Gamebook
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Posts posted by Gamebook
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To answer some queries.
Penetration and armour values are slightly higher across the board. Lasguns and autoguns I've given a penetration of 2, to differentiate them more from laspistols and autopistols which still have 0 penetration. In real life assault rifles are much better at punching through body armour than pistols. Marine power armour is now 12 on the body and 10 on the limbs/head though to counteract this.
Armour and cover makes a drastic difference to survivability since damage is now only ever rolled on a single D10. Power armour can reduce the roll by -8 or more for many hits. If the roll is reduced to 0 or below by armour then no damage effect is applied at all. A marine would have to make a really bad set of dice rolls to take serious damage from a lasgun, or any damage at all. A lascannon beam hit is very likely death, but that has always been the case in all 40K rule systems.
A lasgun is an average Strength weapon, under my system it has a Strength of 50. When used to shoot an ordinary Toughness 30 unarmoured human it has about a 50% chance to disable or kill them on a hit. Marines under my system have a Toughness of at least 60 (I have abolished Unnatural Toughness). Other weapons have proportional values, from boltguns at Strength 75 to lascannons at Strength 140.
This system is indeed brutal, with a chance of dying to every hit. Small arms fire is not particularly dangerous to a marine though, and Fate can be used as well.
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Doing the sisters of battle with Deathwatch rules is an interesting idea. Deathwatch has extra combat rules, principally cohesion, squad and solo abilities that don't feature in Dark Heresy. Using the rules for devising your own chapter you could spec out the sisters of battle. The sisters themselves are divided into large organisations called Orders, each of which has its own heraldry, leaders and culture in much the same way as a space marine chapter.
In terms of abilities the sisters are of course only ordinary humans, just well-trained humans. It is a universal feature of their rules, both WH40K:TT and Dark Heresy, that they get special abilities from their faith in the Emperor. Their equipment is very similar to what the marines use, except that it tends to be smaller. I would remove all the movement/agility penalties and size increase that power armour normally imposes as Angel pattern armour is very compact, but in turn there is no black carapace interface or strength boost.
In order to reduce the workload reuse Deathwatch rules as much as possible. Battle sisters have a number of roles similar to the space marines. Battle sisters, Celestians and Dominion are all equivalent to Tactical, Retributors to Devastators, Seraphim to Assault, Sisters Hospitaller to Apothecaries. The sisters do not deal with technology or psykers so have no equivalent of Librarians or Techmarines.
In roleplaying terms the sisters of battle do not actually like or trust the space marines. They are aware of the existence of the Horus Heresy and the Traitor Marines and hold all marines in suspicion. They also differ in religious beliefs, and at times in the past there has been bloodshed between sisters and marines over matters of faith. The sisters are some of the few people in the Imperium who are not in awe of the astartes.
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Yeah, although by Imperium standards those vessels are intrasystem shuttles, defence monitors and attack craft. Imperial frigates and capital ships are like spaceborne cities. Deck plans for smaller vessels I agree though are more likely to be of practical use in a game.
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I've never been happy with the damage rules for WH40K RPG's. The way you just roll a fistful of dice directly for damage has never sat well with me. It doesn't match up with the main Warhammer 40K wargame rules. This is my version:
Instead of every weapon having its own unique damage, weapons have a Strength value which determines how much damage they do.
Whenever a character is hit they make an opposed Toughness test against the Strength of the hit. If the test is failed then 1D10 damage is inflicted, with +1 damage to the roll for each degree of failure. Some weapons may have this damage roll modified. This damage is reduced by armour in the normal way.
Wounds no longer soak damage. Instead when a character takes damage they roll directly on the Critical Damage tables and apply the result. They ALSO deduct the damage taken from their wounds total. If a character's wounds value is reduced to 0 they collapse unconscious in the same way as for fatigue. Once they come round they have 1 wound and take 1 level of fatigue. If a character is bleeding when they fall unconscious they die of blood loss.
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Actually even given submarine levels of crew density a standard 3km heavy cruiser works out to have a crew of over 3 million. A sub's smaller crew complement is balanced by it's much smaller size. A sub the size of a battleship would actually have the crew complement of a battleship, maybe even slightly more. Remember that size increases by the cube when we are talking about solid objects. So take the proportional increase in length and cube it to get the number you need to multiply the crew by.
Example:
Imperial Heavy Cruiser 3km / submarine 107m = 3000/107 = the cruiser is approx 28 times as long.
Assuming the two vessels are roughly similar in shape (a long tube) then cube it 28x28x28 = 21952.
An Imperial Heavy Cruiser thus has the volume of maybe 22000 submarines. Multiply 22,000 by the sub crew complement of 140 and we get 3,080,000.
Even a 1.5km Imperial Frigate would have a crew compliment of some 380,000 (1/8th the volume of an Imperial Cruiser, so 1/8th the crew).
The crew figures for 5km battleships get truly impressive. It works out to well over 14 million using the above assumptions. If you assume a ship a staggering 8km then the crew complement would be a mind boggling 58 million.
Personally I say go with these huge figures, they fit in with the sheer massiveness of 40K. If it's not overblown to ridiculous proportions then it has no place in 40K. This setting is meant to be more extreme than any other. In any case it's not as if our own world hasn't built thousands of examples of insanely huge death machines for real.
Artificer armour special features
in Deathwatch House Rules
Posted
On page 163 of the core rulebook it mentions that artificer armour may have special features, but then doesn't give any rules for them. So I thought I'd write some up.
Roll once on the following table. If an artificer suit has a special feature then it only receives one roll on table 5-12 Power Armour History.
Master Suit Features
1-2
Automated Fibre Re-Weaving: The suit can repair itself. If the suit's environmental seal is breached it seals back up in 1 round, and if AP is lost it repairs 1 point every minute. If the suit sustains disabling damage to its Strength or movement bonus this has a 10% chance of being repaired every minute.
3-4
Onboard Medi-Systems: The suit incorporates a medical suite that can even perform surgery on its occupant. The suit has the Medicae skill and a Narthecium with a total +50 bonus, and can take one action using the skill per round. This can be done even while the marine is active and fighting.
5-6
Hexagrammic Wards: The suit provides a +20 bonus to Tests made to resist psychic effects and reduces the AP of psychic attacks by -4 (to a minimum of 0).
7-8
Machine Spirit: The suit can operate itself, aiding its wearer. The wearer receives a +5 bonus to WS, BS, Agility and Perception. If the suit's wearer is rendered unconscious or helpless the suit can carry him to safety, even fighting off enemies while it does so. The suit has WS, BS, Strength, Agility and Perception of 30.
9-10
Augur Array: The suit has advanced sensors and target processing cogitators. It grants a +10 bonus to all attack rolls, all weapons wielded by the wearer are +1 AP and their strength +5, and the wearers effective Rank for calculating Cohesion is increased by 1.