Hello all :-)
Allright, I've been Gm'ing for 20 years, 19 and a half in warhammer fantasy, but lately jumped to 40k, as i find it a better system and setting. problem arised during the fist weekend of gaming. Remember, this was the first session with my old gaming crew, and they are tied down in fantasy (hard), so i wanted to make it good in order to bring the group over to 40k permanently.
I made a campaign using the premade mission at the end of the rulebook as a starter to get them involved. The issue happened at the end of that mission.
It was a premade mission, so i followed it to the letter, assuming the creators had at least tested the mission. Me being new to gm'ing 40k didn't have the experience of 40k to see the problem happening when the party entered the final act of the mission. They ran towards the cathedral, knowing something very wrong was happening inside. They were rushing it, thinking they were low on time, so fully ignored the hints in the village. Not like they are gonna search the ruin of the inn next to the cathedral when they spot "a strange dim haze surounding the cathedral". They fully ignored the hints about the lost eyes of the bodies on the ground and rushed past Brother lamark dieing outside the cathedral. They were almost panicking in their effort to rush that cathedral.
Then : Entering the cathedral : Corrupt Fear test -10 for entering the cathedral, then meeting the Skae-thing (demonci Presence -10wp), fear 2 ...another fear test, this time at a cumulative -20 wp, then the players must pass a wp test in order not todrop their weapons and stumble towards tysiak, again with a -10 wp due to the skae-thing. That is : Fear test -10, fear test -20 and WP test to stay in control -10 just in order to confront the skae-thing. And since they didn't pick up the eye-hint they can't harm it, as the rules don't specify anything about called shots to the eyes, only hit-locations. Thing is , with a startup character they average 31 WP, so all the players needed pass a fear test 21%, then fear test 11% and "mind control" 21%. I mean, they didn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of surviving that encounter.
Any other GM's tried playing the premade in the rulebook as it is written?
Obviously, the players got pissed of and wanted back to fantasy, but i managed to convince them to try one more session. I let them burn a fate each and let them escape iocanthos, just cause i felt the mission was dead hard for a startermission. THEN i ran the premade from the GM pack. AGAIN, i wonder if the creator has even testplayed the last encounter. The acolytes face off 3 Sloth Infiltrators at the end, and because they had to use their "Inquisitorial powers" to get a ride into the city (i mean, what startup character has 50 thrones each to spend on a ride??), all the sloth were gathered at the top of the windmill waiting for them in an ambush. In the premade it states: "after a few rounds of vicious fighting, the players should have taken care of the sloth, and can continue....
Sloth Iniltrator has T50, Unatural toughnes x2 and armor 3 all location, with regenerate d5 each round and 25 wounds each. Are there any startup group on the planet able to handle this? The premade states it's written for rank 1. Most players have S2 or S3 normal guns, and ws / bs 30 ish... they'd need a crit just to make a dent, and they will crit once every 30 rounds of fighting while the sloth regenerates a d5 each round. A few rounds of vicious fighting indeed.... Obviously, the party is now dead, and I'm left with a feeling the writers of these pre-mades have not tested their materials before releasing them... Any other GMs suffering from the same issues, or have i misread the entire rules? think i'll write my own campaigns from now on :-)