Unbalanced Game?!

By xantos2, in Rogue Trader

Mediaeval ranged weapons are a long way from modern (or 40K) firearms, so it's not actually a similar situation anyway. That said, from range, archers could (and did) devastate troops seeking to get into melee, with many forms of armour being ineffective against arrows. The limiting factor was the need to spend a lot of time and money training archers up, hence the revolution that accompanied widespread adoption of the firearm.

The abstraction of the 'dodge' and 'parry' is pretty evident when you look at the rationale for the chance of hitting with WS or BS. They are always challenging tests so are made at base stat value to represent an active opposition to the roll. ie you roll WS vs another person instead of +20 or whatever because the person is moving, dodging, parrying. This applies to range as well. The target is continuously moving and thus incurs a challenging BS test (dependent on modifiers of course). The abstraction for dodge and parry is the 'last chance', all your normal 'defences' have failed and you have one last chance of avoiding the hit(s). When targets are restrained you get massive bonuses (which probably should be changed to 'easy' or 'very easy' tests for game logic rather than granting a bonus as the normal test is set at challenging) because you've removed their opposition and increased the ease of the test.

Whether or not that's a good representation is another discussion.

i think that firearms tend to do more critical damage even if they don't (necessarily) do much physical damage. A war axe might slash you up and leave you in ribbons but you won't die immediately. A bullet can go through your muscles and tear out your internal organs creating life threatening damage. On the other hand statistics for ammunition expenditure vs casualty rates give a ratio of something like 1000:1 (it may be higher or lower, I can't remember) and that's in warfare with ostensibly trained soldiers.

So what do you do? Make firearms more deadly but harder to hit with and melee weapon less deadly by easier to hit with? I think the great weapons should do less damage, but I think the standard hand weapons in the game are fine as they are.

As an aside, the mechanics for multiple melee attacks are rather different to multiple ranged attacks. Perhaps if the multiple attack talents worked more like semi and full auto it would reconcile easier? ie, swift attack grants 1 additional hit for every 2 DoS and Lightning attack grants 1 additonal hit for every 1DoS. then dodge and parry can ignore more of them. Course it does give melee more attacks than before, so you'd have to decide if firearms would do more damage (perhaps 1 crit for every X damage).

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Course it does give melee more attacks than before, so you'd have to decide if firearms would do more damage (perhaps 1 crit for every X damage).

It'd be easy enough to borrow the crit mechanism from starship combat - give each weapon a crit value, if you score that many Degrees of Success or more, then you roll 1d5 on the critical hit table as part of one of the successful hits. Maybe even allow a Called Shot to cause criticals in this manner more frequently (say, a called shot adds +3 to the number of Degrees of Success scored for determining whether or not a Critical has been caused).

Of course, that makes the Crippling Strike and Crack Shot talents quite a bit better, as they're dealing critical damage more frequently, but that's not necessarily a problem.

An Arch-Militant may be t3h 4w3z0mnezz!!!1!11 in personal combat, but is still only one guy, wielding one or at most two small arms at a time. Fully maxed out, he'd be a great asset in particular situations, but he's not (literally) a one-man army, he won't take over an enemy ship with a crew of 20.000 on his own.

A void-master with the Mastery of Gunnery specialty, on the other hand, isn't wielding one or two small arms. He is directing the fire of batteries of guns firing phone booth sized shells at the enemy ship. A situation in which his skill, or lack of, could be very, very decisive for the outcome of the space battle.

Nuff said on game balance.

One of my big things against how video games (especially mmo's) have effected the way people look at pen and paper RPG's is the balance thing. Video games all have to have the balance or else 90% of people would all just be the most powerful class/character. But in pen and paper it shouldn't matter. A player shouldn't want to be an archmilitant because they are the most powerful (usually) combat character, they should be one because they want to play as an archmilitant. They shouldn't use a specific weapon because of its stats, as my games rogue trader character did, he picked the best quality laspistol because that is what his character would have done, yeah the other guns would have done more damage but his RT would have wanted the nicer quality weapon. In a video game you are going to usually use the weapon that gives you the biggest advantage, the looks of an item or even thinking of if that character would want to use it will never come into play to most gamers. Just because my pnp's characters gun can do full auto doesn't mean I will, I might not want to be the kind that sends out a storm of bullets i'd rather use precision.

Balance comes into play in video games alot mostly because of player vs player aspects. In the games it will usually be a set number vs the same number. In pnp games there is not set number of vs, you can be fighting one baddy or a hundred, as long as the GM adjusts his games to the group's abilities (as he should) there will be plenty for even that character with crappy combat skills to do. So the combat giant killed half of the enemies with his full auto badass gun, that's his 'job' but when that senechal kills a couple with their low skills they are way more happy about it since it was more challenging to them and not expected.

In my games half the players shot things and back out of melee and half go into melee, its not usually because one is better statisticly its because thats what they want to do, our void master has like 53 balistics and only 40 weapon skill, he'd have a little easier time shooting things with guns but he'd rather mix it up and feel the enemies bones breaking under his blows he doesn't care that the archmilitant is killing more than him, he also knows that without his skills in space combat the whole party would be dead already. The senechal knows that without her that archmilitant wouldn't even have the ammo to waste for full auto.

And yes full auto is nasty, its meant to be, so are alot of grenades. My players have found the joy of filament grenades but at least with them I will get a huge smile when one finally rolls badly and it goes into another players square. None of them have abused full auto yet since they know me, if they start using it all the time.....so will people they face.

I don't think you can really blame a genre of entertainment for bad players, in fairness. I agree that for some their expectations of combat (and 'balance' in it) will have been coloured by them but the truth is that they are players who just don't get roleplaying or worse, they are determined to be the hated "powergamer/munchkin" type.

In my game we have a nice mix of different character types and preffered combat tactics. I do not have an active RT game at the moment, but my DH game is going strong. Full auto tends to do horrible things to lightly armoured targets of moderate toughness with diminishing returns against harder foes. GOOD melee weapons are frickin' BRUTAL even against really tough foes. Crap melee weapons remain crap, as they should be. How you adapt your tactics to evolving situations will win you more battles than fighting by rote. Some examples:

Kira (Guardsman officer) is a Cadian noble with Kasrkin training. She is absolutely LETHAL with guns, especially lasguns, hellguns and boltguns. When the fighting gets up close and personal she switches to a powersword and bolt pistol combo. For damage mitigation she has about a 50 dodge, Step Aside talent and wears either an armoured bodyglove or best quality Kasrkin (stormtrooper) armour with hexagramic wards. TB4. She coordinates and inspires the team with shouted tactical directives and some of the fun "inspiring leader" themed talents.

Jerichus (shooty Assassin) is from Scintilla. He preffers to do the John Woo style two stub auto pistols hail of bullets thing. When he starts flattening ammo against really tough foes he will pull back and set up sniping shots with a Nomad rifle. For up close work he will either dance in and out of melee with his pistols or start carving with a pair of chainknives. He usually has about AP4 mesh on and has a TB3 but relies on his 80 dodge skill to avoid most harm.

Psi-1985 (Techpriest) is from Battlefleet Calixis. He avoids ranged combat as much as humanly possible. No really, he hates shooting. His usual MO in combat is to charge things and beat on them with his Omnisian Poweraxe until they turn into paste. He has 6 mechadendrites (including one laspistol and one hand flamer) and Dragonscale implant armour. His UNTRAINED dodge is low-teens and usually does not bother, relying on his TB6 and armour to literally walk through bullets. If he spends his reaction it is either to parry something BAD in melee or to shoot one of his dendrite pistols. He is also the team's medicae.

John (assault Guardsman) is from Ganf Magni's Schola program. He is more or less fascinated with anything that might vaguely be described as a weapon, but has a noted fondness for shotguns, massive melee weapons, heavy support weapons or paired powerblades. He is a full cyber-rez cyborg these days (current TB4, down from TB5) and wears Light Enforcer Carapace whenever he can get away with it. His dodge is about a 51 but has been known to spend his reaction to take hits for others on the team.

Anna (Adept) is the girl that had a reserved seat in the Dean's office back in her Schola days. Her primary value is her astonishingly huge stack of lore skills and general brainpower related talents. Surprisingly she is pretty effective in fights too, by fighting smart! She favours a monosword in fights and holds her own quite well despite her low strength (SB2). At range she will usually fire single aimed shots with a laspistol. Paradoxically she is quite lethal with a multilaser, a complete surprise to everyone! She wears a best quality bodyglove when expecting a fight and has a TB3, but uses clever tactics like keeping a melee combat between herself and enemy gunners, ducking behind walls, hiding behind the Techpriest (who does not dodge usually), fighting defensively in melee and so on.

Tanya (chantry Cleric) is a Scintilla noble. This is the team's best diplomat and can drink like a fish. Historically she has been fairly useless in combat but has recently discovered the joys of flamers and the longlas. She has a dodge of about 31, TB3 and starts fights wearing mesh armour (I say starts because she has ended more than one fight naked due to misadventures in body armour) so she is easily the "squishy" member of the team. If she has nothing to contribute firepower-wise then she will often "cheerlead", bolstering her team with shouted prayers.

Amy (Psyker) is surprisingly young and quite mysterious. She is a powerful telepath with a few telekinesis tricks thrown in for good measure and mostly relies on these talents in a fight. She will broadcast "pain" to living foes, jam guns, hijack enemy bodies and other annoying wytchcraft. She sometimes remembers that she has Kira's old laspistol, but not all that often. She is petite and not at all strong, but surprisingly tough (TB4!), wearing mesh bodygloves mostly. She is passable at dodging, but mostly relies on ducking and telepathically erasing herself from people's sight or hiding behind Kira.

From an MMO perspective these are not balanced characters, but we are not playing an MMO. They are a team. Each is more dangerous when supported by the others. Kira and Jerichus are solid examples of the "guns = death" school of thought. Psi and John are disturbingly effective arguments for the "Melee OMG WTF pwN BBQ!" school of thought. The others are specialists. Granted not all games have two big cybernetic meatgrinders in the group but melee has NEVER been a joke in my game: Seen WAY too many hits for 28ish damage to shrug off. Meanwhile, when in full wargear Kira, Psi and John have little to fear from full-auto unless it is a BIG weapon and Jerichus does the Matrix thing... Together they are abject badasses. Solo they would fail.

Mazinkaiser said:

As many others have said many times before: Unless your doing tons of PVP, "balance" shouldn't be anything some DM fiating can't fix with a little thought and care. gui%C3%B1o.gif

Failing that, just hide your die rolls.

alexkilcoyne said:

Your not taking into account a whole bunch of stuff-

  1. Melee weapons don't jam
  2. Melee weapons dont have a chance of hitting your allies
  3. Melee weapons aren't affected by cover

It doesn't actually NEED fixing- the guy with the gun has the advantage at range, the guy with the power sword most certainly has the advantage if he can get close enough to take advantage of it.

(emphasis added)

Don't tell that to my Vampire group. None of us will stand next to the Settite anymore because he dual wields swords and rolls botches about twice a fight.

And if you're looking for a real life example as well, I've seen videos of people hitting themselves with poorly-handled swords. I don't know what the Roman's called it, but theyand every other ancient army, I'm surehad the same basic concept of friendly fire that we do.

Romans used the gladius in a very specific way, in formation (and they needed to, these things were not steel, they bent if you tried to hack with them). Point stands though - an untrained combatant is probably more dangerous to themselves and any allies than to an opponent.

P.S. When I play Vampire games they hate me to use ranged weapons because I rarely observe niceties like 'avoid friendly fire', particularly with regard to firing into melee.