....Yup.
Blessings Unheralded is the Free RPG Day Wrath & Glory adventure. If you've got a Free RPG Day paper copy, great.
If not, there's a link floating around out there to get it free for July ONLY . Then, whilst still cheap, it will cost you moneys.
So....what's the game like?
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This is a starter adventure
- This means that reviewing it is like reviewing Whisper Base for Age of Rebellion, or Broken Chains for Black Crusade; you're almost inevitably missing some of the detail, but have enough to get a decent overview of the game.
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The big thing that's missing is character creation/progression. We have a total of 6 pre-generated characters:
- Gael Harden, a Cadian Guardsman.
- Pater Nemoris, a Ministorum Priest
- Trojon Kull, a White Scar Tactical Marine
- Victoria Lin, an Imperial Commissar
- Henna Orten, a Sister of Battle
- Lady Yyrmalla Aleretta, an Inquisitorial Acolyte
- It's a bit of a super-friends brigade, but the backstory is that they're essentially the 'inner circle' of a Rogue Trader's allies and advisors; this is post Gathering Storm, where the Great Rift has basically buggered half the galaxy and a Peer Of The Imperium's warband is likely to consist of 'whatever loyal individuals I can lay my hands on'.
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Basic Rules
- The game looks nice. At first glance it appears to fall somewhere between the Dark Heresy/Only War series and the Star Wars/Genesys series in 'crunchiness' of rules.
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The game uses 'normal' 6 sided dice.
- Because it mostly only uses 4 faces of the dice and talks about 'icon' and 'exalted icon', expect custom dice to pop up as merchandise sooner or later, but unlike the star wars or legends of the five rings stuff you don't actually need the custom dice.
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Your stats + skills + circumstantial bonuses give you a number of dice to roll.
- The maximum number of bonus dice is limited by your character's tier (level) - to 6 in the case of this adventure.
- A 4 or 5 is an 'icon' (1 success), a 6 is an 'exalted icon' (2 successes or another bonus effect).
- 1 die nominated before the roll ('the red one') is the wrath die. This includes genysis-style opportunity and threat - on a 6 you get a point of glory, on a 1 you get a complication ('I hit but my gun is jammed'). It still generates icons normally, too.
- Distance is measured in actual metres, not unequal short/medium/long range bands. Yrmalla moves '4 metres', whilst her laspistol shoots 24m (well, 48m with a penalty - much like Dark Heresy, a gun's listed range is 'with no penalty to hit')
- Difficulty is a flat target number (default 3), with situational increases or decreases. Multi-Attack, for example, lets you shoot at several targets with a penalty to your 'to hit' roll.
- Success is beating the target number.
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Bonus successes don't seem to do too much (except in the case of combat) but bonus '6's (exalted icons) specifically
do
matter, a lot.
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This means that:
- Getting a 'basic pass' isn't too hard on a normal difficulty task
- Since adding a bonus die only works out at 2/3 of a success on average, a 'pip' increase in difficulty is a lot worse than it looks
- Since 'more than normal success' is probably going to require you to roll a '6' that you don't need to pass the test in the first place, 'critical success' on a check is not easy at all - you're really going to notice the difference between skilled and unskilled characters getting the option for these 'extra boosts'.
- By comparison, there doesn't appear to be an 'unskilled penalty'. So it's more like Genesys that anyone has a reasonable chance of a basic success (good if the medic's the one who's bleeding out!) but without a big dice pool getting those bonus effects is nigh impossible.
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Listed effects for a '6' are:
- Pass the check but get it done 'faster' (pretty much self-explanatory)
- Pass the check but get it done 'better' (so instead of just being convinced to let you past, someone also actively gives you aid)
- Pass the check but get it done 'with more information' (the example given is cracking a security door and finding out that whoever unlocked it before you used xenos tech to crack it)
- Shift the die into the pool for your damage roll (in combat)
- Gain a point of Glory (once per check)
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This means that:
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There are two 'fate point' equivalents
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Wrath - a personal resource, players get 2 each per session in the starter adventure and can pick them up for completing personal objectives.
- Everyone gets a D6 table of personal objectives. For example, if Victoria Lin summarily executes someone in a way that the GM agrees meaningfully serves the Imperium.
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Glory - a group resource
- Starts at 0 each time, built up from 'spare' 6s on checks and or '6's on the 'wrath' die.
- Both can be spent to boost rolls, but their effects are different, meaning that for that roll that absolutely positively has to go your way , they can be stacked if both are available.
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Ruin - yes, I said there were 2. Ruin is the GM's equivalent, and has broadly similar effects, but represents fate-points-for-the-bad-guys.
- The GM can pick it up as a complication, and some Master/Nemesis/Whatever NPCs have their own personal stockpile.
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Wrath - a personal resource, players get 2 each per session in the starter adventure and can pick them up for completing personal objectives.
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Basic Stats
- There are less basic stats and skills than Dark Heresy, about the same as Genesys
- Interestingly (but logically!) Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill are both....skills. Ballistic Skill works off Agility and Weapon Skill works off Initiative (not strength, which is one thing which helps keep the Space Marine in check).
- There is a default 'how hard you are to hit' stat, Defence.
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There is a separate stat, Resilience which is 'when hit, how hard you are to hurt'.
- In practice, this is probably generated from toughness.
- The character sheets show resilience as two numbers - from the context presumably 'armoured' and 'unarmoured'.
- Wealth and Influence exist as two separate stats. They're single-digit stats implying you make a wealth or influence check, but neither is really used in the starter adventure.
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Keywords
- Much like 8th edition 40k, everyone has a bundle of default keywords ('Imperium', 'Chaos', 'Adeptus Ministorum' etc).
- The GM is encouraged to provide bonus dice where an intereactee would likely also have said keyword, but some rules namecheck them specifically.
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It's nothing an experienced GM wouldn't do by default, it's just written out in a more mechanistic fashion. For example:
- Pater Nemoris' hatred talent gives him +1 on melee attacks 'vs. beings with the Heretic keyword'.
- Sister Orten is noted in her background section as having fought to protect some astropaths from generic cultist loons. Noticably, along with the Imperium, Adeptus Ministorium, Adepta Sororitas and Order of the Sanctified Shield keywords you might expect, this results in her also having the Adeptus Telepathica Astra keyword, which you wouldn't. Consider it a list of 'peer' talents.
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Combat
- Initiative in the starter adventure is very simple - there are no rolls; the PC's pick someone to go first then alternate with the bad guys unless someone spends wrath/ruin to 'seize the initiative' and add an extra good/bad guy turn before the I-go-you-go resumes, or unless someone ambushes the other, in which case ambushers go first in the first round.
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Mobs are swarms of disposable goons. They're still a touch more dangerous than horde magnitude - more akin to Genesys minion groups or Legend of the five rings minion groups - essentially a bunch of individuals where all but one spend their action 'aiding' the first one, who actually attacks, and who don't impose a penalty for multi-attacking the group.
- Since aiding adds bonus dice, mobs will be good at hitting (as 1/2 the dice will add one or more icons) but won't cause ridiculous horde damage (as only 1/6 of the dice can shift dice to damage rolls, and even then only if they've hit 'already').
- This means that fighting a mob is easier with armour and toughness than flashy swordsmanship and agility.
- For every two 'icons' you beat a mob's defence by, you hit an extra guy
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There is no 'location roll' when shooting someone. You hit them or they don't, and armour has added an average value across the whole body.
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However, called shots are now more than just a narrative tool, but a standard combat option. For every 'step' you voluntarily make your roll to hit harder, you get bonus damage dice. The examples listed are
- Aiming for a limb - which would give you enough bonus damage dice to probably ignore the armour of the guardsman
- Aiming for the head - which might give you enough bonus damage dice to ignore the armour of the battle sister
- Aiming for a joint or vision slit - Which might give you enough bonus damage dice to ignore the armour of the marine
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However, called shots are now more than just a narrative tool, but a standard combat option. For every 'step' you voluntarily make your roll to hit harder, you get bonus damage dice. The examples listed are
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There is a separate damage roll (unlike Genesys) but it's more obviously coupled to the to hit roll than Dark Heresy because you can 'shunt' bonus dice from your to hit roll to your damage roll.
- Because damage dice add 0, 1 or 2 damage, far more of the damage potential of a weapon is in the 'flat' damage bonus.
- A Lasgun (damage 7 + 1 die) does 7 damage 1/2 the time, 8 damage 1/3 of the time, and 9 damage 1/6 of the time (before extra bonus dice).
- 7 damage is more than the (unarmoured) resilience of all the character, marine included, so whilst 'skin armour' is still a thing, it's only reducing how many wounds the hit causes, not stopping damage in the first place (without armour coming into play, anyway)
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However, 9 damage is less than the armoured resilience of the battle sister, which means that the two power armoured characters can only be hurt by lasfire with a spare '6' on the damage roll (a lucky shot) a called shot to a weak point, or some other form of damage boost.
- Rifles get Rapid Fire, giving you bonus damage within half range (2 in the case of bolters and 1 in the case of Gael's slightly longer range lasgun)
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If you equal the target's resilience, they take shock (fatigue/strain/strife).
- Recovering shock is pretty easy
- If you 'run out of shock' you're basically unable to take actions
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If you beat it, they take wound(s).
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PCs, or NPCs with ruin, may take shock and make a 'soak' test to turn some or all of the wounds into shock and "
80's-action-hero(ine)"
your way through the gunshot wound.
- 'Mortal Wounds' can't be soaked unless you have a piece of gear which says you can (the Priest has a Rosarius which allows that)
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If you're reduced to zero wounds, NPCs are just dead, heroes get 3 toughness checks (+/- medicae assistance) to try to not die.
- This is probably where critical injuries may come in in the full game, but obviously not shown here.
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PCs, or NPCs with ruin, may take shock and make a 'soak' test to turn some or all of the wounds into shock and "
80's-action-hero(ine)"
your way through the gunshot wound.
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Ammo is not tracked bullet-by-bullet, but it's still a 'thing' unlike genesys.
- Everyone starts with 3 reloads.
- A standard 'complication' (a '1' on the wrath dice) is dead-man's-click and need to spend an action reloading.
- Alternatively you can spend a reload to add your weapon's 'salvo' value in extra attack dice (basically emptying the magazine into something).
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'Non-combat-combat skills' have a stock effect which is nice and easy for a GM to use:
- If you want to make an intimidate check versus willpower, or deception or acrobatics versus initiative, or whatever, they all have a standard effect in combat.
- Either the target gets Vulnerable (-1 defence for the turn) or Hindered (+1 difficulty to their checks for the turn).
- This means that whilst 'hitting it with my sword' is a perfectly valid choice (especially since she has a power sword), Victoria Lin can instead lower the defence of a bunch of opponents with an intimidate test and make it easy for everyone else to kill them.
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Bolt and chain weapons get 'brutal', which give +1 to the roll of bonus dice for damage
- This is obviously akin to tearing.
- Since it boosts existing bonus dice rather than giving you more, it's (a) good, but (b) particularly rewards characters with the skills to get said bonus dice; meaning (rather appropriately) boltguns and chainswords give proportionately more awesome effect in the hands of elite combatants.
So, what are the characters like?
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Everyone is a Tier 3 character or has been raised to that point, meaning all characters are in theory equal.
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Some of them are Tier 1 characters with 2 ascension packages dropped on them (Sergeant Gael Harden, Pater Nemoris, Lady Yyrmalla Aleretta)
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Sergeant Harden looks a bit out of place compared to the marine and the battle sister, but she's better off than she looks at first glance because she's had two ascension packages dropped on her.
- Yes, a lasgun is a bit naff compared to a bolter (damage 7+1ED versus damage 10+1ED, brutal).
- She also has a lower soak (3 instead of 4 dice), shock 7 (the same as Orten rather than Kull or Lin) and 6 wounds not 8.
- However, she gets a talent allowing her to recover shock mid-battle, so her stats are deceptive, and a subskin armour augmetic, upping her resilience to nearly the same as the power-armoured brigade and the toughness 5 Lin).
- Her main combat benefit is her signature weapon rule, giving her a bonus damage die with her lasgun (and its bayonet), plus her BS5, which puts her far more on a par with the heavier fighters.
- She also has I5 and a distinctly non-standard-for-generic-grunts auspex, giving her the best awareness roll of anyone.
- She does also have the ability Look Out Sir, allowing her to take hits on behalf of someone else (with a slight resilience boost) - although since the Marine, Battle Sister and Commissar are all tougher than her, this is an ability to be used sparingly!)
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Pater Nemoris is equally an upgraded Tier 1, meaning his base stats are...so-so.
- Willpower and Fellowship 5 are nice, though, as is Influence 7.
- He has an area-effect shock-healing ability, which is good because it's a free action and everyone for one reason or another will want to spend more shock than they have.
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His various talents and gear make him very choppy in melee:
- Weapon Skill 4 Initiative 4 is okay, but Hatred Heretics gives him a flat +1 against heretics and Master-crafted on his chainsword gets him an extra +2 dice.
- his defence is pretty poor (although he can parry with his sword for +1), but his resilience is better than the guardsman thanks to his rosarius. Being able to spend shock to try and soak even mortal wounds is probably nice, too (not that there that looks like i'll come up too often).
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Lady Yyrmalla is a heavily upgraded inquisitorial acolyte
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Aside from having too many 'y's in her name, she's....basically the bookworm.
- A Loremaster talent and cortical implants for knowledge tests, Peer, the Inquisitor's Influence and Symbol of authority, and the Inquisitor's Decree ability for interaction tests...you name it.
- However, she has the lowest resilience and wounds and joint lowest shock.
- However, however, she has he highest base defence (equivalent to Commissar Lin when she's using a once-per-turn sidestep), and a chainsword which is far more use for Parry than to actually stab people.
- Her main job in a gunfight is 'try to not get killed', but she's pretty good at it - certainly much better than a default Dark Heresy sage or scribe. Interaction attacks (intimidate, persuade, etc) give her something useful she can still do to a target not really susceptible to laspistol fire.
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Aside from having too many 'y's in her name, she's....basically the bookworm.
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Sergeant Harden looks a bit out of place compared to the marine and the battle sister, but she's better off than she looks at first glance because she's had two ascension packages dropped on her.
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One is a Tier 2 character with a single ascension package (Sister Henna Orten)
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Henna Orten is a bit more than a 'stock' battle sister but not as blinged out as the upgraded Tier 1s.
- Notably, her only weapon is the boltgun - she's the only character not packing a melee weapon by default.
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She is very good with the boltgun, though. With Ballistic Skill 5, she's a detectably better shot than the marine.
- Her talent ability is Marksman, reducing the penalty for called shots, meaning she can readily get bonus damage dice from a called shot.
- Combined with a boltgun's brutal rule, it means she's proportionally better at putting down single tough targets compared to the marine's crowd control role.
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Again, she's tough, meaning tanking lasbolts is (reasonably) easy.
- That extra point of resilience of Kull will mean a lot more than it looks like it should in practice because extra successes means one-and-a-bit bonus dice are needed but she's certainly tough enough to largely ignore the rank-and-file goons whilst she concentrates on head-shot-ing the important opponents.
- She gives anyone nearby benefits to corruption tests to resist chaos taint and gets a bonus to resist psychic powers.
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Faith is in the game, mechanically.
- Unlike Dark Heresy, Faith is a separate resource, not using Wrath/Glory/Fate Points, whatever
- Sister Orten gets 2 faith points. We're not told in the intro rules how they're recovered, but I'd assume 'per-session'
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She specifically has 'acts of faith 1' (which gives her 2 faith points and 2 acts of faith. Go figure on the numbering system).
- It costs 1 faith and 1 shock to use them - her shock of 7 is a touch lower than Kull or Lin, so don't use Faith lightly.
- Both abilities are good but pretty low-level in effect; divine guidance is +1 BS for the turn, the passion is a single out-of-turn move.
- Stacking Divine Guidance, Marksman, spending a clip for Salvo 2, and her base Agility 5, BS5 means she should NOT be missing, and bonus damage dice and rapid fire 2 means whoever she hits should stay the heck down.
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Henna Orten is a bit more than a 'stock' battle sister but not as blinged out as the upgraded Tier 1s.
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Two are Tier 3 character (Battle-Brother Trojon Kull and Commissar Lin)
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Trojon Kull is the toughest character, but
@Lynata
will be pleased to see he's not insanely tough.
- Because he's pretty much 'straight out the box' almost all his potential comes from slightly higher stats and lots of good gear.
- As noted above, without his powered armour, even a lasgun would automatically wound him if it hit (if it weren't for the powered plate, anyway)
- His defence of 3 is actually one of the lowest, so whilst he can tank hits well, he can't really avoid them.
- His wounds score (8) is no higher than other characters (although note that they're ascended to rank 3 too, that shouldn't be taken to mean that a marine won't have more wounds than an out-of-the-box guardsman
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There is also no sign by default of the concept of Angelus-calibre weapons; Kull, Lin and Orten's bolt weapons all have identical stats of 10+1ED damage.
- When Primaris Marines turn up, they will probably have more powerful guns, because they explicitely are armed with bigger weapons - the Cawl-pattern Bolt Rifle is a separate thing to the Bolt Gun on the tabletop, with a physically bigger model, better armour penetration value and a longer range.
- Kull does have a special ability called Angel Of Death - whether you want that to represent heavier weapons, superior skill or whatever, which adds an automatic success when targeting mobs. Combined with his high armour rather than high defence and the high salvo value of a bolter, a talent that adds to attack rolls (to get multiple hits) along with a talent which helps with melee multi-attacks, this means that mulching generic goons in vast numbers is an astartes speciality (but that he's not necessarily that much better at killing 'dude with a nametag')
- He does, obviously, do insane amounts of damage with his combat knife (12+1ED), but as an unpowered blade it has no funky special traits.
- Rather than the 'unlimited power' of unnatural characteristics, he has a stock rule that he gets a +1 die situational modifier if the GM deems it appropriate to one of his implants (which is probably most checks other than combat attacks, frankly - most senses, raw strength, endurance for soak, you name it). The result is a rule which doesn't look that powerful but probably really is, albeit that a bonus die only has a 50% chance of coming up good.
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Victoria Lin is a default human Tier 3 character.
- Her stats are not detectably lower than the marine's, and better in a couple of cases (actually both her toughness and willpower are 5s, which beat's the marine's 4, and her shock - but not wounds - threshold is higher)
- Her resilience is (unsurprisingly) lower, since her armour is just a flak greatcoat.
- She's much more a 'don't get hit in the first place' combatant. Her power sword does fractionally less damage than Kull's combat blade once strength bonus is baked in (11+1ED versus 12+1ED) but it has parry, increasing her defence in melee. She also has Sidestep, which lets her further increase her defence against 1 melee attack per turn.
- Her biggest skill is intimidate. With Initimidation 4, Willpower 5, her commissar abilities giving her a flat +1 to intimidate score and the ability to intimidate mobs without penalty, she can apply vulnerable to big mobs without much trouble, allowing the other PCs to clean up.
- She's also another character who boosts friendly resolve checks, along with Pater Nemoris.
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Trojon Kull is the toughest character, but
@Lynata
will be pleased to see he's not insanely tough.
-
Some of them are Tier 1 characters with 2 ascension packages dropped on them (Sergeant Gael Harden, Pater Nemoris, Lady Yyrmalla Aleretta)
Edited by Magnus Grendel