While reading through the different DH books, (and I haven't had the funds to buy up RT yet so bear with me) I noticed that while there are a quite a few different enemies to have and some great tables for creating your own, the deamonhost one being a personal favorite. I realized that while I have pulled from the books a lot I've also found myself needing to craft up and housemake a lot of adversaries for my acolytes to fight. Under the assumption I'm not the only one to do this I figured we could all share a bit and garner some cool ideas for our campaigns. I just used this guy for a great session where the PC's had to do some seriously quick thinking and forced them to start making choices if their lives or those of imperial citizens were more important.

To preface this whenever I make an NPC or antagonist I just make even numbers for ease of calculation and creation feel free to tweak them as you like

Eversor Assassin

WS 60

BS 60

S 40

T 40

Ag 50

Int 20

Per 40

WP 40

Fel 10

Wounds 40

Traits/talents

Heightened senses (all), Ambidextrous, Autosanguine, Weapon training melee/missle (all) Blademaster, Blind Fighting, Catfall, Combat Master, Crack shot, Crushing Blow, Counter-attack, Die hard, Fearless, Frenzy, Furious Assault, Hard Target, Leap up, Lightning Attack, Mental Fortress, Mighty shot, Quick Draw, Rapid Reation, Rapid Reload, Step Aside, True Grit, Wall of Steel.

Now for the special stuff

Combat Drugs. The Eversor assassin can activate this as a free action and may sustain it a number of rounds equal to triple his/her non enhanced toughness score. while under the effects the assassin gains unnatural strength, Toughness, and agility x2. and can make dodge attempts in a single round equal to enhanced agility modifier. The eversor can activate this ability as many times as he/she wishes even while it is already active which does stack the un natural modifiers, however each time within a 24 hour period causes him to make a Hard (-10) toughness test increasing by (-10) for each subsequent activation or take 1d10 wounds unmodified by toughness and suffer a level of fatigue. A secondary failure causes the eversor to take 2d10 wounds and lose his fast shot and overwhelming assault abilities.

Neuro Gauntlet. Treat the gauntlet as a normal powerblade with the special property that it ignores all toughness bonuses.

Fast shot. When charging an opponent the Eversor can fire his pistol twice at the target he is charging.

Overwhelming assault. While under the effects of Combat Drugs you may use your lightning attack power at the end of a charge.

Bio meltdown. when the Eversor is ever incapacitated, killed, or if capture seems imminent he goes into bio meltdown and in 1d5 rounds explodes violently causing 1d10+4 Pen 5 damage to all creatures within 5 meters of him. Acolytes can percieve the changes happening with a hard (-10) Perception check.

The special pistols they have I just treated as a bolt pistol and a needle pistol in one gun that he could choose which one to fire on any given shot.

The Eversor assassin is in Ascension as a NPC/monster to wipe out your players with.

Your take seems sufficiently evil.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Well I feel like a twit then. I haven't had the cash to nab Ascension yet, and as my PC's are all in the rank 2-3 range currently I haven't needed to. Well I'll have to scour some of my notes for something more original and post it up here. Until then break out your baddies guys, lets give our little acolytes something to fear.

No need to feel silly. Line YOUR eversor up with the one they provide and it is not that far off. Sentinel Array and Executor Pistol, all their kit really, is in Ascension.

I have found a very valuable GM's tool is to simply modify existing templates to in-effect create "new" templates that are specific to your story needs. So say you are using the "Enforcer" template in the core book to represent local planetary police officers, but you also want to include a special "elite" security detatchment that act as security guards for non-Imperial government facilities as well as bodyguards for VIPs.... Start with your existing Enforcer as a "baseline" then add to it just as if it were a PC spending XP. Adjust WS, BS, PER and possibly WILL by +3-5 each and add a few "vital" skills and talents. Modify their gear to suit their intended role and you are good to go. Another easy "tweak" is to take an existing template and simply modify it with a "character origin" template and make a few suitable gear changes; Adding the "hiver" package to the generic Enforcer, for example.

Now say your story has a lieutenant in the Special Security unit serving as the antagonist... Take your freshly crafted "Securitat Officer" template and start making changes again. Alternately, I will make unique stat-blocks for "named" NPCs that serve a specific role in my story. Maybe they are notably superior or inferior to a "generic" NPC of their type? Perhaps they have a few odd skills and talents that their co-workers do not? Maybe they have a mutation or latent psychic power that they have managed to conceal so far? If they are especially important and might be around for a while I might actually create the NPC from the ground up as if they were a PC, up to and including "spending XP" over the course of a long story arc, allowing my long term NPC to learn from their experiences and remain relevant to the players' growing level of competence. This is great for recurring villains or long term allies!

A few things I've noted when creating opposition for the campaign where all the characters are based on the guardsman template. Most premade opponents are way to weak to be a challenge for a combat oriented group in a straight up face to face challenge. The easy thing to do is to make antagonists that can do a lot of damage and challenge the group by threatening to take out all the dangerous elements before they can take out the antagonist. That kind of gunslinger shootout challenge gets boring quite fast and it's tiresome to make up all those new player characters. So I usually end up throwing lots of slightly weak enemies on my acolytes, or I design opponents that have unusual means of survivability. I thought I'd share some creative ways to create survivability for named opponents. Many of these work really well when combined.

The unnatural dodger. make a talent that lets you dodge as many times as you have agi-bonus. Very fitting for assassins and quick aliens such as genestealers. Although a bit random. An undodged hit form an autocannon or an eviscerator will still kill you. This is just survivability on average.

The unnatural parry. Similar. Appropriate for very skilled fighters such as eldar exarchs. Can also work good if the antagonist is supposed to be in melee most of the time, and will create an interesting tactical situation where the players must maneuver to get a clear shot, maybe

The force field. this works like the unnatural dodge in that is has a random chance to either work or not.

The ablative minions. Let the minions have an ability to sacrifice themselves by spending reactions to get in the way of an attack ment for their master. If they fail the master is allowed to take a dodge. Really colorful way to illustrate a mindcontrolling non-caring mastermind or just standard fanaticism.

The unnatural toughness. A high amount of damage reduced from every hit makes the not-combat-optimized characters feel very unneccesary and powerless. It's really boring when the target is balanced around handling huge amounts of damage in a single hit and all you have is a lasgun. Can be combined with multiple minions to give those with smaller damage/hit something to do.

The lots and lots of wounds. This is my fav solution. Sit down and make a calculation of how many points of damage your acolyte group can inflict during one round, reduced by your antagonists toughness and armor. Then decide how many rounds you want the antagonist to live and then multiply. Remember that the players damage per round is likely to decrease over time as they get taken out of combat. Make up a way to connect this rule to the story, and preferably a way to illustrate it, including a definitive effect. It breaks immersion if there is no apparent reason that a person can take horrible amounts of wounds. Some of my preferred explanations are:
The psychic powerfield that dims a bit with each strike it absorbs, defensive runes combusting and withering away as the power of the attacks is nullified.
The mechanical powerfield, similar.
The psychic shield, make the minions heads burst open or their bodies open up in matching wounds each time a strike lands. This is extra fun if the antagonist is using innocent civilians or hostages to channel damage too. People with less combat skills or more blast weapons can always help by killing off the hostages ;-)
The huge monster. Mutated/xenos/psychic powers/mechanical monster/powerrangerscombine. You can even do a classic manga-computer-rpg-endboss-transform from this. Just as the players think they have beaten the big bad, she laughs, lifts up her mangled head from the floor and transforms into a seven winged angel, her true powerful form that she has laboured for years to perfect the ritual for. And now the acolytes appeared just in time (and exactly as she had planned all along) to help her with the last step of her transformation: the slaying of her mortal coil in a fight to the death in the center of this ancient necrontyr temple defiled by long forgotten runes dedicated to the sixth unnamed power of chaos! And as soon as she has properly repayed the acolytes for their help (by killing them of course) she will travel to holy terra to throw down the rotting emperor from his throne and claim all of the imperium for her dark lord and master. Well, you know how that story ends ;-)

The invisible. A vindicare assassin would be the perfect example of this. A kilometer away on a rooftop inside the sprawling hive. This is an enemy that is better hunted by using contacts and underworld/arbites connections than by using awareness checks. Similar goes for a lictor in a tunnelsystem or someone in civilian clothes with a needle pistol in a crowd in the market. This can be very frustrating for the players, some groups might not at all enjoy this challenge.

The horde! Make not one enemy but a huge group of them, equip with a shared mind/personality of some sort. Deathwatch has workable rules for fighting against hordes.

The clones. Kill the same enemy several times.

The controller. Mindtricks are fun. Using psychic powers to disable the groups hardhitters or to use them to attack the adept is a recipe for success. Please be mindful that it is boring to not be in control of your character.

The unavailable. Keep the adversary visible but not touchable and have her do her fights by minions or remote controlled turrets. Use videolink, voxlink, stationairy forcefields, teleporters etc. Once the defences are down the door to her inner sanctum can be breached and the killing of her frail physcial form will be a nice contrast.

That's some basic food for thought. I hope it helps you.