I read the rules part for complications during Missions and the choice for adding extra/harder Adversaries mentions that using a Daemonhost or a Tyranid Lictor would be a good choice. Sounds fine except neither are in the rulebook. So here we are again. I don't understand this at all. The rest of the book goes into such detail with all sorts of cool stuff and yet the section on what the Space Marines have to face is almost an afterthought.

So if I want Daemonhosts I need to buy an entirely separate game, Dark Heresy (which I'ms ure is great, but not really the point).

And if I want Lictors I need Creatues Anathema, which is £27 for 3 pages worth of info.

On top of that, while I'd love to own those books I notice that the entry for Lictors (having browsed it) is fairly hefty. Now in play this means i'm going to need to either know what all his many (many) talents and traits do by heart, or I'm going to need to cross reference with the main rules. The game is already fairly detailed and the books already fairly hefty. What if i need further info? Daemonhosts will have their own rules within Dark Heresy and cross referncing that and Deathwatch at the tabel (along with whatever other books i might use, such as Rites of Battle) is getting crazy! That's on top of the steep learning curve - i'm sure it's great once you know it.

Finally there's the problem of balance: using the Lictor as an example Dark Heresy is scaled at a third the power level, initially, that DW is. That's the difference in character power levels, using XP as a guide (I don't know how else you'd do it). Lictors are presetned as enemies for Acolytes. I have absolutely no way of judging how tough a Lictor is compared to a Space Marine (or indeed anyone, since there doesn't seem tobe any objective explicit measurement system and I have no idea how many xp was used to build the Lictor). They look tough, but compared to what? If i set a single Lictor against a Kill Team will it mow them down like grass or go down like a sack of spuds? On top of that I have no idea what the average Kill Team is supposed to look like, in terms of numbers. The average gaming group is likely 3 or 4 (i'm not sure DW could work with a two man kill team but that's beside the point) so how do you guage threat sizes against player numbers as well as XP levels?

If a roll comes up on GM tables, you can just ignore it. I view the 'complications' table as more of a list of ideas on things that can go wrong than something that I'd *ever* consider picking up dice and randomising. Picking up a dice essentially means randomising some key elements of the story, and I'd like to think that my players deserve more than a scenario created via dice rolling. If an option comes up that you're ill-prepared to deal with, pick something cooler.

signoftheserpent said:

Practice and gut instinct. Preferably pitching low at first, in order to avoid a TPK. Balancing combats is a crucial GM skill, and not something that can be learned by rote. The introductory missions will give you a feel for what is right, but the truth is that it's impossible to gauge the balance of any new system without experimentation.

I'm struggling to think of a roleplaying game which lists monsters by a convenient and accurate 'threat level'. Truth be told, it's impossible to really do so, because of environmental factors. A brood lord standing 500m away in the middle of a desert is dealt with a lot easier than one that drops from a tree onto a PC's head with complete surprise in the middle of the night, so it's impossible to assign stuff 'points values'.

Reinforcements is a good way to help balance things. Have a fight start, the bad guys call for help/trip an alarm, and have it planned and scripted that some reinforcements turn up. If the party are finding the fight hard, then help never shows, or shows in limited numbers. If the party are having an easy time, then the reinforcements come in large numbers or perhaps from an unexpected direction.

It's good to think of other ways that you might change the dynamics of a fight in order to make it easier/harder, in case you've got the balance wrong. But it needs to be thought out in advance and delivered in a way that doesn't look forced, or a cop-out. Player's storming an alien ship and butchering the xenos too easily? Have a stray shot hit something that cuts the artificial gravity. Heavy bolter dominating a factory corridor and the enemies can't close? Have them release a valve to fill the passage with thick, hot steam in order to provide cover. The key to not making it look artificial is to have already put some personality into the bad guys and to have noticed the problem before it has affected play.

And sometimes... let it roll. Players sometimes deserve an easy fight, and sometimes they deserve to get their arms ripped off. Knowing when to run away is an important skill, and Fate Points are there to be burned.

Siranui said:

Overall, D&D Don't get me started, you didn't mention a "good" RPG

As for thougher enemies (which is the topic here), if you don't want to spend 27$ for the Lictors (though I'd say you're easily forgetting the other Xenos there are in the book...), I wouldn't blame you : if you want monsters to oppose Deathwatch PCs, it's supposedly better to wait for Mark of the Xenos.

If you don't want to spend money at all, then you'll have to think by yourself, inventing your own enemies (plus it helps remembering what they do, because you'll have chosen it!) or even just play it "by instinct", use basic characteristics and add up some damage here and there. I'm not the kind of GM who thinks that role playing game has to be absolutely strict on the rules. If I'm too lazy to make up an enemy, I just roll and make up damage on-the-fly. Though I would admit not everybody likes to do so.

I said 'RPG', not 'skirmish wargame'

Well, I can see someone having a different opinion here :

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons

Though I agree with you, to tell the truth. I was just pointing out that the task is not impossible, D&D's "benchmark" of the enemies is quite well made (although D&D4 is a pain in the a$$ to GM, but that's another problem). In DW, it could have been done, would it only be by stating "These enemies are best opposed to rank M-N PCs". It hasn't, but as I said, the best answer to that is either mastering the system by yourself or adapting the dices' results to your free will.

'Cause YOU're the frickin' GM.

So no one can tell me what level of 'power', if you like, a Lictor is then? HOw many Space Marines they can handle?

Nothing like that?

Isn't that a bit ridiculous? I can't think of a single game ive run where it isn't possible, explicitly or otherwise, to balance threats in some fashion.

It is the level of threat you want . Basically.

With the description on the Lexicanum ( wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Lictor ) you can guess approximately : the Lictors are Tyranid Warriors under steroids with much much Agility, +20 on Silent Move and Concealment, and eventually some funny natural weapons (if you want, of course).

If you don't want to spend money (because, of course, Tabletop statistics are not freely available ), I can only tell you what I feel the Lictors are, because there have always been discrepancies between people as to which unit they think are the strongest.

I would personnaly take a Tyrannid Warrior, bump his Agi, give him all it takes to be super stealthy, and give him one or two special rules / Talents / invented capacities to make him able to deal a lot of damage to a Space Marine on his sneak attack.

The idea being, Lictors are super deadly when you aren't expecting them, but they are fragile.

But these are only my 2 cents, and to tell the truth, you seem to me as particularily unfair, because it is possible to balance threats in Deathwatch, just like in many other RPGs : with a bit of experience.

Stormast said:

The Lictor as listed has specific stats. So what is the equivalent in Space Marine terms? Rank 1 new character? Rank 4? How much xp? What i want doesn't come into it.

And if there is a way to balance threats, why not just tell me? Is this a secret that only come are allowed to know?

Sorry, Sots, but it seems like you really want to argue just for the sake of the argument.

In DW, there is a threat level, Master, Elite and Troops, which states what an enemy is designed for. Now you are referring to an enemy that does not yet have stats according to DW, hence it is impossible to say, based on the rules.

If you want to use the one from DH: Creatures Anathema, you will have to wing it, as the threat level these is designed for DH characters, before DW was even created.

And in regards to number of marines and XP level, vs an enemy of a given level, then it solely depends on the players and the style of play, as to how many can take a given enemy. But using Master/Elite/Trops should give a good idea on most compositions, while having more levels and players, ofc increases what they can face. But again, this is imho just common logic.

You seem to request a D&D style of table, where you can scroll down and find 3 marines of 11 combined levels equals 47 Whatever-points, and cross-check with a result of 2.4 Lictors. I don't know why you can't just do as the rest of us, and play with it a bit.. Experience really is the best thing to give you what you are looking for, instead of incredibly fixed tables.

signoftheserpent said:

Maelflux's description is about what I'd do as well, reduce the toughness, bump and agility, let him eat brains and give him a pheremone trail. If you play him right (stealthy) you should get a couple of solid hits in on an 'average' kill team of 5 before they crush his skull, which is probably where an elite should sit in my book.

What games are you coming from where you've played and ran where there is this special way of balancing that you're going for? We can't really talk to that point if you don't offer up concrete examples of where your perception comes from. We just hear shouldn't and wouldn'ts from you but I've yet to see an example that says 'game x does y' so we can only guess and say you're comming from D&D with it's concept of challenge ratings, and we've already described the differences between D&D combat and DW combat.

And I should stop my reply there, and not feed you any more, but my hope is maybe a lurker will see the responses here and learn a thing or two that helps in their game.

To add to Siranui and Maelflux's points, the issue in DW is that 'balance' is subjective and the environmental factors here play a MAJOR role. Probably because of the whole gun thing. If you search the forums you'll see a million and one posts on 'AAAH, My Kill Team Killed My Uber Boss in One Round' and the cause is usually that the Hive Tyrant was by himself, not using his special abilities, and standing in the middle of a field. In that scenario the devastator opens up with his heavy bolter with special ammo and either kills him outright in a single turn of firing or weakens him enough for the AM to fly in and stab him in the heart a dozen times.

That same exact Hive Tyrant, if played like a PC, has the potential to create a TPK, or at the very least damage the crap out of half the squad of Marines (the example at the end of OE where he flies in and roars menacingly is cinematic but will result in his demise in short order as every marine in the squad opens up with their biggest gun).

There is no magical secret to DW and balance, it's a learned skill (as has been said) that you'll feel out with your individual kill team. If your KT has two dev's and twin heavy bolters your enemies will be vastly different in scope and challenge as compared to a group of only tacticals and assault marines.

Because that kind of experience leads to frustration and puts players off.

signoftheserpent said:

What kind of experience?

Where are you pulling your experience from? What systems are you running so we can try to compare/contrast here? We don't even know what your version of 'balance' is.

I'm talking about my own experience. I can't talk abut any other kind. Players get fed up if the game isn't balanced. I don't see how comparing what other games do.

What was the Lictor put into CA for then? What sort of characters were intended to fight it? I can't imagine it would be much fun if a group of Acolytes stumble across one and then get eaten alive.

DW ≠ DH

In DW, the PCs are f***in' awesome. They CAN stumble onto a Lictor, get hurt, and kill it with their bare hands while shouting prayers to the Emprah.

In DH, the story is completely different. PCs will have more info (cause you know, it's more or less an Acolyte's job to look for intel, gather it, draw conclusions...), and they won't "stumble upon" a Lictor, they'll be hunting it for the glory of the Imperium.

So you see, two types of characters with different power levels MAY happen to fight the same enemy. Hell yeah.

as for the answer to what would a lictor as statted in creatures anathema be appropriate to fight I would say you need the following things

1st, catch the enemy by surprise, as long as the lictor gets a surprise attack (which it should because it is almost unseeable) it should do some damage to any pc of any rank as long as they are not forcefield equipped or in terminator armour.

2nd, for rank 3 or above it might seem unusual to players of the 40k table top game but I would use groups of CA lictors to attack a party, approximately 1 per pc

3rd. If you have your players just encounter a lictor they will just kill it, even at rank 1 a dev with a heavy bolter will kill 3 or 4 in one turn as long as they are standing close enough together to be full auto'd

Having said that I would not use a creatures anathema lictor but make my own up, there are other posts which show good ways of doing that.

The CA lictor is xenos terminus which means its a big bad mutha, only for extreme boss battles in DH, but it looks approximately equivalent to a stealth suit in DW to me.

To me the best way to balance an "encounter" is not to have encounters at all in the sense of the pc's fight this and this and this, you dont open a door and say "there are 3 lictors in the room, what do you do?" because the answer is shoot them to pieces. You say "you see something move in the bushes, as you are distracted by the rustling a vile xenos monster leaps on you from your left hand side." because in this situation the number of enemies around them is completely ambiguous, then you can keep attacking in an ambush until you are satisfied the pc's have had enough.

And as people have said, no matter how massive a group of monsters you have sent at your team tpk's arent such a bad thing, because they have fate points to burn and ultimately there is nothing in the game that can stand up to a devastator with a heavy bolter for very long, so the pc's will probably win, and if you feel you are being too hard on your pc's then award them with more fate points for their heroic stand against innumerable foes etc etc, dont do this overtly to show you are overcompensating. just make them feel the glory of a job well done

signoftheserpent said:

Yes, you're right, players do get fed up when the game isn't balanced. In DW it falls to the GM to make sure things are balanced, and people here are offering you some advice on how they've balanced their games. A lot of it changes based on the composition of the party you're playing with. In D&D you get the exact same thing (at least in 3/3.5) if you do not play the standard 4 roles of fighter/mage/thief/cleric- as a DM you have to adjust things.

signoftheserpent said:

I'm asking about your game background so that we can have some context on where you're coming from. Right now the only game I know of that I've played that has this rigid all encompassing list of monsters and xp ratings is D&D, which doesn't compare across to the FFG system very well (and can be broken when the players change things up). Saying "I can't think of a single game" doesn't work with many of the people here as the folks here on the board have played a HUGE variety of RPGs and aren't this annoyed by DW balance.

signoftheserpent said:

Really? They put it in there so that Acolytes could have a "cool" enemy to fight. Maybe the stats work for both DH and DW, I don't know or care, I don't have CA. If I were going to make a Lictor for DW I'd make it the way that Maelflux laid out- lots of stealth, ambush style enemy, base it off the Warrior since it's an adaptation/mutation of the warrior line. If you want CA's stats, go buy CA. If you don't want the book or can't justify the cost of an additional book for 1-2 pages of monster stat (and I don't blame you for that) then make up the stats yourself so that they fit YOUR game.

Aside from that, Narkasis has some good additonal points to help you out.

signoftheserpent said:

Traditionally pen&paper RPGs do without such categorizations. It's part of the GM's job to develop the eye measure to properly balance encounters.

Based on the tabletop rules, I'd say a Lictor would an elite-tier xeno according to the DW tiers, if that helps you out. Probably bordering on master-tier. 2 marines should struggle, 4 marines should be able to manage. The CA should be somewhat weaker than that because it has been geared towards low power PCs.

Be warned though that DW works differently than D&D. Here the fights are shorter and more brutish, it's do or die. If the Lictor can spring an attack, it might cause the first burnt fate point immediately. And it matters not if the marine is Rank 1 or Rank 8. So your approach to DW is too much influenced by D&D. Things work slightly different here.

Alex

ak-73 said:

This is an important point. because you don't get more hit points from level to level I find that the power of pc's is much more linked to their renown than their xp, obviously both are important, but as soon as everyone can get a master quality storm shield you find it ALOT harder to even hurt a marine. by comparison a rank 8 marine will probably either have very high toughness or very high agility so that makes it a bit harder to hurt them but it is still quite possible for a horde of mag 20 hormagaunts to more or less instakill a rank 8 marine who is unlucky, because their max damage per turn is something like 45-16(maximum toughness inc bionic parts)-10(armour on the body) +3(pen) = 22 wounds straight off. a couple of hits like that will leave a marine seriously messed up

signoftheserpent said:

Close quarters, or at range? With surprise? Does it have allies? Cover? Has it been cunning and used decoys to split up the party and ambushes one of them on their own, or is it just being played like a dumb goon that jumps out in front of them while they're on overwatch? What party members are in the group? How min-maxxed are they? Did they take a heavy bolter or a heavy flamer? Terminator armour? Are they wounded? Low on Fate Points? Got Hellfire loaded? Do they work effectively as a team, or are the AMs the type of glory boys who jet-pack off and let the Devs get meleed, thus rendering them useless?

Your question is impossible to answer because you've just asked 'how long is a piece of string'?

I have bookshelves full of RPGs, and I can't think of one that does this for me. RPGs do not give you a 'threatometer' that tells you how to perfectly balance combats. 4e and 3e D&D tried to dumb things down to the extent where encounter difficulties were spoon-fed to GMs, and even that fails. Just look up the 3e stats for a Jugganaught and tell me that the system works. Just look at a party of fighters, monks and sorcerers next to a party of planar shepherds, conjurers, druids and ruby knight vindicators and try to tell me that it works and that a threat for one party is a threat for the other. Aside from D&D (which does it badly), no game really does what you want here. D&D tries to do it, because it's an introductory RPG - it's like a bicycle with stabilisers. It's time to take those little things off and get on a real bike. And just like learning a bike, that requires learning to balance.

Being a GM isn't easy. Nothing rewarding in life is. Learning how to give your party a good fight without either killing them or fudging dice rolls is something that takes practice. Even an experienced GM doesn't know how to balance a new system until he's run it once or twice to get the feel of the system and his players. That's why introductory scenarios [Like the one in the book] are so useful. Run that one first, and you'll start to get an idea of what the party can do. I'm always eager to run my own adventures, too. But I'm always careful to try to run something simple and preferably pre-gen'ed first, so I can get a feel for things. And it's as dependant on your group as it is any statistics: I've run games for dumb players who just mindlessly charge stuff and roll dice, and I've run the same adventure for guys with streaks of cunning a mile wide, razor-sharp teamwork, and dice that loved them. And unsurprisingly what was balanced for one group was a walk over for the other.

Players do not have to be - and should not be - frustrated with a GM who is getting the hang of a new game. They are too. You are learning the ropes together. As I said, the important thing to remember when learning is to pitch low and then make it harder, rather than start hard and resorting to deus ex machina or fudging dice when it goes wrong. That way you don't TPK by accident, too. Nobody tends to mind an easy fight, but players don't like rolling up a new character each game and have a sixth sense for dice fudging in their favour. Decent players don't expect every fight to be perfectly balanced, because life and games aren't like that and no GM is perfect. We all manage to screw it up sometimes, and we all need to learn, and not every fight has to be nor should be 'fair' anyway. If your players are unwilling to cut you slack on the first couple of missions while you learn how both the system works and how THEY work as a team, then you need to get some better players, because yours are asses!

As to Lictors in DH; it has a good chance of ripping a low-to-medium rank party apart, if played right. It's a big, bad guy that makes players wish that they were playing something nice and safe like Call of Cthulhu and makes them wonder what character they are going to stat up next. It's almost certainly not going to be a 'balanced' fight. It's going to burn Fate Points. The 'fun' of that depends on your players. If your players like being superheroes and want to mindlessly blow it away with ease and fist-bump each other afterwards shouting 'Boo-Ya!' then it won't be 'fun' for them to encounter as Rank 1 DH characters. If your players like horror games where they are the underdogs and enjoy having to come up with some kind of cunning but super-risky plan such as in 'Alien 3' in order to trick and trap a far superior foe, then it's a whole bunch of fun. That's why there are different RPGs on the market: Because we all enjoy different things and difficulty levels.

I don't happen to have the CA with me and the Lictor's stats, but if I was using one, I'd base how hard I want the fight to be on how important it was to the mission. If the party were encountering one as a major protagonist (such as in Predator), then I'd adjust the encounter area and the creature's statistics to ensure that I could use hit-and-run tactics and seriously threaten isolated characters (And then I'd do my best to isolate them!). If I just wanted a bunch of Lictors to drop from a ceiling and melee the party as they were on the way to deal with something more important, I'd probably just run them as per the CA, perhaps shaving off an attack or some wounds if I thought them too tough. What I'm saying is that fights should be as difficult or easy as you think they should be in the adventure, and because DW's 'difficulty' has so many variables, you can massively tune the balance of a fight with environmental factors and a few extra wounds, or an extra dodge per round.

Narkasis Broon said:

What's really scary is that hormagaunts have Swift Attack. But max damage is 35 only. 2 additional damage dice.

Alex

ak-73 said:

No, it's 45 - Hormagants have the Overwhelming (Horde) Trait, which adds +1d10 damage to their melee attacks so long as at least 20 Magnitude remains. That's in addition to the +2d10 for being a Magnitude 20 Horde.

@ AK-73

good call on the swift attack, however I fear they also possess Overwhelming (Horde) which grants an extra damage die if their magnitude if greater than or equal to 20

so a mag 20 horde of hormagaunts gets 2 attacks each doing 1d10+5 +2d10 for being magnitude 20 as per horde rules +1d10 for being an overwhelming mag 20 horde =2 * 4d10+5

and because its a horde it can attack everyone it is in close combat with so it can hit potentially get 8 attacks on a 4 pc party = 1 round tpk.

on the other hand a dev will probably kill it in one round as well, its just a matter of who hits first

[edit] beaten to it by no1 here [/edit]

D&D has a system for the GM to properly balance encounters.

Shadowrun 3 and 4 both state difficulties for adversaries.

Mutants and Masterminds lays out how to create cross power-level enemies and encounters.

Star Wars (all editions) has guidelines for fighting matching your players.

All d20 SRD-based games have difficulty guidelines.

Contrary to what most of you here are saying, the 40k roleplaying line is not within some sort of vast majority that has difficulties while D&D is out on its lonesome. In addition, since D&D and d20 are by FAR the most popular Pen and Paper roleplaying systems to date, I think this group should be lest disdainful of an honest question from somebody who seems new to 40k role-play.

That said: Dark Heresy attempted to create a vague classification of threat level Minoris, Majoris, Extremis, etc. I found that these were largely circumstantial.

Deathwatch, similarly, attempts to create a classification level, per the core rulebook of Troop, Elite, and Master. In theory, a Master is a "threat" for the party by themself, Elites are 1-1 matchups for the squads, with one elite per marine, and troops need to be in a Horde to be any threat whatsoever. However, I have found this to be largely circumstantial as well, and it depends upon party size and party make-up. In addition, these classifications don't tell you whether a Troop turned into a Horde that is 30 strong is good for a 3-man party or good for a 6 man party, it is variable.

You may find this variability frustrating as a GM, and your players may find the "lack of balance" annoying as players; however, this is only a vaguely balanced system. The GM and players together are creating a story and having some fun. If they're extremely worried about balance, roll dice behind a GM screen and balance it yourself. If they're worried about gaming where the dice fall where they lay, roll in front of them. Either way, encounters are entirely circumstantial within this system.

And here's the key from 15 years of GM experience across all the systems listed above: even in a so-called "balanced" system, the encounters are circumstantial. They're never really balanced because as the GM you know in advance what skills and gear and abilities the characters bring to the table, the PCs know nothing. This means that Challenge Rating 19 black dragon with rogue levels would be a TPK for a 23rd level party just because you designed the encounter circumstances to be so.

Does that suck? Not really, as long as you look at the time with your friends as a positive. As you're learning the system, maybe you kill somebody too easily. Have them burn that Fate point, Deux ex Machina them out of the situation, and give them a bonus Fate Point at the end of the adventure if you feel really bad about it.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Ah yeah, I forgot they had that trait.

Alex

Isn't Mark of the Xenos not all that far away now?

That's the DW bestiary book. Just wait for that.

BYE