Fortress Worlds

A Fortress World is a category of Imperial planet where the entire populace is immersed in constant warfare. They are created as bastions against a great threat, a wall against the tide which ensures the safety of hundreds of far less defended worlds. The most well known fortress world is Cadia, which guards the Cadian Gate at the entrance to the Eye of Terror. As a Fortress world the entire population of Cadia is dedicated to military service and it is often remarked that Cadians learn to shoot before they can walk. Regiments raised on such worlds are often considered the finest soldiers in the Imperium.

Just a quick note on this home world choice; At first it may seem rather powerful in its own way. The ability to get bonus ballistic and and the potential for a tier two talent seems powerful. However this kind of character (while quite deadly in combat) will be severely limited in many respects. Their ability to pick up non-combat based abilities for example will be hampered and the home world begins with a very limited fate pool.

I believe this home world could provide an interesting (if very focussed) character though clearly should only be allowed with express GM permission. Far more so than any of my previous rule sets.

Finally i'm open to opinions on balance and if someone can come up with a more interesting home world bonus i'd like to know.

Just as a note if you're wanting to keep these in-line with the core book home worlds, but fate point pools for the core book seem mostly based on fluff rather than game balance. So keep that in mind when designing things.

If your conserned that Ballistic Skill is a little too powerfull, you could replace it with toughness. I can easily imagine that even a lowly Munititorium Caster would be strong of mind and body when raised on such a world.

Having bonus weapon training isn't that over powered, altough i'd make it "except powered and exotic".

Thats something else thats bothered me with DH: weapon training solid shot/las. Both are quite common weapons, so i' reduce the cost to buy these advantages later on, and let the player, upon character creation to switch solid shot with las, and vice versa.

Tnx for the fortres world!

Fortres world citizen

Starting skills

Athletics, Command, Awareness, Common lore (planetary defence force)

Operate or Tech-use.

starting talents

Weapon training (Las or Solid shot)

starting equipment

Lasgun or autogun or handcannon, imperial robes, flak coat, combat vest,

background bonus

Siege mentality : A character from a fortress world may spend a faith point to automatically succeed at a Fear test with a number of degrees of success equal to his willpower bonus or twice his wp bonus if the character is on his home world.

background aptitude

Fieldcraft or defense

Just as a note if you're wanting to keep these in-line with the core book home worlds, but fate point pools for the core book seem mostly based on fluff rather than game balance. So keep that in mind when designing things.

I agree, yet on the other hand i want to make house rules which are both playable and not overpowered otherwise people won't want to use them. In regard to the hit points of this world i thought 8 seemed reasonable. After all 9 represents the extremely naturally fit and tough feral worlder. While i imagine a fortress world character would be athletic, i can't imagine their frame being much tougher than a hive worlder for example. Afterall an imperial guard from a hive world or fortress world would grow up in very similar conditions (if with a different emphasis on their duty).

Obviously however these rules are what you make of them. If you want the fortress worlder to have 9 wounds go right ahead, i'd love to think that these rules could be used by the players and GM exactly how they want them to.

If your conserned that Ballistic Skill is a little too powerfull, you could replace it with toughness. I can easily imagine that even a lowly Munititorium Caster would be strong of mind and body when raised on such a world.

This was my original thought, if im honest the main reason i didn't was because my death worlds and penal worlds already use toughness as one of their bonuses and i wanted to keep it different. Again if you think this maks more sense then the following revision could be used;

Optional Revision;

Change Characteristic Modifiers to;

It's not that I dislike your conversion of Fortress and other Home Worlds to DH-2e (rather, I applaud you for converting them), but I dislike Home World Bonuses that strictly grant Talents. Any schmuck could buy [Marksman] or [Weapon Training] after character creation, but one does not simply buy [The Old Ways]. Importing origins is a chance to flex your creative muscles and grant a bonus that no amount of experience could buy. If that means going back to the source material and dragging it to 2e, then so be it. An Origin that doesn't grant unique bonuses is just a bundle of Aptitudes, Talents, and Skils.

Not bashing you, just trying to explain my thought process. And explain why I dislike Forge Worlds as written.

It's not that I dislike your conversion of Fortress and other Home Worlds to DH-2e (rather, I applaud you for converting them), but I dislike Home World Bonuses that strictly grant Talents. Any schmuck could buy [Marksman] or [Weapon Training] after character creation, but one does not simply buy [The Old Ways]. Importing origins is a chance to flex your creative muscles and grant a bonus that no amount of experience could buy. If that means going back to the source material and dragging it to 2e, then so be it. An Origin that doesn't grant unique bonuses is just a bundle of Aptitudes, Talents, and Skils.

Not bashing you, just trying to explain my thought process. And explain why I dislike Forge Worlds as written.

No i totally understand your reasoning. This particular home world bonus is more of a usable place-holder while i think about a better option, or until someone posts up an intriguing idea for one. All these home worlds are works in progress. At least in its current state it is a serviceable home world option.

Home World Bonus

Unsung Dogma: Against targets of their Hatred Talent, Fortress Worlders inflict Righteous Fury on a roll of 1, 2, or 10.

Righteous Fury guarantees 1 point of damage not reduced by Armour or Toughness. Even against the hardiest targets, a fortress worlder's weakest hits are going to do something. Should the fortress worlder punch through the enemies' AP and TB anyway, then the attack is much juicier narratively. I think its thematically appropriate for the soldiers who need no restraint.

The usefulness of this ability is gated by how many instances of Hatred an Acolyte has. Hatred isn't a Talent to be bought, it's a Talent to be earned: this Home World Bonus is only as abusable as the GM makes it. Such a narrow condition justifies a little more power too, though triggering on 3s as well is probably overkill. Unsung Dogma will never become irrelevant, even in the late-game when a weapon might have Vengeful (8). So a character might earn Righteous Furies on 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10 against certain enemies. That's a hell of a roleplaying opportunity, I think.

As an aside, I personally don't mind the [+ Ballistic Skill] modifier. Fortress Worlds are more of a direct translation that way. Hatred doesn't apply to BS for that matter, only WS. Hatred has limited applications for gunmen, though the Talent still provides narrative implications.

I'd consider allowing a fate point to be spent to ignore the untrained penalty with a weapon for an entire combat, but it's a bit situational. Maybe spending a fate point to get an automatic righteous fury against the target of hatred? Or spend a fate point to give a weapon Proven 6 (any value lower than that for proven is, frankly, garbage)?

I'd consider allowing a fate point to be spent to ignore the untrained penalty with a weapon for an entire combat, but it's a bit situational. Maybe spending a fate point to get an automatic righteous fury against the target of hatred? Or spend a fate point to give a weapon Proven 6 (any value lower than that for proven is, frankly, garbage)?

I argue that Proven is not garbage. Take Feral Worlders' [The Old Ways] and give them a Great Weapon (2d10 I, 0 Pen). With just the Proven (3), it's a weapon that hits between 6-20 raw damage per hit. While Lightning Attacks are closed off to Unbalanced weapons, hitting even twice with a Swift Attack has 12-40 raw damage. Give a S/-/10 weapon Proven (6) and you're guaranteeing 6 raw damage per 1d10 per hit . And that's before dual-wielding and other Talents. God forbid someone picks up something like a 5d10+10 weapon. Handing out Proven (6) as a Home World Bonus treads some very dangerous territory. It borders on an instant-kill technique, more so than even some other Talents.

A little less aggressively, giving another Home World a [Proven] mechanic makes Feral Worlders less unique. I would want to keep each Home World as different as possible.

I'd consider allowing a fate point to be spent to ignore the untrained penalty with a weapon for an entire combat, but it's a bit situational. Maybe spending a fate point to get an automatic righteous fury against the target of hatred? Or spend a fate point to give a weapon Proven 6 (any value lower than that for proven is, frankly, garbage)?

I argue that Proven is not garbage. Take Feral Worlders' [The Old Ways] and give them a Great Weapon (2d10 I, 0 Pen). With just the Proven (3), it's a weapon that hits between 6-20 raw damage per hit. While Lightning Attacks are closed off to Unbalanced weapons, hitting even twice with a Swift Attack has 12-40 raw damage. Give a S/-/10 weapon Proven (6) and you're guaranteeing 6 raw damage per 1d10 per hit . And that's before dual-wielding and other Talents. God forbid someone picks up something like a 5d10+10 weapon. Handing out Proven (6) as a Home World Bonus treads some very dangerous territory. It borders on an instant-kill technique, more so than even some other Talents.

A little less aggressively, giving another Home World a [Proven] mechanic makes Feral Worlders less unique. I would want to keep each Home World as different as possible.

So yeah, proven is kind of a garbage quality as currently implemented, and merely okay at higher numbers, especially in comparison to Tearing, or really even just adding 2 damage to the weapon. Your example is for cases when weapons are dealing 5d10s of damage, in which case at its most potent proven 6 adds 7.5 damage on average to each shot, and this would occur for each hit on autofire. Keep in mind that spending the fate point to add +20 to that roll (thereby gaining more hits from autofire) would instead add 2 hits, each adding at least 5d10 damage, or 55 damage total (and this isn't even counting if it's 5d10 + something). In order for proven 6 to be a superior choice for the fate point, you'd have to be scoring at least 8 hits with your weapon, adding a total of 60 damage.

Basically, for any kind of rapid-fire attack, consider that spending a fate point to add proven 6 will increase damage by 1.5 times X times Y, where X is the number of d10 per damage roll and Y is the base number of hits. Adding +20 to the roll with a fate point adds 5.5 times X times 2. Doing some basic algebra, we can boil that down to in order for Proven 6 to be better than adding +20, 1.5*Y must be greater than 11, or Y must be greater than seven. In other words, only for weapons and rolls scoring 8 or more hits on a rapid attack would you be better off spending the fate point on adding proven 6.

Also, for a 2d10 weapon you'd still only be adding an average of 3 damage to the roll with proven 6 and adding Proven 6 to a weapon with tearing only adds .55 extra damage to the roll.

Also, here's example math you can extrapolate out.

Regular d10 average = (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)/10 = 55/10 = 5.5

Proven 6 d10 average = (6+6+6+6+6+6+7+8+9+10)/10 = 70/10 = 7

So yeah, the "instant kill technique" of Proven 6 is pretty much the equivalent of slightly worse dumdum bullets.

Take an [Autogun] with S/3/10, 1d10+3 I damage, 0 Pen. Average roll dictates that'll be like 9 per hit, let's say. Minimum roll dictates a poor 4 damage per hit. Proven (6) on 10 successful hits guarantees 9 damage per hit, just like the average roll. Once more, you can tell me how likely it is that 10 hits of 1d10+3 without Proven (6) are going to come up to 90.

Minimum damage is why I call Proven (6) an instant kill technique. I'm a numbers guy through-and-through, but I'm not using fancy calculations this time. I like you, I really do, but I'm challenging you on this one. I will happily agree with you if you can give me a solid counter-argument.

EDIT: Shots fired. Just had to say it. It's a pun, since we're talking about guns and stuff? Anyway, this whole thing is in jest, a friendly debate. Please don't take it personally.

I'll post more about this later, but by only looking at how much is added to the minimum damage, you're forgetting to include that 50% of the time with Proven 6 you're actually adding 0 damage. If you roll a 6 or higher, the quality didn't do anything. You have to take that into account when looking at the quality's effect, hence why I'm using the average for damage. Using dum dum bullets, on the other hand, would always add a +2 (better than the average of proven 6) AND would increase the maximum damage. Tearing would add +1.65 (better than proven 6) while increasing the chance of a righteous fury from 10% to 19%. So actually, I take it back, compare to other qualities, proven 7 or less sucks.

Also, you're using the most extreme example (a las cannon) and not mentioning that I'm gating this ability behind a fate point expenditure. There are talents or ammunition types that can add a permanent +2 to a weapons damage. Also, how often can a person using a las cannon roll at least 40 damage (30+10)? 38.13% of the time. That's roughly 2 times out of 5. And how often will they roll HIGHER than that? 32.49% of the time. Roughly 1 in 3 times.

I feel that we are detracting from the original post (about a Home World adaptation for DH-2e) by talking about Proven or not right here. There is the dubious benefit of letting other people chime in, but it still bogs down/artificially inflates the thread. We can discuss this over private messaging if there'll be more back-and-forth between us. While I'm using this post to tell you this though:

I'm actually kind of confused at this point. Are we keeping Proven (6) in a vacuum while we do our comparisons? That's not what I'm concerned about. I get what you're saying with how Tearing has a net increase in average damage what with the extra die and everything, but I am not really sure why you keep bringing it up. I'm more concerned about how the weapon acts in-game.

From my understanding, you're keeping ammunition upgrades and Talents away from the hypothetical Proven (6) weapon. If so, wouldn't that skew the case in your favor? Why wouldn't a Proven (6) weapon be able to benefit from those things too? Like giving a Proven (6) weapon Tearing is very possible. It could be done by picking a weapon with Tearing already and applying Proven (6) afterwards even.

The real strength of Proven is having those bottom floors jacked up. Yes, maybe 33% of the time a user can do better. It's the other 66% that I'm worried about. Part of that 66% is going to be near the average, but most of it is going to be less. For the purposes of my argument, I don't care about rolling higher than than the average. Consistency is my main concern. Say a mook had 30 Wounds. Admittedly very beefy, yes? Further assume that his AP and TB were already accounted for, so anything else is pure damage to his Wounds. For the price of "just" a Fate Point, a player with the Proven (6) 5d10+10 weapon doesn't even need to roll to see if he obliterates poor Chuckles or not. That's without taking extra goodies like Unusual Ammunition, Talents, and whatnot into account. Under the same conditions, a player could fail to finish the job without Proven (6), for simplicity's, 30% of the time since every result under 40 gets progressively non-lethal. Chuckles' survival rate drops from 30% to 0% instantly because of Proven (6). That is no small drop, from my perspective, and reducing anything to from not-zero to zero flat raises a red flag.

Thank you for your posts. I am enjoying our conversation, but, again, I don't want to monopolize the thread either.

http://www.darkreign.org/system/tdf/Homeworlds_DH2.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=1715

I bound all your homeworlds, and Moonshine Fox' together into this document. =D

http://www.darkreign.org/system/tdf/Homeworlds_DH2.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=1715

I bound all your homeworlds, and Moonshine Fox' together into this document. =D

Whoa this looks amazing, great work! Can I just say that some of the work I did wasn't quite done. Please feel free to change whatever you think is best for the purposes of this book. The agri world especially I think needs some work, it's up to you

Again very well done! We will certainly be using this in our game

http://www.darkreign.org/system/tdf/Homeworlds_DH2.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=1715

I bound all your homeworlds, and Moonshine Fox' together into this document. =D

Holy crap this is awesome! Make me want to get off my lazy tail and finish the other stuff I've been half-heartedly working on.