Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy

Quickly becoming one of my current favorite games is Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy and its associated games, Rogue Trader and the upcoming Deathwatch. At first I wasn’t altogether interested in it, but as I got more immersed into Warhammer 40k with the video games and novels, I gave it a second look. I read Rogue Trader first, actually. But as a whole the system is something very appealing to me, and where I was once intimidated I now feel very comfortable. It’s nice and crunchy enough while providing cool roleplaying opportunities, loads of character advancement, and yet due to its career paths, it doesn’t actively overwhelm you because the careers only present advancement options fitting and useful to your character. While some mechanics feel a bit annoying (count how many centimeters you jumped) the majority of the system just roars with life and depth.

So I decided to write this stream of consciousness sorta-review of Dark Heresy to talk about what it is like mechanically and what things I like about it. I’ll probably do a full review of Deathwatch when it’s out, and maybe for Rogue Trader (my personal favorite).

Each of these games shares a system that has some things in common with what Warhammer 40k tabletop players know about their model’s stats. There’s WS (Weapon Skill), BS (Ballistic Skill), ST (Strength), T (Toughness), and then we have Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Fellowship and Willpower. These stats are generated either by looking at certain minimums depending on your background and adding 2d10, or in Rogue Trader by buying them with points. I prefer the Point Buy, as I don’t care for random stats, but there’s a lot of stuff for random gen fans in the game.

The basic mechanic of the game is one I’m really starting to love, which is roll under with a D%. You roll 2d10 for it, or if you play online you can roll a d100 using dice roll scripts. Stats are rated with a number from 01 to 100, though generally you’ll have around 35 to 45 in your good stats to begin with and 20-30 in your worst ones. So if you want to shoot someone for example, you roll under your BS (ballistic skill). For every ten you roll under your BS you get a degree of success. There’s also hit locations, which are simple too – reverse your roll result (36 becomes 63) and look at a table. The cool thing about a d100 is that you always know your chances. They are plain as day.

Skills in Dark Heresy are what you use most of the time to interact with the environment. You gain skills depending on your career path and your home world might also give you some. If you don’t have a skill there’s usually no way to default it, unless the skill is a Basic skill. If it is basic, you use half your characteristic to roll if you don’t have the skill – not good odds. With advanced skills, only a trained character can perform them, and most of the times other characters might not even have access to them at all. As you go along, you can purchase Advances on your skills and characteristics to improve them. For example, you might start off with the Charm skill, and at a certain level of advancement you can unlock Charm +10 for purchase. While characters in Dark Heresy start off at a pretty low end of the probability range (you’ll be lucky to have a 40 in something) the GM should take into account circumstance bonuses. GMs are encouraged to offer circumstance bonuses and penalties to the PCs depending on the situation, from a +30 from “very easy” to a -20 for Hard. I think the game definitely wants you to take those in account to insure that that little 30 can, with planning and strategy, be bumped up to a 45 or 50 for a roll, or higher if the PC has proper tools. They won’t win by fiat – players have to work for it.

The Career Paths are like the game’s classes. They are packages of equipment, skills and talents that form a character archetype. Each Dark Heresy character is someone the Inquisition might hire to do their dirty work of pursuing heretics and mutants or sniffing out rebellious movements. For example, in Dark Heresy there’s Imperial Guard, and Techpriests, and Psykers, etc. Each career path has ranks that you climb by earning XP. You start off with 400 XP to spend customizing your character. Your Rank will determine the list of stuff from which you can buy advancement – there’s enough choice in each rank to make your character pretty uniquely your own, and there are divergent paths later on that add more variance. As you unlock more ranks, you open up more options for advancement. So for example, a Guardsman might start off being able to buy basic things like better Weapon Skill, the Dodge skill, and certain combat talents, as well as use his trusty lasgun. As he moves up, he unlocks better tiers of combat ability and skill advancement, better proficiencies with equipment, as well as greater influence with others. I find this makes it pretty exciting whenever you unlock a new rank – you feel like you’ve achieved something, and every time you spend XP you become visibly more competent.

Combat in Dark Heresy uses abstract movement and is intended to be fast-paced, deadly and crunchy. It seems intimidating at first, but all it takes is a good read to get the gist of it. The Dark Heresy GM Screen and Rogue Trader’s own are incredibly helpful, offering all the important combat info so you won’t ever forget it. But really, it comes down to remembering keywords and bonuses, for things like the properties of weapons, and certain tables like the hit location table. In combat, you can take a full action or two half actions each round. Half actions are most of what you’ll do. PCs have a limited amount of wounds. Dodging, Parrying and wearing armor can make you pretty damn survivable (if you can use them), but there’s no denying that a bolter can potentially do more damage to you than you have Wounds right off the bat. There’s also a few humorous, explosive critical hit tables. Combat has a bunch of options like aiming, full auto, semi-auto, takedowns, stunning depending on the weapons and talents that you have. Talents are kind of like the game’s Feats (the D&D concept) and improve upon or add new abilities.

The game is pretty scaleable – the PCs start out as bottom of the ladder fodder (yet one step above normal people, who are pretty much totally helpless) but at higher ranks they are legitimately kickass. That’s Dark Heresy though. In Rogue Trader and Deathwatch, you start out kickass and only get better. A starting Rogue Trader character is equal to a 5000 XP Dark Heresy character. Considering Dark Heresy characters start out with 400 XP, that’s a lot. There’s also the matter of equipment. A guardsman from an imperial world has D5+8 wounds, which’d normally be like 10 or 11. He is wearing Guard Flak Armor which gives him an Armor value of 4, and if he has decent toughness he’ll be able to reduce the damage he takes by it as well (let’s give a 30, so he tanks 3 additional). Guardsmen are pretty much the tanks of the starting acolyte world. If a Heavy Bolter catches him though it’ll do 2d10, Penetrate 5. If it rolls well, it can definitely kill him. But then again, Heavy Bolters aren’t something every heretic and scum has with them. They’re more likely to have weapons that aren’t “very rare.” Like the humble Stub Automatic with its 1d10+3 damage Penetration 0. Everyone can also buy Sound Constitution to get more wounds – if the Guardsman buys it 3 times he’ll have 14-15 wounds, which gives much better odds. The game allows you to scale the lethality of each situation as you want.

The equipment lists are enormous, too. The game only gets more cool stuff with each book. I think every GM should definitely consider the Inquisitor’s Handbook. It offers so much cool equipment and new options. The Radical’s Handbook is also a worthwhile investment for GM’s who want to give their players the option of going down heretical paths for power. Even if you don’t care for the Warhammer 40k universe, I think Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader might really change your mind about the wealth of roleplaying opportunities in the setting. There is just such a wealth of characters, enemies, equipment, and so many different worlds that the story possibilities are almost limitless.