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Slaunyeh

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Posts posted by Slaunyeh

  1. Posted

    I definitely think plasma weapons should be fearsome weapons, and I like the 3d10 damage. The pen could probably do with being lowered a bit though.

     

    Just to repeat what everyone else has said. :)

  3. Posted

    Reaching a new bonus value (40, 50, 60, etc.) was always where you got a serious increase. When doing melee damage, there was no difference in having 30 or 39 strength, but when you hit 40 it suddenly jumped.

    I don't understand why this is consistently ignored.

     

    Uhm, because we're talking about characteristics tests, not melee damage rolls? Yeah, sure, Strength bonuses and (in particular) Toughness bonuses were really important, but that's not even remotely what I thought this discussion was about.

     

    I thought we were talking about Degrees of Success.

     

    Anyway, this is getting pretty stupid. I'm out.

  5. Posted

    I think the Mystic role kinda stands out because it actually gives you some unique capabilities that may or may not make sense in combination with your background. I mean, I'd have trouble approving a tech priest psyker. On the other hand, a skitarii recruit who fled his superiors and was taken in by a local Inquisitor after developing signs of psychic potential might be cool. So it's really a case-by-case thing, but the Mystic can be more troublesome than most of the roles.

     

    IMHO!

     

    (that said, an unsanctioned forge worlder makes more sense than most. I don't believe that Forge Worlds pay tithe to Terra. If anything, they pay tithe to Mars.)

  6. Posted

    Your previous complaint, that we were responding to was, and I quote: "It's not a techpriest if it doesn't start with any cool augmetics." To which we pointed out that the Adeptus Mechanicus actually get more "cool augmetics" than the old Tech Priest.

     

    Now you are arguing that the new Adeptus Mechanicus role isn't identical to the old Tech Priest and, well, that's true. It's not. I haven't seen anyone claim that this system is, by default, better because you get a mechanical arm. Except for you implying that mechanical arm = better.

     

    You do have a point. You can make some slightly odd combinations in this system, like an Adeptus Mechanicus tech priest guy (ie. starting with the mechandendrite) with the Mystic role. That's one of the flaws of giving the players more options, and should be the duty of the GM to disallow any combinations he doesn't think makes sense for his take on the setting.

     

    The alternative is to make a long list of illegal combinations and imply that you're a bad GM if you think any of them are cool.

  9. Posted

    For me, while its fun to debate and argue all manner of rules minutiae, and other such topics, the glaring ommission, the mega-elephant in the room with the whole 40k RP line is the almost total lack of exploration, exposition, or explanation of Imperial society.

    We are still locked into the wargame handwavium 'there is only war' stuff that does a disservice to the roleplaying game (except OW of course).

     

    Not to mention that we're reminded constantly that it could vary wildly from planet to planet, so discussing Imperial society can be seen as pointless.

     

    Personally, I'd like to have some basic guidelines to follow. Variation only makes sense if you have a baseline to vary from. It'd be very nice if FFG would take some time to explore the more civilian sides of the setting. (And if it differs from the vision in my head, I can always change it :P)

  10. Posted

    I used to be strongly opposed to the requisition system in the newer games, as opposed to the standard monetary system in Dark Heresy, but I have, since then, come to realize that the requisition/acquisition/whichever system actually represents my vision of the 40k setting much better than an actual thrones economy ever did.

     

    (disclaimer: the following is, obviously, bound to vary wildly from world to world. And also only represent my personal take on the 40k setting.)

     

    On the average Imperial World, I don't really see much of a practical economy. Basically, citizens are assigned jobs from the Adeptus Administratum and are probably also assigned living quarters automatically. You don't really get paid, you're issued 'food stamps', etc., to cover essentials. If you need something beyond what the Imperium assigns to you, you have to trade for it. There aren't any real stores anywhere because people aren't supposed to randomly decide to go shopping. If you need something, you put in a request at the Administratum, and if you're lucky your grandkids might receive the item ( :)). There definitely wouldn't be 'weapon stores' where you go to shop for new guns or ammo. The concept of temporary housing (like hotels etc.) is probably next to non-existing, except possibly near spaceports and such (possible not even there. Interstellar tourism is pretty uncommon outside of shrine worlds).

     

    This makes being new guys infiltrating an unfamiliar Hive city really friggin challenging, if you don't have any local support.

     

    Obviously, there's also bound to be a teeming underworld where you probably can acquire guns or ammo, find a bar or even a grocery store. The underworld, I imagine, is much more likely to have its' own home-made economy, from bottle caps to bullets, used to trade for items (which, again, makes it difficult - but probably a fair deal easier - to integrate into as an outsider).

     

    I only really see Throne Gelt being used commonly in the higher echleons of the Imperium. The planetary governor might worry over the value of goods being produced on his world, or the size of the upcoming tithe, but it's not something the common man ever has to think about.

     

     

    Anyway. Just some musings I've been chewing on for a while now. Might be slightly off topic, but the topic reminded me of it, and I thought I'd share. Sorry. :)

  11. Posted

    On the topic of sanctioning, it's actually my impression that the Sanctioning isn't really about your abilities to channel your powers. It's about willpower. Every psychic mind is basically a doorway from the warp into reality, every psyker is a daemonic invasion just waiting to happen. Those that pass sanctioning would be those psykers who have been tested and proved strong enough to minimize that risk or, at the very least, be strong-willed enough that they can hold off the Daemon for the split second it takes to slit their own throat.

     

    Essentially, I see the process of Sanctioning as these people doing everything in their power to break you. If they fail, you pass. If not, well, too bad. Sanctioning probably involves learning a few litanies to ward off evil and such, but it's not really psyker training. It's not really about being good or bad at your powers.

     

    At least, that's my take.

    knasserII reacted to this

  15. Posted

    That's only an inconsistency when you assume there's some inherent meaning in beating the target number by the same percentage. There isn't, it just seems to you that way because the old system worked like that.

     

     

    "That's only inconsistent if you think it's inconsistent'.

     

    Well, yes. :P

     

    The thing is. If your target number is 40, you will get one extra DoS at 39, and a second extra DoS at 29. If your target number is 49, you get one extra DoS at 39 and a second extra DoS at 29. Basically, the system makes it really difficult to gauge just how much better a given stat is. A BS 50 is significantly better than a BS 49. While a BS 49 is obviously better than BS 44, exactly how much better is pretty difficult to gauge (hint: it's less significant than the 5% improvement might suggest).

     

    In the old system, all advances were linear and the benefit of increasing a characteristic was easily predictable. You may or may not prefer one system over the other, but you can't claim that the new system is more intuitive.

     

    What I'm questioning (and I realize it's unlikely that I'll ever get an answer) is what the new system is supposed to accomplish compared to the old system. I suspect the purpose of the new system is "same outcome as the old system, but easier to calculate" in which case I find it to be a monumental failure. Of course, it's quite possible it's trying to do something completely different. I'm just not sure what.

  16. Posted

    Wait, that test is inconsistent. You said that having a low 40s is better than high 40s, but then in your example you use a low 40s target (40), and a high 30s target (39). If you use a high 40 as the target(49), and roll a 39, you get 2 DoS, same as if the target number was low 40s. 

     

    Nah, the test just wasn't showing what you thought it did.

     

    But this was kinda my point. If the roll is successful (say, the 39 above) whether your target number (let's say BS) is 40 or 49 is irrelevant. In the old system, a 49 is always better than a 40.

     

    What the test was trying to illustrate, was how If your target is in the low 40s, your chance of a successful roll being of a lower ten is higher than if your target is in the high 40s. And rolling a lower ten than the target number is all that matters.

     

    Eg. if you roll a 37 against a target of 40, you have 2 DoS. If you roll a 46 against a 49, you have one DoS. In both cases, you beat the target number by three, but you don't get the same DoS.

     

    That's the inconsistency. A higher target is, of course, better in the sense that there's a better chance of beating it, but I think the problem with this system is that it's really unintuitive what's good and what's bad. In the old system, "higher stat is better" was the simple truth. That's not the full story in this system.

    Luddite reacted to this

  17. Posted

    The 'glitch' as I see it, is that the DoS is somewhat unpredictable. I get that the probabilities of success are what they are, but that doesn't change that this system behaves weirdly when you cross the '10 threshold'. Basically, having a target number in the low 40s is better than having a target number in the high 40s. If you roll against 40, rolling a 39 gives you two degrees of success. Against 39, rolling a 30 gives you one degree of success.

     

    That's the kind of inconsistency that makes the mathematician in me want to scream. :P

     

    I still find the old system both more intuitive, and more mechanically sound. Again, I get what they are trying to do, but this is a really inelegant attempt.

    Luddite reacted to this

  18. Posted

    O(2) is better than O(X)

     

    I dunno, maybe if you're pushing for that agenda. The way I see it, the new system is "okay, so I roll a 27. So that's 2. The target number was what, 63? So that's 6. That gives me four, no wait, five degrees of success." vs. "Okay, I roll a 27 against 63. That gives me a degree at 27, 37, 47 and 57."

     

    The complexity of the math is pretty minuscule in both cases, and arguably slightly less so in the old system (assuming you grew up with a base 10 number system). In return, you get some pretty quirky probabilities. I get that the new system is trying to do the same thing as the old system in an easier way, only it doesn't strike me as any simpler, and it introduces some new inconsistencies.

     

    I don't think it accomplishes what it's trying to do, any better than the old system (especially if it's not supposed to accomplish anything new.)

  19. Posted

    I still think it's a bit weird that the degrees of success depends on the target number. If the target number is 40, rolling a 39 nets you two degrees of success. If the target number is 41, rolling a 40 to hit is one degree of success. That's the kind of inconsistency I don't really see any point in introducing. What was wrong with the old system?

    Luddite reacted to this

  22. Posted · Edited by Slaunyeh

    I thought one of the defining characteristics of the bolter was the ridiculously loud sound it makes, so I'd expect it to be really high. The Autogun seems okay to me, though in all honesty it's a bit abstract for me so I really have no idea. I know I used to live a fair distance from a military training facility, and you could certainly hear the ra-ta-ta on a quiet day. That was probably at least 10 kilometers.

     

    Lasguns, far as I know, do make a really loud crack when you fire them, so that's probably okay (I've heard it described as a crack of thunder).

     

    I'm not sure how it's described, but I assume these ranges are "huh, someone, somewhere, is firing an autogun right now" and not "oh hey, someone fired an autogun 9.5km away in that direction." Assuming very little background noise.

     

    I do like that there's a chart for this though.

  23. Posted

    Thing is that everyone starts at rank 1 so apparently everyone has had some training.

     

    Unless I've read it completely wrong, I think that's exactly what rank 1 in a skill doesn't mean. Rank 1 is unskilled/no training. I suspect the primary reason that untrained starts at rank 1, is so it can fit neatly into the "current rating x modifier" formular to calculate costs. If it started at 0 ranks, you'd need a special exception for training new skills.

  24. Posted

    Aside from the "wait, my sanctioned psyker doesn't have a Psy rating?" issue, I think it would work fine. Maybe a custom card for the psyker combination/types you want to make common occurances.

     

    My only issue would be with the "unsanctioned psyker" character. Being unsanctioned can really complicate your life and is not something I would personally enjoy having assigned 'randomly'.

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