Atheosis said:

Equal parts curiosity and boredom. Plus, I've already run a Deathwatch game using the DH rules (with pregenerated characters), so statting up bigger enemies for games on that sort of scale may come in handy... and the 40kRP system does, if handled correctly, scale upwards quite well.

Beyond that, I'm generally quite willing to fly in the face of the idea that every adversary the PCs face is there for them to defeat... some of them are, of course, there for the players to run away from.

My party once got their hands on 10 tonnes of promethium as part of a fuel dump. They were supposed to use it to drive their truck across a eldar-infested feral world to reach their drop-zone.

About ten minutes after getting the fuel they found the home made fire bombs rules in the Inquisitor's Handbook and realised that they had a bomb which would inflict 20,000 d10 E damage on anything within 25 miles in every direction.

About halfway through their discussion on where they could get hold of the horses necessary to carry them and their jerry-rigged nuke to their destination I house-ruled that there was a maximum size limit on the size of a fire bomb they could make.

I'm not sure if it counts as Crazy-Awesome, but it was pretty funny at the time.

Edith The Hutt said:

Which is probably the right call technically as well. As an explosive detonation of that magnitude using conventional fuel would have required at least a two stage detonation process. The first stage to vaporize the fule in order to increase the air/fuel mixture and the second to ignite. And even then you would hardly get a 100% conversion.

Still, good job on their devious thinking!

The rules were never meant for more than five or ten kilos of fuel I suspect. Blast radius and damage scale linearly with the amount of promethium meaning they rapidly become more and more ridiculous to the point that 10 tonnes (perfectly reasonable to have that in a fuel or ammo dump) make the Tsar Bomb (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_bomb) look puny. I've never capped the maximum size of blast but I've re-written the house rules such that the radius and damage scale differently after 10 kilos.

I'm not too sure how to account for a fuel-air bomb as described. I suspect that I could quite happily demand a few crafting roles and then use a modification of my house rules, I definitely wouldn't use the IH rules for one. Nonetheless I think capping the maximum size is the wrong way forward, you have to allow for the PCs causing something like the Buncefield Oil Depot Explosion (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Hertfordshire_Oil_Storage_Terminal_fire).

So yeah, although I've never seen it actually used, a few hundred tonnes of promethium would be my Crazy-Awesome weapon of choice.

I'm GMing a mixed bunch of RPG relative vets and newcomers, and I gave my Metallican Gunslinger Assassin (who's never before even heard of an RPG) a "Ripper Pistol" from a shady gun dealer who lives in Hive Zero on one of the moons of Tallides (I'm running my campaign in a different star system, one I invented so the players can't look up anything OOC). The gun's stats (Range 18m, S/10/30, 1d10+3 R, Pen 0, Reload Never, Clip Infinite, Primitive) so far have raised no eyebrows, but he's going back to get another... This might be a bad thing for the merry band once their =][= finds out about such high-tech stuff her Acolytes have

Today I ran the first session for my new group, so no really "Crazy Awesome"-weapons yet. But still some nice stuff to start out with. The PC had their starting income + the full value off their starting equipment + 200 Thrones from the Inquisition to buy their stuff with. Now here is what they got:

Arbitrator:

Magistratum Chastisement "Punisher" Baton

Hand Cannon

Techpriest:

Long Las with Red-Dot Laser Sight

Triplex Pattern "Fury" Assault Laspistol

Pyker:

Best Craftsmanship Monosword

Hecuter 9/5 Heavy Combat Autopistol

Last game I played (rather than GMed), the entire team was equipped with mono weapons (including my own mono-sword with which killed about a hundred loonies per game). Paddy had a mono-knife he used for collecting asses (I knid you not), and our Cleric waved around a Holy Mono Great Sword with Exterminator cartidges that took down (in one session): around 200 cultist (exterminator cartidge + small doorway = IT BURNS!!, then exterminator cartridge + fuel leak = FWOOSH! IT BURNS SOME MORE!!!), 16 daemonettes (I killed 1), 2 Masque-level Daemonettes (killed one of these too), 32 debased Sisters of Battle (3 for me), 3 debased Sisters Superior (1 for me again), a daemonvessel and a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh.

BTW this was at 1st level.

foxfax said:

Your GM needs training.

Nope, it was actually just a truly insane amount of Righteous Fury, something like once every 3-4 turns, oh and me shooting a hole in a fuel tanker!

No really, he needs training...
In my game we have our fair share of combat but nothing to this extent.

My last session was combat heavy but I wanted to show my pc's the effect of "The long day", which means:

No rest, back tot back combat and being chased:

They Fought:

20 zombies (Fydea Strain), 1 Vile Savant, 2 Logician Hunter Killer Drones and 3 Logician Troopers

For mooks such as zombies I use the Mook rules for CA (aka, they have only 1 wound), so the drones and zombies were nasty but went down quickly.

The Vile Savant nearly whiped out the party and infected the psyker before bursting open and releasing the swarm, hey, 50% chance.

The Logicians had a superiour postition and had superiour equipment (which they didn't loot )

But in the end the result was:

Adept: 4 wounds taken, who says high Intelligence isn't usefull (1 fatigue damage)

Guardsman: 2 wounds left, but used 2 fate points for healing and received healing once form the psyker (1 fatigue damage)

Assassin: 0 wounds left, +3 Crit and used 1 fate point for healing and received psychic healing (2 fatigue damage)

Psyker: 1 wound left, used 3 fate points for healing, used psychic healing on himself and burned a Fate Point to prevent turning into a zombie. (4 fatigue damage hence coma)

Most damage was done by Logician troopers equiped with 1 Longlas and 2 pimped autoguns with Man-Stopper rounds.

So I can't imagen pc's surviving 200+ antagonists in combat in one session...

Santiago said:

At first rank...

It was less the DM needing training, more the Cleric needing a common sense translant. Something the lines of this happened after the Cleric beheaded 10 cultists who charged into the Church. One. At. A. Time. After the first 5 got Exterminatored (gotta love a Mono Great Sword).

Cleric: I leave the Church of the Emperor to my Brothers and enter the square.

DM: You see a baying, riotous pack of about 200 howling madmen, baying obscenities, epithets and prayers to false gods.

Cleric: I CHARGE THE HERETICS!!

DM: Oooo-kay. (he's probably thinking: "Why the **** are you charging that crowd of insane cultists?!?! They're backdrop!! Run away you fool!! FLEE DAMMIT!!!)

Assassin (me): What's in the square?

DM: What? Uh, the Arbites precinct house, a bistro, the church that the Cleric ran out from, a fountain...

Assassin: No, actually in the square itself. Beside the screaming mob, I mean.

DM (harrassed): Um, a hover-truck, two crawlers, an Arbites crawler...

Assassin: What's the truck hauling?

DM: Um, fuel? (almost beneath his breath) ohshit...

Assassin: How close iss the mob to the tanker?

DM: (depressed) They're all around it.

Assassin: I shoot the tanker, trying to hole it. (proceed to roll a 01 for my scoped Autogun).

DM: (sighing) Fuel sprays everywhere, covering much of the mob

Cleric: FEAR THE WRATH OF THE EMPEROR!!

*ignites Exterminator cartridge (single-shot flamer version)*

BA-WHOOOM!!!

*5d10E and 2d10R damage to half the mob, 3-5d10E to the rest, 3d10E to the Cleric (who's a fair distance from the truck)*

*mob turns to cinders bar a few stragglers who are calmlty killed by the Assassin, Guardsman and Tech-priest*

*Cleric survives (barely), but with a lot of superficial burns (got a 15 from the damage, ends up -2 Critical to the face) *

*Cleric is hauled away from dancing on the still-burning corpses*

Cleric: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

EDIT: Names removed to protect the Innocent (and Guilty)

Similar experiences to Santiago. Last session finishing up maggots in the meat we finished with the arbeit with the most wounds left with 4 (16 at full). I took a crit, another was at 0 and two others were at 2 left. We keep telling each other we need grenades but then say we woudl probably use them all in a single combat. I am just saving up for a power sword for my moritat assassin.

We were then discussing the drawbacks of the game in that equipment is really limited. You simply cannot modify your own gear - or if you do the cog boys cry 'blasphemy' and that is that.

foxfax said:

Point we're making is First Rank acolytes should in no way be capable of performing the actions you listed in the previous post. A Greater Daemon of Slaanesh? Come on the gm really screwed the pooch on that one it's Daemonic Nature alone would have stopped most of the dmg, not to mention it's intoxicating aura would have had most of the party enthralled, and it's daemonic presence gives you negatives on the Willpower checks to boot. And this is also not taking into account the Fear Rating this would have had.

We're not saying that it's not possible to do. We're saying that if your GM threw all of that stuff at you and you survived... He did something really wrong.

Rashid ad Din Sinan said:

Is that why there's an entire section with rules covering crafting and modifying equipment in the Inquisitors Handbook?

Really, the coggies don't seem to care that much about what people do with something as simple as a gun or else they wouldn't be ok with privately owned arms manufacturers like the fanes of Gunmetal City. But like almost everything in 40K I guess just how anal the cogboys are is open to interpretation.

It was more the dice utterly failing him with the Greater Daemon

He rolled high for attacks and low for wounds. We all ended up mearly dead, but our Feral Guardsman ended up eyeball-shotting the thing with a stolen Sacristan Bolter with Holy Shells after the Clerics Holy Sword Righteous Fury-ed it for more than 40pts of damage in one blow! Cleric at full wounds was nearly killed next game by a cultist one-shotting him in the face with a musket! XD

Swings and roundabouts...

Commandeering a half-track off the PDF and saving ammo by running over heretics has been some of the best value so far... it makes a crazy mess of anything it ground under its treads and has the awesome factor of being something a bunch of bloody minded, fascist representatives can use with a symbolic sense of irony (and impunity) about their jobs.

We did have a Rhino once that we found, but by the time we fixed it up and figured out how to drive it back most everything worth running over was either dead or running like scared little bastards, then the mingy Inq took it off us and gave us some nice guns and gear as a reward. Guns are great, dont get me wrong, but **** I wish we could have kept the Rhino... it would have kept the Ad-mech busy for weeks picking the slow and stupid out of its components.

Okay,

What we mean is:

* 1st rank character with a "Holy" weapon, they should be awe struck if they have a Mono weapon

* No amount of luck on the parties side should allow them to slay a Greater Daemon, those things have Fate Points

* Greater Daemons cause fear (-30 WP Test)

* A GM should teach the such a Cleric Humility

* And what GM uses Debase Sisters (that amount), Daemonettes and Greater Daemons in the first mission, such enemies remove all sense of horror

Santiago said:

Based on the information contained in the core rules NPCs generally do not have fate points. The exception to this general rule, as presented in DotDG, is the new NPC talent "Touched by the Fates" which provides Fate points to NPCs which possess that talent.

Just a thought to keep in mind when statting out major NPCs (including Greater Daemons) - if you want them to have Fate Points include "Touched by the Fates" in said NPC's talents.

foxfax said:

For daemonettes, and even moderate to moderately-high power daemonhosts, mid-level daemonic entities (i.e. charnel daemon from core rules), 40pt holy damage = major hurting, maybe even out-right gibbed, no problem.

For a properly statted out greater daemon? 40pts of holy damage should hurt, but only enough to piss it off. How did your GM get the stats for this greater daemon of Slannesh?

1) If it was a straight port w/ not mod from WHFRP that may be the problem. While the basics of the systems are similar, Fantasy doesn't have such things as unnatural characteristcs (any Greater Daemon out to have at least unnat tough x2) or the fact that daemon hosts gain access to massive amounts of psychic powers when possessed by random daemon #5, the idea that a full on greater daemon wouldn't have similar degrees of psychic might (unless Khornate) is ludicrous.

2) If this was a home brew greater daemon it was either a pansy, or mentally defective.

After Tzeentch daemons, Slaaneshi greater daemons are the most likely to have psychic powers and should definately have some perception-altering and mind-controling powers. Why was the greater daemon even standing where the characters percieved it to be? What about all the fear causing and enthralling abilities connected w/ Slaanesh? Or simple agility? the graceful daemons of slaanesh are among the fastest and most agile of daemon-kind. Don't tell me it wouldn't have the talents granting an extra dodge and an extra parry, plus unnatural agility of at least x2 (granting bonus degree of sucess to all AG based tests)

If the Greater Daemon didn't have any of these kinds of abilities, it was poorly statted out. If it had them and didn't use them, then the daemon wins the prize of biggest moron ever crawl across the boundary between the warp and the physical realm.

So maybe these rank 1 characters got lucky and rumbled with the only mentally defective greater daemon stupid enough to just stand around and get hacked to bits.

Then again, maybe the Daemon was screwing with them. Maybe after it saw all its cultists go up in a blaze of promethium it decided to let the acolytes think they killed it while it slipped away to recruit more cultists. Their great "victory" may have been no more than false perceptions created by the daemon's psychic powers. Hmmmmm.....

DocIII said:

So... Santiago was right, Greater Daemons have (if the GM says so, and for Greater daemons, he should) Fate Points. Why dose the terms or names of exact traits that only the GM will know exists for an NPC matter? If a GM wants an NPC to have Fate Points, bam, they have Fate Points.

Well,

In my humble opinion a greater daemon should always be a character and not just a daemon, they creature of inmense power.
It should take more than just do enough damage to slay one permanently, otherwise it will just return from the warp, with a vengeance.

In WFRP they do have fate points (as far as I remember), now I know that DH is not WFRP but they should be atleast as powerful.

grtZ,

Santiago

Hokay peeps: Greater Daemon does not equal fully-fledged fully-formed Keeper of Secrets. We managed to stop the summoning in time, just, by sheer fricking luck, a lucky ricochet from me and killing what appeared to be someones mum. So what manifested, and yes, we did manage to pass the majority of our OHGODITSADAEMON!!! tests (our Guardsman crumpled into a whimpering heap but got back up to save the day eventually), was basically a Japanese Hentai beast. Lots of tentacles, very grabby, strong (but nowhere near as storng as a full manifestation, IIRC it only had a SB of 5) and relatively immobile (those tentacles could reach).

Only our Arbitrator and Tech-Priest got grabbed (we went Matrix on its ass and passed something along the lines of a bazillion Dodge tests) and got rather fiercely tectacled (no permanent damage reported, although they did walk funny for a while. Neither was female.).

Me (Assassin, female), the Psyker (bald female) and the Cleric (bald male) shot at it a lot, until someone had the bright idea to slot the thing in the eyeballs (I'd been reading the rulebook, and thought, "Hold on, maybe..."). Only the sanctified bolter shells of the Sacristan weapons we had "aquired" made it flinch, so after a few desultory crossbow bolts, Cleric Nutjobus Magnificus (not the name he chose, but the one we gave him) got bored, charged and unleashed Righteous Fury on it's head. I ninja-ran up the wall (passed Ag test), ninja-flipped over the daemon (passed Ag test), shot it through one eye (passed Very Hard BS test), shot it through the other eye (passed Very Hard BS test) and landed on the other side (passed Ag test). Total damage: bugger all, I'd been using my unsactified Autogun instead of the bolter.

Then Guardsman Asstaker McAxe (who'd woke up in time to help unleash our volley of Sacristan bolter fire) finished it off with two perfect bolter shots through each eye (a 9 and a 10), ganking my kill.

I was not amused.

As I've hinted before, the dice just hated the GM that day. It was as if he'd uttered the immortal line "Anything but a..." every time before he rolled the dice! It was painful to watch as cultists couldn't cult their way out of a paper bag, daemonettes tripped over each others hooves, debased SoBs shot everything except the party and even his mighty hell-beast got taken down partly because I fumbled a shot off a sisters helmet into a demogogues face, and partly by a Guardsman who wielded a Mono-axe, thought guns were for sissies and hadn't so much as fired a single shot before the encounter. He got revenge later, though...

EDIT: BTW, we were playing this just as DH first came out, so no fate points for enemies at all. I don't think our DM has played WHFRPG either.

Even if the GM dices were "cursed" that session, even if you rolled like the God Emperor and he saw fit to bestow his wrath on your enemies, your GM still made serious misstakes. First, I would say that it's obvious your GM didn't make full use of something as powerful as a Greater Daemon, secondly, he had no business pitting a Greater Daemon against a bunch of 1st Rankers.

On Rank 1 what you should expect to encounter is maybe some low life cultists with no armour and armed with knifes. Where do you go after fighting a Greater Daemon on Rank 1? A Daemon Prince on Rank 2? If I would use a Greater Daemon against my players on their first Rank you'd better believe they wouldn't be engaged in combat with it. Maybe they'd see it manifest itself in a city they just barely left with a shuttle to reach a ship in orbit, watching how it utterly destroys everyone and everything around him. Instill fear in their hearts and souls, and leaving them with a creeping suspicion that they might see it again sometime.

Wait, I just realised something, did your GM actually let you aim for the eyes and destroy them just by hitting and exceeding his toughness bonus, or what?

Just, wow.

I mean play however you want, its your game you play it in whatever way you find fun.

but your 1st level characters really should have gotten horribly mangled, and then eaten.

Essentially what your GM was doing was allowing you to fugde your rolls while crippling his own.

The arbitrator and tech priest are grappled by the daemonhost-thing but no actual damage? how are you passing your bajillion dodge tests? you only get one per round...

DH is quite a low level game, your characters are suppsed to suck slightly, then go mad. If you want to murderize everything within sight like some sort walking tac-nuke, maybe you should try Exalted. Seriously, Exalted is a great game and the rules are designed for this kind of OTT action. unlike DH, which really isn't.