Vehem2
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Posts posted by Vehem2
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Just looking for a quick "Sanity Check" here - can anyone see any obvious issues with the following for a group looking to be a little more flexible in the use of Squad Modes? Whilst it reduces the emphasis on pre-planning and the importance of selecting the most appropriate Oath, it does still penalise a poor decision due to the costs to Cohesion.
Flexible Warfare
You may activate Squad Mode Abilities not available to your current Oath, but doing so requires a Challenging (+0) Tactics Test (Assault Doctrine for Attack Patterns, Defensive Doctrine for Defensive Stances) and you must pay double the normal activation cost in Cohesion. If the test is failed, the Action is still spent, but the Cohesion cost is not paid.
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Calonnau said:
The issue I’m having is how much clips of standard ammunition should cost. I know the Errata says that in general a character should have 3 clips per weapon, but I think it’s likely players will want to requisition more (especially if they think they are going to be facing a long or combat-heavy mission). How much should be charged in requisition points per extra clip?I suspect this will come down to the weapon and how gritty you want the mission to be. A lot of GMs run weapons as being "infinite ammo unless I say otherwise" (i.e. if ammo-restraint is a factor for the current mission, they'll be briefed as such and have to plan accordingly).
For a general campaign running a more realistic ruleset (ammo tracking etc), 1 Requisition for 2 extra clips should cover bolters and other basic weapons, with 1 per clip for Special/Heavy Bolter/Missile Launcher and 2 per clip for the more exotic heavy stuff. This way allows them to plan for a little extra sustainability, but discourages carrying huge amounts of ammo for no good reason.
The other way to go if they're planning for a long, hard battle is to allow them to requisition an Ammo Cache. 20 Requisition for a number of large ammo crates with enough spare ammo to keep them going. The crates are bulky enough to make moving them under combat conditions impractical, but if they're stashed inside a Bastion or in a bunker on an Aegis Line, they may be a vital source of mid-mission refills. This is especially true if you're throwing waves of attacks at them or if they're facing a Last Stand situation. The crates contain enough ammo to refill all weapons up to Distinguished rank indefinitely, as well as a healthy supply of Frag/Krak grenades and other standard issue consumables. Of course, if the Ammo-Dump were to come under fire (pretty heavy fire, given this is an Astartes Ammo Crate - not a gunpowder keg), it could provide for some interesting moments of its own.
[S]ir[B]ardiel reacted to this -
The only thing I would add is that if you were to consider buying a supplement to support this, you'd likely want "Blood of Martyrs" rather than the Inquisitor's Handbook or Ascension. It's more specifically what you're looking for - I'll give a quick rundown of the contents below.
Chapters…
- "A Million Worlds, one Emperor" - details of the Imperial Faith, including Saints and Saint Worship - mostly just relevent fluff
- "Paths of the Righteous" - seems to be mostly for Ministorium and related careers - probably not that useful
- "Brides of the Emperor" - specifically covers SoB characters with 7 specialities, including those mentioned above. Also includes a Sidebar with suggestions for using them in Deathwatch or Rogue Trader campaigns (in terms of power balance)
- "Faith and Fury" - faith powers.
- "Reliquary" - relics and specialized bolt/flame weapons, plus armour
- "Ecclesiarchal Campaigns" - themes and advice for running campaigns featuring Sisters
Of that - 5 Chapters seem useful to Deathwatch and the rest of it just makes life a lot easier in the long run. Seems to be up for $32 on Amazon (or £26 if you're on my side of the pond).
One thing it doesn't cover however is how they'd interact with Deathwatch Squad modes - though you could fairly easily construct a few Oaths of their own, or just apply the equivalent speciality restrictions for Tactical/Battle Sister, Assault/Seraphim etc. Alternatively, if you have a few each of Sisters and Astartes, you could rule that they're allied, but use significantly different tactics - give the Astartes their Squad Mode and the Sisters their Faith Powers and keep the two separate - Boys vs Girls style.
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Gamebook said:
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.
One or two issues, though some might be fixable with some scaling/tweaking.
First off - I'd assume penetration is still present at the current values (no changes to armour values, so no changes to penetration needed)? If not, bolters become just as lethal as lascannons.
Secondly, in the basic game, you don't "roll on the Critical Damage table", you build up critical damage over time and apply the effect from the table. Rolling directly means a 20% chance of death everytime you take damage (30% for the head). This is suitable only for a seriously "gritty" campaign - something where you want being shot to be a really big deal. It'd work for modern day spy or low-action crime RPGs, but it will probably result in masses of rerolled characters and a massive recruitment drive being needed by the Ordos Xenos.
Thirdly - what sort of Toughness test/Strength values are we talking about? Should it be reasonably easy to pass (therefore they ignore most hits) or more challenging (in which case they'd be taking a lot of chances at death via the critical tables)?
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Basically the original system takes the Strength vs Toughness part and makes it a "one cancels the other" - if you're stronger than they are tough, you deal more damage. Also bear in mind that the errata dramatically changes the damage values for a lot of common weapons (mostly bolt weapons) which changes the dynamic considerably (i.e. Heavy Bolter is no longer the ultimate weapon).
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Looks a solid option if you're wanting hordes to be more effective vs fields, though to be fair the multiple attacks that hordes throw out mean that it's more likely for one or two of them to sneak through anyway. What is the aim of the change? Is there a specific combination of field/abilities that is proving unbalanced?
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I've been toying with the rules again, looking to make the Renown rewards more tactile for the players and to negate the need to make all mission objectives easy to determine in the "blind scenarios" (where the players must discover plot elements before they are able to determine or attempt to complete an objective). Feedback appreciated.
The Issues to be addressed
First issue - the "One for all and all for one" approach to Primary/Secondary/Tertiary objectives. Needing to complete all objectives to receive recognition means that in more complex missions, missing out a less obvious objective (or believing it to be complete when it's actually more complicated - tricksy Tau…) turns your glorious and triumphant return to the Watch Station into a debriefing where your Captain grumpily points out "you missed a spot…"
Second issue - Rites of Battle. The fact that the suggested reward for suffering a "terrible wound" in order to save a battle brother is +2 Renown promotes a certain degree of "jumping in front of bullets" and calls of "that could have killed you!" - at times with multiple brothers making the jump, hoping to take the wound for the glory of the Emperor. Likewise, the potential for "defeating a numerically superior foe without firing a shot" granting +1-3 Renown does lead to rather a lot of pre-emptive shouting at the enemy - hoping they'll run away - rather than just getting down to blowing away the heretics with good ol' bolterfire. In short - the fact that these rewards can potentially add more Renown for a single scene than you typically would receive for completing a mission in full skews the balance rather. Having the Ultramarine stop the Space Wolf and Dark Angel from squabbling every few missions is not worthy of as much reward as completing all your Primary Objectives (though both are +1 Renown according to the tables).
Third issue - Oath of Glory. What do all characters want in the early game? Access to the cool toys in the armoury. What's the quickest way to get there? Oath of Glory. Every. Mission. Always.
The Proposed Solution
Bigger numbers. This allows for more granularity. A few points awarded for minor achievement is less of an issue when the goal is further away.
First - all Renown Requirements for all gear, honours, advanced specialities and anything else listed where it's used as a prerequisite are multiplied by 10 across the board.
Second - mission objectives are awarded renown individually. A single Primary Objective is typically worth 5 Renown, a single Secondary Objective is typically 3 Renown, whilst Tertiary Objectives are 1 Renown each.
Third - taking inspiration from Rites of Battle's approach, failure should not be tolerated. Any Primary Objective that is failed reduces the Mission Award by 5 Renown. Secondary Objectives are by nature less important and semi-optional - failure to complete one reduces the Mission Award by 1 Renown. Tertiary are almost entirely targets of opportunity and do not result in penalty if missed.
Fourth - using these values as baselines so that the players know what to expect, you can tweak the awards to suit your mission. Maybe the two Primary Objectives for a certain scenario aren't entirely equal - one is slightly more Primary than the other. Maybe one is simply more glorious - slaying the Chaos Lord in his throne room is definitely going to be more widely reported than the fact you got the data-core back in one piece, though both would be Primary objectives… In contrast - perhaps one of the Objectives is absolutely essential and failing that specifically would have greater consequence (for instance, killing the Lord, but failing to stop him from opening the Warp Gate). In that case, the failed objective penalties can be scaled (+5 for "Killing the Lord", +11 for various completed Secondary/Tertiary but -10 for failing to save the planet from the daemonhorde - a total of +6, which in this system is less than glorious but still recognizes that you fought against the oncoming doom). The key here is to use the adjustments sparingly and make sure the narrative lets the players know which are really important in the briefing. After all, the Watch Captain would probably mention that whilst you're off defeating Lord Braxaltharn, you really should make sure he doesn't do anything silly like open a rift into the immaterium and doom the planet to the hells of the warp.
Fifth - Oath of Glory. This Oath has become less of a swear word in my mind (previously mentally referred to as "F@#*ing Oath of F@#*ing Glory") since the adjustments. It remains exactly as it was (+1 Renown per Primary or Secondary Objective completed) with the addition of "and +1 Renown for any Tertiary Objective completed without the aid of your battle brothers". Suddenly the Glory-hunters become a little more interested in doing things that would be considered glorious - such as defeating a Tyranid Warrior in single combat or a lone Devastator standing at one of several breaches in a defensive line, holding back the oncoming cultist horde whilst his allies cover the others. There is still a compelling reason to take the oath if you're really hungry for Renown, but in the grand scheme, it's a more marginal benefit - best to use when you don't really want the abilities offered by other oaths rather than something worth giving up the whole oath-selection mechanic for quick advancement for.
Finally - Rites of Battle suggested renown bonuses remain roughly the same, though perhaps you can afford to be a little more generous in some cases. These are all nice little "extra" rewards for doing something that adds to your personal legend. They shouldn't be invitations to take stupid risks in return for disproportionate reward or to approach a situation in a non-logical way because you expect it to be more rewarding to do so.
Losing Renown
Another perk of this system is that you get to reduce the rewards when they screw up, so they know that they screwed up (without the more obvious indicators, like a scything talon through the head or being trapped on a planet being dragged into Nurgle's backyard). I do however rarely impose a reduction of their Renown beyond what they started the mission with. Players tend to dislike their characters ending up with less than they started with, so if they do happen to end up with a negative total for the mission, I normally count it as zero total and possibly add a suitable "black mark" to them in another way (having the "Enemy (Lord Ebongrave)" talent is a much better way to remind them of the time they crashed their boarding torpedo into an asteroid after mistaking it for the Ork Rok they were supposed to assault on his behalf, than taking some of their toys away via Renown reduction). If they act in a way unbecoming of the Deathwatch however, all bets are off. Corruption and long term reduction of Renown is entirely appropriate for a team that crosses the Emperor's most holy line and starts sleeping with Eldar or something (and no, we're not getting into the viability of "Space Marines sexy-time" discussion again…)
TL:DR Version
Given the wall of text - this seems necessary. Short version is to have lots of small rewards, worth varying amounts each, with all the Requirement numbers being scaled up by a factor of 10. Easier to reward small events, differentiate importance of objectives, control rate of Renown game to match your planned campaign.
Thoughts?
[S]ir[B]ardiel and pearldrum1 reacted to this -
Alekzanter said:
I was going to comment on picking out the Leader in a Horde, but it bogs down in adding and subtracting modifiers. I think this is something FFG should have considered, meaning Leader/Horde Size differences. Could be they play tested it and they knew what to do because they knew what they meant, and we're all just gawp-mouthed fools because we don't get it. Unless…you are shooting one or the other, and not both? Though a smart KT would direct their fire at both. Well, I know how I'd do it, but you'll get mum from me.I was toying around with this one myself trying to find something that wouldn't bog down - in the end I opted for treating it as a called shot where the penalty is equal to the current magnitude of the horde. 10 points of this penalty is ignored for every size category larger the creature is.
- Chaos Arch-Heretic hiding in his Magnitude (30) throng would be -30 - picking him out is going to be tough
- Tyranid Warrior hiding in Magnitude (30) Termagant Swarm would be a base of -30, but ignores 20 of that due to Enormous vs Normal, so -10 overall
As it's a Called Shot, only a single shot may be taken (no full-auto called shots), but I will allow missed shots to still hit the horde if the roll would have allowed it anyway (i.e. if firing with BS50 at the aforemention Arch-heretic, he'd be hit on a 20 or less, but the horde is still large enough for the normal +30 modifier, so rolls of 80 or less would still hit the horde). The downside to targetting the leader in this case would be that you have to engage the horde using single shots rather than automatic fire.
Also, being a called shot allows Dead Eye and Sharpshooter to apply, allowing you to half the base penalty or ignore it respectively - which makes the two Talents much more tempting (they always seemed a little lacking).
Flexible Warfare - Activating non-Oath Squad Modes
in Deathwatch House Rules
Posted
Fair point - I think I'll have to side with "Multiplier before Modifier" for the sake of consistency with the other mechanics that use both multiplicative and additive modifiers. Had our first session using it the other night - or rather not using it. The option of using a non-Oath ability was discussed, but ultimately they went with another option (though for reasons of it making more tactical sense, rather than the cost). I'll keep the thread updated with any significant comments on how it plays out as they occur.