I'm a rather inexperienced GM, but looking over the starting gear I'm concerned that if I stick with the defaults some classes may not have many ways to go in regards to gear progression. For example the Sorcerer starts with any force weapon and the Heretek can start the game with a servo arm that deals 2d10+14 dam with 10 pen! Am I misinterpreting how powerful these weapons and traits are? Or is Black Crusade's character progression more focused on talents and gifts of the gods?

Force weapon on the Sorcerer is understandable. Sometimes using psychic powers is a huge risk, and when those times arise, you need a backup plan. Sorcerers aren't melee specialists, so they need a really good melee weapons since they're likely to have zero melee talents.

Hereteks are likely to go ranged combat, while the servo arm is very powerful, it's more of a major utility, and since it's an bionic augmentations it doesn't benefit from things like lightening attack or any other melee talents, hence why it's so powerful. I could be wrong.

That's very true, both examples of mine were melee traits/weapons on primarily ranged classes. Thanks for your input!

The force weapon (especially since the Sorcerer can pick any force weapon, including the one that's a warp weapon) is most likely the best melee weapon that psyker's ever gonna need. He could still benefit from upgrading it's quality though.

As for the heretek, yes it's a sizeable amount of damage (and I don't know that there's a rule saying you can't lightning attack with your servo arm, if you feel like it. Long as you devote the action to it, it's a melee weapon like any other, ain't it?) but as mentioned it's a melee weapon for something that, in general, prefers to play tank, complete with cannon.

However, these are both one kind of item, namely weapons. They can still benefit from better armor, forcefields, backpacks, weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, tools, wargear (psy focus and hood are sorcerer candy!) exotic xeno tech, archeotech, personal inventions etc etc

So your players should have plenty of items to drool and get excited over. However, you did get something right a bit, which is that gear progression ain't a core tenant of the game, to my eyes. Infamy is. Heretics usually don't form compacts and fight the Imperium 'cause they want shinier armor. They do it because they want more infamy before their corruption point tally goes so high they go spawn rather than Daemon. Likewise, a bit like Rogue Trader's profit factor, infamy isn't a resource that goes away because you buy stuff, meaning it's mostly a matter of enough time and decent rolls for players to get access to "infamy rating appropriate" equipment.

So in short, your players should probably be more focused on Infamy and XP than "stuff" but there should be plenty of stuff for them to get even with force weapons and servo arms

I was under the impression that the servo arm was a strictly a bionic, and therefore wasn't able to use talent-based actions or have weapon upgrades attached to it.

I haven't seen a rule like that. It's used as a weapon, it acts like a weapon. Otherwise, a character wouldn't be able to swift attack with blade-tines, which are nothing but implanted weaponry. I wouldn't allow anything but a single attack when used with a reaction, but if the character devotes the action and has the talents, why not let him?

I would say that if the character has the swift attack talents, then a weapon can be used with the swift attack talent, i don't think there is any exclusive area where that wepon has to come from, with swift attack you attack twice with a gun but after all...

Actually the serve arm just flat states that it can either be used to make a standard attack with the wielders reaction, or they can make a standard attack with it, so long as it isn't swung more than once per round.

I'd say the real question is whether characters can use the trading rules to get rarer pieces of equipment at start.

If I were GMing I would rule out the trading equipment rule for starting equipment since it is supposed to be gear that the heretics obtained prior to the campaign, and trading would entail actions on the player's behalf before the adventure even begun.

arachnidshadow9 said:

So, you're implying that the player characters have just been sitting on their asses until you start play? I have no problem with my players trading in some of their equipment at character creation, as long as it is for equipment that is reasonably balanced compared to what they are starting with. In my opinion, something that creates more diversity and variation between the characters can only be a good thing.

That would just make character creation even more time-consuming and more difficult to players new to the game. Diversity is good, of course, but be aware that it always goes together with complexity.

There's no rule saying you MUST trade around your equipment, especially since the starting equipment most of the time is rather well-suited for the character and about as good as you're gonna get it. So new players could safely and comfortably NOT exchange equipment and still be more than ready to play without a handicap. Diversity does indeed add complexity, but it doesn't apply if you don't exercise it.

I personally would totally allow players to exchange one piece of equipment for another, long as it's not just straight up superior and it fits their concept. White Scar traitor exchanging a bolter for a kick-ass bow etc

Well, as my character is an Apostate, I certainly have a lot of gear progression to do: Flak armour, laspistol (good quality mind you... which does nothing as las weapons are already reliable) and a best quality sword. Not power sword, not mono sword, just a bog standard sword.

But yes, for some of the character classes there isn't that much gear progression to go.

Jackal_Strain said:

Jackal_Strain said:

No I see it more as the items/skills in your archetype starting package, and the items you attain in equipment selection/skills you purchase with your starting experience are the items and talents from your character's past ventures. I meant I would restrict players from say trading in a laspistol from their starting gear to reduce the acquisition modifier on an extremely rare item. That seems to take some of the fun out of progression if they can start with really great gear, and seems rather anachronistic since the player is making decisions for the heretic prior to the first adventure. I wouldn't disagree with how you've described your trading however, if the gear traded for is reasonably balanced then you're not really making decisions for the character before play but merely changing their back story from "owned a power blade to owned a chainsword" and keeping the gear progression on the same level.

Glad to see we're on the same page then. If a Khornate marine wanted to change his legion chainsword to a legion chain axe I would be ok with it. Changing it for a power fist is another matter entirely.

Jackal_Strain said:

Yeah, having too many powerful equipment on a starting character does spoil the power balance. More fun to think out of the box and/or improvise with existing weapons.

I see it like this:

The whole galaxy's against these guys. The Imperium hates them. Xenos races don't like them because they're either:

A.) Humans and therefore part of the Imperium (from the xenos perspective) which screams Kill the Xenos as it wades in to destroy.

-or-

B.) Servants of the Great Enemy (this would usually be an Eldar perspective) bent on the destruction of everything.

And it's not like there's any unity in chaos:

"Let's team up against the Imperium, mm'kay?"

"No, you wear green on thursday! I sore an oath to Tzeentch to kill you! RAHHHH!"

Something like that.

So, with everyone against them, they need some potent tools to assist in survival, otherwise they'd be back on the side of some intergalactic lane of travel gasping out their last breath after having been shoved out an airlock, or something. Hence the above average starting gear and the 2 auto-includes of the -10 acquisition roll pieces of gear.

"Ok, so once those are sorted out, how do we get more stuff?"

Infamy. A stat that starts out with unaltered rolls failing three fourths of the time. Even looking for a single common item, you'll only find it barely more than half the time you attempt it. I guess, to make a long story shorter, what I'm saying is, "I don't really see the bump in quality of starting gear all that imbalanced as that gear's gotta last a good while in most cases."

-My $.02

Black Crusade really isn't gear specific, though I there is good stuff people can strip from the bodies of dead enemies. If you have any of the other games those can be good ways to give interesting things such as a relic blade from a loyalist Astartes or Eldar technology. Also the chance to get daemon weapons or weapons with a legacy of slaughter to make a daemon weapon. However the primary point of questing is to gain infamy, with which you can get most everything else.

Actually I have a question of my own that I have been pondering. For those archtypes where you get a bolt pistol could you get another bolt pistol as a your gear as a Chaos Space Marine and exchange one of them to give your other bolt pistol the extended magazine feature?