Hello!

I've been gming a few different games, including Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy, but I'm about to start my first Only War campaign. I've tried a few searches on these terms, so I'm sorry if they've come up before, I couldn't find them.

Is there any general advice/info on the Battle Maneuver system in the corebook, as I'm a little hazy on how to run it. I like the general idea well enough, and it seems easier to make into a narrative/sandbox than the Exploration Challenges in Rogue Trader.

But the forum searches barely show any mention of the system.

My biggest questions:

1. How does it play out when it focuses so heavily on a skill that the PCs wont have very high? With a small group, I'll be lucky to have anyone with a command above 30. Certainly not in the 50+ that seem needed for it to be even odds.
2. How do you involve the whole squad? I like the idea of zooming out to "can you pull off a flanking maneuver", but what do the medic and the heavy gunner do while sarge rolls command?

Other topic, loosely connected. i never really dealt with running out of ammunition in my other games. PCs were usually powerful or social enough that they never risked using all their bullets. But we've made lightly armed drop troopers, and I want to play up some of the survival issues of running out of fuel and ammo.

3. Does anyone have any neat ways of handling ammo for zoomed out scenes. So if the PCs were in a fight that used Maneuvers, or any other mass combat systems, how would you dock ammo?

I know I can just pick a number and say they lose 10%, but does anyone have a trick/method that's worked for them?

1. Gives your players a reason to not just dump all XP into BS, WS, AG, and Dodge. My group likes to do just that, so using Battle Maneuvers, Pinning, Fear, and Lore tests provides an incentive to branch out beyond just being a fighter. If you want your players to spend XP on Logic or Common Lore: Tactica Imperialis, give them a reason to. Make whether or not a particular battle succeeds depend on how many Battlefield Maneuvers they pass or fail.

2. I like to have the Logic or Common Lore: Tactical Imperialis roll be for Battlefield Awareness, to determine if the squad notices the potential Maneuver, or is able to act upon it. Then you can tailor the actual Maneuver to whatever person/skill/ability you want. For example, maybe you have three Maneuvers planned out for an opetn battle. The first one is to hit the rear of a Chimaera that doesn't see your squad, so your heavy gunner gets a chance to shine. The next Maneuver is for the medic to heal a downed officer, who then rallies his platoon. Lastly, the pilot of a nearby Sentinel is killed, and your Operator has a clear path to the vehicle.

3. Drop Troops are an excellent chance to actually use ammo, though it is difficult with lasguns. If you give the regiment autoguns ammo conservation becomes very important. As GM, I usually keep tally marks of PC ammo usage to keep them honest. It is with a certain satisfaction that I don't necessarily tell them when they run out of ammo. Which can be humorous when they roll very well for a full auto burst on a wounded leader, only for me to tell them their weapon is dry.

A good summary. And that's probably a good way of doing a battle - I tend to find that three 'scenes' plus a bit of preamble and connecting tasks are a good evening session.

I'd also add that you can feel free to vary the difficulty of battlefield manouvers based on other things.

So whilst the check to get to that chimera's side armour is dependent on Sarge, the quality of covering fire from the guys doing suppressive fire will make it easier (or harder!).

The difficulty may start easy but go up every turn after the first as the bad guys react to the weak spot in their line - so the longer it takes to stabilize that officer, the harder it's going to be to get to the downed sentinal....

etc, etc.

Where is the Battle Maneuvers detailed in the core book? I can't find it. Nice 3 missions system you detailed here. This looks like permitting each to use his specific talents and to easily "inserting" the PCs into gigantic battles.This also seems to be a good balance between the narrative and structured approaches of mass fights management.

Sorry I found it

Very helpful answers, thank you.

I particularly like the angle of substituting in different skills to suit the tactic/event actually taken. This essentially leads to the first time I've liked the execution of a Skill Challenge, which is no small feat. An unfolding battlefield feels a lot more concrete than "find the thieves guild", and the need to work as a single group might just keep the focus away from "I want to use Athletics to find the thieves guild"

My concerns around the Command skill were not that my players min-ed that part of their minmaxing, but that penal colony soldiers with rolled stats weren't likely to have great command stats.

In some ways this will make sense. I think we will find that they are very good commandos, where their skills and ingenuity and penchant for explosions can come in to play. But that leaves them poor line troopers, where their lack of heavier weapons and discipline will bite them.

Which should push them to both weasel out of big fights, and really try hard for unusual tactics and advantages.

For PCs giving orders to NPCs under their rank and upon which they normally have authority, I would personally grant them 70% of chances to suceed if the actions are of the kind the regiment like and is trained to (...like blowing things p, you maniacs!) via various bonuses.

For operating behind lines (and far from commissars) or for types of actions the regiment is not specialized in, I would give them maluses.

If the men are given orders they like, why ask for a roll at all? It should be automatic in that case. Only ask for rolls when there is a chance the PCs will fail.

I don't really play the command roll as whether their underlings decide to follow or ignore the command, but as an abstraction of whether the squad succeeds in that task. The PCs can't fail to issue a command, but they can fail to manage their underlings properly, and they can fail to take an objective without heavy losses.

Alright that's different.

if they're penal colony soldiers, introduce an NPC leader of commissar or priest to command them.

but yeah doing battlefield maneuvers as skill challenges i like, the way only war should be played is that each individual max mins so that the squad overall is balanced (bit like D&D)

Also never forget the power of a failed roll. For instance in one of my games I play a sarge with a command skill of 45 currently, but on a failed roll with 1 degree of failure only people within 10 meters respond (must make a fellowship or tactica roll to see if they make the right action, otherwise nothing bad or good), 2 degrees people outside a certain range depending on the noise level do what ever they want, some run for cover others charge, some panic, others throw grenades as they all try to fill the orders they think they heard (successful willpower nothing happens). 3 degrees and all hell breaks loose to anyone with 100 meters. The rangers were made up by my DM and since I have air of authority trait and can command up to 400 people in a 100 meter radius he thought the same should be true for an inept command. So this makes life truly dark. Feel free to implement ideas like this.