Jump to content

Zarkov N

  • Content Count

  • Joined

  • Last visited


About Zarkov N

  • Rank

Contact Methods

  • AIM
  • MSN
  • Website URL
  • ICQ
  • Yahoo
  • Skype

Profile Information

  • Location
    Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom
  1. Experience is easy. The book recommends about 500 per four hour session, but feel free to cut that down a little if you don't do four hours, or if they do four hours but goof about. Equally, feel free to drop a little more on them if they rock their characters, advance their personal and group objectives, and accomplish the goals of the scenario. Experience is all about pacing, and it's a long, dangerous road to the top, so don't sweat it. Corruption, well, it happens when it happens. In your quick write-up of the scenario, your own personal "Cliff's Notes" version, bullet point one or two potential instances where Corruption can be gained. Remember, when Corruption hits 100 it's judgement time for the character, so don't worry about rushing it at this point. Infamy for this scenario should be pretty light. Maybe 3, maybe one more if they manage to obtain significant resources or have a decent impact on the local setting. Part of the reason is simply escaping with their lives isn't a big step towards forging a badass rep (but it is a step), and fighting pirates also isn't a big step (but destroying them might be). Make them work for their infamy. Now, gear! Gear is fun! Arm your enemies sparingly. Give them poor quality equipment, if you like. Feel free to write off 25% of anything after a fight - stray bullets and bolt shells will wreck things, even in a melee there's all manner of things that can happen to break stuff. Armour will tend to get the worst of it. Track hit locations if you want - your Chaos Marines will mix and match parts to keep their power armour working. Then again, that's assuming you want to restrict your warband's access to stuff. Do you? Perhaps. Where will they put it all? Do they carry everything on their backs, or do they have a base? How secure is it? How many followers do they have? How trustworthy are they? Do their enemies know where it is? How well defended is it? Et cetera. If you're worried about giving them too many toys, play smarter, not harder. Tucker's Kobolds. If you have to point a lascannon at them, give it some pre-Heresy power supply that has three shots left and can't be recharged. Unless your Heretek wants to spend a month tearing it apart and rebuilding it. In general, relax. Under-do rewards rather than over-do them. They'll find ways to wring extra out of you. They'll plan within their capabilities and act beyond them. And having two dozen howling thugs with poor quality stub guns and sharp knives lets you send them in waves, make morale count, let the CSMs go nuts, but the loot is going to be pathetic compared to a half-dozen Imperial Guardsmen or a couple of Loyalist Marines.
  2. Tap Necromunda PDF into Google, and you can download a bunch of stuff from GW.
  3. Ye-aaah, that's not off of Initiative, that's 20 off Agility for the purposes of determining Initiative. Initiative is only a d10 to start with! The other Tails give you a Toxic attack, a prehensile limb or an accurate unarmed attack. To expect the Nurgle tail to take off twice as much as the maximum die roll for Initiative is just plain silly. It's errata waiting to happen. If you want something to argue about, how about why it only affects enemies and not allies? Acclimation? Psychic exclusivity? Compact-bound warband or not, would a follower of Nurgle really care if the Slaaneshite or Tzeentchian didn't like their odour? Is there any way of blocking it (filter plugs, rebreather) and what happens if your enemies are using them?
  4. Morangias said: The real deal with Medicae and Utility mechadendrites is, they look cool and let you have these equipment bonuses all the time without having to actually carry the items. True dat. Maybe if it was Best Craftsmanship, it might count for an extra +5 if you have tools to use in your hands. Then again, we start verging into Spiderman 2 - Doc Ock territory. Not impossible.
  5. An elaborate game of strategy, chance and bluffing, played with electro-crystal cards that change as the game changes, on a transparent platform hovering above an amphitheatre within which acrobats and circus freaks perform. Every so often when a piece is taken, an acrobat's swing cuts loose, or an advance across the board is reflected by a parade of xeno-beasts. The stakes may be Profit Factor, or something actually worthwhile - your dynasty's flagship must pledge to serve the victor for a month, perhaps. Maybe the stakes are ten thousand left-handed slaves, or something more exotic. This thread: javascript:void(0);/*1327534610132*/ is to How I Became Incredibly Wealthy, which should be required reading. Some interesting bids were made on an auction including: Lord Admiral Bastille bid the co-ordinates of the lost 13th Station of Passage. Lady Charlabelle Armelan bid a Daemonette’s toenail. Sun Lee bid a vial of 500-year-old Brain Leaf essence, which, I have no doubt, is quite deadly. Captain F'wad bid 10,000 blind slaves. The Witches aren’t interested in money, slaves, or poison. They want value. Whatever is bid has to be extremely valuable to the bidder. This auction was a test of what the bidders were willing to lose. My position worsened. All I had to bid that I would consider truly valuable was my cruiser, and I would lose my life before I lost my ship. I bid a bottle of fine Quaddis wine anyway, and it was rejected. I rely on the Tech-Priest’s recording from here. Abel Gerrit bid next, winning his place with the Palace of Moonlight. Baron Scourge [...] bid The Brotherhood of Shadows, possibly some sort of assassins guild. I have little information on him other hthan his propensity for world-burning. Jerimiah Blitz bid a mummified Priest-King. The Duke of Blood had been trying to gain admittance to the auction, but his power armour and dozens of concealed weapons, not to mention his fiery temper, kept him out until the auction house was virtually deserted. He entered stark naked, and bid... his dignity. He pointed out that he knew the Magos was recording the proceedings, and, if he was granted a place, would perform a thong-dance to be publically distributed. The bid was accepted, and we are producing the vid-cast even now. So go nuts, and emphasise the spectacle!
  6. The utility mechadendrite description says it counts as a combi tool, that's where the bonus comes from. I don't really see it stacking with a handheld combi tool - the bonus is coming from the same source, in effect. Maybe the utility mechadendrite counts as an assisting character?
  7. Zarkov N

    40K Novels

    Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! is a good read. A Commissar who thinks he doesn't deserve the title or his reputation as a hero, and yet keeps getting into the thick of it and coming out on top. It's 40K, but with a little more sarcastic humour than usual. I'll also second the vote for Eisenhorn. Ravenor is a good follow-up to that. Eisenhorn gives some indication as to the kind of resources that a powerful independent person can muster - his private school of Untouchables, for instance. It's also given me some nice hints on how our group's Astropath can get her hands on a force weapon. If you want to experience the baroque majesty of the 41st millenium as it was originally conceived, pick up the Inquisition War trilogy. It shows its age some, but the writing is quite singular, and it explores the Eye of Terror, the Eldar Webway, the Palace of the Emperor, and over a dozen worlds between. The way characters enter and leave the story is somewhat close to what I can imagine happens in some roleplaying groups.
  8. I tend to look for a reason before keeping something locked away in the Exotic bracket. It's an XP sink if you need to buy more than one Talent to become proficient with your shiny gear, and that's not something that appeals to me even as a GM. Therefore, if it's clearly exotic I'll leave it as is, but if there's a case for it falling under one of the regular categories I'll call it a house rule. Specifically, when it comes to things like Eldar weapons, I can see the use of wraithbone in the construction being a barrier to a human making best use of it, possibly even opposing the wielder. Perhaps you might want to reduce the cost of the advance to become proficient if the character has a related Talent?
  9. And a bolter has a range of 24" in tabletop, or 90m in RT. It's fiddled for balance in the tabletop wargame, but I think the range is reasonable for open world roleplaying under Rogue Trader. Don't sweat it.
  10. I make 'em use astropaths. The astropath's power roll gives the following Navigator a boost on his roll to coordinate his ship's re-emergence into real space, something like +10 for a flat success, raised by +10 for each two degrees of success.
  11. Hellguns. Only d10+3 damage, but penetration 7 is good for getting attention. Or hotshot clips. Or the rules for setting a lasgun to a high power level. Mix it up. Tactics, diversions, heck, set fire to something. Search for Tucker's Kobolds for ways that "level 1" foes can lay some hurt on PCs that individually outclass them. Make the objectives more complex so that simply slaughtering everyone in their own time isn't a viable solution. Give them choices with consequences, but make sure you offer them (wherever reasonable) sufficient information to make a choice they understand. They can rescue the hostages but let the terrorist leadership escape, or take out the leadership at the cost of the hostages. A simultaneous assault increases the risk of unexpected complications that could mean one or both elements failing, or costing more resources than were planned. Personally, I like to remind myself that balance in Rogue Trader is a waste of time. PCs have superior skills, equipment, a stack of Fate Points and oh yeah - a freakin' starship. Give them conundrums that can't be solved with firepower, moral choices, decisions that have consequences that affect them and the people that care about and rely upon. Just keep it interesting!
  12. Hunterindarkness said: Any chance you could reupload these somewhere? What he said.
  13. Servo skull, laspistol, red dot laser sight. BS 25 when firing single shots. For something heavier, just take the battle servitor and chop its legs off. One heavy weapon, four clips of ammo in an armoured hopper, no melee capability. Personally, I have no problem in taking existing statlines and redressing them if I need something different. Know what I'd do if I needed a Gauss Turret? Chop the legs off a Necron Warrior and increase it's weapon damage and penetration by one each. Simple!
  • Create New...