Techmarine is master race killerskiller.

andrewm9 said:

To quote myself again:

"@andrewm9: About Evaluate... it seems a bit over-powered in combination with my Crimson's Siegecraft. Also see the above remarks about having an interesting combat talentthe other to work towards to. Thus Umbranus contemplating moving Wall of Steel to Rank 8. "

I never talked about 16+ talents.

Alex

Siranui said:

You're never forced to buy them, but it is nice if there are more options. Having more options than you can afford is a good way to make sure everyone doesn't end up with the same spread of skillstalents. The only one that is hurt is the guy that obsessively believes he has to have every talent related to whatever he's doing because he will end up short.

I've literally only just picked up the core rulebook today, but from a design perspective I can sort of see where both sides of this discussion are coming from.

Basically you've got two conflicting motivations here (leaving aside the question of "rounding out" your character - I actually think that's a bit of a red herring). On the one hand, it *can* be very frustrating to have your shooty character exhaust all the shooty options quickly, on the other hand it can be deeply annoying to have your shooty character *prevented* from doing the baseline shooty stuff at low levels.

I think a big part of the problem here is that it's simply a lot *easier* to think of an increasingly elaborate set of Melee techniques that characters can learn as they level up, whereas for Devastators your biggest asset is (as several people have pointed out) the fact that you get a Really Big Gun.

You could artificially gate Devastators so that they don't actually get the good weapons until later ranks, but then you wouldn't really feel like a Devastator at all, you could make the Heavy Bolter less good but it seems a shame to depower the signature weapon of the Imperium.

Looking briefly at the list, it seems like a big thing that's missing from the Devastators lists is a sense of distinction between weapons -indeed much sense that the marine is a heavy weapons specialist at all, most of the shooty talents in the Devastator advances feel like they're designed for snipers (I mean one of the capstone abilities: Eye of Vengeance basically can't be used with any kind of heavy weaponry that I can think of). I'd have expected a lot more talents that, say, made you better with Flame weapons (you could break CleansePurify down into several talents for example)Missile Launcherswhatever. Although that might have had the problem of making already-powerful weaponry too powerful.

It might also help to take Tech-Use out of the general Marine trees. I mean I've never really seen "technological savvy" as something that marines had as standard,it might help secure the niche of the Devastators as gear specialists.

Chastity said:

Do not confuse the DW Devastator with a regular Dev. In the DW Devastator is a speciality; it means approx. "the shooty guy." In the same vein, DW Assault means "close combat specialist."

In short if you want to build a sniper the Dev is the way to go. Alternatively a Tac with Bolter Expertise is okay too.

Alex

ak-73 said:

True - but presumably if you want to build a Heavy Weapons specialist Devastator is *also* the way to go, if you see what I mean, but the Advance options seem more skewed towards sniping than anything else (particularly if you look at the flavour text - although Mighty Shot and Crack Shot are perfectly good options for a Heavy Bolter user, their flavour text is all about targeting weak points in your enemy's armour, which doesn't seem very heavy-boltery to me).

I'm totally cool with DW Devastators being general ranged combat specialists, it's just that I'd expected them to be more, well, specialist rather than just having a small number of generic shooting-damage buffs. The issue raised in this thread seems to be that Devastators don't actually get much to play with in terms of their "shooty guy" niche - some people like that and I can see why (it's nice to be able to be able to play an effective character with minimal faff) but they do seem a bit light on customization within that niche.

Chastity said:

Mighty Shot is worthless for Single Shot weapons and super powerful for the HB. The higher the ROF the better. Storm of Iron is also better for the HB than any sniper rifle. Also Bolter Drill. The Dev is a heavy weapons/sniper hybrid.

Alex

It's not an over-reaction or a struggle with power gamers. It's just that SOME OF US don't like the same character progression that you do. People who share your opinion can play an AM and be happy, and people that like it the way that some of us do can be happy with a Dev. Trying to make people like both of us happy about a single class by making it 'your way' completely destroys it for people like me, because the two are pretty much mutually exclusive.

The best way to cater for both types of player is to make entire classes that are friendly to one type of player, and the same for the other. And that's what they've done. It's pretty cool. I can avoid AM like the plague and you can do the same with Dev, and we're both happy.

The problem with offering a lot of combat options is that they stop being optional and become required.

Essentially; if they're added then you *do* have to buy them, because either the GM expects you to buy them and balance things that way, the optimisers in the group buy them and leave you a choice of playing catch-up or getting killed (or just looking weak-ass in comparison), or that pre-written stuff assumes that you're a munchkin and balances things in the assumption that the players have it. Essentially not buying the more uber combat stuff when it's an option has a good chance of killing you or -at the very least- making the character perform poorly next to peers. And it's hard to enjoy roleplaying when your character just got maimed because he wasn't full on optimised enough for the game.

Siranui said:

Giving a character in his chosen profession options to improve at his full-time job destroys it for you? Okay...

It's like saying a D&D Sorceror: sorry, can't learn spells anymore, time to round-out your character. Sorry, makes little sense to me.

Siranui said:

What? Why would I avoid a specialty like the plague? I play a Crimson Fists Devastator.

Siranui said:

I don't see that. The only options I think are required are Mighty Shot (rank 1 talent) and probably Storm of Iron. Some Devs might not even take the latter and go all sniper, complete with Immovable Warrior. Among the Rank 5 to Rank 8 talents, I see not a single one that I would classify as required, do you? So why would for example moving Storm of Iron to high rank destroy it for you?

Siranui said:

Looking at the Dev, I don't see that. I would say that one can expect from a middle-ranked Dev is Mighty Shot (pretty much basic training) and either Unrelenting Devastation or Storm of Iron, possibly both. Nothing else, talent-wise

Siranui said:

That is not true with the Devastator in any case as his strength is in his gear. Even if I don't pick Mighty Shot, nor the other mentioned abilities and talents, I can be pretty effective with a HB, Heavy Flamer or Missile Launcher.

Alex

Two words: Elite Advances.

If you want it, ask the GM if you can buy it. Elite advances exist to allow you to step outside the box. So what if it costs you 1500 or 2000 to buy a single talent; if its worth the cost, go for it.

ak-73 said:

It doesn't 'destroy it', it just makes it less fun. I appreciate that you don't understand the viewpoint. That's because we play the game differently, for different reasons. There's no point attacking my opinion, because it's my opinion. I'm not saying yours is 'wrong', just that I don't enjoy it. It's essentially a pointless treadmill: I buy more combat stuff without adding dimension to character, GM makes monsters harder where required for plot reasons in order to compensate, so my overall gain in XP has meant essentially nothing. That's not character development to me. That's not even really 'improving' my character, because he'd have been just as successful in combat if he hadn't done it.

And yes... it's a bit like saying 'no more spells' for a sorc. That's fine with me. That's why I like E6 3.5, and you'd hate it.

You could avoid the Devestator if you don't like the lack of options, and then you wouldn't have a problem with the lack of options.

Once again: Please respect my opinion, and don't attack it, as I have not attacked your opinion and style of play. You are just as wrong/right as I am. As for specifics, I was actually musing the AM's ability to get three reactions per combat round rather than the Dev, as the AM *is* a class with late options. And having three reactions is not really much of an 'option' and more of a 'requirement'.

Siranui said:

You better don't make assumptions about the way I play.

Siranui said:

I don't see why car-driving should be more character development than being able to expertly concentrate fire to diminish enemy hordes. In fact, if we take an Imperial Fists/Crimson Fists Devastator and look at their chapter demeanour, one would assume that it would be very in character to focus on their job to the exclusion of most other things.

Siranui said:

E6? Anyway, I don't hate anything.

Siranui said:

Except the lack of a Devastator option under that scenario?

Siranui said:

Are Wall of Steel and Step Aside combinable at all?

Alex

Siranui said:

Except you might specifically want to play a "shooty character".

I also really do think "rounding out" your character is a misleading idea. I think it's a common fallacy to assume that spending points on things that *don't* relate directly to your character's primary specialisation is somehow better roleplaying that spending points on things that do - this simply isn't true, how "well rounded" a character is simply isn't a factor of his statistics at all.

Actually that's kind of exactly what "well rounded" means. I appreciate your desire to defend character specialization, as it is one of the most universal practices in pen & papers, but don't misapply your logic.

A character who has only one specialty is the definition of poorly rounded. He does one thing and one thing only, as his sole focus.

A character who takes a wide variety of skills in differing areas is "well rounded", his talents in one area may not be supreme but he is capable of many actions to some sufficient degree.

Now, this has nothing to do with whether this character is a deep one from a role-playing standpoint, that can have as little or as much to do with character abilities as anything else. It's a different metric completely, and you're right that buying a wide array of skills and talents does not necessarily make your character a more profitable one for roleplaying, but it does make them a "well-rounded" one.

Siranui said:

The two sentences I bolded above are pretty much directly in opposition. Your final paragraph further destroys your initial sentence. In effect, you've shown that you can't see options as options because you're stuck on the "munchkin" path and you assume that everyone else falls into this too when all they want are options (that they see as options).

At Last Forgot said:

That actually depends on one's definition of well-rounded. We should distinguish between a well-rounded skill/talent set and a well-rounded character as a whole.

But the actual issue is whether the system must enforce a skill-wise well-rounded Devastator. Actually, it's not even that: it's about whether the final ranks as a Devastator must be spend on rounding out the character skill-wise.

Alex

But once again: There are plenty of ways of spending XP on a lvl 8 Dev to make them 'more killy'. Stats, Distinctions, Deathwatch Champion, Elite Advances... heck: Astartes Weapon Specialisation for a dozen different weapons.

ak-73 said:

Erm... Pardon?

I certainly will assume that we play differently, given that we appear to like different things in our games. I have every right to hold that view, and every expectation that it's correct.

Given the next sentence that I've quoted, this is clearly the case, because I *don't* see buying a talent that makes me better at mowing people down to be character development. For comparison, if Jason Borne picks up an uzi and manages to kill four people while emptying the magazine instead of his prior record of three, I don't see that as character development or the creation of a more rounded character.

E6 is a 3.5 variant where players stop levelling at 6th level and just get to buy feats for 5000xp each. It's D&D where a sorcerer doesn't get more spells, essentially.

And there's a lack of an Assault marine in my favoured scenario. I can live with it, as it keeps me out of a tail-chasing scenario of constant talent-buying.

Wall of Steel and Step Aside both give an additional reaction for parry/dodge. I'd assume they stack for a total of three. The clarification wording (which is traditionally secondary in importance) describes this as 'in *effect* a second parry', not 'a second parry', which is indicative of them not *actually* both being a second parry/dodge, and hence both stackable by a strict RAW interpretation, as I see it. One for the FAQ, perhaps.

Chastity said:

Then play a Tactical. They are just as shooty as a Dev, but with the shootyness spread out more. Pretty much every single shooty talent that the Dev gets, the Tac gets... eventually. If you're genuinely looking for a shooty character where the talents are more spread out, then a Tactical Marine is kinda blatantly the answer. You loose out on tech skills late-on and get a bunch of leadership stuff scattered throughout instead.

'Well rounded' can and indeed does mean 'being able to do something other than kill things really well'. It very specifically does mean buying things that are outside the character's primary specialisation. That's kind of the definition. If we were using the phrase 'well rounded' to define a character's traits, background and personality then it might be valid to say that it's not a factor of his statistics, but we're using the term in the mechanical sense of a well-rounded skill-set, which is totally a factor of statistics.

It has nothing to do with good or bad roleplaying, just before someone cops a massive dose of lame and tries to drag 'that' tired fallacy into the fray. I might want my character to be well-rounded skill-wise for entirely munchkin reasons and be the worst roleplayer around.

HappyDaze said:

That depends on the options, doesn't it?

Astartes Weapon Specialisation is always an option. Buy some of those. It makes you better at combat after all. So how is it possible to say 'there are no options for a level 8 Dev' unless Weapon Spec has been bought? That's an option, right there.

An 'option' that quadruples horde damage, or gives a second parry isn't really an option because it's an overly strong option. Selecting ridiculously strong options isn't munchkin or powergaming or being stuck on a 'munchkin path', so much as common sense. If you can show me the character sheets belonging to thirty people who've played Assault Marines to level 8 and half of them don't have -say- Lightening Attack, then it's fair to call it an option. If 95% of them have it, it's clearly pretty much mandatory, unless you're saying that every one of those players are munchkins?

Again: Overly strong options are not options, unless there are several of them and an exclusive choice to be made. That's basic game design theory.

Siranui said:

In that case we've been speaking partly at cross purposes, although I'd suggest that "well rounded" is a bad choice of words in that case since it carries something of an implicit value judgment (and can be read the way I and I think several others have read it - as a statement about the character's personality).

What you seem to be saying now is that you like your characters to have a wide range of different skills, or to be tactically flexible. That's fine but it's *not* actually the same as being well rounded. "Well rounded" doesn't just imply variety, it also implies functioning as a cohesive whole. If you describe a football player as "well rounded" it doesn't mean that they can speak Swahili and program in C++, it doesn't even have to mean that they're able to play at more than one position on the team, it just means that they possess multiple different qualities that make them good at what they do. A well rounded midfielder doesn't need to have any of the qualities of a good goalkeeper, and certainly doesn't need the qualities of a good patent agent.

Siranui said:

This.

Recognizing that some options are better than others doesn't make you a munchkin. Taking superior options over inferior options doesn't make you a munchkin. Being annoyed that half your points get spent for you, because the alternative is to intentionally nerf yourself *certainly* doesn't make you a munchkin.

Siranui said:

You heard me right.

Siranui said:

You better not make any assumptions about the things I like in my games either.

Siranui said:

Except that it seems that you know nothing about me and your assumptions to be incorrect.

Siranui said:

This isn't a matter of the things we like in games, this is a matter of the character in question. If we take for example a character like the Punisher, then yes, I do consider picking a talent that makes the PC better at mowing down people character development. It is representative of his being driven by hatred, fueled by thoughts of vengeance, his dedication of becoming an even more perfect weapon of revenge.

Because you don't see that, among other things, I think you are over-compensating.

Siranui said:

See above: if the training is representative of a streak of character, it is character development.

Siranui said:

I assume such systems are not exactly huge commercial successes and such mechanics are better left to fan projects and house rules, right?

Siranui said:

Yep, it's not entirely clear what the intention is.

Alex

Siranui said:

What if I can't because the KT needs a Devastator? A likely scenario, btw. In fact, that's how I arrived at my CF Dev.

Siranui said:

What does having multiple areas of expertise to do with character development? Nothing. Just because Jason Bourne suddenly has acquired a driver's license and can drive cars, he's not a more developed character. In fact the skills have not that much to do with actual character development, they can be vehicles though. And they can be that whether they are combat skills or non-combat skills. And in fact over-specializing in oen single area can likewise be character development.

Where as I can easily can create a PC that is well-rounded skill-wise but doesn't really have much of a character, In fact, there are generalist approach power-gamers out there.

Siranui said:

The phrase "well-rounded character" does not designate wrt what the character is well-rounded though.

Siranui said:

Right. So what is the use then of stripping players of options to deepen their specialization at high ranks? And mind you, we have been talking about a single talent here. Even more so, it has been suggested moving one talent from a lower rank to an upper rank.

Alex

Siranui said:

Nice to see how you ignore that this has been explained a number of times in this thread already: from a gaming perspective it is nice to have a good talent to work towards to. It motivates player to work towards it. Yet even if it is a good talent, there will be players who will probably forego it, unless it is as über as Preternatural Speed perhaps (and which is only so über because the charging rules are broken). And that's as it should be: a high level talent, for many the crown of achievement, a minority might not pick it (if for no other reason than that everybody else does) and see how it works without that. I am such a player, unless a talent is too essential.

Siranui said:

Gaming does not work exclusively to your common sense though. There'll always be player who stray from trodden paths and will try out the unusual.

Siranui said:

So why are you talking about overly strong options at all? You talk as if someone had invented an overly strong Dev talent and suggested it for rank 8.

The thing you are advocating against has nothing to do with what has been suggested in this thread.

Alex

Chastity said:

Semantics. What is a 'well rounded marine'? Clearly one who is good at doing more than shooting things. One who can lead, think, has great fieldcraft, can read a map, drive a truck, climb a scree slope, knows the tactics of his enemies and understands them, who can use every piece of equipment that he's going to encounter, every tool in the armoury, who is mentally and physically fit and able in a variety of disciplines. That's what I want to have plenty of 'spare' points for; not just 'more shooty talents'.