Reposting from the disucission on the main forum

home.arcor.de/tkis21/Download/Deathwatch%20Chaplain%20v0.3.pdf

Explanations as to why things are as they are:

Chaplain Stat advancement table and his Ranks are based on the Librarian table, who also has a lot of Lore skills in his Rank advancements, hence the cheap Intelligence.

I follow the Skill necessary for a Talent before the actual Talent Route, that means that a skill like Charm which is necessary for a Talent like Litany of Hate is available 1 or 2 ranks before it on the progression scale.

Number of Lore and Skill Advancements is comparable to a Librarian, what can be cut out though are various melee talents, should the table be really too saturated with talents. In total the oversaturation with talents and skills is not worse than that of a Librarian, and there were no forumwide complaints until now about those.

The choice of advancements was rather obvious with WP, Fel and WS being the most used stats, Int made the cut to keep on par with other Lore heavy Specialties like Apothecaries and Librarians. Main reasoning for that was the heavy Lore dependancy implied by FFG in their version, going up to 500 progression for INT would hamper the Specialty in its Lore Skills Progress.

I will probably still do some balancing and shifting around of the combat abilities, but the general framework will stay as it is.

tkis said:

I still would prefer 3 cheap characteristics only but that's a matter of taste. Also, you might want to ponder making perception of medium pricing - chaplains need to detect impurities in their brothers after all. In fact I would consider making Scrutiny a prime skill too.

Another thought is whether all or most skills need to max out at +20. Sometimes it's okay to only go to +10 or +0 as this represents the max level of the average character. Going beyond average would then require an elite advance to signify the PCs unusual focus in a certain area.

And while what you say is true about the Librarian, it is the most overpowered specialty (at least in this regard) and I think there have been no complaints because there probably hasn't been too much in-depth analysis of specialties against each others. What I am trying to say is that if I would homebrew something, I'd b shy to model it against the "best" specialty or chapter, etc. Not saying that what you do is wrong but that I'd personally aim for a middle level first and possibly tack on later.

Also a certain amount of Lore dependency does not necessarily mean that they need to have an Int boost. Rather it could mean that that they are not the intellectual otherwise but have a narrow focussed area in which they amass knowledge - their sprituality/faith, etc.

Just giving my angle on why I'd have made it slightly different from your set-up (I'd also have it made a higher rank specialty), not saying your approach is wrong or anything. In fact, I like it better than the published chaplain.

Alex

Scrutiny and Perception is a good point, however right now the primary concern is as to which melee talents are not needed, hammer blow is one i am heavily considering to toss out, while Berserk Charge and Furious Assault fit the Chaplain nicely. What is really questionable though is Swift Attack, i would prefer the Chaplain to Focus on single powerfull Attacks instead of multiple Strikes an Assault can get, so trading in Swift Attack for Hammer Blow or Thunder Charge is also an option. Basically anything emphasising angry Marine is a nice and fitting option.

New version is up home.arcor.de/tkis21/Download/Deathwatch%20Chaplain%20v0.4.pdf

Overall i am pretty happy with it, being a close combat oriented Tactical Marine alternative for a Squad Leader, while not emulating the Assault Marine close combat route

Stunningly good presentation. *Really* nice.

Critique-time:

3 cheap stats, 1 expensive one. Skill/talent lists longer than pretty much everyone else. Command for free. Feerless for free. Intimidation for free.

Crosius AND a bolter with fire selector for free. I don't have RoB on me, but isn't that a power weapon at rank 1? Bonus Cohesion and a special oath for free.

= Ouch.

I think that you need to move the stat-ups in-line with the more typical characters, rather than exception cases. New material should in my opinion be about options, not power, and should always look to level with or be slightly inferior mechanically to the average, rather than the best.

I can't see most players bothering with most of the new talents, due to their FP cost. As 'freebies' as part of the advanced speciality they work, but as 500xp options, I'm unsure that they do.

I can understand and see for myself that everything is 100% fully justified as being on the list*, but there's still too much stuff there in comparison with other classes.

How about taking a step back to bring it in line with other things. After all: Rank 1 is a newly inducted Chaplain or trainee one. Primarily an apprentice to more senior Chaplains and a relic-keeper. Why is he already trained to lead squads, for example?

*Except Charm. Chaplains are hate-filled marines who rule and inspire by fear. Charm should really not be on the progression.

Siranui said:

Statwise below Librarian and Apothecary on par with Tactical, no unnatural stat is among the cheap stats, making investment into stats less effective when compared to Assault, Devastator and Tech

Equipment is more or less on par with Librarian, Assault and Tech

Special oath being either a sole oath or perhaps with oath of Glory as second, in cotrast to oath and possible squad mode flexibility of the tactical being his distinct advantage

Squad mode functionality only, hence free talent (having a huge downside to it) and skills

New talents provide huge advantages to the team as whole, are very much worth the points, but are included as optional for those not interested in them, or reluctant to spend fate points

Relic keepers most probably being the senior among chaplains, staying to reclusiam most of the time and only joining most senior Astartes ranks in battle

Charm description specifically including a chaplain example, charm being among the base mechanics of the specialty tied to Litany of Hate

Command being included from the start as the specialty is specifically designed to pesent a close combat oriented alternative to a tactical

Melee being significantly more dangerous than ranged with the exclusion of cover and inability to avoid damage from hordes, balanced against more less free advances for a starting tactical

Special close combat weapon being the dedicated weapon throughout the whole carrier balances against significantly higher close combat prowess and flexibility of an assault at starting ranks, provides less damage output than a servo arm, and looses out against a combination of free force weapon and psy powers

My thoughts went along the same points you mentioned and i tried to adress those as good as possible, so it was actually quite easy to have an answer ready for every point nice to see though, that people think along the same lines

Yup: I can see that everything is 100% fully justified.

It's just that it still makes a really big a mountain of cake. Sometimes even stuff that is legitimately there needs to be culled to bring things in line.

OT: I'm not too sure I swallow the 'melee is more dangerous' thing. Sure: You can't parry hordes. But 90% of combats come down to melee eventually, and ranged characters then really suffer for their art.

Siranui said:

I think the probability of melee and ranged happening can be easily balanced by GM in most cases, however ranged is only truly dangerous against Tau and CSM, or Vehicles (which are a death sentence in most cases anyway). At least in my games so far Hordes made the most impact on players injuries, but it boils down to the gamestyle i guess.

Siranui said:

These talents iirc were a dissection of the Icon of Duty talent which isn't free for the original Chaplain but at a cost of 1,500 xp. I believe tkis seperated it into 3 parts at 500 each which is fair enough.

About charm: the problem I have with that is that it makes a chaplain someone good at talking someone in a pleasant manner, swaying their opinions about about anything. The tkis you mentioned refers to a specific use of charm, namely to inspire. I'd rather scratch charm+10/20 and create a new talent that gives a situational bonus to Fel tests when trying to inspire or to impress people with your brand of faith or perhaps to intimidate. But of course one might want to keep the amount of new talents and stuff as low as possible.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Which is what i am trying to do now, as i am severely fed up of cleaning up FFGs mess to tailor it to my group, my list of houserules is growing by the day

tkis said:

Which is why I take the Chaplain as is. I've been focussing my efforts on making the weapons balanced in a manner that I appreciate and fix the smaller system bugs ad hoc. If I had a die-hard Chaplain fan as a player, I might create a custom Chaplain career for him similar to what you have done.

Creating even a near perfect system is too much work unless you're getting paid for it. Life's much easier if you treat running a system like driving a car - you only react to obstacles and focus on driving home otherwise.

Alex

hehe i went the easy way with weapons instead of many other things, +1d10 to melta and plasma, plasma overheats on 89 if fired at semi auto on maximum mode, and melta has penetration 20 at close range

tkis said:

My usual zeal for house-rules is tempered by wanting to standardise with others who will run games for the group. I'm trying to persevere and stick to published stuff plus errata as much as possible, so that everyone sings off the same hymn-sheet. Generally -unless everyone unanimously wants a fix- I'm trying to avoid additions. An 'If it ain't REALLY broke, don't fix it' approach.

Every game system ever written is full of flaws. I don't think FFG have really been any worse than most publishers in that respect.

OT: I think making 'volatile' do RF on a 9-10 is a good start in fixing it. Maybe -5+1d10 damage to make it more likely. Meltas are situational, but also have 'soft' uses outside of combat, for breaching and anti-material work.

tkis said:

That will have to be properly balanced against vehicles though. From what I have gathered from Shadow of Madness and stats of the Land Raider posted here, the AP variance of vehicles might be a bit too high. Land Raider AP 50? How can you kill it with a Meltagun?

Anyway I ran into problems in general because I think bolt weapons are too good - particularly the HB but if you nerf hard, the Storm Bolter suddenly becomes very good in comparison.

Alex

I'm not actually keen on being able to kill a land raider with a meltagun. Multimelta: Yes. But taking out the premier MBT with a non-heavy weapon doesn't sit right to me.

Siranui said:

Thats why i love the forums, one can skim over some ideas and pick the ones one likes.

Overall Deathwatch is playable RAW, my main problem is that at certain points it collides rather heavily with my perception of 40K "reality". In former times i went through the rigours of rebalancing and rewriting the systems to suit my needs, i dont have that time and dedication anymore, as life goes on.

I pay good money for a product hence i expect it to be as perfect as possible, people expect exactly the same from me after all, and i dont have the luxury to state that my work is always inherently flawed. Seeing it not being thoroughly produced just makes me cringe, as i have enough experience in such issues to be able to approximately judge how much more effort and man hours should have been put in to iron the last wrinkles out.

Siranui said:

Except that I don't really base my game on what the current incarnation of a very poorly implemented skirmish wargame says. I don't care what other GMs do with it, but in my eyes Land raider > melta gun.

Meltaguns are great against fixed emplacements, and indeed most tanks (although I'm never sure of the wisdom of attacking armour from 30 feet away...). However the Landraider is pretty much THE most heavily armoured (non-titan) vehicle in the galaxy, bar none. It should ignore pretty much everything but the heaviest of weapons. Certainly something that's not only man-portable, but as light as a meltagun and able to be fired with one hand should not be able to defeat it. It's just nonsense.

Plus - logically - if the metlagun can defeat any aspect of the armour on the most heaviliy armoured vehicle in the galaxy... what's the multi-melta for? Why make it? For an extra few yards of range? Use a las cannon, then and stand a PROPER distance away. If the meltagun is the ultimate in close range tank-killing, there is no role for the multi-melta.

Siranui said:

Don't forget that we are talking about Astartes-grade melta though. And in tank-hunting range of course does matter. (And the Lascannon isn't the primary long range tankhunter anymore, unless we're talking about very long ranges. That title goes to the multi-melta.) You need to get within 30m of the LR to get max damage.

I am in this case a bit on the TT side too: I'd like to see the droppod-sternguard-combimelta combo for tank-hunting work here too. Non-Astartes melta should work against many of the IG vehicles well enough. Astartes melta should work against Astartes grade vehicles. However a kill against a Landraider shouldn't be guaranteed - but a real threat.

Also, as in real life, armour should be accompanied and guarded by enough infantry. Even the heaviest tank should be vulnerable to close range infantry attacks by the best anti-armour weapon you can find. That should be the Astartes Multi-melta. What would you expect if you'd send unsupported tanks into the heart of Moscow? I'd expect lots of burning tanks.

Alex

ak-73 said:

We are. But if an Astartes-grade metlagun can do everything, why use a multi-melta? Ever?

The meltagun is capable of taking out 99% of tanks on the battlefield. Fair enough. But I say 'no' to the Landraider. That's a job for the multimelta.

I'd probably expect a military procession, given that the current ratio of tanks driven through Moscow on parade to burning tanks on Moscow streets is pretty close to 1:0....

Siranui said:

Because it forces you to get within 10m of the tank to do full damage. At that range you might want to consider a satchel charge (read:meltabomb) instead. The multimelta at least allows 30m range. The traitor infantry probably will not allow you that near, at least not without taking massive amounts of fire. Which means that the damage and AP of the LR and Meltagun/MM need to be balanced against so that it needs the additional +1d10 to do serious damage.

The use of the Lascannon is at long ranges. 250+ m. It will need a lucky hit against a LR though. Or lots of shooting at it.

Siranui said:

What I was trying to convey is: the russian military would have enough sophisticated anti-tank infantry weaponry to take out Abrams tanks. They could fire them out of windows and pop back. The role of the meltagun is a very close range tank destroyer. The multi-melta should have a very hard time doing any damage to the LR beyond its 30m short range. Consider this: multi-melta, tough to do any damage beyond 30m.

If that interpretation of the LR doesn't make him bada**, I don't know what does. Please consider that in 40K TT the difference between meltagun and MM is the range and the range only (okay, ROF differs too). At 6 inch it does totally the same damage and has the same chances of penetration (S8 AP1). But in DW the MM already does significantly more damage (which doesn't sit all that right with me).

Alex

Yes, I understand that taking tanks into an urban environment is dumb. Although firing anti-tank missiles out of windows isn't a great plan, either!

I like the fact that the MM does more damage than the melta. It's bigger, and has two barrel things, and did more damage in 40k:RT. So it sits fine with me. Additionally, my own interpretation of what I want meltaguns to be incapable of in this case miraculously coincides with the rules. As per my post yesterday, I want to avoid house-rules. So I'm not going to house-rule away something that coincides with my own interpretation of what I want a weapon to do.

As I said: LRs are amongst the heaviest armoured things in the galaxy. I want them to be VERY tough.

Stormblade, ShadowBane and BaneBlade tanks fielded by the IG.... I do believe they sit in the power and toughness range right between the Land Raider and Titans.

tkis said:

Looks pretty good tkis, might use that one if one of my players clammers for one.

Glad some of you liked it, my primary group did not, accordding to them its lackluster and lacks hitting power, as they have already figured out, that the assault marine is a natural choice for RoB template Chaplain. They did not look for a chaplain as a leader type character with some melee abilities, but rather for a melee type character with some leadership abilities.