Hi,

I'm currently playing a Tactical Marine and I feel that the characteristic advances of the different specialities are not very well balanced.

Lets have a look at the different specialities and their cheap/expensive stats (note: 1 cheap and 1 expensive stat approx. "cancel" each other out):

Apothecary: 3 cheap

Assault: 4 cheap, 3 expensive, leaving 1 cheap

Devastator: 3 cheap, 3 expensive, leaving...nothing

Librarian: 4 cheap, 3 expensive, leaving 1 cheap

Tactical: 2 cheap

Techmarine: 3 cheap, 3 expensive, leaving...nothing

This shows clearly that the apothecary gets a huge bonus, while devastator and techmarine get left behind.

Concering the Tactical marine, I've found that they are mostly the only ones who are almost "forced" to take Fellowship, while other marines have almost no use for the stat.

I really think that the specialities should all be a bit more "moderate", with less cheap and expansive stats (iE. something like max. 3 cheap, max 2 expensive).

Any thoughts on this? I try to be open, and would gladly be convinced otherwise.

br,

Steel

steelshark said:

some classes have less things to do with the stats and more to do with skills, imbalance is intentionall as much like dnd the party shouldnt be thinking well the tech marine beats the tactical marine in a fair fight but the apothecary... and so on. its a matter of how the skill lists for the class balance out to make it fit the role its designed to play for the party and how much it actually needs stats(vs needing skills) to do that.

In spite of his characteristic advances the Apothecary is the worst (most lacklustre) specialty of them all. The librarian conversely is the most powerful, followed by Dev and Assault.

Characteristics don't need to be balanced, it's okay if one class has better characteristics and another has other benefits (such as psy powers). The overall package must be right and I don't feel the Apo is up to it.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Yet the Apothecary is also the most necessary Specialty given how combat-heavy Deathwatch typically is. A team can get by without a Librarian, but unless they have a very generous GM or a lot of downtime between every fight they'll definitely want an Apothecary.

I don't think the costs have to be perfectly balanced, but I don't like how wildly uneven they are. Of course, that's just one of many things I think should have been differently with the various Specialties.

Another thing is as is said above Deathwatch is uber combat heavy, so stat ups in WS, BS and to a lesser extent Str, Tou and Agi are generally more valuable than stat ups for the mental skills, but then the librarian, stat up for willpower is fantastic. In short I don't think you can just compare like that, because some stats have synergy with one another (Str and WS) and some are more valuable than others. This is a concept that is prevalant in lots of RPG's. That's where the concept of a dump stat comes from. I think the important thing is that a party of all one speciality will almost certainly not survive long. Therefore the game is balanced enough that everyone ought to be a different speciality in a party. beyond that game balance is a matter of preventing munchkins from running away with the game. As a GM if I think my devastator is dominating the game I throw some close combat enemies at the party, so the other specs can have some glorious victory.