Kill! Maim! Burn! Kill! Maim! Burn!

This book is great fun. Anyone who is as big a Khorne fanatic as me should love it!


BYE

Awesome, long time Khornate player here who is delighted to see the Blood God given his due.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

Assuming that the wording was vague and we're getting 2 CSM and 2 Heretic archetypes, what do we assume?

I'm saying: World Eaters Berzerker, Iron Warriors Warsmith, some kind of anti-psyker Heretic, and then a commander type character.

There should also be quite a lot of new (Khorne) toys as this book wouldn't spend much place for psychic powers.

I'm rather excited.

Tome of Fate is to be expected as the first of the four alignmentbooks; Tzeentch is a pretty ambiguous chaotic god and his followers work for just about any character concept, and they're probably the easiest type to portray and roleplay satisfactorily. Also, the chaos sorcerer in heavy armor and using powerful magics alike is one of the most iconic images of Chaos and Warhammer in general.

Khorne is what I already expected to be the second. Khornates need the most love for new rules as far as any alignment is concerned, though they have a few really nice chaos gifts, they have a lot of problems, not least that its a psyker build that is the best at melee at the moment, as far as I can tell. Khornates are also basically the archetypal warriors of Chaos, perhaps an even more iconic image than the sorcerers, and so it makes sense that they are the runners up. Basically, due to the lack of psychic stuff, there are the fewest Khorne-centric combat options, so hopefully Khornates will get something to fill the void in this book.

The mass combat bit sounds exciting, I really wonder what will entail.

Nurgle and Slaanesh are definitely alignments I expected to come last in terms of releases -- their followers are gross and sick even by the standards of very gross and sick men, and mechanical concerns aside, it ought to be an epic undertaking to keep their books from being too disgusting to be appealing at all while still keeping them from seeming dumbed down or kiddy-fied.

I agree that Iron Warriors will probably be the unaligned CSM in this book. Which makes me wonder what the unaligneds in the Nurgle and Slaanesh ones will be? We have the Word Bearers, Night Lords, and Black Legion… I'd VERY vaguely guess Night Lords will fit into Nurgle (spreading terror seems to be a Nurgle thing amongst the talents and even the Intimidate skill, iirc, and the way the Night Lords legion decayed into a seething mass of ex-cons and the corrupt and such seems very Nurglesque). But who would the honorary Slaaneshi unaligneds be? Word Bearers, due to their emphasis on charismatically spreading the word of Chaos (mainly since Fellowship and diplomacy is associated with Slaanesh in BC?)

That would leave room for an undivided chaos book… for that, I would definitely wager we will see Black Legion (the Ultramarines of Chaos) and HOPEFULLY an Obliterator-style archetype as the two CSM options.

What topics would these alignment books carry? I'm guessing the Nurgle book might have rules for becoming a chaos dreadnought (or 'helbrute' as it looks like they'll be called in 6e; which may be interesting, as its rumored in their fluff that they can ascend to become greater daemons instead of daemon princes), and maybe some sort of rules for terrorism and spreading plagues (I guess) to decimate populaces, though not sure what these'd be for, really. The Slaanesh book might also include all sorts of ideas and rules for converting people to Chaos -- while yeah, you can shove 100 Corruption points in people's face through psykery, there isn't any kind of consistent way of telling whether this will make them go Chaos or turn them into a freaky eyeball and tentacle creature or just kill them.

Incidentally, since Slaanesh was the first god to have a psychic power that could turn people into Chaos Spawn, I hope it will have rules for converting PCs and NPCs alike into Chaos Spawn. Note that we've had stats for Minor Spawn of Chaos before -- I hoep this means that we will see Greater Spawn of Chaos.

Then, I would rather hope the Undivided book has rules for converting PCs and NPCs alike into daemon princes.

This is great and all, but perhaps you could actually release Tome of Fate in the UK first!

Here's to you guys at FFG for rocking my socks. Tome of Fate was excellent. I just finished it cover to cover last week and can't wait to drop it on my group.

I'm interested in seeing how you manage the social aspects of the end of the book module for the Tome of Blood. I've got Khorne NPCs sitting around and I want to throw them at my players but just launching into combat seems to diminish the whole undertaking.

Props and support to you. Keep up the stellar work.

YAY! Bring it out quick!

After finishing Tome of Fate I simply can't wait for this book to arrive!

As for the psyker melee vs pure melee thing, I would like to see some "Prerequisite: Aligned Khorne" talents in this book for some added special melee smash. That would atleast somewhat fill the ~20 page hole the lack of new psychic powers will leave in the book, me thinks

Oh nice. Mounted Combat, so Rough Riders in OW will be coming.) I´m bit worried about mass combat though, one in Battlefleet Koronus was well… bad. Like realy bad, slow, broken and despite the efforts I´ve seen more narrative in Epic: Armageddon.

Still looking forward for this tome. Two Astartes archeotypes are more or less given (WE Berserker and IW Warsmith, but I think that Night Lord is still a small possibility) so I wonder about the mortals. My guesses are some kind of Murder-Priest, Gladiator and Bloodpactesque Veteran/Grenadier. Would love to see more exotic Khorne daemons, along the ways of DH DotDG Murder Room.

A lot of people wish for some sort of anti-psyker as archeotype but we already have blood god's contempt and other than this there are only psychic blaanks so I don't think anything like this will appear. There would rather be more anti-psychic gear like the exotic armour that protects from force weapons.
Khorne is also quite big on command skill so meaby would see some kind of renegate/apostate combo archeotype. I hope for archeotypes that are not simply 'upgraded' from base ones (I love alpha legion from tome of fate for this).

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!
SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!
MILK FOR THE KHORNE FLAKES!!
BUTTER FOR THE POPKHORNE!!

Glad to see a new one in the works. I look forward most to Unaligned things personally though.

A thought regarding that: Wise expenditure of your XP early on can ensure you'll have some good stuff from the opposition while still unaligned, and nothing but the True costs on the majority of things you like once you actually switch into alignment. Combined with the bonuses on the Gifts, and the improved gifts tables themselves, surely there's some room for "Chaos Undivided" bonuses somewhere?

Obliterators would certainly be special, but even something as simple as "well, if you reach 5+ with each alignment without ever being more than one apart between the highest and lowest, 100xp off the two highest purchases of skills and characteristics, and tier 3 talents" would be nice. It wouldn't be interesting like unaligned warp-entity weapons or unaligned Gift forms, but just something to go for out there ya know?

I'd particularly enjoy the Obliterator infection to affect non-marines as well. Sure, you're just as behind as a regular human archetype vs the CSM ones, but nothing should be stopping your renegade or heretek from fusing to his armour and stuff just as much. At the least that oughta rid you of the no-black-carapace penalties to agility in power-armour, given its now 'you'. I can imagine, given how resilient they are, that it either "lathes" your armour or outright turns half your AP into Toughness.

Imagine: Enhanced Potentia Coils on a smaller-than-normal obliterator. A "weapon switching" style, where as opposed to actual Slayer Arms or Daemon Weapons, you only get your WP [or should that be what's left of your fellowship] to weapon damage [you are the daemon bound to it], and weapons don't get infinite ammunition as-is, but rather freely and automatically reload themselves while not deployed.

Now I'm thinking of houserules [or maybe if its not total crap, it can get polished up and used officially] for obliteratordom…

I want playable Daemon Princes.

Also, calling it now; Tome of Rot for Nurgle.

Kiton said:

Now while I think all Chaos builds should have a unique point to them, to include even non-psykers of Chaos Undivided (as really, Exalted powers probably are enough for psykers, because holy hell, flying around crushing baneblades with your mind WHILE INCORPOREAL and indestructable to all mundane attacks), Chaos Undivded is probably overall the best alignment in a number of ways and probably is the absolute least in need of bonuses; its unbelievably improbable, even for a starting Undivided char, to ever get a bad mutation except on a failing.

From the roleplaying standpoint Chaos Undivided is even more attractive… compare the difference in freedom between a Chaos Undivided and Marked Khornate or Marked Nurglite or ordinary aligned Slaaneshi. The Chaos Undivided dude is a free man, he doesn't have to fear heresy or bow to anyone like an imperial, he can be good or bad or lazy or do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. The marked Khornate and Nurglites are driven to KILL, FOREVER. Even if your character has no problem with committing murder, he probably does it for survival, or fun, or something… a marked Khornate can't stop himself. Anger isn't a pleasant, happy feeling, even when you are punching people. Its a stressful, unpleasant feeling, and Khorne is seemingly always angry. A Khornate is driven to kill, all the time, and even killing doesn't relax him or make him happy other than maybe in the short term… he just has to do it.

Oh, and uhh, Slaaneshi get punished with corruption (which, except when you're about to gain a chaos gift or hit 99, isn't much of a punishment usually) if they "ignore a unique opportunity to… desecrate a foe." That's also problematic.

The game should err on the side of providing bonuses to those who must abide by the restrictions of the gods, especially because of how nice Undivided is atm.

And I will totally second that it'll be awesome when (not if) they put out rules for playing a daemon prince. I seriously hope we see an analog to DH:Ascension that has rules for playing chaos spawn (yes, I'd totally play one) and daemon princes (Also would totally play one). Whatever you do, don't tell me it wouldn't be fun or a good roleplay experience to play a chaos spawn, though.

I'm betting it'll be the Tome of Decay for Nurgle.

Awesome. The CSM Archtypes are pretty much a given, considering Tome of Fate had a Q'sal psyker or whatever I imagine one of the human archtypes being from Xurunt.

I'm pleased that they're taking a "general supplement on things thematically associated with this God" approach to the Tomes line, although I do wonder what they'll do for Slaanesh and Nurgle.

I'm kind of hoping for some detailed social interaction/soft skills/cult building rules from the Slaanesh book, and I wonder if Nurgle might be the best place for rules on Daemon Princes, since a lot of people petition Nurgle directly for Immortality.

Hmm.

Tzeentch: Thousand Sons, Alpha Legion

Khorne: World Eaters, Iron Warriors

Nurgle: Death Guard, ???

Slaanesh: Emperor's Children, ???

Who should Nurgle get? Word Bearers don't exactly fit. Slaanesh is a tie between Word Bearers and Night Lords.

Plushy said:

I think it fairly straightforward.

Tzeentch: Thousand Sons and Alpha Legion

Khorne: World Eaters and Iron Warriors

Nurgle: Death Guard and Night Lords (because Nurgle empahtize fear and the Night Lords are all about causing fear)

Slaanesh: Emperor's Children and Word Bearers (because the Word Bearers are very charismatic and so fits best with Slaanesh, who should be the most socially adept Chaos God)

As for the archetypes I was actually a bit disappointed by them, and most so about the human ones. I would have favored wider archetypes rather than so shallow ones. "Packground backages" or something would in my mind have worked better to give the oppertunity to play the Traitor Legions.

Somewhere along the line there would have to be a way to become psyer without alighning yourself to tzeentch (because death guard have nurgle sorcerors f.e.). The 'sorceror heretek' we got in tome of fate shows one way (in fact I think someone has invented exactly te same way on this forum a while back) but you should be able to start game as one without being either tss or weak legionless sorceror. We won't see it in tome of blood, but hopefully in the next book, or meaby some free pdf for tome of fate.

ShadowRay said:

There's already a way to do this, it's called "playing a Sorcerer". Starting sorcerers aren't "weak and legionless" they're just not members of a specific advanced splat.

Why should Death Guard Sorcerers get to be more powerful than other Sorcerers?

Mainly because they would be an 'advanced' archeotype, You can't argue that if we get TSS and sorceror+3600xp, they aren't equal (which pains me a little to say the truth). TSS gets bonus base stats (paid for in xp, but not counted as such so his stat treashold is higher), bonus gear (which can be equalised by giving sorceror more starting aquisitions) and better archeotype ability (which sorceceror cannot get).
I'm not saying that I want to start as e.g. alpha legion and as a bonus gain psy rating; I'd happily sacrifice some of his abilities to gain psyker, and some skills/talents to exchange them for psy rating 1 and some psy powers.
It's my problem with new archeotypes, because I'd rather see differend legions as some sort of background packages than new archeotypes.

That's sort of the thing - the Thousand Sons Sorcerers are *supposed* to be better than other Sorcerers, because it's all they do.

If you want to play a Death Guard sorcerer, you just play a Sorcerer.

I have a feeling, that 4 Gods Handbooks, instead of one Player´s Handbook were chosen, becouse of coming CHSM Codex and possible revamping/reintroduction of Mark of Chaos Undivided for miniatures 40k. So it is possible that after the four god handbooks we will get IH/RoB sized Handbook for Undivided and unalinged players, which will incloude Black Legion.

Just speculating…

I don't think they'll do Unaligned CSM legion archtypes beyond Alpha Legion and the Iron Warrirors, what exactly is their in a word bearer that can't properly be replicated by a Champion?

Ryder said:

To be fair, you could probably represent a member of the Alpha Legion fairly well with a Champion as well. The new Archetypes are, I suspect, mostly there to show the ways in which individual Legions can be modeled in the system, and to give fans of those legions something fun to play with.