It IS adventure related, an adventure about dark eldar containing the bonus of the rules for playing a dark eldar. So not only are you getting an adventure, you also recive the ability to play one should you feel the need to.

And as for how much of the adventure book will be devoted to this material. I think we can expect at least as much as the Kroot or Orks were given in the earlier work, Into the Storm. Honestly I'd prefer a bit more, but there's already quite a bit of space to work with there, especially if you include the two specialties that one of the races had, and remember the space devoted to their Talents, Skills, and weaponry and other equipment.

And frankly, since the adventure involves Dark Eldar, there's no reason not to provide a section discussing them in greater detail.

Personally, it makes me sad that, after getting Orks and Kroot, we are also getting Dark Eldar, before we get nice rules for "regular" Craftworld and Corsair Eldar. I more than half-expected that they would say "here's the Eldar; see what you think", and then, later, drop in the DE with "So, the vanilla Eldar weren't grimdark and gritty enough for you? Your games are of a completely different shade of dark and terrible greed? Well, then now we will bump it up a notch, and present to you what happens when an Eldar is taken to the worst extremes of vileness and depravity. Feast your eyes, and your souls, on the Dark Eldar, and be terrified of what the future holds." But no, they skip over one of the, in my opinion, most wanted races, and give us the group that, at least to me, really lacks a good deal of diversity of role-playing. Dark Eldar HAVE to be evil douchebags; their lives actually seem to depend upon it. That limits their availability as a player race in your game to the rare times when the whole crew is a morass of sin, debauchery, and evil. There are a good number of useful relationship groups you cannot use, because that group isn't likely to make very many other good friends, except in criminal circles. And yet, still no Space Elves. I know that your average Eldar isn't likely to join a Rogue Trader, and that they are aloof, arrogant pricks, but I still see a number of better thoughts for if they were an available option for PCs, after Orks and Kroot came along, but we get the DE, instead.

Okay, my whining is over. Is there a particular reason the DE had to come first? I'm not trying to dis the book, but I almost hope it is more a case of "we printed this book, chalk-a-block full of stuff, with Dark Eldar hounding the players, and then realized after people saw this, they were going to say 'but wait, in another scenario, using this material as a base, what if I actually wanted to PLAY a DE? How would I go about it?' ", rather than someone saying that the next revealed PC race shoauld actually be the Dark Eldar, renowned for the cruelty, sadism, and agile combat skill, and not much else, because if we got these, instead of easier to fit in "regular" Eldar, that just seems dumb, IMO. Of course, this is also due to the fact that I am an Eldar fanboy, I guess, and I really hoped that they would stat such an option out for us.

As for tossing the character stuff in this book, rather than a core/source/campaign book, I'd say it's fine, mostly because the material isn't likely to be relevant, much of the time. How often is your GM likely to say "it doesn't matter what our team's composition is; a crazy, murdering, badass xenos, of a race feared by practically everyone, would fit right in." ? With it fitting into only specific campaigns, ones of a decidedly darker description, ahead of time, most people won't need the info to make a character. As an aside, if the party does have a DE onboard, I hope that they remember to post an extra few guards near the choir chamber; Dark Eldar are renowned as well for their hatred of psykers, and you never know when he might make a move to recharge some gear, or just rid himself of that which disgusts him most.

Well for one thing, you can't pull off a Craftworld Eldar, per se. Not with the scope of a starting RT character anyway.

They're only giving you a Kabalite Warrior for the Dark Eldar. So extrapolating power levels, there's pretty much nothing above a Guardian that you could pull off with a Craftworld Eldar. Rangers not really being members of the Craftworld (they chose the Path of the Outcaste remember). Rounding off the last of the applicable options would be Corsairs, who we don't really know much about other than that they tend to be Dark Eldar Lite.

Corsairs tend to be harsh and uncaring, but not sadistic and capricious like DE. I think they’d be easier to play than a DE, and I’m surprised we didn’t get a Corsair (or Eldar Ranger, which’d be even easier to play) as the first Eldar career. Craftworld Eldar is a different story. 40K isn’t Star Wars; the various races tend not to get along, so having a Striking Scorpion or Warp Spider as part of your crew just wouldn’t work (IMO). I’m sure it’d be fun , but I can’t see it being feasible.

I’ll still be interested though to see how DE really work in the game.

BYE

The way I've always seen and understood it, Corsairs don't actually take up the life because they want anything, certainly not anything material anyway. While banishment can be the cause for their separation from the Craftworld, it more often seems a willful choice, done to escape the strict tenets of the Path system. Which is where the risk of becoming like the Dark Eldar comes in (go too wild, get too hooked on sensation and decadance, and while your soul may not begin to be leeched away, you're still going to be acting just like one of them...).

But at the same time, such an outlook seems to provide the least incentive to cooperate. They're just out for ***** n' giggles, being wild and crazy Eldar teenagers, sowing their wild oats and generally being dicks at the expense of others. They already have what they want, and that is freedom from the Path system, which allows them to truly experience, and revel in, what it means to be one of the Eldar. And as presented, they don't really seem to want for much other than that.

Now however risky it might be, however tenuous, Dark Eldar have desires and needs that you can play on. 'Sustenance' for one thing, while power and prestige fit right in with a Rogue Trader crew. A particularly unscrupulous Rogue Trader wouldn't have any problems with the slave trade afterall.

And frankly, concerning Dark Eldar, the Reaver specialty, and etc., people have been thinking about playing space pirates ever since this game was announced and we all know it.

I simply want play a party of all Eldar/Dark Eldar/Crorsair/Arlequins, and so to me having a career in an adventure is not so good, since I've still need of ships, alternate ranks, stuff, ecc.

Personally I hope the Dark Eldar Career Path is a prototype of an imagined upcomming Craftworld Eldar game... I doubt it, but it would be awesome.

A new game?

I hope with the rules of WHFR.

If not, I'll be satisfied with a book for Rogue Trader about Eldar and Dark Eldar.

It's been discussed at length elsewhere, so I'll just say I don't think it's likely.

We'll probably keep getting stuff like what we have been (and will be), though.

Also, come to think of it, I think there might be some stats for Dark Eldar (and regular Eldar) ships on Dark Reign. While they are only statblocks intended for use as NPC's (Non-Player Ships?), they'd be a good place to start extrapolating from, in regards to making ships for playable characters.

Hate to resurrect a dead thread but I was just reading through Lure of the Expanse, looking for little hidden easter eggs, and I found one. The Witchblades of the Eldar, page 132. Power Sword + Triple STR bonus. Kicks the everloving crap out of a power fist!

Just a thought =)

WhiteLycan said:

But, as far as I remember, you have to be an Eldar Psyker to get any benefit from the swords.

Nope, you have to be an eldar Psyker to get a PEN for the sword. It doesn't say anything about needing to be an eldar psyker to gain the STRx3 bonus.

"...a Witchblade's penetration is equal to the user's Psy Rating..."

"... and in the hands of a non-Eldar is simply an unusual power weapon."

So it's better in an Eldar Psyker's hands, but those aren't the only hands it's useful in.

WhiteLycan said:

Which means that for non-Eldar the sword works just like a regular Power Sword with no additional benefits. Also the first sensence fluff text makes very clear that the Strenght enhancement comes from the psychic energies of the warlock.

Since when does fluff trump clearly written rules? They clearly say If you have a Psy rating and you're an Eldar, the weapon's pen is equal to your Psy rating. The mechanics of the weapon never say anything abou needing a Psy rating to benefit from the STR bonus.

Yeah, I'm going to learn toward a no on this one. It seems quite trivial to restrict the PEN bonus to just Eldar, because it is such an inconsequential thing next to the (x3) to Strength.

I know I wouldn't be too concerned with it just the PEN.

Maese Mateo said:

This might make me invest in the book just to get that career path, so that my brave Acolytes of the Ordo Xenos can go up against these degenerated aliens.

Blood Pact said:

I have no idea which side you're trying to support with that statement. For one, the PEN bonus isn't restricted to Eldar; it's restricted to Eldar Psykers. And Penetration is not inconsequential. 5 PEN means you're doing more damage against ANYthing that has armor (which everything does) than something without penetration.

"A witch blade counts as a power sword with the additional effect of tripling the user's Strength Bonus."

"Also, a Witchblade's Penetration is equal to the user's Psy Rating, provided the user is an Eldar psyker."

"... and in the hands of a non-Eldar is simply an unusual power weapon."

It seems to me that this is a matter of interpertation of whats written. To me it seems like you have to be an eldar to gain the effects of the weapon, otherwise it is a strange looking power weapon.

But i can see why some may want to include the x3 strength even for non-eldar.

On-Topic:

I kind of get the feel that this will be a Dark Eldar source book written like an adventure book. This is a hope of mine anyway, and i hope for a lot of Dark Eldar monsters and machines so i can use them in other games aswell as in Rogue Trader.

WhiteLycan said:

Since we started playing non-competitive RPGs, and instituted a player called the "Game Master" that sits down and makes relatively sure that players don't do completely absurd or ridiculous things just because the rules say they can.

Yeah, because game developers and writers aren't paid to try to balance the game or anything. Cause ya know, they just like to half-ass it and tell us one rule and expect us to ignore it because it's not really there... even though it is.

And what the heck is a non-competitive RPG? The entire game you're competing against the GM's NPCs and Monsters. I really can't even wrap my mind around how you'd think I was bringing this up to outdo every other player in my gaming group... the comment is just confusing, really.

Don't mind me, just continuing with the completely uncalled-for sarcasm.

Explorator with an easily attainable 70 STR (40 start, 10 xp, 20 power armor) and a Power Fist deals 2d10+14 with Pen 9. Raise that to 2d10+21 if he has best quality synthetic muscle grafts.

Dark Eldar probably aren't going to have good STR progression, so we'll just put him at 50 with a Witchblade (the Warlock from LotE has . That's 1d10+21 with no Pen.

Until the adventure is released, this comparison isn't quite fair because we don't know what STR is attainable by a Dark Eldar. But looking at this, no matter what the STR of the Dark Eldar, the explorator will be doing at least 1d10 more damage. Then add the 9 penetration on top of that. Now think about how explorators aren't intended to be combat centered characters while Dark Eldar most likely will be. The fact that a Very Rare human item will, on average, deal more damage than what is likely a Near Unique, or at the very least Extremely Rare, Exotic Weapon is pretty sad. And BTW I'm being generous with the 50 STR score. No Eldar in any of the adventures have a strength bonus higher than 3.

tl;dr: A Dark Eldar with a Witchblade will do the same amount of damage or, much more likely, less damage than an explorator with a Power Fist. Letting a Dark Eldar get the STRx3 is not "completely absurd or ridiculous" and will not break the game. Especially because the weapon's entry says nothing about Psykers not being able to gain the STRx3 quality.

WhiteLycan said:

I didn't think I really needed to type "eldar psykers" to make my point clear. And yeah, it really is inconsequential, becuase not everything has armour. And the additional Strength bonus from the multiplier blows past it when the weapon is only in the hands of a Strength 30+ character.

They're not going to restrict the PEN and give that to everyone.

Not everything has armor? Have you ever looked at a monster stat block? Well over 75% of enemies have armor, and the ones that don't aren't worth fighting in the first place (like completely unarmored humans). Even a simple Hired Gun has 2 (all) armor. An Oathsworn has 4 or 6 depending on the location.

And you're trying to tell me that they just forgot to put in the "only usable by an Eldar Psyker" line despite the fact that in the very preceding paragraph they have stats for a piece of equipment that specifically states "...worn by anyone other than an Eldar Psyker loses this special property" ? You're saying a suit of Rune Armor worn by a non-eldar psyker should have 0 armor then?

"...counts as a power sword with the additional effect of tripling the user's SB."
"...Penetration equal to user's Psy Rating if user is Eldar Psyker."
"...in the hands of a non-Eldar is simply an unusual power weapon."

Eldar? Check. Psyker? Check. Power Sword + Psy Rating PEN + STRx3
Eldar? Check. Psyker? No. Power Sword + STRx3
Eldar? No. Psyker? --. Power Sword

Really don't see how that can be interpreted any other way...

And imo there's no way to interpret the rules so that the STRx3 is given to non-eldar. "...in the hands of a non-Eldar is simply an unusual power weapon." Power weapons have STRx1.

WhiteLycan said:

Maybe it's because I just woke up, but I could have swore you were trying to argue this in the other direction earlier in the thread, ie: non-Eldar get the Str x3 (also I somehow missed the post you made before my last). Anyway, that was my point as well. And I guess I was being full of it when I said "not everything has armour".

re: said post; game developers do try to keep things balanced (the good ones succeed), we've seen previously that FFG's writers will generally lean to keeping stuff in line with fluff, like the Availability of various Eldar weapons found in Hostile Acquisitions (a topic of discussion when the book came out). It does stand to reason that the writers would go right ahead and create a weapon that isn't too useful in the hands of the average PC (I think we will get non-DE rules someday though, probably if Soul Reaver does well).