How do you balance the way unnatural characteristics work in BC vs the other game lines?

It appears at first glance that UCs are nerfed a little in BC.

Help?

Yes they were nerfed for balancing. the X2 and x3 and x4 was just a little insane.

Dark Heresy psykers with unnatural willpower - so ridiculous!

that being said, it's consistent accross Black Crusade, so it's pretty balanced (I feel). There may be some issues using stuff from other RPG lines, but they required a fair amount of conversion already, so y'know.

Well, they made them far easier to manage. I think its pretty clear from Deathwatch (the introduction of Felling weapon attributes), that FFG wasn't entirely happy with the way they were working.

This new incarnation is still not perfect in my opinion, but its a lot closer and far easier to deal with since they don't explode quite so quickly as the multipliers did.

Initially I had some serious reservations about the wide availability of Unnatural Attributes in BC, but after reading through the ways to acquire them (primarily psychic powers, Marks and other mutations) it seems pretty clear that they are making them broadly available to those who want them. In a way it reminds me of Ascension or Deathwatch: All kinds of crazy stuff for you to have crazy fun with, but far better internally balanced.

Basically all I can tell you is that BC feels to me like the best iteration of the 40K ruleset to date. And the way unnat attributes are handled is just a part of that package.

Cool, thanks for the info and insight!

Once I read that section I introduced them in my RT game exactly as they appear. After a few sessions of play I'm considering halving all the values given, to balance it out a bit more.

Larkin said:

If you're implementing them in Rogue Trader, it might be worth considering (for Xenos PCs) spreading out the Unnatural Characteristic advances, so that (for example), the Ork gets Unnatural Strength (+1) for 500 or 750xp each at ranks 4, 5, 6 and 7, to give a more gradual progression.

Bladehate said:

I'm not really sure FFG intends UC to be balanced, that's what we got skills and characteristic progressions for. UC are ment to be unnatural, hence the name

Bladehate said:

To be clear, I know UC are unnatural and don't mind it. I just find it a bit odd that being inhumanly good at something does not actually increase your chance at success, only the margin by which you succeed. Its a minor point though since mechanically I think UCs work fine in their current incarnation.

If they were named some variation of the Adroit trait (which does something similar) I wouldn't have batted an eye.

memespawn said:

Yup... but then they were never meant to have unnatural willpower. It was just a bad decision by FFG for Ascension.

The problem by the old system was just the proliferation of them as the system went on. A "normal" Dark Heresy game is almost certainly not going to be too badly messed up by the old method. It is purely reserved for horrid gribblies that are fairly unnatural. The problem started when giving it to Space Marines and orks really. They should have just an straight up high toughness and strength scores (at about 50-60 ish)) and that should have sufficed (as far as I can remember, only daemons had the equivalent in Fantasy Roleplay). However, once you give it to those anything on a similar scale (which become increasingly common the further you go into the game line) has to have it too. And then larger things have to have even more levels of it.

I do think the new version has some things going for it, but it does cause some puzzles, and it changes the balance somewhat. Bonus only mattered a huge amount for Unnatural Strength and Toughness. Having a Int Bonus of 8 wasn't exactly game breaking. Agility... was useful, but really only for dodging area attacks and falling. Willpower... for a psyker in Dark Heresy it was broken. For anyone else? Minor (ok, a tech priest had some abilities that worked off wilpower bonus, but that was it). Fellowship? I can effect more people with my skills and talents. Ok, good, but not a huge advantage. What mattered a whole lot more for most of those stats was the reduction of difficulty for checks (basically an effective +10 that was very slightly better). Now that is gone, and everything works pretty much like it did for opposed checks with Unnatural stats before. Which is odd. Yes, if they succeed they are going to succeed better, but a person with Unnatural Stats is no more likely to succeed in the first place as someone without . That just puzzles me.

Oh, and what is the problem with the -10 for full auto? While I am not entirely convinced by the rules changes, when I first read Dark Heresy I was puzzled by its approach. Many games either give a possible huge damage boost (lots of shots hitting) but a lowered chance of hitting, or an increased chance of hitting, but only a minor (or no) damage increase. It increased possible damage massively, while giving a major boost to the chance to hit (especially if you remember the cap on increased or reduced difficulty was +/-30 initially).

@borithan

Bonus only mattered a huge amount for Unnatural Strength and Toughness. Having a Int Bonus of 8 wasn't exactly game breaking. Agility... was useful, but really only for dodging area attacks and falling. Willpower... for a psyker in Dark Heresy it was broken. For anyone else? Minor (ok, a tech priest had some abilities that worked off wilpower bonus, but that was it). Fellowship? I can effect more people with my skills and talents. Ok, good, but not a huge advantage.

Speak for yourself - a massive Int bonus can keep your team on its feet if there's no healing psyker around once everyone has Hardy or Autosanguine. Agility and Perception are really only about the opposed tests, but they're pretty mean there. And Fellowship... depending on the setting, immunizing the next hundred IG troopers against Fear and Pinning with Into The Jaws Of Hell can be a game winner.

I myself am looking forward to my Slaaneshi having Demagogue that can affect 1000 people at once, and 10 greater minions.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

We don't have any Xenos PCs, and it's doubtful we'd actually get one, but that is a solid idea.

For those talking about UFel like it doesn't matter, I'd like to point out the RT rules for boarding ships, as well as commanding fighter and bomber squadrons. Granted, it seems a bit less important in other games, but if you plan on having any sort of regular troops it becomes fairly handy.

Cifer said:

I forgot about healing, which is quite a nice boost for Int, but otherwise the Bonus itself is rarely used. The main benefit was the reducing difficulty by one step and the extra degrees of success. Yes, Unnatural Agility is good (a further +10 to dodge checks? Yes please!), but not terribly due to the increased Agility Bonus. It doesn't apply for movement, so it applies for dodging area attacks, falling and Initiative. Not exactly game changers in most cases. Useful, but not distortingly so. Perception... when do you ever use the Perception bonus? Yes, again +10 is useful, as are the bonus degrees of success, but boosted bonus doesn't matter that much. Fellowship? Yes, it is useful, but probably most useful if you don't have the talents that increase the number of people you can effect (going from 4 to 8 people affected is going to matter a heck of a lot more often going from 40 to 80 or from 400 to 800). Even when it really does matter it isn't as distorting as the case with Strength and Toughness.

borithan said:

I might be all off here, but i do believe that Unatural Agility actually does affect your movement with the new rules (Think i read it in the "Incorperate BC in the other games" section

borithan said:

I wouldn't call it a problem, it just buggs me... The reason you use automatic fire is to have a greater chanso of hitting something. And -10 doesn't make it easier in any way. Granted, the +/- 30 is an overkill, but i wouldn't argue a +10. I won't change the rules im my group until i've tried them out, hwo knows... it might just make the game more enjoyeble and i guess you could explain it with "recoil"

Well, i belive the reason for the rule change regarding Fully Automatic fire was to bring a semblance of balance to it. In the previous incarnations, Full-auto was the end all, be all firing mode. It was just extremly superior in everyway. Basicly, if your weapon was incapable of full auto (and wasn't a specific weapon, like a sniper) it was a crappy weapon. I like this rule change, full-auto is still the "best" choice for anyone who has a high BS (or a few situational modifiers) since it allows for the most amount of hits, and thus the most damage, but it is no longer the "prefered" firing mode.

Soliquidity said:

Full Auto isn't meant to be a "greater chance of hitting things" action, it's meant to be more "spray and pray", and if you manage to hit anything, you have a better chance of hitting them more than once.

Single shots should always have the greater chance of hitting - less recoil, greater accuracy in general, etc.

That's why I like it with the new changes.

Yeah I much prefer the new firing mode rules as well, along with their melee counterparts.

There is one problem with Single Shot though, which is that its all hit or miss. The degrees of success have no impact on a defender's chance to evade.

That becomes particularly devastating against Sniper Rifles or other high damage single shot weaponry such as Las Cannons.

Its easy to house rule a fix, where your DoSes count as a penalty against an enemy's Evasion roll. Our group is still discussing if that's a route we want to take though since it might seriously overpower high power, single shot weaponry.

Alternatively we might introduce a Talent allowing you to do the same thing. We'd probably call it Sniper's Cunning or Leading the Target or something equally appropriate. Perhaps it needs to be restricted to Accurate Basic/Pistol weaponry only if the Las Cannon dominates too much with such a talent.

Soliquidity said:

Oh, I haven't fully absorbed all the BC changes, and it would make sense with the reduced Bonus of Unnatural traits. But my point was more that in the previous system the doubling of the bonus wasn't that outrageous or an overpowering effect (quick edit) in the case of Agility .

I wouildn't agree that full-auto is really spray and pray. Thats probably more Suppressing Fire. Full auto seems to be controlled automatic fire, in which case a larger number of shots in the enemy's direction does tend to be an increased chance of a hit. However I don't think that quite justified how it works in the none BC lines (especially from a balance perspective).

I don't agree that single shot should be opposed tests. You say it penalises single shot only weapons like sniper rifles or lascannons, but most of those do a lot of damage and so rely on "if I hit I put you down". The only reason they remain balanced is because they are quite easy to evade.

borithan said:

Hence why its still up for debate in our group.

However, implementing a tier 2 or tier 3 talent allowing the dedicated Sniper with a Basic weapon to actually snipe seems like a good way to let a human sniper somewhat keep up with the Heavy Weapon toting CSMs without breaking the game.

It might become a problem with the Stalker Bolt Gun or other Deathwatch gear tho.

Or, the sniper could just delay his attack, and shoot after the rest of the squad, meaning that their targets won't be able to dodge (assuming they had to dodge the previous shooting/melee).

MILLANDSON said:

Obviously there are tactical ways around the single shot limitations, although if a fight is allowing players to focus fire it tends to be over fairly quickly. But considering that there exists talents that allow free head shots, and those headshots are not instantly fatal, I think there might be room in the system for a quality of life talent for a sniper.

All it would do is allow the basic weapon sniper to somewhat keep up with heavy weapons or melee maniacs in the circumstances where he is able to aim. I don't really see that as overpowering, but we'll have to play around with it a bit.

It would also allow me as the GM to give that same talent to enemy NPCs allowing otherwise minor long-las snipers to be a bit more threatening.

By the way: As long as snipers really, you know, snipe , they're already devastating as they are right now. You can only evade attacks you know about, after all - if the sniper keeps his position hidden, his targets can't dodge at all if they don't have funny precognition stuff going for them.

Yes, I know Cifer. Thank you.

However, most "snipers" in this game are more designated marksmen then true snipers. Since most combat is fairly close range and fluid, with a lot more close quarters combat then we see today the option to sit at 500 meters and pick people off rarely presents itself to PCs. Add to that the variety of combat environments, even compared to a modern urban area, and I think it becomes a rare thing for a sniper to remain undetected for very long.

Even with a fully silenced Stalker or silenced rifle it becomes progressively harder to hide the closer you get. Especially if you haven't had the chance to setup a hide site or are forced to be mobile.