I’m looking for something that plays like inquisitor. Gritty detailed combat that is tactical. Where your Decisions mater!
Coop ideally or one person gms.
Ideally each player would control very few figures (except the gm)
I want it to be more sorry focused to delve into 40k universe.
Personally, I would say that Inquisitor is ill-suited to the standard "Player-vs-GM" nature of a traditional RPG where everyone has a character and are collectively trying to thwart an evil scheme.
Inquisitor is inherently designed as a player-vs-player experience, and the best example is probably the fairly aggressive damage system that frequently hands out hefty penalties with two major assumptions in mind:
- In a Player-vs-Player system, each hit needs to matter, with plenty of granularity to have characters somewhere between full effectiveness and out of the fight. A "who runs out of HP first" system doesn't work well here.
- And if a character is heavily wounded, stunned or unconscious, the player will have other characters to use.
These things don't migrate well to Player-vs-GM play, as it means unnecessary bookkeeping for NPCs and PCs quickly losing effectiveness.
(An exception is when the PCs are robust and significantly outmatch the NPCs, such as Space Marines taking on traitor Guard, when it actually works very well, but more level fights don't work well).
Personally, the best descrition I have for Inquisitor is "Tabletop Improv Theatre". It's a genre of its own - a very rewarding genre, but still not quite anything else you might have played before.
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If you want players facing off against a GM, that's probably better handed to a dedicated RP like Dark Heresy or Wrath and Glory.
Also 3 published official campaign books too?! *drool*
I'm going to continue to sound negative here, but I don't hugely recommend them! They're okay as examples, but the scenarios and stories just don't hold up well against what I've seen out of the community. (Many of them are pretty empty and shoehorned in to make it longer).
edit: living rule book ftw, question: how do I tell what is new??
I believe the edited sections are in red.
I would also suggest checking out the standard community "house" rules, which can be seen on page 6 of this event pack:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/89b3z3amxezdm3e/2018+Abyss+Pack+V0-1.pdfThese add in more opportunity for non-combat interactions (it uses artistic licence to speed up conversation, making talking a viable alternative to shooting), removes a couple of rules that had nasty exploits, and tries to make psychic powers slightly fairer.
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The other alternative, but unofficial, is my Inquisitor Revised Edition project:
http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2387.0This is a work in progress that attempts to update the Inquisitor rules with more interactive gameplay and fixing some clunkier bits, while maximising back compatibility. The main overhaul is the close combat system, which I'm exceptionally pleased with. (I was aiming for "well choreographed movie fight scene", and with some surprisingly simple changes to the original rules, it does it beautifully, with characters making maximum use of their environment).
Any tips for balancing encounters and making characters not too beardy?
Best advice?
Well, bearing in mind that I see Inquisitor as a player-vs-player game, the main balancing mechanism is good intentions. It wouldn't be fun if the other player(s) brought overpowered characters and steamrollered you, and there's no glory in "winning" by being more powerful in the first place (but there would be significant embarassment in losing!), so try to make your characters fair.
I've written quite a long treatise on my take on the "Conclave Standard"... which isn't really a standard, but more of a catch-all term for guidelines about creating characters who aren't invincible supermen, and who have strengths, weaknesses and the tension inherent in being able to fail:
https://carthax.fandom.com/wiki/Conclave_StandardI'm afraid I've forgotten which articles specifically, but they were previously hosted by GW before being re-hosted by Marco - hopefully he'll notice this thread and fill us in at some point
Alas, I can't really remember which of the Fanatic articles have good campaign writing advice, but I can say that the 2002 Annual reprints some WD articles that have some reasonable advice about structuring campaigns.