We just recently started playing Dark heresy, and as the one elected to read the rules and run the game, I came up with a few questions after the first session of play. Some of these may be stupid questions, but none of us have any experience with the system or similiar games so I maye have missed the answers in the rulebook somewhere.

1) When rolling dice to manifest psychic powers or for the Void Born's charmed ability, the rules call for a 9 to be rolled. Does this mean 9 or higher, or just flat out 9 on the die roll? This just came up because some people felt just plain 9 was a bit of an artibtrary number, and they felt the rules might have been referring to "9 or higher".

2) When resting to recover from an injury, what does a day mean? Does it mean straight 24 hours of rest? Sleeping for 8 hours? The term day is very subjetcive in a sci-fi setting and I couldn't find a rule reference defining it.

3) How many people use the optional rule that allows for a chance to hit your allies when firing into melee?

4) What does the term "Engaged" mean? You are adjacent to an enemy?

5) While adjacent to an opponent, do you provoke the free attack when you move so you are no longer adjacent or when you move at all? For example, if I wanted to move one meter to the side, while still remaining engaged, would that provoke a free attack?

6) Do you use the critical hit tables for most NPCs your party encounters? I skipped it for the "thug" encounters and only used it for the important monsters.

7) When a player dies, how do you handle the replacement character? Do you force them to start at level 1? Give them bonus exp? From the blurbs I read of most of the pre-published adventures out there, they are suitable for characters of all levels, so a mix of different acolyte ranks seems to be far less problematic then in say, D&D.

8) Finally, we played some Illumination, and I just have to ask.. Is full auto at point blank range as deadly as we've been playing it? Against one of the creatures, the Scum player managed to get six hits. Everyone else immediately wanted to go out and buy autopistols.

1) When rolling dice to manifest psychic powers or for the Void Born's charmed ability, the rules call for a 9 to be rolled. Does this mean 9 or higher, or just flat out 9 on the die roll? This just came up because some people felt just plain 9 was a bit of an artibtrary number, and they felt the rules might have been referring to "9 or higher".

Psychic phenomena occur when you roll a natural, flat out 9, not 9 or higher.

2) When resting to recover from an injury, what does a day mean? Does it mean straight 24 hours of rest? Sleeping for 8 hours? The term day is very subjetcive in a sci-fi setting and I couldn't find a rule reference defining it.

I've always interpreted it as 24 hrs of non-strenous activity, ie resting, reading, smoking a lho-stick and watching the sun set, whatever plus getting a good nights sleep.

3) How many people use the optional rule that allows for a chance to hit your allies when firing into melee?

I do. It hasn't stopped my players from taking their chances and blazing away anyway though, which sometimes lead some interesting roleplaying ("You frakkin' shot me, you son of a Grox!").

4) What does the term "Engaged" mean? You are adjacent to an enemy?

I don't have the book with me right now, but I think this is a bit of a common sense situation. If that big, angry mutant is taking a swing at you with a lead pipe, you're obviously engaged. If you're sneaking up on him and he hasn't spotted you, you are not engaged, adjacent to him or not.

5) While adjacent to an opponent, do you provoke the free attack when you move so you are no longer adjacent or when you move at all? For example, if I wanted to move one meter to the side, while still remaining engaged, would that provoke a free attack?

Again, the most sensible interpretation would be that you only provoke a free attack if you turn your back on your opponent or is otherwise unable to defend yourself. Moving cautiously to the side while facing the opponent should not result in a free attack.

6) Do you use the critical hit tables for most NPCs your party encounters? I skipped it for the "thug" encounters and only used it for the important monsters.

It depends mostly on the scale of the encounter, in a small bar fight I usually use the crit tables (yes, even for the mooks) while in a larger combat situation I wouldn't bother, as it would just bog the game down in details.

7) When a player dies, how do you handle the replacement character? Do you force them to start at level 1? Give them bonus exp? From the blurbs I read of most of the pre-published adventures out there, they are suitable for characters of all levels, so a mix of different acolyte ranks seems to be far less problematic then in say, D&D.

Typically I give replacement characters enough XP to compete with the rest of the group. This works perfectly well for us, but quite honestly this is just a matter of taste.

8) Finally, we played some Illumination, and I just have to ask.. Is full auto at point blank range as deadly as we've been playing it? Against one of the creatures, the Scum player managed to get six hits. Everyone else immediately wanted to go out and buy autopistols.

That depends...how exactly are you playing it? But yes, +30 for point blank and +20 for a full auto burst is pretty nasty. Of course getting into point blank range is often a very bad idea and can lead to disemboweling and other assorted nastiness.

Crap, really screwed up the quote tags on that one. Hopefully it's still readable.

Yeah, it is. Thanks for the quick response. I think the main hurdle my group will need to get over is the whole common sense vs rules as written mind set. We are all long time D&D players, especially 3rd and 4th edition, and that game system is more about rule mechanics and less about what really makes sense. Dark Heresy seems to be different, in that respect, with less technical descriptions of some of the actions.

Just to chip in on the strange 9 number for Psyker powers or charmed, there's a few things in the book where a 9 (not higher or lower) results in strange things there's even the roll a 9 at char generation deciding you're left handed. The reason? Tzeentch of course! The Chaos god Tzeentch is the architect of fate, the changer of ways and master of magic and fortune. So it's kind of like a in joke I suspect amongst the game designers to make things happen on a 9 instead of a 10 or 1 on the d10.

Once you get into it though it's fun when you're Psyker rolls a 9 and the comments like "Tzeentch wants your sooouul!" start to fly from the players