Dark Heresy: Inquisitor's Handbook

December 16, 2008 No comments

I was fortunate enough to receive the Dark Heresy Inquisitor’s Handbook in the mail as a gift from Bill V., one of the Dire Paladins. He apparently enjoyed my Warhammer 40k/ Star Wars mashup campaign idea, pointed out that the Inquisitor’s Handbook had rules for Jump Packs (which I needed for my Boba Fett analog character), and bought it for me. Thanks, Bill!

While it’s billed as “The Ultimate Player’s Guide”, this is not a stand-alone players handbook. It’s a companion piece to the core rulebook, offering additional player character types, new weapons and gear, and new skills and rules. Most of it is tied into the game’s default setting, the Calixis Sector. Rather than creating a character from a generic Imperial world, or Feral world, and so on, there is information on worlds in the Sector that the character can be from, and how it affects their abilities. There are new origins for characters, including Noble Born, Mind Cleansed (wipe, start over!) and orphans raised in the Schola Progenium. There are backgrounds that can be purchased, allowing characters to have been at famous battles and events or members of various organizations and societies. There’s a new Career Path, the Adepta Sororitas. There are new paths for the existing careers from the core rulebook as well.

The book introduces Elite Advance Packages. These are swerves from the rigid career path structure that the character can pick up based on events, approved or bestowed by the gamemaster. This include the Nascent Psyker (you suddenly develop powers), The Cult of theRed Redemption (you join an extremist cult and get new abilities from them), and my favorite, Cybernetic Resurrection (you come close to death, or die, but they rebuild you – *cough*DarthVader*cough*).

Weapons, Armour and Gear are broken up into section by world type. Feral worlds have a different tech level and economy than, say, a Forge world or a War Zone. There’s also a section on stuff only available to Inquisitors. This layout took some getting used to, and I can see it being a pain if you have to look something up on the fly during play and can’t remember what world type something comes from. You’d have to look up every weapon section to find a particular gun, every armour section to find a particular helmet, and so on. The upside is that the appendices contain collected weapon tables containing everything in this cook and the core book. That doesn’t help with descriptions and pictures, though, only stats. Page numbers would be nice, or an index for weapons/armour/gear.

There are nice fluff sections on Religion and Superstition in the Imperium, as well as Life as an Acolyte. Included at the end of the latter is an Expanded Skills section, which gives additional uses for the skills presented in the core book.

Overall, a good supplement that adds value to the game. Like the core book, it’s got a lot of crunch that’s infused with the flavor of the setting so one reinforces the other. I still think that it’s the kind of game that would be great as a player because of all of the crunch and character options, but for the same reason it would be a gamemaster’s nightmare. I’d like to play, but if I ever ran it I suspect I’d be winging it and fudging roles most of the time to support the story of the mechanics. But that’s me.

Buy Dark Heresy: The Inquisitor’s Handbook