As I said it always depends on the preperation and hence the situation to a degree. Though that much Grunts might have also killed that Wapsmith and play in a different league.

Given that troop composition with an added tank, some preparation from a decently build party they would stand no chance. Though I am arguing here from the position of a Guerilla/Stealth warfare and no stand of where people charge each other on plain field. A regular PCs will not necessarily fail against one strong foe but the volume of attacks will carve through his doges/parries and sooner or later result in assured damage that drains you down. But in some urban or rural area with plenty of cover the trick is to stay hid ^d en, switch position and utilize hard and precise strikes. A sniper might kill all the special weapons and lay down suppression with his comrade from undetectable range and might switch position if needed. Explosives like Mines require preparation on the field yet a mortar allows constant striking from a save position. Add in pincer attacks from your other guys, the heavy use of stuff like smoke grenades and these grunts are teared to shred. The tank will only be of use if it has an actual target and is taken out so easily by several different tools.

We once had a similar situation and even with the assistance of some auspex regular grunts and at one occasion even marines were no match against our stealth specialists. War is all about bringing yourself in a superior position and utilizing all the tools you have at your disposal. That is how we play it and we rarely start engagements at close range below 100 metres as long as we do have the initiative - and that is the most valuable thing.

Yeah the Dominate used buildings in the Hab-area of the Forgeworld to ambush the players' armoured convoy, destroying their 3 vehicles, their 3 formations of NPC Guardsmen, and laying low the players with several fate points burned.

Any side played with sufficient intelligence will win in Only War. That's what I love about it.

Yet I noticed that players at some degree simply become incredibly good at scouting and would never drive their convoy into an alley without checking it out first. Unless there is some incompetent higher up or a strict time limit that makes them to rush they have learned not to get caught in such traps. Some Stealth focused scout with a good amount of perception is frighteningly good to a Tanith Degree and those guys also have a past of slaughtering Marines even if they were attacked on the wrong foot.

Add to that the individual strength that lets them get through those hard encounter they even make the Kasrkin Backstories look like childsplay. As some points they simply become the Seal Team Six +9000 and it seems they have to carry out missions on the behalves of warmasters like the Ghosts yet going back to normal grunt duty always feels wrong at that point. And at that point, where they just do extraordinary missions for me the appeal of Only War is lost. It more feels like an astartes kill team, just with humans instead of marines.

You could just cap your players off at starting XP if you wanted, and they were cool with that. Appropriate if that's the level of down and dirty they expect. All comes down to you GM-Player Covenant at your table, really.

If something is detrimental to the fun, that's the whole point of Rule Zero. I personally enjoy the progression mechanic, and don't suffer from chronic munchkin players.

My players are relentless munchkins, and somehow never end up living all that long. I don't see how a handful of PCs could decimate whole platoons of enemies, even with cover and flanking. They aren't mindless fools (unless that's exactly what they are, but you know) so they should be flanking and using cover, suppressing the PCs, etc.

I always see people talking about "fatal encounters" where the PCs had to burn a few fate points. That's what a regular patrol looks like in my games. Just because they are PCs doesn't mean everyone has to suck and play like idiots.

Rather offtopic but defeating 50+ guys with a tank is not that hard:

When you have a squad and fight a platoon you don't accept the honorable exchange of a prolonged firefight - you hit and run.

I do not play my NPCs stupid yet the low WP and Per of Grunts is one of their major weaknesses, easy to pin, and to blind to even spot the PCs with good stealth and chameleolin. Also you have to account for their Officers getting shot by a nearly impossible to spot sniper.

Suppressing fire is nice if they actually know where they are, though my PCs came to love the effect of indirect weapons right on pinned soldiers too. Also I do have to mention that my PCs play a guerilla/stealth regiment that comes rather close to the ghosts and hence they heavily rely on their mostly successful scouts to always ensure combat on their terms. Yet in the scenarios that do not work that way, like a defense, decent minmaxing on builds still works wonders against regular Rulebook foes - even en mass.

The thing is that light, hard hitting scouts make, in several scenarios, better front line troops than "heavily" armored Shock Troops. And for that platoon with the tank. Once their officers have been killed and the tank is busted by an Accurate Lascannon a kilometre away or a short Accurate missile/melta strike around the corner they start to run sooner than later.

As for that deadly Patrol scenario. Lets take a severan dom Sarge or trooper, their Per is ~35 with Awarness. That is not a good chance against Scouts with Coats, especially after they spend XP and some requisition genius has started to get the nice stuff. They may be the brightest tacticians in the dom yet they are dead after that ambush.

There's the source of your problem right there. A) Minmaxing munchkin players. B) You're daft enough to run a guerrilla regiment. Did no one learn anything from Vietnam?

What about pitting them against Dark Eldar? When my players got too good, half of them were in critical by the time they finished their first encounter with a single squad of Kabalite Warriors.

I don't really see a problem with the PCs fighting and defeating opponents that are supposedly superior. First of all, they are having fun doing so. Secondly, they are using good tactics and preperation, and sometimes good rolls to accomplish this. And third: They are still squishy. The Heavy in my group got his eye shot out by a random lucky hit from a standard ork. Granted, he didn't have his helmet on, but even so unless you give them power armor or something like that they will always be somewhat vulnerable to everything except low-powered lasgun shots.

If you want to run a very gritty and depressing game where the PCs are always underdogs, have no real choise in what to do except follow orders, and continously burn fate until they need to make new character, it would be more "realistic" for a guardsman. But where is the fun in that?

Amen, brother.

Edit: I'd just like to add that I felt they scaled too quickly using the recommended model, is all.

My solution to the "Stealth Rambo" build that always seems to give GMs the biggest trouble was to put them up against other guerrilla fighters, ones that are better at it than they are. My players moaned about it for a bit, because they didn't like being out ambushed, but the simple fact was that the enemy lived there, knew his planet, and had been fighting there for centuries, my players showed up a week ago. Who's going to be better at hiding there? I built guerrilla fighters that were amazing at hiding in the countryside, surviving off the land and knew what would be out of place in their woods, fields and streams. I also threw hostile wildlife at them, things that sneak better than any human, can see in the dark and have nasty claws, teeth or venom. My players were good general stealth troops who were outclassed by specialists and local species who only operated in that one environment ever. This can cause some animosity at first so be prepared to explain that point if you have to, and don't make your entire enemy force the predator, but it also helps keep the novelty up when your squad of the Ghosts gets ambushed by someone better at it than they are.

What has also kept my players better in line was throwing situations that specifically target their weak points, a whole squad of guys who've sunk every xp point they have into agility, stealth, ballistic/weapons skill is great if it's standup fight against hordes of grunts who don't have the skills to root them out, but the first time they're on patrol in a village trying to gather intelligence that can only be found by talking to people, they're up a creek with no paddle. This can be a bit hard to do, but I recommend looking at modern counter-terrorism campaigns, watch films like Restrepo and Korengal (both on Netflix instant streaming at the time of writing this), see what infantry soldiers have to do and feel when you're trying to win over a local populace that doesn't like the people you're fighting, but doesn't trust you to protect them from them either.

Players who min/max can be easily thrown off in this game by simply requiring them to do things they aren't built to do, and as a GM I was getting mad at my players for sinking everything they had into ballistic skill and immediately going on a crusade for the red dot sight and every weapon adjustment/customization that could give them more ballistic skill, most of them were in the 40s to 50s easily. Add in their bonuses for the standard attack, range, aiming, companion helping, and that cursed red dot sight a lot of them were simply rolling to see if they jammed and where they hit. A whole squad of Larkin isn't fun to play, it doesn't make for a fun role playing game, at that point you're playing Warhammer where everyone only gets to control one mini. I've been trying to push back with things that make them play a character, artillery barrages with gas, becoming more liberal with the fear, insanity and corruption tests, things that hit a min/max build where the mins are. In my opinion Only War is one of the harder games to GM for because a lot of sessions only have the roleplaying when the officer walks in and says "Go here, blow this up, kill anything bad" and the players grunt and then it's playing Warhammer with the best mini the players could build. It's very hard to GM for if you don't have any military experience, to know the sorts of things soldiers would get up to in their off time, or where to emphasize the things that just suck about daily life in a combat zone. Sorry for the vague rant filled with more of my general frustrations but I hope somewhere in there is some vague idea you can distill down into something you can use.

Or, just lie to them.

In our newest campaign, the PCs were preparing for their first drop onto the hostile world. They were told it was guarded by a token force, that it had passive flora and fauna, that the planet's gravity was relatively low.

None of that intel was correct. At all.

Their dropship was shot out of the sky by AA. They landed in a dense swamp filled with primitive Kroot, hostile swamp predators, and killer plants. Running away was difficult, as the high gravity slowed their movement considerably.

Welcome to the Imperial Guard.

There is that option too. I mean, there's plenty of mention of "They'd only do that if they were ordered to by incompetent officers". Incompetent, or in some cases competent but uncaring, officers are the hallmark of the Guard, combine that with bad intel and players quickly find themselves in less than optimal positions.

I award 500 Exp per 6 hour session but my players never last long enough to gain 5000 exp. i dont think the game is meant to work like that. its not deathwatch, if your PCs can kill twice their number of space marines you've done it wrong. I give out a lot of exp at a time, but the average PC lasts about 4 sessions for me, if your roleplay well and are lucky you'll reach 4000 exp but its highly unlikely, generally at least 1 player burns a fate point every session.

You're in the guard, not the space marines. you are a mildly-above average soldier in an army of billions that wins by weight of bodies, you should never be that good. i think this is what makes only war different from other roleplaying games. if your PCs have like 7000exp and can kill loads of space marines i feel youre missing the point of the game!

My solution to the "Stealth Rambo" build that always seems to give GMs the biggest trouble was to put them up against other guerrilla fighters, ones that are better at it than they are. My players moaned about it for a bit, because they didn't like being out ambushed, but the simple fact was that the enemy lived there, knew his planet, and had been fighting there for centuries, my players showed up a week ago. Who's going to be better at hiding there? I built guerrilla fighters that were amazing at hiding in the countryside, surviving off the land and knew what would be out of place in their woods, fields and streams. I also threw hostile wildlife at them, things that sneak better than any human, can see in the dark and have nasty claws, teeth or venom. My players were good general stealth troops who were outclassed by specialists and local species who only operated in that one environment ever. This can cause some animosity at first so be prepared to explain that point if you have to, and don't make your entire enemy force the predator, but it also helps keep the novelty up when your squad of the Ghosts gets ambushed by someone better at it than they are.

What has also kept my players better in line was throwing situations that specifically target their weak points, a whole squad of guys who've sunk every xp point they have into agility, stealth, ballistic/weapons skill is great if it's standup fight against hordes of grunts who don't have the skills to root them out, but the first time they're on patrol in a village trying to gather intelligence that can only be found by talking to people, they're up a creek with no paddle. This can be a bit hard to do, but I recommend looking at modern counter-terrorism campaigns, watch films like Restrepo and Korengal (both on Netflix instant streaming at the time of writing this), see what infantry soldiers have to do and feel when you're trying to win over a local populace that doesn't like the people you're fighting, but doesn't trust you to protect them from them either.

Players who min/max can be easily thrown off in this game by simply requiring them to do things they aren't built to do, and as a GM I was getting mad at my players for sinking everything they had into ballistic skill and immediately going on a crusade for the red dot sight and every weapon adjustment/customization that could give them more ballistic skill, most of them were in the 40s to 50s easily. Add in their bonuses for the standard attack, range, aiming, companion helping, and that cursed red dot sight a lot of them were simply rolling to see if they jammed and where they hit. A whole squad of Larkin isn't fun to play, it doesn't make for a fun role playing game, at that point you're playing Warhammer where everyone only gets to control one mini. I've been trying to push back with things that make them play a character, artillery barrages with gas, becoming more liberal with the fear, insanity and corruption tests, things that hit a min/max build where the mins are. In my opinion Only War is one of the harder games to GM for because a lot of sessions only have the roleplaying when the officer walks in and says "Go here, blow this up, kill anything bad" and the players grunt and then it's playing Warhammer with the best mini the players could build. It's very hard to GM for if you don't have any military experience, to know the sorts of things soldiers would get up to in their off time, or where to emphasize the things that just suck about daily life in a combat zone. Sorry for the vague rant filled with more of my general frustrations but I hope somewhere in there is some vague idea you can distill down into something you can use.

do you not do skill challenges?

I'm still struggling with figuring out the best allotment of XP so my players don't reach Godhood too fast, nor force me to scale encounters where we get bogged down on combat for hours. I'm not interested in slaying my PCs regularly, but I understand that is a possible way to run Only War games

My other solutions are the following:

• Scale xp awards back, but award players specialized talents at big milestones that cater to their playstyle or actions they took. These can be very minor powered talents (and shouldn't be too powered) but since they are customized your players should value them more. For example, the squad's sniper had a few close calls with escaping where he had setup, so I created a special talent for him where he gets an Athletics/Awareness/Agility type bonus when trying to suddenly escape from an established sniper nest
• Scale xp awards back, but award players a temporary aptitude in something that drives them to broaden their character instead of combat focus. My squad was getting pulled back from the front to attend a social function, so I turned the crash-course-in-how-to-not-get-charmed-into-spilling-secrets-by-hive-nobles into everyone temporarily having the Social aptitude.
• Even if your players are leveling up and becoming combat masters, base their feeling of accomplishment not on the enemies they slay but the results of their actions. For example, in a last session the players focused on killing the enemy forces that showed up to break up the hive nobles' party, but didn't use a single action to try and ensure the safety of the bystanders. Not a single Command "GET DOWN!" or Intimidate "Get behind the bar or you're dead!" or ANYTHING at all to get them out of the crossfire. Sure, they took out the enemies, but lying around them was a field of dead nobles which, of course, will have some serious repercussions going forward.

I have found that 400 XP a session (4-6 hours) works out well, with half that for shorter ones, or half if they were being a **** or not role playing at all. One thing you could consider is giving them medals, commendations, and awards, which give small, usually situational bonuses such as +10 to Dodge when avoiding explosives, or 2 AP when in cover behind heavy foliage, etc.

These are found in the GM chapter of the rule book, under the "Medals and Honours" section, page 294. They provide a few examples, as well as things to consider when making your own. The Enemies of the Imperium book also details a few more accolades that are based on who the PCs are fighting, as well as some bonuses and nicknames their squad can receive due to number of enemies killed.

Just some things to think about, I would be wary about handing out talents or commendations unless there was an absolute, concrete reason for them to receive them.

As said by others, exp isn't necessarily based on kills, its a war roleplay, it should be based on things like completing the mission successfully, and sometimes that means not killing anyone!

I'm still struggling with figuring out the best allotment of XP so my players don't reach Godhood too fast, nor force me to scale encounters where we get bogged down on combat for hours. I'm not interested in slaying my PCs regularly, but I understand that is a possible way to run Only War games

My other solutions are the following:

• Scale xp awards back, but award players specialized talents at big milestones that cater to their playstyle or actions they took. These can be very minor powered talents (and shouldn't be too powered) but since they are customized your players should value them more. For example, the squad's sniper had a few close calls with escaping where he had setup, so I created a special talent for him where he gets an Athletics/Awareness/Agility type bonus when trying to suddenly escape from an established sniper nest
• Scale xp awards back, but award players a temporary aptitude in something that drives them to broaden their character instead of combat focus. My squad was getting pulled back from the front to attend a social function, so I turned the crash-course-in-how-to-not-get-charmed-into-spilling-secrets-by-hive-nobles into everyone temporarily having the Social aptitude.
• Even if your players are leveling up and becoming combat masters, base their feeling of accomplishment not on the enemies they slay but the results of their actions. For example, in a last session the players focused on killing the enemy forces that showed up to break up the hive nobles' party, but didn't use a single action to try and ensure the safety of the bystanders. Not a single Command "GET DOWN!" or Intimidate "Get behind the bar or you're dead!" or ANYTHING at all to get them out of the crossfire. Sure, they took out the enemies, but lying around them was a field of dead nobles which, of course, will have some serious repercussions going forward.

Using valuable time to babysit bystanders vs. taking down the enemy before they can kill? Yeah I think most guardsmen to focus on the enemy then, and most Nobles really should have enough self-preservation to get down or flee themselves when people are shooting next to them or at them. It depends of course whether the enemy shoots at them though, if they have a lull in the fight evacuating nobles might be a good idea, assuming the PCs care about them.

I'm still struggling with figuring out the best allotment of XP so my players don't reach Godhood too fast, nor force me to scale encounters where we get bogged down on combat for hours. I'm not interested in slaying my PCs regularly, but I understand that is a possible way to run Only War games

My other solutions are the following:

• Scale xp awards back, but award players specialized talents at big milestones that cater to their playstyle or actions they took. These can be very minor powered talents (and shouldn't be too powered) but since they are customized your players should value them more. For example, the squad's sniper had a few close calls with escaping where he had setup, so I created a special talent for him where he gets an Athletics/Awareness/Agility type bonus when trying to suddenly escape from an established sniper nest
• Scale xp awards back, but award players a temporary aptitude in something that drives them to broaden their character instead of combat focus. My squad was getting pulled back from the front to attend a social function, so I turned the crash-course-in-how-to-not-get-charmed-into-spilling-secrets-by-hive-nobles into everyone temporarily having the Social aptitude.
• Even if your players are leveling up and becoming combat masters, base their feeling of accomplishment not on the enemies they slay but the results of their actions. For example, in a last session the players focused on killing the enemy forces that showed up to break up the hive nobles' party, but didn't use a single action to try and ensure the safety of the bystanders. Not a single Command "GET DOWN!" or Intimidate "Get behind the bar or you're dead!" or ANYTHING at all to get them out of the crossfire. Sure, they took out the enemies, but lying around them was a field of dead nobles which, of course, will have some serious repercussions going forward.

Using valuable time to babysit bystanders vs. taking down the enemy before they can kill? Yeah I think most guardsmen to focus on the enemy then, and most Nobles really should have enough self-preservation to get down or flee themselves when people are shooting next to them or at them. It depends of course whether the enemy shoots at them though, if they have a lull in the fight evacuating nobles might be a good idea, assuming the PCs care about them.

Welcome to the Imperial Guard. Hope you enjoy your stay.

Or just don't award XP in a linear fashion.

Like award less XP for every 1000 xp they have gathered.

0 - 999 -> 400xp

1000 - 1999 -> 350xp

2000 - 2999 -> 300xp

3000 - 3999 -> 250xp

4000 - 4999 -> 200xp

5000 - 5999 -> 150xp

6000 - 6999 -> 100xp