I ran a Dark Heresy campaign, two in fact, that fell apart after a few sessions when my players realised that with the rules as they're written in the book they failed at everything. Veteran Guardsman who couldn't hit a barn door while standing in the doorway and other guys who were useless at what they did until reaching a theoretical level of competence. I say theoretical because they never got there. Why? Well, they died. A lot. Eventually I figured out ways of bypassing the rules but was then left with the question of what was the point of buying the book if I was forced to ignore the rules.

To be clear, these were veteran roleplayers and I myself no noob GM and yet...

So, Deathwatch. I thought, well they'll have sorted out any rules issues by now and I bought it as soon as it came out in my local store, Leisure Games in Finchley for any other local boys.

The same problems remain, a Space Marine with a maximum starting ballistic skill of 50?!

What. The. Hell?!

What part of genetically engineered superhuman was unclear. What part of training for 10 years followed by a couple of hundred years experience confused them? These aren't mediocre grunts who spray and pray...okay they probably pray to their guns but that's hardly the point now is it. I suspect that the rules would state that I give them +20's to everything because they're easy tests to pass for a Space Marine, that's cool but then what are the point of the stats in the first place. They do not reflect the abilities of the character they represent. For me, the most truly reflective stat line for a space marine was in Inquisitor. This was a guy who could kill a human by throwing a grenade at him . With the 'pin' still in place.

Before anyone comes up with the whole "but if they're so awesome they'll always win" argument. Nonsense, it is the job of any competent GM to provide a suitably challenging encounter for a group of post-human super soldiers carrying rapid firing-armour piercing-rocket launchers (boltguns in effect). Think up the sort of thing that would annihilate a human group of hardcore Inquisition agents and stand back as your marines figure out how to use they superhuman physique and weapons to sort it out.

My solution at the moment is, during character creation, change the stat equation by making it 2D10+50. I think this will create a stat line more akin to a Space Marine. It will also completely unbalance the game system.

I reckon I've missed something fundamental here in the rules (which, by the by, strike me as supremely cumbersome) so could any of you guys clear this up for me? What am I missing?

A lot of the time you're going to be getting bonuses for firing weapons in burst fire or full auto modes, taking time to aim, charging and so on. Actions like this grant +10 or more to hit so you'll actually fail a lot less often than it first appears. Also, characters in Deathwatch are a lot more robust than those in Dark Heresy so they shouldn't be dying at every turn.

Let's go through this one by one:

Combat: BS 50 is about enough. It means that you'll hit a target aware of you on a medium range of your weapon (for a boltgun, that's 200 metres) without taking time to aim one out of two times. Now let's tweak that a little and get ourselves a red dot laser pointer, take six seconds to aim our shot and be a Tactical Marine with Bolter Mastery. Now we're hitting 9 times out of ten. That enough for you or would you like to actually spend a few XP to raise your BS?

Non-combat Difficulties: The book doesn't spell that out clearly and often breaks with its own idea, but a +0 check isn't called Challenging for nothing. More mundane tasks should often receive a +10 or +20 bonus. A propos bonus: The system often rewards being a little clever. You, Tech Adept Gearius, want to repair a MacGuffin, a Challenging (+0) task. You have a 40 Int and a +10 on Tech-use, so your base chance is 50%. Doesn't sound good? Right. Of course, being a techpriest, you're bright enough to have brought along your combi-tool for a +10. You've recently taught your Scum buddy a little lay tech-knowledge so he can assist you (+10). And you happen to have researched the MacGuffin in question and brought along its blueprints on your dataslate for another +10. Do 80% sound better?

And finally, for the dying part... DH and its sister games reward intelligence in and out of combat. Slugging it out will likely kill you when you're up against automatic weapons. Luring your enemies into ambushes, focusing fire, making use of cover or outright bypassing as many of them as you can to move towards your mission target... won't.

Phil73805 said:

The SMs advantage is Deathwatch isn't so much in having uber-WS or -BS to begin with. It's in the Damage they can absorb and dish out.

That said, WS and BS are lower in 40K Roleplaying than in other systems. This means you have to make use of combat actions to gain multipliers. About every standard melee attack will be aimed (+10). When shooting, you often get +10 for Short Range and +10 for a Half Action Aim. If you instead go Full-Auto that turns into +20. And we don't have Weapon Upgrades figured in yet. If you give 2D10+50, you'll frequently end up with values of 90+.

While not unrealistic given Marines awesomeness, it would take a bit the thrill out of the game. I'm okay with Marines strength lying in dishing out and absorbing damage.

As for hitting a a barn door, it's again down to modifiers: Your barn door has been a Hulking Target (+10), given that it doesn't move at all it can be counted as unaware target (+30) which gets fired at at point-blank range (+30). Minimum BS in DH is 22, for a total of 92. Your players must be some unlucky dice-rollers. ;-)

Seriously, the trick in 40K Roleplay is gaining modifiers. In Ranged Combat that's easier than in close combat, I've found. Also for skill test, the GM should give bonuses where in other systems he would assign a flat +0 modifier to a test. One example would me Medicae... with the right (standard!) equipment you'll have +20 to your medicae test which should make it about 50% for a starting DH char. Sounds reasonable.

Alex

Not a lot to add, other than in DH, and Im guessing DW (as I wont get my book till next week), the first thing I ever did in a fire fight was run for cover. Standing out in the open was death. Behind a rock, with supressing fire, using "Tactical Advance" from cover to cover etc etc was how to survive.

Cheers,

Tam

I realised that with bonuses their chances of hitting stuff would be better, my question was more along the lines of, what's the point of their stat lines, they don't seem to represent the character's abilities?

The bonus system seems to miss the point from where I stand. It seems to say, well, your Marine type chappy is actually quite mediocre and will, generally speaking, miss half the things he shoots at. Harver (that's however in posh speak), since the GM reckons that the Marine is quite handy at the killing lark he gives him a +20/30 bonus to hit...fair enough but that makes the statline a rather academic affair that, I say again, doesn't represent the character very well. It makes more sense to me to give a marine a BS of around 80ish and then give negative modifiers to represent a particularly difficult shot. Do you see what I mean?

In addition, six seconds is a hell of a long time in combat. Particularly at the sort of speed that a genestealer, for example, moves at. A regular human would take six seconds to aim a weapon, a Space Marine with his centuries of experience, superhuman senses & uberarmour should be aiming in the time it takes one of his hearts to beat.

Katie's point that Space Marines are as 'ard as a coffin nail gives me hope that my players may even live to see another mission

Even if I'm able to wrap my head around this +/- bonus system, the cumbersome nature of the rules system remains a challenge. Still this is the only Space Marine RPG out there so perhaps I must simply get used to it and start handing out the bolter ammo.

ak-73 said:

Alex, I think you've summed it up best for me. I think my response to the rules is a basic dislike of the system. It seems counter-intuitive. I think a few games should sort that out and the fact that the PC's are Space Marines means there will be a few games to play

As for running into cover, it was always my understanding that Space Marines were shock troops who's armour was meant to be moving cover to facilitate the 'shock' part. Of course they're not going to expose themselves to heavy fire and will therefore use cover to an extent but I think the idea of them behaving like brand new Inquisition acolytes is a little silly.

My DH players always ran for cover and then died in it

As for running into cover, it was always my understanding that Space Marines were shock troops who's armour was meant to be moving cover to facilitate the 'shock' part. Of course they're not going to expose themselves to heavy fire and will therefore use cover to an extent but I think the idea of them behaving like brand new Inquisition acolytes is a little silly.

Oh, Marines can stand up to quite a bit of fire - most small arms up to an autogun have no chance of actually inflicting damage to wounds, barring critical hit/horde rules.

My DH players always ran for cover and then died in it

What did they fight against?

Tamrix said:

speaking as a soldier this is always sensible the less of you the enemy has to shoot at the better

Its amazing how quickly bonuses stack up in this game. A tactical marine with the right squad powers and equipment shooting at an average sized horde can easily be rolling on an effective BS of 90+. It becomes more a matter of how many degrees of success rather than do I hit.

Trust me, the statline works as it is.

My own RT character is an Arch-Militant. Until our last session my BS was 45 and it is pretty rare for me to miss a target all together. I usually can score one or two hits each time I use a semi-automatic burst from my hellgun. Modifiers for close range, Semi-auto burst, and Weapon Master (Las) really bump up the chance to hit. If anything I have thought that the player-characters hit so often as to take away a little of the desperation in some situations.

Phil73805 said:

Phil73805 said:

So I'll agree with you on the rules- the system for 40k is not my favorite one by far. Not because of percentages (theoretically all diced based systems are probability based), but because when you move from standard opposed rolls and basic combat actions you spend half an hour adding up bonuses, subtracting penalties, and calcuating the number of hits you do. It's not 'fixable' for the most part with houserules as the whole system is based around +s and -s, so every time you fix one thing it breaks another.

That being said, the stats seem to just work for me and my group. It is a bit tricky to run for if you're not used to it as enemies can get out of control quickly and you end up with total party kills, but if you're careful and are willing to pull punches when something starts to go off the rails, it's not too much trouble.

And as for cover- what are they hiding behind, wooden doors? And what on earth are they being shot with?

Sorry for the wierd quotations...I'm going to go ahead and blame the software

Phil73805 said:

It sounds like you and your "Veteran roleplayers" aren't or can't use modifiers or are even reading the descriptions of aim(full and half action) semi and full auto fire, point blank and several other shooting modifiers. Now I know d% isn't for everyone but this is an all too common conplaint I see when it could all be solved by having a look at the modifiers rules.

Charmander said:

Turbo Lasers from a Warhound Titan.

Kidding aside I'm also a bit shocked by the complaint... most fight I've seen in the W40K rpgs are short range affair, urban fights and such... so you basically ALWAYS have +10 due to short range and quite often +30 due to point blank.

Add +10 from Burst or +20 from Full Auto or +10 from a half action aim... oh, and get a Red-Dot Laser or that motion predictor thing that add +10% when you full-auto/burst...

So in short, a Character with 35 BS (Good DH score) who uses a Bolter at 50meter with one fairly common weapon upgrade is looking at 75% firing rate.

Make this character a Marine with 50 BS and he's at 90%. If he's a Tactical Marine in solo mode, he's actually at 100%.

And that's quite feasible at rank 1 (You can in fact, have 55BS at rank 1 if you take an Ultramarine or a Dark Angel).... as someone else said, you only really need xp to boost your BS to ensure you still get crazy degree of success if you decide to head shot someone at critical range with both hands tied behind your back while hanging out of a Land Speeder with one feet in the middle of a snow storm...

Just to give an example, intro part of my adventure tonight:

1st Encounter: single Multitude 30 horde of Gargoyles (Termagaunts with Flyer trait). Not a single damage to the marines, granted they were low in the initiative order, but still. Full-auto bursts kill stuff really dead.

2nd Encounter: Multitude 40 Gargoyle horde and 3x Shrikes (winged Warriors). Very little damage to the kill-team.

3rd Encounter: 6 Genestealers. Which got surprise on the 2 marines who were scouting ahead. Actually did a lot of damage against the kill-team, but not a single critical against them.

The players rarely miss with all the bonuses as mentioned. They are walking power-houses for sure.

Hell I even had a devastator get jumped by a 'stealer and grapple it to the ground. He ALMOST killed it with his astartes combat knife before he got some help.

Sounds like some people don't know how to play the game and are giving a knee jerk reaction to what they don't understand.

That's not what 'help please' in the thread title suggests to me, but whatever floats your boat.

Alrighty then people, I think I've got the idea. I was getting it rather wrong. I still find the system a little cumbersome and counter intuitive but I reckon with some practise I'll get well into it.

Wodan, like Cifer said, I was looking for an insight into the game mechanic to overcome my confusion. I've succeeded.

Thanks all for taking the time out to clear things up for me. Appreciated.

Phil73805 said:

It is counter-intuitive. It is set-up so that the values roughly correspond to the tabletop values (x10). Once you accept the logic behind that, you can get on with the flow.

Alex

Also just to put it in real world perspective for you, the average trooper on the ground fires something thousands of rounds before he hits someone in places like afghanistan and iraq, these are professional soldiers with a lot of skill and determination (except for the reservists, but lets not go there) , cut that in half or even into quarters and you will have some pretty elite guys running around.

A guardsman recruit (your starting character isn't a veteran when he's hauled into the inquisition) probably can't hit a barn door while standing in it.

I do agree an important part of the game is figuring out bonuses and penalties.
after doing this for a bit it gets quite alot easier to remember the bits, if you think this system is cumbersom try 2nd edition exalted and god help you if try play using there mass combat rules.

now generally starting DH characters are somewhat incompetent at what they do unless your players are good at figuring out every tiny advantage they can possibly get (via both rules abuse and decent roleplay + planning) but fortunatly the system makes it pretty easy to choose enemies that are challenging without being suicidally difficult, if your just going through the book seeing a monster that looks cool and using it, you likely going to end up with some dead characters pretty quickly.

now in DW starting characters are pretty much nails but I would only suggest the game to people with a decent amount of experience using the system, otherwise you'll likely get bogged down by the rules, combat will slow to a crawl and half the book is likely to go flying out the window just to speed things up a notch.
Space marines get bonuses all over the place, there special organs give even more bonuses and the occasional reroll all over the place, there are new uses for skills that should be memorised (Assault marines should use war cry derived from the intimidate skill for example) and lastly characters get to choose advances from a general list, chapter list, deathwatch list and speciality list.
itll take a couple of gaming sessions before things start hitting there stride.

Another way Ive seen some groups do it in the 40K RPGs is to rewrite how weapon talents work. In general, your BS/WS is the raw score you use for any combat attack, whether proficient in the weapon or not and if you have the proper weapon training you get +10.

Another method I worked with was to make Weapon Training Talents into Weapon Training skills, essentially you use half your WS/BS (not at -20) while using untrained weapons and then you can purchase the weapon training skill to use at full WS/BS, get it a second time for +10 and a third time for +20, as long as you never purchase said Weapon training multiple times at the same rank. You could even then get Talented (Weapon Training Skill) for another +10 modifier (+30 total). I highly recommend that these bonuses get narrower as you go on. For example, to Get Pistol Weapon Training (Bolt) at +10 you must first have Pistol Weapon Training (Universal) and you cannot get Pistol Weapon Training (Universal) at +10 only the sub group. While Pistol Weapon Training (Specific Model of Bolt Pistol) could be at +20.

Neodreamweaver said:

I'd like to stress this: Deathwatch is no beginner's game . Starting Marines start out with many Talents, modifiers, equipment, options. My impression is: this can become quickly overwhelming even for more experienced gamers.

Alex

Phil73805 said:

A big mistake people make with DH, even veteran RPG'rs is treating it like other games. DH IS an angry dangerous nasty place. Your group needs to AVOID getting killed and AVOID getting shot at because lets face it, getting shot is bad not good. DH is an investigation game, not a combat game.

Now there are mechanisms to help them like fate points. With fate points its impossible to get killed (You can burn one to avoid it) So they are evidently getting killed a LOT or not using fate points.

What about Dodge / Parry - are they using those? They get that EVERY combat round.