Storm Trooper's are kinda weak. (Ascension)

By Blizzard36, in Dark Heresy

My group is doing an Ascended+ campaign (mixed PCs from all 3 40k RPGs) and we've noticed something that I see many others have noted on these boards. The Storm Trooper is... pretty underwhelming when compared with any of the other Combat focused careers. They're really only worthwhile if they have the resources of a full unit to back them up, individually most of the other careers are far better.

But, despite so many people agreeing on this, I've found almost no suggestions on how to fix it. (If there is such a discussion that I’ve missed, please link me too it.)

My personal view is that the core of the Storm Trooper's problems is that their guaranteed Ascended Trait, Special Operations Training, only works with Hullguns and Carapace armor. While it does some nifty things, allowing them to nearly reach the performance of power-armor and bolter, that equipment is losing its usefulness at Ascended levels. The Storm Trooper is at their most effective the moment they Ascend. From that moment on, assuming they stick with the gear they have their bonuses with, they will slowly be outpaced by their opposition and allies. In order to stay competitive they need to upgrade their equipment within a rank or two. And as soon as they do that, they effectively loose one half of their Ascended special abilities, which puts them right back behind their foes and allies in individual ability.

My proposed solution would be to extend the bonuses the Storm Trooper gets to Hellguns and Carapace Armor to all Imperial Issue weapons and armor. That way they retain their special abilities, and can scale their equipment with everyone else.

Give them Squad Mode abilities and a squad of Storm Troopers to command.

guest469 said:


Give them Squad Mode abilities and a squad of Storm Troopers to command.

Blizzard36 said:

The Storm Trooper is... pretty underwhelming when compared with any of the other Combat focused careers. They're really only worthwhile if they have the resources of a full unit to back them up, individually most of the other careers are far better.

The point that needs addressing is the Storm Trooper's poor comparative performance as an individual combatant. Giving it a squad to work with to be effective just proves that it is a poor option as an individual, and even if that is your "fix" it still has problems. There will be times when you don't have your squad with you, and it assumes none of the rest of the careers that outperform the StormTrooper will have a squad of thier own.

Well, we may end up finding the fix when "Only War" comes out, but considering FFG's history of slow release dates on new material, it may be awhile.

Blizzard36 said:

My personal view is that the core of the Storm Trooper's problems is that their guaranteed Ascended Trait, Special Operations Training, only works with Hullguns and Carapace armor. While it does some nifty things, allowing them to nearly reach the performance of power-armor and bolter, that equipment is losing its usefulness at Ascended levels. The Storm Trooper is at their most effective the moment they Ascend. From that moment on, assuming they stick with the gear they have their bonuses with, they will slowly be outpaced by their opposition and allies. In order to stay competitive they need to upgrade their equipment within a rank or two. And as soon as they do that, they effectively loose one half of their Ascended special abilities, which puts them right back behind their foes and allies in individual ability.

So the opposition and allies are advancing beyond power armor? Isn't that the limit?

While I may agree that a combat class that doesn't get an unnatural stats may be underwhelming the idea of gear progression on an RPG makes my teeth ache.

For storm troopers, I can't help thinking that they expect them to be packing a heavy weapon most of time. What else would they expect you to do with that weight allowance you get from not counting the weight of carapace armour?

Try to apply the bonus to hell-guns to all ranged weapons that he can use.

bogi_khaosa said:

Blizzard36 said:

My personal view is that the core of the Storm Trooper's problems is that their guaranteed Ascended Trait, Special Operations Training, only works with Hullguns and Carapace armor. While it does some nifty things, allowing them to nearly reach the performance of power-armor and bolter, that equipment is losing its usefulness at Ascended levels. The Storm Trooper is at their most effective the moment they Ascend. From that moment on, assuming they stick with the gear they have their bonuses with, they will slowly be outpaced by their opposition and allies. In order to stay competitive they need to upgrade their equipment within a rank or two. And as soon as they do that, they effectively loose one half of their Ascended special abilities, which puts them right back behind their foes and allies in individual ability.

So the opposition and allies are advancing beyond power armor? Isn't that the limit?

No, they are using power armor while the Storm Trooper is stuck with Carapace if it wants to receive its Ascended Trait benifit. If they switch to Power Armor or a heavy weapon to counter, then it looses that benifit while the opponents and allies still keep whatever equivilent they had.

Face Eater said:

For storm troopers, I can't help thinking that they expect them to be packing a heavy weapon most of time. What else would they expect you to do with that weight allowance you get from not counting the weight of carapace armour?

Hellguns and carapace seem like they're sort of iconic for Storm Troopers, something they train with to absurd amounts. At least, that's what I picked up from Eisenhorn.

I'd suggest, instead, considering adding new traits that boost the iconic accountrements, either through Storm Trooper only talents/traits or by simply modifying their base Ascension-level trait to grant additional benefits once you reach a certain rank.

One possibility that comes to mind would be a trait that could grant the "Accurate" property to all Hellguns carried by a Stormtrooper, which would provide both a boost to shooting ability AND an option for a significant damage increase. Another trait might boost the Armor value on Carapace worn, or even boost the movement speed of a Stormtrooper wearing Carapace. There's actually quite a few properties that seem like they could fit: Isn't there a "Proven" quality recently introduced?

Personally, I'd focus on bringing the Storm Trooper's iconic weaponry and armor up to par with the later equipment options, rather than step away from the Storm Trooper's fluff preferences by granting bonuses to EVERYTHING imperial.

If the Storm Trooper in question wants to come from a background with a different focus, well... just change the base ascension trait to fit that character's iconic weaponry. But don't grant those bonuses to everything under the sun, regardless of that character's particular focus.

Mastercrafted Artificer Carapace armor with improved powered armature, morza death world pattern, with custom stummer, grav-shute, hell-gun overcharged power pack. capture and confiscated Xeno (tau) personnal Stealth field... (ssshhhh, the inquisitor must not know!)

or

Death Korp of Kiev Mastercrafted Carapace chemical and Biological warfare specialist armor. Chemical repelant tranchcoat, incorporated chem and bio detectors, etc...

Overcharged mastercrafted Hell-Gun combi melta, Lillith Forge pattern with underbarrel grenade launcher.

You know make it personnal! ;)

To me, the storm trooper is a veteran and a professional of the war.

He has learned to gain the best from every weapon and to improvise in direst circumstances.

Maybe, GM can allow the PG to add a trait to weapon he uses by circumstances and logic.

Blizzard36 said:

No, they are using power armor while the Storm Trooper is stuck with Carapace if it wants to receive its Ascended Trait benifit. If they switch to Power Armor or a heavy weapon to counter, then it looses that benifit while the opponents and allies still keep whatever equivilent they had.

Well if they're using power armour they can't be sneaky which is one of their whole points,

Give them some unnatural characteristics. My GM had no problem in giving my old character unnatural fellowship x2 due to all the social benefits that desperados get.

I can only endorse what crisaron said and after all it is an RPG and not an MMO, so all this talk of balancing makes me wonder. A Storm Trooper might not be en par with a Vindicare Assassin, but this is part of the 40K background (equality is not the credo of 40K). In Black Crusade you play Space Marines next to mundane human renegades and it is supposed to work, even though the "power level" is far from en par. It is the job of the GM in my opinion to ensure that all players have fun and to implement at least some sort of level playing field for all. As for Power Armour, I suppose Death Cult and Vindicare Assassins as well as most Desperadoes do not run around in it either.

So, as crisaron indictaed, give the Storm Trooper access to the most diverse equipment (i.e. a big armoury) where he can chose from about all military grade weaponry. Give him best quality Storm Trooper Carapace with chameleon coating, inbuilt refractor field, auspex, grav harness, shock gloves, hand flamer etc. as well as an Mechanicus sanctioned Aegis/Sollex pattern overcharge upgrade for his Hellgun with underslung grenade launcher, power bayonet, combi-melta and whatever else you can think of.

Make him flexible, make him diverse, make him attuned to whatever threat is to expected. The Vindicare may have his Exitus Rifle all the time against every opposition, whereas the Storm Trooper pulls out just the best fitting arsenal of weapons to counter his opposition. He is MacGyver combined with John Rambo as well as Schwarzenegger in Predator (and maybe Chuck Norris in Delta Force).

If you are really despearte to increase his innate abilities and bring him up to unnatural charateristics, give him access to Magos Biologis crafted muscle grafts, extra glands and/or subdermal armour. The Genetors of the Hippocrasian Agglomeration do some kind of such experiments with volunteers from the Imperial Guard on the Death World of Morven if I remember correctly...

My solution was to play something else.
Now I'm really happy with my sage.

If I was GM I would rule that the the AB of a best Craftsmanship Carapace Armour counts as 1 higher if worn by a stormtrooper with special operations Training (because it can't count as one step better in craftsmanship).
In addition I would give hellweapons used by the stormtrooper the proven (x) quality, where x is the number of Ascension ranks the Trooper has achived.

The ability specialist: Field Command should give the option to reroll either failed ballistics skill tests or willpower tests to resist fear or pinning during that one turn.

The ability Specialist: Drop Trooper lacks the Bonus to Pilot (personal) which is not only used for grav chutes but for jet packs as well.

The ability Specialist: Recon should include the addition that it's a natural AB of 7 that may not be exeeded. Not including bonuses for increased quality.

I would probably allow Stormtroopers to take all three of the Ascension bonuses, or maybe two of the three. I'd also let the armour bonus work a bit better. I'd also be tempted to allow for another Ascended class for Guardsmen, something like Lord Militant or similar, high ranking Generals and similar. Here's hoping Only War has some cool things.

I have one player headed towards stormtrooper, was thinking of bulking him up with some best quality cybernetics or biologus equivalents (dermal armour, MUI interfaces, replacement senses, maybe tears of the dragon etc) either that or I'll let him play his marine scout I have in a parallel game. Otherwise he'll be a bit like a street sam out of SR.

Assuming he survives the tests to get in, which wont be pleasent.

I can sort of understand handing out superior kit to the Stormtrooper to bring him closer to the assassin power wise but if you drop things like dermal armour, MUI interfaces, replacement senses and tears of the dragon on the party stormtrooper your assassins are going to want a piece of that high end kit action themselves and at unless the assassin is unliked by the Inquisition he is going to be justified asking for it and you will have to give some GM in character crap not to let him have any and when the time comes and all your party have top of the line gear your Stormtrooper is going to be back on the bottom rung.

The real problem is that combat options are actuallly quite limited if you look at it from an optimisation perspective (which your combatants will as they want to kill the enemy before the enemy kills them) the assassins get far better stuff to do thier jobs with than the stormtrooper. Hell, given the amount of high pen weapons kicking around at that level an extra point of AP whilst wearing carapace is not going to achieve much.

Unfortunately the DH system does not promote being a good all rounder, so you guardman cant sensibly move out into different specialities because the characters who excel in thoses specialisations will be doing the task so much better.

Which means you stormtrooper is left to improve his area of expertise (shooting based combat) where the other combat careers are just so much better (Vindicare, Twin hellpistol desperado, ranged psyker, ranged cog boy with a heavy weapon) .

Banjulhu said:

Which means you stormtrooper is left to improve his area of expertise (shooting based combat) where the other combat careers are just so much better (Vindicare, Twin hellpistol desperado, ranged psyker, ranged cog boy with a heavy weapon) .

Pretty sure he can use the same weapons with the respective Exotic Weapon talents and has the same talents. He won't get the special goodies that the Vindicare does... but that's it AFAIK.

Just a little departure from the thread, can't this be generalized for all non-combat Ascentions? Beeing an inquisitor/Interrogator/Sage is all well and good but Unnatural Willpower won't stop the big bad combat machine heading your way...

Isidro

isidro said:

Just a little departure from the thread, can't this be generalized for all non-combat Ascentions? Beeing an inquisitor/Interrogator/Sage is all well and good but Unnatural Willpower won't stop the big bad combat machine heading your way...

Isidro

Yet again, when a combat monster is charging your Inquisitor/Interrogator/Sage, it's the Stormtrooper who puts himself between you and it

Braddoc said:

isidro said:

Just a little departure from the thread, can't this be generalized for all non-combat Ascentions? Beeing an inquisitor/Interrogator/Sage is all well and good but Unnatural Willpower won't stop the big bad combat machine heading your way...

Isidro

Yet again, when a combat monster is charging your Inquisitor/Interrogator/Sage, it's the Stormtrooper who puts himself between you and it

I'd rather have a Crusader do that, a storm trooper would be out of his element. That hellgun won't help a lot when he is being bounced like a basket ball.

When my guardsman ascended I had a choice to make between Storm Trooper or Crusader. My first instinct was to go storm trooper and try to make rambo using the recon package, but the ST transition package was so bad for my 60 st and toughness character. When I compared it to the crusader transition there was no contest. On one side Ihad the choice to become something like a shaolin monk, on the other was going to the 40k version of Police Academy (movie reference).

isidro said:

Banjulhu said:

Which means you stormtrooper is left to improve his area of expertise (shooting based combat) where the other combat careers are just so much better (Vindicare, Twin hellpistol desperado, ranged psyker, ranged cog boy with a heavy weapon) .

Just a little departure from the thread, can't this be generalized for all non-combat Ascentions? Beeing an inquisitor/Interrogator/Sage is all well and good but Unnatural Willpower won't stop the big bad combat machine heading your way...

Isidro

That's not a fair comparison. As mentioned above, each of the careers is supposed to have something they excel at. In the case of the Interrogator and Sage, that's the investigation side of the game. Sure the group is in big trouble if it comes down to the Sage trying to stop the enemy's big combat monster, but they're in just as much trouble if it falls to the Storm Trooper to solve the crime. That's not the job either of them is meant for.

Blizzard36 said:

Sure the group is in big trouble if it comes down to the Sage trying to stop the enemy's big combat monster.

Really? The Adept/sage is not THAT incapable in combat. He gets some nice combat talents and weapon trainings.

I think that Storm Trooper is like Sister of Battle: more capable than a 1° Rank guardsman, but still not powerfull like an Inquisitor.

Storm Trooper and Sister of Battle are something between Acolytes and Throne's Agent.

If FFG will rewrite Storm Trooper like Sister of Battle would be great, but I don't think this will happen.