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Warhammer 40k Roleplay: Only War Half-Baked Subsystem It sort of started as a joke that every single FFG 40k game has a half-baked subsystem that's in the game too deep to get rid of but goddamn annoying, but drat if it hasn't been the case across the entire line. Here that subsystem is the Comrade System, which sounds like a fun and thematic idea until you actually look at what it means. Comrades are the extras in the war movie that is your life. They have a name, they have a single rolled/chosen quirk, and they die. A lot. They're also completely essential to powering your class abilities and kind of a pain in the rear end to track and replace. The game goes so far out of its way to strain not to give comrades stats or have them do anything besides act as a little buff that also dies a lot, that it actually becomes more confusing and complex to use them than if they had game stats. When I say Comrades are essential to your abilities, I mean it. Every class has extra class abilities they can buy (except the Stormtrooper and Commissar, who do not have friends because they're too good for it. The Enginseer has a Servitor, which is like a Comrade) which rely on your Comrade still being alive and near you. For instance, the Operator can have their Comrade hop in their vehicle and act as a gunner, letting the Operator fire a main turret weapon without needing anyone else manning it, using their own skill. Their Comrade can also buy a skill to put out vehicle fires instantly (as vehicle fires cause an escalating chance the vehicle explodes and probably kills everyone inside it the longer they burn, this is a good thing). The Weapon Spec can make all their attacks (sadly not including melee attacks, as being attacked in melee breaks pin) cause Pinning while also doing full damage, which is loving awesome when you have something like an automatic grenade launcher. Their Comrade can also act as a golf caddie, carrying all their weapons and letting them swap between them all as a free action rather than just making one swap per turn with the Quickdraw talent. The Medic's Comrade can run out and heal people at range (though as they aren't in Cohesion while doing that, any gunfire targeting them that hits will wound them, then kill them, so...careful on that) or act as an orderly and let them heal better or heal multiple patients at once. The Heavy Gunner's Comrade can effectively give +10 to hit on Semiauto, +20 on Full Auto (which is loving awesome) by stabilizing their gun, and can help them reload faster. The Sergeant can make all Comrades who aren't doing something else this turn make their allies does +4 damage per hit, get +10 to Dodge, or snap out of fear and pinning (this is why Sergeants are so much better than Commissars; the Commissar can try to help with Fear by terrorizing the team but only if they succeed at Fear themselves. The Sergeant has Huge Buffs) These are just the Normal Guardsman examples. These abilities are expensive in terms of EXP cost, but you also keep them if you class change. They're also awesome. Even if you don't use these abilities, your helpful Comrade can always add +5 to your BS when shooting your gun (as they fire their little flashlight to back you up) or give you the effect of outnumbering an enemy 2-1 in melee. These helpful little guys sure sound great, and they are, as long as they're alive. Which is where the problem comes. First, any shot that rolls doubles to-hit hits your comrade unless you Dodge or Parry, representing protecting your extra. But the real kicker is any attack with a Blast radius or that causes Spray (like a flamer) automatically hits all comrades caught in it. This includes if PCs make the Agility test to evade them. They just hit everyone 'in their radius'. So two grenades on your position (even if they land in front of your cover and get fully absorbed by cover AV and your toughness and poo poo) will kill your comrade instantly. You see, comrades take a Wound, then Die. Also while Wounded they can't run, and they take in-game days to heal. You need to keep your Comrade within 5 meters of you to keep in Cohesion and actually use their abilities. Outside of abilities like 'run over there and heal someone', everything they have forces them to be close to you. Also if they're out of cohesion, any hit will wound them, and then kill them. If your Comrade dies, they're gone for the rest of the mission. You can even buy a Tier 3 talent to get a Veteran Comrade, and if they die their replacement requires a long period to actually let you use the drat talent again. Similar for if you buy extra orders to give to your buddy. Don't waste your EXP on that, it costs a poo poo-ton and these guys are all 2 grenade templates anywhere close to you away from dead. However, these guys are baked deep into the system. Also, if they're ordered away from you, what the hell do they do? They don't have game stats. They don't have clear stats on how far they can move (one would assume they move at about AB 3, and the book does suggest you can 'consider using the basic stats for NPC Guardsmen' for them). They don't actually have a weapon, or BS, or anything to fire on targets for you after they move away from you. Basically you just stick them close to you and use them as a little buffbot/to power class abilities until the GM uses a couple template weapons like a jerk and they're dead. Remember: It doesn't matter how much damage it would have done. Unless you specifically order them to take cover, at which point they can't actually help you at all so they might as well be dead, anything that hits them wounds, than kills. They also cannot dodge on their own, unless they're close to you. And the GM is advised to make heavy weapons fire kill them in one hit instead of 2. They're in this weird little place where somehow, they're more complicated by not having any game stats. Everything about them exists as a binary state: They don't have stats, so if X, than Y. That they're also completely critical to using your actual class abilities (and those class abilities rock!) makes losing them really, really painful. This means a GM who uses blast and spray weapons strips the party of their ability to actually use their class skills very quickly. Good luck if you're fighting traitor guard, who will have a shitload of grenades and flamethrowers. Also, every single PC having a one-note pet NPC they're supposed to prattle with and characterize just enough to make it sad when they die can get kind of awkward. Look, I get it. It's an Imperial Guard RPG, but the PCs are too complicated and take too long to make to really play them as disposable and they'll probably eventually be shitkickers anyway, but someone has to die a lot. Giving them extra squadmates to fill out their squad, to be the poor little second model handling the ammo on the heavy weapons team or the poor dumb bastard who just has a lasgun and a prayer is fine and in theme. The implementation is just incredibly awkward and deeply unsatisfying to play with. You need your Comrade. They are your class abilities. They are also extremely death prone, and when you get a new one is very heavily dependent on the GM. Similar for if they're wounded and slowing you down; it arbitrarily takes quite a long in-game time to heal them. This also makes the Commissar class shooting your Comrade, who is a critical part of you being able to use your class abilities, kind of a dick move. Thankfully it's unlikely to come up, as that ability only works to heal a PC who is below 0 wounds and not dead, and that is a pretty uncommon state to be in in military-scale 40kRP. Either you got hit by small arms and you're in shape for the Medic to help, or you got hit by a heavy or monster and you're burning a Fate point and looking at robot limbs. If I was to redo Comrades, I'd make them something you spend in an emergency. Have them follow you around and help you with those order abilities; it's fine for the Guard to have Comrades who power their class abilities while they take the lead. Even good! It really emphasizes that you're soldiers, not lone superheroes. Then give players the option to have their Comrade get pasted instead of them when they'd take critical damage. The poor guy who just showed everyone a picture of his girl back at camp getting a sniper round that would've hit one of the leads otherwise is a classic of war movies to the point of being widely mocked. It would help players avoid getting one-shotted while giving you a meaningful penalty for saving yourself from a serious blow, to the point that if it isn't going to kill you you might take the crit. As it is, Comrades are 'Man I Sure Hope The Enemy Doesn't Have Grenades So We Can Keep Using Our Class Abilities', which sucks. There's a LOT in OW's combat system that will require the GM to hold back, pull their punches, and not play to the abilities and capabilities of the enemy if they don't want to murder the squad. If the GM actually uses every ability the enemies in this game have against an early-game squad, they are likely going to kill them all. You have to play with kid gloves early, especially against some of the enemies. It irks me. I felt like a dick every time I fielded anyone with template weapons because gently caress, now I'm turning off everyone's cool class abilities that they spent a lot of points on. Next Time: Compare the Tier Matrix
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May 21, 2020 04:25
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How would modifying the game to exchange the one comrade for a fireteam work? Since in setting the individual guardsman isn't worth much it stands to reason that commanding officers would plan things around teams, and it makes more sense for 4 soldiers to control a vehicle or a crew served weapon. and in addition to having 3 extra lives, it would also work better for the players to move separately around the battlefield instead of everyone getting pinned at the same place.
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May 21, 2020 09:29
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By popular demand posted:How would modifying the game to exchange the one comrade for a fireteam work? Since in setting the individual guardsman isn't worth much it stands to reason that commanding officers would plan things around teams, and it makes more sense for 4 soldiers to control a vehicle or a crew served weapon. I think thematically comrades are genius, but as night pointed out too fragile. I would change it so area attacks suppress the comrade, and they have to be unsuppressed by the PCs
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May 21, 2020 09:48
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I think I'd lean in to the 'comrades as powerups' and turn them into basically orbiting 1-ups. You start with 3 or so* Comrades who exist schrodinger-fashion in the general area around you. They cannot be hit with AoE effects or targeted directly, the only way they can be harmed is when someone shoots you and before the damage roll you declare that actually the shot hit one of your Comrades. They die messily and you are unharmed. * exact number decided at the beginning of the mission. Watsonian explanation is how many troops Command decides to send, the actual decision is made by the GM based on how long the mission is and how many enemies are packing instakill poo poo. The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 09:55 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 09:53
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Warhammer 40k Roleplay: Only War Character Advancement Is Unfun I've been thinking a lot about the overall problem of Only War, and I think I've hit on it as I ponder character advancement. Deathwatch was a highly combat focused game, but every PC could be reasonably assumed to be loving awesome at combat. The players were going to win the combats they got into almost without question. Marines would win battles, with the interesting drama being 'which battles do they fight' and 'why' and 'how do you deal with a warzone of billions expecting your 3-4 supersoldiers to turn it all around' and 'can they actually do that, if they make the right choices?' and 'do they even care as long as they have enemies to kill and receive the one pleasure allowed to Space Marines: Glory?' It became much more about the character drama, the wider war, the decisions and the sacrifices. When our PCs were pressing on in the Underhive, spending Fate to heal because we didn't have a medic and getting our armor and bodies progressively more hosed up as we kept going because as the Sergeant I'd made a bad call strategically earlier (tried to get two things done at once instead of committing properly to do one of them, almost got Ciaphus Cain killed, though I doubt Sgt. Martinez knew that was just 'Tuesday' for the poor man) and now we had to press through and salvage what we could, that was where DW was great. We were going to win our actual fights, and it ended in a glorious tank chase that wrecked a bunch of Tau and traitor PDF stuff, but a lot of Guardsmen died for my bad call and we didn't fully complete either objective. That was where the drama lived, a bunch of Marines with their glorious armor shot to pieces by Tau pulse rifles and weird rear end local Deep One things in the underhive, slogging through their mistake and trying to make the best of it they could. By contrast, in Only War, your ability to win combats very, very much is in doubt. You can potentially get turbo-hosed and you don't have a lot of control over where you're sent and what you do. You're not the elite of the elite fluff-wise, you're a bunch of modestly competent Guardsmen who might eventually be a special forces squad. It also wants to be able to model Guardsmen who are not destined to be Sgt. Glory and Their Howling Commandos, so you're able to make a completely terrible Regiment or characters or accidentally make a completely unbalanced one. And you're able to do that within the same play group. Look back at the Minions: loving idiots who bumble around the battlefield trying to avoid combat and stealing from the other units to survive as they try to crime their way past the hell-war their trustfundsman dragged them into is a fun concept for a Regiment. But it's not what the game supports. The game is way more into square jawed, sincere badasses trying to fight their way through hell and win at everything, because that's what all the character advancement and systems play into. Skills are very cheap to buy if you have both apts, and very expensive to raise all the way. You'd better be sure you really, really needed that skill at +30 before you decide to raise it there, like Dodge or maybe Parry. In almost every situation Dodge is better, though, because Dodge lets you evade the real killer: rear end in a top hat with an AT weapon and nothing better to shoot at. Dodging also works on melee, after all. Yes, Parry uses the same skill you use to attack in melee and that's potentially some dual-use there, but there are way more unparriable attacks than undodgable ones, and more importantly, Agi adds to your Initiative and less importantly your movement. Going first is absolutely critical whenever possible: Remember Suppressive Fire? You can use that with Semiauto guns now. Even if all you have is your terrible lasgun that can't hurt them (like the Medic) they can fulfill the time-honored Adept role of screaming 'SUPPRESSING FIRRRRRRRE' and pulling the trigger randomly at the enemy, whereupon the Orks, Eldar, or whatever will try to hunker down on a WP-10, with any failing enemies losing 1/2 their actions and taking huge to-hit penalties and being unable to leave cover. Now imagine what happens if your opponent goes first. You know, like Eldar, with their huge Agi Bonuses and infinite ammo automatic rifles? That cause WP-20 because they're full auto? In a game where, because WP is linked to the Psy Aptitude, almost no-one has a decent WP Advance? If I play a squad of Warriors (basic Eldar mooks) well, they will absolutely slaughter a squad of early-game PCs. Especially if they have an attached HMG or AT cannon. I note when I read stories of people playing OW they almost always seem to be fighting any of the attached enemies except the Dark Eldar, and this is because Eldar are basically perfectly adapted to the 40kRP combat system as it actually exists. High damage, high accuracy dodge tanks with very high initiative scores? Who are also good at Stealth and so can ambush PCs and hose them down before you can do anything about it? That's effectively how the players want to be playing anyway. Anyway, I digress. So your goal is to build a PC who goes first, who does a lot of damage. You probably also want to be evasive. Trying to be tough is a fool's game where you're throwing good after bad; if you can get an extra point of TB cheaply or something it can be worth it (like for Heavy Gunners) but investing heavily in Sound Constitution is sort of a waste of time. The simplest and easiest way to do this is guns. Guns are by far the best weapons in 40kRP, especially full auto heavy weapons. You'll need some of the low fire rate heavies to bring down vehicles and really big monsters, but for most things the Autocannon or Multilaser is the best weapon in the game. An Autocannon does 3d10+8 Pen 6. Compare this to, say, Dame Lillith: She has amazing armor her team spent a lot of points on. It's golden armor made of magical space material that is super important to her homeland. It's close to being as protective as light power armor. The Autocannon on average inflicts about 25-26 raw damage, ignores her armor completely, and takes her to -10 in one shot. What about comrade Multilaser, who is meant to be poor against armor since it's Str 6 AP 6 on TT? 2d10+10 Pen2. Average damage of 21-22 or so, ignores 2 of her 5 armor, takes her to Critical 3-4 in one shot, which is a level where she can drop unconscious (as good as dead), get blinded, or get stunned. All of which effectively take her out of the fight. Her armor will stop basic traitor lasguns all day, but any kind of heavy weapon will paste her. What if we really leaned into it and made her tough? Say she goes into a class that has good Toughness access and, oh, takes one rank of extra +5 instead of Class Changing. And buys her Tough to max and buys her Wounds to max. She goes up to 24 Wounds, TB 6. She'll have spent about 4000 EXP to do this, EXP that could have gotten her basically every talent in one of the talent trees that would make her kill her enemies faster. This will all amount to taking 11-12 damage a hit on average from a Multilaser or 19 from an Autocannon. She'll die in two Autocannon hits instead of one (and remember, it's a fast-firing weapon with long range and multiple shots, and AA versions get bonuses to hit her since she's flying Cavalry, while having Twin Linked which gives a flat +20 to hit and a chance for extra hits, the Hydra Flak Tank is a scary motherfucker) and go down in 3 Multilaser hits. This is a marked increase in HP, except it cost 8 sessions of pouring her EXP into nothing but being tough. No ability to hit back, no ability to evade damage in the first place. She just has to hope she doesn't get hit more than once. Pouring that level of character resource into Getting Tougher should make you far tougher, not 'I can take literally one more serious hit'. Sure, she'd shrug off minor small arms fire, but she could already do that via her golden armor. By contrast, lets look at a version who went all in on Dodge in the Sergeant Career or something. It costs her 1000 EXP to master Dodge if she has both Apts in it. Then 400 EXP to get Step Aside. Step Aside lets her try to Dodge/Parry twice in one turn. Even if she doesn't raise Agi (and she could; if she went into a Career next with good Agi access she could max Agi for 1650 EXP) she'd have a 73% chance to dodge an individual attack, doable twice a round, and Fate to help her survive it. For only 1400 EXP, she's now quite hard to hit, which might also make the GM decide to shoot at someone else. If she spent the EXP, she'd go up to 88%, which is some good odds when you consider the enemy has to roll to connect in the first place. Having about a 5% chance to be hit will still eventually get you killed if you're out of Fate (You've played X-COM, you know how 'safe' a 88% chance or someone dies is), but it's a pretty sweet deal until then. A character who is great at dodging is cheaper, more efficient, and generally favored by the system. The 1400 just to get her Dodge to max in a Career good at it is less than she'd pay just for the Sound Cons, and Sound Cons are only useful if you buy a lot of them; 1 HP isn't going to make a difference like it can in Fantasy. Now remember she's got that 1400, but she's also got 2600 more to play with compared to the tough version of her. For that, she can buy up stuff like Two Weapon Fighting, Lightning Attack, Blademaster (Reroll one missed melee roll per round), Blade Dancer (Completely remove TWF penalties when using Balanced weapons; Chainswords are Balanced), or Crushing Blow. In fact, if she was in a place with the right Apts from a class change or something, the difference in EXP would let her have bought 2 more Agi advances and then class-changed into someplace that could afford almost all of those for the difference. The cost of trying to be tough is equal to the cost of 'extremely dodgy, better Initiative, and every major melee talent I wanted'. And Melee is even an inefficient, expensive build! Compare to someone who was using a Multilaser and bout Lasgun Volley, Lasgun Expertise, Lasgun Mastery, and had Lasgun Barrage. They're getting +1 damage per shot if their Comrade is nearby, -5% to enemy Dodges per DoS (up to -30), +1 damage per shot per 2 DoS, and +1 DoS on every autofire shot (which also determines how many shots hit). These talents were designed to make the Lasgun less sad. They are far better used with the other 'las' weapons, because they explicitly work with anything with Las. If you started a Weapon Spec you got Barrage for free, if not this cost 1200 EXP, 800 if you started a Weapon Spec. And it makes one of the most lethal weapons in the game far better. Add a Comrade with Stabilize to the mix and now you're firing a pretty long-range weapon (Add in Marksman and you can fire it out to 600m without any penalties, and no combat takes place further than that because that's beyond the movement system, really) that can hit up to 5 times at +10% to hit base (Full Auto is meant to be balanced out by giving -10% base to-hit, but Stabilize switches that to +10) with extra damage on top, debuffed enemy dodge, etc. And you had the EXP to actually buy Ballistic Skill and make yourself evasive enough to live. Why all the focus on combat? Surely OW has non-combat adventures and plenty of non-combat skills! It sure does have those skills. Social skills are always useful for navigating the Guard, but most adventures will focus on combat. And it takes a lot of effort to be good at combat. Let's also not forget you have to be buying WP at some point or everything with a Fear rating is going to send you screaming (because 40kRP decided the most common Fear should be WP-20 and then made everyone's WPs suck relative to Fantasy, because it was meant to be 'a horror game') and suppressive fire is still going to happen. You have so many things tugging on you and so much actual necessity to maximize how much you're getting per EXP point spent that it's just exhausting to build characters in this system. I genuinely don't enjoy character advancement in this system. I loving love character advancement systems. I love watching my PC climb their way up and I usually love purchasing fun and flavorful new abilities and skills. OW's system demands optimization and allows for tremendous gaps between characters, which not only makes it easy to fall into system mastery traps by listening to what the system seems to be telling you ('Hey, you can buy anything!') but makes it easy to have one player who did that and one player who didn't, at which point the person with the multilaser and the right talents is going to have a good time and the other isn't. There's also the fact that everything being available right off the bat makes it so characters tend to rush the best talents and end up pretty samey. Yes, in WHFRP you had the whole 'what marks you as a Fighter is having Dodge, Strike Mighty, and extra attacks' or 'Ranged characters need Rapid Reload, Mighty Shot, and hopefully Sure Shot', but that was often in your starting talents and was only 300 EXP of investment if it wasn't, with the rest of your class being what unusual skills or talents you had that set you apart. There were 'must buy' talents and things for character roles, but they were also guided by your Career system. Here, the much more freeform nature actually leads to people being even more samey...or being in real trouble. With much less room to have flavor abilities or branch out. Also, this being a military sci-fi game about soldiers in bloody, heroic combat kind of means you know every PC should really focus on 'what makes me good at combat', but the system doesn't guide that the way Deathwatch did. You have way more rope to hang yourself. Next Time: Rocket Tag
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May 21, 2020 13:40
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Hey Mors Rattus, the Soulbound PDF updated.
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May 21, 2020 13:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:Hey Mors Rattus, the Soulbound PDF updated. Doesn’t seem to have propagated to Drivethru yet.
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May 21, 2020 14:41
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Mors Rattus posted:Doesn’t seem to have propagated to Drivethru yet. Yep that is an issue. Says it's being looked into. Cubicle 7's site has the changelog if you are curious.
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May 21, 2020 14:44
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Warhammer 40k Roleplay: Only War Rocket Tag So this is going to be an analysis of the combat system, yes, but it's also going to be a bit of a 'why is Rocket Tag bad' manifesto. The basics of 40kRP combat have not changed, the other reviews cover them fairly well, though I'll be talking about the problems the military scale and PC role in it as individual Guardsmen present later. Please bear with me. 'Rocket Tag' refers to games where the first person who lands a serious hit wins. They tend to strongly favor increasing your initiative, your accuracy, and your ability to avoid attacks outright. Rocket Tag is tremendously common in RPGs, and I strongly suspect this is because A: It's easy to design B: Lots of games liked to sell lots of sourcebooks full of giant powerful guns and swords, which tended to be sexier than better armor or defenses and C: I think a lot of it is a direct reaction to how long combat can take in some games like D&D and to what can best be termed 'numberslam' (wherein there are relatively few tactical decisions to make and combat is mostly a very extended skill challenge with a lot of rolling). I strongly suspect that 40kRP's consistent issues with over-damaging weapons comes from trying to emulate 40k the TT game, trying to design by what 'should' happen within the setting rather than what would make a satisfying game, and as a reaction to how effective and useful armor and damage reduction were in its predecessor system of WHFRP2e. The problem with Rocket Tag tends to come when a game has a highly complex character creation and building system (like this one) and PCs are clearly not intended to be disposable. 40kRP has this big reputation of being super lethal, but when I read peoples' stories about games they liked, not many of them are 'we all got wasted'. They tend to be 'we somehow survived, despite how dangerous this system is supposed to be'. The extent to which this happens will come from a couple places: One of them is the GM pulling punches. When I was GMing 40kRP, for instance, I never used suppressive fire on the PCs. This is because it is an ability that strongly favors the side that outnumbers the other side, and enemies often outnumber the PCs. It's also just plain unfun to play against: How would you like it if you got to take neutered half turns every round unless you managed to roll a 20 on d100? Where your movement as the player is strictly dictated to you? Your only playing piece is stuck there, unable to use most of your abilities or do anything but snap off unlikely to hit shots, until you roll a WP test successfully. At which point your opponent likely just tries to pin you again. And one enemy MG or rifle can potentially pin the whole player squad, especially if the enemy went first while the PCs were in formation, because it goes in a 45 degree arc for the whole range of the weapon firing. Similarly vicious abilities include 'having heavy weapons', 'having a tank', or 'consistently going first'. Even if you have AT weapons, tanks are ferocious enemies in 40kRP. You see, they designed the AT weapon first (MP Lascannon, our good friend the ruiner of combat systems) and then designed tank protection around it. So the tank has, say, 40 AV on the front, 32 on the side, and 20 on the rear for the standard Leman Russ, with 55 Wounds. You can damage it and cause critical hits if you cause a wound while getting at least 1 ten on your damage dice (which is quite likely if you're rolling 5d10, and on average you'll penetrate the front and do 10 Wounds with a lascannon) but these don't necessarily stop it fighting. It has a very powerful artillery cannon that will kill your comrades and might be undodgeable if it hits your PC directly (you can only dodge blasts if you can physically get to the edge of the blast radius with your Agility Bonus, so a direct hit with a Blast 10 Battle Cannon is literally undodgeable for most Guard) and will kill you in one shot. It has no issues using this on infantry, no difficulty targeting you, etc. It has an additional lascannon shot in the front to follow up with (or potentially, a heavy bolter. Pray it has one of those, d10+8 Pen5 Tearing is potentially survivable or stoppable if you have cover). It then has two sponsons with either additional HMGs, flamethrowers, or plasma cannons which do powerful AoE shots that can one-shot you. The tank has the firepower of your entire squad, actual durability (even if you catch it on the sides or even in the rear, you won't kill it in one shot with heavy weapons), no issues targeting you, and it is just going to be a total bastard to fight. And again: A direct hit from the main gun will gib most PCs in a 10m area, and a direct hit is unable to be avoided because you 'should' only be able to dodge things that are Agi Bonus in size. Yes, a tank should be extremely dangerous to PCs, or a boon to PCs if it shows up on their side. Also note the other problem of enemies with high durability: Righteous Fury no longer causes burst damage. Righteous Fury instead causes a d5 strength Critical Effect immediately. Righteous Fury is also explicitly PC only; I contend that it was in WHFRP2e because of the wording of the rule (it only ever refers to players doing it) and it was generally accepted that enemies didn't do it in return in prior 40kRP games too, but OW makes it explicit (and then tells you to let enemies use it if you 'want a darker tone'). My suspicion of why this is is because A: It's generally a more advantageous rule for the players, as the d5 criticals can disable major enemies and you have lots of multi-dice or rerolled weapons and B: It made the 1-5 results on the crit tables ever get used. This also makes the +Critical Damage talents either extremely good (if they apply) or still meh (if they don't, it's not clear). Fury also one-shots anything that doesn't have Elite, Vehicle, or Master in its designation. This is presumably meant to be how you use your lasgun; you fire wildly and hope to roll a 10 on damage so you kill a mook, just like lasgunners on TT. I also suspect they felt extra d10s of burst damage were much less useful compared to WHFRP because so many weapons already did extra d10s of burst damage. Note that if you could not have damaged the enemy with your current damage roll, a Fury instead causes a single wound and no crit. Hooray! Note the issue with the tank: Even with specialized AT weapons (which will also paste other threats in one or two shots) the tank is very hard to actually kill, and outguns you. It suffers no real inconvenience fighting infantry as long as its turret is working, either; it has a complex facings/movement system that demands a grid (all of 40kRP combat demands a grid) but it can always rotate the turret to fire at anyone (it does take 1/2 action per full 180 degrees, but that's pretty generous). Now, think of what happens when the players play a regiment with a tank. One player and their Comrade and maybe a few others are driving the tank. Anyone not in the tank is suffering a power imbalance on the scale of a 3.5 This is where you start to really get into why the Rocket Tag is bad. You deploy an enemy with the complication of 'has a tank', and now the players are in for a hell of a time. You deploy an enemy who goes first, or is good at stealth, and there's a good chance players start dropping before they could even act, which means there was no counterplay or strategy they could have employed to not die besides 'hope that Dark Lance misses'. As I mentioned before, there is an entire enemy faction whose thing is 'goes first' 'good at stealth' and 'powerful, accurate weapons'. One of the reasons I keep stressing that PCs are likely to resort to the heavy weapons options as much as possible is that they sort of need to, and the system doesn't incentivize doing anything else. The combat is so lethal and rocket-taggy that you need to get kills as fast as possible and use everything in your power to do it. Why does this keep happening in games? When I was designing a game back in high school (a comedy game about PCs who couldn't actually die, since they just respawned at a penalty) I recall intentionally making combat as fast as possible because I was coming off of 2e D&D and I'd found combat there to be over-long and very boring for the amount of effort it took. I also did that because I figured dying was a funny inconvenience and a bit of physical comedy, since it was based on MUDs and the PCs would come back from dying. In practice it was terrible design and deeply inconvenient anyway. From that experience, I suspect some of this is a direct response to the complaint that killing people can take some time and some effort (especially early, when everyone has lower WS) in 2e WHFRP. Similar, big guns sell sourcebooks and the setting is full of big guns. But PCs in Only War aren't simple or fast to create, so dying is a huge inconvenience. You also still have to kill a PC multiple times, and it's fairly hard to get bionics without GM fiat so it's possible you're running around with no eyes thanks to a Fate Burn until you either decide 'I died anyway, new PC', somehow get cybernetics installed, or get shot again. The system is designed without disposable PCs, but everything serious kills the gently caress out of PCs if they don't glass cannon it up as much as they can and do everything they can to get their Initiative up. Which leads to designing encounters being very stressful, and a very strong temptation for the GM to cheat on rolls just to avoid the inconvenience of a lucky Lascannon hit leading to having to redo the rigamarole of character creation. Look, I have successfully (I like to think, anyway) 'hacked' this system twice. I used to like this system, and I think my efforts have shown that it could work, it just needs to rip out the MP Lascannon as the arbiter of what a powerful weapon looks like. Some of the issue comes from the writers just never thinking about what Penetration means. Penetration is, effectively, conditional damage. A weapon that does d10+5 Pen4 (Bolter) is effectively inferior to one that does d10+9 Pen 0. One of those is doing d10+9 BUT ONLY if the enemy has at least 4 AV. The other doesn't care where they're getting their DR from. As personal DR from armor rarely goes above 8-9, and Pen will apply partially (unlike its TT cousin, which it was based on, where old armor penetration was simply an if/than statement where if you had Pen 4+ and they had Save 4+ they didn't save, but if they had Save 3+ they saved at 3+ on d6), there is a real role for 'high pen low damage' weapons: This is how you solve the loving AT problem. Similarly, on other weapons, Pen should be fairly rare. There are also other sources of DR: Daemonic Aura, Unnatural T, etc. It would not be hard to balance weapons around some of them being better against certain targets, or having other quirks. 'It just does a shitload of damage' is both boring, and automatically superior because that's the goddamn point of a weapon. There are tons of flavorful and fun sounding weapons in this game that belong in the bin because something else just does their primary job better for the same cost. You'd never use a Heavy Bolter because the Multilaser is straight better. Similarly, 40kRP needed to have a long, hard look at what hit-points are for. Hit Points are a resource stat. A buffer. They're a thing that you can suffer damage to, and then decide how you react. If you're getting one-shotted all the goddamn time, your system actually doesn't have a use for Hit Points as a mechanic. Hit Points are only really useful if you have actual plays you can use to react to losing them: Running away, disengaging, taking cover, defending until a medic can get to you, deciding whether or not you keep risking it. They need to be an actual, interactive part of the combat system or they shouldn't be there at all and you should just use a damage state system. Or resolve combat narratively! There is honestly room for that in 40kRP since it has such a goddamn hard time making its combat actually work as a tactical game. Its combat can't serve the roll of 'extended, dramatic skill challenge' that can make Numberslam acceptable because it's too hyper-lethal and full of death cannons, so maybe giving up and just designing a more narrative framework would have worked if pulling out the guts of the gear system and enemy design and altering them was somehow impossible (which it may well have been, given GW at the time; 'It has to work like on Tabletop' may well have been a design imperative imposed by the partners). Not to mention combat tends to be way, way more central compared to something like WHFRP once you get outside of Dark Heresy. Just, I've had good luck altering combat to be less of rocket tag hell. Make HMGs do good but not obscene damage. Make AT weapons have tons of Pen but lower main damage. Give people more HP. Limit Pen/damage. Make multidice weapons rare and powerful. Make movement easier relative to the range of weapons so people can meaningfully maneuver. All of it is solvable, but OW doesn't do any of that. It just makes it worse. At least in DW you could survive a couple hits and walk through mooks. Here, everything can kill you, but you also have the giant guns to kill everything. It's very literal rocket tag, given the number of rockets involved, and it makes the game's encounters stressful and frustrating to design and GM, and surprisingly boring to play. The campaign I was playing in ended fairly quickly after realizing the solution to pretty much every combat was 'use Autocannon on Ork' and if that solution wasn't available, the squad was kind of hosed. Next Time: Enemy Design Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:45 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 15:36
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This has the exact opposite of what you'd want the Only War tank dynamics to be- the guy in the tank has a bunch of really useful firepower and is a complete sitting duck for every two-bit heretic jerk with an RPG-7 with a skull on it. They desperately need the support of their infantry regiment to keep their incredibly fragile, valuable bolt bucket in one piece so it can blow up a wall or hold covering fire or act as cover from small arms.
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May 21, 2020 16:00
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Ratoslov posted:This has the exact opposite of what you'd want the Only War tank dynamics to be- the guy in the tank has a bunch of really useful firepower and is a complete sitting duck for every two-bit heretic jerk with an RPG-7 with a skull on it. They desperately need the support of their infantry regiment to keep their incredibly fragile, valuable bolt bucket in one piece so it can blow up a wall or hold covering fire or act as cover from small arms. Unless it's hitting directly in the rear, the RPG will do literally nothing. A full emplaced missile launcher might, but hitting the rear with those is much harder. Vehicles are insanely tough in Only War. When I was using enemy vehicles in Death Robots, they tended to have very light rear and side armor and started the campaign mostly proofed against ballistic small arms (so about AV 13-15) because the guy designing them was a genius wizard demigod but had no direct military experience, so he didn't properly support them with infantry and figured if they were immune to rifles they'd be good enough. The Resistance killed a bunch of the early tanks with technicals, sniper rifles (Accurate can hit for up to 2d10 extra on a perfect shot), mines/grenades/IEDs since they didn't have infantry supporting them to sweep for traps, and eventually a jury-rigged railgun hack-built out of a bunch of the superconducting material they salvaged off dead robots. It was fun. E: Oh, also, fun fact about the Battlecannon: Since it isn't Indirect (which gives a weapon larger scatter but lets it fire without LoS) and has Blast 10, it literally can't miss you RAW. It only Scatters d5 meters off target. It's entirely possible for it to aim at a PC and for it to be completely impossible for it to either miss them or for them to Dodge it RAW if they have less than a 5 AB. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 16:14 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 16:10
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Infantry trying to avoid getting hit by a tank would benefit both from Cover and Concealment, and the tank would have trouble just seeing them. In a vacuum a perfectly spherical tank would kill a squad of perfectly spherical guardsmen at 50m, but if that's the game you're playing you might have a gm related issue.
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May 21, 2020 16:12
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There are no actual rules for that besides the cover part, and the cover only matters if the shot scatters. Otherwise the shot lands where the tank meant to put it, the same way a grenade does, which is directly on a character. Also your comrade is dead. And there's a 50-50 chance the shot scatters behind your cover, and you're dead anyway. E: In a better designed game, yes, the tank would have a hard time seeing players. When we played both this and DW, we houseruled those things in. That's the problem, though: We had to put those rules in. They aren't there by default. You know what, let's also say cover applies, as it's possible to argue that since a blast hit is always to the torso, any cover between you and the shot will still trigger. 3d10+10 Pen8 Concussive 3 vs. the PC in cover. Tough-30 or be stunned from Concussive, and your cover is probably something like concrete (AV 16). Add to your Flak (AV 5 against Blasts) and TB of let's say 4. You take 3d10-7 damage. This is not good for a Guardsman. Survivable, but you're stunned and in a bad way. Further E: The reason I stress that all this is RAW is because yes, you can sanity check/fix things like 'the tank literally can't miss and a character who doesn't have an exceptional Agi can't even try to dodge a scattered shot' or 'tanks need infantry support or they'll get ambushed, except nothing makes it harder RAW for a tank to see infantry'. But those fixes should be in the game you paid money for, not the sort of thing you have to do yourself. 'You can fix it' doesn't excuse how badly designed the RAW is. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 16:30 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 16:14
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Joe Slowboat posted:I listened to the review, and are you sure you’re thinking of the right game? There’s nothing occult in what they reference. Oops, I was thinking of an image that turns out to NOT be from the actual RPG.
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May 21, 2020 16:32
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40k has the most obvious case of a disease that affects a lot of RPGs -- namely that they are ultimately adapted from wargames, where, in particular, you control multiple units (maybe like hundreds), and while they changed some of their systems to account for controlling one hard-to-replace hero guy, there are some core assumptions that still linger. Crowd control is a good example. Having one member of your XCOM squad get stunned and miss a whole turn can be an interesting tactical problem, because XCOM is single-player, and that's one of the half-dozen pieces you have to work with. Having one member of a TRPG party get stunned and miss a turn means your buddy Mike gets up to make a sandwich for thirty minutes. If some of your wargame guys do nothing but stand next to the enemy and roll attacks, while others have big complicated magic spells, that's fine, because you're controlling both. But translate that to D&D and you get the 3.5 fighter and wizard.
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May 21, 2020 17:00
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Ratoslov posted:This has the exact opposite of what you'd want the Only War tank dynamics to be- the guy in the tank has a bunch of really useful firepower and is a complete sitting duck for every two-bit heretic jerk with an RPG-7 with a skull on it. They desperately need the support of their infantry regiment to keep their incredibly fragile, valuable bolt bucket in one piece so it can blow up a wall or hold covering fire or act as cover from small arms. Ah but here the setting rears up again. I don't know if this would have been a GW mandate (it most certainly was on Deathwatch), but the Leman Russ has to be The Strongest Of Tanks because the setting says so. So it has to be able to shrug off this stuff to keep the feel of the tabletop game.
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May 21, 2020 17:13
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Warhammer 40k Roleplay: Only War Prepare for the worst, it's where you're going So I need to take a break from mechanics because, well, there's a reason I didn't originally review this game back when. The mechanics are bad! They're bad the same way 40kRP has always been bad, but moreso, because they try to drop normal humans back in a system that had been hurtling towards hyper-heretic mutant superhumans and Actual Fluff Space Marines. So let's get to some of the good parts. I think the combat section serves enough to talk about why enemy design might have problems as it is. So let's talk about fluff. Only War's setting is serviceable. I don't think it's quite as good as the Crusade in Deathwatch (weirdly, despite the fact that I hated Marines even when I liked 40k, I think Deathwatch is one of the high points of 40kRP for me) but it works for a Guard plot. One of the things I appreciate? You don't even have to play as Imperials! There's an entire rebel faction of non-Chaos people (who are actually the original rebellion the Guard were sent here to quash) who are not actually doomed and might successfully win their independence. There's a lot of fuckery going on with their leaders, but it isn't Chaos. They aren't just generic evil people; they're rebelling for their independence and there are full rules for playing as them rather than the Imperial Guard, since they fight with the same equipment and similar doctrine. This is one of the first 40kRP games where it is totally supported to not play as the Imperium of Man without it being Black Crusade. We can skip over all the fluff about the basics of the Imperium, though I will say the specific fluff on the Imperial Guard does a good job of getting across that this is a kafka-esque nightmare army. Worlds raise entire PDFs that are often billions strong, and when their PDF gets overwhelmed because the enemy has orbital superiority (it's relatively rare for this to decide wars in 40k, because the game takes place on the ground, so orbital superiority is more an inconvenience than decisive. Unreasonable? Maybe, but I remember Albedo trying to play that realistically and it was a pain in the rear end, so I'm fine with breaks to let people hit each other with chainsaws and ride giant birbs) they send out a call. Maybe someone hears it. If they do, they pick up the best of their PDF, call them Imperial Guard, transfer their flag to the Departmento Munitorium, and send them off to save the world. This can take years. Thankfully, capturing a planet of billions also takes years (usually). So it's quite possible that after asking for help, if everything goes smoothly billions more Guardsmen (trained to a higher standard and better equipped) show up to drop on your head and kick the poo poo out of you while the still-intact PDF holds you up. Sometimes the system works. Sometimes it doesn't. Warp travel and comms are hard. One of the Regimental Drawbacks you can take is 'time displaced' for a reason. You could theoretically arrive 300 years before the hell war, settle down because what else are you going to do, and then centuries later your own great great great grandchildren are screaming into the Astropath for help and their own ancestors hear the call, teleport out, and...time loop. Time is weird. Alternatively, sometimes an invasion is so brutal that it wins before the Guard get there, even if things are working smoothly. At which point they assess if they can retake the planet. Sometimes Marines or the Navy will hear the call and show up much faster; they don't need to spend years mustering and separating everyone into mono-task 3000-5000 trooper Regiments. But if things come down to the wire, it's going to come down to the Guard. No other Imperial army is really equipped for sustained conflict the way they are. I'm not kidding about the mono-task thing. In practice, units end up merging and making themselves into combined arms units in the field, but the Imperium is so loving terrified of Horus happening again that they try to make sure individual 3000-5000 soldier Regiments all only have the equipment to do their one thing. If you're an Artillery regiment, that's all you do. If you're a Line Infantry regiment, no vehicles for you. Your Line Infantry have to fill out the proper forms and paperwork and submit them to someone who will check them, decide if they should call a few blokes from the Mechanized regiment, and if so, send you an APC that you are under no circumstances meant to drive; only the Mechanized regiment people will do that. You don't have artillery under your officer's command to back you up, your Line Infantry need to write a letter to the specialized Artillery regiment and make a formal request for them to shoot people. Technically. This is how it is supposed to work, so in theory any individual rebelling unit doesn't have the strength to muster combined arms and your Line Infantry can just be run over by tanks and artillery. In practice, there are billions of troops in planetary wars. Things actually do move faster. Forms get discarded. Artillery is called in with a single vox call. Units pick up extra gear, attach damaged elements of other units and specializations to themselves, and come together to form organic teams. But technically it shouldn't work this way, and you always risk a very angry and overzealous clerk reporting you for doing what everyone is doing in order to survive the hell war you're all in, at which point you may face all manner of capricious bullshit. The Imperium of Man cannot actually keep track of everything in its wars. But occasionally it tries, much to chagrin of everyone involved. This usually causes a terrible military disaster, because the way things work on paper is fundamentally a terrible way to run an army. In practice, even when things hew closer to how they're supposed to work, they tend to lead to petty factionalism and fief-building. Which means the Imperial Guard are actually a highly accurate depiction of a Fascist state's military. They are very much in the spirit of 'Goering wants a tank division'. You even have a bunch of overequipped and mostly overrated 'political' elites (Stormtroopers) running around not actually accomplishing much and being overaggressive. As an added wrinkle to everything, these soldiers come from hundreds of different martial traditions. Even among the various 'based on X real world military/period, BUT IN SPACE' armies of the Imperial Guard, you could have 80s action heroes (Catachans) scouting for the Mobile Infantry from the Verhoven films (Cadians) who call in WWI Prussians (Kriegers) to dig the trenches while the Afghans (Tallarn) harass the enemy alongside actual golden horde era mongols (Attilian Rough Riders). Getting all those things to work together can be a challenge. This is also absolutely the most fun part of the Guard. Just look at our example regiments. Imagine an entire army made of them having to work together. It's a fun image, isn't it? It is. And in the RPG, unlike the wargame, all those differences actually have room to matter more rather than just being reasons to have to spend thousands of dollars on Forge World troops to field a horde army of out-of-print space-Prussians. You can even do actual mixed regiments, so you can force the Wark-Knights to work directly with the Redshirts and have PCs from both Regiments. This is the fun part of OW. Oh, and if you somehow survive, you get to settle some of the planets you conquered. This has led to famous Guard planets being hugely over-represented in the Imperial population: There are, according to the book, 70 or more 'New Cadias' throughout the Imperium, because the Cadians are some of the best Guardsmen in the Imperium and are often used as the core of invasion fleets or relief units. You are never going home. If you enter the Guard and get deployed, you will never, ever see your homeworld again. So what crazy BS are they being called in for here? Well, when the Drusus loving hated him, on a personal level. And with the whole becoming A thousand years later, his descendent has gotten super into ancient Rome cosplay and decided gently caress it, we don't need the Imperium, we are the Severan Dynasty now. He has set things up to grant his people greater prosperity, spending the tithes directly on his realms instead of the Imperium. Lest you think he's a great guy, he also hired Dark Eldar mercenaries to gently caress up the Imperium, in return for the right to occasionally raid and ravage his own outlying planets. It wouldn't be out of place for such things to happen, or for the lord to be unable to stop them. The Children of Thorns Coven is actually really happy with this deal and considers the warzone in the Spinward Front extremely win-win. Either the Imperium keeps the place a lawless hell of battle that they can raid endlessly (or takes over a weakened, crushed Severan subsector, whose defenses are down from all the civil war, which they can raid endlessly) or their 'allies' win and they can raid endlessly, forever holding it over their heads that they can just reveal the deal to the people and get Severus shot in the head and overthrown. They like. This wouldn't be such a problem if everything slated for the Spinward Front wasn't being sent inexplicably somewhere else. As it is, the Imperium doesn't have enough troops to crush Severus easily. They SHOULD, but they don't. Commanders have no idea where their reinforcements are going. And then the WAAAAAAUGH arrived. And Chaos showed up to attack all sides. Because that's how it goes... So yeah, you're in for an exciting time on the Spinward Front. Next Time: More on the Spinward Front
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May 21, 2020 17:16
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Oh, also, one fun thing is the sidebar on 'maybe once PCs are high level, some Space Marines show to to save them once, which they'll be really excited about forever because they saw a Space Marine and maybe he said they weren't terrible.' Yes, yes, highest honor of any warrior in the Imperium in setting and all, but really.
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May 21, 2020 18:05
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Surprised they didn't suggest "You could play out the rescue using the Deathwatch:tm: rules". Something which I have seen has been done in other campaign.
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May 21, 2020 18:27
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At least Only War doesn't seem to be going hog on the misogyny a lot of writers attach to the Guard. Looking at you, Sandy Mitchell and 'there's only been one Lady General in all of Imperial history, and women are super rare in the Guard.'
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May 21, 2020 18:37
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Only War is extremely clear that the Guard are completely integrated and no-one cares what gender (or color) you are. The art backs this up. The reason the Commissar stands out is it's the one picture like that in the entire book. Other women are always depicted in normal, practical Regimental dress as serious soldiers the same way the men are. The art in Only War is no poo poo one of the best parts of the book and I have nothing but good things to say about it besides that one single class pic.
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May 21, 2020 18:42
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Night10194 posted:Only War is extremely clear that the Guard are completely integrated and no-one cares what gender (or color) you are. The art backs this up. The reason the Commissar stands out is it's the one picture like that in the entire book. Other women are always depicted in normal, practical Regimental dress as serious soldiers the same way the men are. The art in Only War is no poo poo one of the best parts of the book and I have nothing but good things to say about it besides that one single class pic. Commissar Décolletage looks like she got lost on the way to visit one of her subs; the men’s longcoat and hat would be just fine and definitely an improvement over that.
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May 21, 2020 18:46
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Midjack posted:Commissar Décolletage looks like she got lost on the way to visit one of her subs; the men’s longcoat and hat would be just fine and definitely an improvement over that. GUARDSMAN! THE VIEWING OF PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIAL ON DUTY IS TREASON! (The term "Guardsman" as used in this notice refers to any and all active duty personnel regardless of gender or sex)
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May 21, 2020 18:54
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEGo41443iI Better than lasrifleman that Abnett used for like a book and a half. 
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May 21, 2020 19:02
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I should also quickly note: Psy is about how it always is (pretty powerful) it's just much more boring. Most psy is purely combat focused and some variation of 'kill man with mind bullet' or 'give buff'. It's effective, it's useful, it's just also dull as dishwater as a Sanctionite.
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May 21, 2020 19:09
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Night10194 posted:I'm not kidding about the mono-task thing. In practice, units end up merging and making themselves into combined arms units in the field, but the Imperium is so loving terrified of Horus happening again that they try to make sure individual 3000-5000 soldier Regiments all only have the equipment to do their one thing. And yet despite the traitor the Imperium's the most worried about being a Space Marine, Space Marines get to have combined arms units from light-ish infantry all the way up to starships, because of course they do.
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May 21, 2020 19:58
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Friend Commuter posted:And yet despite the traitor the Imperium's the most worried about being a Space Marine, Space Marines get to have combined arms units from light-ish infantry all the way up to starships, because of course they do. What's funny is they always talk these forces up as self contained and efficient, when it takes an entire ship's crew, additional support staff, chapter serfs, Mechanicus, and other staff to keep 100 Marines serving in the field, to feed them, keep their exotic weaponry loaded, man the actual weapons on the ships, service the vehicles, and repair the armor. I think that's just what the Marines themselves think, being relatively isolated from the need to consider boring stuff like 'logistics'. E: Though the real truth of it is the shape of the Imperium depends heavily on which of its 80 different armies (making up like 1/2 of all the wargame factions) are serving as viewpoint today. Are the Guard useless cowards? Someone else is the main character. Are the Marines distant and kind of dumb? Guard are probably the heroes right now. Etc etc. Which is fine; it's all fiction and ought to be mutable anyway. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:03 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 20:01
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Night10194 posted:What's funny is they always talk these forces up as self contained and efficient, when it takes an entire ship's crew, additional support staff, chapter serfs, Mechanicus, and other staff to keep 100 Marines serving in the field, to feed them, keep their exotic weaponry loaded, man the actual weapons on the ships, service the vehicles, and repair the armor.
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May 21, 2020 20:26
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Part of why I liked Deathwatch so much more than I thought I would was that it lets you genuinely play someone like that running face first into reality and I think the Jericho Reach is awesome for that, since the entire theme of it is the Imperium getting its rear end kicked for buying its own press.
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May 21, 2020 20:29
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Soulbound Dark Necromancy  Golvaria is beautiful, with lush grasslands and fruit trees, but it has no real native settlements. In the Age of Myth, it was ruled by the Necromancers of Golvaria, who used their undead armies to intimidate foes until they decided it'd be a good idea to antagonize the Bright Mages of Aspiria. After their skeletons slaughtered an entire trade caravan, the Aspirian tradition of undead hunting began and the former undead hunting schools were established. Aspirian attacks forced the the Necromancers to flea out to the Searing Sea, where they eventually settled in the Kingdom of Malacur, now known as the Isle of Ghouls. Chaos invaded shortly after, taking control of the old Golvarian fortresses. However, with the Necroquake, the Isle of Ghouls has risen once more, and the undead there seem to be moving to reclaim the land they once ruled. The primary Order stronghold of the region is Hallowheart, built on top of a Tzeentchian fortress named the Shimmering Abyss. The Hallowed Knights Stormhost purged the fortress and reconsecreated it for Sigmar, claiming the massive pit and basalt column for themselves. The column and the land below is full of gemstones, valuable minerals and realmstone, and Duardin miners live up and down the column, setting up their own small communities in the mines. Natives of Hallowheart are often unnaturally lucky and frequently touched by the powerful magic that infused the area. In theory, it is ruled by its Grand Conclave, but the mages of the Whitefire Court all but openly control what goes on in the city, and everyone knows it. Hallowheart makes quite a bit of money selling its metals, gemstones and mystical tools, but merchants rarely like to go there. It was, after all, a Chaos fortress for centuries. The locals tend to be almost paranoid about corruption, to the point of intense superstition and fear over things like unusual birthmarks or books they don't recognize and can't read. The Skyhelm Peaks are home to Lord Selpher Zaronax, a powerful Daemon Prince who rules from Castle Drakesbane, built inside the skull of an ancient flying serpent whose skeleton crosses multiple mountains. Zaronax is one of the most favored servants of Archaon, calling himself the Fist of the Everchosen, and he takes pride in corrupting any region he attacks into uselessness. He is the main leader of Archaon's forces in Aqshy, and he considers torture an art form that he seeks to master. His legions are depraved, monstrous and highly motivated, for his worst tortures are saved for those who fail him. Zaronax has been ordered to stamp out the growing hopes of the Parch, which he really enjoys doing. He still controls large parts of Golvaria and is now focused on taking down Hallowheart.  Khul's Ravage certainly had another name once, but...well, it's gone, along with all record of those that lived there before the Age of Chaos. Korghos Khul slaughtered them all, save for those who joined the Goretide. It was, before the Storm, the most peaceful part of Aqshy simply because there was no one left to fight, save for other forces of Chaos. Which, of course, the Khornites happily fought in a pinch, especially the Skaven. It's taken a century of fighting, but the Stormcast have established their own presence here. The Goretide can still be found in the Ravage, but cannot control them entirely. There's nearly no farming settlements, and most of the land remainds entirely unusable, but the Stormcast have established several coastal fortresses to try and change that. Atop the Titanspear Mountain, Tempest's Eye looks down on the Ravage. The city was founded by the Tempest Lords, who wanted to use the height to watch out for Chaos movements. At its highest pont is Castle Regal, their Stormkeep and observatory, which is staffed by seers and packed with strange magical devices in order to gaze into any Realm they need. The city's inhabitants are known for being able to easily see through illusions and lies, and some say the seers can even see through time. Certainly Eye forces always seem to arrive just when they're needed. The city produces some of the finest lenses in the realms, and much trade passes through the Azyrite realmgate at the heart of Castle Regal. Their most valuable product, however, is information - their maps are excellent, bringing in many airships whose captains rely on these charts. Around the Titanspear are for smaller mountains, the Talons, which each have high watchtowers and Swifthawk rookeries to watch for trouble. This is home to the Aetherguard, a unit of Aelven and human scouts said to be the finest in Aqshy. It is believed that Tzeentch covets the knowledge of Tempest's Eye, so the locals are always watching out for his plots. The Templest Lords work closely with the Celestial Warbringers of Brightspear to fight Tzeentch. They are growing worried about the fact that several locations have been noted that even their best telescopes cannot see, and especially that several have turned up near Tempest's Eye, impenetrable even by magic. The Obsidian Fortress towers over the Bridge of Brine. It was once the stronghold of the Khornate warlord called the Thirsting Prince, but the Stormcast infiltrated the fortress and killed him. The Tempest Lords now rely on the fortress as a Staging Ground to help fight strange things that emerge from the Timestolen Empire near Steel Spike. On the opposite side of the region is the Horn of Ignax, which rises from a small isthmus near the Coast of Bone. It is a never-fading, extremely bright thing. No one's quite sure what it is, though. The Fyreslayers belive it to literally be the broken off tip of one of the horns of the Solar Drake Ignax, but others believe it's some kind of burning gas vent. It's definitely not magma, because stone doesn't form around its base. No matter what it is, it serves as a lighthouse for sailors on the Crescent Sea, an easily spotted fixed point even in the densest fog. Its white-blue glow can be seen for hundreds of miles around, and even the Fuethan Enclave of the Idoneth, deep under the Mordacious Sound, can see faint light from it around their homes. Vanx has always been a land of danger. In the Age of Myth, it was known for its raider tribes, who showed no mercy to their victims. Even before Chaos came, they worshipped Nulrakhar, the Master of Tides, whom many scholars hold to be an aspect of Khorne. Others openly worshipped the Dark Gods, and a Vanxian warlord was directly responsible for setting up the Red Feast. The Aspirians have not forgotten this, or the seizure of their land by Vanxian warriors, and Aspiria has placed a kill-on-sight order for any Vanxian that enters their territory. Chaos is firmly in control of Vanx, as one might expect. The native marauders tend to have skin that is stark white, covered in runes painted in fresh blood. They wear very little, and they make warships of white wood from the Bleached Forest, marking it with red symbols and attacking anyone they run into on the Ocean of Swords. It is said they use human skin for their sails.  Vitrolia is a land divided. Its people are seperated into many tribes that frequently feud with each other. They are also known for having red hair in many bright colors, brighter even than most Fyreslayers. The Vitrolian tribes are highly mercenary and in the Age of MYth were infamous for their easily shifting loyalties. However, they found that Chaos punished betrayal heavily, and those that survived betraying their erstwhile masters fled into the Skyhelm Peaks or the islands of the Wretch Sea. The survivors among the Vitrolian tribes now want their old land back, but haven't much idea how to get it. Most of Vitrolia is still controlled by the Ashen Horde of Bloodreaver tribes, and most other nations on the Parch have not forgotten how quick the Vitrolians can be to turn on their allies. Hag's Delta lies south of the Skyhelms, a swamp full of snakes whose venom boils blood. Since the Age of Myth, it has hidden a secret Khainite temple, built around a realmgate to Ulgu. "Secret" in the sense of its exact location, that is - the locals have known the delta was home to the Witch Aelves for centuries at least. When Chaos attacked, the Witch Aelves were there to meet them, but vanished after several years of war, to aid Morathi in Ulgu. Recently, they have returned under the direction of Hag Queen Viskaya of the Khailebron Sect. She and her assassin-witches have begun a guerrilla campaign against Daemon Prince Zaronax, and many travelers from Hallowheart and the Flamescar Plateau have reported Witch Aelves appearing from nowhere to save them from Chaos attacks, then vanishing. The Kindling Forests cover several thousand miles in southern Vitrolia. The Aspirians summoned fire spirits there in the Age of Myth, and the spells have never been broken. This leaves the forest everburning, as the spirits quickly light it whenever the trees go out. Fortunately, the forest is almost entirely pyrewood, a fast-growing tree that grows even faster in the ashes of dead pyrewood. An entire grove of large trees can spring up in a matter of weeks. Travel through the Forests is difficult if you aren't immune to fire and don't have an Aspirian magical item to protect you. Even with that, Chaos warbands exist in the woods, having learned to thrive there, as do some strange Sylvaneth enclaves who tend towards the xenophobic. Worst of all, though, are the clan of Gloomspike Gitz that live deep under the forest. These grots (read: goblins) live in caverns formed by the dying and regrowing roots of the pyrewood. Their leader, Grand Smotherdouser Claggit, has declared war on fire itself, and his forces appear in many strange places, suggesting access to at least one realmgate, if not more. Wherever they show up, they attack anyone that benefits from flame. Next time: Religion Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 22:37 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 22:33
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Completely insane goblins doing completely insane goblin things are the wind beneath my wings.
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May 21, 2020 22:36
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Friend Commuter posted:And yet despite the traitor the Imperium's the most worried about being a Space Marine, Space Marines get to have combined arms units from light-ish infantry all the way up to starships, because of course they do. Theoretically, the limiting factor was supposed to be the breaking of the old, tens to hundreds of thousands strong legions into a bunch of chapters of 1000 marines, who then theoretically wouldn't have the the numbers to actually split the Imperium. But that just ends up making things wonkier, as half the authors just ignore any implications of such small numbers, and act like 400 elite fighters with some modest superhuman abilities can physically beat down entire planetary defense forces or hold off tyranid invasions numbering in the trillions without outside support. The other half of the authors, incidentally are mostly not much better. Ultramar ruling it's own mini-Imperium requires a lot more than 1000 space marines, so the Ultramarines are supported by lots of their successor and offshoot chapters which....how is this not basically an old legion in all but name? Some of the authors have noted the hypocrisy, especially when Guilliman was stomping around with thousands of primaris. But mostly, the space marines have to be super special take all comers in the eyes of many of the writers, so they have to be able to conquer or defend whole worlds or even sectors on their own.
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May 21, 2020 22:47
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Dawgstar posted:Completely insane goblins doing completely insane goblin things are the wind beneath my wings. His ultimate goal is to murder the sun. e: which, as a note, is literally Hysh, which it's unclear if he knows.
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May 21, 2020 22:48
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I remember an old Imperial Guard codex back when I was considering getting into the game pointing out Marines make terrible commanders for humans. They're charismatic and have the rep that can get them to do stupid poo poo, they have no conception of human weakness, and they're not trained for large unit command. As a result, according to said old codex, most of the time if they were put in charge of human units they just got them killed for nothing. I thought that was great. And later totally dropped so Marines just take command of any warzone they're in.
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May 21, 2020 22:49
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Dawgstar posted:Completely insane goblins doing completely insane goblin things are the wind beneath my wings. I couldn't care less about playable orks even if everyone else I know is falling over themselves to praise them, but I will absolutely buy any sourcebook for Soulbound that makes goblins playable.
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May 21, 2020 22:50
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Tsilkani posted:I couldn't care less about playable orks even if everyone else I know is falling over themselves to praise them, but I will absolutely buy any sourcebook for Soulbound that makes goblins playable. Given how few species Destruction has, the eventual Destruction book will absolutely contain goblins alongside the orcs and ogres and probably giants.
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May 21, 2020 22:51
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Mors Rattus posted:Given how few species Destruction has, the eventual Destruction book will absolutely contain goblins alongside the orcs and ogres and probably giants. That's the dream!
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May 21, 2020 22:52
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Night10194 posted:I remember an old Imperial Guard codex back when I was considering getting into the game pointing out Marines make terrible commanders for humans. They're charismatic and have the rep that can get them to do stupid poo poo, they have no conception of human weakness, and they're not trained for large unit command. As a result, according to said old codex, most of the time if they were put in charge of human units they just got them killed for nothing. 3rd edition 2nd Codex in this case, back when they decided to remove all the Leman Russ variants barring the basic ones from the rules because there were no models for it. The fluff section is pretty solid though. Thankfully that decision was reversed for the 4th ed one, and even included rules for Forgeworld only variants as well.
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May 21, 2020 22:55
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While not elaborated on here. The Goldenmane Monument is the is the site of the first stormcast that was permanently killed death. Jactos Goldenmane fought Khul there and Khul's weapon is an axe that can open temporary rifts into the Realm of Chaos at random. He landed a killing blow on Goldenmane and opened a chaos rift in him sucking his soul into the Realm of Chaos. The Hammers of Sigmar put up a monument there to honor him after they had driven the Goretide out. Also the designers gave the length of the Kindling Forests (Namely about 1500 Miles) So someone that is not me could figure out the almost exact size of the Realm of Fire from that. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 23:08 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 23:01
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Imperial guard are the best because they actually have room for “fascism is bad and inefficient” in their stories and when one of them does something cool it lands because they aren’t stated to be inherently badass like everything else.
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May 21, 2020 23:03
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