I have been brewing ideas for mission sets involving the Tau. Their stats are presented in the DW Core book and they have some impressive ranged skills. It would be an incredibly great switch from the Melee heavy Tyrannids. The biggest problem I'm seeing is the lack of any Melee elements to challenge my Astartes players. Once the Assault Marine engages that Tau Commander in Melee combat, the Commander can no longer use those impressive Plasma Rifles anymore.

Are there any Tau units that have impressive melee fighting that I could adapt?

Short of finding any, I'm thinking of introducing a new marvel of Tau innovation: Beam swords. ..I can see the incredulous "Really?" looks from my players now.

Thoughts from anyone else?

Watch Captain Shaw said:

In short Tau suck in melee. They are supposed to. They employ Kroot which are quite okay in close combat. See the mission in the DW GM Kit.

Alex

Tau commanders often have jump capable suits so the ability to jump out of combat and fire on you as they jump is handy this should make them difficult to catch in melee, for melee what about kroot hounds ? Krootox etc but personally if the players have weathered the incomming fire from the tau and caught the commander they deserve to get to soft squishy bits

yeah just keep the commander moving. he has auto stabilised and flier 12 I believe so he can jetpack 12 meters into the air and then open up with both on semi auto. this will allow for epic aerial duels, and don't be afraid to take the hit and move him out of combat without disengaging, a half move will put him far enough away that then he can semi auto with impunity. same goes for stealth suits. as for hordes, hordes of kroot are ok in melee as has been mentioned.

Also don't underestimate how brutal tau can be at range, a size 30 horde (not very big really) can fire 4 times on full auto, each hit doing 4d10+2 pen 4 and they will keep shooting even if you break them or engage them in combat. Personally to prevent my players being overwhelmed/give them good roleplay opportunities I use lots of traitor guardsmen on a tau occupied world with just a smattering of tau.

Nice! Great ideas, and I think they will help with my Tau missions a lot. Thanks for the help.

I agree, Firewarriors hordes can be devastating but I keep them small, but many (Magnitude 15). This (I think) emulates better fire-squads moving around the battlefields, trying to flank opponents, covering each other (one squad pins, other move). 1 such horde per PC is quite a challenge!

On a different note - I recently tested one Stealth Suit Tau firing at a Techmarine at point-blank. Out of his full auto 8 hits he dealt 1 point of damage...

Sadness! Was it just bad dice? I know Techmarines can negate tons of damage with their ability to stack armor to insane heights, but one point is still sad.

Tau Commander is a pretty tough opponent if played right. His ability to use Flyer can really cause issue.

Also yea, Fire Warrior hordes can be pretty nasty. I actually downed a PC on accident before I realized this. He had some FP to use for wound recovery so it wasn't too bad, but a bit of an eye opener.

No, actually it turned out to be a memorable moment: the tau stealthie sneaks up, opens fire, stares in disbelief at 'ping ping ping' on the Tech's armour. The Techmarine turns showing that he is bearing a Heavy Bolter and opens up his full auto at point blank. Tau chunks fly around.

Just realised one more thing - with many small Tau firewarrior hordes, each one attacks twice!

Watch Captain Shaw said:

Their rifle does 2d10+2 pen 4, max of 26 points worth of penetration...a fully loaded tech marine is bad news for xenos. Should've hit him with a melta charge or an EMP grenade

Tau are underpowered.

Plasma Rifle: make Pen 10, perhaps ROF3
Missile Pod: add d10 damage (perhaps 2d10), make ROF 4
Burst Cannon: add d10 damage , make ROF 6
Pulse Weapons: add d10 damage

Now that seems a lot more representative of the devastating power of Tau ranged fire in 40K Tabletop, don't you think?

tl;dr = Tau need to do more damage in 40K Roleplay, see my new stat block.

Alex

PS On a serious note, I am undecided on whether I should commit to those changes as they'd make the marines less epic. Probably instead of adding a d10, only add 3 to damage for each d10. Would probably result in a hybrid power level inbetween TT and novels.

ak-73 said:

You know, you can still be epic and not blow up all of your enemies. I think of the demon prince and his ilk, this is a NPC that could mop the floor with the corpses of most non-marine characters, but the marines are able to go (practically, if they roll good ;-) ) toe to toe with this bad boy.

I'd think if you showed the Tau to your players as an incredibly high tech force that can blast apart standard Imperial formations with ease, the increased damage coming from their guns wouldn't be too terrible. Though I do agree with your hybrid, as I see that you'd need to be careful with hordes, as hordes are supposed to be line troops (though I do like the sugeston some have proposed of making the hordes small in actual number, but large in mag, which will give them a significant damage boost, rate of fire, etc.)

I dont think pulse rifles should be improved. in hordes the turn PC's into mush. personally I do think burst cannons leave a little something to be desired. after a while in my campaign I started outfitting stealth suits with fusion blasters in stead. I just copy and pasted meltagun statistics, but the combination of stealth suit and jet pack to get up close and opening up with melta guns is extremely threatening to pcs and made for some wonderful predator style encounters

Narkasis Broon said:

Wow. Predator style stealth suits. ...That totally just got voted into my tau missions. Elite Stealth suits with fusion blasters: Approved! Though, i've been thinking of adding some kind of oversized shield that a stealthsuit could carry and fire weapons from behind it. Sort of a.. riot shield. +4 to all armor, except for the arm not holding the shield. It might give them an extra round of combat at the most. Make them seem more like "elites".

also rail rifles. which I made by using plasma guns that couldnt fire on maximal, or semi auto, but they had a longer range and the accurate property

I don't see any point in changing the stats. It just makes the players feel less like the ultimate killing machines that they SHOULD feel like.

If I want to do more damage to the party, I'll use larger hordes and more bad guys. That way I get what I want (more risk) and the players get to feel even more awesome for taking on such vast numbers.

I don't want my game balanced with the TT, where Marines are pretty poor. I want it in line with the fiction, and I want my players to really have a blast playing mankind's finest.

I agree with Siranui. in terms of just modifying weapons because you dont think they are powerful enough. having said that I think the hardest thing as a GM in this game is finding that balance where the PC's aren't completely impervious but also don't get dragged down in about 5 seconds

If you want to really be evil, add a Broadside suit.

Using Rites of Battle, you can get the Railgun stats (twin linked), add extra armor points, remove flyer, add unnat Str (x3)

You now have a Very long-ranged sniper that can both take hits and deal out damage in HTH

For extra fun, add a shield generator