My group is relatively new to Rogue Trader and so far we've had two combat encounters in the "Into the Maw"...the one in the marketplace and the space combat vs. the Wolfpack Raiders in the Battleground.

However, this week my group of 5 players will be fighting a dozen orks on Magoros Prime and I have a few questions:

1. Did you guys run this as a regular combat encounter or am I supposed to be using the "Mass Combat" rules on p. 262? What constitutes a "large group"? I'm afraid that this combat is going to end up being rather long and i'm looking for ways to keep it reasonable.

2. I'm used to being provided with maps when I run a pre-made adventure, but this encounter doesn't have one. Did any of you find a map that worked for this encounter, did you make your own, or just run the combat without any visual aids at all?

The RT rules say that groups can't target individuals and individuals can't target groups, so if you were going to make the Orks into a group against the PCs, you would still have to use individual Orks from the Ork group to fire at the PCs, according to the rules.

What you could do is give the PCs a friendly group of ship's crew and/or armsmen from the RT ship to assist the PCs against the Orks = I mean the RT ships have 1000 plus crew members to use as fodder, ahem, combat helpers.

The friendly crew personnel would be a group and could combat the Ork group, thus helping to eliminate some of the Ork group down to a few individual Orks, which the PCs could then combat normally.

Just a suggestion.

Tang86 said:

Great idea! I think I will subtly suggest that to the group before they leave the ship again.

Depending on the kit your players have, I wouldn't expect the combat to last more than a couple of rounds.

I don't know, my group found orks to be pretty scary. 8 or 9 toughness, halving criticals, 20+ wounds, unpinnable when in groups, bonuses to charge and close combat...most basic las and stubber weaponry cant even hurt them, and if they get in close you can kiss any rank 1 character but an arch-militant goodbye.

Be careful about what you let your players take, you don't want to undermine the need to aquire real guards and equipment. Any troops they bring with then probably don't have military training, or armor, and only basic las weaponry or stubbers to defend themselves with. On top of all that, they didn't join up to battle orks and would have pretty weak morale. A group of orks could really eat through a lot of basic armsman, whose weapons are going to have a hard time just bypassing their toughness and armor. It would be a slaughterhouse.

Which sounds totally awesome! Play it up, make those orks nice and scary! They are eight foot tall hulking brutes that shrug off small weapons fire that have been know to recover from decapitation!

As for how to run it:
You have some delicate balance ahead of you. You want to impress upon them the hordes of orks on the planet, but likely don't want to be in combat all day.

I ran "cinematic" combat for the trips their and back. Basically the group decides their tactics for getting their and what skills they are going to use, and then through a series of rolls. Our group used their armsmen to cause a distraction (command and tactics checks) and used a combination of sneaking and intelligence checks to try to bypass most of the orks, with the arch-militant and Rogue Trader trying to quietly off any orks they happened upon (perception, tactics, and WP/BS checks). I described what was going on and they offed two orks on the way.

Once they got to the tower it switched to tactical combat. Lady Ash and her servitors were battling the orks, they sneaked by, and gotthe information they needed. When they came out most of the orks were gone, only 10 left. Tactical combat again, which they didn't think was going to be a big deal.

Then they crapped their pants when they realized just how tough the average ork is. No, orks in a group don't pin. No your stubbers and las weaponry aren't going to scratch them. The hell guns could at least hurt them, and only the heavy bolter was realy don't any damage, not enough to save them though, so they made a break for it.

Back to cinematic battle. Skill checks and the occasional weapon check to avoid the orks and lead them on a game of cat and mouse until they made it back to their shuttle.

Just make sure to actually read up on the orks abilities, they are pretty scary. And again, if they haven't paid for: troops, weapons, etc. than you probably don't wan't to just give them access. Some armsman, sure, with some basic weaponry. But your average armsman is going to get decimated by an ork.

Can't thank you enough, Riplikash! That's so incredibly helpful to me.

Another question for you...during tactical combat, did you use a map or minis at all? Or did you just keep it all loose and narrative?

I use them on occasion. I love modding and painting mini's, have some great terrain, and big hex and grid maps, so I would hate not to use them.

That being said...

For the most part I find they don't help the experience. Players start looking at the game from a "top down" perspective instead of a "first person" perspective. They start considering things in squares and hexes instead of what their characters can see and do. They get all tied up in the minutia of wargaming instead of the cinematic narrative of an RPG. Instead of playing a character they end up controlling characters, and everything slows down.

I use minis from time to time. Like I said, I love minis. It depends on the feel I am going for.

If an encounter is very, very tactical, and I want to encourage a tactical mindset and give them a strategic challenge with lots going on, and the characters acting as generals I'll break them out. If they are coming up with a plan in their war room, I'll break them out. If they are running fleet actions as leaders of a flotilla, I'll break them out.

I almost never use them for a fight that I want to be cinematic or evoke emotion. If I want them to be scared, hard pressed, angry, experience a sense of wonder, or awe, or loss, no mini's.

Like I said, in my experiene: mini's = wargame. Top down view, tactical, attention to detail. Narrative = RPG. First person view, emotions, cinematic.

When the map comes out, I count on the focus being strategic combat, not my story.

Thats my experience. But your milage may vary.

About running orks...so would you basically have them all run in straight toward the PCs, firing their Shootas until they are close enough to charge with their Chain Axes? They don't really strike me as much for tactics.

Kind of, but not exactly. (I play tabletop orks btw. )

Now first of all, it is worth noting that the Orks were inspired by english soccer riots. All enthusiasm and brawls.

Now orks are brutal and kunnin', but for the most part their kunnin' is used to set them up for being brutal.

Orks BS is crap, their weapons are inaccurate, and they have no abilities to help them in shooting.

Conversly they are basically unpinnable, nearly immune to small weapons fire, have a great weapon skill, typically always outnumber their enemies, tons of abilities to help them in close combat, and absolutely LOVE a good brawl.

Orks aren't dumb. They are kunnin', much moreso than people give them credit for. They can be very sneaky and tactical, luring players into traps, setting up feignts, and making good tactical decisions.

But almost all of their kunnin' is focused on getting them in a position to charge close combat, where they will absolutely DECIMATE almost anything else in the galaxy, weather it be eldar, chaos, or space marine. And those are just the boys. Nobs? Warbosses?!? Fuggedaboudit!!!

So it isn't that orks JUST charge in every time, regardless of circumstances. It is that they are very good at setting up situations where they CAN charge in.

Now that isn't to say they can't be effective at range. There are Orks that love the dakka. But there are no ork snipers or marksmen. The orks who fight at range do so with LOTS of dakka. Hordes of innacurate fully automatic weaponry, typicaly modified to be as loud as possible.

Ork tribes tend to be a bit OCD, and don't approach things in a 'combined arms', well balanced manner. Weather it is vehicles, guns, or hand to hand combat, they get worked worked up and go all out.

Like I said, they aren't dumb, they are kunnin'. If they know an enemy is coming they will set up some nasty suprises and ambushes, and they aren't dumb about strategy.

But in a small scale fight, yeah, the best 'tactic' available is usually to rush their enemy and rip them limb from limb. It works well for them. They'll set up traps, they'll sneak and feint, but when push comes to shove, players get the bum rush.

Unless they have really pimped up their military there is little chance they will be able to "fight" the orks in any effective manner. There are hundreds to thousands of them around the mirror, most of them a fairly even match for most Rank 1 explorers, and worth a dozen armsmen.

Remember, these aren't LotR orks that are chopped up by humans by the dozens. They are one of the most dangerous threats the galaxy has to offer, right up there with tyranids and necrons. Now is a good time to impress this upon your players.

riplikash said:

That's exactly what I want to convey to my players. Again, great info!

So are a dozen orks going to be too much of a match for 5 PCs (rank 1)? Now I'm sort of concerned about a TPK...LOL.

If they decide to take down a group of 10 or 20 armsmen with them, should I just break of 3 or 4 of the orcs into a group and run the mass combat rules between those two groups?

Deadline247 said:

It really depends on how they prepare. My group didn't know much about 40k, so they saw things like melta guns, power fists, etc. and said, "oh, that is heavy weaponry, we won't need that. All this best quality las weaponry will do us just fine". They only had 1 hellgun and 1 heavy bolter between them and couldn't hardly scratch the orks.

If I were a player I would have loaded us up with power fists, melta bombs, grenades, flash and smoke, then troops on top of that. For a prepared party with appropriate weaponry 12+ orks isn't too bad. For 5 explorers with standard weaponry, yeah they are screwed.

But that's ok. Let the gravity of the situation sink in, make them use their fate points, let someone lose a limb.

Orks are tough mothers, but they aren't so dangerous as to wipe the part in one or two rounds. Space the orks a bit, and give your characters a suprise round (in which they will be unlikely to do any real damage). Have two orks closer than the rest, and let them get into combat a round before the rest and rip the explorers a new one (extra points if someone loses a limb and has to replace it with bionics). Now, just as the rest of the orks are beginning to get into charge range let the bomb fall that the rest of the camp is rousing and being drawn towards the fight (orks are always drawn towards combat, like moths to a flame). More orks begin to come out of the maze surrounding the mirror.

If they have armsman that is only going to escalate the situation. More fighting means more orks, and those armsman aren't going to do squat against them. The armsman (their only buffer against the horde) begin getting shredded, and it is obvious soon they will have a full fledged ork war horde breathing down their throats.

Make sure to leave an escape route, at this point your players will likely take it. Now they have to start making skill checks and their brains to try to avoid conflict. The various tribes will likely begin brawling with eachother now that they are aroused. All most of the orks know is that there is a fight, not what they are fighting, and orks love fighting eachother. If the players are smart they will use the ensuing brawl to sneak back to their shuttle.

Terrifying monsterous enemies, sticky situations, horrific wounds, players surviving by their wits and escaping by the skin of their teeth, with the promise of unimaginable treasure and glory? You have the set the mood for a truly epic Rogue Trader campaign.

As for group combat rules, I would try to minimize their use at this point. It drives how how tough even ONE ork can be. Use them for the cinematic scenes (daring escapes, using the troops to distract the orks), but at the climax they should have to deal with the orks in a very personal way.

Now when the eventually orks re-appear in your campaign the players will be very cautious and prepared, treating them as a dangerous and unplacable foe, and use every trick in the book to try and come out on top. Which is much more fun than how most games handle orcs.

Final note, though unrelated to orks: How are you going to handle the treasure ship? Is it just a big treasure chest, BAM, you PF goes up by 3?

I took it as another opportunity to reinforce the scale they were working on. You don't just find the treasure and sell it, how is that even possible? Who would you sell it too, how would you ship it, and how will you appraise it? It could take YEARS to sell that much loot. The treasure ship is much larger than theirs and stuffed tot he BRIM, there is no WAY they could fit even a fraction of it in their cargo holds. It ended up being an endevor in-and-of itself, finding archeologists and appraisers, finding people to handle shipping and protection, people to sell it, etc.

Now I don't make them do this EVERY time. Once they have built up the contacts and relationships they can just let their underlings handle it. But I like to reinforce, this isn't just a big treasure chest immediately transforms into money. It is a massive resource to be exploited, and it is up to them to figure otu how to do that.

Finally, your going to want to decide the nature of the treasure, and if there is anything special in it (the adventure gives a few ideas). I ended up having most of it be your standard "mountains of gold/jewels/artwork", but there was also a hold of 1000 cryostasis modules, each containing a genetically pure, untainted by the warp captured human colonist (the true treasure of the world), whose value (if properly exploited) would dwarf everything else in the treasure ship combined.. This has set up a whole other endevor as the players try to keep the prisoners a secret and how best to use them. They have come up with some creative ideas.

I like to sow a few seeds for future adventures in every endevor.

If the scenario is a defensive situation use two armsmen Heavy Bolter Teams to help out the players. Those are real crowd-pleasers.

Oh man, I can't wait to run this now. Thanks for all the great suggestions!

I would still beware giving them things like heavy bolter teams for free though...

When we played it the captain saved the psyker, then the orks chased the players back to their guncutter, which took off, and then blasted at the orks until they ran.

They landed on the far side from the orks and entered the telescope that way, after securing the psyker who stayed loyal to Fel and wouldn't join the player's crew.

So IF my players decide to bring a group of armsmen down with them to the planet as they head for the crystal structure, how would I handle the combat vs. the orks? My understanding is that groups can't fight individuals. Should I just break off 3 or 4 of the orks into a mass combat group in order to go head-to-head with the armsmen group?

Personally I just sort of have the NPCs off to one side. Another method is to grab the Death Watch preview adventure and use the mass combat rules from there.

As far as if Orks are a challenge it depends. If the PCs are armed with basic weapons and armor below carpace then the Orks are a huge danger. If they are in power armor with storm bolters then I advise adding a few Mega Nobs (see DH creatures book) with Ork versions of chain axes and power fists.

PS- If you don't have the DH creatures book then just give them 8 point power armor with +20 str. (Not the offical stats, but works well enough.)

Well, our session went pretty well. As I suspected, they took a group of 20 armsmen down to the surface with them. I decided to break off 4 of the orks into a mass combat group in order to fight the armsmen, but in retrospect I probably should have just said there were more orks in the fight and made their mass combat group larger w/o cutting the size of the main group.

I'm still learning, but I think I'm getting better with each session. My big screw up for the night was letting the players fire at Point Blank Range while engaged in melee with the orks. Oh well...

One of the orks all but killed the groups Missionary with a chain axe to the gut. He had to burn a fate point to survive. He was traveling across the surface on a throne/cart carried on the shoulders of four underlings, so they just scooped him back up into the throne and took him back to the ship. LOL

Needless to say, they're all freaked out by orks now...so mission accomplished.

Awesome, good job. Sounds like you handled it perfectly.

So congratulations , most DMs have a very hard time with this scale of action, and it sounds like your players were suitably awed. Good job forcing one of them to burn a fate point. I usually try to make at least one player dip into criticals for any major encounter. It makes them feel like the universe is dangerous without having to kill anyone off, and the occasional robot peg leg or eye patch adds flavor to the campaign and makes combat more memorable. ("I lost this eye to an eldar warp blade!")

One last tip, this one on massed combat: sometimes rules don't reflect reality well. At those times you need improvise. The idea that individuals are somehow magically safe from mobs is silly. One solution is to look up the Death Watch mass combat rules, but that failing you need to be comfortable enough with the system to make them up.

Here is an example from our game this week.

My players were up against 50+ troops and had 10 kroot on their side, as well as some allied NPC Rogue Traders.

I divided the enemy up into 8 groups: 2 heavy las teams, 2 heavy stubber teams, and 4 mobs. The heavy weapons teams worked as you would expect them to.

For the mobs I let them each target an area. They would roll an attack modified by their size (+55 in this case) and I would note their degrees of success. The players would roll an agility check modified by their cover (+30 in this case) and any clever things they came up with. The number of successes the enemies had over the players was how many times they got hit, at which point I would roll damage (ignoring cover since that had already been taken into account). To attack the mobs they rolled their BS and I noted their degrees of success and shrunk the mob by an appropriate size.

Battle can be just as exciting at this scale, sometimes even more exciting. Spend some time describing the withering fire, the chunk of rock that just exploded next to their head, and how the world swims and they lose their balance as a bolt explode against their pauldren. Make it feel like 'Saving Private Ryan", fast and furious against an implacable faceless horde. They don't which enemy just shot at them, and it doesn't matter, it is a battle and their goal is to stay alive.

I was thinking - and I haven't seen it mentioned - but :

What about basing group combat off the Command skill?

Opposed "Command" test - with the Mobs Weapon Skill bonus as a modifier. Sure - it'll likely be only an extra +2 or something - but it's a way to account for the "Specialists" you're bringing along.

Then - whoever wins the test - gets to do DMG based off the weapons the Mob is armed with.

The Mob gets a base set of Wounds - 10 per, 12 per, etc.

And - every 10 health lost by the Mob - a soldier dies (though this is more for the RPing aspect)

And then - when the Mob takes 25% - 50% - and 75% of its hits - it has to roll a morale check. 25% would be no minus - then at -25 for 50 - and -50 for 75?

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It's rough - but I think I'm going to try working with this model to refine it.

It's very loosely based off the tabletop.

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Cause honestly - without the Command skill you should be a battlefield commander anyway.

The PCs are all the best of their fields. They don't need leading - but grunts would I think.