Do Hordes damage Hordes the same way that PCs damage Hordes? I had to ask to make sure but I think the answer is yes.

Thanks!

I would assume so, but I don't think it's stated anywhere.

They would be really good at killing each other. Magnitude 30 heavy stubbers would be beast against a horde.

SomVone said:

Well, yes. Given you are first determining whether damage occurred and then allocating actual "hits" to winnow down a horde. Blast weapons are generally a touch better, since they will inflict "hits" equal to their radius. Barring those, Heavy Stubbers work wonders; or our Devastator with his Heavy Bolter.

-=Brother Praetus=-

On page 35 of Final Sanction, in the GM Guidance box at the bottom of the page, it stats that PDF Support Units players acquire through the adventure due to their actions can be "spent" to negate a single rebel horde, regardless of magnitude. This represents the unit being either tied down or defeated by the PDF allies. But once the unit is "spent" it's no longer available to the players, due to casualties and resupply/rearming concerns, I would imagine.

Is this how the full game will do it? Not sure, but for the demo adventure it should suffice.

Oh, the adventure also addresses the Horde vs Horde issue at the bottom of page 30, as well, saying in regards to the first battle "Meanwhile, the PDF exists mostly in the background, adding to the carnage of the battle but not directly influencing the actions of the players.". In this instance their pretty much just an abstract set piece.

But if you really want to play out Horde vs Horde, I don't see why you could use the demo's RAW for Horde on Horde, but things get a little weird. I ran through a quick mock combat with two 30 magnitude Hordes, and found these issues:

- While shooting works fine, the demo rules don't address whether or not Hordes can take advantage of cover, and if so, how. Would it be a Armor bonus like normal, or instead be abstracted into a penalty to hit? Also, the rules mention that a character attacking a Horde should take the appropriate size bonus to hit, based on the Horde's Magnitude, but they fail to explain how you figure out that bonus exactly. Even if you figure out what that bonus should be for a character attacking a Horde, should that also apply to Horde vs Horde, or not?

- Melee is even more problematic. If you use the RAW for HvH, then the two Hordes would only get one attack upon each other. With this, it would take a very long time for two Hordes of any substantial Magnitude to get each other to the Breaking point, let alone the point of destruction. You could use the rule for characters, that one hit is inflicted for every two degrees of WS success, but it would still take awhile. Another option would be to allow a Horde to make a number of melee attacks vs another Horde equal to the 10s number of it's Magnitude, just like with shooting, but then you run into the problem of the GM making a lot of rolls behind the screen while the players just sit there, waiting for you to figure out what's going on.

It'll be interesting to see what the final rules for Hordes look like in the full rulebook, and whether or not Horde on Horde action is supported. But for no I think I'll sit with the page 35 "one Horde cancels out another Horde" abstraction. That should work pretty well for most encounters.

If there is enough cover for a horde to make use of then I'd suggest that cover is a simple increase to the hordes armour points. It won't go down like regular cover because every time you attack you aim at a different part of the cover. This would probably only matter if the horde has had enough time to dig trenches, build sandbag walls, etc.

Size would be determined by the number of the NPCs in the swarm, so that will need someone to figure out the magnitude to NPC ratio. Or for FFG to tell us what it is.

Melee taking a while seems a good way to represent the fact that only a fraction of a hordes participants are within melee range.

1 horde counters another horde will probably work for Deathwatch. But Rogue Trader players probably want the gear the acquire for their private army to matter, so a more detailed method would be useful.

Bilateralrope said:

Hordes are described as being Enormous somewhere in the FAQ for the module, and therefore all ranged attacks count as Routine (+20) as was pointed out here . I am sure there will be more detailed rules within the actual Deathwatch core book, as everything in the adventure seems a trimmed down version of things.

Of course, I'd like to see the FAQ in it's entirety... To wit, I add... The FAQ . I knew I looked at that on Saturday. Why I thought it was a regular topic, I've no clue.

-=Brother Praetus=-