BLAVCK BANNER

I have requested a 'Back Banner' for the next mission and we (me and GM) agreed the following:

- My character, as a Team Leader, can spend one Fate Point (FP) to increase 2 Cohesion Points (CP) above the start value or to renew used/lost Kill Team CP's.

- When my Kill Team uses 1 FP, the Kill Team CP increases by 1, even above the starting level.

Any other suggestions or ideas?

TEAM LEADER AND HIS CHAPTER OFFENSE/DEFENSE

Another question: The Team Leader cannot use his Chapter offensive or defensive for the whole Kill Team? I want to have the same feeling as Gimili and Legolas, even being from totally different cultures they can benefit from each others tactics.

GENERAL TACTICAL IDEAS & TIPS

Finally, some tactical ideas for a group consiting of the following:

- Blood Angel, Assault Marine

- Dark Angel, Techmarine

- Dark Angel, Librarian

- Space Wolf, Tactical Marine

By letter of the rules, the Kill-team may NOT use the leader's Chapter patterns, unless they are of the same Chapter. I completely understand your sentiment, but by letter of the rules, that's not how it works. You may wish to grovel to the GM to change this, or you can have a look through RoB and consider the various mechanics therein for side-stepping the problem. Specifically; check out the Strike Team Leader deed and the coresponding one for defensive patterns.

Likewise, by letter of the rules, spending a fate point when you are wearing a back banner does not restore a point of cohesion. All the back banner does is, if you spend a FP to increase cohesion, you get two instead of just one. Even if you were of the camp that claims that the letter of the rules *could* be construed as such, then it would be a self-only thing, and you certainly wouldn't get the cohesion for OTHER people spending fate. Plus: That would be a bit broken. 5 PCs with 3 fate each would result in the team gaining 15 Cohesion per session! That's really crazy.

The back banner is a very poor choice for requistion, as written. It certainly needs looking at, but the idea of gaining a point of cohesion any time anyone in the party spends fate is *way* overpowered. The rules are written to 'expect' the party to have access to maybe 10-20 FP a mission (starting amount, plus bonuses for objective completion). If you give them that plus another 15FP per session, it's going to be horribly unbalancing.

Siranui said:

How can you get it to 10-20 FP plus 15 FP..., don't follow you. There is only for example in our team, 3x4 FP = 12 FP.

I don´t think it is overpowered to get one FP per spent, considered some mission may take a considerable time and different tacticts along the way. The Back Banner is a great roleplaying item as well, and boosts a lot of confidence in in Kill Team.

Maybe it would be better to give the Back Banner a Cohesion bonus, that varies with for example the Rank of the Kill team Member wearing it? How about +3CP and +1 for every 2 Ranks? Would that be sufficient and reasonable?

Typically, a kill team would have a total number of Cohesion for a mission equal to the Fellowship bonus of the leader, plus a bit more for Command Ranks, plus a bit more for misc stuff, like Ultramarines and Rank.... so normally a little less than ten. Then the Team gets awarded another point for each objective. So we're probably looking at a total of 10-20 points for the whole mission. Let's call it 12, just for the sake of example.

If the team get an additional point every time a Kill Team member spends Fortune, then they'll be getting - in your case - an additional 12 Cohesion per session (because you all spend ALL of your Fate each session, right? Even if it's right at the end for an extra 1d10 wounds). So over a two-session game, you'd have an additional 24 Cohesion, over and above your 'normal' amount. That's three times what you 'normally' have. Or -as I like to think of it - 8 bolter assaults or furious charges! Which equates to 32 additional 'free' attacks, given a 4-man kill-team! Not bad for 15 requistion.

It also makes your leader's Cohesion pool a bit moot. Why buy up Fellowship and Command in order to get an extra point or two of Cohesion when a back banner's bonus will completely dwarf the effect of good leadership on team performance? I appreciate that banners bolster morale, but is it really far more important than the actual leader?

Your suggestion of the back-banner giving some additional fixed Cohesion is a good one. 3CP is well worth 15 Req, to my mind, without being over-powered. That's essentially a 'free' furious charge / bolter assault per scenario, and -crucially- probably boosts your starting Cohesion up to double digits, which is really handy to help people get back into Squad Mode without having to pick up a d10 and make a test.

Siranui said:

Yes, it makes sense right?

I will propose this to my GM, makes a balanced choice, and you can use your FP for other more relevant actions/events. It is not too powerful but a real booster for, for example my Techmarine which is otherwise not (perfectly)suitable to act as a Team Leader. Maybe we also could consider a +10 Fellowship bonus as well (instead of an increasing +1CP per Rank, as I suggested first)?

Now I have made another suggestion to my GM for the Back Banner which sounds like this:

- the Back Banner bearer, which is also the Kill Team Leader, can sacrifice one Fate Point for the sake of the Kill Team, and receive 2 extra Cohesion Points to the total, which can be allocated on top of the original CP's

- the other team members can sacrifice a FP in order to get one CP (as before)

- finally, cohesion tests (d10) and fellowship/command test are made with -1 or +10 depending on which roll is made

Viola!

I can tell you that anyone in the kill team spending a fate point for any reason gives the kill team cohesion is a bad idea. That gives the kill team way to many cohesion points.

There are a great many things that will add to cohesion, armor, talents, skills, oaths, etc. The team needs to learn to not be selfish with their fate points.

As for the Back Banner, any time the character equipped with it does any action which gains cohesion points, then you add one to the total. We have it apply to Exemplar of Honor and Rally Cry. Our five man team will start in the 5-9 range depending on who is leader. When we get low we have two Exemplar of Honors and one Rally Cry to fill it back up. Ultramarines have a tendency to make sure the cup is always full.

Lucrosium Malice said:

Ok, there is more ways to resupply cohesion points. I did not know about Oaths, which one(s)?

The idea with the Back Banner giving an extra CP is not bad, will see how it works.

Thanks,

Oath of the Astartes provides +2 cohesion I believe. Going off the top of my head, but check the oaths in the rulebook. It tells you the benefit of each oath and what you are allowed to use those cohesion points for.

I'm not so sure that spending a fate point and automatically gaining a point of cohesion regardless of why the FP was used is totally broken. This is the way my group plays it (this is the way we interpret it from the core rulebook) and we barely escape with our lives most of the time. Our cohesion still does to very low levels when we're using squad mode abilities freely or suffering from fear or special attacks that affect it.

Either way, a back banner specifically states that when worn by the leader, he will gain an extra point of cohesion when spending a fate point. No one else in the team gains this advantage, and he doesn't gain extra cohesion when restoring cohesion in other ways.

As for whether you have to specifically spend a FP for the purpose of gaining cohesion, or if it's a nice side benefit, I seem to remember an argument about that in these forums before the errata was released. The current version of the errata doesn't mention anything about it, and it isn't cleared up by Rites of Battle. I think that the official ruling was that it didn't matter what FP's were spent on, you received cohesion for it, but I could be biased towards the ruling I like, and I don't recall exactly what was written. I'm going to ask FF support. Too bad their responses aren't as fast as the one's you get for DH.

"When the kill-team leader spends a fate point to restore a point of cohesion (see page 212), he restores one bonus point of lost cohesion if he is wearing a back banner"

So; only the KT leader spending the point does anything, and ONLY if it was spent to restore cohesion.