I'm having some trouble. I'm looking at how much my Machanicus implants will cost and starting to wonder how I will afford it all on a lowly Tech-priest's salary.

How do you guys make money? At this point I'm considering just jacking a van and filling it with everything of value from anyone who dies.,

Mechadendrites, why not link them to down time between ranks when your Tech-priest has to go to what ever Magos and debrief the Ad-Mech and during the de-brief they add something new?

Fenrisnorth said:

I've put up a couple of threads in regards to the disparity between the income table, and the costs of all of the iconic gear for the different career paths. My focal point had been the Force Weapon required to become a Templar, but the same applies to the Tech Priest and his augmetics as well. Essentially, the general feel was that it was up to the GM to grant these things....because unless everyone plays a noble, the monthly incomes will never be enough.

Edit: Sorry, let me link to the relevant posts:

Here and Here

Indeed, it comes down to what your GM thinks about the whole idea of Acolytes having to buy their own gear.

Some will allow several months of downtime between missions, which means you'll get a bag of Thrones between individual adventures. Others will grant you basic equipment requisitioned by the Inquisition but require you to purchase the more exotic stuff yourself. And again others will run the more exotic stuff as rewards for particularly exemplary conduct. Ascension also contains a requisitioning system that basically allows you to get everything you want when you have enough Renown - there's nothing wrong with introducing this system prior to Ascension but simply running it with lower Renown or additional restrictions.

Last DH game we ran was group funds, looting bodies, and attempting to muscle in and "steal" things ("You won't mind if the Inquisition borrows this, will you?" it helepd to have a guy in the group with a lot of charm, and another one with quite a bit of intimidate).

Yeah, I've been kind of dissapointed that a huge chunk of my DH campaign revolves around my players looting bodies and trying to steal and sell stuff. The next campaign I run, I think I'll start out with the Assention rules for aquiring equipment right from the get-go. Obsessing over coin is for D&D ...

Charmander said:

Lynata said:

Yeah it sounds ok but detracts from the idea that the 40k universe should be a one of inequity and oppression, and it really helps to foster that in the group as well with then Scum having almost nothing for free while the Cleric (not to mention Noble) swim in money. Of course once they are proven the Inquisitor is more likely to help fund the party (in my game the Inquisitor has funded the Scum quite a bit after awhile), but not right off the bat. Starting equipment are meant to be biased towards certain careers as well.

Acolytes are likely to be looting alot as well, and taking the iniative to make some money on the side, especially for the Scum. At rank 9 my party has access to power weapons, force sword, heavy bolter (and some ammo), several different autoguns (some good quality, som IH types), carapace armors, good quality xeno mesh, and various other technical devices.

Adeptus-B said:

I fully agree which is why in my campaign my acolytes were given a collective pot of 4,000,000 thrones.

I could then use this as a GM lever. I knew they were going to need more than 4,000,000 you see so unknown to them, every Throne they spent was one less they'd need in future. It allowed them to tool-up to meet their mission parameters without me having to bother with this utterly stupid idea that the Inquisition doesn't actually supply its agents properly.

They actually impressed me be investing some of their mission unds in establishing a business that gave them an income/profit margin to achieve their mission, and actually ended up only using about half of their original stipend.

That way our game was actually about the Inquisitorial investigations rather than about trying to scrape together a few thrones to buy a meal or a replacement las-pack. Perhaps thats appropriate for a Hive-sump gang but not for the Emperor's finest...

Luddite said:

"Okay, how do we get back to Scintilla now...?"

Luddite said:

i may steal this if I can logically fit it in at some point, at the mo though it'd be illogical for the Inquisitor to tell tehm to take a break form the helter-skelter pace events are developing at to set up a business or what not and by the time events slow down they'll be near Ascension level anyway!

I'm a fan of the scrounging for weapons and stuff. As acolytes we're not there to shoot dudes and leave the cleanup to others. If we don't collect these weapons and hand them over to the local militia or the Guard unit or our Inquisitor then no one else will.

I recently found a power sword wielded by a Chaos Space marine. After quickly dispatching of him (mining lasers, drills, and charges were all used REPEATEDLY (frickin' SpehzMareenz)) I took the sword back to our Inquisitor. Now, there's literally no listed value for a Space Marine/DW power sword. The regular one in Core DH is 2,500 Thrones. This was more money than I ever expected to see. Instead of trying to extort my Inquisitor for the value or something (which would force my DM to think VERY carefully about the crap he was going to leave lying around) I just gifted it to her in hopes of receiving an increase in my income or a favor or gift in return. It made sense from an RP perspective and well, I couldn't wield it anyway.

Oh, and if you don't want players looting things like mad, just enforce weight limits and reasonable volume limits. I find it hard to believe that anyone will be carrying around 3 sets of flak armor. Perhaps the Guardsman with his giant backpack, but definitely not the assassin. Some of this "realism" of the system is what is really best about it.

I also enjoy counting how many bullets I have.

In one of the games I am participating in I play an Arbitrator with my own investigative team. We all get a little bit of money (everybody got the same salary), we don't keep any of the gear we find but when we need new gear I talk to my commander. Explaining why we need the special gear to do our work. Since our investigations started to expose more and more dangerous opponents, I managed to get most of the gear that we would need and want. It works like a charm. We have access to heavy weaponry and armor when we need it, though normally we walk around with less intimidating gear.

Granted we started with a crack team of scientific boffins to examine the clues, a riot squad to purge the unclean and the traitors, some light armor and weaponry for our own and best of all. Our Rhino. Including a big siren and even a pair of stormbolters. Having a badge that you can wave around to make people snap to attention is a great boon as well.

But this systems works really well. We have some personalized gear and the GM has control over what special stuff we can take with us per mission. Highly recommended.

I actually quite the D&D method: Those cultists you just killed; loot and sell their weapons, their armour, their equipment, the clothes off their backs... jewellry and gold teeth. Scrounging for every penny is part of the fun if you ask me. Kill a wealthy heretic and you've really hit the jackpot. Um... I generally play scum characters in Dark Heresy.

You would really sell clothing, pendants and even weapons obviously tainted by the Ruinous Powers on the open market? I think your Inquisitor might want a word with you about that.

Lynata said:

Then you execute the heretics that bought said items.

Letrii said:

"Wait, you're inquisitors? This is entrapment! This ain't legal! I want a la-"

*blam*

Rinse and Repeat: Culling the heretic, one buyer at a time.

Grimdark.

Letrii said:

Now this is an individual that gets it Besides this, most of the cultists that we have done the killing to have been armed with fairly mundane las and stub guns. We don't go trying to pawn off those daemon weapons

Luddite said:

When they have proved themselves though, yes, the Inquisitor (or at least someone more senior) would probably be best providing them with at least a little extra than their income would suggest.

Of course, this is all dependent on how you want to play it. The system was not written with the intention of the PCs being valued assets of the Inquisitor initially, but if that is how you want to play it then yes, the money system needs a significant restructuring. Truthfully it is a bit weird anyway (the daft costs for stuff like food and lho sticks etc) but it was designed so that special gear is hard to get hold of.

borithan said:

Lynata said:

The names of 'rank' on the career don't seem to mean much more than as a label for the level. That Guardsman working for the inquisiton will not suddenly get promoted to Sergeant based on killing some cultists with a group of secret agents, and that scum may not actauly be a lord of a gang somewhere.

As written, you start at roughly equal potential and are recruited away from whatever agency you once belonged, if any. "You take the role of an Acolyte, a trainee investigator in the servce of a powerful Inquisitor..." and "In the earliest stages, you are little better than anyne else of the 41st Millenium. You are merely one of the many scores of Acolytes recruited into the Inquisition."

Charmander said:

Oh, I do agree about the rank names - but this is not what I meant. An Adeptus Arbites character is still an Adeptus Arbites character and thus pretty far removed from some lowly ganger. Regardless of his rank in the organization. This is similar when looking at the Ministorum or the Mechanicus. Not to mention an Adepta Sororitas character, at least if you're using BoM. Try telling a Rank 1 Battle Sister in Power Armour that she's not the Emperor's finest.

I still think it was bad to forego the Novice ranks for this particular class, but there you have it. And yes, I do believe future supplements to give other careers a similar "bump" in influence. Which I actually appreciate, for I was always more a friend of the idea that Dark Heresy should have started out with one player being the Inquisitor from the beginning. The whole idea of a bunch of lowlifes who somehow end up working for the Inquisition felt both wrong in terms of fluff (up until DH, Acolytes were always part of an Inquisitor's personal retinue) as well as somewhat limiting in terms of character progression, especially when you consider where the characters eventually end up. I'm not a friend of characters "rushing through the ranks" - both Rogue Trader as well as Deathwatch feel more compelling because the characters have already accumulated a certain amount of personal experience. Dark Heresy characters, on the other hand, feel like blank slates thrust into a role most of them were not prepared for, simply because they're still too fresh.

It's as if you had some Inquisitor walk through an alley and randomly point at people "You, you and you, consider yourself inducted. Welcome to the Inquisition."

Of course you can make up a somewhat more compelling story, but in the end the character truly is supposed to be a nobody, so it boils down to coincidence. You weren't picked because of your skills, you were picked just because you happened to be there.

Lynata said:

To me, the start as a nobody is part of DH's charm- you get to start as the nobody and prove you're better than the rest. As for how you get picked, you should show some kind of potential to get picked for service. I didn't get my job by sheer coincidence, I got it because someone had faith that I had the potential to do a good job at it.

Starting out as a nobody is awesome - if it's in the right game. I simply never had this image of the Inquisition as being the kind of organization that picks nobodies. Hence me thinking about how awesome it would have been if DH would have been in the same level range as RT (5-12) and 1-8 covered by true low power games for "blank slates". Necromunda gang wars, Imperial Guard conscript campaigns, you name it. From there you could have been able to progress into the others, be it as experienced Arbitrators, Assassins or.Guardsmen having catched the eye of an Inquisitor or particularly skillful Scum and Adept managing to get picked up by a Rogue Trader...

Just another crazy idea, of course. It's not as if I couldn't work with what we have. But we all have our own visions. I'm just saying that the term "Inquisitorial Operative" conveyed a different idea than some guy armed with a stub revolver and leather jacket.