Hey, it's been a while!

Glad to see people still engaging with this stuff considering my total radio silence. If I'm being honest, I haven't worked on any new content in months, been way too preoccupied with work and uni, but I'm feeling the itch to get back into things now. Will try to start working on getting the books I had in production done (the one with vehicle rules, and the one with rules for playing as the Chambers Militant).

I also want to get the core book tightened up a bit, I've had a bunch of suggestions during my unplanned hiatus that I need to include in an update. Will have to trawl through a lot of private messages and posts to cobble it all together, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Also, I just got my hands on Realms of Terrinoth, going to see what I can cannibalise from that to bring over. Will likely put out a list of which talents can be brought over directly, and which aren't appropriate. Likely with some minor tweaks.

Now, to belatedly address some discussion.

On 3/31/2018 at 1:50 AM, javiersac1 said:

This is an amazing homebrew, both visually and in terms of game design. Props for that, I'm having a blast playing this conversion!

After a few sessions played, I was wondering if psychic attacks are perhaps a little underpowered, given their high costs in resources (strain + risk of rolling in the Perils table). With the usually high soak values most enemies have (and players as well), and the increased difficulties from adding upgrades (which mean less successes), weapons tend to shine much more than psychic attacks. I guess this problem stems from the fact that in the base game soak values tend to be much lower.

Having shared these concerns with my GM (I'm not playing a psyker though, so take this with a grain of salt), we toyed with the idea of having the power deal double the base characteristic to bring them on par with ranged weapons, but perhaps that's too much of a buff.

Oh, and an unrelated question. Are psykers supposed to add 1 disadvantage die when manifesting powers in armor providing 2 or more soak, as stated in the GCR?

I think, as some people have said, psychic attacks aren't too underpowered currently, but they definitely struggle to scale upwards against some of the better weapons. I do have plans to address this, though. Two ideas I had in mind;

• A talent chain or two which improve psychic attacks, bringing them up to pace with some of the tougher weapons as the party advances in level.
• Rules for building/acquiring better, more potent psychic foci. Think Eisenhorn's rune staff from the Eisenhorn novels; some kind of potent force weapon or other magical trinket that can actually focus and amplify psychic powers. This way there's some interesting gear progression for psykers, which currently they don't really have. That's something I want to address in general, probably in my own equivalent to DH1e's Radical's Handbook (working title Malus Codicium, because I'm Eisenhorn obsesssed).

As for the 1 disadvantage for armour, no, that's not the intention. I should make that explicit in the rules though, will add it to the list of things needing to be updated.

If anyone has any suggestions for further content they want to see, throw them at me.

Has anyone given any thought to perhaps having a default sector setting and a starting adventure for this port?

Well, most of the thematic and content inspiration for this comes from Dark Heresy 1e, so Calixis is probably your best fit. If you mean a custom setting for the port, it's not something I've really got a ton of interest doing, but if anyone else wants to tackle that they're absolutely welcome.

I tend to lean away from anchoring the rules and content to any particular region of 40k canon, I'd rather let people do their own thing. I've actually gone in and intentionally stripped away some of the Calixis specific language in item descriptions to help that a little.

Realms of Terrinoth is out now, might be able to rebrand the abilities in Liber Heresius as Signature Abilities with the same mechanics. You start off with 1 ability and can upgrade it in various ways. Every 50 exp you get an action point you can spend on upgrades. Each ability also has 3 tiers, basic, improved and supreme. Basic is free, improved is 1 ability point, supreme is 2. The list in the book does a pretty good job but could be more options that are unique to the setting.

I was actually thinking of tinkering with Signature Abilities a little to adapt them into faith powers for Sisters of Battle and other excessively pious characters. A lot of them would be pretty good fits for the faith powers that already existed in DH1e.

Stupid spaceship. I'm late for game nite!

11 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

I was actually thinking of tinkering with Signature Abilities a little to adapt them into faith powers for Sisters of Battle and other excessively pious characters. A lot of them would be pretty good fits for the faith powers that already existed in DH1e.

They look really potent for only a few characters to get them. Would have to tone them down or something, or base it off the templar talent. Right now i think you listed them as 20xp in liber heresius, but they feel like they basically are signature abilities.

Yeah, there'll probably be some heavy tweaking involved. I'd want to add XP costs to them in some way, because I don't really want to have Signature Ability equivalents be a thing every character has, so the default advancement system in Terrinoth would be a poor fit.

I do think the overall framework fits though. Spending story points is a close analogue to the fate points they ran off in Dark Heresy, and they're the kinda thing you'll be bringing out once per session at most, which suits faith powers well I think, they're not the kinda thing you should be able to spam.

My buddy and I are super excited for the work you have done here. We look forward to any updates or new stuff you put out and are planning to start running the game in May. Thanks for putting this together.

Did the other works FFG did before losing the GW license cover fledgling Space Marines? I've always wanted to do something with a group playing Space Wolves starting from their early indoctrination and working their way up. They'd be newly assigned Scouts within the Chapter. I know Death Watch covered experienced marines from various chapters joined together, which is pretty cool. But I doubt those games would use fresh scout like level players. It seems that would be reserved for veterans of powerful chapters. I did a test with some of Tom Cruise's stuff to see how Fantasy Grounds would work with Genesys and the Space Marine was tough as nails. My little test run was not balanced. LOL!

I think the RPG space marines have always been stronger than the tabletop space marines. Been kicking around ideas for how to play them short of basically just taking a human and shoving them full of cyberware. Wargame they would be what, have "And they will know no fear" and basically be immune to it. And have a bit higher brawn and power armor.

It's definitely tough to not have them just be way over the top too strong. I'm not sure having my players be pre-biomedically enhanced recruits would be of interest either. At that point, they might as well be just regular people and not worry about the marine part. I know someone around here will figure it out and set me down the right path.

This doesn't really relate to playing Scouts specifically but I might have been working on a thing.

Marine Test.pdf

Very untested, unbalanced and unfinished. But the vague concept of the Marine rules are in there.

1 hour ago, Tom Cruise said:

This doesn't really relate to playing Scouts specifically but I might have been working on a thing.

Marine Test.pdf

Very untested, unbalanced and unfinished. But the vague concept of the Marine rules are in there.

Hi. The link doesn't work.

Whoops. Fixed that.

5 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

This doesn't really relate to playing Scouts specifically but I might have been working on a thing.

Marine Test.pdf

Very untested, unbalanced and unfinished. But the vague concept of the Marine rules are in there.

That's great! How do most creators/developers test these kinds of things? My group isn't readily available, so testing with them would not work well since we get together so seldom. Is it a matter of just pitting things against one another and rolling dice to see how it ends up and look for trends?

I was thinking. Is there a way to simulate traits like unnatural attribute? Maybe something like

Quote

Unnatural [Characteristic]
Ranked: Yes
Type: Passive

When a character rolls [T] on a check using the specified Characteristic, they may immediately roll an additional [P] into the pool. This can be done for a number of [T] equal to the characters ranks of Unnatural [Characteristic] they posses.

I was also thinking that the trait could also bestow some other effect, like Unnatural Brawn getting Additional encumbrance or something, but I haven't really thought that far ahed.

12 minutes ago, kaleotter said:

I was also thinking that the trait could also bestow some other effect, like Unnatural Brawn getting Additional encumbrance or something, but I haven't really thought that far ahed.

Genesys Superheroes tone let triumphs explode the proficiency dice. Not sure, if that really gives the super feeling though.

10 minutes ago, Elden said:

Genesys Superheroes tone let triumphs explode the proficiency dice. Not sure, if that really gives the super feeling though.

I already included the exploding dice mechanic into the core of Unnatural Characteristic, but limited it to Ranks of Unnatural [Characteristic], So a Space mehreen with Unnatural Brawn 2 would be able to explode 2 triumph dice. I was just thinking of some secondary effect to add a little punch really.

16 minutes ago, kaleotter said:

I already included the exploding dice mechanic into the core of Unnatural Characteristic, but limited it to Ranks of Unnatural [Characteristic], So a Space mehreen with Unnatural Brawn 2 would be able to explode 2 triumph dice. I was just thinking of some secondary effect to add a little punch really.

Oh, now I see it too must have missed that.

Let's see: You get [T] only 1/12 time per die. Having Brawn 5 and Melee 5 would give you (roughly) one additional [P] die. Unatural Brawn 2 would only limit freak dice rolls. Don't know if that's neccessary.

8 minutes ago, Elden said:

Oh, now I see it too must have missed that.

Let's see: You get [T] only 1/12 time per die. Having Brawn 5 and Melee 5 would give you (roughly) one additional [P] die. Unatural Brawn 2 would only limit freak dice rolls. Don't know if that's neccessary.

Maybe if it was [T] or 3*[a] or 4*[a] then?

The exploding dice mechanic always seemed kind of mediocre to me, it's too swingy and inconsistent to represent a character who is consistently more powerful than another. Kinda works with supers games because it matches the genre tropes there. I think putting the characteristics up past the normal human limits works just as well.

I also never really bought the argument that dice pools above 5 are an issue, though. I've regularly seen characteristics go up to 6 and 7 in Star Wars games and it's never really created major issues. I think it's definitely something you want to keep as a rarity, but it doesn't break the game.

On 4/27/2018 at 9:13 PM, kaleotter said:

I was thinking. Is there a way to simulate traits like unnatural attribute? Maybe something like

I was also thinking that the trait could also bestow some other effect, like Unnatural Brawn getting Additional encumbrance or something, but I haven't really thought that far ahed.

So i've considered this as well trying the below:

Unnatural Strength

Tier : TBA

Activation : Passive

Ranked : Yes

Your Encumbrance Threshold is increased by 5 per rank, reducing the rating of the Cumbersome quality of any item by 1, to a minimum of 1. Your damage gains Pierce (2) per rank on all Brawn based attacks.

I just realised, I never did share a snapshot of where I'm at with the vehicles release. Here's the most up to date version; it's basically just got the vehicle rules (modified from Genesys core as discussed earlier), and a selection of ground based vehicles with some variant rules.

Still needs air vehicles, mounts, and an armoury.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SOaV8BOyr3-nhGTY5JFYEBHztFxbNa-w

EDIT: Also, should I look at moving this discussion to the "Your Settings" subforum, now it exists? Or try begging a moderator (if we even have any who are active)?

Hehe well fair enough. I am gonna toss this out here for anyone wanting to use my old Sector for something. All of the planets have partial write ups, and give room for you to tell your own info. I am easily reached on discord at Mathadar #4906 for those who wish to get any of it, due to the size limitations of this forum. Sector Map.pdf

Enjoy the little taste of it I am putting here though.

Edit: Oh and yes this is one I ran campaigns with for 4 years.