Is it just me or are the adversaries presented in the DW core book severely underpowered?

I've been running a game which includes many Tyranids and any variety of gaunt is just plain worthless as a threat. My players don't even fear them in large numbers. In my experiences from the main 40k game is that gaunts in large numbers = death. Its very true that a handful of them would be a cakewalk. But even the Tyranid warrior isnt much to fret about.

I am rather new to this rule set but its not like its hard to run.

so if maybe someone could tell me the basics of combat (dont tell me to read it because I've read and re-read.) Does penetration go through toughness bonus? Does the space marines unnatural toughness bonus work to reduce the dmg or is it just his base TB? Does the marine get to apply his unnatural SB to dmg or just base?

Thank you

rodeoclownjihad said:

It's not you, even bad guys that are supposed to be tougher have little bit better stats but that's nothing compared to all of the special abilities SM's can stack. Combine that with even basic SM weapons doing a crap load of damage and none of the bad guys doing as much damage.

rodeoclownjihad said:

Pen doesn't go through toughness.

Unnatural toughness bonus counts any time you work something out using the TB including all damage reduction.

Unnatural strength bonus counts any time you work something out using the SB including damage. Add the SB for powerarmour afterwards though.

rodeoclownjihad said:

rodeoclownjihad said:

No, they aren't. And this is a misleading topic, because your complaints aren't really about DW adversaries as a whole but about Gaunts specifically. Gaunts are absolutely not a threat in small numbers, or if you have multiple turns to shoot them with anti-horde weaponry. They shouldn't be. Your characters are Space Marines, the Imperium's heroic finest in a form that largely is in line with their fluff- the tabletop game doesn't and shouldn't really apply. Gaunts are mindless fodder for the hive mind and exist largely to be killed in vast swathes by the players, or present an additional threat when used in conjunction with other enemies (a few Warriors say). And they are a very real threat if they make it close to the group and can engage in melee combat with a significant magnitude. Hormagaunt swarms of sufficient size attack everybody they reach twice a round for 3d10+5, Pen 3 damage (an average of 8.5 damage to a starting space marine with a toughness in the 40's) that can't be parried or dodged. Termagaunts do the same damage at close range a number of times equal to their magnitude divided by 10, though they can be dodged. They actually work quite well in their role- if you're prepared and can deal with them on your own terms with appropriate gear they're at worst a minor problem. If their swarm gets to you while you're unprepared, they'll mess you up quite badly in no time flat.

And you can't really say "don't tell me to go read the book" if you don't know some of the basics. But to make it easy:

Penetration does not do anything to toughness.

Unnatural Toughness doubles the toughness bonus. Toughness bonus is subtracted from incoming damage.

Unnatural Strength doubles the strength bonus. Strength bonus is added to melee damage.

Many hordes will not be a challenge to the players nor are they supposed to be. From a scenario pov they are supposed to wither down the PCs a bit so that they are on less than full strength. And then you go send some of the tougher guys.

If your players ever complain about not being challenged enough, ambush the kill-team with a demon prince. That should put a lasting end to those complaints. Of course complaints about character death are likely to ensue.

Alex

Simply put, the marines in the 40k tabletop game are NOT as powerful as the marines in Deathwatch for balance purposes. The Deathwatch marines are closer to the novel marines, in that they're able to wade through swathes of 'grunt' enemies without breaking a sweat.

Force the marine players into situations where they just can't stand there and rake the enemy with bolter fire. Make them think, make them react and make the enemy as smart as they are. Then they'll start sweating combat a bit more.

A particularly fun scenario is in an urban area. Don't forget that Tyranids are generally naturally stealthy, especially if they are already out of sight (and therefore not requiring a Concealment check).

Even if you just throw a couple M10 hordes (which will either negate the +10 move silently bonus due to size, or not, depending on how you feel) at them at short range it'll be enough to keep them on their toes without the long-range firepower they're used to. Even such a small horde of Hormagaunts could wound a space marine with their two attacks at 1d10+5 P3 (4 HP damage if they roll a 10 on each dice, max HP @ rank 1 without the Sound Constitution advances is only 23).

They also attack everyone within range (1-3 metres for melee, if I remember correctly) making it possible for widescale damage with 10 Hormies.

You could also mob up the hordes to take advantage of their Overwhelming talent

LGD said:

Not sure how hormagaunts get 2 attacks a round on the same target? But if you have 30+ horde of them, which they should almost always be 30+, they do 4d10+5 damage with pen 3... averaging 14 damage per a hit with 45% chance to hit. That's not to shabby considering they can charge 30 yards.

LGD said:

LGD said:

You sound like you have en elitist attitude and are ranting. But w/e

You can't say that the 40k table war game doesnt apply when it is the basis for everything all of these 40k RPG games are and has been around since the 80's. They should be somewhat comparable, but w/e I guess you are entitled to your opinion.

The topic is not misleading either as it says adversaries are underpowered. I never stated that ALL were and if you read my post (which obviously you did) I specifically mentioned Nids, also no one made you post here. Also the part about not reading the book, if you paid attention i said i read and re read it and the things im asking about are not clearly stated so i asked for opinions.

However... You did give me insight as to running the gaunts as a horde rather than many many individual ones (even close up they couldnt do hardly anything).

Thank you for you post and clarification.

In the future if you are going to try to offer your "help" keep it to your self if you are going to have a sh*tty attitude and this is a game and you are non the more special for knowing more about it than anyone else.

Thank you everyone for your responses. So gaunts can't really expect to do any dmg (except for the occaisonal "Hey I hit him someplace other than the chest and rolled a 9 or 10 on dmg ") unless they are in a horde correct? I dont want them be killed, however I do want them to think, "Hmm, should I really charge in?"

Does anyone have any experience running chaos or tau? Do they experience similar issues or is it just things run in hordes?

rodeoclownjihad said:

My Players are currently hung up 500m from a tau platoon wondering how to close without getting killed as the Assult marine chared and is currently crawling forward at -4 Although they had prevously demolished a set of gun drone in 1 round of combat.

I have felt that using nids then it is eather huge Magnatude horde over open terrain or lots of smaller mag horde in urban setting with ambush and counter ambush the name of the game

I think that you have a problem concerning de basic rules of enemies, if you reread the enemies rules perhaps you will notice that each arversary has a calification (troops, elites and masters) gaunts are troops and are cleary no menace to a SM unless you use them in horde form, elites can be trouble in one to one against a SM but against a kill team no so much. MAsters in the other hand are meant to be a real challenge even to a kill team. (check page 358 of the corebook).

If you look at the Adversaries section on page 358, it specifically says that enemies in the Troop category are no match for a single marine except in large numbers. Troops are intended to be used in a Horde, which represents the numbers. You said yourself that gaunts are dangerous in large numbers, so I don't see the issue.

Per someone's question, Hormagaunts get two attacks per round due to Swift Attack. Per the Overwhelming trait, gaunts do an extra 1d10 dmg as long as their Mag is > 20. So, a Mag 30 gaunt horde does 4d10+5 Pen 3 damage and has 2 attacks. That seems pretty dangerous to me. That's an average of 25 damage, pen 3 per hit, so you're looking at 8-10 wounds per hit to an average marine. As your marines get better, you can apply Toxic for a possible additional 1d10 damage.

Termagaunts are a bit crap, but they'll get more attacks. A Mag 30 termie horde gets 3 attacks doing 3d10+5 Pen 3 Tearing (roll 4d10, lowest) damage. That's only ~18-20 damage on average, so I'd add Toxic unless the Mag was larger (to get more attacks).

The Tyranid warriors are pretty buff, so I'm not sure what your issue with them is. With 3 Attacks at 1d10+12 Pen 5 Razor Sharp (double pen w/ 2+ DoS), they are pretty nasty in melee. With a soak of 18 and 48 wounds, they are more than a match for a single marine. The Death Spitter is a bit less impressive.

So, can you explain why you thought Tyranids were so weak? You didn't really give an example. Yes, if you send the nids charging across 200 yds of open ground, they will get shot up. But, if you put them in a middling distance and use the Hordes to hide genestealers and warriors, they will mince your kill team.

rodeoclownjihad said:

while you are right that the TT game is for high importance, you have to remember that the TT is heavily balanced, all the background material and all the books say that space marines are lightning fast, monstrously strong, tough as nails, their armor is truly mighty, and with their weapons they cut a blood swath through vast hordes of lesser beings, and i think that is more what FFG was aiming for when they designed the game.

on there own, small creatures like gaunts really don't bother the marines at all, in our first combat situation our gm threw about 16 gaunts at us, a about 12 horms and 4 termies, the whole group quickly noticed that in this config they really couldn't hurt us and the fight got boring, a little nick from our weapons the gaunts burst like bad tomatoes and unless we got hit outside of the body all the gaunts were doing was mussing our armor

so our gm got creative, he used the mob of gaunts to tie us down while a warrior slowly made its way down a hallway to us, while we also had to rush to defend a pair of servitors that had come with us, so we had to really hustle to get through them before the warrior tore us a new one,

our next combat sitch was after the gm split us up, only two marines could fit in an elevator, so our apothicary and assault went up the shaft, while our librarian and myself, a devastator marine, stayed on the ground so the two of us on the ground get hammered by horde after horde, the smaller ones get cut to ribbons by my heavy bolter, but before long we are fully engaged in melee, we were fighting a pretty big hoard at this point, i think it was about 44 in magnitude, took us a while to beat it down with grenades and pistol fire, along with my librarian doing some hefty damage, but we did end up taking some wounds from it, so it all depends on how you array your foes against the kill team

our gm was great about keeping us either bottled up and constantly keeping pressure on us in one form or another, or splitting us up and making us work real hard for our bread at the end of the day

Borin Demonslayer said:

Read up bro. I said i used them in large numbers, just not as a horde. Also you might want to spell check before being condescending.

Radomo said:

The issue was I didn't use them as a horde. After reading all of your responses it seems as though thats the thing to do with them. The reason I didnt use them as a horde is because they gave it as an optional thing, it doesnt say that its recommended so i just threw many "single" gaunts to ease my players into learning the game but also providing somewhat of a challenge and after throwing in 2 warriors 10 termagaunts and 12 hormagaunts. I thought maybe an errata was on its way when they provided little challenge to a 3 man kill team. (tactical, devastator and an assault marine.)

Moglwi said:

Thank you for your advice. I wanted to give my players an "oh ****" feeling with lots of nids rushing them. Just didnt work out that way lol.

Cleric Cromwell said:

Probably the most helpful comment thus far, Thank you very much. My situation had the KT in a semi open urban area where the same situation you gave in your 1st example happened. So I tried adding more little by little but as it turns out a horde is really the only option for a challenge. Thanx again.

I think that this seems to illustrate once again the facility of "Turning Points" and the confusion as to their absence from the official materials. YMMV, of course, but there seems to be some obvious tension between crunch, 'fluff,' and the varying levels of experience that one has coming to the GAME.

Kage

Also, in response to comparisons to the tabletop game, the systems simply can't be that closely linked.

The TT uses a SINGLE combat encounter, which is supposed to occupy you for 1-3 hours. The TT doesn't track ongoing injuries, wounds, armor damage, fatigue, or any sort of progressive damage. The TT uses an abbreviated range, which fits the scale of the board (rather than the quite extensive ranges on the weapons in the RPG). The TT game resolves every model individually, rather than using a Horde mechanic, so it cannot represent extremely large quantities of enemies very well. There's no ability progression in the TT game, and very little distinction between marines other than equipment (Marine, Veteran, Captain, basically).

You can't expect the TT game to match up perfectly, or even terribly closely, to the RPG directly. The tabletop game, the Roleplaying Game, the board game (Space Hulk) and the many varieties of video game (Dawn of War, etc) are ALL linked up to the fiction/fluff of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. You shouldn't be judging the RPG by the TT game any more than you should be judging the TT by the video game. They all need to be compared to the fiction.

Each of those games is going to make design decisions based on the fiction, and based on the constraints of that particular game system. The RPG would be highly unsatisfactory if a horde of 14 hormagaunts would consistently take a Space Marine out of the game for the entire night (2 attacks on the charge each equals 28 attacks, 1/3rd hit, 1/3rd wound, 1/3 fail armor save equals one removed Marine model, who doesn't re-enter play). Similarly, no one would buy, assemble, and paint hormagaunts if one devastator with a heavy bolter could wipe out a squad of 20 in one turn of shooting (but a skilled devastator with the right starting selections could destroy a magnitude 20 horde in one Full Auto burst in the RPG).

Brother-Sergeant Cloten said:

You make good points. It's designed from the start for players to kill them.

But I can't help thinking that, with the basic damage a player can throw out and all those special abilities that it's these things aren't going to last long at all.

Tyranid warriors for instance, they are enormous and can't dodge. How quickly is even a starting kill team going to burn through those wounds. Plus the death spitter is ridiculously low damage and much lower rate of fire, even the stranglethorn cannon isn't going to hurt much. They do less damage in melee than a marine with a chainsword and even toxin sacs is rarely if ever going to up the damage.

I know that it would be a mistake to directly translate stats from the TT but you could at least pay it lip service. Bearing in mind that a death spitter is only going to be used three at time there's no reason for it to be doing significantly less damage than a bolter.

All that means is that for that weapons combination it's no longer a threat to the players. Which means you might as well not include it all. And considering that there are 4 types tyranids in that book, if your campaign is going to show the tyranid army as a viable threat to the imperium (rather than one that is quashed by 4 space marines in 3 sessions) then it's not enough.

Face Eater said:

I agree that the tyranid ranged weapons are pretty crap, but how can you say the tyranid warrior will do less in melee than a chainsword wielding marine?

Average Assault marine is probably doing 1d10+13, Pen 4 Tearing and have 2 attacks. The Tyranid warrior will have 3 attacks (Swift attack + Multiple Arms) for 1d10+12 Pen 5, Razor sharp. The damage is nearly equivalent on a per attack basis. The Marine gets Tearing to increase damage and possible RF. The nid gets Razor sharp for a possible 5 extra damage and an extra attack. The marine gets a to hit bonus for size, but the tyranid has a higher WS (than an avg starting marine).

If you don't think that's enough, add Toxic (with a hefty penalty to the T check) and/or Lightning attack.

Face Eater said:

I know. I suggest the same solution that I suggested for melta gun and plasmagun: add a D10 to damage.

Alex

"Read up bro. I said i used them in large numbers, just not as a horde. Also you might want to spell check before being condescending."

First of all: english is not my mother lenguage, in fact i live in south america, thus i speack spanish, so if i sound (or write) condescendig it is not my intention, is simple a lack of practice with your lenguage

Second: i read that you use the hormaguants in great numbers, but it is not the same that using them like a horde, fighthing them wolyd become borish because they do not repressent any danger, also if you don´t use the horde rules you will miss a lot of talents and tactics from de corebook and will not enjoy DW in all is value.

Bye!

Face Eater said:

This exactly what i was referring to but apparently it wasn't obvious.

They shouldnt exactly reflect the stat line... but tyranids should be scary..... terrifying even, which they are not in this game. You said it should reflect the story, Well in the story the ultramarines lost their ENTIRE veteran company... which if you didnt know... is 100 space marines worthy of the deathwatch with centuries of battlefield experience, to the tyranids on their home world. The tyranids in this game give me little confidence they could come close to pulling this off when 3 deathwatch marines can wack hundreds easily.

They shouldnt just have to ambush to accomplish anything.

rodeoclownjihad said:

Yeah but it wasn't hundreds of tyranids attacking the ultramarine's homeworld it was billions not millions billions. Also tyranids are not scary at long range. Its when they get in close. In an assault they don't mass and attack they attack from spores and thats why there scary and thats why everyone acts like their so deadly. The untold billions a few hundred of them aren't nearly as formidable then even a equal number of gaurdsmen.