Werewindlefr said:

It is kind of disheartening to see something that didnt even exist in the core rules (Pure Faith) suddenly become available to anyone from a variety of alternate ranks, cell packages and background options.

Sisters do not fit in with the DH investigation style of play. Maybe the dialoguos or famulous fit, but not the gun nuns.

So, gun-nun doesn't upset the game but she doesn't fit with it.

Now, I'm very worried about future releases.

Someone must explain to FFG the difference between Dark Heresy and DeathWatch.

Sebashaw said:

I honestly dont even understand why they have their own career path (in two books none the less). At best they should be alternate ranks for Clerics or Guardsmen.

They serve a very important purpose overall in the Imperium and are very handy when it comes time to go a purging once you discover the cultists, their location and rev up for the final fight, but they dont fit the rest of the DH style.

They dont have investigation skills. They dont have knowledge skills. They dont go under cover (I canot see a Sister of Battle pretending to be a chaos worshipper and infiltrating a cult).

Peacekeeper_b said:

If you look at the Adeptus Sororitas as a collection of knightly orders, of course there are going to be a great variety of people within each order, to make it work, beyond the straightforward 'knights' themselves. It is these people (as you say, those types of SoB) who go to work within Inquisitorial cells and can fit in with the more investigation/inflitration-focused games (as the SoB in one of our games indeed does). I agree that the full-on Battle Sister simply does not fit that sort of campaign.

Perhaps these new source books are looking at a whole different sort of DH game (I haven't got my copy of the book yet, I should mention). Maybe BoM is for a game in which you're playing under a very specific (Ecclesiarchal-focused) Inquisitor who will be kitting you out with serious armour and weaponry, and this equipment will be given to the whole group (or else the whole group needs to be BoM classes). You will subsequently be sent against appropriately tough enemies, who can be approached in a militant fashion.

I would suggest that the BoM class(es?) of Sister would work fine in that specific sort of game, and maybe aren't intended to fit in with other (more standard) campaigns.

Peacekeeper_b said:

People have been using Dark Heresy to run all manner of 40k games since it came out: Imperial Guard, hive gangs, arbitrators, chaos cultists... Blood of Martyrs contains information for running Ecclesiarchy-based campaigns, which are not inherently investigative... nor are any campaigns. Rogue Trader is as easily a game of piracy as it is one of exploration, warfare or politics... or any combination of those things. Deathwatch is much more narrowly focussed, certainly, but Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader both have plenty of room for a wide variety of campaign styles. It seems to me that, as much as Blood of Martyrs (and those that will follow it - Bood of Judgement and Only War) contains options for traditional "Acolyte" campaigns, it also lays the groundwork for campaigns with different frameworks and premises.

And that's a good thing.

The Arbite book could lay the ground-work for a fully Arbite-based campaign (ie. not even involving the Inquisition at all) where players could play as members of a small Precinct, or even a special 'Strike Team' within an Arbites Precinct (ala The Shield, but without the robbing an Armenian Money Train...). The Guard book, the one I am looking forward to the most in the whole DH line up, could give us enough 'Guard' options to run campaigns that involve the Guard - specialist elite Guard veteran units sent on special missions, scenarios that involve war and conquest rather than Inquisitorial investigation.

All of these things are expanding and broadening the scope of Dark Heresy, and that's a Very Good Thing™. I suspect their aim is to do the same thing elsewhere, such as with the Battlefleet Koronus book for Rogue Trader, which would appear to give the players enough info to ditch the 'Rogue Trader' element and play as a Fleet Admiral. And that's not a dig at the notion of playing as a Rogue Trader, but a good way of taking the existing framework for Star Ship combat and interaction between ships and crew and so on and and expanding it out into other aspects of 40K lore (the Imperial Navy being a fairly big and much-loved part of that). Hell, by using Into the Storm and a few creative House Rules it's really easy to play a Rogue Trader game where everyone is an Ork Freeboota and you all play as Ork Pirates aboard an Ork ship!!!

The more expansion - and by that I don't mean expansion s as in expansion books, but expansion as in the broadening of the canvass in which we play the game - the better 40K RPG's will be.

BYE

andrewm9 said:

Confirmed. I have an SoB Roster that I play regularly, and melee combat is definitely NOT their strong point. However, advancing on my gunline is never (EVER) a good idea. I've blasted many a carnifex to tiny smoking bits that way lol.

(Let me amend this. I have a Canoness with a jump pack, eviscerator (master crafted), Cloak of St. Aspira, Book of St Lucius, inferno pistol and a ton of faith points that usually tangles with the general of other armies in our tabletop games. None of them like her. None of them.)

I have to agree... I guess part of the reason I didnt think they were overpowered with bolter and armor (armor seems stronger than the bolter by far), was mianly because I dont see sisters fitting in a normal game...

I for one am pleased that they did what they did... It expands the game in a different way. As stated above, now you can run an entire eclisiarchy game. possibly an arbite game etc.

It really expands the realm of Dark heresy to other corners. I'll never run nor play an eclisarchy game, but I am very satisfied that they put the option out.. in hopes it goes somewhere for others too...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Im sure once Bood of Judgement and Only War and we have the options for Chrono Gladiators or Ogryns or whatever they'll be a lot of choice for a particular type of campaign and nothing to stop people selecting what type of characters are available for a particulay campaign.

(other than, of course, a GM envisiging a a descete campaign inflitrating a corrupt merchant house from the bottom up and all the characters only wanting to play a SoB an Ogryn and a Chrono Gladiator but that's possible in 75% of all games ever).