So I have never played dark heresy before and picked up the beta to try it out. I just have a few questions.

1) Where can I find the wounds for the NPCs?

2) How do wounds work? is it just you get a wound if a shot makes it though your armor and toughness?

Don't think of Wounds as Hit Points, think of them as injuries. Each hit causes an injury, with a sort of cascading effect as more injuries are inflicted.

But the characters still have some form of hit points or wounds value don't they? or is it just if they get hit you roll on a table to see what happens to them? this seems like a very random form of combat.

Each successive injury in the "cascade" has an associated effect (Stunned being just one example), and some of these effects are lingering injuries, weather they are critical in nature or otherwise. There is no stereotypical Wounds (or Hit Points) value. Rather than healing to regain Wounds (or Hit Points), lingering injuries are healed.

The more injuries a character has, the greater the likelihood of his/her death occurring upon receiving additional injuries.

But the characters still have some form of hit points or wounds value don't they? or is it just if they get hit you roll on a table to see what happens to them? this seems like a very random form of combat.

And a very book-keeping, cross-reference intensive one.

so how do I find out if a character dies? also how do I find out if an NPC dies?

Plain ordinary mooks can take 2 wounds and die. They still use something like HP because they never roll for wound effects, but instantly die on a crit.

Characters usually die from cumulative wounds. Each wound you have before the current attack adds +5 to the wound effect table. 30+ and you die.

Plain ordinary mooks can take 2 wounds and die. They still use something like HP because they never roll for wound effects, but instantly die on a crit.

So where can I find this HP/wounds on the entries under NPCs and Adversaries? or is it at the GMs own judgment?

So where can I find this HP/wounds on the entries under NPCs and Adversaries? or is it at the GMs own judgment?

Check the rules for 'Novice' level npcs.

So where can I find this HP/wounds on the entries under NPCs and Adversaries? or is it at the GMs own judgment?

Characters and NPCs no longer have a Wounds/Hit Points/Health/Body statistic. Your current 'hit point/health' level is determined strictly by the effects of any wounding hits you have currently suffered. (And, as has been stated previously, 'mooks' don't use the charts; they are killed by two Wounds or 1 Critical.) So, everyone- from a feeble Scribe to a mighty Space Marine- has only Armour and Toughness to withstand damage; once it overcomes your Defensive Value, everyone suffers the same effects, including, ultimately, death, regardless of some people being able to survive more damage than others in the 40K fluff.

It's an interesting approach, but it seems to me that it will be difficult to reflect the superhuman vitality of some types of characters and monsters, short of slathering on some kind of extra 'damage soak'. No more 120+ Wound Daemon Princes; if you can overcome their DV, apparently they die as easily as anyone else...

It's an interesting approach, but it seems to me that it will be difficult to reflect the superhuman vitality of some types of characters and monsters, short of slathering on some kind of extra 'damage soak'. No more 120+ Wound Daemon Princes; if you can overcome their DV, apparently they die as easily as anyone else...

One thing I was thinking about regarding this was to give Big Baddies custom wound tables. Depending on formatting and other factors you could probably fit all 9 tables on single page. So a Bloodthirster might not get a kill result until it suffers a wound of 50+ damage. Just a thought.

It's an interesting approach, but it seems to me that it will be difficult to reflect the superhuman vitality of some types of characters and monsters, short of slathering on some kind of extra 'damage soak'. No more 120+ Wound Daemon Princes; if you can overcome their DV, apparently they die as easily as anyone else...

One thing I was thinking about regarding this was to give Big Baddies custom wound tables. Depending on formatting and other factors you could probably fit all 9 tables on single page. So a Bloodthirster might not get a kill result until it suffers a wound of 50+ damage. Just a thought.

The first port of call would be ensuring that - like the Herald of Nurgle in the bestiary - they have Toughness scores in excess of 100. That'll reduce the amount of actual damage they suffer in the first place, and consequently the number of wounds they'll take over time. Then, the Regenerate trait, or something akin to it, for removing wounds suffered during the fight, and/or some means of counting wounds as 'less', similar to the True Grit talent (but moreso - True Grit means wounds only add +4/+8 for crits, so a monstrous trait version might make wounds only add +2/+4 for crits).

As it is, the Herald of Nurgle has a TB of 10, 5 armour and the True Grit talent. Autogun fire won't get through that, so inflicting wounds in the first place is difficult, and if you do manage to inflict harm, it's only adding +4 for each prior wound, rather than the usual +5. That's really quite tough already...