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I am seriously going to regret doing this, but since it's been abandoned previously and a fellow goon is doing a write-up on Black Crusade, I feel obliged to revive... DEATHWATCH ![]() For the unfamiliar, Deathwatch is set in the Warhammer 40K universe. To some people, this is a good thing. To others it may be bleh, and to some it may even be trying too hard at being Grimdark and winding up all the way into parody. This review may reflect all of those opinions at times. A Brief Synopsis of Deathwatch Deathwatch is the third WH40K RPG system, and the last of the "older" style of WH40K RPGs. It is an RPG where everyone plays a Space Marine, a genetically modified behemoth of a human who is built for war, knows absolutely no fear, and is given carte blanche to prosecute war against the enemies of the Imperium. These Space Marines are organized into Chapters, which for all intents and purposes are basically like clans/fraternities. Each maintains their own separate traditions, and each claims a different path of ancestry to the Emperor of Mankind, a once all-powerful being who has basically been put on life support for the past 10,000 years thanks to roughly half of the Space Marines turning traitor on him. The Imperium is basically the Galactic Empire of Mankind, whose golden age has long since passed and whose borders are under constant threat by foul xenos and traitors. Despite this, there is a group of Space Marines drawn from every known Chapter still loyal to the Emperor who maintain a constant vigil over the galaxy. Watching over the Imperium, these Space Marines are called on to battle the xenos wherever they appear. Though small in number, these Space Marines are incredibly well-trained and well-armed. Overcoming the divisions of their Chapters, they work together to bring swift, merciless death to their enemies. Though their actions remain secret, the consequences of their actions - for good or for ill - make their impact known to the Imperium at large, holding back the encroaching xenos for just one more day... Where Deathwatch fits in Earlier I mentioned that Deathwatch is the last of the "older" style of WH40K RPGs. In my evaluations of the various RPGs in the universe, they tend to fall into two camps: Older Style: These bear a much heavier influence of Dark Heresy 1st Edition, which was the first well-known success at putting the WH40K universe into a pen and paper RPG. Hallmarks of this influence typically consists of a relatively inflexible class-based system with certain abilities locked off to the player until they earn and spend a certain amount of experience to "rise in rank" in their chosen class. WH40K RPGs in the vein of the "older style" are Dark Heresy 1st Edition, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch. Newer Style: These sort of represent a bit of a branching out by Fantasy Flight Games in terms of advancement systems. While the core of each WH40K RPG system remains consistent across product lines, how characters advance can change greatly. In the "newer style", advancement is free form. Characters are not locked out of any skill or talent except by talent prerequisites and characteristic prerequisites. The XP cost of skills and talents varies by whether or not a character's archetype (which is a more general representation of a character class that players are free to move about in) aligns with what that skill or talent might require. In Black Crusade, this is typically represented by devotion to a particular Chaos God, i.e. followers of Khorne have cheaper access to melee-related skills and so on and so forth. For subsequent systems, this is represented by what that archetype has aptitudes for. WH40K RPG systems in the "newer style" are Black Crusade, Only War, and Dark Heresy 2nd Edition. The Resolution Mechanic All of the WH40K RPGs share the same resolution mechanic: the d100. Say what you will about the d100, turn your noses up at it because it's not a deck of cards and that's where the real innovation in P&P RPG mechanics is nowadays, whatever. The fact stands that WH40K RPGs use the venerable d100 as the main resolution mechanic. d10s are typically used as damage dice, meaning that the only dice players really need to play the game are two d10s, which is actually kind of nice. Despite all the cruft built into the rules (and there is a lot of cruft), the system at its core is extremely elegant and easy to understand. Rolling under your skill/attribute generates a success, and for every interval of 10 you roll under the target number you get an additional degree of success. This helps to circumvent most "well, we both rolled a success so now what?" arguments and is integrated into how certain talents and attacks work out. For example. Brother Torias needs to roll under a 63 to hit the big, bad Ork with his bolter. He rolls a 28, giving him three degrees of success. If he just made a single attack with his bolter, then he just hits once. If he made a semi-auto attack with his bolter, then he may score multiple hits in the same attack. This also plays into failure as well - for every 10 above the target number, you add an additional degree of failure which can make bad things worse. In order to adjust the difficulty of checks, the GM can raise or lower the target number in increments of 10, which is extremely handy to know. What makes Deathwatch different from the other systems? Playing as Space Marines is arguably the biggest draw of Deathwatch. That and the fact that it is extremely killy and combat-heavy. While in Rogue Trader you are the archetypical murderhobos, killing everything and stealing what isn't nailed down, in Deathwatch even out of the gate you are all fairly competent killers. The game doesn't make any bones about it - it even states that a Rank 1 Space Marines (babby Deathwatch dudes) can pretty much ruthlessly dispatch an entire team of baby Acolytes from Dark Heresy 1e without even taking a scratch. You're a superhuman wielding a gun that can one-shot most modern cars. And you wear tank armor that makes most modern weaponry hit you with the force of a wet fart. That being said, your relative power level means that you get to participate in epic battles that would end even a seasoned party of acolytes right from the get-go. You face down hordes of Orks/Cultists/Insert Xenos Here, fight some of the scariest monsters in the 40K universe, and get to romp around warzones like the warrior-monks that you are. This typically means that Deathwatch is a little simpler to run, with a fair amount of direction coming from the GM. In the next F&F for Deathwatch, we'll address... Character Creation! LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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# ¿ Feb 16, 2025 22:21 |
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Count Chocula posted:What was that article that talked about how D&D has the assumption that even the ultimate good guy Lawful Good clerics will charge people for healing miracles, which reflects some...American assumptions about the world. Temples to Pelor don't pay for themselves, son. I'm not sure they're necessarily American assumptions about the world so much as they are attempts to establish a logical basis for the temple's presence.
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It's just another way for the party cleric to calculate the value that he adds to the party and how they'd all be boned without his 'free' healing magic.
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Count Chocula posted:China Mieville's socialist sci-fi MUST have inspired a few RPGs by now. Good news! An RPG designer owns the rights to produce an RPG with some of China Mieville's IP. Bad news! That designer is Gareth-Michael Skarka who is... how many years late is he with Far West at this point? Far West Kickstarter posted:The Limited Edition hardcover of the Adventure Game, as well as the Ebook, Kindle and PDF, will be available in December 2011. Electronic versions will be sent to donors at the same time the book is sent to the printer. Good luck ever seeing it!
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Doresh posted:Funny, I just got that recently to complement Only War. I even have Rites of Battle, which lets you roll up custom chapter names like "Steel Blood". Consider me jealous. Rites of Battle is easily the best splatbook for Deathwatch because it has the best character and gear options of any of the books. You can even roll as a freaking Dreadnought Librarian at some point, which is all sorts of awesome. Predictably, it is very out-of-print and hard to find in physical form. It's been awaiting reprint for over a year at Fantasy Flight and I suspect that it will never actually get reprinted, meaning that it will be a while before I get my copy. I'll probably write up a recommended list of splatbooks towards the end of the review, but for now I'd say that the top three go like this: 1. Rites of Battle 2. Honour the Chapter or First Founding 3. Mark of the Xenos I throw Mark in there mainly because the core rulebook could probably suffer to have a more diverse range of enemies for the Kill-team to encounter and Mark fixes that nicely. Honour the Chapter/First Founding mainly depends on which fluff you like better - do you like the fluff for the remaining founding chapters (Iron Hands, Salamanders, White Scars, Raven Guard) or do you want more on the successor chapters?
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LuiCypher posted:I am seriously going to regret doing this, but since it's been abandoned previously and a fellow goon is doing a write-up on Black Crusade, I feel obliged to revive... It's been a year. Lots of things have happened (FFG and GW went splitsies, I acquired nearly every goddamn Deathwatch book in the aftermath of their fire sale, etc.), but I feel obliged - nay, emboldened - to actually finish this write up. As promised in the linked post, I'll be working on Character Creation this weekend and post it. On a different note, I feel like Designers and Dragons is a really cool history book that's inspired me to look up a lot of the mentioned RPGs... only to find that we're not groggy enough for some of them!
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Night10194 posted:One of my goals after WHFRP is to cover 40krp, because it's a broken, ruined mess for genuinely interesting reasons. I am really looking forward to you covering Squad Mode vs. Solo Mode. Oh, gently caress me. Yeah, that's one of their unique innovations that they added to try to make Deathwatch very distinct from the rest of the systems. In practice, all I've seen anyone do is stay in Solo Mode. Edit: Fluff-wise, it's a really cool idea though. Thematically, it fits well within the themes of the game. In practice, it's a hassle to work with and unless you spec your Space Marine to be a squad leader you never really get to use any of the abilities unique to your chapter. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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LordAbaddon posted:See I always read the core joke of Chaos being that it might be a legit better alternative than the Imperium to drive home the Starship Troopers-esque fascism parody. With Chaos, there is a lot more relative freedom with social mobility! The major difference is that you do not want to pay the price for failing to move up with Chaos. LordAbaddon posted:Out of all the 40KRP games my favorite will always be Black Crusade, and I always felt that it was underappreciated as well. Black Crusade is, in my opinion, the best-written of the 40k RPGs. The daemon princes(princesses) are really well-done. The Slaanesh one in particular is great, because instead of going all in on the whole sex angle, the daemon princess of Slaanesh they present in the core rulebook goes all in on solipsism. They really sidestepped the cheesecake presentation of Slaanesh throughout everything, to boot. Hey man, Slaanesh never specified that the excess had to be sexytimes-related! Also, psyker powers are appropriately gonzo. Playing a psyker is never a question of IF I should push, it's always WHEN and HOW OFTEN in Black Crusade. I played a human (scrunt) psyker in a BC game I played with goons, and I had so much fun basically riding the line between one-shotting myself and the party and one-shotting the enemy. Edit: One of my friends also clued me into this, but you can basically play a D&D campaign in the Screaming Vortex and there are enough low-tech weapons and armor statted out for you to do so. Barbarians come from Xurunt, Wizards from Q'Sal...
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![]() As promised, we're finally back to Deathwatch after a year-long hiatus! To start, we'll generate a character which means we begin with... Deathwatch Chapter 1: Character Creation Creating a character in Deathwatch borrows many of the standard elements from Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader with a few twists of its own. However, those systems really focused on building a character, especially their past and how they got to the shithole they’re in now (Dark Heresy) or the decadent lifestyle they occupy (Rogue Trader) Deathwatch is a little simpler. You see, Deathwatch is about being a Space Marine, and being a Space Marine is pretty straightforward. First off - no girls allowed. ![]() Second off - you’re every single Arnold Schwarzenegger character ever. Thanks to a battery of implants collectively known as the geneseed, Space Marines are super-human kill-monsters and that’s even before you hand them their gear: once they get that, they’re basically walking around in tank armor wielding guns that explode most regular humans like a blood sausage. Another fact - In the other systems, facing down some of the horrors of the universe that Space Marines regularly encounter might actually cause you to die of sheer terror. Not a Space Marine. They literally have a trait (taken from the tabletop, you nerds) called ‘And They Shall Know No Fear’. Essentially, you’re all badasses and you should play that to the hilt. Still, there’s some room for roleplaying even as Space Marines, and that all comes down to one of the choices that you make during Character Creation - your Space Marine Chapter! Before we get there though, let’s walk through the steps as the Step 1: Generate Characteristics Remember how I mentioned previously that Deathwatch uses d100 (as represented by 2d10) as its resolution mechanic? It also uses it to generate characteristics! However, we won’t be reading it as d100 - instead, we’ll read it as 2d10. 40k RPGs use nine characteristics to represent characters and their abilities. Your characteristic score also influences a few derived attributes, and the tens digit is considered your ability score ‘bonus’. Finally, skills in this game are tied to the relevant characteristic score, plus any training modifiers. To generate characteristics, the game has you roll 2d10 and add 30 to result. To sort of explain how much better Space Marines are than normal humans, I’ll compare characteristic generation in Deathwatch to other systems in the line. Dark Heresy: Roll 2d10, add 20. On average, you’ll have a score of 30 with 40 being the best that you could ever hope to be and 20 being just the pits. Rogue Trader: Roll 2d10, add 25. You’re pretty decent with average scores of 35, highs of 45, and lows of 25. As you can see, Space Marines start on average at the highest possible score you can roll in Dark Heresy. Even your lowest score matches their average. But what do these numbers contribute to? The nine key characteristics, derived from WHFRPG, are: Weapon Skill - Weapon Skill represents how good you are at chopping people up/beating them to death with melee weapons. Melee weapons in Deathwatch deal high single-hit damage, but don’t handle hordes (which we’ll get into later - it’s definitely one of the coolest aspects of Deathwatch) as well. Naturally you want a high score here if you like going toe-to-toe with Orks. Ballistic Skill - How good you are at gun. Being good at gun is really, really good in Deathwatch. Melee weapons can hit hard, but guns hit a lot. Strength - How swole you are. Strength affects how hard you hit with melee weapons and also contributes to your carrying capacity (which no one really bothers with unless you’re doing weird-rear end edge cases - see Dougie McIsaac below). Because Space Marines are genetically modified, they double their strength bonus. For example, a Space Marine with a Strength of 40 has a strength bonus of 8 (The tens place multiplied by 2), while an ordinary human with a Strength of 40 still only has a strength bonus of 4. Even at equivalent strengths, Space Marines hit twice as hard as regular people. Toughness - How ded ‘ard you are. Toughness in Warhammer RPGs is directly tied to damage reduction. Also, because Space Marines are genetically modified, they double their Toughness bonus. To extend the example from Strength, a Space Marine with a Toughness of 40 has a Toughness bonus of 8 (which is also their damage reduction), while an ordinary human with the same score still only has a Toughness bonus of 4. Not only do Space Marines hit twice as hard, but they ignore twice as much damage. Agility - How fast you are. Agility directly impacts your movement speed, but is also the characteristic that is tied to the Dodge skill. We’ll get into how important Dodge is later, but for now we’ll just say that having a high Agility score is really good at saving your rear end thanks to Dodge. Intelligence - How smart you are. Intelligence is tied to every single lore skill in the game and is thus very good to have around if you want to ‘remember’ some of the more intricate details of monsters and the setting. Certain Space Marines might also find it valuable if they work with technology, as the Tech-Use skill is directly tied to it. Perception - How good at noticing things you are. Space Marines do have some organs which boost their perception rolls (hearing and sight), but nothing as extreme as the super-strength and toughness they get. Willpower - How strong-willed you are in the face of everything. Willpower is the most useful characteristic for Librarians, as psyker powers rely on Willpower, but it can be pretty useful for ‘squad leader’ builds too. Fellowship - How much people like you/how able you are to negotiate… gently caress it, it’s just Charisma. Squad leader types will want to boost this characteristic really high, as it will allow you to command and motivate NPCs a lot easier. So now that we’ve done that, let’s generate our Space Marine’s characteristics! And Orokos tells us… We’ve got an interesting guy. We’re rolling them all in order, so here we go: pre:WS: 47 (This guy is going to be really choppy) BS: 38 (This guy is almost certainly going to be choppy) S: 33 (This is a problem) T: 38 (...Could be better, as it’s below average) Ag: 44 (Much better) Int: 40 Per: 39 WP: 42 Fel: 43 And now we get to pick our Chapter! Step 2: Picking your Chapter Hoo boy. You’re going to get a lot of nerds’ hackles raised talking about what Chapters are good and which ones are bad. Chapters are important to the Space Marines because they form a core part of their identities and separate them from the rest of their Brothers. It influences who they are, how they act, how they conduct themselves in battle, etc. In fact, this is what makes the Deathwatch really interesting fluff-wise - they are comprised of brothers from every single chapter, and oftentimes even chapters that dislike each other learn to work together. Chapters in Deathwatch do a lot. They give you additional access to skills and talents that you might not otherwise have. They give you an attitude common to brothers from your chapter to give you a hook to roleplay with. They affect which statistics you get to apply a +5 bonus to during character creation. For Librarians, they determine which bonus psyker powers you have access to, and for everyone else they determine which Solo Mode and Squad Mode abilities you have access to. We’ll get into Solo/Squad mode later, but what you need to know is that your Chapter influences how your character acts more than anything else. In the Core Rulebook, Fantasy Flight only included the most popular chapters (plus one of their own creation). These chapters are: ![]() The Ultramarines: No, they’re not called that because they’re more Marine than every other Marine out there - they just occupy a region of space known as Ultramar. Really. You either love these guys because they’re one of the few that actually give a poo poo about human life, or you hate them because GW can’t stop making these guys power-armored Mary Sues. ![]() Space Wolves: They wolf wolf and wolf your wolf all wolf long. These guys are more or less Space Vikings with a side of Wolfman. You love these guys because they’re SPACE VIKINGS and they know how to have a good time. You hate them because GW can’t stop making overpowered Codexes for them in the tabletop version of the game. If you play a Space Wolf, you can’t play as an Apothecary (don’t worry - they have their own version of Apothecaries in a later supplement and - you guessed it - they made it overpowered as gently caress). ![]() Black Templars: BURN THE WITCH! These guys do not gently caress around, and they hate psykers almost as much as Khorne does. Black Templars play up the Space Knight archetype to the hilt, and unsurprisingly they favor assault actions. Playing a Black Templar actually limits you a lot in terms of what specialties you can play as: Black Templars can’t be Librarians (they like burning psykers instead) and they can’t be Devastators (because sitting in the back firing at people is for pansies - real knights put swords in people’s heads). Since they are successors to the Imperial Fists, some of their geneseed is also malfunctioning a bit (but nothing that’s terribly useful anyways). You love them because they’re metal and 40k as gently caress, you hate them because the guy at the table playing them won’t stop trying to put a Power Sword through your Librarian’s skull. ![]() Blood Angels: Edward Cullen-type Space Vampires. Blood Angels are said to look like they’re well-sculpted, but the Chapter hides a dark secret - at some point in their lives, they lose all pretense of sanity and desire nothing more than to kill the enemy and drink their blood. This is because one of the Big Bads of the setting murdered their founder (known as Primarchs) really badly, and said founder also had a few unpleasant run-ins with Greater Daemons of Khorne. You love them because they’re all bound to be tragic heroes - you hate them because they’re all bound to be tragic heroes. ![]() Dark Angels: Brooding dudes who are in a secret club that has a secret club inside a secret club. No, that’s actually true. Dark Angels are generally secretive dudes who are hunting down renegade members of their chapter so that no one ever finds out that half of their chapter actually betrayed the Imperium during the near-apocalyptic times known as the Horus Heresy. You love them because they enjoy Plasma Weapons and being able to get secrets out of drat near everybody. You hate them because for crying out loud, do we need another Chapter full of moody-broody dudes that also has Angel in the title? ![]() (Yeah, there’s no old arts for these guys because…) Storm Wardens: Wait, you didn’t read about these guys in a GW Codex? That’s OK - this is actually FFG’s home-brewed Chapter that GW allowed them to make for the 40k RPG line. Storm Wardens are essentially Space Scotsmen, down to the point where you can actually opt out of the standard Combat Knife that all Space Marines get and instead take a Claymore. This makes them completely awesome. One guy on /tg apparently played the Space Scotsman angle to the hilt, and the result is Brother Dougie McIsaac. You love them because for gently caress’s sake, they’re Space Scotsmen. You hate them because you’re a GW purist and these guys aren’t technically canon nowadays. And that does it for our Chapters! There are additional supplements that add a gently caress-ton of Chapters in case you wanted to be from a different kind of Chapter. For instance, First Founding lets you roll up Space Marines from every other original chapter except the Imperial Fists (and the Chaos ones, obviously). Honour the Chapter contains a huge butt-load of Successor Chapters for even more variety. For some reason or another though, Rites of Battle has a chapter in it, and it’s the Imperial Fists (who aren’t in First Founding) Because I’m actually going to skip ahead a bit and say I’m making a Librarian (because I hate myself and feel like you need to see how rules for Psykers work), that actually limits what Chapters we can select. Seeing as how GW doesn’t really want them to be canon anymore, we’re going to roll with a Storm Warden because gently caress GW. Storm Wardens don’t actually get two characteristic bonuses (they get one plus a stat bonus), but they do add 5 to our Strength score. After picking our chapter, our stat block now looks like this: pre:WS: 47 BS: 38 S: 46 T: 38 Ag: 44 Int: 40 Per: 39 WP: 42 Fel: 43 Next time: Step 3/Chapter 2 - Picking your Specialty LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Night10194 posted:Librarians: Almost as good in melee as the Assault Marine with better weapons and incredibly powerful special abilities. I actually have specialties written up, I just don't have the rest of Chapter 1 done yet. I decided to post to keep moving forward and to make next week's update a lot easier on my schedule. Needless to say, I do try to address this disparity. There's not a lot of balance in Deathwatch in general. Nevertheless, all the specialties are pretty good because you're SPACE MARINES and most things you face (except maybe Necrons) are typically inferior to you in some way. The Assault Marine gets Lightning Attack at Rank 2, meaning even pretty early in their career they're hitting three times to the Librarian's one. It's just the Librarian's one hit is enough to kill most things in one hit. Balance! And he has a ton of ways to negate having a lovely BS. More balance! By Rank 3, the Librarian will have Swift Attack though, and by Rank 7 they'll finally get Lightning Attack (and Psy Rating 9). Apothecaries kind of get the poo poo end of the stick, as they don't get to be as good in melee as Assault Marines and their special abilities and gear tend to pale in comparison to Librarians. Still, thematically a lot of Watch Captains are going to mandate that you need someone to be the
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wiegieman posted:Please direct all questions on Assault Marines to Tormagoden the Eviscerator, Flesh Tearer with lightning attack and a breaching augur. ![]()
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One major criticism I have with the system is that it doesn't do middle grounds very well. Either you absolutely devastate the opposition, or the opposition absolutely devastates you. It gives some loose guidelines for creating a 'fair' fight, but even then there's nothing in the system that's codified like Challenge Rating to help you gauge threats accordingly as a GM. It's definitely led to a GM getting very deflated when the Ork Warboss he had planned out as a major boss encounter simply got turned into Swiss cheese by the Heavy Bolter we had on the team. Maybe someday I'll go more into it with the Necron stat blocks. They're pretty much one of the few enemies that can credibly stand up to Space Marines. However, their melee weapons (and even their ranged ones) are ludicrous. They pretty much negate anything short of Terminator armor, and even then that only offers token resistance. Necrons also have high Strength and weapon damage, so it basically becomes a 'if you get hit, you go straight into criticals' kind of scenario. There's a term that somebody threw around earlier called 'rocket tag' in reference to high-level Deathwatch combats, and that's pretty accurate.
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Halloween Jack posted:40KRPG accurately models the organizational horseshit of a real military organization. I'm not sure if you jest, but they really do that in Only War. Depending on the state of the war, how many resources the Imperium's willing to devote to it, your equipment request, and your requisition roll, you can end up with anything from a relic weapon to a crate full of lho sticks. By the way, all you asked for were a couple of extra lasguns to equip the new guys you recently 'acquired'. wiegieman posted:The Imperial Fists are used as an example of the chapter creation mechanic. They also make the best Librarians. You say that, but there's always the Also, Chapter Creation mechanics are really wonky and confusing because there's technically two books that delve into Chapter Creation, and having both is recommended. Both Rites of Battle and Honour the Chapter contain these vital details. I'm gonna say it's GW being greedy with money. It's also very telling that if you look at the 40k RPGs pre-Black Crusade and post-Black Crusade, there's a huge difference in the number of supplements. Dark Heresy 1e, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch had a metric gently caress-ton of splatbooks. Black Crusade, Only War, and Dark Heresy 2e had very few. I think BC had an adventure book and four splatbooks, Only War had an adventure and two splatbooks, and DH2e maybe had three splatbooks and an adventure? The point I want to make is - GW probably saw the RPG line as less-profitable because Deathwatch (which has Space Marines, their most lucrative IP) likely did not sell as well as projected.
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Halloween Jack posted:So what's the most fanboyishly written Space Marine chapter? I'm guessing Ultramarines or Grey Knights? 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'. I am not making this up. Go to the Quotes section.
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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 18:19 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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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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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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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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It's been a week and you know what that means: IT'S TIME FOR MORE ![]() Step 3/Chapter II: Picking your Specialty Covering Specialties is important in the process of character creation, but it also has another fringe benefit - we get to cover most of Chapter II at the same time! Specialties are basically the main role that your Space Marine fulfills in the group. They’re more or less directly drawn from the tabletop with no unusual things thrown in (you have to wait for the supplements, in particular Rites of Battle, for some of the advanced specialties that are unique roles in chapters). Overall, specialties affect a lot more things than just ‘defining’ your role within the Kill-Team (Deathwatch’s term for PC groups). They affect how much experience you have to spend to improve characteristics, what skills you have access to, what talents you have access to - all of which help to continue to define what you do. In addition, they all come with a special ability that can’t be replicated by traits/talents. To help differentiate characters that take the same specialty within a group, there are anywhere from 2 to 3 different special abilities - you can only pick one. In addition, each specialty has a set of starting gear that stays with your Space Marine no matter what - the implications of gear and keeping it is something we’ll get into when we arrive at Chapter V. The specialties in the Core Rulebook are, as follows: ![]() Apothecary: Apothecaries fulfill the role of a frontline combat medic within the group. Cleric would be a bit of a misnomer, as Apothecaries don’t have access to supernatural abilities that they use to heal their brethren - they rely on their skill, as well as a key piece of equipment (the narthecium/reductor) to perform emergency medicine in combat. Apothecaries are balanced more towards the close-combat, knowledge, and technical skills end of the equation (they get WS, Int, and Per cheaply) but don’t have any glaring weaknesses. Ranged combat isn’t a real strong suit (they have to rely on Chapter/General Space Marine advances to get most of those talents), but their BS doesn’t suffer too much. Apothecaries are cool fluff-wise and because of their vital role in ensuring that the Kill-Team’s geneseed is retrieved in case they die, every Kill-Team typically needs one Apothecary. Balance-wise, they’re not as good as Assault Marines in melee and their special abilities don’t make up for this difference - unlike Librarians, who can typically negate almost all of their disadvantages. Still, no one else can patch the Kill-Team back together better than them. Apothecaries get access to three special abilities (choosing only one). They are: Guardian of Purity: If there’s an effect that would cause the Kill-Team to gain corruption points, the Apothecary’s constant monitoring of the team’s genetic purity reduces the amount of Corruption gained by 2 (to a minimum of 1). We’ll touch on corruption later, but it’s generally tied to interacting with Chaos/really nasty xenos artifacts. Create Toxins: With time and a tissue sample from the enemy, the Apothecary can derive a toxin that has devastating effects on that particular enemy. Once you apply the toxin, the Kill-Team weapons gain the Toxic modifier for a number of rounds, but it only works when you’re in Squad Mode. Doesn’t work on Daemons. Enhance Healing: When you succeed at a Medicae (First Aid/Surgery) test to restore wounds, you can restore an additional 1d5 wounds. Much more useful than you realize once we get into how healing works in Deathwatch. ![]() Assault Marine: If your thing is landing on people’s FACES and getting all up in their grill with melee combat, these guys are your ticket. They start out leagues ahead of everyone in the melee combat game, able to make TWO melee attacks in a round right from the get-go - other specialties that have a melee combat bent typically have to wait until they get much more experience just to get those two attacks, and by then Assault Marines are rolling with three. Did I mention they also start with a jump pack? Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are absolute balls at ranged combat, cannot be relied on for most skills (especially knowledge-based), and have surprisingly fragile WP growth for a class that’s expected to jump out of moving vehicles and land on top of a horde of enemies. Assault Marines get two special abilities (choosing one). They are: Wings of Angels: Allows you to add 20 meters to your movement with a skill check, and if you make a Charge while using this ability you add more damage to the attack. This ability can only be used in Solo Mode. Wrathful Descent: Did you play Dawn of War 2 and think it was absolutely awesome when Assault Marines jumped through the air and hit the ground with enough impact to damage and scatter your enemies? That’s essentially what this is - if you make a Charge against a Horde, you inflict more damage to the Horde. You gotta be in Squad Mode to use this ability though ![]() Devastator Marine: Whereas Assault Marines are for bashing people in the head, Devastator Marines are for filling them full of bolter rounds. They start with what’s widely considered to be one of the best ranged weapons in the game (Heavy Bolter) which allows them to absolutely pulp horde-based enemies with extreme prejudice. For this reason, they are often referred to as ‘Cheesetators’ for their ability to render combats with mass hordes (or even singular foes) somewhat trivial. Even post-nerf, the Heavy Bolter is That Good. They are verifiably terrible at melee combat, but they get pretty much every single talent that improves ranged weapons in the game. Like Assault Marines, they’re pretty bad at most skills (especially knowledge-based) and aren’t very quick on their feet at all (which impacts their Dodge skill). Hilariously they can improve their Strength easily, I guess so they can better carry the big guns? The Cheesetator gets two special abilities to choose from (they can only pick one). A common theme among most special abilities is that one is typically only usable in Solo Mode, and the other one in Squad Mode. The abilities are: Immovable Warrior: When in Solo Mode, wielding a Heavy weapon, and behind cover, Devastators gain the Sturdy trait and a +10 bonus to all Ballistic Skill tests. To use another DoW2 analogy, it’s basically like deploying your Devastator in a fortified position, bracing your weapon on cover for more support/accuracy. Unrelenting Devastation: Maybe the number one reason to go into Squad Mode. When firing a Heavy weapon, the Devastator inflicts one extra point of magnitude damage on a Horde for every hit. If you’re using a Heavy Bolter, this means you start mulching Hordes right fast. If you’re using something with the Blast quality (flamers and rocket launchers), you deal an extra 1d5 magnitude damage instead. Need to be in Squad Mode, though. ![]() Librarian: Space Wizards! Librarians are hard to compare to other specialties because nobody else gets access to psyker powers. They are generally good at melee combat thanks to their Force Weapon, which also makes them the best boss-killers in the game - if they channel their psychic power through their Force Weapon when they hit, they can deal tremendous single-target damage that completely bypasses all damage reduction (Toughness and Armor alike). They are terrible at conventional ranged combat, but they can easily compensate for that with PSYCHIC POWERS. As powerful as their psyker techniques are though, they are notorious for killing the entire party thanks to an extremely fun table known as “Perils of the Warp”, which we’ll get to later. Librarians have very good Willpower and knowledge-based skills, but aren’t so great at commanding other Marines, and are somewhat slow to boot. These disadvantages tend to pale in comparison to their ability to open up a hole in the Warp and suck all of your foes into its gaping maw in about a round. Librarians get no access to special abilities, because they can already explode things with the power of their mind. Each Chapter does have their own way of using psyker powers however, so they all have powers that are unique to their Chapter. ![]() Tactical Marine: Tac Marines aren’t really good at anything, but they’re not really bad at anything either. Just like in the fluff, Tac Marines can substitute as either Assault Marines or Devastator Marines as the situation calls, although they get decidedly more ranged combat talents than melee ones. In Deathwatch, Tactical Marines do get a bit of a special role just to make sure they’re unique - they’re incredible squad leaders, with quick access to the Command skill and a lot of talents that take advantage of their extremely good Fellowship. In conventional RPG terms, they’re the face class, but they can fill a variety of roles well. With the right special abilities, they’re downright deadly with a Bolter. More than any other specialty, the Tactical Marines’ choice of special ability really defines their role on the team - are they going to be good jack-of-all-trades fire support, or the quintessential squad leader? Special abilities (which, as always, they can only choose one of) are: Bolter Mastery: In Solo Mode, the Tactical Marine gains a +10 bonus to Ballistic Skill and +2 to damage rolls when using a Bolt Weapon. Tactical Expertise: This is the Squad Mode ability. A lot of how Tactical Mastery works will be covered when I go into detail on how Squad Mode works, but here’s the basic deal - when in Squad Mode, a Marine with Tactical Expertise can allow other members of the Kill-team to use their Chapter-specific Squad Mode abilities. If you don’t have this ability, only members of the Kill-team who are from the same Chapter can use your Chapter-specific abilities. ![]() Techmarine:If you read 1d4chan, you might’ve heard about these guys. They are goddamn overpowered. Techmarines are equally competent at ranged and melee combat, and their built-in Servo Arm is one of the more powerful melee weapons in the game. If that wasn’t enough they are DED ‘ARD in every sense of the word - Toughness is one of the cheapest attributes for them to improve, and they get a fun little talent called The Flesh is Weak which gives them bonus armor points. To top it all off, they also get cheap access to Artificer Armor at higher levels, which is nearly as good as Terminator Armor with all of the flexibility of regular Power Armor. In terms of skills/talents, they get a lot of technical skills, some lore skills, and a set of unique talents that take advantage of their Mechanicus Implants that make them technomages to a certain extent. This is because unlike other Space Marines, Techmarines are seconded to the Adeptus Mechanicus, the superstitious custodians of technology in the 41st millennium. Naturally, no other class can replicate these abilities. Techmarines get access to the following special ability. It doesn’t care what mode you’re in. Improve Cover: You add armor points to a specific piece of cover equal to your Intelligence bonus (unmodified). This isn’t going to make a huge difference if tank rounds are flying your way, but a Techmarine in his own improved cover is going to be the proverbial hard nut to crack on the Kill-team. And that rounds it up for our specialties! Because I wanted to show you all the psychic rules, our Storm Warden Space Marine is going to be a Librarian.
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I won't lie. I'm having a blast unearthing old art and miniatures to post instead of the new, high-quality stuff. Fun fact about 40K 1e that I just noticed:![]() That's a half-eldar Ultramarines Librarian.
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Green Intern posted:Mmm, Cheesetaters. Seriously. Another poster covered how much bullshit the Heavy Bolter is able to put out earlier, and it's staggering. Because Deathwatch has exploding 10s for critical hits, with the right weapon it's entirely possible to keep rolling 10s and deal more than enough damage with just the Heavy Bolter to punch through the frontal armor of a Dreadnought or even a Land Raider. Rites of Battle is one of the first splatbooks that they made before errata, and there are a ton of bullshit weapons that break the system. Someone earlier mentioned the Breaching Augur - this is one such weapon.
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Halloween Jack posted:No, more like this: So that's how AM did it...
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This time, on Deathwatch... Step 4: Derived Attributes: Movement, Wounds, Fate, and Experience Points These should be pretty brief and easy to cover. Movement is based solely on your Agility bonus plus your Size modifier. Within Deathwatch, you generally have four choices when it comes to movement - Half Move, Full Move, Charge, and Run. We’ll get into Deathwatch’s action economy a bit more in-depth when we get into the Combat chapter, but we can figure out our movement based on some simple equations: Half Move: Equal to our Ag Bonus Full Move: Ag Bonus x 2 Charge: Ag Bonus x3 Run: Ag Bonus x6 So for our Librarian with a Agility of 44, his movement looks like this: Half Move: 4 Full Move: 8 Charge: 12 Run: 24 It also probably helps to mention that movement and distanced are calculated using Meters. For everything in Deathwatch involving speed or distance, meters are the norm. The movement rates also hint at Deathwatch's action economy, which we can go into a little more detail about later. The quick and dirty way to explain the action economy in Deathwatch is: you can take either two half-actions or one full-action. For movement, Charge and Run count as full actions and carry their own benefits/drawbacks - there are compelling reasons to not just Run all the time versus taking Full Moves. Wounds are pretty straightforward - you roll 1d5 and add 18, which gives you a pretty slim range of 19 to 23 wounds. Wounds basically represent your ability to take punishment after reducing it by your armor and Toughness. Space Marines tend to have a really high wound total compared to any human, as a result of the superhuman endurance imparted to them by their genetic modifications/implants. To illustrate, the toughest human in Dark Heresy rolls 1d5+9, showing that Space Marines can take about twice as much punishment as the toughest human (Rogue Trader ones can take a bit more, but that’s because they’re special). Wounds typically don’t matter until you hit certain break points, which we’ll cover later. Generally, you will be just as good at fighting at full wounds as you are at zero wounds. When you get down to zero wounds though, you start taking critical damage. Enough critical damage, and you die (but we’ll also get into that later in the Combat section, because the 40k RPGs have a RoleMaster-like Critical Damage table). Critical damage is the ‘bad’ kind of damage, and can generally do unpleasant things to your character that permanently alter them. Typically, this revolves around limb loss. My favorite example of ‘bad’ critical damage is one that nearly kills you. Basically, your head is set on fire and you suffer such horrific burns that not only do you lose all your hair (depending on who you talk to though, all good Space Marines are already bald) your face is also FUBAR. The game asks you to roll 1d10. Congratulations - this is your new Fellowship score! This is the game’s way of hard-dicking face characters. No other ‘archetype’ suffers anywhere near as much from critical damage as anyone who’s built around Fellowship. All other archetypes are OK, as they can replace missing arms and legs with bionic replacements that function either as good as or better than the original. Storm Wardens' other bonus isn’t a characteristic bonus - it’s actually a bonus to wounds! So, rolling for Wounds gives us… 21, because we rolled terribly and added +2 wounds for the Storm Wardens bonus. Fate is another one of the attributes that we roll for. Fate points represent the Emperor’s favor in your destiny - and as Space Marines, who can claim direct ancestry to the Emperor, you tend to have a lot more of it than most. Fate points are Deathwatch’s (and consequently, most of the 40k line’s) Get Out of Jail Free cards - they allow some player agency in mitigating the impact of bad rolls/results. You can use Fate Points to reroll dice (but you must take that result), add a bonus to your roll (which you declare before you roll the dice), or even recover Wounds and reset Critical Damage (unless it resulted in limb loss). If you need to cheat death (i.e., your character takes enough critical damage to be killed), you can also use a Fate Point for that - but when you do, you permanently burn (lose) a Fate Point. Fate is pretty easy to generate - roll 1d10. Depending on your result, you’ll get a certain number of Fate Points. Space Marines are guaranteed to have a base minimum of 3 Fate points (which of course, is the maximum number of Fate Point a human in Dark Heresy can have). For our Storm Warden, we rolled an 8, giving him a total of 4 Fate Points - the Emperor favors him more than most! Experience is pretty basic - you start with 1,000 experience to spend on skills, abilities, and talents. I realized I didn't have any old 40k 1e art to put with any of my text for this update, so here you go: These are the Squats. There are many like them, but none of them are mine (thankfully). ![]() DID YOU KNOW?! Chaos Space Marines, especially Noise Marines, used to be infinitely more ![]() ![]() LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Mar 27, 2017 |
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Night10194 posted:Shitfarmer gaming is great gaming if it's about getting out of the shitfarm and doing something amazing. Though that generally requires a stable group and a long term campaign, and a lot of shitfarmer gaming advocates don't seem to get the whole 'get out and do something incredible' part. And tend to insist ALL gaming should be shitfarmer gaming, which is just patently ridiculous. Incidentally, few systems do this as well as WHFRP.
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I've probably said this before but all I can think of with D&D farmers is all the monsters they'd probably have to deal with, like ankhegs or bulettes. I have to imagine that your average D&D farmer that survived the number of wandering wilderness monsters an encounter chart generates season after season would have to be really capable or be really dead. Not according to 3.x's Commoner class, unfortunately. It would, however, be amazing to have a scenario where adventurers come across a farming community where they deal with these things on the regular and consequently, they're all fairly high-level Fighters/Rangers. When the players arrive to see if they need help with everything, they just redirect them to all the poo poo chores they'd normally do when extremely bored like "clear out this tribe of bugbears" or other monsters that might be beneath a community of incredibly BAMFs.
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MonsieurChoc posted:The thing is, I was laughing because shitfarmers doing nothing was totally a major literary genre, albeit for church propaganda purposes. On the other hand... ![]()
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I can envision a hamlet of the meanest motherfuckin' peasants in WHFRPG. I imagine they're placed somewhere near Mousillon (French vampires), but there's no lord or knight to rule over them. Those who arrive to assert their authority mysteriously disappear, yet the peasants always pay their taxes (and extra) on time and with military precision. One time, a vampire leading a host to Carcasonne decided to stop by the hamlet on the way for a light snack. He arrived to find an empty town, but it was all a ruse. Before he could contemplate his sudden hunger, peasants surrounded him on all sides, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, with every manner of pike and arrow available to them. He barely managed to escape back to Mousillion to tell his tale, whereupon he was immediately executed for incompetence. After all, everybody knows a Brettonian peasant can't obliterate an entire host of undead without being goaded into it by all manner of ranking knights! Meanwhile, the peasants living in this hamlet mysteriously managed to have a bumper crop this year when many fields in Bretonnia fell fallow...
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Kurieg posted:The Inklesspen Mirror has everything up to midway through chapter 5, Which picks up here. I go into the fiction anthology basically immediately after I'm done with the main book. Conquering Heroes is here. Speaking of which, how do I get it to recognized that I've un-abandoned a review?
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senrath posted:In my experience from people who like CoC games the quote could be expanded to "If you want to survive, never touch or read anything. But honestly, who really wants to survive?" Pretty much. As my friend described it, you play CoC to lose, but the manner in which you lose/how long it takes for you to lose is what makes it interesting.
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gently caress it all, it's time for some more motherfuckin' DEATHWATCH![]() This time, we'll be covering Step 5: Starting Equipment This part of character creation is fairly basic. All Space Marines start out with the following gear, which we’ll go into detail about in Chapter 5 (Armory): All Specialties - Power Armor, Bolt Pistol, 3 Frag Grenades, 3 Krak Grenades, Combat Knife, Repair Cement, Chapter Trapping. Hell, a fella in Vegas could have a good time with that. Power Armor also comes with its own special history. Within the 40k universe, technology’s gotten to the point where it’s actually difficult to make something new. Therefore, most Space Marines do not actually wear a nice, brand-new suit of Power Armor that was made just for them to inaugurate their induction into their Chapter. More often than not, they’re wearing an old hand-me-down suit of Power Armor that a prior Space Marine lived (and likely died) in. To represent this, you roll on a special table for Power Armor history that represents the quirks of your armor’s ‘Machine Spirit. We’ll get to that in a bit - for now, we’ll cover the basic gear for each specialty. ![]() This is the basic Bolter in action. Nearly every specialty gets one of these, in addition to Bolt Pistols. Apothecary - Bolter with fire selector, reductor and narthecium. Note that despite being geared towards melee combat, they don’t come with a chainsword ![]() ![]() I put on my robe and wizard hat. Uh, I mean chainsword and trenchcoat. Assault Marine - Chainsword, Jump pack. The chainsword isn’t terribly remarkable - it has tearing, but low penetration and base damage. The jump pack is awesome though, and you should use it every chance you get. ![]() This is what a Heavy Bolter looks like if you’re a normal human. Space Marines tote this poo poo around like it’s nobody’s business - minus the wheels, of course. Devastator Marine: Heavy bolter with backpack ammo supply. This weapon is King of poo poo Mountain for reasons that Deptfordx covers here: 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. Suffice to say, it’s one of the best weapons in the game and you get this as a permanent part of your kit as a Devastator. Have fun! ![]() Force Sword IN ACTION. Librarian: Bolter with fire selector, Force weapon. You generally have one of two choices for your Force weapon (Staff or Sword), but there’s really only one right choice - the Force Sword. Unlike the chainsword, the Force weapon is going to be your best melee weapon from start to finish because it will scale with your Psy Rating, which we’ll get into soon. Tactical Marine: Bolter with fire selector, one clip of Special Issue ammunition. Special Issue ammunition will be covered later, but it’s what makes the Bolter the most flexible weapon in the game. Depending on the type of ammo you load into it, it can perform a bunch of different roles pretty OK - much like the Tactical Marine! We’ll cover specialist ammo in the Armory section, and it’s pretty neat all things considered. ![]() They may as well have made the drat Servo-Arm this big, just because of how much BS it is. Techmarine: Bolter with fire selector (pretty standard), Astartes Servo-Arm and one other Common craftsmanship cybernetic (choose). We’ll get into possible cybernetics (hint: there’s really only one choice, and it’s the Mind Interface Unit) that you can choose from, but the Servo-Arm stands out. You need to wear Power Armor in order to use it, but it’s a pretty beefy weapon. It’s strong as all get-out (75 Strength), counts as having Unnatural Strength (which doubles its Strength bonus to 14), and has a Penetration value of 10 (i.e., it negates 10 points of Armor from whatever it attacks, which in this game means that Space Marine Power Armor doesn’t do jack-poo poo against it). This means right out of the gate, the Techmarine can hit harder than a Power Fist, and he can do this as either his reaction (again, part of the action economy) or as a Standard Attack. The Servo-Arm marks the beginning of the bullshit benefits that the Techmarine gets, and it’s far from the end of it.
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I started D&D with these bad boys:![]() ![]() I then bought the 2nd edition DM's Guide (the one with the monsters bursting through the door) and realized I had no idea how the game worked, exactly. The fact that you had to buy the Monster Manual separately to actually do anything was a pretty big turn-off, considering how expensive the rulebook was back then. I'd only ever start to understand how D&D 2nd edition worked thanks to Baldur's Gate, and through that I also realized that a lot of the underlying systems are incredibly clunky and hard to adjudicate without deep system mastery (see: weapon speed, casting speed, and interrupting spellcasts).
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Barudak posted:I started DnD by inheriting a shitload of modules, weirdass monster books, and random one off junk books for settings or features and not one single DMs guide or Players Handbook. I backsolved everything for our group and man was it weird. Out wizard didnt know any basic spells like magic missle but had like the entire esoteric bigbys collection. Our fighter always ran exotic weaponry since i had like 5 times the rules for those and we assumed turns were measured in discrete chunks of time so like attacking was X units, each square of movement was a unit, investigating things in combat cost units etc. I made a similar bootleg adventure for my gifted program back in Elementary school based upon my entirely flawed understanding of how the game worked via the above-mentioned FastPlay books. The adventure basically sent the party through said Elementary school to... You know what? Looking back on it, I don't think I had a hook other than 'explore all the rooms, laugh at all of the in-jokes'. I don't even know how it worked, because I never actually ran it. My favorite was the cafeteria with the gelatinous cube posing as a bunch of harmless Jell-O cups (or whatever cut-rate gelatin they provided to make $1.25 lunches break-even), followed by poking around under desks and getting mauled by the horde of gum-on-desk creatures. It was, in a word, terribad. I may have put a bullshit wizard in there with 1 hp who could cast Lightning Bolt for 6d6 damage. I forget where I placed him, though.
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Kaza42 posted:I got into D&D from my dad, who was in college when the game first came out. On top of that, I had both the AD&D 2nd edition player's handbook and the AD&D 1st edition player's handbook, and had NO IDEA that they were of different editions, and so used both freely and interchangeably. So for most of my childhood, I played a weird mashup of the rules my dad remembered and played with (which were their own hodgepodge of house rules, misunderstood stuff and basic+ad&d mixed), plus the various Dragon magazine articles, handbooks (I loved the Complete Humanoid book) and the multiple-editions worth of player's handbooks. It wasn't until I played Neverwinter Nights (which was 3e) that I even knew wizards were supposed to have spellbooks they picked spells from, rather than just knowing and using a fixed list. PurpleXVI posted:5E was designed by committee and had no idea what it wanted to be, which meant they ended up with an edition that did a lot of things "okay," did nothing really well or uniquely and ultimately did a lot of things worse than already-existing editions. Like, I find it hard to come up with any reason to not just play 2E, 4E or even 3E instead of 5E. On every single metric it's beaten by one of those three editions, it has no stand-out point where you can go: "Well if you want THIS" or "If you want this done REALLY WELL," then you have to play 5E over the other three, while I'd say that those other three all have something going for them in terms of being different. In this sense, perhaps 5E is the Oldest School Rules of All given that its design-by-committee nature ensures it's a hodgepodge of house rules, misunderstood stuff, and basic+AD&D mixed into a slurry in a hurry. No dig against you and your dad - if you enjoyed what you were playing, then you were playing your D&D right.
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When I learned 3.x in high school, we always used a grid - it's what enabled great shenanigans like our evil Rogue and Monk duo who spent entire combats tumbling into flanking positions, tripping people up, and then curbstomping them down in a single round. I can see how people can get away without using a grid (I've played both gridless and gridded Deathwatch), but it's been my experience that going gridless in D&D enables a lot of fuckery. There are so many rules in 3.x that demand a grid, and you really nerf the hell out of one class (Rogue) without it. Rules like Attack of Opportunity, Flanking, Cover, Line of Sight, etc. I mean, they don't present combat rules like "here's how you play it in TotM:" - they're all presented using the grid, and at least one of the rulebooks comes with a grid in the back for this exact reason. As a result, I was not surprised when I saw the combat rules for 4e and instead the first thought on my mind was "Wow, they really cleaned this up and made it more interesting! Fighters are properly sticky and can actually do poo poo now!" LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Apr 4, 2017 |
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Nessus posted:I suspect a lot of this was ginned up by Paizo in order to support the launch of Pathfinder as a business venture, and to be fair I gather Pathfinder is one of the few RPG product mills/lines/etc. that makes money in a more conventional way rather than by kickstarting all their products and, maybe, having demo games at cons. When I heard people raving about 'gridless' play for D&D 5e, it caused me to cock an eyebrow for this exact reason. Paizo did a lot of work to poo poo all over 4e, and generally the terms you hear to score Paizo bingo are: 1. It requires the grid 2. It's like an MMO 3. Wizards aren't special 4. It doesn't feel like D&D. 5. WotC abandoned its true fans.
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Comrade Koba posted:If it's the same Arduin I'm familiar with, it's basically a 50-something page booklet full of crazy weird poo poo for OD&D. Highlights include the "Techno" character class that lets you build robots, lasers and spaceships once you hit high levels. Oh, and there's a critical hit chart that specifically mentions your butt getting torn off. After reading Designers and Dragons, that sounds like the Arduin he's looking for. I think the two-word description of it is 'gonzo D&D' and that sounds about right.
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Indeed. But to be fair D&D 1e (which Arduin is really just a variant of rather than its own ruleset) basically set that standard. I'm amazed the spell page didn't feature Stafford's Star Bridge. It is indeed a reference to Greg Stafford. But it's also a big dig at him because Stafford declined to publish Arduin because: Humbug Scoolbus posted:The booklet itself is about 100 pages with no page numbering and a layout that makes a Palladium Book look well-organized. There were 3 Books in the initial series; The Arduin Grimoire, Welcome to Skull Tower, and Runes of Doom Stafford didn't really see it as publishable material (the sheer number of tables would give a typesetter nightmares, as this was before the days where computers were used for layout and publishing) and gave it back to him. The effects of Stafford's Star Bridge is that it create a bridge made of light and stars... Which promptly drops out beneath you. Also, re: Palladium - apparently, Kevin Siembieda did not use desktop publishing until the mid-2000s because, and this is according to Designers and Dungeons so there's at least some source corroborating this, he could do typesetting and layout by hand faster than any computer. It might explain a lot.
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Mors Rattus posted:Where do I get an 18-sided die Ask Lou Zocchi - if he hasn't already made it, then he will make it.
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Davin Valkri posted:That one looks silly, but this one actually saw combat. So did this one, and America fielded it.
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# ¿ Feb 16, 2025 22:21 |
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Night10194 posted:Someday people are going to realize 'The Tank only gets attacked because the DM agrees to go after the tank first' really doesn't work for tanking. Especially because D&D has a legacy of monsters that more or less state to the DM "These guys are wise to the poo poo that wizards pull. They will always kill them first and ignore everything else".
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