We played a first part of The Emperor Protects over the weekend. I was the GM for a kill-team of five (two assault, one tactical, one devastator, one apothecary).

I do not really understand what went wrong, but we did the optional encounter with the corrupted servitors aboard the Horizon's pride. After speaking to the prisoner, the team wanted to check out the servitor bay. Of course they were immediately attacked by 10 servitors (2 per player, like it says in the book). The fight went so bad that I almost pulled out my hair. Because of the incredible toughness of the servitors, the marines had big difficulties to get some damage done. And the one lucky time the servitors could score hit, the amount of damage was incredible (avarages of 20 damage because of their unnatural strength).

The devastator's leg was sliced off and he burned a faith point to live. The apothecary suffered three rounds from heavy blood loss after a cut in the right arm. He ended the fight with 0 wounds left. The assault marines only had 4 or 5 wounds left. The only one who did well in the fight was the tactical marine.

Anyone else had difficulties with this encounter?

I thought Space Marines were immune to blood loss on account of Larraman's Organ?

Yeah, I know that I made some mistakes as GM. But the team easily forgives this. They are even more inexperienced at role playing than me. And this was only our fourth session.

Only after the fight I realized that we forgot about the righteous fury rules. But I try to encourage the players to take note of that themselves. for me as a GM it is sometimes too much to handle at the same time.

Perhaps the blood loss should not have affected the apothecary also. I look into it.

The thing is, that I read all over this forum that combat is easy, but in our group combat takes long and is often hard. So I wonder what we are doing wrong or what we are doing different...

Maybe it was bad luck because i can hardly imagine a team like yours in difficulty with 2 servitors by player.

Those construct got 6 armour and a TB of 8 so 14 points are negate and 20 wounds.( Under 0 wound they are dead btw, they are lowaer NPC)

Against Astarets bolt pistol and bolter they get only 9 point of damage reduction and take an average 16 pt by hit with no Righterous fury involved so 7 wound by hit. So with 3 hits you kill one of them.

Against heavy bolterthey get only their TB so 8 point negate against a little 21 by hit so 13 wound are taken by hit, with two hits you kill one and you can shoot at the most 10 hits so if your target are close enough you can kill 5.

Against Astartes chain sword they will negate 10 point, so they will take more or less 8 wounds by hit so 3 hits kill one of them. So your 2 Assault marines would dispatched them in 3 turns at the most.

on the other hand your PC will negate between 16 to 20 wounds by hit, with a max hit they will endure 6 to 10 wounds (10+10 / pen 6), on average roll between 0 to 5 wounds ( 5+10 / pen 6).

Your Devastator alone with a 50 in BS should have score at least 3 hits even 4 killing two of those little bastard right where they stood.

50+10 for helmet+20 full auto+10 range = 90%

And even more the servitors has 1 attack per turn and a 35 in WS or BS so with bonus something like 65% for WS and 55% in WS in all out attack. so 1 out of 3 shoot will get wild, and 1 out of 2 melle attack will miss. And your player can dodge or parry once by turn.

That's strange. My group curbstomped that encounter, and I even put some extra limiters on it- in hindsight, telling the Storm Warden Techmarine he couldn't use the power claymore, while accurate to the size of the weapon, does not stop him from dealing out massive damage with his servoarms.

Well, the players started in melee with two servitors each. Perhaps this was a bad idea, but the book gave me the idea that the servitor bay was a rather cramped room and the corrupted servitors attack on sight.

On top of that, we had an unbelievable amount of failed parry tests. The apothecary even burned two faith points to reroll the parry tests.

Watch-Captain Albus said:

Be aware that for rerolls you do not Burn your fate points, you only Spent/Use them. Spent (Used) Fate points are not gone forever whereas a Burt Fate point is.

Burning and Using are two different things.

Make them begin the fight already engage with 2 ennemy was not a good idea.

Your players was coming there because they were searching for strange attitude, unprogrammed roiutine etc... Servitors gathering at close combat is one of them, maybe you should have them get a perception test and see the trap. because of course it also could be a trap.

<<<andjust asking how many attack the servitors failed?

Hi Bigjul,

I kinda understand that feeling. My group had just started on Final Sanction. Just yesterday we triggered the genestealer ambush event at the governor's manor.

Our squad leader techmarine went after the governor after crushing a genestealer with his insanely powerful servo arm. Our GM had exceptionally good rolls on top of the genestealers already almost insane physical stats.

The funniest thing was the medic, I meant Apothecary was the first to fall to -1 critical. Next went our Devastator, who was taciturn. Somehow our GM's roll seem to hit our legs, lol. Our GM's dice seemd to hate us with vengeance. Fortunately, my assault marine squad member and my libby managed to take out 5 of 8 the ambusher. In hindsight, it shows that our players did not assume battle formations, or fought defensively. We sorta learnt our lesson.

Rules wise, our GM had us do a 'killhouse' obstacles course. Basically it sorta trains the players and familiarises us with actions/reactions. Perhaps you may wish to do the same?

I'm a fair but hard GM and when my team finished Final Sanction they were no more good looking astartes.

Combats are violent and brutal and their tech marine lost an eye and an arm (and not life with FP), all player had received 2 criticals at least.

Genestealers are nasty little cunning and cutting bastards, but servitors?

But a game is what it is and if your player had fun and you also then nothing more is needed.

Thebigjul said:

Well, the servitors failed a lot less attacks than they should have. Their WS is rather low. But the dice were not in favor of the players, I guess...

I don't know. You can't always rely on DW encounters always being balanced (so far); the authors have problems callibrating challenges properly; sometimes they are too tough and sometimes they are too easy.

That said 2 servitors per marine sounds slightly too tough for rank 1 marines, okayish for higher ranks. The reason is that the servitors are slightly worse than marines and there are two for one. So at best this is even odds which means a marine goes down 50% of time. The 6 Genestealers in FS was even worse.

Morale of the story: in preparation for a mission you need to run quick math and do encounter re-balancing yourself.

Alex

Something quite similar happened to my group. I dropped hints about the servitors acting funny to the players, but they were eager to get the whole interlude on Horizon's Pride over with and decided to ignore them. They also locked up their weapons in the barrack weapon lockers for the night. So in the end, the corrupted servitors surprised them in their sleep, naked and unarmed,.

This was the first Deathwatch combat I ever ran, and I assumed an unarmed Space Marine could take out a mere servitor with ease; so did the players. Oh how wrong we were. By the second turn one of the Marines had taken a critical hit, and the remaining Marines had a few wounds left each,. They ran for their lives out of the Brig the next turn. Except for the Blood Angel, who locked himself in his coffin, while the servitors hacked away trying to get at him. One of my players was so disheartened he threw his character sheet away in disgust . The rest followed suit when the wisecracking Rogue Trader NPC showed up in his silk morning gown, after having dispatched the servitors that came for him with apparent ease. That combat nearly ended my Deathwatch campaign before it got off the ground; our Kill-Team has gone up against Hive Tyrants, Tau Commanders and Chaos Space Marines since, but nothing compares to those servitors.

Ormir, that reminds me of when the Rogue Trader came barging in at the end of our fight-gone-wrong.

"Always an adventure with the Deathwatch" was really the most inappropriate remark. The players in my group were discussing if they would shoot the Rogue Trader in the head. They could not understand how a captain would not notice his enginseer corrupting so many servitors. In the end, they did not shoot him though. Would have been a interesting turn of events if they did.

The players in my group were discussing if they would shoot the Rogue Trader in the head. They could not understand how a captain would not notice his enginseer corrupting so many servitors. In the end, they did not shoot him though. Would have been a interesting turn of events if they did.

That was indeed interresting idea.

That the rogue trader didn't see the work of the enginseer is pretty normal and can not be take in account, who knows a bit of the tech arcana and rituals made by the members of the mechanicus. When does the RT go in the tech sublevel where servotors are build and repair but never. Then btw the problem with the servitors is triggered by the arrival of the PC before that nothing was there to be seen. And from RT point of view as long as my ship run in perfect orderwhy troublen the work of my enginseer.

But to hide heretics is a crime...