boruta666 said:

My calculation goes this: at Rank 6, players are about a SM Captain/Epistolary/Chaplain/MOTF equivalent, so about 100 pts on average. Since you play Movie Marines, not TT Marines, you need to apply an arbitrary factor like 3 (that one might be off though). So 300pts per Marine with 3 to 5 Marines means, you need to send against them an army of 900 to 1500 pts of TT enemies. (for some enemies like Chaos Marines/Assassins/etc point factors might also apply)

Morale of the story: at that point it's time to think of armies as opponents, not single enemies or small bands of enemies, unless they are absolute top tier. (Assassins?)

Alex

Personally I dont want hordes to kill my marines. I would much rather have a number of super-elites, which is basically the theme of my games. My PC's can happily splatter many hordes that I throw at them. but for my big fights I use NPC's. When I invent my NPC's I play them as PC's, give them a name, think about what an equivalent level PC would have, the PC's are not unique.

An example of this would be a Ranged weapon specialist. I have yet to see a Devastator with about 10000 XP who hasn't spent 3200 on maxing out BS. a player who chooses Dev is probably gonna have above average BS to begin with, and might be a dark angel or ultramarine with +5 BS. so a rank 3+ npc bad guy ought to have BS in the region of 65-70 just to be equivalent. I make the main bad guys of my campaign not Monsters, but Hero level Warriors who use tactics and hordes of lackeys to slow the PC's down

ak-73 said:

From a fluff perspective though a kill team, no matter how awesome would not be sent to take on an entire army alone, they would be supporting an army on the battlefield, but as soon as you stick in the extra bodies of the field of battle the threat to the marines is vastly reduced and they have time to do their jobs again and it once agin becomes a breeze to victory.

I would say the solution to a unit of rank 6+ marines is a unit of rank 6+ renegade marines. Fight fire with fire. Let the kill-team see what squad mode looks like from the other side.

Banjulhu said:

Such style of increasing difficulty level have its flaws too, sadly for me that are powerfull flaws. Players may never feel that leveling mean something and may even start to think that all exp colecting is pointless, each time they grow a bit their enemies grow too, grot/heretic/gaunts or other cannon fooder that on first session died after chainsword swing much later can withstand powerfist punch? (sarcasm level high detected) Such level incrase amongst enemies can be done quite smoothly in case of "named" antagonist so called Master type, absolutly should not be done in elite or horde case.

I personally sometimes use different approach, renown amongst DW is two sided blade in my gaming sessions, once team defeat powerful enemy and news about their victory will travel far and wide it may also get to wrong ears. Same tactics will not work everytime, soon their enemies will be using advantage of having knowledge of their combat strategy know about their favourite way of deployment, their usual arms setup and such, to put it blunt same trick seldom works two times in a row.

Above strategy works well with chaos and cultist, orks may deploy better/bigger units that will want to taste real fight with big marine heroes, xenos may grow great hatred vs heroes that plague them and put bounties on their head or send their elite units to ambush, hunt and catch infame KT, but i will always point that they face enemy elite not just pimp common trooper to absurd level. Nothing will surprise KT as much as news that their fame have brought new ork Warboss band to conflict around, and they want only to fight vs them, pilaging and slaughtering dozens of imperial settlements just to bring their attention.

boruta666 said:

Although I agree with much of your post, I take a bit of exception to this. It's fine if you're running Cyberpunk of D&D, but not when players are members of a small, secretive organisation that doesn't actively advertise it's actions or victories, whose members names and faces aren't public knowledge, whose 'victims' never even knew that they were going to be specifically targeted by that specific unit. The universe is massive, and that just pushes believability way beyond the limits. It supposes a level of clairvoyance on the bad guys, which is only ok if they're actually clairvoyant!

Orc Boss Mr. Thumpy, or even Tau Commander Bob are not going to plan strategy based on the prior performance of Brother Sergeant Fred and his special forces kill-team three star-systems and 20 light years away, no more than a tin-pot dictator will tailor his strategy based on Lt. Cruz's SEAL team 4's recent mission performance.

boruta666 said:

I think you're right on Hordes, but I think Elites are a tough call. Presumably if there are such things as rank-six Deathwatch kill teams then there are also such things as rank-six Chaos Berzerker cabals.

That said, I do think you're right that it's important not to *arbitrarily* increase the stats of enemies - it would seem stupid if every single Chaos Marine your rank-six group encountered was also rank six. On the other hand, it seems okay for me to have your team start off fighting Heretics backed up by ordinary Marines, then go on to fighting Marines backed up by - say Marines with Marks of Chaos, then from there to fighting marines with Marks of Chaos, backed up by actual Chaos Champions and the like.

I don't know - is there anything more heroic than dying in a last stand against thousands of Orks? Is it really more heroic to die at the hands of the Warlord in personal combat? I think with hordes the focus is different... you got to convey a situation of a person born as a mortal and transformed into an Angel Of Death that is facing odds no mortal man could face... and that if he dies it is a hero's death.

The bravery of facing hordes alone should be the stuff of legends and myths among the locals. Perhaps even more so than facing a single master-tier enemy.

Alex

Siranui said:

DW campaign is taking place in same sector so u may become familiar with certain enemies, planets, enviroments, spaceships, adversaries and such. In case of Tau (no matter how i dislike those runty blue comie bastards with hoves) death by bolter shoot or chainsword cuts on bodies are quite uncommon and may actualy rise some questions especialy if such situation happen many times deep within their teritory, not to mention that such highly advanced technological race can use some surveilance, and i doubt that every DW team while fighting deep behind enemy lines will have time (and needed xeno tech knowledge) to search and destroy every prof of their actions, not to mention that 1 tau warrior from 10 hordes KT anichilated may survive.

About mr.thumpy and comie midget Bob, if DW want them dead and send KT to assasinate such targets then why fungi, runt or space elf cannot do same, taking initiative and intelligence from enemies kills RPG faster than everything else. But maybe u are playing most of your enemies computer game style, where advesaries are just there so protagonist may shoot at someone? And please commando seals are at best equivalent of veteran guardsmen, not heroic power armoured 220cm of rocket shooting acid spiting walking death of emperor fury.

ak-73 said:

awww sorry for double post.

totally agree, especially if such death by uncountable horde is happening just after deadly and brutally exhausting fight against some master enemy that u were trying to find then kill by many games, and when u put him down u know that u will be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but u have won much greater battle for humanity survival.

I've only played DW once and then we went back to our hybrid RT+DH game but an encounter with Enslavers at rank 3 ended up with only 2 marines surviving out of a team of 5...