My players just upgraded their characters' armour- now mostly carapace, many combined with shields (from Book of Judgement ). As a result, most of them are flat-out immune to most standard weapons. It's easy enough to create challenging high-level adversaries who can overcome that armour value, and I've been looking foward to the day when my party was powerful enough to face many of the critters from Creatures Anathema , so I'm not too concerned with how their high-end armour will effect their encounters with major challenges and 'boss monsters'.

-But I'm not comfortable with them being able to completely disregard huge numbers of 'grunts'. As operatives of the Ordo Hereticus, they generally have to wade through a lot of flunkies before they get to the brains of the heresy they are investigating; I'm fine with the PCs being able to heroically wipe out large numbers of cannon fodder, but not with zero risk to themselves. It would be too contrived if the grunts suddenly all started carrying bolters and plasma guns instead of autoguns at he exact same time that the party switched to better armour.

So, I'm considering using the Horde rules from Deathwatch to represent large groups of low-level heretics, so they still have a chance of damaging above-average characters. Before doing so, I thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback from other GMs- has anyone else employed Horde rules in DH ? How did it work out? Are there any pitfalls I should look out for?

I have a game this Saturday, which will involve a full-scale seige of a large heretic base; I'm planning on using Magnitude 15 Cultist Hordes for the bulk of the opposition (supported by a Sorcerer, some lieutanants with special weapons, and some summoned Bloodletters- not fielded as a Horde). The PCs will be supported by a few units of the local PDF (also fielded as Hordes).

Any feedback will be appreciated.

Hey!

I started using hordes myself after the priest took on the power to add WP bonus to Toughness, so that everyone was virtually immune to everything (which mostly consisted of Nurglings for that particular mission.)

But even then I had to mess around with the horde rules a bit, play around with it as to make it more challenging. Mechanics that are great for the hordes on the other hand is their ability to hit everybody- so everybody gets in on the action. Every round

Black crusade offers tips on how to make hordes more compatible with humans: allow humans to dodge it, for example. On the other hand, it says that if the humans can take it and dish it out, they should be treated the same as the space marines.

As for my own experiences, I still had to give the nurglings a bit more damage because when they dropped the horde down to 10 magnitude, it acted the same as a regular nurgling- only took much longer to kill.

So still you should mess around with the horde's damage [increasing it slightly, I'd recommend anywhere from +3 to 5 depending on your acolytes' soak]- especially in that awkward moment between 10 & 19 magnitude where the horde deals as much damage as a single cultist. Unless there's a segment of the rules I've ignored. Then again, I am using BC hordes.

Weird, I was just about to ask this same question in the forum.... Great minds think alike I suppose :-)

Anyway, I was wondering if the horde rules suggested in BC 'worked' against acolytes as they probably are less tough than human villains in a BC warband.

Allowing a dodge should help but magnitude = number of attacks might be a bit much even if the damage does not receive the horde bonus.

Considering the response of Saldre regarding damage being too light, especially if the horde is diminshed, I might try the hybrid combat rules suggested in the Broken Chains adventure. In this case, each player would be attacked once but with the attack having a +20 to hit and an extra 1d10 damage.

So if the acolytes face a horde of chaos cultists armed with laspistols (1d10+2) and a BS of 20 with a magnitude of 30, they would each be attacked only once per round but the attack would have a BS of 40 and do 2d10+2 damage. Not too dangerous but still a threat.

Thanks for the replies!

The top damage soak in my party is, I believe, 14, so I'm not too concerned about normal Horde damage (+d10 per 10 Magnitude) being too low. Since the cultists will mostly be armed with autopistols (1d10+2 +d10 for Magnitude 15 = average damage of 13), just under half of the hits will inflict damage; with an autopistol's RoF, and the extra shots for Magnitude, I think that's enough to convince the players to take the threat of a huge mob seriously without too much risk of a TPK.

Melee weapons are more problematic, since they are almost all Primitive and thus double Armour values (=22 damage soak in this case). So, a 15 Mag Horde armed with axes will do an average of (1d10+4+1d10) 15. Hmm... Maybe combine the previous suggestion of a bonus to hit- say, +10% per 10 Magnitude- with +1 damage per Degree of Success? After all, Hordes get extra Ranged attacks for Magnitude, so it makes sense for there to be some kind of bonus for Melee as well.

One change to the Horde rules that I am considering is changing the bonus damage from +1d10 per 10 Magnitude to +1d5 per 5 Magnitude. That would make the smaller Hordes that would be more common in DH (as opposed to the huge ones in DW ) a viable threat right up until they Break.

As for allowing PCs to Dodge attacks from Hordes- I don't like the idea of Dodge functioning the same against wave of attacks as it does against a single attack. A compromise that I am considering is to have successful Dodges reduce a Hordes' bonus damage by 1d10- or, if I go with the d5 system, maybe by 1d5 per degree of success.

Thoughts?