Greetings, fellow GM!

What are your experiences with sending Genestealers after the PC? I am talking about thoses stats in the CA. In comparison to my current group (a Guardsman, a Sister of Battle and a scholastic Psyker) they are quiet deadly as soon as the get into close combat.

Since I am actually deploying them in a warzone and allow the ´Stealers to make good use of Stealth and Ambush tactics one or more tends to "end up" in close combat with a PC. Their, the multiple attacks (I already tuned them down to three attacks instead of the four Lighting Attack & Multipe Limbs are ought to give) become devasteting. With their high WS, 2 to 3 attacks actually strike true and their high DS and damage quickly wear the PC down.

It is very much "we kill them quickly or they eat us up"

Greetings Fellow GM...

My thoughts on genestealers is I paticularly would send one or more (depending on how reliably your PC's are hitting and damaging mooks and and what weapons they have) after them.

But in all acctual experiance since you probably know the trivials my experiances is I had some players before the group I am with now kill 3 of them because my players were smart enough not to get close and used stuff that would give them a auto hit (such as a flamer). Don't get me wrong they almost die but it was hilarious to see the "oh crap" look when three stealers are barrelling at them full tilt claws and teeth bared.

From a player's point of view...

We were on a deserted ship overrun with genestealers. The GM made use of the "Space Hulk" board game in order to simulate the experience. We had a group of NPCs with us, but after the first encounter with genestealers they all pretty much died or fled.

There was no way to avoid clsoe combat in the situation we were in, and the genestealers move way to fast for any sort of meaningful ranged response.

Our group is at ascended ranks (about 21000 xp at the time). The Crusader I was playing was managing to fight them about 3 at a time in close combat. They were not an easy fight, but not as hard as some demons. I did not charge the genestealers, since that would give them the maximum amount of attacks against my character. I pretty much made sue of the full defense combat move and braced for impact as the genestealers charged in waves. Counter attacks with the power sword was tremendously helpful. My goal was to take the brunt of the assault and let the group peal them off my Crusader. If my character didn't have his force field things would have gone much worse. The fact that a lot of the encounters took place in areas of ship that was airless vacuum made viod suit damge another danger that could result from the combat. Luckly my I had my character grab a second helmet from one of the dead NPCs, it really helped the Judge out when a genestealer cracked his helmet open. The viod suits were patched up all over the pace when were were finnaly done. So, the genestealers can be one danger that results in another.

My Crusader also went toe to toe with a genestealer prime, and took it down with a lot of help from the group. My crusader with power fist, the Judge was backing me up with an inferno pistol, and the desperado with two plasma pistols on maximal. The combat lasted several rounds.

If your group of PCs should be armed with power weapons, plasma weapons, meta weapons, and force fields (meaning thing that you would use to fight Chaos Space Marines) to stand a chance against a group of genestealers. What ever armor the PCs has is pretty much useless. Not getting hit at all is the key to beating them, sice they put out some serious damage.

I'd say that 2 or 3 genestealers is more than plenty for the average group, because there is a big chance that they can just insta gib some of the weaker characters. I would not recommend taking on 12 at a time like we did. Roleplaying a fearless character in that kind of situation was tremendously fun, since as a player I was freaking out. Also put them in some vacuum to see how they handle depressurization when the genestealers rip their void suits apart. Fighting genestealers will also result in having a reason to get bionic limbs.

Good to know. One of my players wants to face a genestealer cult but since my group is about 100xp from rank 3, they won't stand a chance ATM (which I told him).

I just had a sessoin with my group lastnight and ( using the random encounters table ive modified from an existing dark reign file ) I let the Pcs roll their encounters 1 time for each week to see what happens..sometimes nothing...other times..they get things like they did lastnight...a genestealer loose in one of the lower cargo holds...during warp transit. The PCs are onboard a IG seconded Lunar class cruiser ( currently also by random roll carrying the Tanith first thanks to a natural 00 roll ) in transit to a warzone...When the PCs were woke up and ordered immediately to the bridge in full gear in middle of night they had no idea what was going on....till they got there and saw the entire command staff of the ship and IG...The looks on their faces were priceless...when they got told there was an unknown number of genestealers loose in the cargo deck(s)....they had the assistance of the Tanith scout teams ( out of their element in a ships corridors...) and heavy gunner teams ( set up at control points w/ heavy stubbers and lascannons) to help maintain containment as they closed the cordon down lower and lower...till they zeroed in on one cargo hold...locked down on all sides and all maintenance and airduct access shut off by the ships tech priests and servitors as they cleared each section with auspex and visual sweeps until the PCs group finally ran across one while it was in process of "collecting new genetic material" from a few downed crewmens corpses. The Pcs wisely ordered the tanith to take up positions on either side of the corridor immediately to their left and right and be ready to fire at its vulnerable points ( joints, face, etc ) while the heavier PC ( a hulking former guardsmen ) chucked a couple frag and stun grenades at it...the frag injured it some..the stun more pissed it off than anything...but bought them a chance to level everything they had at it...and opened up on it..the tanith scout snipers gave a good account by targeting its weaker areas and scoring several damaging hits while the PCs simply opened up with their carnodon hand cannons ( w / hyper-density penetrator ammo- one of the PCs wisely chose to be a trade(armorer + smith ) and invested in training with it ( along with randomly rolling to be a member of the havelock merchant family ) and thus was able to create the special ammo and such during downtimes using personal funding etc.. ( I am a firm believer in the Inquisition hiring and or seconding its own armourers and weaponsmiths to create any needed items possible and thus each Inquisitor in my games has one in one of the cell teams somewhere...) This players "false/real" ID is as a armourer under his real Havelock name..the perfect disguise...something that cannot be proven false because its true...and he holds to it ( plays in character well ) He outfitted everyone in his team with the special ammo to assist in bringing down the xenos threat. Several of the ships arbites assisted in dealing with the threat since there were a total of 5 genestealers onboard..but a total of 37 crewmen, 15 arbites, and 6 guardsmen were killed in the forrays with the xenos...the PC guardsman took a nasty hit from the claws of the genestealer but was saved from being bitten by it by his fellow PC and a few well placed shots at point blank range to the xenos face....now the guardsman has a few nice scarlines to remember his "fun" playing with the genestealers as well as a newfound Hatred of them..lol It helps that all of my Players ( like myself ) are former military so they are adept at using tactics as well as whatever resources are at hand ( namely ships arbites and in this case IG ) to assist them in dealing with their given missions.

I have run one encounter with a stealer. In summary it was single stealer that had been brought to a primitive world by Logicians for experimentation. Obviously the stealer escaped, killed the logicians and started infecting a local village. By the time the PC's arrived (twelve months later following a lead on the logicians) the entire village had been infected, many pregnant women, five first gens and a couple of second gens. When it came to a fight the PCs (5th rankish) tore through the hybrids. Their journey into the catacombs beneath the village to hunt down the purestrain was going to be tougher. In the end several players went down but the assassin made good use of assassins strike to limit the attacks to a level that dodging kept him alive until the death blow could be delivered.

antony131073 said:

I used these rules http://www.koldborg.eu/genestealer.pdf

I must admit though they were pretty ineffectual. The villagers armed with autoguns did more damge with full auto

Nice to see that the supplement is still being used.
I wrote it before Inquisitors Handbooks came out (which was to be the last DH supplement)

Thanks for your hard work santiago

Santiago said:

Santiage, thank you for writing this document! I never knew about how this "Generation Cycle" really works. While I differ in view about your use of the Psyker-Powers for all of these "rank and file" Hybrids I am very happy to now have this fine document at hand.