I ran the first session of a Deathwatch campaign on Monday. Overall, I think it went well and found the system to be very flexible. That said, there are a few things that I would appreciate opinions on:

1/ The first combat encounter was against a horde, elite and 12 troops. I found running the troops (elite guardsmen) very time consuming. Was I doing it wrong? I'm considering moving to running them as small hordes, with special weapons mixed in and allowing specific models in hordes to be targetted (called shots).

2/ A couple of PCs took a fair amount of damage. The party doesn't have an apothecary and they probably have ~3 equivalent encounters to go. Without healing the odds are pretty good they'll lose members. Am I missing something or is playing without an apothecary much harder for the party?

3/ Criticals (having to roll to confirm) seemed to really disrupt flow. The process of rolling to hit, count DoS, work out location, roll damage, if crit roll to confirm (if you can remember what you needed to hit) and if you confirm then roll more damage etc just didn't work for us. I'm thinking of allowing Deathwatch marines to auto-confirm against everything (not just xenos). Is that a mistake? I'm also going to make none master RF from adversaries just be +2dmg.

4/ I didn't find a clear example of how cover works with hordes. I'd like them to gain some benefit, so I'm thinking of allowing hordes to negate #Cover armour value)-D10 damage? Most hordes won't use cover, but I can see a squad of Storm Troopers or equivalent doing so.

The above really isn't intended as a critiscism. I found the system to allow players to do a lot of great stuff and a lot of fun was had. I did however find that too much time was spent on certain mechanisms and I'm not sure if that was down to me playing it wrong, or if its mechanical in which case I'll streamline it.

Glad you're enjoying it! Let me see if I can help.

1) That does sound a bit clunky. I'd advise running the bodyguards as a separate horde with beefed stats and special weapons. I've always allowed my players to target individuals in hordes carrying special weapons with a modifier based on how many other members of the horde there are who might try to protect the one with the heavy weapon. Also, consider looking at the horde traits to determine exactly what you want it to do. For using hordes with an elite as a leader, look at the stat blocks for Captain Grayson and his Storm Troopers in Oblivion's Edge.

2) In my opinion, Deathwatch is actually the LEAST lethal of the three 40kRPGs because of how beefy Space Marines are. That said, yes, it's a rather lethal system, and if the Kill-Team doesn't have an Apothecary, chances are good you'll lose one or more Marines. Heck, even with an apothecary odds are more than even for character death. You might want to remind your players that they can spend a fate point to recover 1d10 wounds at any time.

3) The Righteous Fury system works, and it goes faster and faster as you learn and grow accommodated to the system. That said, the only enemies who should EVER get Righteous Fury are those with the Touched by the Fates talent, which also grants them Fate Points.

4) This'll be case-by-case. Most hordes are too large to make effective use of cover. For the specific example of Storm Troopers, and also for Fire Warriors, using smaller Hordes to represent fire-teams of a single squad may be the best path- it worked for me in a mission against the Tau, anyway. If they can get behind cover, then they get the full bonus. If some of the horde is left out in the open, figure out how much is left out. The parts in cover get the bonus, those that aren't, well, don't.

Hope this helped!

Thanks Gaire, it was all very useful. I was hoping that someone would see areas in the rule I perhaps was overlooking and you've certainly done that.

Recovering wounds with fate completely solves the dmg issue. I want the missions to have bite and make players use fate etc and that will help no end

Your points on hordes are all helpful and should allow me to run them as I want them. I'll trust your judgement on RF and leave rolling to confirm in for now, hopefully your right. I will definitely restrict it to characters with "TbtF" as you say.

Thanks again,

John

Glad to be of service.