I've yet to run a Black Crusade game, though I'm making preparations at the time of this post.

My players are all veterans of many game systems, and are very familiar with the 40K RPGs.

Something I have recently become concerned about (in regards to Black Crusade) is the defining concepts of characters being pushed aside for the sake of game mechanics and their rules benefits. In Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch the progression of a character's Skills and Talents is defined by Rank, with access to various abilities being limited by this restraint mechanism, as well as by GM approval in the case of Elite Advances.

I realize the Alignment mechanism is meant to take the place of the Rank mechanism, but my concern is that Players may run roughshod over this mechanism in pursuit of Characteristic Advances and combat-focused Skills and Talents over concept and RP. Combat is a prevalent feature of Black Crusade, so it's natural a Player would want to decrease a PC's mortality percentage, but this is also a game of personal glory- seeking one upmanship, gloating over who dealt the most Damage, or who dealt the killing blow, and so on in the quest for the favours of the gods.

I'm asking for GMs to share their thoughts on this subject. I realize every gaming group will have differing dynamics and styles, but have any fellow GMs noticed a "cookie cutter" pattern to character progression, whether it be early, mid, or late PC progression, and what have GMs done, besides sitting down in discussion with the Players pre-game, to discourage Xerox copy PCs.

so far in my game I've not noticed it too much. BC isn't one of those games IMHO where you ahve 5 or so useful skills and talents and the rest are mostly fluff. every skill and ability has a use. now you are apt to seesome similarities, khornites are gonna be melee built etc. but by and large these make a degree of thematic sense.

I think in that case it's up to the GM to provide situations where players really feel the sting of investing too much in combat abilities and not enough in their social capabilities. Or, preferably, talk beforehand about what you want the campaign to focus on.

I really, really like the ditching of the rank system in Black Crusade and Only War. It lets me make characters more organically and doesn't make me feel like my immersion is being ruined by an artificial limitation of things like weapon proficiencies until higher ranks are achieved.

There are some Skills and Talents that will get taken more than they might have in the Rank-based advancement.

Awareness and Dodge are the two Skills i see everyone pick up. I don't have a problem with it, but the trend is there.

For Talents the big one I see everyone race to get is True Grit. This is one of the biggest boost to character survivability in the game, and anyone that's taken Critical Damage even once will shoot for it in no time

For Talents the big one I see everyone race to get is True Grit. This is one of the biggest boost to character survivability in the game, and anyone that's taken Critical Damage even once will shoot for it in no time

I have to say, that **** with the Mark of Nurgle makes for a character who's pretty indestructible. We're talking about surviving a Tachyon Arrow shot indestructible.

Is it then safe to say (home brewed) NPCs are just as likely to acquire these Skills and Talents just as quickly?

Obviously, if mortality ranks over concept or RP, everyone who's anyone in the Vortex will be a tough nut to crack, yes? So, is this essentially the beginning of power creep in Black Crusade?

Why do you think True Grit is so impressive? Step Aside and crazy evasion tests (or Precognitive Dodge!) seem like a better method of character survivability.

The damage reduction for True Grit on a CSM means that most weapons will only do a single point of critical damage per hit and its guaranteed to work. Dodge tests are limited in number and can fail.

They're limited in number. If you've based your character around them they're not going to fail that often.

True Grit's an issue, I guess, but Dodge is a more reliable defense against a meltagun.

I have a good group who are more interested in making interesting and unique characters than min-maxing. With BC there's is so much scope for making really unique and memorable characters and that's one of the things I really love about the game.

Besides there's no abilities or stats you can pump up that will make your character immune to what the GM can throw at you, I would much rather concentrate on interesting characters involved in an interesting storyline than be in some kind of arms race with the GM because lets face it if the GM is more interested in that than creating an involving story you are screwed.......

I would agee with you that min-maxing and concept degredation would be an issue; if only it weren't for the alignment rules. As soon as a PC is aligned to a God, they are severely limited on what they can realistically buy with XP; unless of course you as a GM shower them with XP beyond what the game is designed for. Once you are aligned, it's a fairly straight XP path to 15,000 for each God. If a character chooses to stay unaligned (there is one in our game), then they have an even harder task, but have some great rewards as well in terms of Gifts of the Gods and Exhalted Psychic Powers.

The way you can "game the system" in Black Crusade seems to imply to me that there is some build that is distinctly awesometastic, albeit ill fitting due to the god-romping. Of course, the game is called Black Crusade, after the Black Legion, that chaos faction known for two things:

- Allowing members of every alignment and none refuge withi.

- Flip-flopping from god to god.

So its not A HUNDRED PERCENT ill fitting.

But yeah. Is there a best way to do things?

umm no this game is called black crusade after well.. black crusades.

My way of doing this when I GM is this: I warn my players of two simple things. If they powergame, so will I. And if they suck at social interactions I'll make sure to put them in social situations where they can earn alot of benefits, if they manage to navigate them properly.

That tends to work out, as I can minmax ALOT better then them when I want and I make them feel it. It also leads to very interesting combat, so it isn't all bad. BC DOES have a problem when balancing combat though, as the things that would make a CSM think twice would absolutely pulp a heretic.

I posted this in another thread, but it serves the topic of this thread so well that I'll post it here as well.

Some people say that Psykers in Black Crusade are over powered. I tend to disagree.

However, if you are Favoured by The Warp, take some D-Dust, prepare a crap load of Sacrifices, Psyphon a few mooks and alternate between Boon of Tzeentch and Protean Form (using Sacrifice to bleed damage every other round) , you get Unnatural Characteristics (All) (∞), Psy Rating (∞), Amphibious, Amorphous, Burrower (∞), Flyer (∞), Deadly Natural Weapons, Multiple Arms (∞), Natural Armour (∞), Sonar Sense, Sturdy and Unnatural Senses (∞) while being immune to the Psychic Phenomenon and never being able to Peril. This is sustained as a Free Action and so can be held for the rest of the day and does not impede other Psychic Powers.

Using Blade of Baleful Might, you can give your Force Weapon Flame, Power Field, Razor Sharp, Tainted, Tearing, Crippling (∞), Felling (∞), Proven (10), Shocking, Toxic (∞) and Warp Weapon. Fate Loom would permanently give you ∞ Infamy Points and Warp-Flame Ward would do 1d10 + ∞ Energy Damage, Pen 5, Flame, Felling (2) in an ∞ radius from the Psyker, turning the majority of the universe into Chaos Spawn and just killing the rest.

Level Up!

The only "god" talent I have seen players gravitate towards is the incredibly useful Infused Knowledge, which really gives you a rather awesome boost to your pool of lore skills with quite easy prerequisites.

Other than that, psykers might get out of hand. Especially if you let your Tzeentch aligned heretek get decked in Terminator Armour while dual wielding force weapons (with the "official rules" for lightning attack and the BC version of Force) while Sustaining Flicker(and thus flying through walls at jump pack speeds+) and Protean Form. I hear first getting hit by ~18 sword attacks and then getting hit by ~18 force blasts to the face can get a bit painful. But then again, if you havent realised what a train wreck the character is becoming at this point, there might be something wrong with you/the player/the group, anyways.

Thank the Gods none of my players are idiots or minmaxers and we have managed to have awesome time playing BC for the last year.

I do highly recommend using the Only War version of Force, though, where the Focus Power test to activate it takes an half action. Makes it a bit more of a choice than something that you do every turn.

Besides, the only TRUE way of playing a BC Psyker is to do nothing in a mundane way which you can do with limitless power ;P

Bolt of Change is lethal enough as it is. I haven't really min maxed my Psyker other than stating my highest roll at Char Gen into WP which is obvious for a Psyker anyway. We've been playing for a few months now and it's been a hugely non-combat game. With Bolt of Change I'm rolling under 120 (7 PR, 65 WP, BI, Unfettered, Psychic Hood, Psy Focus) for 8d10 Energy Damage, Pen 9, Felling (8) which ignores Daemonic Toughness.

I can one-shot Grey Knights! Even a Daemon Prince like "Ax’senaea, the Thrice Possessed" is potentially a two shot kill.

EDIT: As for Force Weaponary, I've never had one with this character so I've never been able to play. I'm currently using a Daemon Sword as per the Reward but last session we decided to go Daemon hunting on the lower levels (to get ingredients to create D-Dust) and I one-shotted a Bloodletter and took his Hellblade. We also took a Plaguesword from a Plaguebearer (whom was "one"-shotted with Doombolt).

Bolt of Change is lethal enough as it is. I haven't really min maxed my Psyker other than stating my highest roll at Char Gen into WP which is obvious for a Psyker anyway. We've been playing for a few months now and it's been a hugely non-combat game. With Bolt of Change I'm rolling under 120 (7 PR, 65 WP, BI, Unfettered, Psychic Hood, Psy Focus) for 8d10 Energy Damage, Pen 9, Felling (8) which ignores Daemonic Toughness.

You have PR 7; I'd wager you are on the deep end of the power scale. Compare that to someone using an autocannon on full auto ruining your parade, or a lascannon from a few hundred meters, and it isn't that ridiculous. You probably even spent more XP than they did, and they can get daemon or legacy weapons; your advantage lies in being able to do it without lugging around a 6ft, 50kg hunk of Warp infused steel around. As could be expected, when the big guns are taken out, BC gets very nasty, very fast, especially if it's Astartes who are shooting them.

I've spent 750XP on Psy Rating. I rolled Warp Smith and got my Mark. We're playing at about 5500XP atm, as of last session. Most of my XP has been spent on Forbidden Lores, Willpower (+15) and a few high XP Talents and Psychic Powers. I have a Daemon Sword (as per Reward) and a Hellbade.

I did however play around with drafting out a Daemon Weapon for fun:

Daemon Weapon: "Lux Nurgleus" (Nurgle's Light)
Base Weapon: Hell Hammer Lascannon
Bound Daemon: Great Unclean One (WP: 70, Inf: 50)
Binding Strength: 1

Class: Heavy
Range: 300m
RoF: S/-/-
Damage: 6d10 + 17 E
Pen: 17
Clip: N/A
Rld: N/A
Special: Reliable, Tearing, Proven (3), Toxic (3), Felling (4), Crippling (7), Special, Force Field (70)
Wt. 55kg

Daemonic Attributes:

Plague Carrier

A weapon with this attribute contains a virulent disease that spreads to anything it wounds. The weapon gains the Toxic (3) Quality, which deals 2d10 Toughness Damage upon a failed Toughness Test and makes the target contagious for the next seven rounds. Any who touch his fl esh or bodily fluids within that time must pass a Challenging (+0) Toughness Test or also suffer 2d10 Toughness Damage and become contagious for the next seven rounds, as described above.

Stream of Corruption

Effects: A weapon with this attribute gains an additional form of attack, which may be used instead of the weapon’s normal attack – the weapon may not be used to attack using both the Stream of Corruption and its normal method in the same turn. It is considered to be a Basic Weapon with a range of 30m, and deals 2d10 plus the daemon’s Willpower Bonus in Impact Damage, with the Felling (2), Spray, Stream, Toxic (3) and Warp Weapon qualities.

Impervious

Effects: A weapon with this attribute grants the wielder a force fleld with a Protection Rating equal to the bound daemon’s Willpower characteristic. However, being daemonic rather than technological in nature, the fleld will not overload. Instead, should the d100 roll to avoid Damage be any double, then the wielder must immediately roll on Table 6–2: Psychic Phenomena and apply the result.

Vicious

Effects: A weapon with this attribute gains the Tearing Quality. If it already has the Tearing Quality, then it gains the Razor Sharp Quality instead. If it already has both those qualities, it gains the Proven (2) Quality.

Wounding

Effects: A weapon with this attribute gains the Crippling Quality, with a value equal to the bound daemon’s Willpower Bonus.

Accursed

Effects: A weapon with this attribute deals an additional 1d10 Damage and has the Felling (4) Quality.