Hey all,

The wife and I are new to Black Crusade but we are planning to play on a regular basis with a group of friends. I am just seeking some advice and maybe a bit of clarity as to some of the rules, specifically about character creation and outfitting.

I am looking to create a Renegade for some of the more "infiltration" orientated campaigns but I'm stuck as to whether the concept for my character is even viable, I think it is but I'm having difficulty with the rules… mainly because my 11 month old won't give me enough time to actually read them, all 78-billion of them.

I would like my character, Castella Kadis, to be a renegade guards(wo)man. In combat she will be comptetent, to the same degree as a regular guardsman is, trusting her ever reliable lasgun, laspistol and chainsword. It is out of combat where she really excels, her charm and general behaviour has allowed her to manipulate many, but since being touched by Slaanesh she finds herself capable of bending even some of the most unmalleable minds to her will. (I have a, relatively, indepth backstory if anyone is interested.)

So, I've rolled for stats using 2 d10, one allocated for tens and the other to units , I was unsure if I had to- so I didn't roll for infamy. The results I got are as follows;

(in the order my dice-roller app generated them) 97 48 56 96 55 83 94 65 72

I was planning on putting the highest in BS, Perception and Fellowship. Does that sound about right?

Also, I was told grabbing a force-field, probably refractor, would aid in survivabilty and I'm not against the idea, I'm just not sure on the rules on outfitting a character at creation… all the rules seem to mention outfitting in-game. Are the rules the same? There must be some limitations or everyone would be terminator clad monsters, wielding god-aweful weapons and flinging witch-fire every-which-way.

I'm sorry if these are really stupid questions but the offspring won't give me chance to read the rules cover to cover.

Big, expensive book + curious, destructive offspring = bad.

I really appreciate any help you guys/gals can give.

Regards

Castella Kadis, Servant of the Emperor … *shifty eyes*

Ah, Just got a chance to check the rules, My stats are way out, thought it was a bit odd… scratch that part.

The way requisitioning works in the beginning of the game, is you get your infamy bonus (the tens digit) in items. So usually 2. These can be anything with a final modifier of -10. There is a chart on page 306 that explains modifiers.

Example: You want a a Chainsword, which is Average (+10), you only want one (+10) you put the mono upgrade on it (-10) and you make it best quality, which is -20. Final modifier is -10, so you can have it for free.

Yes a person can start with Terminator Armour, but its a big choice that really sets your character down one path, and gets in the way a lot.
I'd stay away from refractor fields, as they aren't that great, and give you a negative to sneaking.


Also, I'd reccomend looking at the Apostate archtype. They are hard to beat when it comes to being a manipulative Slaaneshi.

I feared that about the lasgun, really annoying because in all the novels it's solid, dependable and, yes it's no bolter, but powerful enough to remove any limb it hits in one. Why do they always make them flashlights in-game.

As for the problems with reading the rules, it's not the offsprings fault. He's late teething and now he's got 3 teeth coming out at once. He's less than impressed. As soon as this blows over there'll be no problem.

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Thanks for clearing up my confussion over the rules of acquisition. (hehe)

I was interested in the Apostate, but the Renegade really took my liking too. I'll have a good read through their info and reconfirm my choice.

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Thank you for the help, any more advice you have is more then welcome.

I really appreciate it.

Not all Las weapons are bad, though. Given Toughness vs Damage, a normal las-gun will kill an unarmored man in two or three hits depending on how well you roll, landing him in 'heavily wounded' with one hit almost guaranteed. Of course, that all stops right there given normal unarmored humans [or Grots] are all it really works on.

The Long-Las is an excellent piece of hardware, made all the more amazing by its scarcity comparative to other weapons of similar performance envelopes.The multilaser is excellent all-around against anything short of heavy vehicles. Not always the best idea for a starting character due to the -10 on full-auto, but once you've got an MIU uplink, Motion-Predictor, or simply have it upgraded into a Legacy Weapon, it turns out quite amazing.

If you're not going to be insanely accurate, be aware that how much one hits isn't just based on the max from the RoF: you actually have to be able to get enough degrees of success for that extra ammo spat out to even matter. In those cases, I recommend a Poor Quality plasma weapon. Easy to acquire, and thanks to the [bad] wording, functionally identical to common and good quality plasma: Reliability is completely ignored on weapons with the Overheat quality. Even a Best quality will automiss on 91+ instead of burning you, so if that wouldn't double or even x10 your chances of missing once bonuses and penalties are added in, like if you have a demagogue with better things to do than max out ballistic skill, plasma will be fine.

Granted though, while a pistol marks you as someone with "access to the good stuff", a plasma-cannon might not look all that diplomatic. Maybe. I guess it depends on how you present it and all that. Perhaps a little purple bow and skull-sparkles?

The majority of players and gm's I've known are quick to mix in the Rogue Trader armouries to Black Crusade. They're roughly the same balance [well, BC plasma is better] equipment-wise, and its a good source of the really odd stuff for special gear as well. This really starts to hit the spot if your campaign's getting up there in experience and influence, when you might want to find yourself old artifacts like blacklight projectors or the really good field generators.

If you want to use an exotic from there and the variety is overwhelming, understand this: For anything short of heavily armoured vehicles, you will never go wrong with Pulse weapons. You can always do better with 'the right weapon' in a specific situation, but its as solid a general-purpose choice as you can make.

Oh. And never piss off anyone whose job it is to do things to your body while you're strapped down or unconscious, or that repair your Power-Armor. Even a Champion of Chaos should be nice to his little hereteks. That's just begging for 'experiments' or 'pranks'.

Also most las weapons now has 3 fire modes: normal, overcharge (+1 Dam, 2x ammo consumption) and overload (+2 Dam +2 Pen, 4x ammo consumption, loses reliable and gains unreliable)
I don't know whether seond reliable from good quality cancels unreliable, but best quality never jams, and getting best quality las weapons isn't that hard later on.

Kiton said:

Not quite:
"Best: As fi ne a piece of craftsmanship as can be found, this
weapon never suffers from jamming or overheating, treating
any such results as a miss."

That's the Best Quality effect; rather than a 'reliable' upgrade step if the quality were to in fact stack [it really should].

Unreliable, normal and Reliable are what I was talking about. All three of those do nothing to overheat.

@Kiton

As long as you're playing with robots for a group who can't recognize an obvious and illogical exploit when they see one…

@Kiton

Except when GM plays it like this.

Overheat+Unreliable from poor craftmanship makes it to overheat everytime you miss. That is sure way to make you kill your own character if you make that compination, unless you have darn good Ballistic skill and luck in dice throwing.

But he has also played reliable, from good craftmanship, to make plasma weapons to overheat only when you roll 100 and best craftmanship plasmas never overheat and roll automiss on normal ranges in standard and semi-auto, not in 91-100.

I see no reason anyone should need to house rule additional penalties for poor quality plasma weapons. You are forgetting that like best quality, poor quality effects appearance. Appearance matters greatly in social combat and carrying poor quality weapons will weaken thier positions in many such situations. And as doing poorly at a social situation can often times make later violent encounters far worse, I see no reason to add ridiculous penalties as house rules to the weapon.

Cryhavok said:

The above statement is spot on.

Cryhavok said:

I certainly agree; personally I believe the problem's on the "good" side of the scale, not on the poor-quality one. Perhaps I should've stated the plasma situation as "common and good quality are exactly as rickety, unreliable and prone to killing the user as those of poor quality, even if they look a little cleaner"?

I've not actually played with a group that did no houserule overheat in relation to weapon reliability so far. However, just because one can houserule something in no way implies the rules changed were appropriate to begin with. If they weren't blatantly off in their exact wording, we wouldn't all be 're-interpreting' or adjusting things a bit.

The second 'reliable' from a good quality lasgun does NOT cancel out a temporary switch to 'unreliable'. The FAQs have explicitly stated reliability [quite unfortunately] does not stack. It just kinda looks like it could because Good Quality weapons explicitly state that if it was unreliable, it loses this quality, whereas if it lacked it it gains reliable.

Reliable not stacking with itself is little strange as Unreliable can stack with itself, as is impliet in Ranged Weapons Craftmanship. By reading Las variable setting my two cents is that it should be that when you use Overcharge Las weapon should lose the reliable quality and using Overload it gains Unreliable.

And for Poor craftmanship plasmas being too killy to their wielder.

From BC corerules, p.147. Ranged Weapon Craftmanship

"Shoddy and dangerous to use, this weapons gains Unreliable quality. If weapon already has this quality it jams on any failed roll to hit. "

So rules wise as plasma weapons overheat on 91-100 BS roll, just like unreliable weapons jam, it can be said that they are cumulative.

But I wasn't putting this as "You should play/houserule it like this." Just informing how our group plays it.

This has brought it's own little russian roulette feeling when you take up that hive brutes shoddy plasma weapon and try to use it against the rest of the mob. Our Champion quickly bartered it to good plasma weapon after few unlucky "hot potato, hot potato" scenes in not so good combat situations. But still he made impressive kill count with the poor version also.

And off the topic, Our groups GM has played that everytime your weapon jams you just lose one (1) round from the weapon as you unjam it. Not the whole clip. Our groups renegade would have started to need to use his ranged weapons as a close combat weapons not long before if he had lost his ammo still in the clip. Man that was one lousy roll's, two Weapon Jams straight through in the first battle. And mind you we only had 2 spare clips each and he still had high BS.

Play as you play but if you ask question, don't shoot the messenger

Routa-maa makes a great point about only losing one round in a weapon jam. My real life experiances support this. During a jam one round fouls the chamber and often gets damaged to a small degree. But the rat of the rounds are often still in the mag and happy, ready to go!

That seems OK for SP and bolt weapons, but what with energy weapons? Here losing wole clip can be logically explained. Still I like the 1 round rule.

Cryhavok said:

I love the worse than poor weapon quality. That's a great idea. I'm thinking of calling it Defective Weapon Quality and am thinking of having a trader in a game down the road be given a shipment of these…