I've been talking to a friend that is playing in a Deathwatch game. He's been informing me of the hilarious hijinx and the fact that they call themselves Special-Marines (the DERP kind of special), probably because their melee combat fury ridden Blood Angel was taken out by a grandmother with a rake after he tried to jetpack up to her through a hole in the living room floor of her house...yes, this happened. So my house mate and several other of our friends decided to dissect the book and figure out what to do. These are the things they've come up with:

1.) For 15 Req you can add or remove a trait from a gun. Is there a limit to this or is it just do as you please? An example I've been given is a Bolter with Felling 2, Storm, Toxic, Devastating and Accurate. Once I looked these things up I nearly cried. Is this possible, or are they missing something? Also there's a breach weapon that does something around 4d10+5, which is balanced because it's Unwieldy. Yet, you can spend 15 Req to remove the Unwieldy trait and then dual-wield them, thus having spent 30 Req (15 for each) you now have two 4d10+5 plus strength bonus with a power field weapons. I know the damage is probably not completely correct, but you understand.

2.) With Req 15 you can also get 100-300 Reserve Guardsman Horde (Mag 50). My friends want to know, can you combine them into a Mag 200 Horde that eats lightning and craps thunder? I said I wouldn't allow it if I was GM but the book doesn't seem to specific. Also, is there a limit to how many times you can take this? Kinda defeats the purpose of an elite shadowy space marine faction when one guy has 300-900 men (for 45 Req, 15 each) following him around and shooting their flashlights at anything that moves.

Please give any assistance you can before I have to burn them all for being Heretics.

-Mike C

Is this stuff in RoB? Because with the core book neither of those two points are even options in the RAW. For comparison, it costs 15 req for 24 rounds of Kraken ammunition for you standard boltgun, which gives you extra range and +3 pen.

I suspect they're taking you for a ride.

They are not lying to you about the mechanics, but they are possibly trying to pull a fast one as the entry says that the GM has final say on whether any of these modifications can be applied to a weapon and can even stipulate that a particular quality cannot be on a ranged or melee weapon. Also, Arcane Weaponry has a renown requirement of Respected, so they may or may not be eligible for this option in the first place. Personally I'd say no to balanced on breaching augers as these are not weapons, but rather tools that can be used in a lethal manner.

On the subject of the guardsmen I would tell them that beyond a certain point they are requesting an overly excessive amount of Imperial resources to complete their mission and tell them to spend their requisition on other things.

There is a Combat Mark that costs 1000 XP that lets the GM pick 2 weapon traits for a player that they can then add, one at a time, to an Astartes weapon.

Imperial Guard assets, as well as others, are available for Req. Just because they are around, doesn't mean they are available. The book does specifically state that the players must figure out how to get the support unit to them. This means they will need to Req transport for 100-300 people. A single Chimera costs 30 Req.

Never forget, the GM can always say:

NO!

or

Anything you can do, so can your enemies!

Thanks everyone,

That's pretty much what I was figuring. I just had to find out what the rest of the community thought. Thankfully, I'm not running the game. I busy with my RT game that has these guys in it. Thankfully enough, they're not stupid in my game I've given them a healthy fear of what a GM can do when pressed past the limit of what's acceptable. I definitely agree about the Auger though, even if my house mate would argue, which is what we're doing right now. So I told him that I'd never allow it in my game and he conceded the argument. I always figured that the GM had final call, I was just making sure they didn't miss something, my Arch Militant didn't know what the Storm or Tear traits did on his Storm Bolter till the second session- mid combat. So I figured they only read what sounded right and forgot to read the part that really lays down the law.

Again thanks,
-Mike C

This....this tells me they're not taking their DW game seriously...so long as they're having fun though...

Eskilius Quinn said:

Could have been one bad ass granny

In the first case, isn't that for special weaponry from the Inquisition. they need to be able to have access to them before they can get hold of them. No matter how much the players want a felling (12), toxic, storm, devastating (99) weapon, that doesn't mean that there is one in the arms locker. No matter how much money I had, I could not buy a car capable of 3000mph, for example. So the brake on that is simple common sense. Just as in D&D 3.5 the magic item creation rules in the DMG were clearly broken if your GM didn't say 'no, you jerk', so are those rules.

Yes: You can get hordes of guard to do your fighting for you. I wouldn't allow the horde to be combined though, because that's not how the rules say it works. Furthermore there are times when this isn't going to work either: There might not be any IG available, or the party might have been inserted in a way that means they can't have IG with them (ie boarding torpedo). Finally, DW missions are normally rather secretive. The IG might not have the clearance to be sent on such a mission.

More importantly, think about what's happening here: The players have been sent on a mission. They elect to take along a Coy of IG to do their work for them. There's no way in hell I'd allow them to take the Oath of Glory under that situation ('yay, we are so glorious and we're letting these plebs do our dirty work!), and I'd give them less Renown for the mission too, because they relied on others to do all the hard work.

Anyone can abuse rules. It's not hard. It's not even very clever, given how loose the rules are. That's why every RPG says very clearly in Chapter 1 'The GM's word is final'.

Most of the uses of Req to gain support shouldn't be seen as abuses - they are simply how things should be done. One group may Req an extra Heavy Bolter while another takes that IG Company. Both are valid choices. The missions can be quite BIG, and smart DW teams will know better than to try and handle it all themselves.

I'm not for restricting choices overmuch. Just keep the game challenging and adapt to the game the players want to play.

Oh yeah, and regarding the IG not having the clearance to accompany the team, that's crap. The IG Company that you take is what has been scrounged up from reserves. They may lack the clearance to return from the mission alive, but if you pay the Req, they'll be sent in.

HappyDaze said:

I agree. Going on the mission isn't the issue, it's what happens after the mission that is the problem. That IG company has a very high likely hood of being executed or, at the least, mind wiped after the mission.

Would the players be OK with the deaths of an entire IG company after that company helped them complete their mission?

The IG are very good for take and hold missions with secondary objectives. They may risk loosing the objectives but gets them time to handle the side jobs, etc.

Anywho a 50 horde guard against a few Genstealer hordes probably won't fare long or enslavers or [death bringing Xeno/Chaosy/virus/etc].

Genestealer HORDES?!

No, I guess they wouldn't last long. But then nor would the PCs.

Deathwatch is a secretive organisation, that performs secretive missions. Small teams can accomplish that with no fuss or bother. Get into the palace, ice the Tau diplomats, have a quiet 'word' with the local rules about loyalty to humanity? No problem. Infiltrate a xenos base after a 250km hike in the jungle? No worries. Quickly cross a city full of rampaging xenos without drawing too much attention and blow some crap up? We'll be back for breakfast.

As soon as you want to take 300 men along (y'know: 100 men to a Coy, and all that), the vast majority of Deathwatch missions become rather less viable. Perhaps 'clearance' was the wrong word. Perhaps 'would blow any chance of the mission being remotely secret out of the water' would be better.

There's also the fact that at a secretive place like eroich, there isn't just gobs of imperial guard lying around. At best, there might be some inquistorial storm troopers, which you'd probably have to be really good with an inquisitor to use, and then I don't see them letting you have 300 of them.

Imperial Assets as a chapter is designed to allow players and GMs to have options, but they're more based on the mission.. If the Deathwatch has to capture and hold a building of some kind from orks on an imperial world, they might be able to req the troops to hold the base after they capture it, so that they can then go and kill the warboss leading the charge. It's just kinda like vehicles. ROB presents a lot of really good suggestions on vehicles, but just because players can ask for a vehicle every mission doesn't mean they should get one every time. Sometimes the missions just don't require it.

I think somebody said it already in this thread, but there are people who assume because there are options the book presents those are rules that you can use all the time, even if it says explicitly in the text "If your GM allows it".

HappyDaze said:

Love it!

Siranui said:

Total side tangent, but it was noticed by some that it's actually eaiser to kill the genestealers in TEP when they from a horde than it is when they are attacking as individuals, mainly because they go from 15 stealers with 20 wounds each armor 6 toughness 6 down to a mag 10 horde (essentially 10 wounds instead of 300 that are now vulnerable to horde killing talents and ammo).

I've not run it yet, but I have a hunch the issue is simply a misuse of the magnitude...

on a planet with war raging, i would allow KT to not take one special bolter ammo clip and have around company of IG for support, support with all flaws and merits. (normal IG love to "take initiative to redeploy as far away of enemy as possible", or just be slaughtered ), and most req uses from RoB are... to much WoW or D&D like for my taste.

Daisuke said:

That's not a particularly fast "fast one" if that's what they're trying to pull. The Golden Rule of all RPGs is that the rules presented in the book are only guidelines. Theoretically, making a statement like that in any chapter of the book is just being redundant.

To the OP: If you don't like these ideas, stop them. If you want to impose a limit on modifications (or kibosh them all together) then do so. If your friends refuse to play or some nonsense like that then fine, let one of them be the GM for a while, and then you can show them first hand how ridiculous these combos they're so insistent on using can be. =P

Charmander said:

Easier to kill, maybe. But consider the addition of 2d10 to genestealer damage, and making it impossible to parry...

HappyDaze said:

I tend to agree. I remember how in "Final Liberation", instead of sending in a few companies of Mordian Iron Guard with a bunch of Leman Russes and Thudd Guns, I sent in an entire Legion of cheap PDF supported by a couple Basilisks. It still was a balanced fight, just way more bloody. At the end of the battle, the entire city was covered with ruins and corpses.

And just like in that battle I would expect a lot of the Guard units requisitioned by the players in DW to simply break and run. Those requisitioning points the player has invested there can pretty easily turn to smoke once a bunch of 'nids start rushing into the Guard formation.

Charmander said:

I still think anything is easier to kill in a Horde than individually. Including Eldar and Marines.

Personally I do not have problems with the requisitioning of IG. Special Forces ( the DW ) are not a "cure all"- remedy but work best when working in concert with regular forces. There are several tactical situations that might necessitate the deployment of a supporting unit.

- The Kill-team descents into an underground tunnel system/hive/etc and the IG unit guards the entry ways to stop any outbreaks while the team terminates with extreme prejudice.

- The IG detachment establishes an extraction point for the Kill-team ( landing pad, jungle clearing ).

- The IG detachment performs a diversion to draw the enemy attention away from the real threat ( the Kill-team ).

As far as i remember the Asset of getting and arcane weapons specificly says that you borrow a weapons with an added or Supressed quality for 15 req, to me this means that you can buy 6 different weapons with one quality added or supressed, but you cant stack the qualities (Felling (1) on 2 weapons, but not Felling (2) on a weapon), other than that i tend to say they can at most get 2-3 weapons but usually onle 1.

Last game i played my team got hold of 2 heavy weapons teams. These were used to secure a Core Cogitator and an Extraction point so they didn't really mattered unless the team had come under attack in these 2 locations. Same could be applied to a reserve unit. Also anything with a Fear rating could potentially "kill" the entire reserve unit on a bad WP roll. You could also go with the Final Sanction aproach and say "hey guys, your horde negates and enemy horde", i would though say that they could negate an equal magnitude horde. Meaning that when the reserve fights another horde both hordes remove an equal amount of magnitude until one of them dies.