so i had a chance to look at the book at the FLGS yesterday (unfortunately, they only had one book for two of us wanting to buy and i lost out!) and i have to say that some of the stuff in there is definitely overpowered if you simply LET your pc's pick and choose instead of rolling as recommended. an example is the Mk8 armor... i can't see ANY disadvantage over getting it compared with the mk7. it's got better chest armor, the ability to deflect head shots, and a disadvantage compared to mk7 of... nothing! the mk6 beakie has a +10 agility and +5 perception for -1 chest armor; i'd say that it definitely in the plus category but it at least has some disadvantage. in addition, there is a deed that lets you for 300pts IIRC pick an armor ability instead of rolling for one; you could easy simply pick a Mk8 armor chest for your mk6 and get a chest armor of 11, +10 agility, two armor abilities, and +5 perception compared with a Mk7 set for 300xp. in the end, none of this is absolutely gamebreaking and easily houseruled so no huge deal but definitely an eyebrow raiser.

i see a somewhat balance in that the new armors are supposed to be rolled for (instead of chosen) but i think i'll allow my pc's to choose their armor types as a signature wargear pick. they'll still have to roll for the armor abilities (no choosing the ones the armor comes with "free") though. in addition, i'll probably change the mk8 to have NO armor ability (its too new fluffwise to have a history/quirks) and the mk6 to a +5 to agility instead. any thoughts on this? i'm trying to give my players the ability to fairly customize their marines (and figs since we do use them and most of us play 40k) but to not unbalance the game too much when doing so.

i do appreciate that FFG included this stuff though in the book and its one of the MANY reasons this one is a MUST BUY for any serious DW

Why is the Mk VIII being more powerful a bad thing? It's supposed to be. Astartes Power Armor is one of the only things there actually has been some technological progress in the Imperium for. Admittedly, it's also still a bit rare, those things don't come out quick. Fluffwise, usually in use by champions and officers.

Dulahan said:

in the grand scheme of things, it's not a bad thing but it does show some power creep in regards to the second book compared with the first (and that is a bad thing if there is no cost to it). i don't want deathwatch to turn into rifts where the older books are crap and the same stuff in newer books is just a whole lot better for no additional cost/price. variety and customization is a good thing as long as its overall balanced in some way.

on second thought, though, i think i'll keep the bonuses on mk6 and mk8 as is without any houserules if the players pay for the armor via signature wargear; if the group vote prefers to randomly roll for armor, then i'll change it as i wrote since it'll be "free" bonuses to certain players that happen to roll it.

Small point: Mk8 also grants a +5 bonus to Command Tests.

Yes, many of these are showing power creep. The Mk6 being particularly troublesome. I do recommend dropping it to +5 Agility, but otherwise it might be OK. It should be noted that it's pretty easy to swap parts between Mk6 and Mk7 suits (and Mk8 suits might be able to do the same too). It really should be pretty common to see Mk6 suits with Mk7 Elements (Aquila Chestplate), and if a player wants that, I'd let him take it as one of his two armour history rolls, but I'd probably have it also eliminate his +5 Agility.

HappyDaze said:

totally forgot about the +5 command.. yet another mk8 freebie. i'm a big fan of balance between players (i don't have them roll for attributes but have them assign the 100pts) as well as customization within limits (i don't want a player who has his heart set on playing an assault marine roll a ws33 and ag32). i'd like to incorporate the armor variants as a reasonable choice for a cost and i think the two i listed step just over the line as a freebie from rolling on a chart compared with the standard. charging for sig wargear to get your choice of base armor feels like a good compromise.

You could also allow the guy that takes Mk7 to have a choice of his Armour History to compensate for getting nothing extra compared to every other suit out there.

I think the Mk6 is the best armor. +10 agility and 2 armor histories for one less chest armor is rellay good imo. A blood angel is getting big bonuses to ws and agility if he rolls alright on the history table.

But the best is being a Consecrator with Mk6 as your mastercrafted wargear. That is a really sweet set of power armor.

nolsutt said:

Consecrator with Master-Crafted Mk4 isn't bad if you want some heavy Fellowship bonuses with your Space Marine buddies. Like, say.. going for Chaplain!

Ya know what you do when one of your players decides to be a sneaky little git and pick the system apart to try and twink his armour.

You slap them in the side of the head with your hardcover and tell them to stop being a munchkin.

Blood Pact said:

Or you could accept that some players get enjoyment from such things. So long as it does no harm, why stop them? The trick is making sure that the selections are all reasonably balanced to begin with, and that might take a little tweaking.

I don't think OP means what you think it does. Is an extra point of armour good? Yes. Is it over-powered and game-breaking? No.

There really is no surprise in that you say: That allowed to pick something from a table that is supposed the be random, some players will pick the one that's mechanically best. That's why it's supposed to be random, and that's why there's more Wizards than Truenamers in 3.5. This is basically a case where the GM needs to use that thing that GMs are supposed to use: Common sense. If a player has something cool in mind for their armour then the GM CAN say 'yes'. But if a player is just being beardy, the GM can just say 'no'.

It's all fairly moot in the long term in the long term anyway, when players get Termy suits and Artificer armour...

HappyDaze said:

But what about my enjoyment as a GM? I enjoy pummelling power gamers with hardback rulebooks. I own the entire Imperial Armour series and all published 40kRP books for just such a purpose.

Fundamentally, the GM bending over and accepting what players do because "some players get enjoyment from such things" is doing an injustice to GMing. Every GM has their own style and their own preferences, and while some GMs are willing to tolerate power-gaming from their players, others (such as myself) are not. Consequently, my group doesn't contain any, because I choose not to include such players in my games.

To this day I will never understand why GM's or players moan cry and whine about gear and what not in games. If you are a GM and want balance issues fixed just tell the players "No" its not that hard. If you don't want to be that hard on them then give what ever it is to the players "with in reason" and then give them tougher encounters. Or just not let them have anything unless they pay for it. Best yet is to not lat them have any and then give it to the players as rewards. Personally I think all players should have standard armor and only gain better armor as seen fit by the GM as treats for spectacular role playing. e.g. You managed to escape the clutches of the chaos marine hoard after retrieving the geneseed of your fallen battle brothers during the raid on the chaos ships engines and stopping them from escaping to the warp. Do to your heroism and blaa blaa blaa you are rewarded this set of MK (whatever) armor and so on and so forth. Makes it all worth it IMHO.

Siranui said:

pssst... read the first post.

Sanguinary Priest said:

do you have any ideas on how to make this balanced for a campaign in which the players want a chance of armors and one in which the GM thinks its not unreasonable with some tweaking? as for the suggestion that it doesn't matter because of terminator armor and artificer.... termie armor requires 100 req which they've so far *never* gotten for a mission and artificer is hero level renown only IIRC (they're at 6 renown and rank 1 currently). we've got probably a calender year before that actually becomes an issue assuming weekly play and no change in the player base.

i do like the earlier suggestion of letting people that take or roll mk7 getting to simply choose their armor ability though.

from Lexicanum on Mk VIII 'Errant' Power Armour,

The suit itself is a highly modified Mark 7, with additional fixed armour plates on the torso that now enclose all of the suits cables, which were vulnerable to weapons fire, and a new armored collar protects the helmets respirator, and also addressed the vunerability issues of the neck joint, which had been know to act as a "shell-trap", (a round could hit the chest armour and deflect up into the neck joint). *explains the + 1 armour to the chest and the deflection*

The new collar required a new helmet design, which caused problems for backward compatibility with earlier helmet types .

*can be used to justify not letting players swap out the breastplate "willy-nilly" *

Mark 8 armor has only seen limited production thus far, and is seen in limited numbers on the battlefields of the 41st millennium. Often, it is worn by officers or squad leaders as a symbol of rank.

*explains the +5 to command*

I honestly dont see the problem, considering the fluff for the armor and the small bonuses it gives. If I had to house rule that armor, it would have been something very similar.

The Mk8, which only shows up 10% of the time, is not really too offensive to a perception of "strictly balanced" options. The Mk6, which shows up 30% of the time, is far worse. This is the armour that trades 1 AP off of its Body to get an extra +5 Auto-senses modifer, an extra roll on the armour history tables, and +10 Agility(!).

broutefoin said:

i think you're misunderstanding the problem some of us are having with the new armor types. the problem is NOT that they're better in certain ways, gamebreaking, or inconsistent with the fluff... the problem is that they are better with little to no downside or cost. if FFG had put a req or xp cost for each armor, that would have solved the problem. its like if they came out with a new model of bolter that you had to roll for in character creation; if you get it, you get 15m better range, 1 extra damage, and a 32 round clip (instead of 28)... if you got the first one as a player, you'd be thinking WTF? if instead, you had to pay 5 req to upgrade it to the cheesus maxiumus variant... it would at least be a choice. either way, i've gotten some ideas from others (letting players with mk7 choose their armor ability) and came up with some on my own too.

yes new armours are totally OP

mkVI with +10Ag.... big letdown, now every assault marine will dream about it.

mkVIII withouth command bonus is fine.

As for now most of RoB material is rubbish.

As far as all Assualt Marines wanting it: They do. I am sure it states somewhere that it is very popular with assault marines. OK, balance wise it is a bit wierd and +10 agility doesn't make much sense. However there is a background justification. Now, I would have said that it suffered less of a penalty to certain skills compared to other armour, rather than make it a flat +10 agility.

The +5 Auto-senses certainly makes sense as it is meant to have superior sensors (in the pointy nose).

Currently my armour is now Mark 5 with Mark 6 helmet and right arm (the latter making no difference what so ever). All I cared about was that I got the pointy helmet.

On the histories: Yes, an extra roll on the history table can be very powerful. It can also be utterly useless, or even negative. Having clanking armour is a pain in the arse if you are trying to be a sneaker. Incidently there are some abilities which are unclear what they do (what does Fear do? Ok, I know what it does, but does it do anything against hordes? Does "injury" mean any wound damage or just critical?).

One simple solution: Any Mk of armor that allows multiple histories does not grant the +1/-1 option on any of the rolls. Straight rolls only, no choice.

ItsUncertainWho said:

The alternate is to allow the Mk7 to have a greater choice, say a +/-2 to the roll or allowing the player to select which of the four history charts to roll on. I'm usually in favor of giving something extra rather than holding back.

Our GM didn't allow us the lee-way on histories when re-rolling our power armour, regardless of what armour you got.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Truthfully, I don't know why there are RPG power gamers. The majority of games require basic interaction with the other players and NPC's. Most of the power gamers I have seen stare blankly at the table or the GM until combat. Then they begin to express the advanced calculus of how much damage they do. I do not need the incarnation of MS Excel sitting at my table.

An old D&D GM told me long ago, if you get a power gamer you can do several things to curb him:

1. Aim for the rolls he is not good in. Make the combat monster have to negotiate or his head is in a noose.

2. There is always a rock to his scissors. How good is an axe wielding barbarian if he is being grappled by monk?

3. Rust Monsters were invented for a reason. If all else fails you can destroy gear or take his weapons away.

When they are begging for gear, say no. If you know that allowing people to OP things frustrates you, make them use the rolling table for the random "no". The GM is not the bad guy, but he is a god for that game. Like with kids, pull a firm line with players; they will like you more for it in the end.

hmk17 said:

I guess it's a good thing that I play with gaming atheists then.

Seriously though, I've met some powergamers that are excellent roleplayers. Just because they like to crunch numbers and get the most bang for their buck doesn't mean they lack in other ways.

HappyDaze said:

The two best players in my group are math experts- they get off on crunching numbers, but they're also both great actors and like to change up what they play. It's just when they play something they push it to its limits.

As for the general question, why not simply houserule a renown requirement and require req or signature wargear purchase? That seems to be one of the problems here, is the something for nothing and the potential balance issue when starting out.