I just played my first game of Deathwatch and am playing a Blood Angels Assault Marine. I took Flesh Render, Acrobatics, and a Weapon Skill ugrade. My question is about the Swift Attack Talent you atuomatically get.

Maybe I am not understanding Swift Attack, but it lets you attack twice with your Melee weapon using the Multiple Attack Action (No Bonuses). However, you can normally make 2 standard attacks with a Melee weapon (No Bonuses). My question is what is the point of haveing Swift Attack if you can already make two attacks?

It also seems like shooting is way better than Melee in this game. What would be the best way to optimize my character? My party consists of a Melee Librarian, 2X Devastators, TAC Marine, Apothacary, and might add a Tech Marine. It seems like my only roll is to keep the shooters out of hand to hand so they can keep killing everything. I did more damage throwing hand grenades then I did in melee.

I thought about taking Frenzy/Battle Rage for my Assault Marine is that a good option. It seems like the Blood Angel Talents/skills are better than the actual Assault Marine options.

Thanks for the help.

Uriah Novus said:

You cannot make two attacks normally because you cannot do the same action twice (Standard attack). You can aim and attack otherwise. If you wanna play munchkin you take Flesh Renderer + Two Weapon Wielder (Melee) and take two chainswords and go Blood Frenzy (Solo Mode ability) at your opponents (+Frenzy, +Hatred, etc).

Please take note of the errata'd Righteous Fury rules though or your GM will eventually strangle you because of this combo of infinite damage (RF on 8+ at high ranks with Flesh Rendered Chainswords). Somebody's BA Assault killed a custom-made Bloodthirster in one round with this combo (at high ranks). In one round.

Alex

Yeah our GM was letting our Librarian make two standard attacks per turn. Me and him took on a Hive Tyrant while the rest of the party took out everything else. We spent the whole battle attacking it. I was only doing 20 to 27 damage a hit so after reduction from armor and toughness I was doing 1 or 2 wounds. I think our GM was reducing Rightoues Fury damage with Armor/Toughness too. The librarian pretty much did all the damage and our shooters wasted everything else. My character just didnt do much. Blood Frenzy only lasts one round for me. Can you use Blood Frenzy to re-roll your Righteous Fury Damage?

Uriah Novus said:

Your GM is cramping your style: multiple attacks are normally the province of the Assault Marine (not exclusively but...). If your GM allows the librarian to make two attacks too, of course he will outclass you.

You cannot make two standard attacks. The same a Tactical cannot make two single shots with his Boltgun. He can aim and fire but not fire twice. Page 236 says if a char takes two half actions they must be different.

In fact it is widely believed here that the intended rule is that no char can make more than one attack action, including psychic attacks, etc. You can make 1 multiple attack action - thanks to your swift attack.

Also note that wielding a second weapon (bolt pistol, chainsword) will give you an additional attack. If you take two chainswords and have Two Weapon Wielder (Melee) you can make 3 attacks at -10 (2 with the right hand, 1 with the left) - or choose to have 2 attacks with the right hand only at +0.

Also at Rank 2 you can take Lightning Attack. At Rank 3, your Blood Frenzy will last 2 rounds and Pen will increase and you can parry twice per round with Wall of Steel.

And don't forget the powerful Acrobatics+20 + Assassins Strike combo.

Yeah, a Blood Angel Assault can dish out for good. One of my players has one so I have prepared for the worst.

Alex

20 to 27 damage? With a chainsword and flesh render you should pretty much constantly be getting RF due to the two rerolls you get. And the RF 1d10 is added to your damage before reduction from armor/toughness.

So you use a full action to use Swift Attack for two melee attacks with your chainsword (the librarian can't do this, as he doesn't have Swift Attack). You roll 3d10 and take the best die. If it's a 10, you trigger RF and roll 1d10 and add that to your damage total (if you roll 10 you trigger RF again, and keep on doing that), which should be 1d10 + 3 (chainsword) + 10 (double your strength bonus, which is probably 5) + 1d10 (RF), and remove 4 from the target's armor. That would mean 14-23 (without RF), 15-33+ (with RF) before reduction from armor (minus 4) and toughness. Twice. And considering how often you should be triggering RF, especially as a blood angel, the damage will rack up.

Versus hordes its more important to get good rolls, for more degrees of success on your WS when attacking, and it will take a while until you can reach the devastators' magnitude damage here. So you should probably go for the elites and individuals and let the devs clean up all those horde who'd want to hurt you hurting their masters (which are dangerous to you, as you can't dodge or parry their attacks - of which you get 2 of both, later).

And as Alex has said, dual wield your chainswords and take TWW (melee) for more tearing+flesh render fun. Plus next rank you get 3 attacks (+1 with TWW(melee)), due to Lightning Attack. Now that's a lot of damage to some lonely HT.

Oh, and don't forget your dualwielded Lightning Claws later. They're tearing.

But hey, when I met a Hive Tyrant playing as a melee centric Librarian at rank 1, I readied my bolter and did some full-auto with Hellfire rounds. That ignore natural armor comes in handy and beats a chainsword at that rank. Plus you can stay out of range from those four very ouchy attacks it gets.

BrotharTearer said:

You're only getting the re-rolls when in blood frenzy, so that depends greatly on what your rank is as to how often you get that. But point taken, while getting the re-rolls you should be (statistically, mind you, which doesnn't always stand up to real world dice tests) getting RF just a fraction under every other attack, so on average you should get one RF a round.

And FWIW, everyone shoul dhave to play by the same rules- the Librarian shouldn't be given an edge like that. Without special talent or significant penalties you should not be getting more than one attack action a turn.

Charmander said:

I was refering to Tearing + Flesh Render giving you two effective rerolls on your chainsword damage. 3d10, take best. With that BA chapter solo ability, it's more insane.

BrotharTearer said:

Ah, yes- so 3d10 gives you about 27% chance to RF with each hit. So Tearing + Flesh Render would give you about 47% to RF once between two hits, and about 61% to RF with one hit with three attacks.

Add in the BA ability to re-roll if you muck up, that increases to 47% chance with one hit (essentially 6 dice), a 70% chance with two hits (essentially 12 dice), and 85% chance with three hits (essentially 18 dice).

Though that's all math based, and dice never seem to actually follow the laws of probability that closely

Yes: Shooting is good. Especially with heavy weapons against hordes. However melee does horrific amounts of damage, too.

One could easily argue that if -as an assault marine- you are engaging foes in melee combat so that the Devestator Marines are free to shoot, rather than being engaged themselves, that you are already optimising the role. If you weren't there doing that, you'd have two guys with heavy bolters not using them and instead flailing around with combat knives.

Ultimately, it always ends up in melee somewhere along the line. Especially with the more extreme foes. And someone needs to stand toe to toe with them. That someone is the Assault Marine.

Siranui said:

I'm still a believer that, that someone is the Techmarine. If they purchase melee weapon skills as elite advances . . . /shudder.

But by then you may have enough renown to get a powerfist so it might equal out.

If one allows the cross-class buying of all of the decent combat talents, one might as well throw the whole character class idea away, though...

Or conversely, tank by playing an assault marine and buying autosanguine, the flesh is weak et al via Elite advancement...