Sup guys, got a question. I have a Salamander with the trade (armorer) skill and a Blood Angel with the trade (artisan) skill. What extents have you put on those skills when it comes to creating something? The Blood Angel's is easy its paintings and sculptures, but what about my Salamander? Trade (armorer) reads that it is used for "creating armor and weapons from personal to starship size". Wouldn't that allow them to bypass Sig. Wargear? To what extent should I let her use that skill? Can I let her create actual weapons such as flamers and bolters? Upgrade and customize her own? What about her armor? Sorry guys ahead of time but I'm kinda in the dark about this.

Thx!

-J

First of all, the IHB is your friend on this, it has a very good writeup on trade skills.

Mechanically, this probably should be alot of extended tests.

In the DW setting, I would probably have the player acquire "parts" by spending requisition from their next mission (or perhaps they find some). The key thing is to set the difficulties appropriately. Exceptional/mastercraft should be on the order of -30 to the test, and extended test years in duration.

If the item is of no game-value (such as a blood angel doing some sculpture) then I'd be inclined to allow it, as it's essentially characterisation. Just let them make cool stuff when appropriate and remember that it's probably better to rate their quality of work on the number of skill levels they have than them picking up a dice. I can't paint the Mona Lisa by trying a hundred times and by finally creating a masterpiece when I roll '01'.

Making wargear is of course entirely another matter.

The Trade skills might be useful on missions, but are not there as a back-door way of taking the Requisition economy and breaking it and your game! If they want to make something cool, then by all means consider allowing the item they take as custom wargear (and pay for with XP!) to be self-made, but that's the limit of it, to my mind. Although having a powersword you made yourself should be plenty cool enough! That the skill be useful on a mission once in a while is the point of the skill and generous enough (perhaps the blood angel notices that the priceless icon they are supposed to escort is a blatant fake, or the gun that jammed after a Kraken round mis-fire could be repaired in the field by the armourer, or they can jury-rig non-Astartes weaponry for desperate players to use).

Remember and remind your players that they are Marines, not artisans. When serving in their Chapter, Marines -by canon- have 15 minutes of personal time each day. This isn't really enough time to knock up a new boltgun. Marines have better things to do that sit around painting, and if they wanted to make things, they should have joined the AM instead! No matter how skilled a cobbler a star soccer player is, he doesn't make his own shoes, because he's out practising to remain the best at playing.

Things might be a bit different for Deathwatch characters as regards personal time, and they might have more free time on their hands, but they are still primarily special forces elite infantry, and when they are not out doing that, they should be spending the vast majority of their time training for that. Remember that the PCs are new to working together, and are learning to work as a team. That should take up more than enough time.

Next up, if the players want to make a boltgun with their single rank or whatever in a trade skill, 15 minutes of spare-time per day, and Int of 40, who do they think made their weapons and wargear in the first place? Trained monkeys? If someone who spends 90% of their time training for war can knock up a better boltgun in their spare time, then why is the Chapter's wargear carefully handed down through generations of warriors and hand-made thousands of lightyears away by Tech Priests? The truth is that Marine wargear is already going to have been hand-made by the best people for the job, who have spent their entire lives dedicated to such duties. It's already far superior to 'mortal' gear, and it makes little sense that players can short-cut that process and be able to just make stuff with as much -or more- skill.

Obviously, power armour and high quality weapons should be outside a player's remit. There's a reason why the players are wearing armour that's thousands of years old! If players are *really* insistent, then the closest thing available is the Forgemaster in RoB. That's a specialist career of tech-marines that has very limited gear customisation abilities. Given that it's available only to tech-marines, it's the very pinnacle of gear customisation as far as the players are concerned. And if they want it, they should play a tech-marine!

And of course, Marines don't own a thing. All of their 'stuff' is borrowed. If a Marine should make a 'spare' thing, then it's not really spare. As characters bought up with this monastic point of view, characters should not really take to the concept of ownership or possessions. If they have something that they don't use, then it should be given to the Chapter, so that others may use it, or so it can be properly stored with honour until needed.

In short: Don't let your players turn a game that has a Requisition economy and that is not supposed to be about loot into a game about loot with a broken Requisition economy! There's nothing wrong with letting characters make minor non-game-affecting changes to things or items, such as painting stuff, or carving runes onto stuff, or allowing the custom wargear that they just paid XP for to be self-made, but for the most part the skill should be there as a 'background skill' that is seldom relevant to the game. You also might want to throw players a bone by dreaming up ways for them to use their 'non-combat background skills' in games somehow, and the armourer skill is already *plenty* useful enough in that respect in that it can be used to repair gear in the field.

I second Siranui's points and just want to add that the skill will really seem cool the first time your player uses it to make improved armor for the tribal Feral Worlders to strengthen them against the Tyranid forces you're all about to fight.

Thx Kommisar, I didn't realize that the IHB went into SO much detail in the minutia of the skills. And to Sira, dude I didn't need a rant. I understand DW works off a Req economy, thats why I was torn before to begin with, but this is a Nocturnian we are talking about all of who have extensive training on the forge! What the solution I have conceived after reading more on the IHB, is to allow crafting with the Salamander Marines, but, XP will have to b paid proportionate to what they are trying to accomplish! That will represent taking time away from training to concern themselves with what their pet project is, not including the parts and material that will be needed.

I am thinking to take the Req. of the item and times it by 100. And then make them make the test with appropriate modifiers and let it come out in the wash! That means to make a common-craftmanship Chainsword will cost 500XP and the test to see if it is made with or without complications! Its a quick and dirty solution.

-J

And just to add to this, I wouldn't generally allow creating items from scratch. I would say more for modifications and the like. Perhaps allow a trade armourer test to (if you're using the new weapon stats), to "restore" full auto to a boltgun.

Jkilla41 said:

Players can typically only get three bits of wargear: A relic, a master and a normal level. To say that I'm leery about a player buying a 400xp skill which not only adds character, and is useful in up-time, but also allows a player to then make and own an effectively unlimited number of bits of extra wargear (even if they are not master crafted, and even if they are paid for with XP) is a bit of an understatement.

Dice rolls don't help, either. The player just spends fate points on re-rolls and is a dice-roll down for a single session in exchange for having something permanent. Ripe for exploit.

Even if they want to be 'reasonable' and just make normal quality bits, it's easy to see that one player will soon be walking into every mission with at least 25Req more than everyone else.

I have been known to min-max before, and I would bite a GM's hand off to be able to make stuff in DW, because franly, it's beardy as sin! 1000xp worth of trade skills +100xp per Req to be able to break the Requisition economy is a bargain. Heck; I'd even undersell it and go for technomat or electronics or something. Then 3500xp later we can have a Singulem link in the party, which is 3500xp for a +5BS increase for every player! Ca-Ching! Another 2000xp gives me a motion tracker for an extra +10 on a skill check that I'd be making in at least 50% of combat rounds. Brilliant!

I think you're really underestimating quite how bad it could get, and how much resentment you might potentially get from other players when they see something which is to them an enormously valuable resource (wargear for XP) becoming freely available to another player.

KommissarK said:

So some life-long adept of the AM hand-crafts the ultimate in personal weaponry, then some grunt comes along with a spanner and makes it better with a few days work?

It would probably be like a one month interval extended test, 5 requisition per interval (taken from next mission unless they set it aside last time), -10 to -30 difficulty, depending on what they want to actually modify, 10-15 total DoS's needed for success. This would be for a somewhat significant/useful upgrade (melee hardening for a weapon to make it count as a blade, perhaps RoF adjustments if they accept a negative penalty like jamming on an 80+)

So yes, just a couple of days.

Also, I handle crafting at start of session, so they take away from what fate points they can use during actual play.

Note that I've really only handled this in DH, has not come up in DW for me. One example is I allowed a tech priest to modify a hellgun to be more efficient with its ammo, and not require the backpack to get full charge from a charge pack. Basically, a significant weight reduction/ease of reloading in the field modification. For it, he had to use parts from 2 other hellguns (destroyed in the process effectively), and it took several months and a few good rolls. Also, to allow for this, the tech priest character had a background package making them a form of heretic (he had "Scholastic lore(Tech)", basically an actual understanding of science and technology).

With marines, I don't view the traditional "15 minutes free time" as applying in the Deathwatch setting, so its fair to assume they have time (at least to me) to actually devote to such a project.

Now, I would be careful with generally preferring a Techmarine to take such a skill, or a marine from a chapter that obviously respects such concepts.

You may want to compare this with the rewards of the "First Among Equals" distinction from Rites of Battle. 1000xp buys you 20 extra req and +10 bonus on renown when choosing gear. Sig Wargear talent is good for about 20 req and master costs you another 1000xp for 20 more. So I'd say that the cost of wargear is about 10-20 req per 500xp. Since the trade skill costs 600xp to train I'd just be clear with a player how much req he can build with it. Since it takes time to aquire and tweaking weapons is consistent with fluff, I think this is a cool way to improve that standard wargear.

If he opts to improve it to +10 for 400xp give him some more req. Improvements seems totally believable and balanced. I wouldn't let a player build some prototype nonsense or scratch build a conversion beamer or anything.