I apologize if this has been answered before, but I didn't find anything after a search.

My question is about the summary of Overwatch in the Combat Actions table on page 189 of the the Dark Heresy core book. That summary mentions a -20 to BS to take the action. However, the full description of Overwatch does not include such a penalty. Furthermore, the GM screen doesn't note that penalty. I'm thinking that it was just a typo, but I didn't notice a correction in the official errata.

I'm leaning toward treating this as a typo. Any opinions on this?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Well overwatch is sorta like a reactive Supressive Fire, page 191. Supressive fire has a -20 to BS test when you do it so maybe that is what they mean by it?

My train of thought is because Overwatch is exactly like a Supressive Fire attack but as a reaction to someone entering your kill zone, so why shouldn't it have the same -20 bs?

Do you need to actually hit the enemy to force them into taking pinning tests?

Otherwise both overwatch and suppresive fire seem pretty powerfull to me! most standard type foes will have a WP of 25-40 which means almost always they will fail the initial roll (its at -20 WP as well) and lose their round. subsequently if they continues being shot at they will fail more than half of them time to do anything (normal WP roll). If they are no longer shot at then they will probably succeed (+30).

But realistically how often would a PC that managed to get someone pinned giving him an effective -20 to BS would stop firing at them even if the opponent was behind cover!

So although this rule/option sounds wonderfull I dont think it is very well implemented overall!

You don't need to hit to create the pinning effect. It is pretty powerful, but don't forget you still get a half action. It basically makes sense that if someone is spraying a hail of bullets in your direction, you stay down until they've finished.

I would use the -20 or overwatch, because firing at someone who has just entered your kill-zone is equivalent to firing at someone with partial concealment, for a -20 penalty. Also, it's just too good to be able to take a full auto burst without penalty against a target on their own turn.

But realistically how often would a PC that managed to get someone pinned giving him an effective -20 to BS would stop firing at them even if the opponent was behind cover!

There's a very simple limit to the number of pinned turns: ammo. Your generic autogun can only pin someone for 3 turns before you have to reload. Also, you're doing nothing else than pinning. If you are fighting enemies that are more numerous than you and they're spread out, the one you pin will remain in cover while the others can still hit you - and you're not hitting the one in cover any better than he is hitting you...

This is why choosing where to fight is as important as how. Being able to set up an ambush is a major advantage.

The -20 BS is to show that you are attacking an area and not an individual.

Remember that Suppressing fire and Overwatch are equally effective against your acolytes. I have gotten pinned as often as I have pinned in the games I have played. I stand by the fact that the GM started it.

Tactics by the rest of the cell or enemy come heavily into play when you have someone suppressing the enemy. Once you get the opposing force pinned that’s when the flanking to take out pinned targets comes in. Sharpshooters on rooftops or second floor windows become very effective when they are shooting at pinned targets.

I would not use the -20 penalty for Overwatch, both because it doesen't say so in the description, and because unlike Suppressive Fire, you have to waste a full turn before you get the effect of overwhatch. Even worse, overwatch doesen't guarantee you fire before the enemy, because if the triggering enemy has great AB than you, he can shoot you first and even cause you to lose Overwatch . You could opt not to dodge but then again you could become stunned, unconsious or dead instead...

So no I have no problems to allow this as there is no other way to hold fire and wait if you want full auto (delay gives you only half actions).

IMO the -20 for pinning is insane by itself, as it is a total of -40 compared to normal autofire. and only every 2 degrees add to hits so you if you fire suppressive fire down a corridor with 20 people in it you'd need 41 ballistic skill and roll a 01 in order to hit more than one person....

How about allowing removing the -20 penalty if you opt to fire double the amount of rounds the full-auto burst does? Since a modern assault rifle or MG can shoot about 5 times what an Autogun or Heavy stubber does per round, I see no problems allowing the character to squeeze down the trigger a bit longer. Ammo will run out fairly quickly though, and overheating will become an issue if this action is used alot.

Friend of the Dork said:

What do you mean a total of -40? The question was do you take the -20 written in the summery or not, where is this extra -20 coming from? You don't add the -20 from overwatch to the -20 from suppressive fire if that's what you did.

The rules give you a net -20 when you make a overwatch action if you are using whats written in the summery, otherwise as someone else pointed out it's by far way to powerful.

The number in the full auto column would represent a typical controlled burst from the weapon in question. A controlled burst being designed to conserve ammo and accuracy. I would imagine if you held the trigger on any full auto weapon in DH it would very quickly and inaccurately expend all of its ammo.

What do you mean a total of -40? The question was do you take the -20 written in the summery or not, where is this extra -20 coming from? You don't add the -20 from overwatch to the -20 from suppressive fire if that's what you did.

It's -40 when you compare the Overwatch -20 to the Full Auto +20.

karn987 said:

It's -40 compared to normal autofire, (+20 to -20). Did you not see my example? Even getting a single hit is hard enough, getting more than one is practically impossible unless you have several other modifiers. Pinning itself is very powerful but it would be nice to be able to hit someone if you're suppresing a bunch. If you're firing at something fearless (like Xenomorphs) overwatch become useless with -20. So not only are you losing out on on the +20 bonus for firing the extra rounds, you also lose an addition -20 even thought you're only shooting the same 10 (or 6) bullets.

Published on 7/21/2009 - 06:48:57
The number in the full auto column would represent a typical controlled burst from the weapon in question. A controlled burst being designed to conserve ammo and accuracy. I would imagine if you held the trigger on any full auto weapon in DH it would very quickly and inaccurately expend all of its ammo.

Hmmm... sounds a bit like suppressive fire. -20 to hit with a bunch of bullets doesen't sound very accurate to me, sounds more like you're wasting ammo, except maybe to scare your enemy. Not that suppressive fire is the same as just holding down the trigger until you run out of ammo, as it would take exceptionally fast .

Suppressive fire and Overwatch are basically two different types of area effect attacks. You are targeting an area or direction not individuals, hence the penalty to BS.

Overwatch is to guard a direction and react as soon as the enemy is spotted.
Suppressive fire is to target a group (area) and attempt to immobilize them.
Full auto is focused fire on one target.

Here is an example of all three actions at once.

3 guardsmen are defending an intersection each with a heavy stubber. G1 spots an enemy squad flanking to the left, he initiates suppressing fire to hold off the flank. G2 realizes that the enemy may try to flank right and goes on overwatch to cover that direction just in case. G3 continues to target and take down individuals with full auto fire using controlled 10 round bursts just as he was taught in basic training.

These are three distinct and individual actions that all serve a specific function.

ItsUncertainWho said:

You are aiming or at least pointing your gun at an area, but as soon as someone actually enters an area you're firing on that person. If more than one moves there at the same time, yeah you're shooting at the group however only one is the primary target and you're very unlikely to hit anyone else because of the penalty and extreme difficulty of getting more than one hit. The suppressive effect here seems to be a bonus. Also, why can't you lie in wait and THEN fire controlled burst as soon as you see someone move around a corner? So far the only way you can do it is Overwatch, thus the -20 penalty seems a bit harsh just for firing out of your turn.

I can't really find a reason why it takes a full turn (5 seconds) to establish a "kill zone", after all you could just point the gun at the area and ready yourself to squeeze the trigger as soon as you see movement there. IRL you could spend less than a second to cover such an area, and with enough training, as little as 0.10 seconds to actually fire and hit them (although such an reaction could easily lead to friendly fire as you don't think your muscles just does it through repetition). Even worse, unless you're excpetionally quick there is no guarantee you will be able to take your Overwatch ac tion at all even though you're ready for it and has either already won initiative or have been lying in wait in an ambush for some time (a clear advantage).

I'm considering just scrapping the entire Overwatch and Delay action rules totally and replace it with:

Delay: Free action. You reserve your whole round to a later point in the turn. You can decide to act after anyone else has completed an action. If this would interrupt someone's turn, an opposed agility test decides who act first.

Example: Dave the Guardsman enters a room filled with robed individuals performing a ceremony. Not sure if these are proper worshippers of the Emperor or heretical cultists, he decides to wait and see what Bob the Cleric says and does before shooting or threatening anyone. When it's Bob's turn he shouts "heretics!" and opens fire. Dave smiles and decides to take his turn after Bob is done, ready to fire with the blessing of the Ecclesiarchy.

Ready: Free action: You reserve a full or half action to a later point in the turn to be triggered by an event specified by you in advance. The event must be something you can observe and react to. Any action or reaction (including dodge) taken before this will cancel the Ready action. This action can be combined with an Aim action if you have a clear target to aim at.

Example: Dave has entered a space hulk with his fellow acolytes. Jim the tech priest calls out "hostiles moving towards us!" after using his Auspex. On his turn, Dave deploys his Heavy stubber and looks the corridor. Next turn he decides to Ready to fire as he can now hear sounds of approaching enemies, the trigger being the enemies moving around the corner in the corridor. 2 turns later the enemy rears their ugly orkish heads and Dave choses to fire a full auto burst at them as he suspects they are too stupid to be suppressed. After downing one of them, the rest of the orks runs around the corner and charges the acolytes who now regret waiting...

What do you guys think? The only problem I see here is the risk for a "double" action by delaying until the end of the round and then being first in initative the next. But I'm not sure if I want to changing initiative for delayed/ready actions like in 3rd ed. D&D.

Friend of the Dork said:

Well your delay has the flaw that if you want to delay, you should also be forced into that new init slot that you delayed yourself into because your not going to be the first one moving every round any more, you delayed.

As far as your example of the Ready action, it is again to powerful to allow a full action to be readied. Also it is extremely unrealistic because the ready action is supposed to represent that split second reaction to get (taking maybe 2 or 3 seconds). Autofire action also represents the time it takes for you to bring that full burst onto the target and the slight delay you are going to have between shots as you try to keep your gun on target. Ready is just that split second oh **** go action that is going to have you spraying the general area and not have yet gotten fully on sight yet hence why overwatch exists.

Also if you look at what the overwatch action is for, it does it quite well. It's for suppressing an advancing enemy and trying to keep them back. All those scenes in movies where the good guys are trying to chase down the bad guys and they round a corner into one guy waiting for them who flattens the trigger at them and forces them back but rarely gets a hit on them. That's overwatch and you don't need to hit someone to pin them in fear of becoming swiss cheese. It's supposed to be harder to do it because to pin someone your spraying more bullets, in a wider pattern in order to force them back or into cover long enough for your forces to achieve it's goal.

You keep saying "it is too powerful" but fail to explain to my why it is too powerful. How is it unbalanced? Does the rules favor a particular type of character?

Delay: huh? I already said changing the initative might be necessary, but that requires a bit more book keeping. I think I'd like to avoid that but I don't want acolytes or even NPCs taking advantage of delay. Delay should simply be, I don't want to act yet I want to see what happens first. That means others will act before you, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on the situation.

Ready: Why do you think it's unrealistic? Do you know how much can be done in 5 seconds? A melee attack might represent several attacks, feints etc. but shooting a gun is just that, it takes a fraction of a second to do it.

Remember that despite there being turns, everyone are actually acting at the same time. While enemy B fires his gun, hero X charges towards enemy D. However to adjucate conflicting actions the game divides time in rounds and uses initative to see who acts first. This is in itself unrealistic, but necessary to prevent chaos and confusion. It is however quite possible for 2 men to kill eachother at the same time with guns, just as it is possible for one to react before the other and shoot him before the enemy can aim and fire back. However it is also quite realistic that a person waiting and ready to do a certain action will act quicker than one that has to take a split second decision and then act at the same time. For example, a cop holding a gun, aiming at an enemy and shouting "freeze scumbag!" or some such will have the option of riddling said scumbag with holes with his pistol (I.E semi-auto burst) before that enemy can draw his gun and fire back. Unless other factors play in, such as the cop being distracted, the scumbag managing to Blather or pretend like he's cooperating, or the Officer's own reluctance to kill, the Officer should have the ability to fire if he ses the scumbag drawing his gun.

It takes a human being about 0.25 seconds to react and be able to do something about it, which is not that much when you think of the rounds being 5 seconds long. I see no problems with someone being able to react to a half or full action, after all the rules already say you can dodge or parry, and it doesn't really take that much longer to squeeze off a few rounds in semi or full automatic fire.

Funny you should mention the "quarry in action movie stops and shoots at the pursuer" example. If it was like in this game, the quarry would need to run around the corner (full action), spend a whole 5 seconds aiming at the area he thinks the pursuer is coming from, and then being able to fire to supress (which is often done with semi-autmatic pistols) to get the hero to take cover and give the quarry more time to run... yeah except he just wasted a round doing that... So yes quite possibly the worst example of Overwatch I can think of. An example of overwatch I can think of myself would be the good old Vietnam ambush were soldiers lie in wait for the enemy to come - and then open fire on them to both suppress and kill.

Anyway the main point is that there is currently no way to simulate the "freeze" situation, as you can either aim a gun at a target OR Ready to fire a single shot (although firing more than one doesen't really take more time) but not both, and the line might even call for a full-action intimidate skill check as well... yeah so it takes about 3 rounds to do what is done in one second or two in a movie. That's not very cinematic.

Overwatch is a delay action that allows you to act out of turn and use a full round action after an extended period of time.

The full round setup time is to allow the character/NPC to get into a comfortable position that they can stay in for long periods of time and maintain focus. Overwatch isn’t really an action that you take during a fire fight unless the rest of your party is handling the opposition and you are sure of an attack from another direction. It’s more of “I know the enemy will be coming from that direction, I’m going to get into position and open up when I see them.” It might take 5-10 minutes, in some cases longer, before you react in your overwatch state.

In example 1 Dave is moving then delaying his attack and attacking after/during the Clerics turn. Personally I see no problem with this and would allow it, as long as Dave doesn’t delay into the next round. Use it or loose it.

In example 2 Dave is using overwatch you are just allowing him to cancel it and use standard fire instead. This would be totally up to you but I would rule that he must take the overwatch action as he did not know what was coming and readied for anything hostile to come around the corner. If he had passed a PER check and heard and recognized the grunt and growls of the Orks and thought suppressing fire is useless, then he should just exit overwatch and be ready to attack, he had two rounds. I would then have the Orks make PER checks to see if they are aware of the ambush awaiting them. If they are not let the players get a surprise round in before initiative, if they are aware of the players its strait into initiative for all.

Regards the -40 point - I am assuming that the modifiers for firing into a kill zone and firing on full auto stack. So net modifier: zero.

You get (1) a chance to attack someone outside the normal initiative sequence; (2) a reasonable chance to hurt the target, albeit on average one hit less than on a normal full auto burst; and (3) everyone in the kill zone makes a pinning test at -20, so you get benefits over and above any damage you might cause.

That seems pretty powerful to me, I'm not sure it needs modding to make it *better*.

Also, why is it a full action? Because if it was a half action, you could have a regular half action, *and* store up a full-auto burst (a full action) to use out of sequence, *and* get the pinning effect on top of any damage you cause. That seems a little brokenated to me, even with the additional -20 to-hit penalty.

In your Vietnam ambush example only a few members of the platoon are going to be using overwatch or suppressing fire. Everyone else will be firing normally.

The “freeze” situation is up to the GM to control, but it is basically an intimidate action. It is the GM’s job to tell the players that the bad guy has halted and take the players to a narrative timeline instead of combat time. Allow them to talk, maybe even take a half action before the bad guy reacts and then return to initiative order. That is up to you.

As for the “it’s unrealistic, you can do a lot in 5 seconds” whining. Get over it. Either toss everything out the window and deal with everyone timing out all they can do in 5 seconds or come to grips with the fact that pen and paper RPG’s arbitrarily place specified time limits on everything in combat so everyone gets equal time and no one can take up a half hour of game time describing what all they can do in 5 seconds.

@ It's Uncertain Who:

I agree with your definition of Overwatch action, and what bugs me is that you can't do a normal +20 full auto burst with it. Actually what really bugs me is that some want to give an additional -20 penalty to the test as well. Sure, pinning is very nice (close to being broken), but sometimes you just want to kill your enemies.

As for the rest of the description, it seems more like something a party wants to do in narrative time, not round for round combat. I can see how it could take some time to properly set up an ambush, but if you just want to wait a few seconds until a certain event has happened (such as getting a clear shot on an enemy in melee with a friend), a ready action is more appropriate. Atm we only have Delay for that, and that only allows a single shot when you might want to pepper the enemy instead.

My Delay is more of a delay and less of a ready, if you get my drill, and will only be used occasionally when you want to see what your teammates do or if you can't make up your mind then and there.. thus it can help speed up combat.

As for my example two, yes Overwhatch works fairly well there except that it is suppressive fire only. If you could chose wether to fire suppressive with a net 0 modifier (actually making it being like suppressive fire combined with a full round- aim action) OR fire normal +20 autofire burst, I'd like it alot more. Never mind being orks or not, or the player chosing this or that, let's rather assume he wants to fire full auto no matter what and not caring about suppression.

But if you see me next thread the "police aiming gun at bad guy"-example is more akin to what I intended for readt action - short term alertness and readiness that can't be maintained nearly as long as Overwatch, but doesen't take any time to establish (other than the ready and aim action itself).

@ Cardinalsin

As for the full action thingy, I think you misunderstood I don't want one to be able to get a full or half turns action and THEN getting a full action when it's someone elses turn, and then getting a new full action the round later. That is indeed broken as you get more actions than everybody else. The problem is that it takes a full TURN to establish a kill zone, which means if enemies walk, run, or dance the macarene in your kill zone after you''ve taken your Overwatch action but before it's your turn again, you can't do **** about it! So you actually waste 2 turns to get one full action out of turn. With my Ready rules you would only spend a free action, but then could only retain as much action as you have left, thus if you spent a full action before you couldn't do anything when the trigger occurrs (except free actions).

Again @ It's uncertain who:

Sometimes taking people out of initative and get some dialogue in what could be a fight is awesome. Sometimes however, said bad guy reaches for the gun instead and you're left with the acolyte having to shoot. If you just use the intimidate rules, the bad guy will ALWAYS have time to ready his weapon and fire before it's the acolyte's turn again. If for some reason you decide to have everyone reroll initative, well then it could go both ways again and the acolyte wasted his chance once more. That's why I like to have this built into the system so not to intererrupt the turn sequence until the bad guy is actually ready to talk or the combatants are having a mexican stand-off. If this takes a long time, then yeah you could roll initative again, but if the acolytes are on guard still aiming their guns then they should get the drop on their adversaries.

As for realism debate, I was answering karn987 who was "whining" about it being unrealistic to be able to fire 10 bullets in 2 or 3 seconds with full-auto. I see no reason why RPGs need to arbitrarily place specified time limits about anything, but rather well thought out and mostly believable limits that can still be fast and playable. For most parts DH does this, one example being the melee attack+ready action or melee attack+feint or +aim. This is pretty much what you have time for, especially considering that one such attack could actually be several swings. Using Swift attack and better requires special training as you turn these testing blows and maneuvering into actual damage-dealing attacks.

I'm not too happy about deciding that a full auto attack has to be a Full action though, as firing modern guns takes alot less time than attacking with swords. However, I can accept it for simplicity and for giving melee-oriented characters SOME fun. but this becomes a problem when you are only left with a half action and thus can't fire full auto, even though firing several shots would be very cinematic and fitting RP wise. Examples being:

1. When pinned. Who hasn't seen characters pop up from cover firing a bunch of ill-aimed shots and then forced to duck down again?

2. When having pulled out a gun. Imagine some punk pulling out an Uzi, and instead if holding down the trigger he only gently taps it firing a single round, or even worse wastes time setting the gun on semi-auto? This is an artificial and stupid limitation. Better to have an extra penalty or losing the +20 bonus for hastily firing full auto.

3. When doing any other half action first, including stepping a few metres. Why shouldn't someone be able to walk/jog/step a meter or two before letting lose a burst?

Solution? Half action burst. Since you spend less time aiming and controlling your burst you lose your bonus (+20 for full auto or +10 for semi auto). Easy, quick, and allows you to burn ammo without hitting that much better.

BTW I just reread the Overwatch rules and if I go by the text alone it seems that you actually get the +20% from Full auto burst in addition to the pinning effect! If so Overwatch is indeed a very nice tactic to use and may be worth risking a full turn to get it's effect. Only the table contradicts this, and differences between tables and text has happened before. AFAIK there is no set rule what takes precedence and an errata is needed to resolve the issue. Kudos for to the original poster for bringing this up. The Errata does not clarify it, but clarifies that Suppressive fire action does not get the +20 from autofire in addition to the -20. Overwatch, on the other hand specifically refers to page 120: "Full Auto Action" thus it seems it actually gets the +20.

Friend of the Dork said:

As long as the player has initiative I would say that allowing an intimidate as a free action is reasonable. If the intimidate fails the player would still have a half action for an attack. This is actually how my group has handled the "lets make the Inquisitor happy and get prisoners this time" situation. Shortly there after the still warm body of thug X usually thuds on the ground. We try.

Friend of the Dork said:

This pertains to the dirtiest of concepts "Game Balance." If you want to allow the Half action SA burst I would lose the +10 and give a -20 BS.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Hmm that would sorta defeat the purpose of using anything other than single shots anyway. -20 bs to a test you need 2 degrees of success to benefit from is a waste of time and bullets. By losing the bonus it is still possible to hit with 2 rounds if you have 21 or higher BS. I understand single shots are supposed to be somewhat useful, but then I already have house rules making them a bit better than normal.

Melee is another issue, but they can usually out-damage most guns anyway.