Hello, it seems to me the game mechanics differentiate, in a very nice and neat way, the characteristic that allows you to shrug off damage (T) and the the actual amount of damage you can take before you go out (die, faint or whatever), and that's wounds. I come from 40k so this distinction is very clear to me: you can have a crappy T and still have 3-4 wounds, or you can have an above average T but have just a single wound. Of course some lucky gits have astounding values in both departments!

What i mean is, for exemple, that an inhrently sadictic/masochistic creature (a slaanesh magus?) should have an average T value (you CAN hurt him), but should be able to sustain loads of wounds before he finally passes out, enjoying every bit of it.

This being said, i noticed most high T creatures form 40k are also given and incredibly high wound value, whether they have a corresponding amount in 40k or not.

Similarly, most low T critters have some wound too few in their profiles.

Was wondering: why do such a sterling job in differentiating the two things (not being damaged by blows and actually sustaining damage while remaining functional) and then, in the published material, just ignore that?

Am i missing something?

There is no direct relationship between stats on the Table Top (TT) and the RPG.

Well, i agree, except thay share the same universe.

What i was trying to say os that i dont like some of the creature stats i find in the published material, and that's mainly because they tend to associate high T and W values, effectively making the two traits one and the same. I'd like to see an eldar autarch with at least 30-35 wounds, and a tyranid worrior with far less than that. Of the two, of course, the warrior should still have higher T.

rzucchelli said:

Why should the warrior have fewer wounds, so you could kill him in a single shot? From a player and GM perspective isn't your primary concern how many hits it takes to kill? And that is a careful calculation of armor versus pen and damage versus toughness. I wouldn't worry too much about how closely aligned the TT and RPG stats are, they're abstracted in significantly different ways regardless of sharing the same universe.

If you want your Warriors to have less wounds, I'd just cut theit wounds down to fit your game, but just know that even with their moderatly high toughness, they're going to die very quickly versus Marines if you reduce them too much.

Charmander said:

Which is only right and proper.

Don't think of TB as a way for the flesh to resist being damaged. Think of it as how large a wound the creature can just ignore (For example, I can ignore most of the times my cats scratch me*, even when they draw blood, but anyone can see that they have caused damage). Then it makes sense that high TB relates to high wounds. A tougher character will be able to take more injuries that are just over his pain threshold than a weaker character taking injuries just over his threshold.

*When cats get really happy, they flex their claws. Usually into the flesh of the person making them happy.

Charmander said:

That is what I should have said.

What it means is that the needs of a TT game and an RPG are vastly different when it comes to stats for a creature or character.

Hmmm, well thanks 4 sharing your thoughts.

I see where you are coming from, and, actually, it makes a lot of sense if you look at things from a certain perspective.

Our campaign, however, is going to be a pretty complicated affair, with loads of miniatures involved. In most of the missions the deatwarch team(s) will be flanked by other imperial forces, sometimes reasonably powerful officio assassinorum agents, more often just ig joes. Probably scores of them.

Eldar, dark eldar, tau and 'nids will be the major opponents, with orks playing a fairly minor role.

Now, high T and/or armour value targets, regardless of how many wounds they have, will be simply impossible to kill for lasgun armed guys.

Other opponents (thinking tau and eldar of all sorts) will always be rather soft and, except a couple troop types and hq choiches, will have really poor armour. HQ equivalents, however, need to have loads of wounds (at very least 3 times the basic creature entry) as well as better armour. This will make for opponents that guardsmen (or anyone else with a lasgun) COULD kill, but they'd better have a fully loaded weapon, maybe a couple spare clips too. And another bloke bside them, then some more.

These intermediate (let's say elite) opponents should be rather killy in their own right, and marines would be the best choiche for dealing with them, but an inordinate amount of resolute regular guys could get the job done, sustaining many casualties in the process.

Some other opponents (demon princes, hive tyrants and the like) should remain untouchables for guardsmen, no matter what. Marines HAVE to takle these, no other choiche.

That's why i'd love, games wise, low T creatures with tons of wounds. As things stand now, however, i'll just have to give the like of autarchs the unnatural T trait and buff their w value, as well as armour, to play along with the "high T equals high W" game. Players should be fine with that, poor guardsmen, probably, wont...they're turning from support cast to spectators...spectators rather to be killed sooner rather than later

Were you intending to roll dice for every guardsman with the Marines? Because that will *really* slow the game down. RoB has rules for using accompanying Guard forces, but stats them as hordes, rather than individuals.

Siranui said:

Well yes, i think i'll have to resort to the horde thing. We planned to go the ultra detailed way, time not really being an issue, but i guess i could simply ignore 5-10 ig squads and go straight to 30 strong hordes. Oh well. Will look at RoB again, thanks for the tip!

Cheers!

+ 1Siranui - if you roll out your fights like Table Top things will go exceptionally slowly. If that's what you like go for it, but I think you're going to need to make some significant tweaks to the weapons and enemies to find a balance that works right.

I'd go with the horde rules and see if that get's you what you want.

Also remember that you get to be the GM here, and you control what ALL of your NPCs do. If you want the PCs to be urged into taking out the 'high value' targets it's super easy to create a scenario where they're urged to do this, all within the realm of reason in 40k. Those elites, if left unmolested by the KT, are either going to directly engage the KT anyhow (they're a high value target for them) or they're going to run roughshod over the allied troopers you've deployed. Who does the KT focus on once that happens?

rzucchelli said:

Remember that horde size doesn't automatically equate with numbers. A 30 horde might only be 5 well dug-in and motivated guys.

If you're looking for a more battlefield kinda game, then I'd recommend a look at the net-published Movie Marine rules. It's a question of 'right tool for the right job', and DW isn't really the right tool for detailed mass-combat.

Siranui said:

While it's technically true that five dug in and motivated guys *could* be modeled as a Horde, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea. Yes, Horde size doesn't equate directly to number, but things start getting a little bit screwy if you start giving your Hordes a Magnitude greater than the actual number of soldiers out there. It's not immediately clear, for example, why five guys count as a Massive target, or why your Lascannon which could *easily* take out a single entrenched Elite somehow can't put a scratch in this group of five very determined dudes.

Now I could see you using a M30 Horde to represent an *unspecified number* of entrenched or stealthy enemies, but I think the moment you make it clear that, yes, there are exactly five of these guys, you run into a huge inconsistency in the rules system.

Remember that there is no rule saying you *have* to use Horde rules when employing Troop-tier enemies. Five Tau Fire Warriors or Eldar Guardians can be run perfectly well as a group of five individuals without creating too much admin or hassle, I'm not sure what you gain by running them as a Horde.

Chastity said:

You gain the damage and rate of fire. You don't have to run them as a horde, just make sure if they're low numbers and weak enemies they have something in their pocket that can scratch marines. This works for Fire Warriors, not so much for cultists or guardsmen.

Regarding the bonus to hit, just reduce it- it's the same thing I do when I have a horde that's partially obscured- I make the to hit bonus relative to how much is ready to be shot at. It helps that I don't have players that aren't constantly checking the GM's work to make sure they're getting the proper size bonus or that horde getting 3 ranged shots with bonus damage isn't providing them a +30 to hit.

But employing a 5000 pt TT army worth of troops and playing them all as individuals would be quite a bit of a hassle, IMO.

Word on the street is MoX will have some more large scale combat rules, but who knows when that will actually hit the street, or if you'll have enough cash to get it when it arrives

Charmander said:

Sorry, talking at cross purposes. When I say "what do you gain" what I mean is something like "what do you gain, assuming your goal is to represent, relatively intuitively, the capabilities of that group of enemies." Fairly clearly, an M30 Horde of Imperial Guardsmen is more powerful than a group of five imperial guardsmen, but this to me is evidence that treating five Imperial Guardsmen as an M30 Horde is simply inappropriate.

Basically I kind of feel that treating small numbers of weak enemies as a high-magnitude Horde makes something of a mockery of the system - I'm cool with using the Horde rules to *simplify* combat but I don't think it's sensible to use it to arbitrarily set the power-level of an encounter. Although one point of Magnitude is not supposed to correspond *directly* to one enemy fighter, there's obviously supposed to be some correlation between the Magnitude of the Horde and the number of raw bodies being thrown at the players. Of course there's nothing in RAW to stop you declaring that 10 guardsmen or 5 Guardians or for that matter 1 Ork are a Horde of arbitrarily large magnitude, but it feels to me like an improper use of the rules.

From my perspective, the Horde rules are there to (a) streamline play and (b) represent the fact that an enemy which is individually weak can still overwhelm you in large numbers. Using the rules to just "power up" small numbers of weak enemies seems like a bad idea to me.

Chastity said:

I agree with the overall intent of the rules, though I view hord magnitude the relative 'power level' of a group of ordinarily weak individuals. The 5 guardsman example, IMO, is a bit of an extreme one, but the underlying theory is there.

Charmander said:

I do the same as Charmander for my hordes when I am GMing. Normally when I use firewarriors I tend to have each firewarrior equal 2 points or more of magnitude. As my player do damage I tell them how many they are felling for example if an AM gets 6 DoS "You chop one in half as your back swing hits another, you kick out falling another blue skin freak.' Kinda showing that while they might be small in number their training and weapons lets them act like a bigger force. Those guardman in the bunker or trench might be few in number but because they are dug in it might take 3 to 1 odds to remove them thus having more mag.

When some Nid hordes I do the opposite a magnitude 30 termagaunt horde might be made up of 60 since gaunts are pretty weak but come in vast number with each point of mag damage killing off scores of them.

I plucked an extreme example off the top of my head there, and it's derailed things a bit. But no: I wouldn't use horde rules for just five critters. Frankly I wouldn't even bother running a combat against five normal guardsmen anyway as it'd be pointless, as they're no real threat. I'd just cover the (brief) combat in narrative.

If I were using multiple 10-man squads of Guardians or Fire Warriors, I'd certainly represent them as each a small horde to streamline play, but my point was mainly that 1 person/gaunt/cultist/whatever does not automatically equate to 1 horde magnitude

Fabian said:

So, if you don't mind my asking, what do you do when somebody fires a Lascannon at one of the Fire Warriors, or takes some other action which should *clearly* kill one of them but which is mechanically prevented from doing more than one point of Magnitude damage?

To be honest, I think we're all on the same page here - I don't think anybody is actually advocating treating five Imperial Guardsmen as an M40 Horde - it's just that I personally think that while one fighter doesn't have to represent one Horde Magnitude, it raises some difficult issues if one Horde Magnitude doesn't nominally represent *at least* one fighter - at least for low numbers.

I think a lot of the problems go away if you're nonspecific about numbers - if you're fighting "several" squads of Fire Warriors you can assign the group any Magnitude you like, because there could be anything from thirty to a hundred of them anyway.

Chastity said:

Near miss would make them duck down. If a Marine is firing a Las Cannon into a horde anyhow I would be more worried about that Marine's sanity since they could have thrown a frag.