A couple of things bother me with Dark Heresy, and I'm sure quite a few of you have heard this all before. In fact, I'm kind of counting on it - because I could use some advice and direction, so I can present my Players with some guidelines for creating their characters.

When I imagine Acolytes serving the Inquisition, I find the idea of 400xp characters, or even 1,000xp characters difficult to rationalize. Personally I think that Rogue Trader had it about right for starting xp. Inquisitoral Acolytes should be exceptional people.

Has anyone simply used Rogue Trader's character creation in place of Dark Heresy's?

I mean, after reading the Arch Militant concept, it sounds a lot more like how I envision a military Acolyte - broad strokes to allow the Player to decide the details. He doesn't have to be Guard (which is another thing that annoys me) since his career as Guard pretty much ends when he becomes an Acolyte. As an Acolyte, he's not going to advance as a Guard - because he's not Guard any more. So, the Arch Militant seems to make a lot more sense.

I figure those Careers that are not found in RT could just as easily be done the Dark Heresy way through starting xp. So someone wants to play a Psyker - but not an Astropath or Navigator - they get 5,000xp to spend on their Imperial Psyker.

Does anyone forsee any problems with this?

Most accolytes are chosen because they show promise. They start of as just flunkies, with bad gear and almost no support. They will have to prove themselves the hard way. Either they fail which would not be a terrible loss or they adapt and grow into their role. So yes at their start they are absolute rubbish.

The best way to start playing more experienced characters is to give them more xp and money to begin with. At 5000xp, a DH character is more then a match for a level 1 RT character. I would advice against mixing the systems. It gives more problems then that it solves. The differences in attributes, different prices for skills and skillgroups, a completely overhauled Psyker system to name a couple.

I see what you are saying, Vargr. Starting Acolytes in DH fall far short of the retinues of Inquisitors Eisenhorn and Ravenor in the Black Library novels- but none of those characters are supposed to be "new recruits". DH mostly represents the beginning of their careers, and not the tail end as in the novels.

Hi Vargr.

I've been toying with this too. I don't think that you need to start the characters as complete mooks if you don't want to. I'm sure that there are plenty of more experienced individuals who didn't pick the Inquisition on careers day but end up working for them down the track (like it or not). Somthing I have been trying is using the Rogue Trader background system, and then just plugging the dark heresy classes on top of that.

The Rogue Trader background sytem is excellent, especially if you have access to Into the Storm, and it works very well explaining why this (more experienced) person has now wound up in the service of the Inquisition. You may need some tweaks to some of the options though.

I've made a couiple of characters so far and I like the results, but it will give you a higher powered starting level, but that seems to be what you're after anyway.

Great avatar to go with your name by the way.

vargr said:

Speaking as a player who's playing an assassin that started out at R1 and now is R7 with 8400+ XP spent, I would not have traded in those lower-levels. And the experience of having built up that character from the very first rank where you have no gear and no abilities to a death-dealing ninja (who, ironically, hardly needs any gear anymore because he's such a bad dude ) is pretty rewarding. As much as I love being able to drop down 15 meters without getting hurt into a pile of enemies and go to town with my mono-blades before anyone realises what's happening, there is something to be said for needing to be careful, for feeling out your abilities, and realising that you are a totally expendable piece of the Inquisitorial puzzle. We had some great times in our first ranks and the difficulties then make the fact that the three PCs kick some serious Heretic butt sooo much sweeter.

Also, if you're new to the game, making a low-rank character is a good way to get used to the basics. Seeing as most low-rank characters have relatively few abilities, it allows you some time to learn the ropes, the rules, etc. It also forces you to be strategic and use the environment to your advantage. And, you tend to progress out of the first 2-3 ranks pretty fast and by the time you hit 2000 XP or so, you start to gain cool Talents, skills and possibly some basic ability increases to make you a little more... resilient.

If you DO still want to try starting wth more powerful characters, I have to agree that mixing the DH with RT would not be my first choice. Better IMHO to simply decide that characters start with more XP but build their characters from the DH materials.

A quick note on Careers: you shouldn't feel too constrained by the titles the careers have. Sure, Sanctioned Psyker is pretty cut and dry and some effort has been made to try and buildthe careers into the established canon of the WH40K universe, but there's really no reason the "Guardsman" could stand for "Mercenary" or "Weapon Specialist" or "PDF" or whatever else you might imagine. And, if you feel that there are some advances that you just need, and you've discussed your character concept with your GM, it would seem reasonable to allow you to by an Elite advance at-cost, if need be. (We certainly see no issue with it in my group.) Even my assassin was created as a Renaissance Swordsman concept more than your standard Vindicare model, and the Assassin career offers some neat Talents that are perfect to portray an athletic, flashy swordfighter.

Finally:Cheap, expendable paws are the backbone of any good informat network, as Sun Tzu writes in the Art of War. Also, you have to go through a lot of #failedacolytes before you find some really good ones.

Good luck!

Hi Vargr,

while I agree with you about 400xp pc (why should the Inquisition send such newbees onto a task of importance?) I used 1000xp (Rank 3) pc instead... and it worked quit find. Of course, I did not start out with World-Shaking events but with local investigations like "Edge of Darkness". Things that are a threat and need to be dealt with but would not necesserily lead to the loss of a world by the weekend.

I happen to really like the RT career flowchart system for building characters, and I don't really see any issue adapting it to work for DH characters other than the GM will have to do a little work in advance to fit the final DH careers into chart slots. You should probably stick to the "20-base" stats from DH though if you are planning to use the DH careers, as RT characters are considered 4,500XP characters before they spend a single XP on their careers due to all of their stats being 5 higher.

Alternately, be very flexible and creative with new character's starting packages. I see no issue having people build on more than 400XP if that suits your game. Likewise, the new homeworld/origins from RT can be very easily adapted for DH without using the entire flowchart. Catachan IG use Death World origin and Guardsman career, Cadian IG use Fortress World origin and Guardsman career and so on. Heck, it might be fun to make a Rogue Trader scion Adept character for DH under the assumption that the Warrant of Trade is still in someone else's hands.... If the GM is particularly evil such a character might even belong to a branch-family that is connected to the Haarlock bloodline!

As Macharias pointed out, the actual career titles are in most cases fairly flexible. The previously mentioned Guardsman career includes a choice of different weapons and equipment that would point to different origins. Your choice of a mercenary's license, a copy of the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer or an explosive collar makes it pretty clear that your character could be Imperial Guard, but could just as easily be a mercenary, AWOL naval armsman, penal legionare, an underhive ganger "heavy" or just about any semi-professional warrior-type that makes a living by brawn and skill at arms. The titles within the career ranks are even more "just there for flavour" and intended more to give the player a general idea of what the relative power level a character of that rank is at. So don't look at it as a literal title for the character (since you are all mooks, maggots, lackeys, minions, pawns, agents or whatever the Inquisitor reffers to them as now!) so much as "ok, so I am roughly as bad-ass as an Imperial Guard Sergeant now. Cool!" Before that goes to your head, realize that the skinny guy with the books is your social superior in every way, not to mention way less expendable! Perfect example: Very few characters that belong to the Scum career would actually reffer to themselves as "scum", but the Arbites character most likely does call you that, likely to your face.

I've been having a similar issue, but it's not so much about the power level, but more the amount of choice you get. Almost everything comes pre-packaged, and a starting Feral World Guardsman is going to be very much similar to any other starting Feral World Guardsman. Even equipment is handed out on a plate in a "take it or leave it" fashion. There's no real way to customise starting characters. Why should all clerics have either been valets, cooks or copyists? I appreciate that there's some fairly broad skills at use in those descriptions, but the typecasting bugs me somewhat.

And yes, I know the "galactic feudal order" is a get-out clause, but the starting characters as they are offer no "crunch" room to show why the acolyte was noticed by the Inquisitor in the first place.

Aramithius said:

It is a bit hidden in all the character creation mess and the eratta, but the primary reason that all the "starting" skills and talents for DH careers are listed in the rank 1 lists is so the player and GM can customize character origins and starting packages and then still go back and buy the stuff they "traded away" with some XP. There is really no hard and fast rule, but I work with any player that presents a well reasoned character background, or when I am a player I do the same with the GM.

One of the characters floating around in my campaign is a Battlefleet-born Imperial Psyker. She was the daughter of a Lunar Class Cruiser's XO and grew up in "officer country" prior to her powers manifesting and subsequent transfer to a different ship with black paint and no running lights... For this character the normal Psyker options for Trade(Soothsayer) or Trade(Merchant) simply didn't fit her background, so Trade(Valet) was substituted due to her service as a ship's paige as a child. If someone wanted to play an Atillan Guardsman then I would have the player remove Drive(Ground) from the Guardsman package and replace it with Wrangling, since an Atillan that doesn't know horses is an Atillan that died during their birth. If a player tells me that their new character comes from the ocean world of Spectoris then I am going to make sure that they end up starting with the Swim skill unless their concept speciffically revolves around their inability to swim.

Same thing with starting gear. As long as it is reasonable and fits, I am willing to change it around some. One of our original characters was from Ganf Magna (a frontier world with an ork problem) and the player requested a combat shotgun in place of the standard issue lasgun. Since 40K fiction has solidly established that orks show more respect to projectile weapons than las weapons (because they make loud exciting banging noises instead of wimpy crack-zap sounds) this seemed like an entirely reasonable changeout, plus the idea of a bunch of redneck PDF with combat shotguns going out with the family dog and a cooler of beer to go greenskin huntin' was just too much fun to pass up!

ZillaPrime said:

Totally agreed. When you really look at it, the sort of "modular," XP-buy system makes it very easy to accomodate substitutions and adapt to character concepts.

I wanted to make an assassin from a Late Feudal/Early Renaissance world, sort of a fencer trained in esoteric sword fighting. But, looking over the list of starting skills and talents, a bunch of stuff didn't make sense to me, specifically: Thrown Weapon Training or Pistol Training (Las), Basic Weapon Training (SP) and Pistol Training (SP). Thrown Weapon of Las Pistol is easy, I just opted for the Thrown weapon. But the other two just made no sense. So, we simply decided to replace them with the corresponding Pistol (Primitive) and Basic (primitive) so my character would be trained in the bows, crossbows and pistols that made sense. Then, we just adapted the equipment to go along with it: GM allowed me to take a Composite Bow instead of a Hunting Rifle or Autogun or Shortgun.

This is kind of a simple example but the concept certainly holds for other Talents and Skills.

Macharias the Mendicant said:

Just because you were from a feudal world, does not mean you're "fresh off the boat", so to speak. I would think you would need a little "conditioning" before you would be useful to an Inquisitor, so it is not unlikely that you could have picked up those skills after you left Hickville, and before you start doing His work.

There is so much good stuff here; thank you everyone for taking time to comment and share your thoughts.

My lament about the Ranks (specifically I'd mentioned the Guard, as once someone becomes an Acolyte they cease being Guard and thus wouldn't gain anymore ranks as a Guard) was mainly due to those Players I have who are utterly unfamiliar with the 40K setting, and are thus looking at the Guard (and ranks) and getting an incorrect impression. Contrasting that with how Rogue Trader approached Careers and left off specific Rank designations for the most part and how I liked that better. But as some of you have mentioned, I can (and will!) adjust the various Careers to fit the Player's various concepts. Concept over Career. Style over substance.

Also, ZillaPrime, thank you for the pointer on how DH characters should keep the 20-based Characteristics, as I was going to use RT's 25-based Characteristics. So I tweaked that.

For what it is worth, I thought I'd share the Character Creation Guidelines I've settled on...

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The following guidelines are for creating a Dark Heresy character for my campaign.

CHARACTERISTICS
Characters begins with a score of 20 in each Characteristic and may allocate a total of 100 additional points, adding no more than 20 points to any one Characteristic.

CAREERS
All Careers, Origins, Backgrounds, Homeworlds are available (including those from Rogue Trader; however, any character concept from Rogue Trader will need to be re-worked mechanically to fit the campaign’s starting xp level).
Note that anything selected from the Radical’s Handbook or Rogue Trader must be discussed with me first.
Also, anything Feral World or Death World needs to be discussed with me too.
Remember, concept is more important than what is in the book - Career names, Rank titles, specific Skills or Talents, Origins, Homeworlds, equipment, all of it can be tweaked and adjusted based on concept.

STARTING EXPERIENCE
Characters get 2,000xp, beginning the game at Rank 4.

BRINGING YOUR CHARACTER TO LIFE
The tables for Gender, Appearance, and the Past can all be selected from instead of rolled.
However, Divination and Fate Points must still be randomly rolled.
Barring anything unusual, age should be between 20 and 30.
Characters take the maximum number of Wounds instead of rolling randomly.
Characters begin with the maximum Starting Wealth for their Career.

Each character must purchase the following package for 1,000xp.

Acolyte Sanctioning Background Package
Characters begin play with the following skills: Ciphers (Acolytes) (Int), Secret Tongue (Acolyte) (Int), and any three Basic Skills.
Characters begin play with 500xp worth of Contacts; either a single powerful Contact or several utilitarian Contacts. Note that the points for Contacts can be held on to and spent during the course of the story so that contacts can be developed during play.

I REMEMBER THIS ONE TIME...
Waiting. It took the better part of the day for the recently assembled cell to acquire passage out of system. A bulk Merchant vessel belonging to some Guild House whose name ought to impress you for some reason is where your Gun Cutter is currently docked. Well... not your gun cutter; you imagine it belongs to Inquisitor Prinn. Or maybe to Vokker. Interrogator Vokker, that is, who is currently not on the Gun Cutter but off talking with the Merchant Captain presumably. The other members of your cell are here with you though, waiting. To be fair, not your cell, but Vokkers'. Actually, Inquisitor Prinn's cell when you stop and think about it. Even though you have yet to actually meet the Inquisitor. Looking around at the other members, you wonder if any of them has met the Inquisitor. While you wait, your mind drifts back to when you were recruited... [please continue the story of your recruitment]

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I figure I'll offer a small xp bonus to those Players who write about their character's recruitment. Or maybe something else, I'm still thinking on it. At any rate, does this sound good?