DH, so it has a lot of utility even if you strip out a lot of the knowledge it can pull up.
• Trauma rules. They're kinda weird. Currently, each time your character develops a mental trauma, it's a new, different mental condition with no clear ties to their existing traumas. What I'm thinking of doing is instead redesigning the system so that further trauma development just worsens an existing, singular condition. So rather than a heavily traumatised character having a mess of phobias, erratic behaviours and violent tendencies, they just have one condition that gets worse and worse. So maybe initially their phobia is just a minor, roleplay impact. By the end (Severity 5), they're automatically failing fear rolls related to their phobia and being reduced to a shuddering mess every time it shows up. Feels a bit less slapstick, and probably better for character development.

1 hour ago, Tom Cruise said:

[things]

I agree with the proposed changes. The lore separation is good for emphasizing hivers or war-worlders from noble-born, for example. And I have already considered the four threat ammo count myself separately. And I haven't thought much about the trauma rules, but it makes sense.

I also agree about war-worlders being a 2 across the board with the exception of 3 agility. Making them cheaper in XP is fine for having them start as good generalists; in reality soldiers are pretty often cross-trained.

Update time! All three books get updates this time.

Core Book - LINK -
Liber Heresius - LINK -
Tau Threat Briefing - LINK -

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Changelog 1.4.5 –

• Voidborn changed to have 3 Agility, and 1 Brawn. This aligns well with the skills they’d logically be good at, and makes sense with the fluff of them being emaciated, pale skinned weirdos without much physical fortitude. Starting XP dropped to 100 accordingly.
• Expanded rules for running out of ammo and reloading added. Weapons now run dry on 4 threat, rather than Genesys’ default of having it only occur on a Despair. Auto-firing weapons run out on 3 threats instead. This has also resulted in some general streamlining of the ranged weapons and ammunition section.
• The Storm quality has been added; it’s essentially an always-on Autofire, replacing Autofire on Heavy Bolters and Heavy Stubbers.
• Power Weapons had their Breach increased to 2 across the board (except for Power Blades), and Power Fists had their damage tweaked; they now add 2 x Brawn to their damage, but only have +4 damage. Now Power Weapons should be able to actually harm vehicles.
• RPGs have lost Breach and gained Pierce 4. This is to make them less potent against vehicles (especially when you add Krak Missiles from Liber Heresius into the mix).
• Krak Grenades had their Breach reduced to 0. Previously they were performing a little TOO well against vehicles.

Liber Heresius Changelog 1.1.5 –

• Added encumbrance values to the Standard Ammunition table; this was previously forgotten about.
• War Zone statistics swapped from 1 Willpower to 1 Intellect.
• Tweaks made to align the book with changes in 1.4.5 of the core book.

Ordo Xenos Threat Briefing - Tau Changelog 1.0.5 –

• Tweaked the Adversary ratings on NPCs; I’d forgotten to include them in some profiles.
• Tweaks made to align the book with changes in 1.4.5 of the core book.

Still working on those updated Trauma rules and the skills change I mentioned, should be a release addressing those soon if I decide to stay the course and implement them. I also plan to rebalance weapon costs next release; they're a little wonky and out of date right now, just don't have time to update them today and I wanted to get these changes out in the open.

Whoops, did that ranged weapon re-balance quicker than I thought. A few big changes here.

- LINK -

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Changelog 1.5 –

• Ranged weapon costs have been totally redone; some haven’t changed, but some did significantly due to gradual changes in their statistics making the prices inaccurate.
• Lasguns and laspistols gained the new Variable quality, letting them increase their ammo consumption for a slight bump in damage.
• Plasma guns got the Maximal setting, allowing them to gain Slow-Firing and increase their risk of running out of ammo in exchange for a serious bump in damage potential. They also gained Vicious 2.
• Hand Cannons now gain Cumbersome 4 if wielded with one hand.
• Melta Weapons gained Vicious 3.
• Other minor tweaks made to the balance of ranged weapons. See the PDF for full details; the above only details broad strokes changes.

Also, here's a few examples of the gradual mental traumas I have in mind. Thoughts? The rules for how they develop are pretty similar to the ones already in the book, the main point of difference is the traumas themselves.

Is the Backpack Ammo Supply still only supposed to run out of ammo on double Despair with the ammo change?

Also, assuming you missed it because my first post had to be approved by a moderator: Am I missing something or is the Wyrd advance just really bad? 10XP is the same as cross class first rank for any psychic discipline, which just grants more.

EDIT: And should the Motion Predictor attachment also be applicable to Storm weapons?

New Mental Traumas look good, certainly makes more sense this way. As for how they develop, perhaps change it so that instead of getting a trauma with a severity equal to the check, you get the lowest severity on your first Despair and it worsens on subsequent Despairs? As it is, you're more likely to develop a more severe trauma since higher difficulty Fear checks have more dice to upgrade, thus creating more chances of rolling a Despair. I mean, how often do Easy difficulty Fear checks come up, if at all? Even Average was pretty rare in the games I played, Fear checks tended to be Hard or higher.

If you want to split the Lore skills up, might I suggest the following:

Scholastic -> Imperium (planets and their enviroments/cultures/people of note etc), Adeptus (Imperial institutions and the proper procedures for interacting with them), Education ("School subject"-stuff: math, chemistry, law...)

Forbidden -> Warp (Psykers, Daemons, Chaos), Xenos (Aliens and their tech)

Finally, a few minor thoughts:

I like the addition of the Storm quality, but I would suggest taking a que from FFG's Star Wars system and simply naming it "Auto-fire (Only)", it's a bit clearer as to what it does.

I'm a bit sceptical of the 4 Threat=Out of Ammo rule, I felt Despairs were common enough when playing Star Wars, but I understand your reasoning regarding resource scarcity. 3 Threat for some weapons is a good rule to port over though.

A maneuver to switch power settings (Variable and Maximal) feels a bit much, maybe for the Plasma weapons since they are fiddly and high-tech but for Lasguns it seems excessive.

Excited to see what's next, keep up the good work!

Some great feedback here, thanks a lot! I'll try to address it all here.

5 hours ago, WabbaWabba said:

Is the Backpack Ammo Supply still only supposed to run out of ammo on double Despair with the ammo change?

Also, assuming you missed it because my first post had to be approved by a moderator: Am I missing something or is the Wyrd advance just really bad? 10XP is the same as cross class first rank for any psychic discipline, which just grants more.

EDIT: And should the Motion Predictor attachment also be applicable to Storm weapons?

I don't see any reason to change the Backpack Ammo Supply. Wording seems to check out okay, and the two despairs was always meant to be a once in a blue moon thing (and realistically, it's probably not the most exciting way to spend 2 Despairs). Could have made it a straight up "never runs out of ammo" but I thought it was worth having that edge case of double Despair in there.

The Wyrd advance is actually pretty bad, now I look at it. It was always intended as more of a flavourful choice than anything, but that's no reason for it to be actively terrible. Might drop it down to 5 XP in the next update, then it's at least a semi-worthwhile investment. Could even have it discount the first rank you buy in the relevant Psychic Discipline? I'll think about what to do with it, it's a bit of a weird thing to put mechanics to in such an open ended psychic power system.

Motion Predictor should definitely apply to Storm weapons, I'll fix that up.

3 hours ago, Hampulina93 said:

New Mental Traumas look good, certainly makes more sense this way. As for how they develop, perhaps change it so that instead of getting a trauma with a severity equal to the check, you get the lowest severity on your first Despair and it worsens on subsequent Despairs? As it is, you're more likely to develop a more severe trauma since higher difficulty Fear checks have more dice to upgrade, thus creating more chances of rolling a Despair. I mean, how often do Easy difficulty Fear checks come up, if at all? Even Average was pretty rare in the games I played, Fear checks tended to be Hard or higher.

If you want to split the Lore skills up, might I suggest the following:

Scholastic -> Imperium (planets and their enviroments/cultures/people of note etc), Adeptus (Imperial institutions and the proper procedures for interacting with them), Education ("School subject"-stuff: math, chemistry, law...)

Forbidden -> Warp (Psykers, Daemons, Chaos), Xenos (Aliens and their tech)

Finally, a few minor thoughts:

I like the addition of the Storm quality, but I would suggest taking a que from FFG's Star Wars system and simply naming it "Auto-fire (Only)", it's a bit clearer as to what it does.

I'm a bit sceptical of the 4 Threat=Out of Ammo rule, I felt Despairs were common enough when playing Star Wars, but I understand your reasoning regarding resource scarcity. 3 Threat for some weapons is a good rule to port over though.

A maneuver to switch power settings (Variable and Maximal) feels a bit much, maybe for the Plasma weapons since they are fiddly and high-tech but for Lasguns it seems excessive.

Excited to see what's next, keep up the good work!

That's pretty much exactly how I had planned to have the Mental Traumas work, so definitely solid recommendations here.

In terms of Lore, I'm reluctant to split things up too much, I kinda like the system I have going now where the skills paint in broad stokes, and then the Specialist Knowledge talent fills in the gaps in terms of allowing characters to specialise. What I'm looking at doing is just splitting it three ways; Common, Scholastic, Forbidden, pretty much covering exactly what they covered in classic Dark Heresy (although Scholastic also kinda acts as a stand-in for the Logic skill, and some uses of the Scrutiny skill). I'm mostly just finding in my own games that Scholastic Lore is TOO good; it's the only skill an Adept type character really needs, which feels a bit off.

I actually had no idea that FFG noted down mandatory Auto-Fire with that kinda language. I'll just do that, then, makes things a bit clearer.

In terms of the frequency of Despairs, I think it's mostly down to the frequency with which you're going to see Challenge dice on ranged attack checks specifically. If you're fighting a lot of opponents with the Adversary talent, or with defensive Talents like Dodge, then you're gonna see red dice a lot, but against stock standard enemies? Barely ever. Feels a bit odd not being able to run out of ammo when you're just fighting hive scum, guardsmen or what etc. Realistically 4 threat isn't super common anyway, so it's not gonna happen too frequently.

Agreed on the maneuver; I think I actually meant to make it an Incidental; it was about midnight when I was writing these rules, some of the work is a little sloppy. I'll fix that up in the next release.

Alright, here's a sample PDF of the revised mental trauma rules. Please give it a look and tell me what you think.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BG27ujHJJRTuQ7rPSlS5eDhSao6_qpYO

I'd ideally like to have a few more examples of mental traumas, so suggestions are welcome.

8 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

Alright, here's a sample PDF of the revised mental trauma rules. Please give it a look and tell me what you think.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BG27ujHJJRTuQ7rPSlS5eDhSao6_qpYO

I'd ideally like to have a few more examples of mental traumas, so suggestions are welcome.

I question whether or not downtime in a voidship should present x2 Setback for void-born; or if downtime spent in a warzone should be an automatic failure for war-born.

As for potential traumas, some that came to me include actual depression or despair, severe anger issues or lashing out at authority figures, and a general misanthropy (or hatred of literally everything) if you can find a way to swing it.