Since I'd rather not bloat the FAQ thread any further, let's just continue the debate here:

Radomo:
But, if that means a starting group will get 60ish Requisition, that means that the group gets significantly less kit, beyond their standard stuff and makes it so you need a REALLY extensive mission to get any of the good stuff. Hell, a lascannon requires about 4 objectives on it's own just to pay for its cost, and then the group gets nearly nothing else. On a starting adventure, each marine would be lucky to get a magazine or two of kraken rounds. Not to mention there seems to be no adjustment for group size (100 Requisition for a group of 4 vs a group 6).

Cifer:
Seeing the book considers 200 requisition a large amount (enough for a protracted campaign for defending a planet), I'd say it's relatively clear every marine gets his own points. Those can then be pooled.

Otherwise, there'd be pretty much no way the players could ever field more than one terminator.

tkis:
> Rule Question:
> Hello i have to questions regarding Deathwatch rules:
>
> 1. Is requisition calculated via table 9-4 (p.273) divided by the
> number of team members, or is this the value assigned to each team
> member ?

Table 9-4 is the total for the entire group, not per individual.

Ross Watson
Senior RPG Developer
Fantasy Flight Games

Radomo:
Not having my book on me, is 9-4 the table that gives each Primary Objective as +20 Req, etc? If so, I agree with Cifer. It's impossible to field an entire squad of Terminators, or really much of anything besides standard kit. Plus, group size HAS to have some bearing on the requisition, or you just create player conflicts as they fight over who gets to pick what. "We'll give you 3 mags of Hellfire rounds for stopping this tyranid invasion. No, not each. Total."

Yep, 9-4 is the table you refer to.
I've done some calculating... it really depends on how you define missions. After statting out Final Sanction, it appears the marines had 100 requisition points available (I considered no objective as Veteran and only the Broodlord and the genestealers as Skilled) and used about 30 (for the power fist), possibly a few more depending on how many magazines of kraken bolts the Tacticals loaded up beyond their free one. So on the low end, it definitely works.
On the high end, it probably depends on how you split up objectives. What definitely doesn't work is the classic Spacehulk "get in - kill 'stealers - blow up MacGuffin - get out" mission in terminator armour, as single objectives never rack up enough points. Such a mission would work only if you made it a long term one, with lots and lots of objectives and the players only suiting up for the final combats (let's face it: Terminator armour isn't very good on open terrain when the enemy has time to walk away and come back with a few krak missiles) - like Oblivion's Edge, though Terminator Armour probably wouldn't do much good in a Hive Ship.

Regarding the group size influencing requisition points, I disagree. A mission doesn't become harder by having more people participate, thus you wouldn't magically get outfitted better. It might require mature players, but hopefully you can reach a compromise that people select their stuff together depending on what will probably be needed on a mission - when you're going tank-busting, getting a powerfist for the Assault and a Lascannon for the Devastator would probably be more important than getting the Tactical his twentythird clip of special ammo.

Regardless of the developer's reply, the requisition for table 9-4 was clearly intended to be per member. This is demonstrated explicitly in the example text on page 274, which directly relates to table 9-4 and the previous section on setting requisition on 273:

DW, Page 274
A GM creates a mission with one Skilled Primary Objective, One Veteran Secondary Objective, and two Novice Tertiary Objectives. Adding all of these together gives a total of 62 requisition for each Battle Brother.

(emphasis added)

As sad as it is, it's generally best to ignore examples. It seems they weren't updated too frequently when rules were changed during development.

However, it at least indicates there is a certain doubt. Let's see what's said in the Errata.

Cifer said:

I essentially would never try to argue based on example text or anything other than rules, but that example spells out something that apparently isn't stated explicitly enough in the section it covers and jives nicely with both common sense and the rest of the book, where requisition is always treated as being issued on a per-battle-brother basis (who can then choose to pool it). I mean even in the actual text on 273 you have "The final part of creating the mission is to choose its Requisition total . This is the amount of resources that each Battle-Brother has to draw weapons, armour, and equipment from the Chapter armouries for use in the field." When you have an example that meshes perfectly with everything written in its section and how requisition is handled in the Armoury chapter, apparent levels of requisition in the sample adventures, etc. I don't really see why anybody would see the need to totally disregard it because the phrasing in the rules text is maybe a little bit vague. There's no contradiction- there's rules text and a correctly worded example that explicitly lays out how those rules should be applied in simple English.

Maybe it's true the example was not updated when they changed the way requisition works during development, but it might also be true the ammount of points was not update accounting a group.

I do see the ammount of requistion points to be on the low side BUT I don't think Terminator are even supposed to be a player choice. If you need to run a Space Hulk scenarion, their Captain can simply issue them to the group outside the standard requisition.

This question was answered by Ross Watson, Lead Developer of Deathwatch. Posted in the Errata / FAQ thread.

His answer was, that the Requisition Points generated from table 9-4 is for the whole team - not each team member. The example that follows on saying 62 Requisition Points per Battle-Brother is an error, as SO many examples in this book are.

So are some tables and wording around the book.. Are we sure the table was infact updated to account for the change from "per member" (as seen in the examples) to "per group" ?

Lucius Valerius said:

Lucius Valerius said:

Then they also forgot to change the text in the requisition section to state/imply that was the case. Since we don't have access to whatever resource the developer was referring to when he asserted table 9-4 applied to the group as a whole and the actual text on pages 273 and 274 contradicts this, as do the logical implications of such a conclusion. The only way to conclude differently is to entirely base your conclusion on an ambiguous reading of a text box containing example/clarification tex t which is somehow held to be categorically superior to the example text on the next page and the actual text under the "Setting Requisition" heading itself. That's crazy. And the requisition points aren't "on the low side"- they're absurdly low to the point where a team of the supposedly best-equipped Space Marines in the galaxy are frequently going to eat up nearly 50% of their mission budget picking up a single melta-bomb or Targeter or pair of Auspexes.

Basically, aside from what Mr. Watson said, which would be pretty easy to chalk up to an innocent error, is there any actual reason to think it doesn't work on a per-individual basis?

LGD said:

Well, no.

Is there any actual reason to think that book is really the Deathwatch Core Rulebook at all?

sayles78 said:

Snarky, but seriously- I know it was the lead developer and obviously that carries some weight. However, the history of developers giving clearly incorrect off-the-cuff answers is about as long and storied as the history of example text being hideously at odds with the actual rules text.

Lucius Valerius said:

Very true. That could be the case and the table wasn't updated. Possible, but unlikely. Either way - whatever was meant to be on that table, is obviously for the group, not per individual.

It went from every kill-team member having what seemed like way too much requisition to them having bell all!

sayles78 said:

But as mentioned a few times already the "per group" solution leave the party tremendously underequipped for what they are supposed to be doing.

Three Comments:

1) Your game do it which ever way your group wants to play.

2) The values given are guidelines assign whatever values you think are appropriate to the mission

3) I Disagree a group would be underequipped with 50 points per team. Considering the standard issue each marine gets on top of the requisition pool, they pretty much start out with everything they need. The requisition pool gives them acess to additional specialty equipment / ammo.

Gotta agree with Darq here.

The stuff you "buy" with requisition are the extra shenanigans you wanna have.

If a mission is designed to be carried out in terminator armours (don´t forget to obtain your Crux Terminatus first ) then these armours will be issued as part of the mission specific wargear. If your KT needs to blow up some structure as an objective, you will be given explosives, you don´t need to requisition them. You get all the necessary stuff for free, requisition is used to further "pimp" up your squad.

That´s at least how I understood it.

moepp said:

Really ? Let's see..

Auspex 12 RP

Cartograph 3 RP (don't think PA have gps build in)

Dataslade 5 RP

Screamers (can be very useful) 5 RP

Vox Caster 10 RP

35 points gone without even looking at weapons and stuff. This are stuff that you need unless of course you play FPS style

I think the problem is the table has no mechanic for how to increase that pool as the size of the group increases.

I'm, probably just going to come up with a baseline requisition, and increase or decrease it as I see the difficulty of the mission increasing or decreasing

Lucius Valerius said:

Although I´d have disagreed, since you already start out with "weapons and stuff" and can have signature wargear and since I´m also quite the minimalist, I was wrong.

It is explained on page 138 in the rules text regarding regarding Requisition, a little bit hidden in a wall of text:

........A Watch Captain, Inquisitor or similar authority determines the level of resources necessary for a given Mission. The judgement is represented by the Mission´s Requisition rating. Each Battle-Brother on the Mission then has a number of Requisition Points equal to that rating with which to arm himself.......

KommissarK said:

Perhaps the GM should increase the number of objectives as the number of PCs goes up. It stands to reason that, if the Deathwatch is committing more manpower and resources, then it's probably for a bigger job.

I think it should go something like this . . .

A party of one (1) to five (5) characters get to divvy up a pool of requisition points equal to the base-requisition times five (x5). Each character over five (5) adds half (1/2) the base.

62-point mission example: One (1) to five (5) characters equates to 310-requisition to divvy up (62*5). Each character over five adds half 31-requisition to divvy up (62*0.5).

. . . or this . . .

Dividing up 62-requisition amount a group of six (6) would suck if "standard-gear" was 35-requisition. Perhaps 35-requisition per character plus an amount equal to the base mission to divy up would work.

. . . or this . . .

Perhaps each character adds a number of requisition equal to his or her renown to a mission.

. . . I think I really like the last one.

Going per group means that almost none of the fun toys will see play. And it just builds needless conflict. You give out 70 points for a mission. The assault marine wants a power fist and melta bomb. The tac marine wants a master bolter w/ targetter. and a backup chainsword w/ dipole. The Devastator wants a suspensor and motion predictor. The techmarine wants to get a bionic arm. etc. And we haven't even added any specialty ammo.

Now you have to bargain, and someone is going to feel like they got the short end. Since every other place states it's per Brother, and the one table is somewhat ambiguous, I plan to ignore Ross's comment.

And if every weapon or armor upgrade is per GM fiat or signature wargear talent, then what's the point of having the requisition model at all? Just have the GM assign everything and be done with it. If the Dev is never going to be able to choose to take a lascannon or the tac will never choose Terminator armor, they don't need requisition amounts.

HappyDaze said:

The thing is, increasing objectives should also mean the GM prepares more material. This can be hard/annoying, especially if someone jumps in at the last minute. The cool thing about requisition though, is that they don't get to keep what they use it for. Therefore so what if you give them too much / too little ? It is far easier to scale the mission mid-game, than to come up with some complicated method of making sure they get the exact amount of requisition. I would say just err on the side of giving them too much, and be done with it. That way you don't feel so bad if you turn the tables on em.

I think part of the problem is that the rulebook goes to such great lengths to indicate that a team member, may in fact, give his spare requisition to another member, that the actual mechanic on how to determine overall mission requisition is lost.

I am probably going to house rule it: Team requisition is multiplied by the team renown level (ranging from 1 Initiated to 5 Hero ) You can even calculate it more precisely by creating a requisition pool as per rules written, equally diving it between characters and then letting each character multiply personal requisition by personal renown level.

In addition i as GM will sometimes provide my players with some critical equipment for the mission for free, especially if it goes beyond their requisition limits. Things like dataslates, special ammo, secondary weapons and so on, which are nice to have , they will have to pay for. I always see it as a cooperative process between players and GM, sometimes they need a helpful nudge, sometimes they are on their own to figure out what would be most suitable and absolutely required. Gearing up for a mission is a very nice part of the game, and offers good roleplaying opportunities. One does not need to keep it purely mechanistic, as one misses out on a lot of fun.

moepp said:

Yes, that is exactly how it is supposed to work. Bear in mind also that once a Battle-Brother has req'd the additional items they expect to need, any unspent requisition can then be pooled for more expensive wargear picks that might otherwise have not been available.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The more I think about it, the happier I am with the idea of less Req Points.

That makes the Signature Wargear Talents seem much more attractive, and, much more useful. If you want specialised gear, that's the way to obtain it.

The req points per mission should be used for:

Extra Special Issue Ammo Clip (1 clip - not 5!)

Pooling together for a heavy weapon you think may be useful.

Obtaining a chainsword (not Powerfist) for your tac marine.

A flamer for the assault marine.

1 meltagun (not one each!) for some extra close range punch vs armour.

With lots of req points per marine, every tactical marine will end up running around with Powerfists and Thunderhammers and the like, which, if you've ever read any of the books, does not feel right. Every class of character starts out with awesome wargear already. At least this way a Tactical Marine will value and stick with his standard issue bolter a lot more, instead of getting that power sword and storm bolter combo as soon as he hits respected, swapping for a MC Storm Bolter and Powerfist at Distinguished etc.

I like the idea of a team pool; promoting teamwork which is what this game seems heavy on. I am however, like several people here of the opinion it's quite low. I'm considering using a hybrid of the two for my first game. Using this now infamous table 9-4, each battle brother will get requisition equal to the primary objectives, then all the secondary & tertiary objectives are combined into a single squad requisition that the players can discuss on how best to use. Oh and if an individual requisition isn't used it can be pooled into the team just like the box talks about on p273.