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 Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:26 pm
The appeal? Lots of appeals to making various kinds of characters. I personally like finding ways that the rules interact to create interesting multipliers of effects, like the aforementioned - Counterattack + Wall of Steel + Precognition combo. Such combinations are invariably more effective than having several unrelated abilities. I also enjoy seeing how far the system can be stretched.
It's not as if this is the only kind character I like to play - I have made great concept characters and characters which are purposely gimped for the sake of their background. But it's important that you have a character that fits with the rest of the party and the tone of the adventure. If you're running an entire group of Tech-priests on an Explorator mission, coming in as a thieving, illiterate Scum is going to break flow. If your adventure is noir-style political intrigue and investigation with the occasional minor combat, then bringing in a weapon festooned Guardsman is not going to jive with the party that much, and he's only going to shine occasionally.
Not that having party members able to cover all eventualities is bad, but a good GM spends some time allowing everyone to shine. And he and the rest of the party are going to be bored while you get your occasional Captain Heroic time, and you are going to be bored when your combat character is rendered useless while the Adepts research and the Scum wine and dine into noble houses.
If your whole party is focused on combat, you should come in with a combat capable character, since the GM is likely to focus the adventures on combat. Hence Lyra, as ALL of my group is combat focused with a secondary specialty. The Techpriest is a Secutor, and is combat with some Tech use & knowledge. The Noble is a Guardsman. The Arbitrator is a riot cop with some interrogation and investigation.
Besides, even a broken character doesn't truly break the game in the case of something GM run like DH. Oh look, you've got this combat character that will murder anyone else she comes up against in CC. That's why the cultists are shooting at you from 50m away. In the case of the shooty RT character above - the enemies have gotten wise to him - booby traps and snipers galore, or charge him with something nasty that grapples, or have him come up against something with multiple layers of armor - Mechanical horror with carapace and a refractor field..
Outside the rules, there is always GM fiat - the GM is always able to say, that there's an extra penalty on firing so many weapons, or that using that many psychic powers so often will draw daemons to you. Or even simply state 'you can't play that character.'
EDIT: And having just looked over the psychic powers section again, I can say with confidence that Lyra isn't even optimized. If I had really wanted to focus on damage output, I would have made her a Telekine rather than a Biomancer. Telekinetics has the most powers which have range or multipliers on other effects based on Willpower Bonus. Force Bolt is easier to cast, has a range 7 times longer, and the same damage as Bio-lightning. Force Blade would have done 1d10+14 damage with 14 penetration, AND would have me test Willpower to hit rathr than Weapon Skill. That's +5 damage and +6 penetration on the Force weapon I chose to use. Force Barrage would have generated 7 Force Bolts, each doing 1d10+7 damage, with a Range of 70m.
Besides, I do have a background written up for Lyra as well, but my focus was on her abilities, so I didn't bother to post it. Would you like to see it?
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 4:09 am
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:09 pm
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 1:43 pm
I've removed my previous remark as it could've been seen as something uncalled for or unnecessary rude.
In short, I'm not a fan of stretching the system and seeing just how far I can go before breaking things. Your reasoning comes across as the (in)famous parody of the RP participant who leafs through the rulebooks looking for every possible exploit and loop possible to use to your own benefit.
While yes a GM can ultimately mix things up by providing said counters or just say "no", personally I feel that the age-old and done to death application of common sense would be more preferable.
Again, I am not trying to offend, just tossing in my €0,02
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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 1:12 am
Common sense is hard to come by these days. Just look at what happened to Inquisitor. gonk
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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 8:01 pm
Lt. Brookman I've removed my previous remark as it could've been seen as something uncalled for or unnecessary rude. In short, I'm not a fan of stretching the system and seeing just how far I can go before breaking things. Your reasoning comes across as the (in)famous parody of the RP participant who leafs through the rulebooks looking for every possible exploit and loop possible to use to your own benefit. There's a difference between stretching the system and breaking it. Stretching it is focusing all your attention on one stat and only taking abilities or talents that affect or use that stat. The systems functions, and you are working within it to ensure that your character is the best at this one thing he or she can be. Lyra does this. In D&D, if you up your Strength whenever possible, and take all Strength boosting gear as a Fighter/Barbarian, that's doing the same. You are inflexible, but you have incredible damage. and probably good Indimidation and physical skills. Lyra is an experimental subject that has had her will hardened and forged in the fires of repeated torture and experimentation, with her past wiped from her so that she cannot recall anything but hypno-doctrination and training. All done before they would even think of letting her work with her psychic talent. She was purposely exposed and kept near Blanks and Pariahs to both harden her and prevent her from exercising any powers. Only when she was as hard as they could make her did they begin training her psychically. She has conditioned triggers, which while she can probably override them by the rules, I will probably abide by, as you don't make a weapon you cannot control at all. Unusual? Yes, but then Inquisitorial acolytes at higher than Rank 1 often are. She did not grow organically as a character - but that is part of her backstory. She's not a normal person, she has been engineered to be a strong-willed psyker, resistant to psykers and Warp terrors. Why was she created? As a weapon? As the perfect candidate for the Temple Psykana, to infiltrate them? Or is there a greater destiny for her? I leave the ultimate purpose of her creation in the hands of the GM for a future story hook. She's extraordinary, but within flavor for the system and background. The system is stretched but not broken. Breaking the system is using the rules of the system to create situations that are completely unbelievable within the bounds of the system. For example, in D&D, I know how to create characters that can atomize planets - starting at 12th level in 3.5 and starting at 25th in 4.0. Broken. You're not supposed to be able to do that without incredible amounts of magical power and probably a god or three helping. But you can do it by the rules. In the original West End Games Star Wars, a Jedi could block the Death Star's beam, as a Jedi could block any energy weapon that did two or less dice of damage - and the superlaser did two dice of planetary damage. Silly. In 3.0 D&D it was possible to kill anything from a 20th level character to the Terrasque with an adamantine dagger and a single spell - Harm (or Heal if fighting undead.). Harm wasn't supposed to be that powerful. Breaking the system means that you have used artifacts of the system to do things that are well outside of what the the system is intended to simulate. DH is tightly written and difficult to break. Lt. Brookman While yes a GM can ultimately mix things up by providing said counters or just say "no", personally I feel that the age-old and done to death application of common sense would be more preferable. Again, I am not trying to offend, just tossing in my €0,02 Common sense isn't. Everyone has a different idea of what's 'obvious.' For some, it's common sense that DH's totally random stats are stupid, and people should be able to roll an array and assign stats. For some it's common sense that a Flak Greatcoat and a Flak Jacket have their coverage values flopped. Some people think that everything about a character should be ordinary - some people want to play heroes. What exactly needs to change about this character? How would you apply common sense to 'fix' her? I've already applied my common sense to her once, and it made her what she is. I started off with an older gentleman that was Voidborn, had Meditation, Perform: Storytelling, and Lore: Legends - the initial concept I started with was merely to have a Psyker that could walk around with Inspiring Aura up all the time, mitigating our party's current problem with Fear, and simultaneously blunting some of the stigma of being a Psyker. He'd walk around dispensing sage advice and calming people in the face of fear with mentions of classic characters that everyone knew. It was a good concept. It was also totally out of whack with the party. The party is a bunch of 'shoot first, we'll sort 'em out later' characters. If any one of our characters were in Han's place, we'd have shot Greedo before he got more than 4 words out of his mouth - it's a running joke in our group that our party's Berserk Button is exposition. Minor character's with huge amounts of dialogue options are ignored, enemies who are going to reveal their plans or tempt us get plugged after saying three words. So the man was scrapped in favor of the more hardened and grim Lyra, who would fit in better with the party. Lady Blodwynn Common sense is hard to come by these days. Just look at what happened to Inquisitor. gonk What happened to Inquisitor that would have been fixed by common sense? I think that system had alot more problems other than the total lack of baselines for characters.
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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:41 pm
I've done similar thing with my female elf D&D ranger, though with dexterity build based on weapon finesse - she was running into battle almost naked, with pair of rapiers and lots of close combat feats, and with maxed out dex she was also very capable shot with longbow. She wasn't dealing great damage with each blow, but landed more of them than most characters, and was quite good at disrupting spellcasters.
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Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 7:14 am
Oryn Lady Blodwynn Common sense is hard to come by these days. Just look at what happened to Inquisitor. gonk What happened to Inquisitor that would have been fixed by common sense? I think that system had alot more problems other than the total lack of baselines for characters. As far as i see it, common sense would have been to tie the Game into the 40K Rules more, and add to the "Regular" miniature Range, instead of making those "only for this game" miniatures .......
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:29 am
Common sense from the developers point of view would've been easier to use rules and a lot of patching on certain systems and rules found there. But this isn't about Inquisitor, we've got a thread for that one here. Back on topic I can't wait to reunite with the group and get started on our Rogue Trader campaign. I'm sure it will as dangerous and scarring as Dark Heresy, but at least we're in space this time round. sweatdrop
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:05 am
@Oryn: Excellent food for thought. 3nodding
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:30 am
I haven't had much of a chance to work on my character, the Wolf scenario and working on my army in my sparse spare time have seen to that. I have given some thought as to what my character might look like, I've decided on this model to act as the base, just add in a padded flight jacket and less skin showing through the fabric. stare 
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 4:50 am
It's a lovely miniature, I'm the proud owner of one. Haven't painted it yet though, I feel like a butcher whenever I think of painting it. sweatdrop
Looking at the adventures supplied by Black Industries and FFG, you can go quite a long way with the minimum of creative effort going into the bigger picture, especially when putting it in a chronological order:
Shattered Hopes (demo adventure)
Illumination (Core adventure)
Rejoice! For you are true (Purge the Unclean)
Shadows of the Twilight (Purge the Unclean)
Baron Hopes (Purge the Unclean)
Maggots in the Meat (GM kit adventure)
The House of Dust and Ash (Disciples of the Dark Gods)
The Haarlock Legacy Trilogy
Though I'm curious as to what the Radical's Handbook might have to offer. My FLGS has it shelved for me but this damn virus is preventing me from finally getting it. scream
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 10:16 am
Maggots is a pretty low-level adventure. You might also want to add the second starter adventure found on the FFG site called "Edge of Darkness" which is more focused on investigation and detective work, not a full-blown combat scenario like Shattered Hope.
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Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 12:40 am
Even more free adventure? Don't mind if I do then. I'm really enjoying the sudden amount of free time to glut on these books.
Purge the Unclean so far is a great read, thankyouthankyouthankyou! heart
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Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 1:46 am
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Reply
