A few months after DH came out I had the chance to look at it at a friend's house and it got my blood running. I never ended up getting it because rogue trader had come out since and I immediately latched onto the possibilities of star-ship based campaigns. Now it's 2 years or so later and I've gotten most of the other core books as well as a mess of sourcebooks for various games. I was wondering if a few people who had played DH extensively could give me their input on the core game and expanded product line, how well it meshes (Which I believe is very well) and the over all wealth of information the DH line would add for my Warhammer 40K roleplaying games. Already Daemon Hunter has caught my eye (Love those Grey Knights) Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

Ive had the books since they came out (Black Industries) and played a few sessions. Im now running a campaign and I have to say that the setting is my favourite type.

The Acolytes all start off at a very low level and as a GM it is great showing your players a galaxy of things that could quite esily destroy them in an instant, so even though there will be times when they may have to fight, they are not generally especially well equipped to deal with powerful enemies head on. It is this which I love about it, they have to use their heads and the settings are pretty evocative, It has a very much call of Cthulu esque hint about it with big scary things lurking in the backgrournd potentially but you can also mix it up with guns, citizens, police, criminals and all manner of other things that may not play such dramatics parts as in the tabletop game.

Ive been a 40K fan for over 20 years and I have to say I love the backgrounds, settings, themes and characters from the DH books. If you like the idea of interactions between a HUGE veriety of different types of 'humans' then I say go for it. The Inquisition itself is extremely fascinating to me.

I clearly say "no, do not".

(Quality) support by FFG is dwindling since they started to launch their other products
[and NO, the Apostasy Gambit is NO quality support to me... and "Only war" is delayed]
The rules of the other 40k-RPGs are better developed

While I LOVE the background and have a DH-group myself, I strongly suggest you keep yourself to RT

Don't bother with the core book, if you have other corebooks there's positively nothing in it you might find useful, and the game has shown it's age profoundly.

You might want to consider buying Disciples of the Dark Gods and Creatures Anathema, both are great books that can be easily used with other lines.

You may also want Blood of Martyrs for new Faith Powers, and Daemon Hunter for cool Inquisition toys, a very flexible Daemon Generator, and Grey Knights rules (though the latter are mediocre and introduce all the derp from the Wardex, you have been warned).

I hear some adventures can be adapted to Black Crusade if you're into premades.

Thanks for the input, Already have creatures anathema, and while the core book was not gonna be a primary buy for me I was seriously considering getting some of the supplements, particularly Blood of Martyrs for the SIsters of Battle Rules I've heard about in there.

As the first WH40KRP book out of the gate, Dark Heresy contains a lot of mistakes and clunky elements that have been improved in other core books- at a minimum, you will need to study the latest official Errata. That said, DH has my favorite concept of any of the linked games. Agents of the Inquisition fighting a wide variety of the Imperium's enemies appeals to me more any of the other lines. Some people don't like the low starting power level, but as an old-school D&Der, I prefer games where you start small and work your way up. And, as a GM, DH has the labor-saving trait (shared with Deathwatch) of being able to order the PCs to undertake specific missions. If you don't have Desciples of the Dark Gods yet, I highly recommend it: tons of insperation for cool scenarios! My favorite sourcebook by far.

Gregorius21778 said:

DH also has the benefit of being the only game system that deals with the "Normal" citizens of the Imperium. In many ways it represents a "baseline" from which all RT, DW, and even BC characters are derived. In my own RT campaign I also use DH to run "Normal" crew members when the The captain and crew want to use their minions for something other than cannon fodder.

We play using all of the game settings mashed together (DH, RT, DW, and BC). We started with DH before RT was out. Obviously the best and most up to date combat rules will be in BC, but for all of the background specific information still use each book.

The books that get used the most by us as players is the DH core book, Inquisitor's Handbook, Ascension, Book of Judgement, and the BC core book. We've started looking more into RT since obtaining a ship for our PCs. DW is mostly used for NPCs now, but it was our go to source for combat rules before BC.

DH still produces some of the strongest PCs at higher ranks. The careers in DH might be more restrictive/focused, but you end up paying a lot less over time to gain the ability advances compared to RT. So, if you introduce a Dh character into a higher rank RT game be prepared for one beastly bastard.

In order to balance the systems we had to give RT and DW characters major discounts to their advancemnt cost to keep up with our DH characters. With BC's advancement scheme it's also much easier to calculate elite advances for our DH, or other, characters.

So, in my opinion every thing except for the older game mechanics is great in the DH core book. But, since you primarely use RT, and will continue to use it's rules for the mechanics, the added DH information/careers can only benefit the RT game.

Radwraith said:

This is a pretty bad idea, because those "normal, lowly citizens" tend to advance at a pace that makes those awesome characters from other games look like retards by comparison.

Morangias said:

He is using them as NPCs and NPCs wont' be statted out at 15000 Xp the way he is using them. Low rank DH characters are underwowered compared to the other systems, only after 5000 xp does things start swinging the other way compared to RT.

This is because the RT character is pretty much forced to spend the fist 4500XP or something to get a +5 in every characteristic. That is why a newly created RT character would be equivalent to a 5000 xp DH character. The DH character starts with nothing spent, so the player can choose to specialize much earlier, by getting talents and skills pertaining to the chosen specialization. The result is that certain charactersistics will be lower than an RT character's, but the DH character would be more specialized in a other areas.

When compared to a DW character the DH one will be heading into Ascension when they are on par, xp wise, with a starting DW character. By that point the DH character already have heaps of talents and skills, while the DW character is just starting to get those. When I played DW I played an assault marine, and I realized that the marine lacked a lot of talents that my DH guardsman had for ages.

So, using DH for lower powered characters is a great idea since you start off with a pretty blank slate, XP spent wise. DH has a lower base line, but advancemet accelerate pretty fast over time.

Any particular advancement in RT (Characteristics excluded) costs about twice as much as it does in DH. Advancements in DW cost at least four times as much. I'm not even touching Ascension, where instantly getting all Forbidden Lore skills at +20 costs less than it takes a DW Librarian to buy one Forbidden Lore at the same level.

Then, there are things like Adept getting Swift Attack at Rank 4 and Step Aside at Rank 5, both achievable before the XP level of starting RT characters (where no RT character can start with either Talent), not to mention before the level of starting DW characters, whom, despite being the best warriors galaxy has, have a slim chance of picking up either of those Talents (both pivotal to combat performance) at all throughout their career.

DH meshes really poorly with later systems. It may be OK to use it for low level NPCs, but don't ever go beyond 2k exp with those characters, or you run the risk of your Arch-Militant player suddenly wishing to switch his character sheet with that of the ship's scribe.

Running any crossover game of 40k is a painful exercise in ad-hoc rebalancing, but DH definitely takes the cake with the amount of derp it introduces to any crossover game.

The reason DH characters will have most of the skills and talents long before DW characters is becaue they start at rank 0, and end their leveling at the point where DW begins. Both DH, and DW are an RPGs, where people expect their characters to advance in some shape or form from ranking up. So, it's understandable why DH gets talents when they do, and DW get the same talents when they do. It's all in the name of feeling good about your character ranking up and getting new abilities.

Bringing the other game systems into DH hasn't been all that difficult. I'm rolling up a BC Chaos Space Marine to compare to the DH Crusader I play.

You can also claim the same about BC, since a Chaos space marine starts at about half the experience spent as a starting DW marine. Where the BC marine could pretty much start the game with swift attack ans step aside. We don't have to make any changes to BC to fit it into our DH game. I think the problem is that DW and RT is underpowered compared to DH and BC. BC characters seem to pretty much spend the same amount of XP to advance as a DH character, and they get more options way sooner than DW.

We've been using BC as the base line for character advancement, we let any one pay BC XP costs (after figuring out alignment equivelant) for any advencemtns if it's cheaper than what it would cost in their native system. This has benefited RT characters the most so far, and what ever the GM is doing to DW NPCs showing up in our games.

Playing at Ascension level has also helped widen the scope of our games, to include more elements from RT and DW. Low rank DH characters won't normally be owning a ship, have minions, and run into Deathwatch all too often.

Last game session I rolled up a RT Void Master so that I would have some one to play during space transit and space combat. My DH character is useless for that. I rolled him up with 6000 xp to spend so that he could be on starting BC level. For his advances I played BC or RT xp costs. Any thing that I had access to on his RT advancement scheme at 6000 xp I played "true" cost for in BC. I payed what ever the cheapest cost was between RT and BC.

So refusing to use any source book because of the notion that it is "out dated" only serves to restrict the overall gaming experience.

Morangias said:

That Is not really true. A RT character at lvl 1 is supposed to be the equivalent of a lvl 5 DH character. A DW marine is the equivalent of a lvl 8 DH character. BC is a lvl 6 character and requires a DH character to have accumulated 100 corruption points prior to starting on the path of "glory". It should also be noted that a DW marine is the equivalent of a Veteran SM whereas the BC Chaos marine probably more represents the equivalent of a Standard SM (In 40k SM's both chaos and imp are virtually Identical.)

To your point... It is up to the GM to control his game such that it showcases the differences between DH and RT differences. There are many ways a GM can do this. One obvious one is that it is highly unlikely that a DH character could advance beyond 5th lvl on a Voidship. This means that they would likely "Convert" to a RT class via an elite advance. There are other methods but my point was simply; DH characters represent the "Baseline" from which all other Warhammer 40k RPGs are measured against! I would certainly agree that DH is ripe for a "Revision" that brings it more into line with the later projects but that is another thread.

DH is by far the most interesting and high-potential setting in the 40k universum!

It's certainly the most developed one, I'll give it that much. Personally, I vastly prefer the cold, unwelcome backdrop of the Halo Stars and the crazy freedom that Rogue Trader offers.

Thanks for all the replies and insight into the question guys. I'll admit that outsdie of perhaps Daemon Hunter and Blood of Martyrs we probably wouldn't use much of the DH stuff via the players, and even then I know that our group is a more player driven group, which lends itself to BC Or RT rather than lower-level DH games or DW. At this point I figure if i were to buy DH or any of it's supplements it'd be mostly from a fluff point of view, or as a starting level equal to ascension games. Also it'd be nice to have a Hardcopy of DH so I could more easily transfer the psychic powers. but that's a personal preference, give me hardcopy over PDF anyday.

About transfering the psychic powers: don't. If there's one subsystem of DH that's screwed up beyond all hope of redemption, it's psychic rules. Just pretend they don't exist and contend yourself with the powers in BC, perhaps with a side dish of Theosophamy from Into the Storm.

Morangias said:

Other way around my friend.

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Morangias said:

Okay, so if he doesn't buy the DH corebook, he must be buying some other corebook, say Rogue Trader or Black Crusade. So, when he does this, and player's make up characters for a DH setting, they do what... You must have some kind of house rules or something for making DH-type characters using another set of core rules.

Regarding playing DH characters using another system, Me and a friend have talked about using RT for Necromunda, and I think it'd work to a certain degree. though I think I'm probably gonna go with some of the supplements.