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musungu

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Posts posted by musungu

  1. Posted

    Ebongrave would deserve his very own thread, the way the whole conflict was written is one of the highlights of Rising Tempest, probably because it presents a meaningful choice with far-reaching consequences.

     

    (My players, of course, utterly messed it all up - it was their first real politicking adventure and they were wracked with indecision the whole time, so they didn't choose sides until the very last moment, and by then it was too late to shut Ebongrave down. The weird thing is, it's still one of the most memorable moments for them.

     

    Also, I still have to decide what happened to him after the kill-team left - right now I'm stalling with an ongoing court martial. Fellow GMs, whose parties had Ebongrave surviving, what did you do?)

    SlamDance and Decessor reacted to this

  2. Posted

    The way I see it, Marines know much more about the human experience than we give them credit for. Even if we put aside the knowledge they might get as children before they're chosen, they're actually in constant contact with their very own human microcosmos. Admittedly they tend to dress them in uniform jumpsuits or monk-like habits and call them chapter serfs, but those people do live and multiply in fortress-monasteries, ships and whatnot, numbering at least in the tens of thousands - just think about the crew one Battle-Barge requires to operate. They might not engage in the whole range of normal human activities because of constant combat readiness, and society as a whole is doubtlessly way more disciplined than it's healthy, but can it be completely devoid of ordinary human drama? The kids must play and go to school somewhere, people love and hate each other, and it would take a very arrogant Marine to not catch a glimpse of it at all. Most Chapters extend their camaraderie to their serfs to some extent, and a group as observant as the Raven Guard, as gregarious as the White Scars, as keen on good stewardship as the Ultramarines must know the basic workings and mental schematics of a normal, unaugmented human to some extent.

     

    That being said, many of the peace-time human activities might seem baffling to them, although probably not the activity per se, rather the motivation behind it. A Marine can likely relate to the feeling of adrenaline rush, just might not understand why someone goes to an amusement park to experience it instead of enlisting in the Guard. It is doubly so if we take the mind-blowing cultural diversity of the Imperium into consideration. If an enemy officer speaks in slang, it's not only the spying Marine who's left confused, it is also the fellow rebel who was born a hundred floors higher or lower in the same hive city. Also, speaking in slang? Make them throw a Speak language (Low Gothic) test with -40 because of the local variant's divergence - bet they didn't use dice on that skill since ages. ;)

     

    I admit a Marine is probably not the greatest in the people skills department (and might very well get those minuses on a skill check), but that has a myriad reasons in addition to the Marine being (somewhat) distanced from the mortals. There's obviously room for your interpretation, and also for individual differences - some characters or Chapters may choose to disconnect themselves more and more in order to be more effective (hello, Iron Hands), some may be so single-mindedly focussed on some goal that they ignore what they are otherwise capable of experiencing/understanding (hello, Black Templars), some may adopt a smug sense of superiority or be too drunk with freshly discovered power, and so on.

     

    The motif of the human-Marine or human-human cultural divide and cognitive dissonance can be massively atmosphere-setting and rewarding in DW - I like to play with its nuances as a GM, so I feel we wouldn't do it justice by simply hand-waving it away with a blanket interaction penalty.

    Lynata and Avdnm reacted to this

  4. Posted · Edited by musungu

    Let me get this out of the way first: the character sheet included in the Core Rulebook has some glaring mistakes, so take its contents with a grain of salt (e.g. Dodge is supposed to be Trained for Space Marines according to p. 36 of Core, and Barter and Blather are Skills from other 40k lines, but not used in DW).

     

    Now, in DW, there are two types of Skills - Basic and Advanced. In a nutshell, Basic type tests may be attempted without relevant training, against half of the relevant Characteristic value as target - everyone may attempt to climb a mountain or dog-paddle in a body of water without being trained in mountaineering or swimming, respectively. This is what the first column represents. It is coloured for all Basic type skills, and left empty for all Advanced type skills. You can also look up which Skills are Basic in Table 3-1 on p. 93.

     

    For Basic type skills, the full value of the Characteristic may be used only after you get relevant training (i.e. buy the skill). Advanced skills may not be tested without getting the Skill first; then, you may use the full value of the Characteristic right away. If you buy an Advanced skill, you leave the first box empty, and start with marking the second column on the sheet. The third and fourth, +10 and +20, works the same way for both. Using your example, your Ultramarine may attempt a Command test any time, even without having the Trained box checked in, since it is a basic skill. If he has a Fellowship value of 45, you need to roll under 22 for success.

     

    About the multiple ways of getting Skills and Talents: Advancement tables purposefully contain duplicates (there are even starting Space Marine skills and talents listed). This is done to allow the player more freedom in developing the character, to make creating custom advancements easier, and supposedly to maintain compatibility between lines - check the framed text on p. 59. That means if you want to buy Command +10 to your Ultramarine Tactical, you can choose to buy it for 400 XP from the Ultramarine table at any time, or wait until Rank 4 to buy it from the General Space Marine advances for 500 XP. Basically when buying a Skill or Talent, you need to cross-reference the General SM Advances, the Deathwatch Advances, the relevant Chapter Advances and the relevant Speciality Advances table (and quite possibly the Special Advances table, too).

     

    Hope that helped to clear the issue :)

     

    Edit: If we talk about the character sheet, let me ask my own question, too. Under the Characteristic number, there are six little circles, which are (I think) meant to track how many Characteristic Advances the PC has. For every Characteristic, one can buy a +5 Advance four times. Even if we want to track Bonuses given by the Chapter during creation (which is silly, why would anyone do that), leaves one unexplained. So why six? Why?

  5. Posted

    What makes it so sad is that I specifically checked the Trait description and still missed it.

     

    Also, if the theoretical record-shattering Marine is a Libby, there's also The Quickening in Honour the Chapter p. 102, further raising the max, and that's before we painted it red :D

  6. Posted

    Unnatural Agility does not modify movement, only Unnatural Speed (core rulebook, p.136)

     

    facepalm

     

    The one thing I though I understood before delving into the mess above, and now this...

     

    Unnatural AG doubles your AG bonus, and your movement is directly related to your AG bonus, so why wouldn't it modify your movement?

     

    No, sadly Jargal's right, there's indeed a line tucked between the unnatural modifier calculations saying "Note this trait does not modify the creature’s movement." The info should have warranted some highlighting, or at least to be mentioned along with the word "Agility." Oh, well. What's the point though, splitting Agility benefits like that?

     

    At least it removes the ambiguity in the order of calculations. A Marine can run 384 metres, which rises to 480 metres after the increase in Burst of Speed at Rank 5. A little under half a kilometre in six seconds is still brutally unrealistic.

  7. Posted

    Wow. Sometimes I think this game was commissioned by an evil world-dominating cabal of accountants, I swear. Anyway, I have a perverted wish to see whether this thing is actually logical, albeit overcomplicated, or the overcomplication simply hides the lack of coherent rules.

     

    Max. travel distance means we're calculating Run distance. The order by how the bonuses are added is crucial here, so as a general rule first I add the Ag bonus modifiers, followed by movement point modifiers. Still, it all remains somewhat arbitrary, since few abilities mention explicitly where the modifier should be added to the equation.

     

    1) Starting value: 5/10/15/30

    2) Size adds +1 to Ag (and since we're nitpicking, it's also worth mentioning that in Character Creation, Core consistently attributes this bonus to the Power Armour, and not to Size), making it 6/12/18/36 (Size description in Core, p. 134 says When calculating movement, apply the size modifier first, and then other modifiers from other traits or talents.)

    3) Here comes the Dilation Field (grants the owner the Unnatural Agility and Unnatural Speed Traits):

    - Unnatural Agility makes the Ag Bonus 12, so 12/24/36/72

    4) Burst of Speed cuts the line (see Unnatural Speed description): This ability increases the character’s Agility Bonus by 2 with all the usual associated benefits for a number of Rounds equal to his Rank. Result: 14/28/42/84

    5) Unnatural Speed: For the purposes of determining movement, the creature doubles its Agility Bonus (after modifying AB from other traits and factors, specifically size) 28/56/84/168

     

    A slight change of order is also possible, adding Burst of Speed first, then Dilation Field. That would look like this: After BoS, 8/16/24/48; after Unn. Agility, 16/32/48/96; after Unn. Speed, 32/64/96/192)

     

    6) Jump pack: allow the Battle-Brother to double his Base Movement. 56/112/168/336

    7) Sprint: When taking a Full Move Action, the character can move an extra number of metres equal to his Agility Bonus. When taking the Run Action, the character may double his movement for one
    Round.     So a battle-brother employing everything above could run a staggering 672 (or 768) metres in one round. That is, in six seconds. By a human, weighing hundreds of kilograms, in full armour. Eat that, Usain Bolt.

     

    Also, factor in that by the time a character gets to Famed (a prerequisite of getting Dilation Field), he probably clears rank 5, raising the bonus of Burst of speed to +4.

     

    And now I'm convinced that my worth as a human being lessened considerably by actually spending time on this. :wacko:

  8. Posted · Edited by musungu

    • Another Kill-Team invites the Battle Brothers to a feast to celebrate a recent mission. The Kill Team's leader, a Space Wolf, presents the players with an animal native to the world they visited last, and which he had hunted and slain by himself, befitting Chapter tradition. Unbeknownst to the Astartes, the animal was infected with the larvae of mindburrow worms that begin to hatch after the flesh is consumed. The worms will slowly travel through the host body alongside the spine until reaching the brain and begin to alter the host's thinking.

      After the members of the other Kill-Team had already started to behave erratically, the infestation fully comes to light during combat drills aboard the Watch Station, when one of the Marines goes into a frenzy and starts to attack the player characters. The infected Marine has to be put down, but whilst his corpse is quickly taken to the laboratorium for dissection, the remaining members of his team, reacting to their comrade's demise, quickly worsen in their condition and become paranoid, attempting to flee the Watch Station. Now the players must devise a plan to stop their wayward brethren from escaping or sabotaging the station, whilst at the same time being at risk of the very same fate.

      Will the autopsy reveal the cause of the dead Marine's frenzy in time? What will the player characters do once they know what is inside them? Can the Apothecary safely extract these dangerous creatures before it's too late? And .. who can they really trust?

     

    I like this plot hook a lot. It could be a resupply mission on a minor Watch Station far from Erioch, so 1) the isolated setting is begging for a nice survival horror run and 2) the Kill-Team have to protect the only Apothecary present. It's a neat one-off mission, thanks, I'll be using these ideas. The other one is also promising, but forcing the removal of helmets that way is a bit heavy-handed, and my (genre-savvy) group would quickly put me off tracks, so I need to tweak that a bit so that the players won't scream railroad. I do like the plant ruining their day though.

     

    The reason I'm thinking along the lines of gradual infection is that immediate takeover, like Genestealer* or Bruul Parasite infection, can't be done to player characters easily - it requires a special type of mature roleplayer to enjoy slowly spiralling his very own special snowflake down toward death and destruction without giving himself away, and NPC Marines getting the infection wouldn't have a very strong impact on players exactly because of this subconscious metagaming reason: my group would find it inconceivable to consider something like this as a real threat to them.

     

    *I'm aware that the Purestrain ability Genestealer's Kiss in MotX explicitly states the Marines are immune to this (why though? makes no sense), but I recently listened to a BL audiobook, Incorruptible by David Annandale , where the grand plot twist (obligatory SPOILER ALERT) is that a Grey Knight Purifier's being corrupted - just not spiritually by Chaos, but genetically by a Genestealer. The only concession to him as a SM is that he's able to regain control of his faculties for a limited time with extreme effort when the brood's telepathy field is weakened. Thing is, it looks like it can be reasonably done.

     

    The Corruption ideas you float are quite interesting: it would be fun to mess around creating a system which deals with with different sources and thresholds of corruption; it's actually surprising no one did it before. It sounds like something detail-obsessed 40k autists would like to  dabble with (not that I'm not one of them occasionally) :P . I have a major RL project ongoing, but I might just revisit the idea when I'm done with that - though it's probably hard to create such a system without multiple unwieldy tables, and, uh, a lot of time. Meanwhile there's a sort of half-baked houserule I found which proposes a no-set-Req system with adding Corruption Points for excessive Requisitioning as a balancing factor - this could be nicely turned around as docked Requisition or a Renown level penalty during arming could symbolise the diminished trust the character suffers from. Of course I'd reserve such measures for players in the high Corruption range, but still, it's something.

    Lynata reacted to this

  9. Posted

    Which statistic generator are you talking about though? Tricky's Character Sheet Generator? Also, bear in mind that (while I'm not a math wizard) if you use 2d10, the two extreme ends (2 and 20) are actually statistically less likely to occur than the numbers in the middle range. You don't roll a d20 in DW during chargen, you roll 2d10.

  10. Posted

    They might be silly, but I still love compelling, well thought-out fan theories. Too bad one has to wade through a sea of excrement to find the few pearls worth looking at. There's just something oddly enticing in watching a completely unexpected picture reveal itself after some fan connects the dots in a totally surprising way. Imagine this "false Emperor" bit as a central tenet of an investigated cult in DH or the big revelation of a story arc in BC - it would massively set the atmosphere.

  12. Posted

    I guess it's because some winged creatures can only hover for brief periods but is to do with muscle structure to stay stationary and flap?

     

    Also Necron stuff technically has Hoverer or can revert to IIRC? At least I'd rule they could for most things

     

    According to Core's Flying Movement rules (also on p. 210) there's no difference between Hoverer and Flyer in that regard: "While flying or hovering, a creature must devote a Movement Action to maintaining its flight each Turn, or it falls."

     

    Of course I'd overrule it too - in my book, an anti-grav-equipped Necron hovering above, say, a lava lake shouldn't spend a Half Action per round to stay in the air and not die. It's just the fact that people obviously tried hard to represent a real-world-physics-compatible handling of flight, and still missed such obvious blank spots that irks me. But I'm admittedly in a ranty mood, I'm penning my thesis so I'm both awfully cranky and incredibly open to any and all possible distractions :)

     

    Anyway, to end it on a more positive note, the rule modifiers concerning gravity sound like fun. I never tried it before, but now I'm thinking about doing a stint in a high-grav environment.

  13. Posted

    At least thats how I think it is IIRC. Might be wrong and can't find me copy of the books. Take this therefore with a pinch of salt, pepper and a wedge of lemon for seasoning.

     

    It is very correct (and possibly tasty), which makes your accuracy without having access to the books kind of scary :)

     

    Anyway, as it has been said, all relevant info (along with lots of additional unnecessary details) can be found in Core, p. 210. The surprising part is that the rules actually disallow hovering in one place - if a character doesn't spend at least a half Movement action to maintain flight, he automatically lands/drops. Now with jump packs it makes some sense, I can see how hovering on freaking jets might require some skills with the backwash and all, but it eludes me why would a winged creature or a spooky levitating Necron drop down if it stops moving around.

     

    The flying rules apparently can be turned into hardcore simulationist number-crunching very easily. Is it more streamlined in Black Crusade or other 40k lines? I only have access to DH2 besides DW at the moment, and it's pretty much the same.

  14. Posted

    Also want to point out that there are two talents to up your reactions -Step aside and wall of steel.

     

    Now I just have to find a build where I can get both early and cheap for a Librarian with Iron Arm :)

     

    The Genestealer business is a bit silly, of course, but when I do my super-lethal Space Hulk adventure, I'll slap on Preternatural Speed precisely to counter this.

  15. Posted

    Wow, Brother Malachai, thanks for reminding me. I was never a big Tau player, but THAT VOICE ACTING is fantastic, whichever faction we talk about :lol: Technology-wise though I didn't mean Tau-Imperium relations (although that is interesting too - how do they react? I couldn't watch the video to the end, the narrator guy's voice and style just rubs me the wrong way). What I was trying to point out is that if someone wants to use Cthulhu Mythos or other cosmic horror elements in 40k RPG, I think it it pays off to bring in the Tau in some function or other, because that is the faction in 40k whose first reaction to a sanity-threatening event would be the closest to ours as participants of the game, so the players would be more drawn in.

     

    And, while I can understand the opposite opinion, I personally don't really mind the Tau being dragged down from their noblebright pedestal into the grimdark mud. In 40k, nobody should have the moral high ground, dammit :)

    Robin Graves and Avdnm reacted to this

  16. Posted

    They're slowly turning the blueberries' lives grimdark too - the Commander Farsight storyline nicely expands on how moustache-twirlingly manipulative the Ethereals really are, not to mention the Pheromone Mind Control idea, which pops up quite frequently here and there. Come to think of it, a cosmic horror story would work even better with a Tau character present, to provide those reactions we learned to expect from XXI-century, technology-minded humans in other iterations.

  17. Posted

    Sorry about that! I was actually concerned for a moment that it was me who missed some very basic rule for a very long time. Let's just say it wouldn't be unprecedented :)

     

    That said, Deflect Shot (shudder) is something the less we talk about, the better.  A very obscure talent with an incredibly limited applicability and, honestly, even that little is for mostly cinematic use - nothing a suitably challenging Agility test can't replace. I don't even remember this talent being offered in any Marine advancement table, so probably the only way to get it in DW is through Elite Advancement, for something ever starter DW characters (rightly) expect to be able to do if we roll with 40k's inherent Rule of Cool. I'd give it to Marines in the starting Talent list and be done with it if I had a say. If I wanted to painstakingly learn such an ability, I'd play DH :)

    Calgor Grim reacted to this

  18. Posted

    We went through the same discussion when I was a beginner GM (as I suppose everybody who didn't start with an experienced group). Ahh, the nostalgia :) Anyway, what Calgor says. Parry negates only one successful attack, so you resolve how many attacks connect, and in case of a successful parry, the first one is a miss. Marines are hard to kill, and if someone plans to get often in melee situations in the long run, that person will work hard to get the relevant Talents.

     

     

    [...] Multiple attacks, clue is in the name, it's several attacks in one so the parry can be chosen say to deflect the first, and second hit but not the third or whatever. The same argument is also used (by me) for melee. [...]

    That part I don't get though. Parry is only usable in melee by default, isn't it?

  19. Posted

    First of all, welcome aboard!

     

    Was reading through the different power armour marks to try to discern the different bonuses and qualities of each, and I'm slightly confused. The Rites of Battle book states that the Mark VII uses the rules presented in the Deathwatch Rulebook, which leaves me wondering whether the other armour marks lack certain rules.

     

    ...If so, does Mark VII have any individual rules or bonuses?

     

    Mk7, as the most common type in use, is representing the benchmark Astartes Power Armour in Core. It grants a number of bonuses listed on p. 161, but those are included in the general description. The special rules of all other Marks found in Rites of Battle are used to highlight the differences when compared to the baseline stats and attributes of Mk7. This in turn means that basically all Mk7 attributes and bonuses apply unless specifically noted otherwise, although as a GM I'd exercise extreme caution with very old (pre-Mk4) models for various reasons, the main one being common sense.

     

    The "called shots are half actions" and recoil suppression bonuses mentioned in the core rulebook - do these apply to all armour marks?

    If we want to keep to a very pedantic Rules As Written interpretation, Core lists "Called Shots are Half Actions" as an ability granted by the armour's Autosenses. Table 3-7 on page 151 in ROB lists all Marks except Mk1 as including Autosenses, so yes, they do. If not, and you want to differentiate a bit more between marks, you may also remove or nerf the ability for Mk2, 3 and 5 as the Autosenses of these Marks appear to be less powerful (as it gives only +5 to the relevant Heightened Senses test, instead of the normal +10). As for recoil suppression, see Table 3-8 (also RoB, p. 151) - all Marks except Mk1 possess the feature.

  23. Posted

    Are you implying that you think they're not the best Marines ever? ;)

    Only the most fabulous. ;)

    You keep telling yourself that. ;)

    Too much smuggery and ponce in a single image. Kill it! Kill it with fire and Angry Marines...who are on fire...wielding fire.

     

    Ahhh, a little island of /tg/ in the sea of Serious Business :D Anyway, the picture is just... wow, so much self-satisfaction. Nice one.

     

    But to stray back to the original topic, Cassius' title of the oldest active Ultramarine can be just as easily de-constructed to mean he's the oldest Marine not entombed in a sarcophagus and stored in stasis - not to mention it's a bit hard to claim being the oldest, when Guilliman himself is on Macragge in a fridge :)

    Robin Graves reacted to this

  24. Posted · Edited by musungu

    My players are actively trying to avoid crossing over to Black Crusade territory, so there's no problem with motivation :) it's just my gut feeling as a GM that collecting Corruption should have consequences, however minor they may be in-game, otherwise PCs become desensitised to its threat, and staying within boundaries could cease to be a choice, turning to be a necessity of game mechanics instead.

    The xenos contamination angle is a good idea; I'll definitely start using it in my campaign, thanks for pointing it out - it was definitely something I searched for. It should have been obvious, too  - it's even mentioned in the Apothecary Speciality description in Core (p. 68), meshing together nicely with the WD quote above:

    "Aside from monitoring the state of the Space Marines’ implants, the Apothecaries must also be ever alert to the risk of alien contamination. [...] There are some xenos that actually reproduce in this vile manner, their seed infecting the victim and slowly mutating him into the original life form*. Such blasphemy must be guarded against, and the Apothecaries administer an entire bank of tests on every member of a Kill-team before and after every mission."

    That still leaves us with the Corruption issue open though, and my problem with Warp-based corruption – or other genetic drift for that matter (see: Blood Angels) – as a narrative element is that it’s hardly a reversible process (stabilizing the course being the only obvious source of temporary relief), and thus it’s difficult to find a middle ground between “60 CP? Test results came back clear, carry on, soldier” and “60 CP? You’re irrevocably tainted, you and your Chapter must bear eternal shame, and after we dispose of the body, we throw your gene-seed into the incinerator with a pair of tongs, which we also burn afterwards”. Mental corruption, on the other hand, could in theory be diminished to some degree by undergoing cleansing rituals and the like (I'm aware that from a mechanical, RAW point of view Corruption cannot be undone in DW, but that's besides the point now).

     

    Semi-important addition: I'm planning to utilise the Removing Corruption section from DH2 (DH2 Core, p. 291): "The insidious touch of the Ruinous Powers represents a permanent taint on the soul, and is normally impossible to remove. It is this permanence that makes Chaos so difficult to combat, for once it is within someone, it grows and festers like a tainted wound. It is possible though, in very rare situations, for the effects of corruption to be lessened. This is always an extraordinary occurrence, and might happen once in a campaign at most. It could represent a [...] powerful and singular event. This can only reduce Corruption by a small measure, usually no more than 1 or 2 points, though the GM can modify this depending on the nature of the event."

     

    A shadow of suspicion by the Apothecarion or DW superiors could work as a narrative tool to add some depth, especially by playing up how an Apothecary from a different Chapter might perceive an anomaly with the PC’s gene-seed (that is, it's difficult to establish for a relative outsider whether it's flat-out corrupted, or just within the limit of acceptable drift for the PC’s Chapter), just like Lynata said, but I find it difficult to imagine how such a storyline could be brought to a close in a satisfactory manner - earning the permanent suspicion of a sizeable chunk of DW personnel, the inevitable conclusion of any such event, even after a redemption character arc has played out, is more heavy-handed than what I had in mind, and should be introduced with care and after some deliberation.

     

    As for other possible plot hooks, in the case of a Techmarine, my most corrupt player thanks to some careless interfacing with tainted machine spirits, this could lead to a greater drive to replace unclean flesh, but if you can think of something other minor roleplaying or narrative effect, I'd love to hear it.

     

    Ultimately though now I think I will leave matters partly in the hands of my Apothecary to see whether he wants to go ahead with a bit of a friction with teammates, and in parallel use xeno contamination and an NPC Apothecary to scare the players by serious doctor-faces and mumbling, just to declare them clean after the desired RP effect has been reached :ph34r:

     

    *Edit: Also, if I were to play the actual xenos contamination straight, what would be the best species for that? No immediate takeover (mental or physical), just gradual turning.

    Lynata reacted to this

  25. Posted

    Interesting bit about the Dreadnought sacrophagus, though! Do you remember the source, by any chance?

     

    Found it after all - it's Iron Soul by Phil Kelly, part of the Angels of Death series.

     

     

    Where is that stated? When the 5E Marine Codex mentions Cassius being "the oldest active Ultramarine", it makes it sounds as if there are inactive Ultramarines as well -- meaning, ones who had to retire because they grew too old.

     

    I distinctly remember reading it, but I have no idea where. I'll try to source it during the weekend.

     

    You also have to keep the Blood Angels in mind, who (at least in GW's books) have their old age as a fairly important background trait. If no Marine would die of a natural death, this would essentially just make the Blood Angels the best Space Marines ever, as they manage to outlive all their brethren by several centuries.

     

    Are you implying that you think they're not the best Marines ever? ;)

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