I am new to this forum and generally new to the Warhammer 40k setting. I got into Dark Heresy last year after I became fed up with Wizards of the coast and gave up on Dungeons and Dragons. My group and I love the setting and we like deathwatch even more an so weve been playing for a while now and I am the GM. Now we are startin a new campaign and ive already ran them through the sample mission in the back of the deathwatch rule book and ive got an idea for a new mission and i was hoping for some feedback and possibly new ideas.

So the mission would start with the kill team being briefed on an imperial vessel about investigating an artifact or a new type of technology on a Tau controlled feral world, breifing takes place as they are approaching the world. After breifing (before arming and oath taking) random warp feilds would open up around the ship and force it to crash into the planet, the kill team barley making it to the escape pods. they would be marooned on the world which will have a harsh jungle climate with vicious xeno animal species, with only their combat knives and chapter trappings and maybe a bolter with only a clip of ammo.The kill team would eventually encounter a human settlement that is led by a psyker that is called "the shaman" and sees the marines as gods because they fell from the sky.

From here, I have a couple ideas the Tau search parties may discover the kill team and take them captive or the locals may show them to the tau base. the kill team might also link up with survivors of the crash and start a guerilla war in the jungle, the survivors could help them salvage the crash for more equipment.

The Tau artifact i was thinking of using would be a rift generator in the warp (responsible for crash) which would be devastating to any imperial fleets. The team would have to find a way to destroy the generator and escape the planet.

Any other ideas and thoughts would be much appreciated and i give thanks in advance

sounds like a fun scenario. for an extra bit of foe variety do not neglect the kroot. tau use these auxilaries for their adeptness at close combatskill at fighting in heavily woodedjungle areas. you could have a moment similar to the movie predator where the kill team is stalked by a stealthy foe. kroottau make for a great mix of savage barbarismhighly advanced scientific weaponry.

I agree kroot will be excellent for such a climateclose quarter battles there is a mission with some kroot rules in, I believe its the one that comes with the GM screen but I may be completely lying about that. Another thing for good cinematic moments is stealth suits invisiblejump jetting from tree to tree Predator style. You might want to look at their weapons first though because a burst cannon is very little threat to a space marine in power armour. personally my stealth suits are armed with Fusion Blasters, a weapon from the setting (see Codex Tau for more info) which is basically a meltagun, so I give them meltaguns from the Core rule book. that makes them very scary indeed,a single one stalking them is very cool. make it very hard to hitfollow him as per the rules, then make him jump jet away once they have injured him a bitthey cant follow it because its almost invisible

one more thing, capturing PC's is very very hard to do. they are resistant to most things that would stun themknock them unconcious,if they are suddenly ambushed my party would most likely fight to the death rather than surrender to a vile xenos. you might want to think about how to do that without just saying "by the power of greyskull, you are captured"

nope, Ive thought of another thing. Tau don't have a lot of knowledge of the warp so them building a rift generator seems unlikely to me. It could be that it was left by a far older civilization and the tau are studying it, but thats just my personal feelings about it

thanks alot guys, im definitely putting the kroot in somewhereill let you know how it turns out

Since the Tau don't actually use warp technology, it's possible that the Warp Field Generator they are testing on the planet comes from a different, as yet unknown, race (either purchased, stolen, or simply found by the Tau). Maybe tracking down the original creators of the WFG would make for a good follow-up scenario- assuming the Killteam survives, of course...

XenocidE said:

Do you have any Librarians or Techmarines in your group ?

If not, skip the rest of my post.

If you do, you are going to find that they will outshine the rest of the group in combat because their combat prowess isn't tied to equipment that they left behind.

Librarians have all their psychic powers. Since you are going to be weakening the other enemies you need to fight (so the other players have a chance), you are going to increase the effectiveness of his powers, meaning fettered casting becomes more viable.

Techmarine players, unless you have already sorted this issue, might argue that they always have their servo arm attached. Their various talents might be an issue, thought not as bad as they would be for the other games.

I don't have Rites of Battle, so I don't know if there are any problem implants or talents there.

Trying to limit them in a way that makes sense is difficult, and you risk going to far. For example, I hated the first part of Tattered Fates because, while the other characters just needed a weapon to access all their melee combat talents, my psyker was useless until the drug cleared.

Well i plan on them having nothing other than a combat knife and their trapping so the tech marine is taken care of. ill have to figure something out for the librarian in my group, and here's a question. Do the Tau have psykers of their own?

No the Tau don't have any psykers at all, but if they are using something that can disturb the warp, make the aftershock of the effect cause problems manifesting psychic powers, can't remember if DW uses threshold off hand but increasing that by a bit might help, dosen't screw him totally but makes it slightly harder to overshadow the rest of the group completly.

XenocidE said:

My suggestion: That jungle could be the habitat of dangerous creatures that are hunting their prey by tracking psi-signals. So whenever psykers use their psi-powers, they risk getting detected and hunted by a pack of that creatures: the more powerful the psi-effect, the higher the risk of being detected.

This won't limit the psi-powers of your psyker, but it will make it more dangerous using them – so he will have to carefully calculate the risk of using psi-effects.

(Clever players could even take advantage from those creatures: A psyker could sneak into his enemies base, use some powers to lure those creatures, get away as fast as he can and watch from far, far away how those hungry creatures are wiping out the base. Don't forget popcorn!)

Thats an awesom idea, thanks alot