What would be the exact type of character we will be playing, clearly a Cultist does not start out as powerful as a Chaos Space Marine.
The "Forsaken" in the picture cleary looks like a CSM but I doubt it will be just another Space Marine Game.

Will this game start out with several levels of play or will they try to balance things?

My money is on a split between Rogue Trader level renegade guardsmen, Dark Mechanicus, other sorts of cultists, and full-blown Deathwatch -power- level-Chaos Space Marines. Forsaken is probably a Specialty of CSM. Just a thought... I could be wrong.

I expect that we will be able to play everything from a chaos space marine, to a mortal warlord of chaos. I don't see the point in playing a lowly grunt if the focus of the game is to bring about the end of the bloated Imperium of man.

I hope FFG will put the players in the position to play the movers and shakers amongst lost and the damned, the slaves to darkness.

The only slaves here are the ones who foolishly worship the corpse-emperor's decadent, dying empire.

Death to the loyalists!

...

I think I'm getting too into my character already.

They'll likely either normalize the "powerlevel" of Chaos Marines to a point where DW Marines would be in a game of DH/RT, or they will buff the normal people to make everyone loosely compatible to each other (not in combat capability but usefulness and survivability). It depends on what kind of narrative style the designers want to take this game to. This being about Chaos I could see it go either way (from DH/RT-style gritty infiltration or the pursuit of unholy quests to DW-style epic carnage against Loyalist forces), though any buffs for ordinary characters could even be explained within the scope of the game itself as "Gifts of the Gods", so to say.

I for one am looking forward to play perhaps not a "lowly grunt", but someone in the middle maybe. Ascension-level sounds about right, with one player amongst the group acting as everyone's spokesperson to a powerful patron (Cult Sorcerer or Chaos Warlord) and the entourage being a motley crew of the Lost and the Damned serving their leader. A RogueTrader'esque approach might work as well, giving the players a Traitor Warship with thousands of cultists and then letting them decide how they will want to bring ruin to the hated Imperium.

I'm certainly eager to see how this will develop.

as a big Horus Heresy fan its Chaos Space Marines all the way for me, endless roleplaying possibilities and ghoulish OTT fun (one half of me thinks of playing a subtle, scheming Alpha Legion marine with ambiguous commitment to Chaos, the other half is thinking of Chainaxes and 'Blood for the Blood god!') given we can see a 'Forsaken' which appears to be a Chaos Space marine, and since they haven't included Ascension-type advance packages in other corebooks, I think its a safe bet that CSMs are a starting option. I'm hoping they keep CSMs at a similar level of power to Astartes in Deathwatch (thus making it more suitable as an antagonist generator for DW as well) and have either a two-tier approach or have very strong mortal characters, I vastly prefer the Black library portrayal of Astartes to that of the TT game...

Hi,

Maybe we'll see character creation on a three tiered structure in line with the other 40k titles? Something like CSM on pr with Deathwatch, Chaos Reavers to Rogue Trader and Fallen Servants to Dark Heresy. I can see the appeal on all levels, though some kind of sandbox freestyle bad guy reavers in a dark dark ship haunting the fringes of the Imperium ticks more boxes for me.

Any thoughts on the setting location for Black Crusade? Possibly the far side of the Koronus expanse (IIRC Hazeroth Abyss?).

Agreed with previous posts this reminds me somewhat of old Realm o Chaos. Hopefully with similar art...

From the preview, it sounds like the players do have some autonomy to set up, ally with or destroy cults and generally be a thorn in the Imperium's side. This would imply at least Rogue Trader levels of power. Considering DW and RT are IIRC only 3000 XP removed from each other, maybe you'd start as a pseudo-initiate in the CSM career - or maybe the non-CSM careers are already quite experienced.

I am hoping that we will get to role-play the unseen background on Chaos held planets as well as being covert operatives on Imperial planets. Some of the most interesting stuff in the 40K canon I read recently was the Abnett take in Gaunt's Ghosts of Guardsmen infiltrating a chaos held planet, and the way that a tainted society would work.

Even 'normal' humans can have astonishing powers should they use chaos artefacts or have access to chaos powers that make them serious malificare - again, the Ravenor series with its host of deadly chaos baddies would stand as a good example of the kinds of powers that pawns of the dark gods could wield. nd then, of course, there are Chaos Space Marine Legionaries - what a blast to be able to play some dude that may have been around for 10,000 years nursing some serious hate (although it may not seem like that long in the Eye of Terror).

No.12 said:

Depending on the preferences of the group or individual players you could then simply skip a few levels, akin to creating rank 5 DH characters for a game of RT - or suck it up and play that rank 1 cultist as a servant to a rank 9 Chaos Marine (or the other way around, heh). Naturally, this would mean that the book needs to cover twice the range of ranks as the other core rulebooks did before, so maybe the designers will go a completely different way. A topic for a future designer's diary, perhaps?

from france

will it be the radical radical side of the empire of man or simply hey coool i can plau chaos. i can burn, torture , mutilate; destroy world etc etc....... but wait isn't it what we do already at a inquisitor order or as inquisitor ourselves?

i am skeptical and hope to be wrong. so far ffg had produce great game.

Hmmm, given the breadth of possible options I would say or at least hope that we have a diversity of careers similar to Dark Heresy and hopefully have some way of making most of them appeal to all or almost all of the chaos gods in equal measure.

Like some of the others, I hope we're given a level of some power in the inner struggles of chaos. Maybe not Chaos Marine level but at least the ringleaders of a cell or something. More importantly I'm hoping that there will be something to reward players who work slowly and subtly instead of just roll up some Khorne Beserkers and tearing up the underhive. Not that it wouldn't be fun, but there needs to be more to a game then that.

Just shove me full of the Obliterator virus , and I'll be good to go.

It's really hard to say. It's definitely a case of wishing there were a corebook even more for the system now, because this game is going to need a LOT of rules to really do it justice, things there won't be room for in a single book.

The Rites of Battle equivalent will need to be huge.

I'm really wondering what player charater options actually compete with being a Chaos Space Marine? Yeah, I'm sure the rulebook will contain cultists, mutants, and sorcerers, but will they be viable options compared to a CSM, or just cannon fodder?

A few things to remember:

Deathwatch Marines are still seasoned Vets at rank 1 Deathwatch (Rank 9). I could see normal Marines having some sort of advance schema from Rogue Trader startoff points as like:

Scout - > Devastator -> Assault -> Tactical. (Or does Assault come before Devastator? I don't recall) Then Deathwatch makes more sense. It would be cool to see an official ruleset for 'in depth' creation along the lines of Ascension to make Marines. Chose planet of origin, choose original career, then get chosen, buy things from Scout on up to when you get seconded to Deathwatch (Or in Tactical, or whatever)

Also, Chaos Champions who aren't Marines can be just as strong, if not stronger than Marines. Grey Knights has a baseline human Champion who can kick a Grey Knights Justicar's butt! The Dark Gods' gifts can certainly be just as puissant as a Marine's implants. So yes. They certainly can be competitive.

Adeptus-B said:

In straight combat, probably not. I imagine if anything there will be two sides to Chaos; the vugular and blatantly obvious like a pack of Khorne Beserkers running down the street decapitating anyone in their way with their chainaxes and the subtle manipulations like the conspiracies that make up pretty much ALL of the Dark Heresy published adventures. I could list a few of the truely sinister options that I would absolutely love to play but then I would have to admit that I've been checking my sanity at the door on this forum. Suffice to say, I will definitely be one of the ones who quietly manipulates things from behind the scenes. Aye Impertor, I do believe I'm actually convincing myself to buy this one.

In all the 40K games rough power level is about the same and there is no reason to assume that it will be different from Black Crusade. The objectives mentioned are high powered ones and that's consistent with the players being roughly CSM power. Here are some of my ideas about viable characters at that level:

Chaos Space Marines

Renegade Marines, not necessarily pledged to serve Chaos (Nightlords for example)

Dark Mechanicus with forbidden and warpy tech augments

Chaos Warlord (Revolutionary, Pirate Lord, etcetera), with social skills and chaos gifts to compensate for not being a Marine.

Cult Magos with sorcery/social skills/chaos gifts

Chaos Sorceror

Renegade Pysker

Fallen Inquisitor

I'm sure people can come up with others, but that's a good start for a list of viable PCs that aren't Chaos Space Marines.

Cynical Cat said:

Actually, Space Marines from Deathwatch are superior to the Space Marines from Dark Heresy / Rogue Trader. That said, if Black Crusade does the Chaos Marines in a vein similar to DH/RT, I'd say it should be no problem to get a mixed group together. Naturally, certain character types will lend themselves far more to combat or sorcery than others, but with focus always comes a price - and whilst I'm sure that a mere cultist won't be able to boss a CSM around, I'm pretty convinced that FFG can come up with rules to make him a useful party member. And in the end that's all that matters.

And to be honest, I'd think a group with mixed hierarchy levels would be far more interesting than 4-6 Overlords all competing with each other about who is more awesome and get's to have the say. Rogue Trader and Ascension already give good examples on how to do it better.

@Adeptus-B

I'm really wondering what player charater options actually compete with being a Chaos Space Marine? Yeah, I'm sure the rulebook will contain cultists, mutants, and sorcerers, but will they be viable options compared to a CSM, or just cannon fodder?

Is an adept cannon fodder compared to a guardsman?

In the combat department, I guess CSMs will be allround combatants (unless you choose appropriate talents to become e.g. a Khorne Berserker), while single aspects may be mastered by other classes - the Dark Mechanicus will likely be a toughness/armour monster like all tech-characters until now have been, certain mutants may become lethal hunter-killers and sorcerors will probably fare well in the Powers of Mass Destruction department. A cult leader might finally just send a few dozen of his devotees to die in the battle while he and his group take a step back and circumvent the whole engagement on their way to the mission target.

I wonder if there's a chaos equivalent of a vodoun - a sorceror who invokes daemonic beings into his own body to gain temporary powers (rather than permanently turn into a daemonhost).

Lynata said:

That's not true. There's first of all one Space Marine stated out in all of DH/RT and that guy (who is Deathwatch) is from the second product published, which was written before they even had the corruption rules finalized. Those aren't the only thing from that adventure that are revised. The splinter rifles in RT have different stats as well. The only thing he's an example of is the early guess work for what Space Marines should stat out to be.

Ascension and Rogue Trader have different levels of authority within the group, but the characters are all roughly equal in power level. There are no rookie guardsmen in Ascension or Rogue Trader. Some characters are better leaders and some are better fighters but they are all high powered. There's going to be more variation in Black Crusade than in say Deathwatch where everyone is a Marine, but like Rogue Trader and Ascension everyone is going to be at the same general tier.

Cynical Cat said:

There's also the Angelus gun from IH which seems to strenghten the idea of 2d10 as proper Marine boltgun damage, though. DW's weapon damage is worlds apart (for no real reason given unless this is another retcon), as are its enemies, making it extremely difficult for DH/RT characters to "fit in". The game just takes place on a totally different narrative style (more "legendary" than "realistic") which is fine when you only have Astartes, but for Black Crusade you'd have to have all party members at least somewhat comparable. It would kinda suck if only a CSM's guns would be able to do damage (or, if enemies are scaled to "lower grade weapons", simply be overpowered in comparison).

Cynical Cat said:

I think so, too. This would mean to go back to the weapon damage as given in DH/RT, for example 2d10 for a CSM's boltgun. He'd still stand out as simply being insanely hard to kill (serving as the group's "tank" so to say), and likely a monster in close combat. Not to mention that 2d10 still means a double chance to trigger Righteous Fury.

Or would that be Immoral Fury?

Anyways, given that Black Crusade seems to be designed for a mixed party of all vocations from the get-go, I also expect it to be far more compatible to DH and RT than DW. Maybe it will even include instructions on how to convert DH/RT characters by making them become Corrupted? Both games already have mechanics that make characters start walking on the path of damnation, after all.

I'm not allowed to say much, but since my group contains both Chaos Space Marines and normal humans, and they've all been pretty relevant and, whilst being good in their own areas, don't overshadow each other too much, being a normal human is an entirely viable option to a Chaos Space Marine. In fact, depending on your campaign, it'd be the CSM that wouldn't be especially viable (unless they're Alpha Legion, do you see them being able to pull off political manipulation in a Hive like a human would be capable of?)

Basically, what I mean to say is, you don't need to be a Chaos Space Marine to be a viable character.

That's what I was hoping for.

Man, I can't wait to hear more details about the possibilities.

Lynata said:

The Angelus is clearly based on the early stats for the Space Marines. The hellguns from Inquisitor's Handbook are also anemic compared to later weapons. Again, an early (still over at Black Library) publication with later changes.

Now the Space Marine is going to be the likely leader for personal combat badassery with others having sorcery/social skills/leadership abilities/whatever to compensate but let's remember how nasty this stuff can be at this level especially when heretical and chaos items are thrown in. A melta is still a melta, some of the xenos tech items in RT are horrifically powerful, and then there are chaos/demon weapons.