Let's assume FFG wants the power level of "single lasguns (essentially all S3 equivalents) have a remote chance of damaging Marines in PA". Let's assume they merely overlooked giving a rule such as "RF for all troop-tiers that don't have extra damage dice".

Let's say 50 Guards fire at an Astartes (at whatever range) and 25 hit. Some hit more than once, generating 40 hits in total. Of those, let's say 4 will potentially generate RF. All others will be harmless. 2 will confirm RF. They do each 18.5 damage average each, 2.5 damage coming through each... so a total of 5 damage on average. If one was to roll for all 50 IG individually.

Now if you roll well, maybe 4 score righteous fury and one of them is a double 10. The 3 others score on average 2.5 damage. add to that the 12.5 damage for the especially lucky one and you get 20 damage getting through!

All this gets abstracted away by the extra damage dice. 3d10+3 averages 4.5 against soak 16. But it can go up to 17 damage.

And I like that this is so unpredictable. This makes advancing under fire a risk and if successful, an accomplishment.

Alex

That's quite a lot of assumptions for a bunch of 30% chances, out of whom only some will roll a 10 on the d10, and out of these only some will then actually confirm RF. Not to mention the random double-10 you arbitrarily decided to throw in just to drive up your final score.

Okay, I guess it's not entirely impossible to recreate this result with individual characters. However, it is far, far less likely to occur than just rolling 3d10 and getting a high result.

And of course you are still in violation of the RAW.

I don't think the designers actually wanted single lasguns to have a chance of damaging Marines in PA, simply because this is not what Deathwatch as a theme is about. The designers wanted Hordes to have this chance, and that's how the rules were written.

And I repeat the question: do you really believe that a guaranteed minor Wound is a worse approach than the extreme gap produced by the 3d10? I remember seeing a number of DW GMs complaining about unexpected damage spikes as an effect of rolling multiple dice, so this seems to be a concern for at least a portion of the playerbase.

3d10+3 has a 72.3% chance of doing at the very least 1 Wound to your Marine. 42.8% to cause 5 Wounds. 11.5% to cause 10 Wounds. Seems a lot more likely to occur than the "once in a blue moon" scenario you concocted above. And a lot more troublesome, I'd say!

PS: If you want lasguns to be more of a challenge, I'm surprised you are not simply arguing for less resilient PCs. I certainly agree about the feeling of accomplishment drawn from a risky endeavour, which is why I'm a fan of abolishing "skin armour" in favour of more dangerous fights.

Getting from 30 to 50 is doable. For example: +10 Short, +10 Semi. With 50, you have 10% with 3 hits. 20% 2 hits and 20% 1 hit. for 15 + 20 + 20 = 55 hits. About 5 RF, getting 2 or 3 confirmed. If you have played Warhammer 40K extensively, then you know that results such as only 20 hits or getting 10 RF out of 45 hits or confirming 4 out of 4 RF happen time and time again. There is a fair amount of variance that produces such deviations over 50 combattants. Your once in a blue moon scenario happens in 40K TT every **** time - in one aspect or another.

So, no, a 12% chance of 10 Wounds doesn't sound anti-immersive to me at all .

Also, I don't see horde rules as-is and the minimum 1 Wound as mutually exclusive. I don't see such leading to critical damage tough. More to veterans criss-crossed with scars of minor injuries.

Alex

Well to stop marine stage diving their way through a combat, just deny them the ability to burn fate points to survive death. If you have only one life and there is a chance that any battle could be your last it makes you think very carefully whether you risk carrying that bomb into the middle of the enemy hoard.

Its perhaps harsh to some but it's at least challenging. They get their rerolls, they can still spend them to regain health so it's not like they are left totally vulnerable.

If you have played Warhammer 40K extensively, then you know that results such as only 20 hits or getting 10 RF out of 45 hits or confirming 4 out of 4 RF happen time and time again. There is a fair amount of variance that produces such deviations over 50 combattants.

But I believe we've been over this before, and it is also not truly relevant to the topic at hand.

Has anyone ever tried this? Removing this final lifesaver seems like a huge change. I could also see players either still not bothering (Fate is fairly attractive for lots of other stuff; someone who is willing to gamble FP may not be too impressed with gambling their only life either) or becoming overly cautious, so much so that it may turn against the theme/atmosphere...

Its perhaps harsh to some but it's at least challenging. They get their rerolls, they can still spend them to regain health so it's not like they are left totally vulnerable.

Has anyone ever tried this? Removing this final lifesaver seems like a huge change. I could also see players either still not bothering (Fate is fairly attractive for lots of other stuff; someone who is willing to gamble FP may not be too impressed with gambling their only life either) or becoming overly cautious, so much so that it may turn against the theme/atmosphere...

Yep, I used it for the last few sessions of a campaign. The amount of general idiocy dropped like a brick since the knew they couldn't take really stupid risks and the amount of sound tactical thinking and heavy use of cover rose. If anything they found it quite a challenge to not get themselves killed...gave the medic something to do as well!

Sure I know that there's a huge variance - as I said earlier, that's part of why I was suggesting a more "equalised" approach that favours a balance between "no damage" and "instacrit", as either of the two extremes does not strike me as a very attractive tool for a GM.

The unpredictability is very attractive, much more so than a predictable steady trickle. The unpredictability means that even an Astartes needs some luck to advance successfully under fire.

Well, truth be told, it may well be possible that my perception is coloured by a dislike of Righteous Fury, on which your whole argument is based. That, and the abstraction still doesn't hold up to analysis - simply because the damage of a Horde is based more on volume of fire, less than the actual weapon. Reduce its Magnitude and all those soldiers gradually lose their capacity to RF you've houseruled into their stats.

I suppose one could attempt to explain it with a drop in morale or whatever, but I'd still favour something more in line with the rest of the system any day.

Yes, it's coloured by that - and your dislike for lasguns being so ineffective against Space Marines in PA. Lasguns in DW are ineffective by design. You need volume of fire to force luck and hit a rare vulnerable part of the armour.

Here's what I think is best about horde rules (and one aspect at least in which it will always be better than your Squad rules): scalability. Horde rules support in a way Movie Marines and Lynata Marines - because the GM can freely choose the ratio between a mag point and members of the horde. Is a mag 30 horde 300 guardsmen? Or 30 guardsmen? Or 10? or 1000? That is purely narrative.

Heh, you don't need 50 Guardsmen to kill a single Marine in the TT, or GW's own d100 game for that matter.

Unless you interpret one Guardsman mini to stand-in for 5 to 10 Guardsmen in-game.

In Inquisitor, lasguns have a 16% chance to cause an injury to anyone in power armour, regardless of whether they are Astartes or Human, as characters there do not have an invisible shield of hitpoints or skin as tough as body armour. They get hit, they go into Crits. Toughness merely dictates how badly, which means Marines get to survive a lot more hits than Humans, representing their genetical enhancement and generally more resilient bodies.

I consider this approach (modifying the seriousness of hits, rather than nullifying them entirely) somewhat more realistic - and, apparently, also more balanced than FFG's games, which ultimately felt the need to introduce band-aids such as Felling to counter this effect, and special weapon classes that undermine the potential quality for crossovers. I also feel the resulting gameplay would be way more cinematic, simply because I've come to the belief that hitpoints and skin-armour, and their effects in the game(s), significantly reduce how "threatened" a player may feel with their character, compared to minor but mounting injuries.

But I believe we've been over this before, and it is also not truly relevant to the topic at hand.

Well, we could write down the rules for it and put them up on my blog. Pointing to that page would be easier than you typing out what you mean by hand every time. Also, you did have some SoB rules for DW? I assume you are going to host them elsewhere? If so, I could put up a link. (As you can see, I am looking for good content! )

Alex

Also I would love to see those SoB rules being a Witch Hunters player on TT. :-)

The unpredictability is very attractive, much more so than a predictable steady trickle. The unpredictability means that even an Astartes needs some luck to advance successfully under fire.

Mhm. I will accept that it's just a simple matter of preferences, then! Personally, I like unpredictability for single combat, but less so when attacks from dozens of opponents just splatter off harmlessly in one round, and put you into Crits the next.

Still, you made a good case for how it'd work out. One might simply assume that Troop-tier Hordes use RF by default, even though Troop-tier enemies don't (by RAW).

and your dislike for lasguns being so ineffective against Space Marines in PA. Lasguns in DW are ineffective by design

Not just Marines! We can assume that a veteran Human warrior would have raised their TB from 3 to 5, which with PA gets you to 13. Just enough to completely neutralise lasguns (unless, again, you give the enemy RF).

But that - and my dissatisfaction regarding even Humans + carapace versus "low-tier" weapons like las- and autoguns - is something that hinges a lot on personal preferences, too. I can say that I've seen a lot of DH GMs complaining about this, though!

Unless you interpret one Guardsman mini to stand-in for 5 to 10 Guardsmen in-game.

Led by 5-10 Sergeants, and shooting at 5-10 Space Marines?

Well, we could write down the rules for it and put them up on my blog. Pointing to that page would be easier than you typing out what you mean by hand every time. Also, you did have some SoB rules for DW? I assume you are going to host them elsewhere? If so, I could put up a link. (As you can see, I am looking for good content! )

Also I would love to see those SoB rules being a Witch Hunters player on TT. :-)

Actually, I have no idea where to host them yet! I was thinking DarkReign, but your blog would be as good as any other resource. Unfortunately, they're far from finished, as I only work on them when I'm feeling a burst of enthusiasm/energy. Right now I'm stuck at translating all the Rank Advancement tables; even though I'm basically only copy-pasting the Marine ones and swapping a few Skills and Talents for something more appropriate, it's still a lot of boring work - and for some reason, my PDF Editor keeps messing up the line formatting in the tables!

Really makes me appreciate Proficiencies a la Only War or the BC Tier system even more.

If anyone is interested in teasers/previews, I can certainly PM you a page or two. Class basics, Orders and Acts of Faith are all done - the only things missing are Rank Advancements and an abridged armoury.

How important are vehicles in the Deathwatch game? I didn't plan on adding any of those, but I'm not 100% sure.

And yeah, a proper write-up of the "Inquisitor goes FFG" houserules is probably a good idea... I'll let you know when it's done.

I recommend hosting on Darkreign because I am pretty sure that it's going to entertain a larger public.

I can do vehicles if you want me to. Conversions are easy and quite fun for me.

As for damage scaling, I would claim that TB 5 should be out of reach for almost all humans. Strength and Toughness should climb more slowly. Perhaps +3 per advance. And armour should then have a slightly reduced effect too. If PA was AP 6, humans would normally have a soak of 9 or 10. Scalability is an issue because ROF acts as a damage multiplier. And this in turn means that a single additional point of soak can reduce final damage by many points. FFG isn't conservative enough with such things. I cringe everytime I read something such as "adds Intelligence bonus to damage". With Astartes and high ROF, this can be well more than 20 points!

Alex

PS Have you tried pasting the entire DW text into a text editor/Word first to lose the formatting and then copy&paste from there? Also, why not use Word and save as PDF? It's how I did my Crimson Fists document. Poor man's desktop publishing!

I tend to just host on G.Docs and link to it here. I've used it for my experimental Tau sheet.

I can do vehicles if you want me to. Conversions are easy and quite fun for me.

Oh, I don't think that is any problem - the majority of vehicles should have stats already, or just need to have their weapons swapped. I'm just wondering if they should be included at all.

I was planning to keep this supplement really small for easier integration, but it's 14 pages already and I'm not even done yet! The tables take away sooo much space. >_<

As for damage scaling, I would claim that TB 5 should be out of reach for almost all humans. Strength and Toughness should climb more slowly. Perhaps +3 per advance. And armour should then have a slightly reduced effect too. If PA was AP 6, humans would normally have a soak of 9 or 10.

Did you read my notes on characteristics advances?

I quite like armour to matter a lot, though. The idea that someone's naked body is half as protective as a suit of powered armour (or 100% as protective *cough*) is just too silly for me. I mean, realistically speaking, take something capable of punching through a carapace breastplate. Now apply the same force on a naked human chest. Yeeeaaah.

GW's Inquisitor actually had power armour provide a soak of 10. It's just that anything that got through would always injure you, no matter what. Exactly how hard would depend on your Toughness score.

Also, why not use Word and save as PDF? It's how I did my Crimson Fists document. Poor man's desktop publishing!

But then it would not look as neat as the official stuff!

I might try pre-formatting, I just thought it would be easier to simply copy-paste tables out of FFG's own PDFs and edit whatever I wanted. Which would work nicely if my editor wouldn't keep rearranging the spacings. ><

I may just end up doing the entire table as an image, if all else fails. It's not like FFG's tables would not use any images either.

Stolen from Exalted

Also I'm going to note that Essence ping was one of the poorest mechanical decisions of Exalted 2nd ed, and that's saying quite a lot. Huge contributor to the game's problems with lethality, the death spiral, and a contributor to the existence of the Chungian approach to combat. Bleh.