i wanted to ask how do you handle this talent?, because if you have a party of 4 players, everybody choose the crusader role and with this talent, the party is a daemon nemesis!, how do you handle this?

If fighting against more that one daemon, does all daemons get the damage? with one roll?

What kind of party is made up of 4 Crusaders? That's a melee-oriented role. If the enemies know one of those is coming to town, bust out the ranged weapons and explosives. If a bunch of dudes with pots on their heads even manage to find them.

My main problem is with the talent, i think is too op, a party of 5 people could almost wipe out in one round an encounter of daemon

My main problem is with the talent, i think is too op, a party of 5 people could almost wipe out in one round an encounter of daemon

Yes, that's because that's exactly what they're supposed to do. You're complaining that a group of super-specialised Acolytes are going to be able to do the one thing that they're very good at very well.

The question is, how do they get to the Daemon? Is it raging around like some Godzilla nightmare? If so, they're more likely to be squashed first.

Any investigation is going to be a major weak-spot for them, and as MijRai pointed out, if they're specialised in melee, then all it takes is a simple ambush at ranged to really inconvenience them.

I don't think the Talent is too OP, even in the - unlikely - event that you end up with everyone going Crusader.

you really think its not op???, imagine this situation, there is a massive (lets say 30 daemon) destroying a city, a daemon usually has 20 point of life, so this 30 daemon gets in a fight against this party of 5 characters with this trait, with 50 of willpower and one fate point, this party is ready to kill all these daemon un one round. Because when they encounter them, they all make the fear test. and BAM!. 25 point of damage to all daemon in the vecinity, add one more player and is 30. Good bye daemon army.

I dont have a problem doing an encounter for a party like this (could just throw some xenos at them) but honestly i think its too much what you could do against daemons with a party like this. Just another walk at the park.

imagine this situation, there is a massive (lets say 30 daemon) destroying a city

For every daemon there will be 1000+ mutants, cultists and 10.000+ panicking ordinary citizens.

Don't have at least Warhound Titan? Good bye 5-man party.

imagine this situation, there is a massive (lets say 30 daemon) destroying a city

For every daemon there will be 1000+ mutants, cultists and 10.000+ panicking ordinary citizens.

Don't have at least Warhound Titan? Good bye 5-man party.

fair point, but i was trying to show that with this talent, daemon are no match, even if the party dont kill them, they leave almost all daemon in a very precarius state. Ok no 30 daemon, then only 5 or 6, one round and bye daemons.

another situation:

"The party finally reach the place where 4 cultist sacrifice a lot a their people and managed to open a portal for some time so daemons could enter real space, 6 daemon managed to joing, o FEAR TEST!!, ok all the party passed the fear test and now they are only fighting the cultist because the daemon are dead now"

Daemonic incursion on a ship? the least problem will be the daemons.

The imperial guard is keeping at bay a army of daemons and some cultist in a daemonic world?, no problem all daemons are wiped out by the acolytes party.

Honestly i find that this talent break a lot of situations.

you really think its not op???, imagine this situation, there is a massive (lets say 30 daemon) destroying a city, a daemon usually has 20 point of life, so this 30 daemon gets in a fight against this party of 5 characters with this trait, with 50 of willpower and one fate point, this party is ready to kill all these daemon un one round. Because when they encounter them, they all make the fear test. and BAM!. 25 point of damage to all daemon in the vecinity, add one more player and is 30. Good bye daemon army.

I dont have a problem doing an encounter for a party like this (could just throw some xenos at them) but honestly i think its too much what you could do against daemons with a party like this. Just another walk at the park.

If you have more than one daemon, I don't see this even remotely possible. You only ever take one Fear test in a given scenario, from each successive degree of the Fear trait. I.e only the first daemon to invoke the Fear test ( for fear 1, 2, 3, and 4) would even be damaged by Bulwark of Faith. The others wouldn't even be touched by it, unless it was a proper horde entry. So yeah, your crusaders would hold for a round longer but would still die horrible deaths.

Not to mention if it were a proper horde, the damage from Bulwark wouldn't even cause much damage at all.

you really think its not op???, imagine this situation, there is a massive (lets say 30 daemon) destroying a city, a daemon usually has 20 point of life, so this 30 daemon gets in a fight against this party of 5 characters with this trait, with 50 of willpower and one fate point, this party is ready to kill all these daemon un one round. Because when they encounter them, they all make the fear test. and BAM!. 25 point of damage to all daemon in the vecinity, add one more player and is 30. Good bye daemon army.

I dont have a problem doing an encounter for a party like this (could just throw some xenos at them) but honestly i think its too much what you could do against daemons with a party like this. Just another walk at the park.

If you have more than one daemon, I don't see this even remotely possible. You only ever take one Fear test in a given scenario, from each successive degree of the Fear trait. I.e only the first daemon to invoke the Fear test ( for fear 1, 2, 3, and 4) would even be damaged by Bulwark of Faith. The others wouldn't even be touched by it, unless it was a proper horde entry. So yeah, your crusaders would hold for a round longer but would still die horrible deaths.

This is something i need to have more clear, basically you are saying then that if there are 4 daemons with fear rating 2 for example, only 1 of them is damaged by this talent?

That's correct. You never take multiple fear tests even if there are multiple sources of it. It's one and done, unless something scarier shows up in the scenario ( the combat narrative)

You could at the limit consider that each one soak the fera test so each one affect 1 daemon, so 4 acolytes would kill 4 daemons. Wow for your 30 daemons army.

There's also the part where all of those Crusaders are spending Fate Points all at once to do this too. Please, burn all of those up in the beginning when it's the baby Daemons. And don't forget the Bulwark of Faith doesn't state it ignores Unnatural Toughness. If you want to pick nits, that will drop the effectiveness by a good amount (which is fine by me, it's a Tier 2 Talent).

MijRai, your confusing Bulwark of Faith with the Crusaders ability, Smite the Unholy . Bulwark of Faith doesn't require any fate points, but it does ignore all Toughness Bonus (Unnatural Toughness just adds to the TB, so therefore it is ignored).

No I'm not. I was addressing the main post.

The original poster's point was that the entire party would be a bunch of Crusaders, all using their Fate points to Smite the Unholy and use that to supercharge their Bulwark of Faith. Otherwise, Bulwark of Faith is still something that doesn't always happen, because you can fail Fear saves. I find it ridiculous to think a Talent is broken IF everyone plays the same role AND spends tons of Fate Points to do a decent quantity of damage.

And whether or not Unnatural Toughness counts as 'mundane' Toughness is debatable. It is easily up to interpretation and nitpicking, which is explicitly what I said.

No need to spend tons of faith points just one or two if you are making two encounters, and this was just the most op option, with adamantium faith i think it would be too powerfull, with a party of 6, one crusader, and the rest any other it would be at least 10 points at LEAST. I think i will limit i to just one daemon. Daemons (elite) would be no match for any party with those talents, i bet a match would end in one or two rounds.

Pd: by Raw, unnatural toughness should be ignored, after all the effect of unnatural toughness is increase your toughness bonus and not specifically reduce damage. This talent ignore toughness bonus

You mean one or two in every fight, for everybody. If you're only doing one or two encounters before getting the opportunity to get all of your Fate Points back, then spending them freely is easy, sure. When you've not been given the chance to recuperate, that's another story.

You're still talking about stacking Tier Two and Tier Three Talents with a number of perquisites; they are very expensive, moreso if you don't have all the Aptitudes (which is rare). Everyone having them is pretty unlikely, in my experience (at least, not until they're all very high up in the experience totem pole). And this still only applies to a single kind of enemy. Oh look, an alien walked into the room and didn't care. Oh look, the cultists don't really care either. Nor do the witches. The renegades don't seem to mind as well.

Apply the damage to just one Daemon, or maybe spread it out evenly amongst all the Daemons present (that does seem like a better option in my mind). Either way, Bulwark of Faith has its uses if you can pull off the Fear tests reliably, which isn't always possible. I'm always happy to take a Fate Point in exchange for a passed Fear test; that's one less point to save yourself later.

That's your interpretation, yes. I still maintain that people could easily read that and rule that it does not ignore Unnatural Toughness.

I don't really think its OP and to be honest I don't think there really is no such thing in a roleplaying game, this is a story, investigation and combat game run by the GM, not a PVP, I digress. If warband makes an all blank or psyker party and they all build it the same way, they are all going to be really good at doing whatever it is they built. This is true for anything. Deamon just happen to be on average much more powerful and deadly than the average baddy. I am in agreement with Frid.

Is a 5-man Imperial Guard Heavy Weapon group OP?

Is a 5-man Psyker party OP?

etc.

Personally, I think it is fine as such groups will struggle (oh they will struggle) with other challenges.

So the contention is that a Tier 2 Talent that has a prerequisite of no less than 4 other Talents (two Tier 1, one Tier 2 and one Tier 3), requiring 3 Aptitudes to fast-track and 45 Willpower* is OP, right?

Bulwark of Faith does 1 whole point of Energy damage per DoS on the Fear test, as a one-off hit when you encounter it; that's...not a lot, even ignoring TB and Armour. Even with a godlike Willpower and as many modifiers you can stack on it, you're not looking at more than, what; 6 or 7 points of damage? Maybe 8 on a good day. That will barely even worry a Nurgling, let alone a more serious threat. You've still got to get through its regular defences to finish it off with your regular attacks.

Four guys who've all invested in this and have the Crusader Role and are spending Fate to trigger it will probably deal around 16-20 damage. Congratulations, you've spent a massive heap of party xp to easily fail to take out any but the least of Daemons at a cost of 4 Fate Points between you. Not the best deal with the devil, if you ask me...should have asked for better terms on that contract.

So no, I disagree that Bulwark of Faith is OP. It's a highly specialised Talent that only works against Daemons, has a lot of prerequisites and doesn't do more than soften up your enemies anyway.

(*assuming none of them are Psykers, they all have the relevant Aptitudes, rolled 35+ starting WP and no-one picked up any freebie Talents, getting Bulwark of Faith should cost 1,900xp...for a party of 4, that's 7,600xp total. If I've calculated it right.)

yea i just had my crazy time xD, its true basically if you want to be op againts something and everyone try to do that, then yes you'll have a op party against that kind of enemy, but at the expense of beeing meaby useless against any other.

yea i just had my crazy time xD, its true basically if you want to be op againts something and everyone try to do that, then yes you'll have a op party against that kind of enemy, but at the expense of beeing meaby useless against any other.

It's not a terrible investment; the prerequisite Talents are handy to have in many situations anyway and high WP is no bad thing, so it's by no means wasted XP. A party of four who've spent xp on getting it might find themselves lacking in versatility, but in a long running campaign 2,000xp is small enough an investment to justify if you know you'll be facing off against a heap of Daemons! The Talent itself is still good; it's reliable damage and any damage to your foe is good damage (give or take...sometimes you can get into unwanted overkill territory, but rarely against warp-born monstrosities!), so softening up a target or even taking out some of the weaker ones is not to be sniffed at.

There's better Talents out there, though, depending on your play style. Bear in mind that if you're springing directly for Bulwark of Faith, then you're not spending xp on Characteristics other than WP, Skills or other Talents. If the game is all about fighting Daemons, then being stuck with 30-odd BS or WS and a TB of less than 4 could prove fatal very quickly, even if you are getting that "freebie hit" in from Bulwark of Faith! If, on the other hand, the game's about seeking out those that would summon Daemons and your party is all going straight for Bulwark, then the investment might be entirely wasted as the apocalypse will probably occur before the party can stop the ritual of doom; lacking the skills to perform the investigation can prove just as, if not more fatal than lacking in combat skills.

In short; yes, there's a potential there for a very experienced/specialised party to use Bulwark of Faith to easily deal with lesser Daemons, but it's by no means something you, as GM, need to worry about, in my opinion.