Is it just me, or are the new rules for True Grit completely insane? Especially for Marines, it makes them almost immortal, what was so wrong with the old rule?

wow that is pretty good.

For those of us who've yet to receive our pre-order of Black Crusade from online retailers (such as Amazon or Barnes&Noble), can you explain what the difference is?

It reduces critical damage by toughness bonus (to a minimum of 1).

I can only imagine this to mean "unmodified" Toughness Bonus or "one half" Toughness Bonus. If Unnatural Toughness and similar things apply a Marine with this talent would simply be near impossible to kill. He would take more attacks to fall to -8/-9-10 then he most likely took to get to 0 Wounds.

Let's hope for some clarifications in the errata.

In the meantime, I refuse to use the rules as written in my games, I will stick to the old True Grit (which is still VERY powerful).

Is the new "True Grit" expensive or rare to buy? Sorry, I don't have the the book yet, so I'm assuming that this is a "non-class" talent. Because, if it's hard to get, it may "balance out" accordingly. Again, if I'm misunderstood, I'm sorry but I'm not getting my book till the weekend...

Mithras said:

Nope, any character may purchase it for 400 to 1000 XP (depending on allegiance) anytime, even at creation.

Ridiculous.

Its supposed to be on par with the new Lightning Attack, for instance. Tier 3 talents are supposed to be powerful, being tough is the schtick of Nurglites, especially when they're already half dead, and old True Grit is more of a Tier 1 talent. Most of the time, anything that'd kill an astartes, wouldn't care about old True Grit anyway.

It bears mentioning that the Felling weapon trait goes a long way towards making this more managable, and by the time you have characters in a position to purchase True Grit, Felling weapons, while not ubiquitous, should nevertheless not be outside the realm of possibility. On the other side of the coin, if a player spends 1000xp on a Talent, I'd say that entitles them to survive pretty incredible amounts of small-arms fire, only slowly going down as the physical damage to their bodies racks up.

It could also be beefed up in power to reflect that the penalties for death in this game are harsher than the other games.

the measily street fighter talent let's you add your WS Bonus to your critical dmg if you fight with a knife or dagger -> instadeath without true grit.

All this rule does is allow True Grit to scale, rather than being a catch-all 'half critical damage' rule like it has been in the past. It means that tougher characters are tougher and weaker characters are - wait for it - weaker , but still gives a benefit to all.

Seems like a perfectly reasonable change to me, especially given the way Unnatural Characteristics work now.

BYE

Doomaflatchi said:

By the time characters are able to purchase True Grit? You mean at the beginning of the game?

Small arms fire? You mean like a Legion Heavy Bolter ( 26 dmg+pen if you roll nine, if you are a marine with average stats and no wounds left and true grit that's 1 critical wounds)?

And it's 1000 XP only if your God is Tzeentch or Slaanesh, and even then, it's a no brainer.

I can't see why so many people see making marines nearly unkillable by anything that can't deal at least 28+ damage+pen in one hit (10 armour + 8 toughness + True Grit = 26 damage reduction, and let's not mention the other ways to increase armour or toughness...) as a good idea, but to each their own...

Sorry double post.

@Zaldrak

You're saying that as if that Legion Heavy Bolter only had a single shot setting. Just get a full-auto weapon that deals at least 19 points of damage, hit the marine 6 or so times (don't know the new crit tables) and watch as the crits rack up.

Cifer said:

That doesn't make the talent any less overpowered.

It's also silly: 6 hits from bolter and 6 hits from heavy bolter having the same effect?

I stand by my opinion: a talent that reduces crits by 8 (EIGHT!) is overpowered, and makes blanacing combat for mixed parties of mortals and marines even more of a nightmare (Like the legion heavy bolter rolling nine for damage: a shot that turns a human with no wounds left into red paint deals just one crit damage to a marine).

and makes blanacing combat for mixed parties of mortals and marines even more of a nightmare to balance (Like the legion bolter rolling nine for damage: a shot that turns a human with no wounds left into red paint deals just one crit damage to a marine).

You're saying that as if it wasn't easily possible to have differences in soak values of ten or more points in the group even without True Grit...

Cifer said:

Again, what you say doesn't make true grit any less overpowered. The number you've given is also wrong.

With the old rule the difference was about six, assuming both have true grit (2 armor +4 toughness). Huge, but manageable (and it still shows that marines are superhuman).

Now, with the new true grit the difference is about 10, assuming both human and marine have it (2 armor + 4 toughness+ 4 true grit). Unmanageable (if you want to include enemies that are a threat for the marines without killing humans in a single hit).

And even in a human only game, if you're not Tzeentch or Slaanesh true grit is a no brainer talent to get. If you're a marine it's no brainer period.

Please read what I'm writing before commenting that I'm "wrong". I noted that even without the True Grit talent, you can have ludicrous differences in soak value. Just take a human character with a 3 TB and 5 points of armour and a Marine with 8 TB and 10 Armour - bam, instant 10 points of soak difference, meaning the mortal will get the red-paste treatment while the CSM is at Crit-0. As long as not everyone invests in Toughness and Armour in the same way, you're going to have trouble balancing fights if every enemy shoots at every PC (instead of, say, reserving anti-tank weaponry against the walking tanks).

Cifer said:

And that makes creating an even greater soak difference in the form of the new True Grit a good idea because...?

...because it's pretty hard to unbalance something that has no balance in the first place. A mortal that catches an anti-Astartes weapon with his face is toast, whether that weapon is meant for a CSM with or without True Grit.

Cifer said:

...Respectfully, I don't think that makes any sense at all.

Zaldrak said:

It makes perfect sense. If something isn't balanced to start with (with the addition that it might not have been intended to be balanced), how can you unbalance it? With or without True Grit, an anti-Astartes weapon is going to turn a human into giblets, which is sort of the point - a human isn't an Astartes, and will never be truly on the same level as one.

You seem to be seeing this as a game problem, when I personally think that, if a GM is throwing anti-Astartes weapons at humans, it's actually a GM problem.

RPGs are not required to be balanced, especially one where both normal humans and what are essentially ubermensch work side by side - there's no way to properly balance that, other than by the GM making sure to be sensible, at least not in a way that won't totally disregard the canon of Marines being able to shrug off what would vaporise a normal person.

MILLANDSON said:

Hmm, I dunno, you might pheraps, uh ....duh... UNBALANCE IT WAY MORE????

MILLANDSON said:

First off, Marines don't "shrug off" things that vaporize normal human: while it makes perfect sense that a marine lives through a hit that utterly destroys a normal human (like a heavy bolter shell in the face, I say in the face because we are assuming max damage rolled), making him live through six or more of said hits is pushing it too far. With the old true grit rules you could take three or maybe four of said hits, I think it was more fair and still superhuman enough.

Second, I think True Grit is bad for the game because it turns every encounter that doesn't feature enemies equipped with lascannons or uber daemon weapons either trivial or extremely long for marines. In short, boring fights in which marines who face a worthy enemy (like another marine) chip away at their criticals 1 point at a time, taking too much of the game session (and if there are human players in the group, they re going to be pretty bored in the meantime, or they could try helping their marine friends and risk getting one-shotted by a stray hit).

It also takes away the thrill of doing something risky, like running towards an enemy firing a bolter, because with the old rules and old criticals, a very lucky hit from an astartes bolter could indeed kill a marine on the spot (and thiings like that happen in the fluff), but now it's impossible: a group of three guardsmen in heavy cover handling a mounted heavy bolter 90 meters far away? Meh, I run to them, I'll be in melee in 3 rounds, that's 3 criticals in worst-case scenario, no risk at all. Sure, even with the old rules they were hardly a threat, but at least there was a little risk involved.

It's not a matter of making human-marine mixed game even MORE difficult to run than the other 40k RPG lines not meant for such groups (although it does just that), even all-marine or all-human campaigns are severly affected by the nonsense that is this talent, for reasons that should be self evident.

But hey, if the rules aren't meant to have even a semblance of balance, why use them in the first place? We should turn this into a 100% narrative game and use the space now taken by rules for more juicy fluff.