On the upside, in a high rank game, Crimson Guard makes up for otherwise being just a Stormtrooper.

Overall the weapons and equipment are an amazing set of tasty treats… but I find them mostly better suited to… uh… all the other games. Where I worry about seeing a Tech Priest of low ranks with most of that stuff, Its all perfect for your local Heretek or Explorator. Except that Omnissian Rod. NO WAY am I letting anybody near that thing.

Some of the rules need clarification, though. The weapons for example, while most can be guessed easily, do not have a listed category. Proficiency aside, its a matter of what connection, if any, they could count as for integral weaponry, or what kind of armour upgrades they may be affected by[granted that's more a Black Crusade thing, but let's face it, there's a LOT of crossover with all the gear].

Lathe LASblasters are obvious, but what about the Percussion Mallet? Is it "primitive"?, can you plug it in, despite its lack of Power Field, for extra damage? Would a Shocking Weapon with a Power Field [like the power-mauls] gain the shocking bonus in that mode, and the damage bonus when on full? Would a Maglev-Impeller SP weapon have no need for extra reload time thanks to your Potentia Coil? And when will we get bigger Impact Weapons? Surely some rock-breakers abound out in the galaxy…

Blood Pact said:

Well It's true that Lathe Blasters replace a hand, but that's less of a penalty than it might be given that Crimson Guard can get Mechandendrites.

I see nothing in the rules to suggest Integrated weapons have to be hand held, and quite a lot to suggest they don't need to be. Arm mounted, shoulder mounted and ballistic mechandendrite mounted all seem like perfectly viable options. We were joking that finally we can make General Grevious in 40k.

There isn't even a suggestion that a Percussion Hammer is a Power Weapon in the book. And while I suppose you could slap a powerfield on it and then integrate it for even more stacking boni, our thought was you can amuse yourself with the listed throwing range and ferric lure. "Mjolnir, To me!"

Blood Pact said:

H.B.M.C. said:

In a perfect world, all players would focus more on roleplaying and creating interesting characters than on powergaming and creating overpowered characters that allow them to dominate their parties. Alas, based on the news I hear every day, this (gasp!) isn't a perfect world; some players do try to make absurdly powerful characters- or sometimes just stumble onto uber-builds by accident. I don't think it's too much to ask to expect game designers to take game ballance into consideration and try to build in limits to powergaming.

For me the Percussion Hammer is more like a Steam Hammer if you know what I mean. Something like in Fallout perhaps. But not a power Weapon. That would not "hammer" it would crush anything you try to "hammer".

There is some kind of odd school of thought that seems to think good RPing means you need to be mechanically ineffective. I don't think that's the meme here, after all you're already at enough of a disadvantage for making the mistake of being born a human in the 41st millenium.

But even DH isn't Call of Cuthulu, you can hope to be good at your job and even achieve something of lasting value before falling to madness, or corruption or .75 caliber politics. And therefore mechanical effectiveness is a good thing.

Yes, you can make a Psyker from a Feral world if you want, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that Voidborn are more popular. And that is because a 10 point difference in willpower can very easily be the difference between saving the day and accidentaly turning a city block into the bile pudding.

If you had a real hankering to play a feral world Psyker no one is going to stop you, although give the occasionally TPK generating nature of Psyker failures your party may well try to suggest alternatives.

Now a player coming into the game fresh has no natural preferences. He doesn't love Space Wolves, or hate Ultramarines and doesn't know a Commisar from an Arbites. And so without a roleplaying hook to hang his hat on he will instead try for mechanical effectiveness. And because most roles outside of "Follow orders and shoot stuff" require a bit of setting lore to do well you usually hand the new player the [strikethrough] fighter [/strikethrough] Guardsman. Or Assasin, but even that has a fair share of baggage.

And there is no reason on earth not to hand him a Crimson Guard instead. Since the new player is setting agnostic he has no reason to prefer one flavor of guardsman over another. And frankly the Crimson Guard is simpler to explain than the normal Guardsman. You don't have to explain about ranks, alternate career paths or any of that. All his advances from now till ascension are listed on one page with no forking branches. The default guardsman has 3 parallel career paths.

Now. This is NOT a bad thing. I'm not here to whinge about powercreep or how my duskworlder with a claymore is now obsolete. He isn't. And frankly none of the 40k lines are particularly fussed about balance to begin with. But for those who do care, the Crimson Guard is pretty much a straight improvement over the normal Guardsman. In fact he wouldn't be overly ashamed to hang out with a Rogue Traders crew. For a player without some REASON to choose otherwise, you'ld be a fool not to play one if you wanted a shooty character in the first place.

I don't think I've heard any whineing about the Venator blade though. It's a nice knife. Who cares? Certainly not the Orks.

The Crimson Guard is as unsuited for a starter Dark Heresy party just as a Blood of Martyrs Sisters Militant are simply because it sends party balance completely out of whack. With 6AP (8 if he buys TFiW twice at only 400XP) he is essentially wearing power armour and is thus practically immune to small-arms fire. Anything you pull out that might threaten him will absolutely devastate the rest of the party, and if you pit the party against the usual low-level mooks the Crimson Guard will absolutely devastate them, quite likely on his own.

Quite honestly, it looks like they were making an Ascension career and accidentally put it in a Dark Heresy book by mistake.

A player using the Crimson Guard alternate rank will still have to select which branch of the Guardsmen tree to head down one s/he hits rank 6.

BYE

The flaw with the "you should build your character to interesting, not just mechanically optimized" falls apart in a group, especially in regards to this book.

One player wants to be the social face of the party, and builds a Scum. One player wants to be cool at shooting people, and builds an Assassin. One player wants to be good at tech and have a lot of cybernetics, so he builds a Tech-Priest. Someone who likes the concept of Skitarii builds a Crimson Guard, and is now better than the Assassin and the Tech-Priest at their chosen jobs, with no real penalty. Another player makes a Factor of the Lathes, because a Mechanicus diplomat sounds super cool; the Scum is now playing second-fiddle in the social department AND doesn't get cool tech tricks. The Acuitor Mech-Assassin is a better saboteur/assassin than just about everyone else within a few ranks of him.

When your character is invalidated by someone else's choice, it sucks. People didn't like it in D&D with Wizards, and I can't imagine they enjoy it in DH with Tech-Priests.

*sigh* I admit my expectations of this book were high. Still, I didn't expect to be underwhelmed that much.

It's simply not my kind of book. There's essential fluff missing, like how does Machine Cant work? Can Binary Chatter be corrupted? How does an Omnissiah temple look like, feel like, smell like? What are the secrets of the tech priests? I mean this is Dark Heresy! There MUST be tons of mysteries that I can exploit! What about the Magi Biologis? What about the data tombs? What about the experiments? Everything is just very superficial, and lots of it has already been covered in the Inquisitor's Handbook and Creatures Anathema.

The toys follow the Motörhead principle: everything louder than everything else. I followed the discussion in this thread and I still say they are massively overpowered. Why does a hammer have penetration?! And why would Space Marines still use laughable Bolters? No. Simply no.

Also I got the feeling that all the interesting parts were simply quotations: The Logicians (covered in Disciples), the Tech Witches (Creatures Anathema), Magos Vathek (Ascension), Nomen Ryne (Creatures Anathema)… where is the new stuff?

Sorry, but I'm not buying this one.

Andor said:

Plushy said:

Oh it's hardly as if anyone said you had to knee-cap your character at every opportunity. I'm a powergamer if there ever was one (mind-wiped is so good for psykers), but 'back in the day' noone was afraid to call someone a munchkin when they asked how they should combine two inherently incompatible 'classes' (or whatever), purely for the mechanical benefits involved. I really want to play aTech-Assassin now, and like the idea of them being Proven Innocent (+3 to yay!) because they were falsly accused of something (probably murder). It also adds to the explanation for why he's serving an Inquisitor.

And then later on if I wanted to add Templar Calix and make him in to an elite psychic killing machine, just because?

There are quite frankly, limits on how far character optimization should be taken when playing with a group.

Well Plushy, I like the most parts you pointed out as "not up to date". And yes, Tech-Priests are pretty strong, so now they are comparable to Psyker.

And the others, well, there is a shitload of roles a Tech-Priest cant take.

How does Machine Cant work?

- Do you ask what they say? Its up to you.

- Do you ask how it literly works in terms of effect? Its Faith.

Can Binary Chatter be corrupted?

- Yes

How does an Omnissiah temple look like, feel like, smell like?

- As you want it. It can be a cathedral of class with shiny tools or a grimdark Hall with tons of smokin, hammerin machines. Lots of Brass and Cogs. You can smell sweat, machine oil, incence, what ever seems fit. Its hot because of the working machines, the air is thick . Or its the complete opposite? This is not that difficult. There are literal millions of temples that look different. make your own.

What are the secrets of the tech priests?

- There are Tons of. Its up to the GM to specifie what they are. Warp Technology that is advanced but difficult? Unallowed innovation on an STC? Blueprints of Mighty Weapons? The Location of an Ordinatus? Archeotech like the Men of Iron?

What about the Magi Biologis?

- You want secrets? Well there are actualy rules to implant Xeno Organs. But get a step ahead, let them force random mutations or allow to manipulate the genes. And their official job is to make Implants compatible to human flesh and prevent the population from tunring into a mutated mess.

What about the data tombs?

- There are secrets? They ma be a Vault for STCs, Guard to Holy artifacts of the Forge World and keep track thousands of years.

What about the experiments?

- Well, you can participate in the experiments of the Cult Sollex as target practice. Also there is fluff talking about gravity manipulation etc.

Just take a look into some Mechanicus Novels or be creative. Thats the job of the GM.^^

A few I've met that claim RPing and mechanical effectiveness are mutually exclusive were usually dead-weight in the party to begin with. One such case was an utterly spectacular min-maxer, spectacular primarily through the horrid gaps in his character. An acrobatics expert with virtually no mobility due to dual-peglegs, for example, or an incredibly resilient wizard grizzly… with no way to drop the somatic components. Comes a point where you gotta start explaining yourself for that, and "depth of character" sounds a whole lot better than "I screwed up yet again"

FieserMoep said:

Well, of course I can make all these things up myself. But my impression was that I pay money for sourcebooks so I won't have to.

Well, so we are different customers.

I buy the sourcebooks because I expect balanced rules. I have no need for premade adventures and I dont need the description of one Temple for I know there are thousand others I like more. But this may be due to the fact that I have read all the codices als core rulebooks from the 4th Edition up to now (Some 3rd Edition stuff too) and based on the other Novels from the Black Library I have a very polished imagination of the WH40k world for my self.

And based upon the fluff onyl Dark Heresy Provides, in addition with some artworks, it may be still quite easy to create such a thing as a Temple. And the Novels are friggin cheap in comparsion to a premium priced rulebook made by FFG and printed in China.^^

I don't think role-playing and having powerful characters are mutually exclusive, and no one said you had to knee-cap yourself in order to role-play "correctly". I just reject the notion that there's "no reason" to ever take a regular character over a Crimson Guard/Factor/Mech-Assassin etc. There are plenty of reasons, and not all of them are just RP reasons. You could not like the Ad Mech. I don't play a Sister because Sisters don't interest me, no matter how mechanically superior they might be to another class. I like the Scum class, and the Factor being potentially 'better' than the Scum really doesn't factor in for me. I don't choose a character class based on what's "best". I choose them based on what I like. That doesn't mean I don't try to make the character powerful in his chosen field/s or that I artificially handicap my characters for the sake of RP, but it means I don't let those fields dictate the actual character I create.

Does that make sense?


And to Dok Martin, I'm very sorry you feel that way, although I would perhaps suggest looking through the book in a store before coming to a conclusion that might otherwise be ill-informed.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

You're grabbing the argument from the wrong end. Sure, there are many non-mechanical reasons to pick any other class rather than the new ones presented in the new book. Yet a player might pick them for any number of reasons. Perhaps they love the AdMech, maybe they love the idea of the cyborg soldier or perhaps he wants to try and roll a zealot of the other authorized religion without being necessarily mechanically inclined. But whatever the reasons, the end result is that, in a group were people carry las pistols, autoguns and the odd mono-weapon and clad in some of the cheapest armor in the book, the Crimson Guard stands as an all-mighty behemoth, and that's not good for party balance. The new classes give a lot, but cost very, very little.

H.B.M.C. said:

But HBMC, would you enjoy another player's choice invalidating your character? If you made a fun Scum, but the player with a Factor is better than you at social and has all sorts of little Mechanicus goodies on top of it, then that's hardly fun to play.

Plushy said:

H.B.M.C. said:

No, HBMC. It was not possible before for one career (the Tech-Priest) to be a social face, amazing at combat, the objectively best saboteur, and the tech guy.

Before the Tech-Assassin just who was the best saboteur? And was it largely by default?

Tech-Priests, who know the most about technology and engineering in general, would logically be pretty good at sabotaging something if they wanted to. I'm not saying they'd be the best, but I am saying they would easily rival, if not equal, any other career at the skill.

I would assume that the Saboteur (the missing class from Radicals that got released as part of the PDF- Salvation Demands Sacrifice) would the best at Sabotaging, and anybody can become a Saboteur except for Tech-priests and Sororitas. Its available at Rank 3- and its pretty damned good for a class, I would say, in terms of relevance.

It would be a shame if he's out-shined by the Tech-priest now, seeing as the Saboteur doesn't have any neat unique abilities- he just takes all the relevant talents and skills into one box for those people that want to play a Saboteur [in Function].

And Tech-priests should be horrified at the Idea of sabotaging something with a Machine Spirit. Maybe the blowing a bridge up is no big deal- but blowing a mechanical bridge up by say frying or overloading its control-consoles would be a lot more questionable [unless the Sacrifice was absolutely necessary for some greater Omnissian Good]…

As for the Topic at hand- I am glad to hear that Amicus Tole and the other Hereteks have some book-space reserved for them, but hopefully they will be covered in greater detail in than the CA or Radical's Handbook- now whats important is that everything matches and that it doesn't contradict each other (Cyclopea Vs Sinophia anyone?). In my games, Amicus Tole is going to play a Major role- so I look forward to hear what FFG has to say about him, but they'll hopefully leave his past a bit of a mystery? I don't want to have to ret-con any of it

I am a bit disappointed that there aren't any background packages or cell directives or better, but I guess power creep makes this a good thing: I wouldn't want all of my players to just pick the same background over and over again [Living Nightmare anyone?]- or just more rules to play around it when it comes to biological experimentation (but we have a framework with that in a few of the other books.) I hope the book will have a LOT more augmentics in it… but that's a double-edged sword: if it does, they are likely to be taken STRAIGHT from Rogue Trader and (as we saw in Book of Judgement) they are likely not to be even priced.

Some rules on converting Thrones to influence (with the various weapon producing organizations? the lathes and the munitorium) would have been a good idea and would have allowed for more connections with the other lines.

In any case- my copy shouldn't be long forthcoming now: Had to Order it from the US because it doesn't seem to be out in Canada yet. Isn't that weird? Same thing for tome of fate, preordered ages ago- but it says it comes out in January 2013…

Well, I had completely forgotten about that rank, the whole little supplement actually.

Upon cross-checking it though, we in fact find that the Mech-Assassin isn't the best saboteur, and really… saboteur isn't an accurate description of what they do (it's just latching on to one power and their Tech-Use skill, like that's all there is to the character).

So in short, surprise surprise, the complaints are bull! Like they always are half the time.

The Saboteur is an expert in demolitions, chem-use, security, and can get a basic understanding of Tech. While Mech-Assassins can get the basic level for only a couple of those (no we're not looking at regular careers, cause that could be almost any career for the Saboteur).

So upon further examination, the Mech-Assassin is merely an extremely tech-themed assassin, with a few special tricks up his sleeve (not the best saboteur in the game) that specifically relate to technology, and that's it. Oh woe to the game, all is lost! (watch ya don't trip someone when your knee is jerking around now).

I hate to repeat the same question, but it got kinda lost in the hype over the Crimson Guard…

But how exactly is The Flesh Is Weak talents a Tech Priest gains now reconciled with The Flesh Is Weak talents an Ascension level Magos gets?

Are the Magos talents just overruled now? Replaced by a cheaper source of TFiW until they get to the point where Magos offers something better? I have a DW game going with a Magos in the party, and I'm trying to determine how I'm going to treat this at my table.

Currently, I'm refunding XP but forcing the same "slow" progression through the talents. A bit of a mix of the two, but sort of inconsistent.

Plushy said:

I agree that in some cases GM discretion (to either reign in the tech-priest or give a little boost to the rest of the party) is required, but I have a few gripes with your argument :

1 - Factors will not hopelessly out-moxie said Scum anytime soon. They only get up to +10 skill advances, with no other existing way to get them, nor a way to get +20s, whereas said scum can take the Demagogue alternate career rank as soon as he hits rank 3. And while they can get fellowship advances, they aren't magically free.

2 - As previously said, the Mech-Assassin isn't going to steal a real assassin's job, for a couple of reason : they have bad agility and the only stealth skill they get over +0 is silent movement. The talents they get are nice, but not broken. They are meh in sabotage, especially compared to Saboteur(which they can't become), their only great feature is Cogs within Cogs which, in the hands of an imaginative and devious player, is admittedly a pretty sweet ability.

3 - A tech-priest can be a great(broken?) combat character(Mechanicus Secutor, pre-ascension tFiW and the new Lumen Talents don't hurt either), a decent social character(Factor), a good cloak and dagger character(Mech-Assassin and Agent of the Lords Dragon), and of course a great tech-guy(duh). However, where in the name of the Void Dr- I mean Omnissiah do you propose to find all the XP required to accomplish all that pre-Ascension?

NOW, when it comes to the Crimson Guard? Yeah, that needs a more active role from the GM to balance the party, like with the Sororitas. How? Well have the Inquisitor give the other players a little bit of gear, like a hellgun(whatever model you prefer) and some better armor for the Guardsmen, the Arbites shotgun and armor from the Book of Judgment for the Arbiter, whatever equipment suits the Assassin and Scum best(like a Lathe sword for the Moritat, a fancy pistol or two for the Metallican gunslinger).

Of course that might be how I view DH : by all rights you should be slaughtered like in Call of Cthulhu, but through a combination of Faith, Skill, Luck, Determination and Standard-issue Brass Balls you either prevent the Heretic, the Alien and the Daemon from kicking Mankind in the groin, or give them a stubbed toe for their effort.