House Rules - Gameplay

The following house rules will be extraordinarily important, as they involve actions or rulings that, if used and considered, will significantly increase your chances of survival and success.

Gameplay

KEY RULE!!
I love the other DH games I play, but I seriously can't stand how it takes 20+ minutes to resolve one round. I have tried out the battle system with my friends (had 3 others with me on OpenRPG) and we managed to complete 10 rounds in 10 minutes with great results and it made the action that much more intense. Since I know it can be done and most of us should understand the battle system by now, I will be enforcing a time limit here. Assuming you are paying attention, it shouldn't take you more than 10 seconds to see it is your turn and start rolling. Because of my style of play I do not multi-task when I play RPGs. I play one game at a time and put my attention into it. As a result I will always tell people when their turn is starting so that if they are paying attention they can immediately roll. You'll be amazed how fast we can fly. Essentially, each player will have roughtly 15-20 seconds to respond. If they fail to do so their character will default to the Full cover mode and their turn skipped. Combat is meant to be quick and easy, not 3/4th of the game, timewise. I intend to make it that way. Now, other the gameplay house rules...




Generally speaking there will ALWAYS be some level of cover around you unless I explicity state otherwise. It will range from 4 to 32 AP, depending on what you hide behind. I consider this AP to stack with your toughness and armor bonus, so if your chacter normally has a AP of 6 and gets behind something with an AP of 8, he has an effective AP of 14 to resolve any attacks that hit. In consideration of this rule, the following Move action has been edited

Tactical Advance
Whenever you take this option you move as per normal, up to your Full Move rate. Upon arrival at your destination however, you take one of two choices:
1) Full cover - You character hides the entirety of her body behind whatever cover provided and thus all body parts take the stacked AP bonus from any attack that must pass through the cover to hit her. A special fire action, Blind Spray is also available while in this type of cover.
2) Half cover - Your character hides her body and legs, givng those parts full cover. The head and arms however remain exposed. The advantage of this is the ability to make an actual shot/aim/awareness check or whatever as you have the ability to see down range. A hit location roll of 31 or higher strikes cover.
Notes: -It takes a half action to switch from one form of cover to another
-Additionally, all perception based rolls take a -10 penalty during the round of a Tactical advance as the character tries to focus on finding cover.

Blind Shot - Half Action
Similar to the Suppressing Fire action, the character attempts to fire blindly at his target. As the character still has some idea where the target is he only suffers a -20 to his BS. Any target that gets hit by semi-auto or automatic fire must take a Difficult (-10) Pinning check. Due to the blind nature of the shot, degrees of success result in any targets within 5m of the actual target receiving a bullet hit before the original target takes a second hit. If no such targets exist, then extra hits only occur every 2 degrees of success.
This is one of the few attack options that can be carried out twice in a row.


Group Fire
Sometimes, either through a particularly bad roll or catching the attention of the wrong crowd you will find yourself under fire by a considerable number of enemies. For example, 30 Orks. Rolling out 30 to hits and then any number of damage rolls would prove cumbersome and irritating. Therefore the following system is in place. When a group attacks, the base BS skill is the normal BS of that creature type. Then, every X number of individuals divided by a racial modifier would add to the BS hit chance, where X is determined by how many individuals are shooting at your character (not how many indivduals that might be shooting at various targets). Damage is then calculated by adding 1d10 to the weapons regular damage per degreee of success. The normal modifiers of darkness, distance and so on still apply.
Two examples:
30 Orks [normally 25 BS] with basic shoota pistols [1d10+2I]: 30/3 = 10 + 25 for 35 BS total. If the Orcs rolled a 15 and scored 2 extra successes they would roll [3d10+2I] damage. Obviously cover would be useful at this point.
30 Chaos Marines [normally around 40 BS] with Bolters [1d10+5X]: 30/1 = 30+40 for a 70 BS total. If they hit with a 15 they would roll [6d10+5X] damage. Unless you are behind plassteel you are probably meat. Fortunately I cannot imagine a situation where you would be up against 30 chaos marines. You'd have to try pretty hard, I imagine.

Counter charge
There is something truly sublime about rushing head on into combat with a charging enemy. Against enemies with the Frenzy talent (ex. ALL Orcs], when charged the enemy must roll a willpower test. On a failure they MUST draw their own melee weapon (even if just fists) and charge back at the approaching character. They cannot attempt to use their ranged weaponry until they have clashed with the charging character at least once.

Location Hit rolls
I will be using the actual rules in the game book to resolve hit location. This is done by flipping the numbers of the To Hit roll. This will allow me to make use of the hit location without having to wait for an additional roll.
ex. You roll a 15 and hit the target. Your hit location is therefore 51, meaning you hit the body.

Rule of Cool
Those who have played Whitewolf games will be aware of stunting. This is the use of explanations of your actions to gain bonuses to an attack. I like this rule. It gives an advantage to those who are taking the time to roleplay their actions rather than simply roll the dice. As DH is not as "epic" or "magical" as Whitewolf games I do not require the action to be epic or magical either. Simply a quick flourish to let me see that you are more than a robot rolling numbers. This is not a solique. It is maybe a sentence describing the action.
ex. "Mordechai cursed under his breath as he whipped out his knife and quickly parried the oncoming blow."
As a reward the bonuses will be either a +5 or a +10 to that one test. Don't argue with what I give you, as I will simply take the bonus away if I do. In accoradance with the KEY RULE, if I see you typing something I will presume your attention is on the game and thus not skip you. If you are still typing 40 seconds later I will then proceed to skip you.

Armor and Stealth
I am of the opinion that armor is innately counterproductive when attempting to stealth. Therefore the more you have the better the chances are of being detected. Your armor does NOT give you penalties to stealth rolls, but it does cause you to need to roll them more often.
A character with:
No Armor or Primitive of 1: Will only roll when actively attempting to evade someone or the story itself calls for it.
Armor between 1 and 3: Around 3-4 extra stealth rolls per session.
Armor between 3 and 5: Around 6-7 extra stealth rolls per session.
Armor between 6+: Whenever you see an enemy

The system has now been changed to reflect the games standards. Armor now simply places a penalty on move silent and concealment attempts as following:

Armor between 1 and 2: -0%
Armor between 3 and 4: -10%
Armor between 5 and 6: -20%
Armor 7+ and ANY Power Armor: -30%
Any item with the shocking or power field tag gives a -20%. This is cumulative with armor penalties.


Note: Failing a stealth roll does not immediately mean you are caught and are under attack. Rather it will mean that something is coming to investigate you. If your team can eliminate the threat or sucessfully evade the investigation then combat can be avoided. Active power fields and shock weapons are considered to fall under the 3-5 AP level.


CHEATING
I have GMed other games before and cheating is something that really irritates me. I take the time to balance the game and then I run into those who are so desperate to always win that they fudge the numbers...sometimes by a lot. My response to this is not to get angry and call them out. It is to cheat back, and as the GM trust me I can cheat better than any of you. There are two forms of cheating I will be on the watch for:

1) As you can't hide the dice from me I will not worry about your roll, but I will often keep an eye on the ability you are rolling against. IF I suspect you are fudging the numbers I will check an up-to-date copy of your character sheet. I really don't care if you say passed a roll with a 35 when you actually needed a 33. Errors happen. But if you are saying you passed a roll with a 70 and I see that you needed a 41 or below? I will cheat back and in ways you can't reasonably defend against. If you attempt to break the balance of the game, I will attempt to break your character.

2) On occassion I will ask for a copy of your character sheet. This is not to check for cheating. I am actually doing it to get an idea of how strong your character is so I can determine what sort of enemeis to throw at you. Again, a matter of balance. That being said, however, I will still have your old node and will do a cursory check. If I find you have 6 unaccounted for talents or 2000 more XP than you should have, I will simply resend you the node that I know is right and tell you that is the correct one. You will receive no XP that you have earned since the older node was updated effectively losing progress for your indiscretion. I will not punish people for minor discrepensides or errors. I will merely correct them and return the newer sheet intact. It really isn't hard to tell a cheater from a simple mistake, just so you all know.


I am making no accusations, only stating that this is important to me and getting it out ahead of time so there are no surprises. If you are inclined to fudge things, take this as a warning not to do so. At least not in a way that will bug me.



As a final note, because of my above stated attentiveness and fairly quick typing skill, I will respond very quickly to any questions or comments. As of such if I am being silent it is probably because I have given you time to talk something out or make a group decision. If I am AFK for whatever reason I will tell you all.

Update: 7/8/9

In consideration of how often tests fail by that slight amount when you REALLY REALLY don't want them to, the "Karma point" system will be adopted.

The rules will be simple. You will receive 15 Karma Points per game. Each point allows you to increase your skill by one for a single dice roll. This will be used when you find yourself close to your target roll, but not close enough. You may expend as many points on a single roll as you see fit. These can ONLY be used to pass a test. Not to make a failure less of a failure or prevent a botch.

Like Fate point usage you cannot employ karma points after you know the result of your failure.

EXAMPLE: Coppertop is attempting to re-route power to a comstations powergrid to get out a desperate communique of an incoming attack on their position. While in a normal situation he may have time to try again on a failure, the close press of the enemy makes "waiting and trying again later" an unfeesible option. Oh horror, oh dread, his characteristic was at 55 for this roll, and he rolled a 58. Under normal circumstances he is effectively out of time and will now probably have to figure something out reeeeeal quick before things go to hell quick. However, by expending 3 Karma points his characteristic temporarily jumps to 58 and he passes. He now has 12 Karma Points remaining for the game.

Due to some issues I have with the present system for boarding actions in ship-to-ship combat for RT (Either because it was misprinted, poorly worded or just a dumb mechanic, depending on the situation) I am making a slight change to the system

Boarding actions:

Normally, you can a +10 to the command test for ever 10 your Crew Population is over the enemies. This makes sense to me, as even if a destroyer runs into a cruiser, a destroyer with a full complement of crew has more men it can re-route from core ship functions to fight a battle, while a cruiser with fewer can't drag all of its menials out of the engine room as they are probably unskilled/untrained fighters and need to work the plasma generators.

The next element presented in the book is that if a ship has more hull points than the other, it receives another bonus from the 10 Crew Population difference. This is utterly dumb. How damaged a ship is shouldn't have an effect on how hard the crew fight. If anything you'd think that the ship with fewer Hull Points would fight harder because they want to get off their soon-to-be-sinking tub. Whatever the writers were thinking on this one, we shall ignore it.

Instead there will be a straight bonus applied to the relative sizes/types of ships boarding each other. For every size class one ship is above the other it gains +10% to its Command test. This represents how a larger ship, simply put, will have more people to fight and defend with than a smaller ship. This bonus applies only to the bigger ship and applies no penalties to the smaller. The size modifiers, from **"smallest" to "biggest" are as follows:

Transport
Raider/Destroyer
Frigate
Light Cruiser
Cruiser
Battle Cruiser - Probably won't run into this one anytime soon. At least on the enemy side.
Battleship - Definitely won't run into this one anytime soon. At least on the enemy side.

A quick example:
Ship A: Cruiser, Crew 70, Turret rating 1
Ship B: Frigate, Crew 90, Turret rating 1
Ship A and Ship B are boarding each other.

Ship A receives the following bonuses:
+0 for crew as its crew population is lower than Ship B.
+20 as a Cruiser is two ship categories larger than Ship B.
+10 for Turret Rating
Total: +30 to Command Test

Ship B receives the following bonuses:
+20 for having a Crew population at least 20 (but not yet 30) over Ship A
+0 for size modifier as it is smaller than Ship A.
+10 for Turret Rating
Total: +30 to Command Test


By this system there is some advantage to being a larger ship with a commensurately larger population. The modifiers are enough to give some edge to a larger ship that may have taken some Crew loss without making it easy picking for a transport that happened to get close enough to board with a full population.



*I put smallest and biggest in quotations as the ships size might actually be massive, even if it is considered a lower ship class. This mostly applies to transports. Some transports are as big as battleships, but most of their hull space is crammed with open-void cargo holds rather than dozens of of floors of components and personnel. As a result their superior mass does not imply the bonus that this House Rule intends to grant. If the transport happens to be carrying, oh say, an Imperial Guard Regiment or two in voidsman quarters (i.e. able to jump up and fight), I will probably up its ship class in regards to Boarding action size.

A few new adaptations will be House Ruled in to work with the new tone the game will be taking. Namely, as the game will be taking on some Rogue Trader elements (in the form of having a ship and having a certain level of freedom as to where you go), a few rules need to be worked in as this is still a Dark Heresy game under the auspices of the Inquisition.

So then, without further wait.
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Use of Lores

Common, Scholastic and Forbidden Lores are about to become much more important. Usually I would feed you enough information, plotwise, to figure out what you needed about a world or certain places to make decisions. Whether this came from battle reports, Inquisitors/Interrogators, dataslates, etc., you could use that and rely on lores only for little extra bits of information to help things out.

That is now at an end.

You will be flying around on a ship and largely without the information support network you once had. Any information you have will either come from what you find out in game OR through Lores. Obviously what you learn through games is limited to what you have time to track down. Therefore the various lore types will become much more useful.

As a result all Common Lore are available for elite purchase of 100 xp assuming you have Literacy. Whether through the reading of data crystals/books, sleep hypno-indoctrination or presence of an adept you can pick up any Common Lore.

Furthermore any Scholastic Lore that is directly related to what you do (career path) is available for elite buy of 300 xp. This doesn't mean it has to be somewhere in your career path, though that is included. Merely that it has to make sense that someone of your breeding would actually take interest in learning it. For example, there is no Scholastic Lore (Beasts) in the Guardsman paths, but it makes sense that they might take the time to learn about them in the off chance they need to identify, track and kill one. A scum might learn Scholastic Lore (Chymistry) to go along with their knowledge of poisons/drugs.

Finally, Forbidden Lore may be taken with an elite buy ONLY with the explicit permission of the GM AND with some sort of in game rationale to why you should have it. Basically this means that I will let you take an F. Lore if it is something I think your char has a handle on. F. Lore (Xenos) if you've taken a deeper-than-suggested look at the various types of xenos in the galaxy or gotten your hands on some bit of information (in whatever form it takes) that instructs you on such matters. Collecting such knowledge still carries the IC risks of heresy and the game mechanics risks of insanity and corruption points.



Because Lore will take such a forefront value in the game, I will be changing how it is rolled. *I* will roll any and all Lore rolls. Because there is less certainty involved without sources to back you up, the use of Lore rolls will reflect this. When you call for a Lore roll, you will tell me what you want rolled and whether or not to use a fate point if it doesn't pass. After that, I do the rolls.
If:
Standard Success: You'll get a basic idea of what you were looking for. It will at least clue you in on what is going on.
1 extra degree: A somewhat more specific idea of what you were looking for with an extra tidbit of information on the subject matter.
2 extra degrees: A specific idea of what information you were looking for. Extra information may be available upon request.
3 extra degrees and more: You, more or less, learn exactly what you want to know with additional information forthcoming as you require it.
Failure: You can't recall the information or it seems outside your realm of knowledge. How long it takes before you can try again is dependent on the degrees of failure.
Critical Failure: You succeed at a level of success equal to 1 extra degree. The problem? The information you get is wrong. There will be no indication that this information is incorrect.


That is the major stuff involving Lore. More will be forthcoming involving the use of endeavors and all that jollyness in the near future.

With the actual introduction of the RT rules into the DH game we are playing, I am going to smooth out how Acquisitions, Profit Factor and Endeavors are going to work their way into the game.

Rules on Acquisitions:

1) The system of using Profit Factor will now be included into the game. The payment of thrones to the players will ALSO continue. However, you will no longer receive a "monthly salary". How you collect thrones from this point out for your character is up to your own devices. I am not going to let you screw around for a year, flying between two calm worlds just to build up cash.

2) Because both systems of acquisition are in effect, they need to be differentiated in their capacity.
-The RT Acquisition system does the following: Let's you get access to items beyond the Very Rare quality and, more importantly, it lets you get access to items and equipment outside the scope of the DH ruleset, such as ship components, military units, other ships, etc.
Furthermore, when you buy an item that is consumed in use (such as ammo or actual food), the acquisition acquires "enough" of the item. Meaning so long as you don't abuse the stockpile by using it too often or giving it away too readily, it will always be assumed you have that kind of item somewhere in your ships hold.
-The DH Acquisition system does the following: You purchase items as you could in the original game. This is mostly useful when it involves getting items that might require a really high Profit Factor for the RT system, such as a powerfist. If you attempt to buy ammunition, you will acquire exactly as much ammo as you pay for. If you pay 32 thrones for bolt shells, you will get 2 shells, as opposed to "enough" as under the RT rules.

3) You will be able to make a number of RT Acquisitions as your teams highest Fellowship Bonus x 4. This number translate into "Acquisition Points". You spend Acquisition Points each time you ATTEMPT an acquisition, not merely when you succeed. The amount of Acquisition Points a particular item requires is based on its rarity, as seen on the following chart.

Difficulty Acquisition Points
Ubiquitous 1
Abundant 2
Plentiful 3
Common 4
Average 5
Scarce 6
Rare 7
Very Rare 8
Extremely Rare 9
Near Unique 10
Unique 11

Any modifiers that change the difficulty of the roll (such as making a Rare Item only Scarce) do not change the Acquisition Point cost, just how hard it is to acquire.



Profit Factor:

Profit Factor in terms of RT acquisitions is exactly the same. Whatever the total Profit Factor is, after bonuses or penalties, if you roll under it you acquire it.

Because we aren't an actual Rogue Trader operation, making all the money, contracts and dynasty building that they are, we will change the system ever so slightly.

Profit Factor will come from two sources. 1) Actual money/resources, 2) Sector Trust

1) Actual Money - This will be hard to increase as, again, your purposes are for the sake of Inquisition, not being business magnates. Only specific situations will result in this part increasing. However, because these resources are under the direct watch of the Sector Seat, the Inquisition and Necromundan agents (where most of the starting money comes from) its is very unlikely that misfortunes will affect it. Whatever level you raise it to will probably stay there unless you do something to screw it up.

2) Trust - Most of your future Profit Factor will come in this element. As you carry out tasks (Endeavors) for various powers they will be willing to assist you in more of your tasks as they come to decide you are a wise investment. RPly, this might be in tracking down supplies for you, selling you stuff at discounted prices, easily repaid loans, whatever. In terms of game mechanics it is an increase in your Profit Factor. This part of the Profit Factor is the opposite of the Actual Money type in terms of gaining and losing. It is the primary type of Profit Factor award you will receive for completing endeavors. It will also be readily lost to Misfortunes when you guys don't pull through on various tasks or random bad shit just happens to go down.

As for Misfortunes themselves, usually you'll be able to prevent the loss (whether Actual Money or Trust) by simply heading to the place that is causing the trouble and fixing it. Or just ignore it and get it back through completing a different endeavor. Your choice.



Endeavors:
I like the system they use. It fits pretty well with our system. It just needs a few changes.

1) I will decide what the Endeavor Scale (Lesser, Greater, Grand) is when you encounter the Endeavor. I won't tell you what the level is. It shouldn't be too hard to guess at, but I won't confirm it.

2) Rather than using the "Objectives" system of collecting points, you will simply complete the entirety of the task or you won't. I will be the ultimate judge as to whether or not an endeavor succeeded. Keep in mind, even if you don't get a reward in the form of Profit Factor for "failing to complete the endeavor" doesn't mean you didn't achieve anything. You did something that will affect the game, even if it was nothing at all.

3) Any component of a ship that adds achievement points will instead go towards being of active assistance to its related objective. For example, the "Temple Shrine to the God Emperor" will offer trained clerics for Creed objectives or access to advanced knowledge/lore of stuff like the Imperial Creed, Eccleisiarchy and so on.

4) Every time one of each Endeavor or 5 of the same kind is completed, you will get a fate point. This is automatic. Fate points can still be given out for other reasons. The reason for this is because there are quite a few RT abilities that require fate points to be used or burned to make effective use of them. So I am giving you easier access to FP's. However, fate points are now capped at 6.