HappyDaze said:

But you can always dodge everything, always. In some ways I think this diminishes the value of parry, as you don't really need it.

I may have to consider only letting people parry melee and only dodge ranged attacks. The difference in most cases will be small as everyone has some reasonable value in WS. It would also tend to buff melee some, which many find to be lacking in comparison to ranged.

Some people focus more on WS over agi, or have more access to wall of steel, or better equipment for parrying. There is less to really get with dodge besides the +10/+20 stuff.

Adeptus-B said:

In general, from what I've read on forums and rules, it seems like ranged is better out the gate at low levels (peaks faster) with lower expediture of exp/req.

Melee can be as good (maybe even better) at higher levels with a greater cost of exp/req. I don't know what to say, in situations like space hulks/jungle/caves/space ships/buildings a melee based character will shine more. On the flip side you can dodge horde ranged attacks, but not melee attacks. The consequence is melee fighting hordes will come out hurt more than ranged in almost all cases.

I have played under GMs where when we have guns capable of shooting a mile, we always seem to have everything in our face clawing our guts out.

I might have to consider giving melee based characters a bonus talent or exp to start in order to even out the seemingly high cost of exp to go that route.

bmaynard said:

Slap a chainsword on the bolter and call it a day. Or, evidently, dodge.

Parry is good early, as you can easily get a Balanced weapon for +10 as well as Hatred for another +10. If you start buying up Dodge advances, your dodge will go up. Not to mention, WS advances help you do more damage AND parry better.

KommissarK said:

KommissarK said:

KommissarK said:

True, but you can stack a lot of things up in both cases also.

Dodge (agility, dodge +20, cover/shield, works on every kind of attack)

Parry (WS, no skill buy to increase, increase with better equipment buy including craftmanship becomes almost necessary as the only extra available increase to the roll, shield or balanced, hatred talents, only works with melee)

If you have a good agility to start with, close to 50, +20 from agility buy, +20 from dodge = ~90 dodge skill

If you have good WS to start with, close to 50, +20 from WS buy, +10 from balanced (but you are typically giving up some damage for this (as opposed to ranged characters don't need to give up any damage to have a better dodge), better craftmanship weapon +10 master craftmanship (which is an extra expenditure over what someone needs compared to dodge) = ~90 parry skill

So the melee is picking for balanced or defensive quality and master craftmanship, spending signature wargear on it, where the dodge is spending exp for the dodge +20.

So fairly equal except the difference in that dodge works on ranged and melee both.

Ah, I figured out where that double/triple quote thing comes from, was wondering.

The melee character could just buy dodge. This is somewhat anticlimactic if you ask me.

Dodge is for melee and ranged

WS is for parry and attack

Melee can get up to 4 attacks on an enemy, they can parry/dodge 2 or 3 max usually, but on average a melee will only hit with about 3

Multiple melee can usually gang up on opponents for bonuses to hit

Ranged with full-auto and situational bonuses upto +60, when compared to opponents dodge, are likely to hit with some shots

So, melee can burn up an opponents dodge/parry reactions faster, but ranged full-auto has a better chance to hit through the dodge

Melee can do more damage average per hit, ranged can get more hits

Just tried to summarize balance between the 2, many pluses and minuses for both besides the obvious range of melee vs ranged weapons.

borithan said:

No one considers 'Rogue Trader'-era 40K- when Space Marines wore camoflage-painted armor and smoked cigars- to be relevent to the 40K universe of the last 20 years...

Adeptus-B said:

False, because I do.

Alex

Suijin said:

How many reflexive actions do you get?

darkrose50 said:

Buying up Agility is more expensive than buying up Weapon Skill for Librarians, Apothecaries, and Techmarines. It's with the Librarians that it really gets more expensive.

There is an Imbalance but I think it flips around by the time characters are super-experienced. Once the assault guy has lightning attack, preternatural agility and a jump pack then he has a massive charge range and power weapons that out-peform a bolter in damage and pen. Let's not forget the feat of strength at high ranks meaning that a veteran marine with strength 60 can be adding +30 damage to his power fist before any other bonuses.

That said at the beginning level the bolter is king. I like that the basic bolter rocks but the Righteous Fury and full-auto rules are the key to this imbalance IMO. I ran an intro for one of my players where he dealt 122 points of damage with a single hellfire bolt shell. With the auto-confirm ability of the deathwatch and rolling 3d10 with a fury on a 9 or 10 the odds of a fury are around 50:50. He generated 6 righteous furies in a row.

With a heavy bolter it is worse - it is not tough to get a full 10 round burst on a massive foe like a carnifex or hive tyrant. In that situation you will be rolling a total of 30d10 when resolving damage and triggering a fury on 9s or 10s with hellfires. A single fury would be a singular disappointment with those odds.

I would prefer to move to a way of dealing with full-auto that did not track each bullet separately but gave the burst a damage line - this then could be applied to several targets rather than putting all ten bullets on some poor unfortunate. Traveller has great full auto rules but i haven't got a satisfactory conversion just yet.

I have also moved to a modified runequest 2 critical hit system to replace Righteous fury.

• Righteous Fury: On any attack if the attack roll is 1/10th or less of the modified hit chance (rounded up) then a Righteous Fury occurs eg if WS is 55 and charging for +10 a crit would result from a roll of 01-07 on the d100 . For attacks that do not require an attack roll (flamers, explosives etc.) designate one damage die as the righteous fury die. If this dies shows a ten then a righteous fury occurs. In either case the player can one from the following options:

o Furious Overkill: The attack deals maximum damage to the target (as if all damage dice showed tens) plus an additional d10 points of damage. If this d10 roll is a 10 reroll and add as per Dark Heresy rules. For multi-hit attacks (e.g. full auto) this benefit applies to the first round in the burst. The target may react as normal. If the targets armour/fields or toughness bonus cancel out the damage completely the target still takes one wound.

o Furious Accuracy: The defender incurs a -20% penalty to any reaction roll to defend against the attack. The attacker may choose the location struck.

o Furious Critical: If the attack causes any damage the attacker may convert up to d5 of those damage points to critical damage on that location. Note that this critical damage may be inflicted even when the defender has wounds remaining.

Still playtesting this but it has smoothed things out a lot and gives the players some interesting choices with their crits. Has anyone tried any other fixes?

I think your RF re-implementation is way overkill, but one thing you need to adjust is that Hellfire shells in a heavy bolter are S/-/-, and not capable of full auto.

I think a more sensible nerfing of RF is the DH version. RF only applies to the single die that came up a 10, rather than giving a whole additional damage roll. This does mean you can get RF multiple times on one damage roll, but each only gives 1d10 extra.

Good point about the hellfires but the 122 point bolter round was completely legit and stretches credulity. Maybe it's just my old school leanings but I feel that crits should be rare and awesome but not the only way to win. Having a critical hit system that adds damage but only triggers when you have already rolled max damage seems redundant.

RF is the single biggest random factor in the 40k games and I have found it makes encounters very hard to design, balance and scale. This was particularly true with autoguns in DH and in RT was exacerbated by throwing righteous fury open to all NPCs.

Incidentally I noticed in 'Touched by the fates' in DW that it mentions that the RF rules apply to the npc but can't find anywhere where it says that RF rules don't apply to regular npcs. Did I miss something? Is this just a copy/paste legacy issue from DH.

If RF does apply to npcs then one chaos marine with a bolter could well be a permanent fate point sink on a pretty regular basis.

The tactical marine, when judged in isolation against a target at range over open ground, will always surpass the assault marine.

This isn't balanced and, to my mind, shouldn't be - they're 100m away, you've got a sword, he's got a freakin' grenade machine gun.

The assault marine excells in close quarters - have something appear at close quarters (lictors?) out of the floor or ceiling and suddenly the guy with the sword becomes much better off. If your players are just standing there autofiring into stuff and laughing, change the situation so they can't.

Chasing down fleeing opponents, recon from the rooftops, etc, etc.

Magnus Grendel said:

100m is nothing to an assault marine with a jump pack. Plus they are issued ranged weapons also. There is also typically cover of some kind involved.

A big part of the fun of the 40K universe are the anacronistic Medieval elements like swords in an otherwise futurstic environment, and their effectiveness in the hands of elite troops in general (and Blood Angles in particular) is an integral part of the setting. So, if chainswords are nearly useless compared to bolters, I don't think that's a 'minor' flaw, or a necessary change in favor of (gawd forbid) 'realism'!

When it became apparent that the Dark Heresy rules made autoguns on full auto better sniper rifles than actual sniper rifles, FFG came out with an errata that made sniper rifles viable again. Do you think we will see something similar with chainswords in Deathwatch ?

Imagine a Star Wars rpg where, after rolling up a Jedi character and crunching the numbers on the available weapons, the Jedi player decided to dump his lightsaber in favor of a blaster, because the lightsaber was too statistically inferior...

Adeptus-B said:

I don't think they necessarily are. Chainswords are better at finishing off enemies, especially those with True Grit, aka Chaos Renegades. (Especially when used with a Dual Strike.) Damage can be increased by increasing Strength. If you can increase the bonus by 1, you'll end up doing 3 points of damage more when using Feat Of Strength Solo Ability.

If you're unsure, give melee weapons 2 additional damage points and be done with it. ;-)

Alex

Suijin said:

You forgot about Hatred... Which would add another +10 WS vs "type".

KellionBane said:

True, but it is stuational. You can also buy talented (dodge) for +10, get something like the stealth suit for vindicare assassins to get +10 to dodge, get unnatural agility, or use cover.

Also to point out a benefit of parry is that the to-hit also goes up at the same time.

I still think melee takes more exp to advance, but other than that it seems to be balanced depending on the GM, whether the situational aspects balance the diferences, like whether enemies typically get in the face of the ranged characters.

Melee got something to speak for them.

Big opponents are easier to hit as they get penalties from their size. You get bonusses for outnumbering them. When you fight a horde you get a bonus to hit as well. When you get an exceptional weapon you get a +5% ws, master wargerweapons give you 10% more. For parying purposes there is the balanced option. Level 3 marines routinely get a +60 to hit either with ranged or melee attack (including the parry!). Plus.......

There is safety being in a melee combat as no nasties shoot at you with wicked weaponry. When they are armed with bolters or autoguns you don't want to be the one standing outside melee.

Sister Callidia said:

Not directed at you but... why make it all so difficult? You GM Deathwatch, you have a set of players and if one of the players has bad stats or his specialty/chapter is seriously underpowered in the first 2 or 3 scenarios, consider creating other combat situations or give the underpowered player a free talent of your choosing. End of story.

I don't believe in creating rules that cover all kinds of situations (or balancing them). Just as I don't believe in a fairer society by creating ever more laws. I'd prefer the training of justices so that they can reach more informed and balanced and fair decisions by themselves instead.

Alex

Sister Callidia said:

Technically size modifiers only apply to ranged combat not melee. The size description says "Size is an important factor when shooting ranged weapons", and also the to-hit penalty/bonus chart specifically mentions the +10 bonus as "shooting a Hulking target".

Also the modifier to-hit a horde specifically says to treat it like an individual and also only refers to it as a size modifier (which should mean RAW the size modifier only applies to ranged combat also for hordes).

You do get bonuses for outnumbering an opponent in melee, you also get a ton of different bonuses to ranged combat, point blank, size, red dot sight, etc.

For the exceptional and master weapons you have to spend exp for the signature wargear or spend requisition to get them. Meanwhile the ranged combat guy can spend either the exp or requisition to increase his to-hit or damage also. You aren't really coming out ahead of ranged that way.

If you go balanced weapons then you are giving up damage from having a powerfist, etc. You can get a shield though, but so can a ranged person actually.

You can't dodge or parry a horde in melee, but you can dodge a horde at range.

You do have some safety from ranged in melee I admit, and you also don't run out of ammo. Two big benefits.