As the title asks, what is the general thought behind the Monthly Stipend? I know it's for a month of gametime, but how long does that equate to in your games? My current group just finished a mission in game-time of 3 days....which was 2 sessions....and 600 xp. Is this the norm? At this rate, we won't even come close to being able to afford any more than the most basic of gear and such. Of course, our group, having seen this pace, has become a bunch of loot monkeys.

Also, what's the general guideline for gearing? There are some really awesome pieces of kit and gear...but when can you feasibly find them? If you go based off of the monthly stipend....most stuff is going to be and stay inaccessable.

What are your experiences along this thoughtline...and also, what have been your solutions and such? What have you done when you've found yourself with several different weapon talents, and no access to those weapons?

Have long streches of downtime between missions. Maybe explain it as training/investigating leads that don't go anywhere interesting/long undercover missions waiting for something to happen/missions too boring to roleplay/etc.

I have never DM'd DH, so this is all from a player's perspective.

I assumed that travel between missions would take a significant amount of time and players would get paid during these journeys. They also might be paid, as the above poster suggested, for downtime between missions as they are "on-call."

In addition, I feel like if the players are finding loots from cultists they are slaying that they can return them to their Inquisitor and she can pay them some % of their value, assuming she can sell them to legitimate businessmen/women to further fund the Inquisition. Players should also have their pick of stuff their enemies are using, so if you're ranking up really quickly and fighting bigger and badder dudes, you should steal their guns (and bullets)!

Lastly, I don't see why Inquisitor's might not give bonuses for jobs well done. It's in the interest of the Inquisitor to keep their acolytes well-armed and armored to allow them to succeed at the Emperor's glorious business. To some degree forcing them to scrounge for and buy all their own equipment seems counter-productive.

What are your experiences along this thoughtline...and also, what have been your solutions and such? What have you done when you've found yourself with several different weapon talents, and no access to those weapons?

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I gave my team 4,000,000 Thrones as a stipend for their expected 6-month deployment. This had to cover all their expenditure of course, and they didn't know what that would be up-front. however, it meant that they could get access to pretty much anything they needed. In the end they didn't spend it all as they were able to establish a few income-generating enterprises to reduce their need to spend all the inquisition's cash. Bonus points for them!

Seriously though - ask yourself what is the point of restricting money? What are you as GM trying to achieve by making your acolytes scrap around for salvaged gear to sell or steal? Not very 'Inquisition' is it? If its a key part of your story, go for it. If not, give them access to what they need.

You could just give them the gear of course, but i prefer to 'give them enough rope to hang themselves'. Let's say you think they'll need 20,000Thr to finish the adventure (you know they'll need to pay some key bribes for example). So you give them the money. They immediately spend it on power armour. Fine. Now they aren't going to have enough cash to cover the bribes, and you as GM have a very interesting story mechanism. I'd double that up by making the situations where that power armour is actually useful, quite rare...

They won't waste moeny like that a second time when the Inquisitor finds out they mismanaged their resources so badly...

Remember you giving a STIPEND, not a wage...

I'm a big fan of the Influence system introduced in Ascension, and granted my group the use of it as quickly as I reasonably could.

In essence, you replace all the individual stipends with a group "fund" as represented by their Influence. The varying pay-grades made no sense to me anyway, as the players are now in service to the Inquisition. Oh sure, some of them might still be getting a stipend from somewhere (Tech-Priests and Clerics?), and the Scum money making system might seem "neat", but overall its just a crapshoot.

If the goal is to make players worry about gear and resources, there are better ways to do it, imo. And for most game types its EXTREMELY inappropriate for your group to loot cultist or xenos weaponry or gear, even if its just to sell it on...in fact, in the latter case that would be the Cold Trade, something the Inquisition is generally combating.

Interesting ideas Luddite, one that would certainly suit some Inquisitors style. I assume that not every Inquisitor likes to have dead poor Acolytes who need to scrounge money wherever they can to get some gear, pay for bribes, transportation etc.

For the old fashioned ones. Travel is slow. It can takes weeks before a message from an Astropath to be received. Travel to another planet is a thing that takes time to. From a couple of weeks to a year of travel time. Luckily while in the warp, on average one day passes for every day in transit. So those aboard a ship, won't know how many days have been passed in the materium.

For a team that does not travel much, most of the times, the acolytes will be spending times training, writing reports, getting debriefed, evaluated, learning new codes and such. Perhaps they even have to observe somebody for a long time to see if he does something suspicious. It is not as if the next serious threat materializes suddenly just after you closed the first attempt to open a warprift in your hive of choice.

So, it would be logical to assume that at least one month passes before another mission pops up.

In my first campaign, the -I- gave them basic gear- for example need to go on a planet undercover? They'll get costume or diguises (rehenforced with mesh lining) as for weapons, most had thier basic starting stuff, and most used them all the time.

Weapon-wise it always ended up with them raiding the local Arbitrator/IG/Navy ship/whatever armoury and simply having the trouble of what weapon they wanted to haul around (then they returned it, since it was a loan under Inquisitional mendate than a perma-take)

Now I had my players start with their starting cash and a folding knife. I plan on having the -I- giving them weapons and gear (specific for the mission: no need for a flamer when they'll be 90% of the time in the void for example) which they MUST return after mission: it ain't a charity after all (I might use a requisition system for what gear is 'autorized' to take: they may take a lasgun crate, but maybe not 2 meltaguns right off the bat without proving their worth first)

If the player wants to have his own stub pistol for example, then they cough up the cash at the Inquisitional armoury/store and have his own personnal weapon...Of course if they loose it, it's their problem they'll have to re-pay to get another one oOR have one 'on laon' for a mission (which they must turn over once the mission's done)

As for pay: generally speaking when 1 month passes (generally a mission with the travel and all, which itself could be longer) They'll get the -I- to wrie money or get thier pay from a paymaster where ever they are.

Braddoc said:

Heh, yeah, I remember my assassin wearing Guard Flak. It made for a nice image, in some weird cyberpunk'esque way. Quite fitting for a Hiver, though.

I'm curious to see how this new campaign will do. A combination of Inquisitorial minimum supply, Renown-based Requisition and personal pocket money purchases sound like the most interesting way to go.

Lynata said:

Yeah I remember that one- everyone took Enforcer Carapace, making the I.G. Lt. think you were the ONLY Inquisiton agent around (as you weren't wearing the Arbitrator monkey suit)

And since this time around, the Cell will have access to special weaponry -they got 2 Type-C already- it,s gonna be a blast..just hope we can kep it running enough to reach the endgame,,which should be epic (duh!)

Braddoc said:

The problem i have with that approach is that its railroading. Its the GM saying to the PCs, 'right, you're going undercover now' or somesuch.

I prefer to give them the mission brief, then a stipend so that THEY can decide how to achieve their goals and purchase the gear they think they'll need to do it.

Always give the PC's/players the choice, and as i said, always give them enough rope (or cash) to hang themselves!

Luddite said:

Well, that was my first campaign years ago, back when I was 'starting out' as a GM, so I was a bit more at ease in a 'controlled environment' than going with the flow of the story as the player saw fit.

Of course I learned with time, so that's why I plan ahead, just not every tiny bits of details; mostly because the players will either ignore them, don't care about them, do the opposite of what was expected or will stop at one of them and grind it to the ground; more than once the PCs flashed the rosette to interrogate a bum/random NPC (wheras a few thrones/drinks would have had him talking for hours) all the while evading a Commissar's questions as to who they were and what they were doing in an Imperial Guard base during an Ork attack.

I plan on doing more of a "this is the problem, fix it, and I want reports every X hours. Bye." Maybe not for the 'first mission' proper (as it'll be a way to get a new player in) but passed that I plan of giving them pretty much blank card as to how they wish to proceed.

So the majority that I'm hearing, is that most people don't have a problem making sure their group is geared?

Our group runs things fairly by the book, with everyone afforded their allotted wage. We don't earn during a mission, but the GM gives three or four months of downtime in between them, for which we get the money our class allows, and during which time we can pursue our own business while the Inquisitor doesn't have need of us, or we're exploring leads on our own.

In the beginning, this hurts for a Scum. A lot. But at higher levels, their earning power exceeds most other classes and they really make up for lost time (or rather earnings). Also, if they're a Scum worth their salt, they've set up money-making enterprises in the meantime that may allow them additional income.

After a few missions (once we had proved ourselves somewhat to the Inquisitor) we were granted a reward - a piece of kit (armour or weaponry or whatever) gifted to us as a reward for our service. The same happened every few adventures, or after a particularly difficult mission. Thus the Scum gained best-quality light enforcer carapace that she's still wearing at Ascension level.

For certain missions (e.g. a foray onto a spacehulk) we were loaned the necessary equipment that we wouldn't reasonably be expected to possess. Honestly, in our game (in fact, both the one that has reached Ascension and the game that's only halfway there), income hasn't been a big issue. The Scum get grumpy about how much the Nobles in the group earn, but that's about as far as it goes, and when the Scum passes a Willpower check and the Noble (with base WP of 15) crumples into a sobbing heap before the scary Pink Horror, who's laughing then?

No, I don't think a group should be under-equipped for the mission their Inquisitor wants them to undertake. Using the normal monetary system, though, and granting additional kit when necessary or earned, we have never had any problems.

Luddite said:

To keep the players for purchasing everything right from the beginning.
Otherwise there would be no sort of pleasant anticipation to get some new and possibly better equipment during play. If all characters have Power Armour right from the beginning, they will never feel like having worked for something to achieve. My Guardsman player was happy like a five year old on his birthday when he finally could purchase his Chainsword and leave his Mono saber at home…

Well, maybe I am a little stringent, but I keep my players sort of on a short leash in this regard. I pay them their wages according to the rulebook as I assume the original organizations they come from (Administratum, Munitorum, Arbites, Magistratum, Mechanicus, Ministorum or whatever) keep paying them as if they would be still part of them. The Inquisitor officially only borrowed the characters (for an indefinite time) from their respective organizations and so they are only sort of released from their duties for the time being.
Thus my rank 5 PCs are still mostly equipped with SP and Las weapons (including a Bolt Pistol for the TP) as well as Chain and Mono weapons and armoured with Flak and Mesh armour overall.
They are about to be sent on the first ‘official’ Inquisition backed up missions (i.e. non-undercover) in the near future and I will most probably start to grant them stuff by the Inquisitor that fits their role (e.g. Executioner rounds for the Arbitrator, a Force Weapon for the Psyker, a Heavy Weapon for the Guardsman and maybe even a Nomad for the Assassin).

Brolthemighty said:

I think it really depends on what kind of scope you're aiming at. The game offers a lot of possibilities when it comes to the role of the Acolyte cell, ranging from being simple contacts that are activated whenever their Inquisitor finds it useful, up to a group of specialists who are on duty 24/7, tracking down threats to the stability of the sector. Naturally, their equipment would reflect this.

Luthor Harkon said:

I think i've put forward mty view on that. :¬D

Luthor Harkon said:

OK, but what does D&D style gear acquisition rewards have to do with roleplaying an Inquisitorial Agent whose life is entirely given over to the duties put before them?

I guess its down to wether you see gear as a reward rather than the tools of the PCs job.

Luddite said:

Actually, I can see some gear given as a reward: like a good or best quality laspistol, nice bionics, fancy chestplate; sure gien them the gear to acomplish their duties, but a nice weapon as a reward shows that at least his superiors notice his work and it's not like they can simply give them a pay raise; plus a best quality laspistol for example could almost be like a badge of office: showing to toher high ranking folks that that 'lowly' acolyte actually seems to be a do-er rather than another fool sticking his nose in everyone's business because he can.

It's not like a guardsman can afford (or be autorized to carry) a pistol that's worht a few months, if not years, of pay

Braddoc said:

Oh, that depends ... if you remember my idea about the "expenses pool", an Inquisitor could arrange for it to be stocked with more money - to be used by the cell to acquire better lodging, faster transport, nicer meals ... or better weapons.

Lynata said:

True, but in 'universe' term, I would see an acolyte reciving a better weapon or ncie armour more than having his -I- saying 'I'll give you an Emperor's Day bonus"..but giving them a bigger cash pool would be acceptable as well!

Likely depends a lot on the individual "style" of the Inquisitor, too.

A Professional may just assign them a greater resource pool ("I see you managed to accomplish your mission. Well done. I have transferred a sum of 500 Thrones to your account - take a few days off").

A Teamworker may grant them access to otherwise restricted armories ("There you are! I seem to have come into the possession of a few Locke-pattern boltguns, courtesy of our friends at the Adeptus Arbites. I am sure you will find a use for them, will you not?").

A Sentimentalist may give them an item that once belonged to one of his former pupils ("This plasma pistol once belonged to a student of mine until he found the Emperor's peace in the Ork Uprising on Magak IV. Be sure to take good care of it"), or maybe even one of his own devices ("Back when I was a lowly Acolyte, this blade of mine has severed the head of many a heretic ... good times").

Just off the top of my head.

Lynata said:

"Just off the top of my head." she says...

(yeah.inside thing, mostly)

My last campaign worked on the premise that each mission brought rewards, with months of between-mission downtime giving the Acolytes a retainer (their 'wage') - the same downtime gave them the means to search out rarer items to equip themselves with.

At any given time, each Acolyte had a few thousand thrones to fall back on, but their Inquisitor didn't give them any resources they hadn't earned or which weren't necessary for their task - it was their responsibility to ensure that they were adequately equipped, that they built their own aliases and gathered their own, personal, arsenals. The reasoning behind this was that they should succeed and fail on their own merits and their own efforts, requiring that they be resourceful, that they learn how to do things with limited resources (because once they can learn how to get things done with nothing but their wits, they'll better respect the power that comes with the authority they earn later) to prove that they're worthy of the responsibilities and rewards of higher station and greater authority.

It's survival of the fittest; either they learn to work with what they have and prosper because of it... or they fail, unmourned and unremembered like so many before them.

That sounds good, too. Especially as downtime also makes the training of new skills and talents much more believable - aside from, of course, the acquisition of new gear. It also allows coming up with new and resourceful contacts, which may be used straight away to make the former easier.

I guess the consensus here is that you could say that "all roads lead to Holy Terra."

@Brad: Whaaat? I did try to think of another one but there's not that many to choose from and this was the most obvious.

Lynata said:

I know, I know, just messin' with 'ya with little, no malice intended.