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Alien Rope Burn posted:Does Polaris actually have some kind of empire development system or something? I mean, yes, you could use it as a means to track settlement growth, but is there a conceivable situation in which that would be important to track?
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Mar 13, 2017 19:02
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Does Polaris actually have some kind of empire development system or something? We're a dozen posts into this review and I'm still not convinced this game even has a game.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:12
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LordAbaddon posted:Inquisitors, Rogue Traders, Chaos Renengades and even Imperial Guard are way more interesting since they have some semblance of individuality and have motivations that include nuance. I agree - I've seen very interesting characters in Black Crusade that are only possible because of that semblance of individuality and presence of motivations. Most of my favorite characters I've ever played or created in a 40k RPG come from Black Crusade for those reasons as well. Even so I'd argue that you can still do some Space Marine roleplay well but it requires more knowledge of the setting. The writers at FFG do their damndest to give players roleplaying hooks to make their Space Marines different from each other. In one brief campaign I played, I was an Iron Hands Apothecary and I had to deal with a player who was very rah-rah about being an Ultramarine, in particular a Tyrannic War Veteran. I spent most of the sessions making snide asides at him about his timeliness, with lots of sarcasm about 'Oh, now that the Ultramarines have arrived, we're all saved!' This is completely warranted within the fluff, because the Ultramarines didn't experience the same Horus Heresy as everyone else. They got delayed in participating in the overall war and as a result, got to keep their military force mostly intact while every other Chapter - especially the Iron Hands - nearly got wiped out to the man. One of my friends - who also GMs 40k RPGs - said this to me, and I think it's a good rule to live by. You play Deathwatch with people who know or at least have a passing familiarity with 40k lore. It is not a good stepping stone to getting into 40k though - Rogue Trader does a much better job, because you really have the option of keeping or ejecting elements from the setting as you see fit. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 19:14
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The big place to look for drama and fun in Deathwatch lies in the framing device. You're either one of the best of the best, a promising up and comer, or someone the Chapter wanted to get rid of by sending them to the Inquisition while things cool off back home, that kind of thing. Similarly, you're an indoctrinated stormtrooper/manufactured hero who has been trained all his (or her, gently caress GW) life in a very specific style and culture. You've always been able to depend on those around you instinctively and totally knowing All The Rules and how you do things. Now you're placed in a team with people from very, very different forms of indoctrination and very different cultures. And then told you're expected to work together flawlessly and achieve even better than normal results. You can get a fun game out of the cultural clash/learning the Marines suffer while getting to know one another. I fully expected to hate Deathwatch, myself. Instead it made me kinda dig Space Marines and wish GW didn't squander an interesting concept so badly. You know, like everything else in 40k.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:20
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Doresh posted:They've also been shown wearing Terminator Armor so often that I'm not even sure if they even get the normal armor. At one point the GKs were exclusively Termies, then they had power armor and Terminator armor for a while in the 2000s. Not sure what the state of the art is now. They were also the largest chapter at one point, but again that may have been overwritten.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:25
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Largest? That must've sprung from Matt Ward's fever dreams. Nobody has more dudes than the Ultramarines, especially not the most elite and elusive "Chapter".
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Mar 13, 2017 19:29
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Even the Ultramarines are technically only 1000 guys, although they create a new successor chapter every few years to run a new area of space. Ultima Segmentum used to be the Realm of Ultramar, and they all run themselves the same way -- they're still the Legion in all but name. Then you have the Dark Angels, who have a "ceremonial gathering" with their successors and "occasionally exchange personnel." The Black Templars though, those guys don't even try to hide their numbers. They're just constantly crusading and putting down new bases so there's no point in trying to get an accurate count. If you tried, there would be a whole lot of pissed off guys with swords asking what the gently caress you think you're doing looking into crusade logistics, you heretic.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:37
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Doresh posted:Largest? That must've sprung from Matt Ward's fever dreams. Nobody has more dudes than the Ultramarines, especially not the most elite and elusive "Chapter". If push comes to shove they can call on a lot of the later founding chapters, but in terms of pure number of marines in a single chapter it is either the Black Templars or the Space Wolves. The Black Templars do this by a combination of being on a permanent crusade and making sure to never have too many of their chapter in one place. The Space Wolves just don't give a gently caress and are more then willing to gently caress with or gently caress up anyone who tries to call them out on this.
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Mar 13, 2017 19:38
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So as someone who isn't very familiar with the property, and wasn't here for the original post a year ago, what exactly is the premise of Deathwatch? If Space Marines are basically supposed to be fighting aliens and demons all the time anyway, why would they have a mixed-chapter organization for doing one of those things? Is it about pooling resources or improving relations between the chapters?
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Mar 13, 2017 20:16
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marshmallow creep posted:So as someone who isn't very familiar with the property, and wasn't here for the original post a year ago, what exactly is the premise of Deathwatch? If Space Marines are basically supposed to be fighting aliens and demons all the time anyway, why would they have a mixed-chapter organization for doing one of those things? Is it about pooling resources or improving relations between the chapters? Also Deathwatch exists so you can have ~crossovers~ and such.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:21
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Deathwatch is pretty much the Rainbow Six of the 40K universe.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:22
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They're the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos. The part of the Inquisition that deals with Alien threats. When they have a Space Marine level threat, the Deathwatch is where they get them from. Similarly, the Ordo Malleus, the Daemonhunters get access to the Grey Knights. And the Ordo Hereticus, the Witchfinders, can call upon the Sisters of Battle.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:38
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Deathwatch is also a chance for Marines that have hosed up really badly to atone for their mistakes.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:38
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marshmallow creep posted:So as someone who isn't very familiar with the property, and wasn't here for the original post a year ago, what exactly is the premise of Deathwatch? If Space Marines are basically supposed to be fighting aliens and demons all the time anyway, why would they have a mixed-chapter organization for doing one of those things? Is it about pooling resources or improving relations between the chapters? RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Deathwatch is pretty much the Rainbow Six of the 40K universe. That's pretty much the best description. You're all basically part of the Special Forces of the Space Marines that are dedicated to fighting aliens. The idea of drawing them from all different Chapters is not only to bring together all the varying experiences that other Chapters might have that yours don't, but to make everyone a genuine expert on fighting just about any alien. After your service in the Deathwatch, you go back to your home Chapter and disseminate the knowledge you gathered, which (ideally) makes every Chapter better at fighting aliens. Of course, there are always the grizzled veterans who stay around on permanent detachment to the Deathwatch in order to guide and lead newer recruits.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:42
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senrath posted:Deathwatch is also a chance for Marines that have hosed up really badly to atone for their mistakes. There's even an entire "class" or pseudo-Chapter for that: The Black Shields, called that way because the pauldron showing the Chapter insignia has been painted black. Space Marine that has screwed up so badly he's been banished? Former traitor that has decided to atone by killing Xenos for the rest of his life? Weirdo with a unique geneseed defect that makes him an edgy teenager who hates his parent Chapter? Who knows, the Deathwatch won't ask. Doresh fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 20:56
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What qualifies someone for banishment? Forgot to praise the Emperor that one time?
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Mar 13, 2017 21:05
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marshmallow creep posted:What qualifies someone for banishment? Forgot to praise the Emperor that one time? Depends entirely on what Chapter they're being banished from. For example, the Space Wolves won't care so much if you forget to praise the Emperor (in fact you might annoy them by praising him too much, they're not big on authority), but they'll be royally pissed off at you if you run from a fight or leave a brother to die when it's not absolutely necessary.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:08
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senrath posted:Depends entirely on what Chapter they're being banished from. For example, the Space Wolves won't care so much if you forget to praise the Emperor (in fact you might annoy them by praising him too much, they're not big on authority), but they'll be royally pissed off at you if you run from a fight or leave a brother to die when it's not absolutely necessary. Space Wolves hate people who cut their hair, shave and don't like wolves.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:19
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marshmallow creep posted:What qualifies someone for banishment? Forgot to praise the Emperor that one time? It can be a lot of different things. Some of the examples they give are: 1. Last remaining Loyalist Space Marine from a Chapter that went renegade 2. Renegade Space Marine that, for some reason or another, decided to rejoin the Emperor and atones for their sins 3. TOTALLY NOT AN ALPHA LEGIONNAIRE, NOTHING TO SEE HERE (to be fair, that's mine) 4. Sole survivor of a squad of Space Marines that were wiped out thanks to said survivor's momentary lapse in competence. For example, could've retreated to save their own life and failed to give orders to the squad, who were then overrun by Daemons/name enemy of Space Marines here. 5. Basically, if it would've gotten someone dishonorably discharged in the modern military, becoming a Black Shield allows them to atone through service and their inevitable death. Once Black Shields join the Deathwatch, they never leave - they serve until death. The details of why they joined are a secret kept only between them and the Watch Captain in charge.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:24
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Doresh posted:There's even an entire "class" or pseudo-Chapter for that: The Black Shields, called that way because the pauldron showing the Chapter insignia has been painted black.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:25
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Doresh posted:Space Wolves hate people who cut their hair, shave and don't like wolves. I had a Space Wolf that got sent to Deathwatch for being a jovial Scandinavian stereotype. Not that he wasn't doing enough murder or whatnot, the Space Wolves just weren't all that big on cloudberry jam and skiing.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:25
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Yukon Cornelius is a totally appropriate 40k name
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Mar 13, 2017 21:26
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The Heavy Bolter has been mentioned by myself and others, as being broken. For those who've never played Deathwatch allow me to illustrate in the spirit of the Thread. N.b. This is rules as written in the book. There was later optional errata for it, and FFG changed the combat rules in every subsequent book (Black Crusade, Only War etc.) Brother Sebastian is a novice Devastator Marine. He has a BS of 50. He opens up full-auto, which he has to with a Heavy Bolter, on his target. He gets +20 to hit for his mandatory full-auto attack giving him a BS of 70. He rolls a good but not spectacular 29. This gives him one hit, and an additional hit for every degree of success, which is to say every 10 points, he beats his target by. So 70 a hit, then +1 for 60, 50, 40, 30, 4 additional successes. So he's hit 5 times. Each Bolt does 2d10+10 damage. Heavy bolter also has the 'tearing' quality, which means you roll an extra d10, discard the lowest. So with a slight buff for discarding the lowest, on average you'd expect each Bolt to do say 23-24 damage. In addition each Bolt has 6 points of penetration, so ignores 6 points of Armour. So against a decently armoured target, each Bolt will average around 30 points of damage. For reference a Standard Marine, loyalist or traitor, has 8 points of Armour and a toughness bonus of 8, which act as a soak against damage. Then he'll have about 30 actual wounds he can take. So effectivly, knocking off 16 points from each attack, he'll take 14 from each, 70 damage with average rolls. Now a Heavy Bolter is a literally classed as a Heavy Weapon, and it's supposed to be a dedicated Marine Killing weapon. So YMMV but arguably that's fair enough. But here is where it get's crazy. Righteous Fury. Righteous Fury is the Critical Hit mechanism for Deathwatch and it's actually pretty straight-forward. If you roll a '10' on any of your damage dice, it's a potential critical. Roll under your hit chance (still 70) again and you do your weapon damage again and it stacks with the first hit. So you're rolling 15d10, that is 3d10 (discarding the lowest) five times. You're going to roll at least one critical, there's an excellent chance you'll get multiple. It gets worse. So one of your attacks critted, when you rolled the second set of damage, if you roll any 10's on that attack, it's an automatic further level of critical. Doesn't need confirming, it's automatic, roll an additional set of damage dice, and keep adding another set every time you roll a 10. And that is how at the climax of my one and only mini-campaign I attempted to run of Deathwatch my groups Devastator marine blew away a Hive Tyrant in the first round of combat when he did something like 150 wounds to it in one attack after what took literally several minutes of rolling to resolve.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:30
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Deptfordx posted:The Heavy Bolter has been mentioned by myself and others, as being broken. For those who've never played Deathwatch allow me to illustrate in the spirit of the Thread. Not in so much detail, but basically yes. I will briefly mention in my next write-up that there's a reason why Devastators are jokingly referred to as 'Cheesetators' - it's because they begin the game with the Heavy Bolter which, un-errata'd, is the best Heavy Weapon in the game.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:42
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Even after the errata combat is still amazingly lethal.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:44
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Note that was just a novice as well. More experienced characters get not just a higher ballistic score but Skills, Talents, and access to special equipment which would buff that damage output even higher.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:47
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The later edition combat rules make a lot more sense. Single shots get +10, semi-auto gets +0, full-auto gets -10. This makes even poor shots capable of hitting things if they and and take a single shot, and makes high investment in BS mean more.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:01
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LuiCypher posted:Alluded to in my review, but pretty much. A lot of people who follow GW will point to Matt Ward turning both Chapters into Power-armored Mary Sues who don't lose battles and never do anything wrong ever. Also, all other Space Marines venerate the Ultramarines as Marneus Calgar (Chapter Master and thus head of the Ultramarines) is their 'spiritual liege'. Don't forget this chestnut. quote:One story in the 5th Edition Grey Knight Codex, "The Bloodtide Returns", lists the Grey Knights as coming across a planet wherein a powerful Dark Age of Technology nanite weapon controlled by a bloodthirster resided - one so powerful that it was corrupting the populace by flying into their pores and driving them crazy. There was a convent of Sisters that were being slowly wiped out near the site whose faith was keeping them pure and untouched by the taint except for all the ones who were corrupted, and instead of asking for the Sisters' assistance the Grey Knights proceeded to slaughter them all and make wards from their blood, then go about banishing the daemon. Read the loving fluff some time. All after the codex stating literally that their faith is strong enough to protect them from any kind of daemonic corruption, so they wouldn't have even needed those wards.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:13
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That Khornate Grey Knight story is like something you'd come up for an oldschool point-and-click adventure (aka tons of puzzles that don't make a lot of sense) set in the 40k universe. And let's not forget that Grey Knights are so hardcore and resistant to Chaos that one of their greatest heroes has been Rambo-ing it up in the Eye of Chaos for centuries, if not longer. wiegieman posted:The later edition combat rules make a lot more sense. Single shots get +10, semi-auto gets +0, full-auto gets -10. This makes even poor shots capable of hitting things if they and and take a single shot, and makes high investment in BS mean more. And Righteous Fury gets nerfed to be much less insane. Doresh fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 22:19
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Doresh posted:And Righteous Fury gets nerfed to be much less insane. Righteous Fury was 100% fine when it was in WHFRP because nothing there does multiple d10s of damage and Impact is relatively rare and comes with drawbacks like no shield or 'this is a gun'. It fell down quite a bit in a setting with full auto and where you can't sneeze without hitting something with Tearing (Impact but for 40k) or 2d10 or more base damage.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:22
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Night10194 posted:Righteous Fury was 100% fine when it was in WHFRP because nothing there does multiple d10s of damage and Impact is relatively rare and comes with drawbacks like no shield or 'this is a gun'. It fell down quite a bit in a setting with full auto and where you can't sneeze without hitting something with Tearing (Impact but for 40k) or 2d10 or more base damage. Yup, much more rare, still feels amazing when your dude in his second class one-shots a demon with his great weapon.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:37
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Kurieg posted:Yup, much more rare, still feels amazing when your dude in his second class one-shots a demon with his great weapon. It was even, intentionally, a big reason to use pistols and greatweapons. That they had 2 rolls per hit that could inflict Fury.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:38
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Night10194 posted:Righteous Fury was 100% fine when it was in WHFRP because nothing there does multiple d10s of damage and Impact is relatively rare and comes with drawbacks like no shield or 'this is a gun'. It fell down quite a bit in a setting with full auto and where you can't sneeze without hitting something with Tearing (Impact but for 40k) or 2d10 or more base damage. Right, the problem with Deathwatch and Dark Heresy, which is all I own, so I can't really speak to the later systems*, is that they tried to backport the rules for WHFRP second edition (which I love) into a setting that's completely inappropriate. FFG needed to start their design document with a blank sheet of paper and build something that worked from scratch *Anecdotally, I've heard they're improved but still have flaws in the rules you could drive a truck through.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:47
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Deptfordx posted:Right, the problem with Deathwatch and Dark Heresy, which is all I own, so I can't really speak to the later systems*, is that they tried to backport the rules for WHFRP second edition (which I love) into a setting that's completely inappropriate. FFG needed to start their design document with a blank sheet of paper and build something that worked from scratch That's part of why 40kRP is an interesting total mess. Because FFG was originally just publishing a long-troubled game produced originally by Black Library, the WHFRP2e guys, that had been cancelled at the last minute. So the original Dark Heresy wasn't their work, but then they got stuck working on the system when DH succeeded. You can feel the deep mismatch between FFG's impulses and Black Library's original game all through the series and it's one reason it becomes more and more of a mess as it goes. Yes, they 'fix' a bunch of stuff, but the two design philosophies and the very different stories the base system and their impulses wanted strain like mad as the power level increases. They were given a game about playing space rat catchers serving as low level intelligence agents for the secret police and then slowly moving up from there, and it just didn't work for what FFG wanted to do with it, but they weren't allowed to scrap it and start over. I have always regretted that they didn't get a chance to design what they wanted, even if I like DH's premise the most of any of the 40kRP games and honestly don't find FFG's design to my taste (as evidenced with WHFRP3e). But there's a difference between 'I don't find it to my taste' and 'it's bad', and I think they really deserved a chance to do their own thing. Especially with how great their fluff for 40k was; I'm not exaggerating when I say FFG's writers seemed to be the last people who got the joke.
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Mar 14, 2017 02:21
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I've had a lot of fun running Deathwatch mainly from making sure the player characters are from chapters with radically different approaches to warfare. Specifically, we ended up with a Raven Guard, a Space Wolf, a Flesh Tearer, an Imperial Fist, and a Lamenter.
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Mar 14, 2017 02:50
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Why is it that this game sounds way more likely to be about cenobites than that other game that is actually about cenobites?
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Mar 14, 2017 02:58
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FFG did end up doing their own thing from the ground up, and it was WHFRP 3rd edition, which is kind of like what they did with Star Wars except when it's not.
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Mar 14, 2017 03:10
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wiegieman posted:FFG did end up doing their own thing from the ground up, and it was WHFRP 3rd edition, which is kind of like what they did with Star Wars except when it's not. Yeah, I meant for 40k, the way they got to for WHFRP.
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Mar 14, 2017 03:12
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I remember getting to have a chance breakfast with some FFG employees and freelancers at GenCon were they were able to speak with effusive relief at getting to finally write a 2nd edition.
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Mar 14, 2017 03:17
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I remember getting to have a chance breakfast with some FFG employees and freelancers at GenCon were they were able to speak with effusive relief at getting to finally write a 2nd edition. Which then due to the first attempt being a huge mess and their fans being crazy, was screamed into being Only War But The Inquisition and not really different at all. A terrible shame, but I kinda imagine they weren't too sad to lose the license and work on something, anything else at that point.
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Mar 14, 2017 03:21
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