Hello all!

After my group played through several games of Deathwatch and Rogue Trader, then ditched the WH40KRP scene for several months, I decided I had some interest in revisiting Dark Heresy and running a campaign off of it again.

I think we'd all be willing to admit that that game is a little rough around the edges compared to the newer games, and my group was no exception to this, so in addition to compiling errata and backporting things from Rogue Trader, I also set out to create a list of weapons and gear that took advantage of some of the newer books and games. This ended up becoming a fairly hefty reference guide, so I opted to produce a PDF supplement for the use of my players and dressed it up to it looks passably like a 40k work, or at least to the best of my ability, anyway.

Presented for the digestion of any interested parties is what I've titled the "Macharian Handbook", as in a reference of all the tools necessary to carve your own path through heretics and scummers just like that famous hero. For now, it only contains weapons (including ammunition, upgrades, and so forth) as well as armor, but I intend to produce another volume for gear and equipment at some point in the future.

I wanted to share this as a means of obtaining feedback about the judgment calls made on a number of things. This started out simply as a compilation of existing weapons, but already some effort of house-ruling was necessary - for one thing, all of the delicious weapons in Into The Storm have no prices in Throne Gelt, as Rogue Traders and their lackeys are above such trivialities. After that, I was left with the nagging premise that a number of weapons, especially some in The Inquisitor's Handbook, functionally serve no purpose in comparison to others that have been put out since then. While I enjoy the flavor that a unique gun provides, and encourage players to downgrade their stats a tad in the name of having a more interesting character, some examples were downright atrocious in comparison. At that point I ended up doing a silly thing and decided "I reject BI/FFG's wisdom on these and will use my own instead", leaving us with a lot of tweaks that I would like to think are interesting and provide new angles to things without succumbing (too much) to the old homebrew plague of making them far better than they should be.

To wit, please feel free to comment on any obvious alterations made by myself that you happen to see - which ones seem nice, which ones are poorly thought out, and so forth. I would also like to pick some brains as to the arbitrated prices and so forth of other weapons, as I was trying to keep within the general spirit of things already in the game, not deviating from the beaten path too much and what have you.

As a standard disclaimer, I make no claims to ownership of anything that doesn't belong to me, including all unmodified texts and statistical charts and so forth. The page backgrounds were taken from a character sheet PDF, and the in-line illustrations were taken off of DeviantArt completely without their various authors' permissions (although all signatures and watermarks were left intact). I cite these materials under a claim of fair use and noncommercial intent, so please don't sue me for theft of intellectual property (I will flee to Mexico if prosecuted so don't bother, okay? ).

Macharian Handbook v2.1

EDIT:

Hello again! Some considerable feedback has been posted that my original Macharian Handbook was so nice, why don't I waste an epic amount of time doing a similar work for things that aren't guns and armor?

After much vexing and procrastination, I have done this thing. May I present "Tools of the Trade", sort of a second volume that deals with all the other bits of kit you might encounter.

Of note, I must offer the following disclaimer at once. Unlike the first volume, this one actually experienced a huge degree of overlap in terms of Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy rulebooks - a lot of different items did the same thing, some of which were fantastically better than others. To wit, this volume is NOT purely official figures and qualities . In the effort to maintain as much gear diversity as possible, yours truly has mucked around with some pieces of gear and equipment to make them more interesting or useful, especially when compared to things from newer books, such as materials published exclusively by FFG (comparing some of that stuff to the Black Industries' material can leave a considerable gulf in certain respects…). I'd like to think that I've done this in a conservative and reasonable fashion, but, if you are looking for a pure compilation of official non-gakked-with gear that's been lifted directly out of the rulebooks, about 30% of this volume is not for you .

With that being the case, please enjoy this first draft, and as usual let me know if you find any glaring errors or concerns. Much like Churchill, I have benefited greatly from criticism.

Macharian Handbook: Tools of the Trade v1.2

MORE EDIT:

Version 2.1 of the Macharian Handbook is now out and up at the above link which offers up some new stuff that's been published since the first edition (as well as fixes some embarrassing spelling and grammatical errors…). A Version 2 of Tools of The Trade will be done at some point or other too, yar.

MORE MORE EDIT:

And now there's a v1.2 for Tools of the Trade as well. Praise the Emperor.

Hey this looks really nice, thanks. Great art too, I recognised one of the pictures and like the feeling of the others. I really like the one of the acolytes and gangers escaping from the gene stealers.

Cheers

Happy to be of service.

If you happen to come across any particulars you think are worth mentioning (especially if a glaring error jumps out at you) do let me know.

Very nice pdf, I think it has nice feel

That's what I was going for.

Just because it's a fan-made item for friends doesn't mean it needs to look that way, you know?

I like the pdf - good work. However, is there a reason that the doc is set so you can't print it?

from france

awsome job bravo

Because if you print it you'll either have to compress the pages to fit within page margins, or you'll lose the edges of some tables and images.

It was meant to be an electronic resource only, basically.

Ok this is probably super cheeky to ask, but there is no harm in asking I say (most of the time)...

I don't suppose you have the doc in a version that is printer friendly, or if not would it be a lot of work to produce one? No worries if you don't have the time and/or inclination.

regards

I'm not really enthused by the idea of going through that book again and sprucing everything up to look good on a printer. However, if you really need to print a copy out, I wouldn't flatly tell you "NO THAT'S WRONG" either, heh. Send me a PM and I'll email you a version without printing disabled if that'll suit your purposes.

Even if it will look a little squished...

Love it, love it. Keep on doing that thing you do Sir.

Good work, I like it.

This is a great source. I'm the only one in my group with the books and it has gotten a bit hard to constantly share them while I'm trying to run a game,

Thank you soooooooo much, this looks fantastic, really easily and simply shrinks the armory of guns into a well orgainized and super useful text, not to mention gets rid of the need to page through 3 or 4 books trying to find out where you got a gun rule from!

I'd really appreciate a printable version too. I'm too old & backwards to allow laptops on the table

Assuming this isn't the First & Only version that will ever surface, I have a couple of suggestions.

An appendix of all the tables would be very, very nice. As would a print friendly version, obviously.

Inclusion of vehicles, miscellaneous equipment & crafting would be extremely useful. At least to me, it would mean I could scrap half a ringbinder's worth of rules & stat confusion from a hundred different sources, whose only redeeming feature is that they're slightly less of a time sink than the published works of FFG. I'd so much rather have a single, unified source for all that stuff. It's the stuff I always have to look up, and having to do it in 20 different places or from a 100 different sources, is painful.

Between the potential of your tome and all the effort you've already spent on it, have you considered setting up a place for community contribution, and eventually community maintenance (assuming you'll lose interest in doing it yourself at some point, in the hopefully very distant future)? A book like the Macharian Handbook would benefit immensely & stay relevant with annual updates. And I can't imagine you would have time for something like that.

+++

I haven't had a chance to put it to use yet, but I have no objections to anything I've found in it so far. Indeed, I fully expect to declare it the ultimate authority on everything it contains, as soon as I manage to print up a copy.

Thank you very, very much

At some point, I'll be assed towards the creation of a second supplemental material, which I've tentatively dubbed "Tools of the Trade: Equipment Reference for the Aspiring Acolyte" - this will consist of things that aren't guns and swords and body armor but which still fall into the purview of personal hardware. Drugs, gas masks, and personal cogitators would be listed here, but not things like gun-cutters and grav-cars.

The production of this second manual will come about when I feel I've got the gumption to append such a task, so don't hold your collective breaths for too long.

Regarding a summarized table appendix, that's something I can probably handle in the immediate future, since it's more or less just a rehashing of things I've already done - I'll post that here later on.

Further, regarding the idea of community contributions, that's not something I've really considered before - I'm kind of the pig-headed type who bites off way more than he can chew and then dutifully gnaws through it to keep up appearances, but it is an interesting prospect to say the least. Did you have something specific in mind about this...?

As usual, feel free to send me a message if you'd like my attention returned here quickly.

P.S. You people suck at proofreading! Just using this supplement with my own gaming group I've already uncovered a few rather glaring errors. I'll have to fix those and post an updated version...

I've noticed this PDF seems to have some sort of properties set which prevent you from copypasting things from the pdf, which is a bit inconvenient when you play entirely online. Any chance I could get a version without that restriction?

Hey my proofreading for spelling is never, available for general use.

and I can't wait for your next Guide!

Love the pdf Thank you very much..my group and i are using it for the refference material it has..Love having all the weapon/armor traits etc in ONE location to check over as needed or for reminders etc...instead of having to thumb through all the books to find one small side entry on A page somewhere..lol I give it a 10 of 10 Kudos to you my friend and keep up the good work

Tom Cruise said:

That was deliberate - I secured the PDF because I'd rather people propagated it around in its entirety rather than lifting bits and pieces and using those for their own purposes. I'm aware this is kind of an inconvenience (my players have told me so themselves...) but this is the only way I know of to make sure it all stays together. I'd feel kind of crappy if the author of some genius collection of guns and other gear (who is not myself!) got offered a job by FFG due to how stellar their freelance work looked, you know? Call it IP paranoia if you like...

As for the rest of you, thanks for the kind words and complimentary praises. As usual, if you happen to spot anything glaringly off, let me know!

Ah, understandable. Thanks anyway.

No worries. I am sorry my proclivities prevented me from being more helpful to you, though. <_>

Can I ask, where did you find the Armored Body glove?

Angel of Death said:

The armored body glove is in the Inquisitros Handbook.

I believe it was in the first printing of The Inquisitor's Handbook. It became the Hardened Bodyglove at a lower price point with 3 APs instead of 5 with the FFG reprint.

The term "armoured bodyglove" is used again in Rogue Trader, where the description remarks that some of these suits are as protective as light carapace while being much easier to move in - statistically, however, it's the same as the hardened bodyglove with 3 AP.

It's basically an ideal body armor for Hereticus acolytes who need to keep themselves reasonably incognito while still strutting around ready for battle.