Hello Fellow GMs and Acolytes ,



Yesterday we had our first session of dark heresy and some questions came up eventually.
1. Do Psykers have any number of laps cooldown for their abilities?
2. Btw are there any combat , I mean explicitely combat skills? Because the book speaks of some combat moves (charge, all out attack, dodge, suppressing fire, knockout) but I mean any skills that enhance the damage of the gun users or the melee?

Nanthius said:

In relation to point 1 I'm pretty sure the answer is no in the Rules as Written, there's no cooldown unless specifically noted, such as the Minor Psychic Power Healer which can only be used on an individual once every 6 hours or they have to test Toughness.

Point 2 - There's the talents Mighty Shot and crushing Blow which add +2 to damage, there's other talents that add +2 critical damage and a variety of talents such as Swift attack, Lightning Attack, Precise Blow, Deadeye Shot, Marksman, Sharpshooter, Dual Strike/Shot, Furious Assault, Beserk Charge etc. that either allow extra attacks, remove negative modifiers for certain actions or give a bonus to certain actions.

hope this helps :-)

Helpful indeed, cause I initially thought that the game is strictly gear based . I want to ask something else , what is it that makes adepts special? Cause or feral born adept had intial rolls over 40 in every **** single attribute. what should I hint him to choose from skills and talents?

Nanthius said:

wow you have someone playing an adept? I've never had one of those :-(

It really depends on the rank he, or she, is at and what they want from the character. Combat wise at low ranks even an auto-pistol with manstopper rounds can dish out a lot of damage and at rank 4 Adepts get Swift attack if they take the Inditor advances. However adepts are mainly knowledge based characters so maybe advise him on which lores to take, you can rationalise it as his Inquisitor or Interrogator directing his research.

I have to ask… how did he get over 40 in every characteristic? As the maximum WP and Fel for a feral worlder should be 35, maybe a plus due to a background package. I'm not having a do as I huserule quite a few things I'm just curious.

he rolled 20s on the 2d10s wherever his modifier as a feralman was 20 , and he got a divination bonus on toughness :@ and to make it even worse he bought sound constitution as a starting skill

A feral adept? Seems to be some kind of village elder.^^

Well, an Adept is no combat class, its an investigator that can work with his knowledge and to some degree with his social skills.

His combat skills are only there to ensure that he can defend himself if needed but their are not his focus.

A feral is quite rare as an adept because ferals are more dominant in combat roles for their stat bonusses and their lack of fellowship and willpower.

Though he seems to be quite lucky, how many 20s did he dish out? And Sound constitution isnt that powerfull alone. Its just one wound more, did you even know how fast a PC can loose its wound? Around 5 Damage after Armor and Tougness arnt that rare… depending on the weapon even more, without taking anything special.

FieserMoep said:

I thought so myself, adept is like a bard…freaking bardic knowledge from DnD …" And then I remember that tall flutist from the village of Raven's Nest….We played with him….well his mother …she is a harpy…" ….And their **** dice that has to reveal any obscure detail..

RAW, there is no such thing as a Feral World Adept.

And he totally cheated on his rolls.

Yeah just like bogi_Khaosa, Feral world characters can only be Assassins, Guardsmans, Imperial Psykers, and Scum career classes. Unless you made an exception for your player. So they may have to change there birth world or change there career class and his dice rolls sound like bs because there is a 5.26% chance to get a 20 off of two dice and to have them get 20 on every role would be 3.1x10^-12% chance to get all 20s, unless you just let your players pick there stats then he is cheatting really hard. can someone check my math for me to see if I did it right.

Nanthius said:

I can understand his strength and toughness being that high, i can just about imagine good enough rolls to have 40+ in toughness and 40 in most of the rest. However it is impossible for him to have Willpower and Fellowship at 40 or above at character creation, barring some esoteric combination of background packages, due to the feral worlder template only giving a +15 to those characteristics. So unless you houseruled something there he's cheated.

I'm not fussed by a Feral Worlder adept, though it is odd and against RAW, as I'll stretch or alter things like homeworld and career limitations if the player can present a convincing enough argument on such things.

FieserMoep said:

Well strictly no. But my friend was playing adept. He took Darkholder homeworld, and starting package with daemonic pact of survival. Essentialy he could spend two fate points with the same effect as burning one. On rank 4 he chose malefic scholar. And I can tell u that sorcery is way OP. Oh, and he rolled wyrd for mutation later on so, he got psy rating on top of this. I allowed to use sorcery as normal when using sorcery powers eg his psy rating was 4 for master sorcerer, but when using normal powers, sorcery simply added to his psy rating, so he got effective PR of 3 for normal powers.

Order of casting:

Living Weapon

Psychic Blade

Regenaration or Flesh Like Iron or Both

In short he made 2 attacks from swift attack, plus one attack from psychic blade. If he got money, he ate ghostfire pollen extract of frenzon to slaughter everyone in range.

With such incridible powers everyone would be a badass.

I just wonder why he didnt get shot on sight by his inquisitor, such a radical scumbag.^^

Oh they tried to kill him. The Inquisitor Herrod from Haarlock Legacy shot at him twice from Bolt Pistol with Psycannon Bolts. Sadly he missed, or Adept doged. Herrod was great swordsman, but still he failed.

A single Inquisitor? I would send a whole Killteam after this acolythe that went rouge and might have some dangerous knowledge and now even has defeatet an Inquisitor.^^

Though I still wonder how he even got all those fancy upgrades but ye, if suck crazy background is allowed I dont want so see the other acolythes. xD

Of course the Inquisitor wasn't alone. But who said that adept was alone He had whole team of fellow acolytes on his side. They were all working for radical inquistor of course.

His histrory was that he worked on some space station orbiting a unique planet, that was still uncharted. One day an exploration team recovered some strange artifact on the surface on the planet and transported it on the station. Shortly afterwards the contact with the station was lost. Months later a rescue party found only the adept left alive (Nihilus). Of course he was dragged to tricorn palace and interrogated and locked in the cell, where he rot for over a hundred years, yet he did not age a single day, until we was dug out by inquisitor Maar to do his bidding. The END.

This is probably the best reason why not to allow tons of backgrounds and homeworlds and such to be strung together to create an overly powerful PC which shouldn't work. Also, Sorcery, should equal a LOT of corruption, which provides a way to remove the PC.

Yeah, lot of corruption, but he found a way out of this. Having a daemonic pact halves all corruption you get, and then armour of contempt reduces that amount further by one, to a total of 0 in most of the cases.

Well, every time he uses an arcana, he gets 1d10-WpB (and the 1/2 effect and the -1 from the Armor of Contempt) Corruption points, and "bonuses" to the severity of phenoma.

You can also say as his knowledge comes only from dark arts (and the corruption opened his mind further in a way), he can't use the psyker talent seperately. If you are looking for ways to rein the PC in, a friend of mine may be able to check.

No thanks We already finished our campaign. Maybe we'll return to it someday, but for now, we are playing black crusade. I think we'll then jump into Deathwatch or Only War to fight our own Black Crusade (Actually events from our first 3 campaigns in DH all took place in Calixis Sector, and are conected to each other, so now calixis Sector is in state of WAR! Already two factions fight for control, so it's ideal time to strike)

Oh guys, you are right I didn't take into account the career-homeworld restrictions…it slipped me . But I am not really worried about his numbers-the chance is like 1 out of 400 rolls I think .But he didn't cheat , we all saw him roll the dice and we have a small cup so that dice don't fall of the tabe . But I am keeping it that way .

@Nanthius: You know they sell loaded dice right? Well anyway if everything is all well then enjoy your game.

They do eh? I bought the dice myself , I have so many dice over the years…