Cifer said:

Fair enough criticism of the weapons, statted mine up back before the power level amped up a level with tearing for bolters and the Slaught weapons were released. As it is though my guys are virtually immune to lasguns, if they get any tougher then... bloody hell O.o

40K tabletop numbers are bad source because of:

1) table top balancing.and simplification. Marines and Eldar get alchemically transformed into pure nerf and the less that is said about the C'tan the better.

2) The wide gulf each range of numbers represents. Toughness 3 on the tabletop represents all humans, from sickly hive worlders with Toughness 22 to hulking Feral Worlders with Toughness 50.

Background fluff and novels are more reliable, which make Necrons very nasty. The 5th edition of 40K does say that some Necrons that have been repeatedly damaged and rebuilt do operate at a lower level of intelligence and effectiveness and that others have rebuilt themselves into more powerful forms so that considerable variation of Necron stats is supported by the source material.

Cynical Cat said:

Fluff and lore cave to the philosphy of "rule by the cool." While hyper-simplified, the numbers imply balance which is what you'd want in a RPG; since its nothing but a game of numbers.

Psion said:

Were you in the same room as me at the moment I read that, I would have repeatedly hit you round the head with a chair for that comment.

The numbers in an RPG are a means to an end - the end being the story. They're a tool and nothing more, representative abstractions that exist to be used or ignored as the situation dictates. Game balance in an RPG is a contrived irrelevance, IMO, as easily discarded as any of the actual rules.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but to see someone so casually disregard everything that defines an RPG and boil it down to "nothing but a game of numbers" is hugely infuriating.

The problem with the fluff is that GW has been on a crusade to amp up the Grimdark to literally stupid levels. Thus it is not consistant as the power levels of all the bad guys has been inflated.

My advice is to go back to early fluff (say circa 2nd ed no later) and use that.

llsoth said:

While, by comparison, the Rogue Trader era background was randomly silly (Space Marines on flying surfboards, Inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock Clousseau, etc), inconsistent and generally incompatible in tone with the more recent background (which some of us happen to like; you might see heaps of Grimdark, but quite frankly, I'm of the opinion that people see that more because they expect to see that rather than because of the actual material - peoples' opinions shape their interpretations).

Quite frankly, I'd sooner base an RPG on the background of a setting than on the rules for a miniatures wargame, especially given that GW have made a number of wargames covering the same setting over the years, none of which ever quite agree on any given interpretation of that background.

It doesn't help that people continue to insist on calling it 'Fluff', a term which I personally find to be universally and unpleasantly dismissive of setting material of any kind, as if it exists only to fill page space and make books longer (especially when paired with 'Crunch', the equivalent term for rules, which again implies a particular emphasis on rules over background). I'm reliably informed that the term Fluff is actually banned within the GW design studio for similar reasons.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I agree whole heartedly. Besides, table top stats are completely silly. A cosmic horror like a greater daemon or an even worse being like a C'tan has a point cost and battlefield performance equivalent to a a few dozen or scores of Guardsmen. And balance? Since when are NPCs balanced like player options in an rpg? Daemonhosts aren't "balanced". Greater daemons aren't "balanced". Space Marines and Eldar Aspect Warriors are brutally powerful by Dark Heresy standards. Where is the "balance"?

In universe, the Avatar of Khaine can walk through a Ork mechanized army like it isn't there and effortlessly slaughter a Dark Eldar Archon. That's impossible because he's beaten with a nerf bat so an Eldar player can actually field him and an army for a reasonable points cost and so when the Eldar player fields the Avatar and an army he doesn't automatically win. The table top doesn't have stats for Titan killing Alpha plus psykers, but the background material for the universe makes it clear that they exist.

In short, for an rpg:

table top war game abstractions, simplifications, and arbitrary balancing<<< way the universe in question is supposed to work.

darkstar952 said:

IMO ship design should be down to the rogue trader char who is actually meant to own it....btw i play an RT