So what doesn't really work in DW?

There is two things from top of my mind where I consider the system broken:

- Heavy Bolter; way overpowered. 2d10+10, Rof 10? Yeah, right.

- Who charges loses. That holds true for any fight between most close combat fighters They will generally have at least 3 attacks per round or so and do not possess Prenatural speed. Therefore: they one who charges gets one attack and possibly 3 attacks back... which might prove fatal. It's a severe disadvantage. Now the system worked better in DH where multiple attacks are less ubiquitous. In DW however, it has become a bit broken.

Anything else? More scaling problems perhaps? Boruta mentioned at high ranks things turn wonky...?

Alex

I haven't seen it in use, but Fire for Effect looks broken.

Sustained ability to make ranged attacks as reactions? So the players can move out from and back into cover actively while attacking?

Does it mean that full auto attacks can be made as reactions or half actions (the wording on how it improves is kind of weird), can it stack with suspensors?

Do you find Charge truly broken or just as something that would only be used by folks with one attack? Could you elaborate as to why it's a 'severe' disadvantage? It seems to me to be the same problem with getting a crap initiative score, you go second, your oppoenent get's more hits than you and can kill you, you best come up with a different tactic if you're going to survive that. I guess I don't see it as broken, I just see it as depricated when your opponents often have as many or more hits than you.

I agree that the HB seems to just kill too much stuff- both in comparison to other weapons (specifically heavies) and the fact it just capitolizes on the autofire issues that the core system seems to have.

Not seen fire for effect in action either, interesting to see what other people think about it.

Situation two sessions ago, landing pad at Avalos Spaceport, awaiting extraction. Horde of Gaunts + Nid Warrior appear. SW Assault charges Marine, doesn't hit, Nid Warrior strikes back and hurts the SW a lot. Now if the SW had lost init and the Warrior had charged, the Warrior would have had only 1 attack.

Think about it - this is four attacks difference . In one setup you have 2 attacks less in the other 2 attacks more (swift strike + mutiple arms/weapons).

Alex

I feel the same way about charge. I never use it unless I know I won't be eaten up as soon as I get there, or I know I will manage to kill the thing I'm charging. Usually better to just stand and wait for them to get to you, perhaps shooting while they advance, than charge in yourself. :/

+1 on HB.

Personally I find many (or most) of the chapter attack and defensive pattern to be subpar. Lead by example is a shining exception, being so useful, especially when you've got a smurf tac in your KT. Most are too expensive to be used, and mostly you're at most 1-2 of a chapter in the KT, so often it won't be worth it to spend 3 cohesion to use something which maybe gives bonuses for one round to 1, maybe 2, characters.

ak-73 said:

To me the real core issue is first multiple attacks: multiple attacks (in this game and every other RPG I've seen) are king. You see it here in your situation and you see it with with autofire. Don't have multiple attacks or autofire? Prepare to get your ass kicked by the guy that does.

Then that's followed up by how engaging in melee works in general. You can't actively engage in melee combat and get more than one attack as all the talents are full round actions (with the exception of some of the special abilities that stack with the multiple attack talents). Which means no matter how you slice it, if you're the one that engages you're only doing one attack. If you happen to have picked a guy with multiple hand to hand attacks, see above.

But at the same time, to allow people to charge/move AND get multiple attacks doesn't work either, or everyone would charge about like demon princes and hack people to pieces even more than they do already.

I guess I look for work arounds as a player (using tactics and talents) as I view the issue as core to the system. I suppose a tweak might be in order, or perhaps more talents that you could buy to prevent your opponent from getting multiple attacks on the first round combat starts or the like.

Charge is less broken when proper tactics are used (furious charge being ideal, giving you the benefits of charge, and then when it scrolls around to your turn, your own attacks, as an assault marine, that's 2 even at rank 1), and at higher rank ALOT of attacks. The Manuever action helps mitigate multiple melee attacks a great deal if you're a skilled melee combatant, or one with only 1 attack, as you can attack, then Manuever them 1 meter away, they have to move into combat with you, giving them only a half action attack (or forcing them to pull the run around the room wrestling style charge, still only 1 attack without pret speed). Tactical Spacing will also mitigate multiple melee attacks, if someone should run in chainsword revving without a plan as to how to survive if the Marine doesn't take him out with his attack. Even beyond this, stupidity in tactics does not make a rule broke. If I can't do something to mitigate the 4 attacks a hive tyrant can unleash on me, I should be smarter than to run up and poke it in the eye Three Stooges style.

The Heavy Bolter is a different story. It unleashes a boatload of pain on the cheap and fast and really the only things that mitigate it are a super high dodge skill, ideally with unnatural agility lol, and most things with such tend to be fragile, so even the few shots that get through will hurt or kill anyway.

I find Fear to be a wierd set of rules with Deathwatch. If you're in squad mode, and you fail your fear test, you eat cohesion damage, if you're not... it does nothing, even if you fail. I'm gonna run the question past our other two GMs and ask'em what they think, I think all three of us went... weeeeell why bother to have the fear rules in there, and why bother having it cause cohesion damage, doesn't that really just advocate staying in solo-mode? but that aside, obviously, squad mode abilities are pretty beast, so worth the risk.

Every weapon that starts with "Bolt".

BrotherHostower said:

I didn't think of Furious Charge. That one helps a melee centric character loads to close the gaps, and not lose any multiple attacks because of that. I've just seen it as a means to get more attacks up until now.

I'm not sure on Maneuvers though, mostly due to the fact that I don't really know the rules. The concept isn't new to me though, as I've played D&D3.5 where shutting down multi-attackers is a nice thing to do. Trip-monkeys are fun.

Hm, must admit I haden't even looked that much on most of the defensive stances. That Tactical Spacing sounds handy, as I'd imagine most shooters don't use their reactions if not being attacked. So much to pick from ;(

One thing I have noticed is that squad mode powers make a huge difference. We played a test misson awhile back and didnt mess with squad mode and it was really tough, 2 out of 4 marines were KIA. Last night we kicked off our real campaign and our Ultramarines Tactical was throwin out squad powers like crazy, we crushed everything. "Bolter Assault" and "lead by example" are brutal.

BrotherHostower said:

1. There is problems with that though: Firstly, Squad Mode abilities only benefit the players. So what does my Tyranid player do when he goes first? Wait until the players comes? If he does and the player uses Furious Assault, then he might be in trouble. And shooting isn't a Tyranid Warriors thing. Also not every oaths provide this ability so it will not be available on a number of missions. These ability aren't supposed to plug holes in the system anyway. I have been thinking about a melee fighter only using some of his attacks on the charge. Perhaps allow attacking with both weapons? (that would make two weapons even more favourable though). Or perhaps allow up to a swift strike on the charge? But then again you have such things as Thunder Charge and it might make the charge über. Sadly, this is again the province of PCs.

2. Fear: yep, it's odd. I wonder if one shouldn't give the PCs just a few Insanity points based on the Fear test a la "I know no fear but this thing is mind-boggling nonetheless."

Alex

There's ways around the charge issue, although it's always been a minor problem since WFRP. I wouldn't go as far as to call it 'broken' though.

It's a tactical option and not always one that's a great idea. It's far more useful to call a Furious Assault, get into melle and soak their parry/dodge with the 'free' attack, and then all party members in melee can full attack.

Heavy Bolters do kill lots of stuff, but I don't see that as a major problem in itself. Heavy Flamers do 8+1d5, for example. Get the character into melee and they're hurting. I think that the problem is more that some characters (Devs...) and some abilities can then dramatically multiply the damage.

I think that the problem is on the base of the system. The system used in Deathwatch was created to be used in Dark Heresy or even Rogue Trader, and that's is what it's though for. The scale is wrong, in my opinion

More clearly: In Dark Heresy, having Toughness 40 and Unnatural Toughness was awesome. In Deathwatch, that's the least you will have. Maybe in Deathwatch, it should be needed to use characteristics over 100. And the weapons have had an increase in the same amount to the characteristics

Because of this, I have observed that with those huges amounts of damage per hit, the game is reduced to "Who strikes first", because if you do 2d10+5 per round with an BS of 70 (after modifiers) on auto, you will kill that Tyranid Warrior of 42 Wounds in a turn.

The solution to this is the same that for all the RPG which we are not satisfied with. Houseruling.

But what to houserule? That's what we are discussin here, so, sorry if I have digressed too much. This is what I am houseruling

-Enemies.

I have made them stronger than they were in the official rules. And created a bit more, like Carnifex or Zoantrhope...Three of my players have burnt yet a Destiny Point in the adventure "Final Sanction". Or made a Chaos Lord too strong to be even damaged for a Player but wich can be defeated by an special situation

-Enemy Tactics.

Why not to give the Tyranid Warriors tactics like the marines have? Why not to set ambushes? Or why not to give endless reinforcements to the enemy and force the Players to flee?

-Combat

I have just had an idea. On Dark Heresy scale, a character with Swift Attack was powerful than his enemies because they didn't have it. Because he was stronger than his enemies. Why not to null a bonus if both fighters have it? On Deathwatch, a Marine and a Tyranid Warrior are able to do several attacks, but narratively, maybe most of them are parried or dodged because the fighters are at the same hability level and you only have one true posibility to bypass enemy defences. One strike for each one

I hope I have expressed myself properly

The heavy bolter is broken because they scaled astartes bolters up and it needed to be better than them (it only does 5 extra damage than the BOLTGUN). The reason they scaled astartes bolters up? Unnatural Toughness and Strength (with a bit of too much armour), specifically, the fact that Unnatural attributes are MULTIPLED for no reason.

As a marine has it, their enemies are going to need it or they won't be able to last long against them. Which means marines are then guaranteed to be shooting at something with TB8 and 6+ armour, so they need guns that will acutally hurt.

If Unnatural attributes came in single digits, +1 to SB for example, you can then scale everything back. A marine may only then have Unnatural Str/T 2 in which case their average starting damage reduction is 6. Remove the extra armour on the marine's torso (or make it ablative like in Inquisitor where it only works on the first hit) and now a space marine has DR of 14 on all locations. Reduce their starting Toughness down to 31-35 average instead of 41 (just like the deathworlder they are most often pulled from) and you've dropped their DR down to 13.

Oh but now my precious space marines aren't EPIC!? Well that's easily fixed. Orks now have T35 UT 1, for a total DR of 4, Tyranid warriors have UT2 and 5 armour, for a total DR of 11 instead of the absurd 16 currently. They keep their current wounds.

Scale everything back and you fix several problems at once - a bolter doesn't have to do 2d10+5 damage to be awesome, the 1d10+5 or 2d10 of the angelus was plenty. It can go back to 4 pen. The heavy bolter can then go back down. Plasma and melta can stay as they are.

Suddenly all the weapons look like they should in comparison to each other and you don't have absurd damage reduction cuz my muscles can bounce off bullets. EPIC is relative, if you everything else down, a marine without DR18 won't be crap.

All this because Unnatural multiplies your attribute. Going from TB4-8 in one shot is silly, especially if you're taking these things as advances. Ascension x4 Agility death cult assassin? Why was that necessary? Because a single level of Unnatural is all you can measure it by, so if you want something with better UAg than something else it needs more levels - more levels results in more multiplication until you've got a Deathcult assassin with AgB20....

Just look at the crappy weaponry carried by tyranid fodder troops. In the setting these are just infantry weapons used against guard with lasguns. But that won't work when fighting DR18 space marines, so now we have devourers with obscene damage simply because they're competeing with marine Toughness.

So, change Unnatural to single digit increases (hell, grant 2x the bonus as a test bonus too if you want), reduce Unnatural down to sane levels and EVERYTHING will follow on from there. Unnatural strength can go down because something with Unnatural Toughness now isn't as tough, weapons can go down because they don't have to be overinflated just to have a chance of hurting targets etc.

EDIT: And as for Lightning Attack, the problem I think here is what the charge is trying to accomplish. Charges are performed to smash into the enemy, knock them back and to gain the initiative. This only doesn't work if the target is ready and using defensive weapons like spears. Therefore, the Charge action should have an opposed Strength test component where you attempt to push your target back, if you succeed they count as having spent a Minor Action. This then prevents the target from using all their attacks on the turn they were charged, evening the playing field somewhat. You can have it always happen, make it an opposed Ag test or whatever, but basically if a charge negated the ability for the target to major action full auto fist then it will fix it somewhat.

Hellebore

About Charge: Perhaps we need to look at what the point or goal of a charge is, and perhaps house-rule something. It does seem a little weak. What about adding on an extra die of damage in addition to the +10 WS bonus? If I think about charging in real life, then charging is a way to close ground quickly with a foe, deal a heavier, all-out-hit, and even demoralize the enemy (I've been in front of a simulated bayonet charge, and even though it was fake, a part of me still crapped it's pants).

Now, if the point of a charge is to accomplish those things I mentioned above, then yeah, the basic description of the Charge action is pretty weak. I haven't read all the Talents and stuff you can buff charging and melee with, but would bumping on a little extra damage totally unbalance things?

As for Heavy Bolters.. Yeah, sometimes, if the player gets a good role, it can be hard to see it as balanced. I haven't really formed a full opinion about HB's. I remember in the Modern D20 RPG, fully automatic weapons did damage to an area, and failing to avoid the area would cause hits. Not saying that would work for DW, but who knows? Maybe HB's need a little tweaking.

at higher ranks (our gaming group use more HR than RAW rules):

RAW:

Blood Angels as whole.

Heavy Bolter vs Stormbolter vs Bolter vs Specialist Weapons.

Everything that is Blood Angel and have chainsword, even after errata.

Initiative, in some cases its better to be last. Delay should move whole actions not just half.

Chapter Abilities, (BA vs SpaceWolves)

Melee unarmed damage vs RAW plasma pistols. (BA rank 8 unarmed strike with preternatural speed vs plasma pistol... one big laughter)

Charge as mentioned, totally rubbish. (+10ws, only thing that help is warcry)

AoA with furious assault and hammer blow.

Eye of venegance + marksman + stalker boltgun (accurate) + sharpshooter + called shoot +aim = ownage of doom.

Edit: bad memory.

boruta666 said:

I'll go over it when I have more time. But this one has irked me since DH too.

In other RPs I usually handle it this way: you can delay your actions for free but if you want to interrupt someone they may go first (think of a western fast draw duel... both sides delay their actions until one of the cowboys decides to draw triggering the delayed action - roll for init to see who goes first, optionally the guy who draws first has a head start and gets +1; or not). And optionally I tack a negative modifier (-10 or so) onto the action it if I think the system gets abused.

Alex

For Initiative, I use the RAW that allows you a half action out of order, but you retain your place in the Initiative order. Alternatively, a player can hold their turn to have a full round action but they are permanently moving their place in the initiative order for that encounter. It's a subtle trade off, but it works without any issues. This allows for more tactical planning on the part of the group.

ItsUncertainWho said:

I had forgotten about holding ations. The RAW concept always rubbed me funny, but what you propose here reminds me of how I've seen other systems do it . Temporarily move your initiative and get a half action. Permantently move your initiative for a full round action.

Another alternative to this that I've seen in other systems (which I don't like both because it's hard to remember and because I found it slows things down to a crawl) is declaring actions. Lowest initiative declares their action first, highest declares last. that way the person that got the best initiative gets to react to the plan of the opponent. To alter from your declared action requires expending some kind of effort.

Yet another alternate, that I kind of like, is a hybrid. I've seen systems where you have to declear held actions, that you can hold your action and get a full action and can interrupt someone else's initiative, but you have to declare what you're holding it in anticipation of, like overwatch, and that held action cannot be used for other uses.

Example:
Player:"I stand behind the door with my sword raised, waiting for the first enemy to come through"
GM: "Through the wall, not the door bursts a warrior"
Player: "Crap, I can't do anything with that this turn, I hope the rest of the team has it covered"
GM: "Next initiative count, a warror comes through the door!"
Player" Yes! I hit him with a flurry of blows" <rolls 10,000 dice>

CruelGM said:

In my experience, this is just what happens when you get into "Epic" levels. It's also my humble, if obnoxiously stated, opinion that the sysetm here is not based on epic sword duels lasting a week, but fast, brutal combat and horrible deaths. Who strikes first fits into that. It does suck however, when your players like flies.

CruelGM said:

I'd be interested to see what tactics the players in your group used for Final Sanction, and what tactics your enemies used. When playing through FS myself, we had mlutple fate points burned to stay alive.

CruelGM said:

Absolutely- but I don't know that this is a house rule, it's more of clever GM-ing, isn't it? Though 'squad mode' for enemies is an interesting concept to me.

CruelGM said:

An interesting idea, no doubt. What do you do when fighting multiple opponents?

Heh Squad modes for enemies.

Nids, Necrons would be in squad mode all the time. Nids have the Hivemind to do just that, and Necrons are souldriven robots.

I simply dont like the Stormbolter. In the TT its only different (maybe oh so slightly better) than a Bolter. In the RPG hes simply better at everything than the Bolter. If it had gotten more in line with the TT we wouldnt have our biggest gripe....

Ding ding ding

The Heavy Bolter. Take Storm out of the equation, and the HB could be scaled back to 5 shots or so. In theTT it only shoots heavier ammo at a slightly faster rate. Not at this insane level the RPG has us do it.

But yeah its all a problem of FFG's ruleset being good fpor DH and RT. DW simply is stretching past the limit. Having an Unnatural whatever as standard. Yeah right its totally natural for me to have Unnatural toughness.

Voronesh said:

You can scale the HB ROF to 6 or 7. Against Hive Tyrants and Daemon Princes, It will be still on an at least equal footing. Against hordes you have to rule that the storm quality does not increase magnitude damage because two simultaneously fired bolt rounds strike the same horde member(s) anyway and thus only increase the chance of scoring the 1 wound minimum damage needed to inflict magnitude damage anyway.

Alex

Well that's not in keeping with the RoF of a heavy bolter in the other two games. I mean, even a slow RoF is still going to put out hundreds of rounds. If you take the 10 shots as literal, then that's ~120 rounds a minute - slow by anyone's standards. 6 shots at 72 rounds a minute is pathetically slow.

See my previous post about why a heavy bolter is broken.

Here is the suggestion I made in that post to fix charges:

EDIT: And as for Lightning Attack, the problem I think here is what the charge is trying to accomplish. Charges are performed to smash into the enemy, knock them back and to gain the initiative. This only doesn't work if the target is ready and using defensive weapons like spears. Therefore, the Charge action should have an opposed Strength test component where you attempt to push your target back, if you succeed they count as having spent a Minor Action. This then prevents the target from using all their attacks on the turn they were charged, evening the playing field somewhat. You can have it always happen, make it an opposed Ag test or whatever, but basically if a charge negated the ability for the target to major action full auto fist then it will fix it somewhat.

Hellebore

Voronesh said:

Very true, but having tactical manuvers they can perform might add to some spice. Most of this I think can be done with clever setups by the GM, but it could be interesting to see manuvers.

Voronesh said:

So first, this system was spawned by BI, yes?

Second with TT, a stormbolter does Assault 2, versus a boltgun which has rapid fire. So storm bolter can be shot on the run twice. A boltgun can fire twice at half it's range if you don't move. To me that's a nice advantage. Then the HB is stronger, has better armor penetration, and does heavy 3.

After that I think you have to remember that TT is even MORE abstracted from combat than the RPG is. Each roll of the dice doesn't necesarily represent a single shot, each 'death' on the field doesn't represent a killing blow but a casualty, meaning that person may be disabled enough to not fight for the moment. Take a look at AK's page on 'bringing weapons in line with TT' and the logic there is pretty sound. Also, the stormbolter in the RPG isn't exactly free, you have to pay for it, so if it came down to it why not just up the req cost?

Full auto (and semi, for that matter) has been a problem since DH first came out, autofire rules the day. You get a major bonus to hit, and have the capability to do multiple 'attacks' without having to be specialy trained. Nothing compares to it, really; as soon as we started playing DH, the first guy that opened up with SEMI auto made all the other players in the room look over and go 'holy crap, how did he do that?!' because they scored 3 hits from a lasgun. Immediately thereafter everyone started looking for rate of fire becuse it was such an advantage. I think the situation was definitely exaggerated with the heavy bolter in DW, but small tweaks to it can go a very long way (much smaller than cutting the ROF in half). Other issues, like charge being meh, IMHO again I see the problem existing in prior games as well.

As for Unnatural Characteristics, while I have to say I really do like the sounds of Hellebore's scaling UT system, I personally am lazy and don't have enough of a problem with it to tweak the whole system around a modification there. First, Marines are unnatural, so it doesn't seem out of the question that they should have such a trait. Second, marines are supposed to be notoriously difficult to kill, especially in the fluff- and an RPG is about fluff, even if it's housed in a frame of crunch. Remember these characters start with 13k xp, which is where other characters start to pick up Unnatural talents, so how is this a huge deal? Maybe in a crossover it's a bigger deal but (keep in mind I'm speaking as a guy who has not run an actuall crossover) if the GM does the extra work to keep everyone on screen an equal ammount, the Marines shouldn't be that ridiculous.

And yeah, FWIW the Browning M2 (the old fashioned .50 cal still used today that sounds like it's firing pretty slow) is something like 800 rounds a minute. Modern automatic grenade launchers fire at over 300.

Another thread reminded me of something else which is kinda "broken": Vortex of Doom .

It has a higher chance of increasing in size than decreasing in size, and probability suggests it will more or less grow inifinately, albeit at a rather slow pace.

Would be easy to fix, by having a slightly bigger chance of it decreasing in size, or perhaps give it a 50/50.