Hi all,

Our group will soon be starting with level 1 Death Watch characters in a campaign game. I rolled up an accension character last night I would like to use to join them but he seems stupidly over powered (not physically) in comparison. Does anyone know what the equivilent character levels are in a transfer between games?

Cheers Craig

The experince point total is provided for you in the Deathwatch rulebook, in a sidebar in the character generation chapter.

A level 1 DW has 13000 XP

Cheers for the replies. I didn't realise there was a sidebar with that info in.

Well base they have 13k, but have 1k xp to spend. The idea though is that xp is equivelant across systems. So yes, a 14k xp ascension character is "balanced" to fresh rank 1 DW characters. Might I ask how the ascension character is overpowered? What is your metric for power as well? Really the difference in damage soaking abilites between DW and DH characters make up any difference. Once hordes get into melee, a DH character is just screwed.

The OP might mean the dozen or more trained skills and talents an Ascension character has over a Deathwatch character of equivalent XP.

From what I understand though, that amount of XP makes DH/RT characters VERY overpowered. The GM who is running the campaign that I play in made a DH/RT character and to use all the XP he had to take from 4 different books. It was gross what that character could do, now it couldn't up in a knock down drag out fight but it got to the point where if the player using that character needed to make a roll for dang near ANYTHING they got a +20. They werent half bad in combat either.

Thats exactly what I mean.

I rolled up a 15,000 exp Vindicare Assassin who has WS 46, BS 58, Ag 63 amongst his stats. With Awareness +20, Dodge +30 (inc his syn-skin), Silent Move +20, Concealment +20 a range of lores and loads of talents. Like I said, physically he isn't as superior, but he could called shot someone from 1km away on a BS roll of like 78.

With a vindicare, the main thing still is damage soaking ability in a DW campaign. Sure, he may have an excellent dodge, but he needs that to survive even a single hit. And yes, he may get like, 12 dodges, but if he runs out of those he is dead. As far as ranged accuracy, sure, it is exceedingly good, and is more up to the gm to provide appropriate challenges, such as poor line of sight, or baving enemies sneak up on him.

Somehow, I cannot grasp why having a Vindicare Assassin being capable of extraordinary feats of marksmanship is a bug in the system...

You can not mix the systems very well.

The 13k xp start mark is just plain silly. The skill/talent progression in DH is simply too crazy for DW (or RT) to match. So if you want to make a DH character to gain xp and gain levels with som SM characters you need to redesign the DH career tree.

You can ready about a similar discussion on the RT forum:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Alox said:

As a side note: you don't have to spend the points on skills. As a GM I would probably tell a player that he may not spend more than X points on skills or that at least Y points must be spent on Characteristic advances. That ends some of madness and will make the PCs more comparable, giving a more homogenuous feel.

Alex

You can even start by saying "you must buy +10 to all characteristics so you are all on the same page there".

But turthfully, even with the attempted XP conversion there are other major issues with mixing systems.

1. The XP award systems are different in DH, RT, Ascension and DW. And so are the point buys for even simple skills and talents at lower ranks.

2. Some skills/talents are not listed in other games.

3. The XP difference is largely "made up". If I were to attempt to stat out a starting Rogue Trader character as a Dark Heresy character, the XP value would not be the same as listed in the "sidebars".

I think the best way to do it is to give the new DH/RT character less then 14K XPs and hand them a bunch of decent gear and fate points (like 7 or so).

A horde would eat a Vindicare Assassin with his 12 dodges per round. What use are those when you can't dodge a horde?

Well, some would read that the Temple Assassin trait allows them to dodge hordes. In my game, I make them use two reactions to dodge a horde in melee.

KommissarK said:

Hey, that's a pretty good one. I'll have to keep that one in mind for my own games in case someone rolls up a Vindicaire.

The biggest differences by far are the sheer amount of damage they can take and deal out, unnatural toughness big armour and basic bolt guns that do f**king stupid amounts of pain. Your ascended and RT characters beat them hands down on the sheer amount of skills they have, but a lot of those skills- particually the RT class ones are mostly useless in a DW mission or could be performed by an NPC for there (lack of) overall contribution.

Its not that they cant play together, but it just doesn't quite work very well unless your ascended character has something they dont.

ak-73 said:

It is true, that you can do a few tricks to make the 13k starting xp be more on par across the systems, but when skills for a DH character costs a fraction of what the space marine have to pay for the same skill you will end up with widely different advancement speed. You could do a rule that SM characters just get 4 times as much xp as a DH character to keep them levelling at the same speed.

Example: A space marine gets interrogation at 23.000 xp and has to pay 400 xp for it. By 10.000 xp a DH characters have been able to by it for 100xp (with a few exceptions). Most of the DH careers even have it by 6.000 xp.

There can be a reason why something should come cheaper and earlier for a DH character, but the picture is the same across the board for all skills/talents. My point is that the 3 games: DH, RT and DW all use the same game system, but the careers and xp progression are widely different and not compatible out of the box.

All Deathwatch characters begin play with 12000xp. ......

Beginning characthers also have an additional 1000xp...

Page 27 Core Rulebook.

Alox said:

For what it's worth Space Marines can buy Interrogation at Rank 1, Interrogate +10 at Rank 2, spending 200 and 400 xp respectively. The next thing you have to figure in is that DW suggests you give 500xp for a night of play (4ish hours). DH suggests 200xp for the same amount of time. At best you're looking at 2x, but that's still a bit of a problem IMHO. Giving a marine 1000 or 2000 xp for 4 hours of gaming means that after 4 hours of play, roughly by the time they've done 1-2 objectives in Final Sanction, they've got +5 to 4 characteristics, meanwhile the DH schlub can by interrogate at trained and +10?

And if you strip the DH character's XP advancment to say half (giving them 250 a session), it'll take them 3 sessions to be able to buy ONE ascended skill that costs them 700xp.

No one ever said it was a perfect balance, but I don't find it to be that bad. DW SMs start with something like 13 talents, 19 trained skills, the best equipment in the Empire, a boat load of fate points, and characteristics that would put most DH characters to shame. Honestly, so what if they outskill the DW Marines at the start (or even for the first few ranks)? Let them have a place to contribute, because it sure isn't going to be when the horde of tyrannids rushes the team.

I agree that Space Marines got stuff that the other characters can not have, no matter how many xp they get.

The problem is really biggest between RT and DH, when you want to use some of the careers in the other system. But that is kinda off topic on the DW forums, so I am not going to dwell much on it here.

not mind Primaris Psyker with unnatural willpower *3, also dont mind Magos with unnatural everything.

also on ascended start u can have guardsman with natural 80T and S, (with some system minimaxing, its not fun but not baned)

boruta666 said:

Apologies for not knowing Ascended (or DH) well enough to know this but how is that even possible, even with min/maxing, at the start of Ascention, when you can only increase an attribute by 4 (total of +20)?

@boruta666

Ascended characters have further trait advancements available, extending the table for them.

In our quick playtests for mixed groups, the parity has been there for us for everyone but the Guardsman. It's not parity in the usual sense of everyone being able to do each job relatively well, but parity where everyone does what THEY do very well. Rogue Trader PC's will generally be better at getting stuff than thier DH counterparts, unless that stuff is information. Then the DH characters win there. Deathwatch characters are combat oriented and will completely overshadow anyone else doing it (this is why the Guardsman is a 5th wheel in mixed games, the Space Marines take over that role completely) but they will also never compete with a Acolyte of the Inquisition when it comes to aquiring and using information, and it's going to be hard for any of them to get anywhere without the RT characters.

Dark Heresy PCs: "Check out my SKILLZ!"

Rogue Trader PCs: "Money money money!"

Deathwatch PCs: "Hey, how do you like my stats?"

Let the Guardsman become the team's sniper.

Alex