Corruption is gained far more easily as the players have the eye of the chaos gods, and so are more prone to mutation and divine "gifts". While Corruption was already a mechanic of the other settings, Black Crusade makes it absolutely crucial.
The game also introduces two new mechanics: Infamy & Corruption. A *great* GM should show, not tell, by introducing the characters, repeatedly, into situations where the skills they lack would be very useful/helpful. Staying Unaligned keeps everything from getting expensive, but it locks you out of getting the XP discounts and the other bonuses of being aligned.Īt least in the previous rulesets the restriction of available skills at each level forced the creation of an evenly balanced character of his type a good Black Crusade GM should be reminding their players of the dangers of forgetting to remain balanced, unless of course they are running a very focused campaign, such as a non-stop combat-filled war. For example, if you start aligned to Khorne, it's cheaper to enhance your melee skills with more Khorne-aligned purchases, doesn't really change purchases for toughening up with Nurgle-aligned skills (since Khorne and Nurgle hate each other the least), and gaining social skills or magic and knowledge skills cost a surcharge (since Khorne really hates Slaanesh and Tzeentch). Once they reach a certain threshold (every multiple of 10 of Corruption), they tally up the score for each deity and realign themselves if they started to favor one alignment over their previous, and this provides XP discounts and penalties towards future purchases (at least until it's time to recheck alignment). Knowledge and social skills are often overlooked by the players because they have metagamed their own knowledge of the setting and haven't even thought of purchasing those skills.Īlso, talents and skills are unaligned or aligned to a specific Chaos God.
Warhammer 40k dark heresy physical fighter adept professional#
On the other, the problem this causes is it actively promotes and rewards powergaming and savvy players will completely ignore useless skills and talents (in their own opinion) to give themselves the quickest advantage.įor example: Skills & Talents such as Swift/Lightning Attack, Step Aside, Dodge +20 and Blademaster are all available late in the character development in the previous settings but can all be immediately purchased as soon as the player has the available Exp to spend on them (of course, this implies these talents should have more prerequisites than they do.) which can make combat situations much more difficult to manage for a GM, and those PCs will also likely be so ignorant of commonplace lore and professional skills that they may not get by in social interactions very well. On the one hand, it gives the players the freedom to create their own character rather than being bound by limited options each level. This is both a good and a bad thing when you really look into it. It also introduced the class-less system of "Archetypes" where no skill is restricted from a player because of their class. It also made parrying its own skill, rather than something a player could "just do", as well as changing the nature of talents like swift/lightning attack which put a bit more thought into how a player can use their actions and reactions each turn. This can go very right, or oh so wrong.īlack Crusade still uses the same fundamental d100 system that the previous three RPG settings use, though tidied it up considerably by consolidating similar skills like all the stealth or athletics based skills into just one skill rather than two or three. One of its greatest features is encouraging competition between players, often by making the personal goals of their characters mutually exclusive, or counterproductive to the mission, thus mirroring the climate of a Chaos warband.
Alignment often leads to extremely interesting role-playing as well. The Chaos Space Marines are even more powerful, having the benefits available to human heretics as well as the hard combat capabilities of space marines, and weaponry ranges from rune swords, to daemonic bolters, to reaper autocannons. Even the Human characters in Black Crusade are considerably more powerful than those from previous games, able to receive powerful mutations and game-changing blessings. This is the exact opposite of the earlier books in every way. This is for the RPG, not the apocalypse-style crusades by Chaos.īlack Crusade is the fourth Fantasy Flight Games Warhammer 40,000 Role-Playing Game, and its main focus is the forces of Chaos, like cultists and the Traitor Legions.