Okay,

We have few months downtime, my character is looking at getting more "dakka". With 22 infamny and behing a Legion marine does not give me mutch choice, with my ancient warrior I have a big 12% chance on any power weapon.

Now I could roll once for each item but I find this is kinad "dumbing" down the system. How do you guys do this usually? Roll anythign once then you can't try until you have more Infamny? The book stalks abotu role playing those aquisition, yet at 12% chance I am better off just rolling them all even if "RP " breaking instead of spendign days of RP tryinbg to roll that 12% after a quick bargin....

Aquisition is kinda broken sometimes. I have the smae issue in RT.

We've always handled it in roughly this way:

You can roll once per category of item. A category, in this case, is something like "Any weapon Scarce or Rarer" / "Common+ weapon" "A Scarce or Rarer Armour" / "Common+ Armour" and so on.

This allows you to try to roll once for a rare weapon, and if it doesn't work, you can settle for something simple rather than getting nothing at all or re-rolling every single item down the list until you get at least some very rare stuff you like.

We also allow rerolls on stuff you've already rolled for, but use the slightly modified and rather nifty Acquisition rules from "Into the Storm". Simply put, you get some kind of trouble by looking too hard, be it attracting attention from someone else who wants the same thing, giving a group of smugglers the idea you're trying to root them out and so on. So if you're willing to take that kind of trouble, you can reroll at least once or twice, until you have to accept there's simply nothing there, if you stay unlucky.

crisaron said:

Which basically means that you're not infamous enough to bully or threaten your way into getting one, or that few enough powerful people have heard of you to offer one in tribute. Legion weaponry isn't all that commonplace.

For a starting character (or someone of equivalent Infamy), that doesn't seem entirely out of place. Obtaining poor craftsmanship weapons, or using the weapon downgrades rules to produce sub-par versions helps low-infamy characters pick up a variety of gear more easily, and it's quite fitting as the good stuff will likely be going to the bigger, nastier and more infamous Champions of Chaos.

Doesn't stop you trying to obtain one by other means. Ripping a power sword or plasma gun from the cold dead hands of a loyal Space Marine is a fine way of getting Legion-equivalent weaponry without testing Infamy. If you're not too proud to beg, seeking the favour of a more powerful patron (normally a good way to start a campaign, at least until character ambitions get large enough to step from beyond a patron's shadow and/or assassinate him) can obtain items.

Infamy shouldn't be thought of as the only way to get shiny new toys in Black Crusade... looting and defiling the dead should be encouraged here...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I understand your point of view, I know about the big bad loot thingny, all our humans have aquired power sowrds this way and other nice "human" sized goodies.

What i am saying is what kind of limitation you put on the aquisition system, do you let your guys roll once per item, per category like Presskohle.

And saying don't use a main chapter of the book as it's main perpose sounds kinda weird... Why put it in there? And the game does give skills and other modifiers to improve your chances (Ancient Warrior and all).

crisaron said:

Once per item, until you find some way of changing the circumstances of the test - typically, finding some additional positive modifier (such as offering to trade an existing item for it, as per the Trade sidebar at the end of the Corruption and Infamy chapter), or trying to obtain the item from someone else, is enough to allow a repeat of a test.

crisaron said:

I didn't say don't use it for its main purpose... I simply said that it shouldn't be considered the only way to obtain items and services. Infamy is not equally useful in all situations and to all characters, and should not be regarded as the one and only method of acquiring things. Everything has its time and place, and (particularly for starting characters, or characters operating within the Imperium) Infamy is not, and should not be, the answer to every item acquisition problem. If it's more effective to beg, steal, borrow or murder to obtain something, then do that instead, particularly as there are some rare and powerful things (like Daemon Weapons, ownership of a fleet of starships, the tutelage of a Haemonculus in the vile arts of fleshcrafting, etc...) that can't be obtained through a mere Infamy Test.

One of the fastest ways to get some gear would be to set up a smuggling ring. Get your commerce skill up and a trait or two to increase your fellowship for social interactions and you can quickly boost your infamy for acquisition. That is the route I'm going with my new psyker.

at character creation you can buy two "very rare" quality weapons but no higher. human power sword is very rare

Human Light Power Armour is also very rare so taking these two can make you very powerfull from the start (aside from obvious things, that power armour stands out in a crowd and everybody tries to take you out first). With cursed heirdom you can even get Human Power Armour or some neat plasma weapons (too bad you cannot get best craftmanship, because they don't try to kill you in every combat by overheating).

Somehow you can start the game with power weapon and not with force weapon as they are near unique

But returning to the main topic I was also wondering what's keeping me from rolling for every item with very rare+ rarity in the very beginning, even with starting imfamy you'd get 2 or 3 usefull items. Meaby there could be some handicaps after a few failed tests as people get annoyed of you and some random encounters if you fail very badly.

ShadowRay said:

Because the system already has a mechanic for these "i roll everything" situations - the 2 automatic acquisitions you get at character creation. Your starting gear represents typical items that someone of your archetypes will have collected during their life up to this point, and the two acquisition tests represent specific wargear or tools that you have specifically sought out.

I endorse using the expanded acquisitions rules from RT's Into The Storm, as they prevent just this kind of "i want it all and i want it now!" mentality. Roleplaying is about progression and development, not just being the best as soon as you can be.

I meant in the beggining of each session (I know, it changes meaning much) or between sessions when you have some free time. Don't know about the rules in into the storm because I haven't had almost any contact with RT.

How would you guys prevent getting some kickass weapon with 'cursed heirloom' used just to trade it for something differend every session?

ShadowRay said:

Uh...the character very quickly developing a reputation as a cheat and a thief?

Not to mention a growing list of people that really want to shoot him in the face for cheating them...

Bladehate said:

Screaming Vortex has a lot of these, meaby PC would have to test Imfamy after some point and lose 1 point on fail (like when you get stuff from other PC) but it's quite alightment dependent (deception is a disgrace for Khorne, but a weapon for Tzeench)

Bladehate said:

'Another 100 people want to kill me? Bring it on!'

Kasatka said:

Roleplaying is a must I know, but it sucks balls if I sepend two or more hours roleplaying an aquisition I have like 12% to succeed. When every single Legion itme is at 12%. Also I was asking this for downtime, LIKE IN BETWEEN GAMES, where you only have dice and rules mostly as a guideline.

I mean I could just not get anything also or crates of grenades... slaves, etc. I KNOW that.

What I want to know is how you guys played it :

1 . maximum # rolls == Infmay bonus

2. ???

3. Profit?

p.s. I will go over Itno the Storm once more I must have missed that part.

ShadowRay said:

Generally, people that have items worth trading an heirloom weapon for, are also people you generally don't want to mess with. But obviously your mileage may vary. If your group is trading that plasma gun for ten sacks of grain on some backwoods feral world then yeah...

Also, and this is just the GM in me...but if my players are trying to cheat NPCs that's great. If they're doing it by abusing a game mechanic like the cursed item, then its going to invite some kind of retribution. Perhaps the guy they traded it to is a Sorc who knows what the item is, and how to keep it and/or use its link to the character for nefarious rituals and other happy-funtime stuff.

Again, not something I would normally do but when its warranted I see no reason to restrain myself.

I think that all of these questions need quantifying - are you asking this so you know how to deal with players in a game you will be running, or as a player wanting to work the system to your maximum advantage?

As a GM of all 40k RPs to date, i find that players that want all the special gear and want it all now often miss the point of a slow burn game like this. Downtimes aren't a way of just skimming over the plot and each person suddenly having better gear - they are a way for background plots to advance, for inter-character machinations to play out, for cliques to form and generally for each player to get some face time with the GM. If anything i would argue the opposite - that downtimes are less about mechanics and almost entirely about story and roleplayed actions.

Example: A group of Heretics have entered into a compact to bring an imperial outpost world under control of the ruinous powers. The players have managed to infiltrate several cults and corrupt them to chaos, but are facing a tougher prospect influencing the planetary Arbites HQ. The GM decides that this will be dealt with in a downtime.

Option 1 - The players all roll for a number of acquisitions and end up with enough ordnance to go and lay waste to the Arbites precinct.

Option 2 - The players each describe how they will use their skills and abilities to approach the problem, including how swiftly they will move against the Precinct, what sort of strategies are involved etc.

Either option progresses the game but for me personally, and im sure a lot of you out there, the second option is infinitely more rewarding.

As a player of all 40k RPs to date, i find that all purchases and acquisitions are entirely situational. Say you are wanting to acquire a Legion Meltagun - going to locations that are more likely to have Legion gear available (like an ancient Space Hulk featuring wreckage from M31) is going to get you some sort of bonus to your rolls decided by the GM. Networking contacts and merchants, liaising with scavengers and bounty hunters, using your Infamy to get your name spread around as someone after certain items - these are all things you can be sorting out as a player to aid you in your endeavors to acquire certain item types.

As to the rules in ITS - basically the more times you try and acquire something in one location from the same merchants without changing factors (time waited, using different merchants, aliases, ships etc) then the bigger the chance that you attract unwanted attention. And i do hope players get out of the mentality of "i am a heretic or legionnaire - i can kill anything i want!" because there are PLENTY of bigger, nastier things out there that won't be too happy with you if you run around yelling "i want a meltagun!" constantly.

ok just to make it clear. I am not a power gamer but usually in some games you will have a concept of money where players have to reach X amount to get Y normal gear.

What I find weird is basically humans can get gear (moslty anything) and Space marines can't (okay they start pretty strong) no problem with that it's a curve ball.

1 - There is this arbitrary number I can say to my players it's X! Yeah... and what if my player attracts attention while trying to bully a plasma gun, I mean who won't be? It's an heretical world where every one os trying to boss the others...

2 - If you think players should be looting stuff instead of aquiring them, well I played enough MMo to not like the grind you like, I discourage looting not to bug down the game when you kill tons of things in a round looting is kind of dumb afterwards, you have 300 guys to loot most have autopistil and stuff "How many I want to loot them all So i can trade them, Profit!!!" to wich I usually answer you got plenty and lets move on.

or do a quest to get equipment which can be nice for Deamon swords and what not but as a routine activity this shoudl be a once or twice type of arc in a full lenght campaing, don't you find it tedisouly repetitive?

I will award loot items once in a while, key items but by defautl most weapons are broken during a fight and can't be readily salavaged either as Io want them to be able to use a game mechanic of aquisition...

See that's my dilemna, I use money to temper a game, when I lavish them in gold they know they have to rack up cause it's not gona last long. I guess when I play I also have the same mentality, I will try to kit up a bit more. Right now I wanted to mag lock my weapons, well forget about it until a few more level of infamny.

There are tons of way to break the mechanics in all the FFG games equipment behing the lesser factor IMO, I try to stay clear of them but on the other end I like the aquisition phylosophie (especially the BC one where infamy is a personnal thing), I love the PF from RT since it represents the aquisitional power of a titanic organisation, makes it not to dumbed down yet you still have the feeling of managing en Empire, just not macroing the bricks...

I just want ot know how you adapted this to your games, maybe what I need is a aquisition time tabel based on the rarety of the item. Doign a tourough search for a plasma gun and finding nothign on a given planet may take as much as 3 months, where a case of amasac is probably a few hours since relatively common.

You still can keep the ITS "you try to often it brings trouble" wich I will probbaly make it a cumulative -10 to each reroll.

crisaron said:

Which is primarily because most human-appropriate gear is cheap and abundant (much like humans in the 40k universe), while Astartes gear is really, really rare (like the Astartes themselves).

crisaron said:

Thing is, piracy and looting are common methods amongst the forces of Chaos of obtaining supplies - they don't have the kind of manufacturing and production infrastructure the Imperium takes for granted, and typically lack the kind of ordered society that allows for things like currency and complex trade. It's an anarchic, might-makes-right culture based on fractured warbands and the power and ambition of a few individuals.

Stealing is a part of that - whether through subterfuge or brute force, taking what you want from those too weak to deserve it is both expected and necessary. It may be that you have to undertake a campaign of pirate raids against Imperial bulk transports to gather the resources you need for a big undertaking later. You might be daring enough to try and lure an Astartes strike cruiser to a world so you can assault it and plunder its holds for wargear and maybe even relics or a store of geneseed to defile (amongst Traitor Marine warbands, geneseed is perhaps one of the greatest things to barter, because it represents the potential to increase their numbers). If you're skilled and lucky, you might come away from it with captives (for sacrifice, slavery, experimentation or even as new recruits) or even the ship itself.

IMO, looting, stealing and scavenging should be made a part of the game, whether you're just starting out or are in command of dozens of ships and millions of warriors (even the Tyrant of Badab raids the Imperium for supplies).

Well, I will share how I handled Profit Factor for my RT group. They began with an initial 27 PF so they were in a similar situation to you: Can't really roll for anything worthwhile with any expectation of success.

Basically, I allowed an acquisition roll whenever there was downtime following a suitable point such as docking at Port Wander or a Forge World. Depending on the location, I'd give the players an idea what was available and likely had bonuses to acquirement. The players would then pick a primary target, and one or two secondaries in case the first was not available.

The characters would then go out and check if they found the item they wanted with an appropriate skill check (Evaluate, Tech-Use, or whatever was most appropriate). If they found the item, they had the option of trying to buy it themselves or getting the "barter" guy in the group to help them out, which most of them chose to do. I basically ruled that they had to do the searching on their own (unless another char was willing to sacrifice their own acquisition chance to help them) but they could get the group member to step in and "seal the deal".

The location, the character's own personal skill roll and the barter roll all contributed bonuses (or penalties) to the final acquisition roll, allowing them a chance to get rare equipment, and even sometimes get some decent quality. If the primary item didn't work out, I would usually let them try for their second priority, or obtain it at a lower then desired level of quality.

Basically it encouraged the players to think about how they wanted to acquire their gear, and not just flex their rather anemic profit factor. And by doing so, I allowed them to slightly overcome that handicap for personal weaponry and gear, when appropriate.

Since I controlled when an acquisition test was made it also meant that the group advanced their gear options at a similar pace, though there was also some looting of enemy nemesis and elite level enemies with good gear.

Ship components and other major acquisitions are another story though.

Also if you use a too strict system it makes the Aquisitionnist a pointless class too.

Yeah I like your idea, I wil use a mixt of time to aquire baesd on rarety and others, I don;t like to ball park my players, saying I only want this and that. Yet if my players says to me we psend the next 10 years tryign to aquire poarts for the ship, I can't really tell them well you made Xn umber of aquisition you can't till you kill another Nob.

alto a plasma batterie is rare, it should not take you 4 months to figure the agriworld doesn't have one. Where a power sword could take a while more since there could be rumours of lootable manors, etc.

p.s. While looting and scavanging are very nice and intersesting part of a campaing arc, I always try to change the flavor of a campaing a few times. The survivors teem only last for so long IMo else it becomes a pretty static equipment grind. Which I hate, after two years in another game we still have to loot the freaking bullets... and the spend bullet cassing to make some doe, after a while give them a ammo runt and move on pls!

You want to have a terminator with a pair of lightning claw, I will let it happen overtime cause it's cool and I can then throw huge stuff at the party members now... (Okay you may hate me when the quest boss is down a tiny shaft, but you wanted the big terminator armor).

To those that say "but humans start with good gear, why can't astartes?" my answer is that astartes can use pretty much any gear a human can - in fact a human power weapon is going to be more effective in the hands of an astartes. The full legion level gear is representative of how astartes gear is so much more powerful than human gear, but proportionately rarer. There were only so many plasma guns kicking around during the heresy, so halve that number for how many 'fell', remove more for attrition over the millenia, though add some more for loot supplies - you end up with them being pretty **** rare indeed.

Look at the systems for getting gear in Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, between them you can strike up some mechanics for duration of checking for items, availability based on rarity and where you are looking etc. The 40k Rps are a living system, and despite each claiming to be an enclosed system, they work best when amalgamated into something greater than the sum of its parts.

As to the comment about me liking grind in my games - i hate grind, i hate repetition. This is why i was suggestion NOT allowing endless rolls of Infamy to acquire gear, as it would be repetitive and break down the flow of the narrative. Limiting the number of rolls you allow based on duration spent 'shopping', imposing penalties or bonuses dependent on locale and contacts, secretly rolling for unwanted attention if you throw your weight around a bit too much or too often. I was never suggesting that all acquisitions should be circumvented by stealing everything, merely that there are times and places where you wouldn't or couldn't be making Infamy rolls. I mean come on, if you are deep undercover on an imperial naval outpost who are you going to 'buy' gear from using Infamy? "I am the merciless slaughterer of Arctur, the crimson lord of legions - sell me your lascannon please!". In these instances you obviously lie, cheat and steal whatever you need. Common sense things if you ask me.

The book cannot and will not explain all modifiers for all situations because as with any roleplay system it is a groundwork - a chasis for you to craft your own thrilling adventures within. If you are unsure how to use certain mechanics in a given situation then make a judgement call and stick with it for the rest of your campaign. These are all basic GMing 101, that are explained in nearly any roleplay book - really good reading are old D&D Dungeon Master's guides as they really delve into the nitty gritty of how to run a roleplay campaign.

ok I guess we just on different side of the coin. To me, it as to be clear that if you get X amouny of cash you can get Y item, not If you have X well good luck (yes I also take in account locations and allie and what not).

Let's say, I want to aquire a freaking scope for my plasma gun well good freaking luck... but a scope from Legion to human should just be a scope... Ducati ralling now pretty much show that any weopon can have a ducati scope... and if you really just want mag clamp well sucks to be you. (Probably not the best exemple). I guess waht I am saying is if I give you 5 gold you shoudl be able to spend it on girls boose and guns... not just try to roll for one of those. If you spend enough time you shoudl be abel to find all 3 of them (alto they may be too expensive) still you should be abel to try and find those 3 items if you invest enough time to try. (The subjective amount of aquisitions is where I have issues I guess). So if a player decides to roll for a powerfist I know it should be hard, but if my player is just saying I want any 1 type of special ammo, just for kicks... Shoudl i be as complicated to try and find a single clip of special ammo as it is to get a powerfist?

Should I penalise the player that will take the fun items, that may give interesting situation vs the player that tries every single piece to OP gear? Curretly, I want to get an optical Mechandrite, a medical one, a luminem globe servo skull... you know rp elements that still require Aquisition, now my Dm wil say sorry m8te inlyt 1 aquisition because that guy keeps trying to roll for power armor and what not and it woudl mean too much stuff right away...

1 - Modifiying the weapon upgrade table.

2 - Time table for aquisitions. So indeed if my players decide to spend 10 years gearing up well they could in theorie get out of it with pretty over the top equipement. (with enemey and what not, generated in those years). Or a player trying to get an auto-quill, paper and some other low key stuf should not prevent him from trying either to aquire weapon alto he does understand he as sacrificed time to aquire the other items.

I should point that to me aquisition is also when you don't want to spend time doign RP on stuff bu just need somethign and then move on. If we go down to RPing an item aquisiton as i said earlier then it will becoem an aquisition quest with a means to succeeds. i.e Anything is possible given time and blood...

p.s. I just came from Eclipse Phase where players can have cornucopia machines that can reprodce any material from bricks, including nucleare weapons...

To me aquisition cannot be limited, only me is limited by my imagination to create challange to present them. 40k system is very simple, I just want to find a balance where player feel they have an aquiaistional power and we can move along the game where it is not just an aquisition fest or grind.

Right now I tell players they get free +-X aquisition difficulty as reward, and they can between games get items with modifiers based on the location they where and will be in the next game. (this means player try and have the heavy aquistion rolls by the time the game starts...) But knowing my players i needed rules to prevent abuse next time I abuse them (dunno why but they have a very high need for avenge any slight I do them!)