I'm starting out first Deathwatch game here with my group, and I drew the short straw as a GM. I promises to be a lot of fun now that the weapon stats have been ammended and whatnot, but I still have one big question:

Can an Assault Marine (or any other melee character) really 'tank' enemies in Deathwatch? Since you can only engage an enemy at a time, it feels easy for most of the mooks to just swarm around the AM and go for the Devastator/Tactical. What other ways can a melee fighter use to monopolize the attention of as many enemies as possible?

Thanks in advance.

SephyrBR said:

The melee dude isn't there for the mooks, everyone can chew through those fast enough with bolters. They're there to charge the biggest badest thing he sees and start yelling "IN HIS NAME!!" as he tries to rip that big baddie to shreds.

A couple of thoughts:

1. There is no tanker in DW, this isn't a MMORPG. However the most resilient specialties are Techmarines and Librarians with Force Field spells, if that's the question. You cannot keep mooks from attacking whatever team member though.
2. Large enough hordes can be very dangerous as they can't get chewed enough quickly and will damage in melee or ranged.
3. High rank Assault Marines can do plenty of damage in melee.
4. The best way to actually draw attention of the mooks is to pose a lethal threat to their leaders for rebel officers or synapse creatures will normally be ordered to defend them then.

Alex

While the game has no generic tanking mechanic like D&D 4e, there are several ways the game lets you handle "tanking" mechanically:

-Storm Wardens have a Solo Mode Ability that encourages enemies to focus on you.

-Deathwatch Champion (advanced specialty from Rites of Battle) can use Intimidate to make enemies focus on him.

-Imperial Fists Librarians have a psychic power that forces enemies to focus on him.

It's a bit unclear if the Intimidate thing is only for Champions or if anyone can use it. If your team really wants a designated tank, I'd say it's OK to rule that anyone can use Intimidate to draw aggro.

Other than that, use some common sense as the GM. Remember that not all enemies are tactically savvy, and even those that are can often be forced into doing something non-optimal. Some examples:

-Orks are too fighty to bother with maneuvering, and vastly prefer hand to hand over shootiness, so usually being closest to them should suffice to make them focus on you. Ditto most Khornate characters.

-The Tau are disciplined and tactically savvy, and will mostly ignore you if there are better targets. However, targeting their leaders should make them lose their cool and rush to help.

-Tyranids are pretty much immune to psychological tricks - they fight in perfect unison, totally disregard their lives and only do what's most efficient. The only way to force them to attack you is to become such a nuisance to them that their collective intelligence considers it more effective to off you first.

Generally, I find that the AM is good for using his higher movement rate to engage, and lock in melee the guys with the big guns.

If you're fighting traitor guardsmen, then the AM should jump in to engage the guys with missile launchers or heavy bolters. If you're fighting 'nids, they might jump in to get the synapse creature. Basically, their mobility provides them the ability to selectively pick their target, and to "tank," they can prioritize the targets that pose the greatest threat.

As others have said, there is no real "tanking" ability for the purpose of pulling enemies off the party. All marines wear roughly the same armour and have TBs in the same range (+/- 2 or 3).

a tech-marine with an artificer armor and the flesh is weak can become pretty nasty, especially is he as the habit of dragging plasteel sheet with is super strong manipulator bionic arm...

The techmarine can get to fairly nasty levels of damage reduction. Our current (Rank 4 Forgemaster) is functionally immune to bolter fire (we are using BC Righteous Fury so there is the occasional 1 hit point knocked off). Howeever, he cannot force anyone to target him, and he is less than stellar in close combat. Also, as soon as someone brings plasma cannons (or something similar) out he starts to hurt... Ok, he still deals with it better than the rest of the party.

Other than that everyone is within 1-2 points of Damage reduction of each other. The best way to avoid damage then is just to have really high dodge and parry and have talents granting multiple Reactions, and that doesn't even help against hordes. As far as holding guys in place. Well, individuals can be pinned by being engaged in melee... most useful if they are a ranged specialist as then you are actually denying the enemy something useful. Other than that it is just down to playing the enemies sensibly. Things like Orks are going to just engage the nearest target.

What about an Iron Hands assault marine (see the house-rules section)? With all the bionics, flesh is weak and a lot of assault skills it could be a good tanker too.

Anyhow, I would not like a tanker in my group. A bit too much like "gaming the game" for me. Good role-playing is more important and more difficult to master.

Another thing to consider is, you don't really want to be a designated tank, as the game is extremely deadly. Whatever sick soak build you can come up with, you cannot guarantee it being 100% impervious to damage, and healing isn't too effective. Most of the time, you're better off if the enemy divides the punishment between all of you - hopefully, nobody gets hurt too much this way.

I tended to serve as my KT's tank when I was playing. (I'm GMing now). I played a Techmarine and had rolled a max toughness score, and bought all my upgrades. (At the time, it just seemed like the thing to do for the character. Salamanders always struck me as a tough lot, what with the handling of red-hot iron as a party game.) He still lost an arm in combat, and had his legs chewed up pretty bad by genestealers.

The only things I ever tanked, really, was a Diablodon on Aurum, and later in that same deployment, a Broodlord. The Diablodon was a matter of just being in the right (or wrong) place at the time. The Broodlord, though... I thought that thing was going to eat me. (Lucky dice rolls, using the Str boosting ability to get an x3 score for a round, and grappling the thing and praying to Vulkan that the BA assault marine finished the thing off before it got loose while the rest of the team handled the genestealer escort.)

Indeed! This game doesn't strike me as one in which 'tanking' is anything but a death wish...and I agree it seems to detract from the role-playing, emphasizing more 'roll' playing...

Remember, in wh40k, everything is but a heavy laserblast away from disintegration...putting oneself 'out there' to draw fire is, ummmm, just not cricket in the grimdark...

so it seems to me.

Zappiel said:

Wait, so a tactic that was developed because its efficient in specific situations and is thus exactly what someone who can take a lot of punishment and has a good grasp of tactics would use if the weapons used against them make it possible is somehow 'emphasizing rollplaying'? What are space marines, tactical idiots? If you are playing a space marine, then part of that role is to play someone who tries to make the best tactical decisions possible, which, if the situation allows, can include tanking. Or kiting. Or whatever other tactic there is that some players would look down on because it happens to be used in some computer games. Which obviously makes it the devil. Using what the character would us it what roleplaying is.

There are some situations in DW in which tanking is a good tactic, many others (most, infact) in which it isn't. Tanking is a tactic, a tool. A situation can make that tool inadequate, not some inherent quality that somehow makes it evil by 'supporting rollplaying'.

I am continuously surprised that one can actually find people here that still use the old "roleplaying, not rollplaying" shtick in a serious manner. It's like walking around a corner on the street and finding yourself in the stone age. 'Mary Sue' at least had something like a workable definition when it first appeared, 'roleplaying, not rollplaying' otoh was never anything but an attempt to talk down on styles of roleplaying one disliked.

Especially since we are talking about playing Space Marines here.

If you are the kind of person who talks about roleplaying not rollplaying you are probably in the wrong place.

I suggest Ben Lehmans Clover.

http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=15137&page=1#Item_0

It is a game about an adventurous five year old girl and her friends and the adventures that they go on together. It is touching, sweet, challenging, intense, and nostalgic.

Tanking is not a "tactic" in Deathwatch. Tanking is a tactic/character build in a MMORPG

The tactic being referred to here is called "Drawing Fire". The reason being because in a roleplaying game situation it is very rare that someone would actually function by deliberately being the centre of every possible attack by everything out there, every possible time (which is the function of the Tanking tactic). Even a mighty Astartes. because actually doing that will get you killed. Even marines do not actively attempt to die unless it's serving a very very very good purpose.

Drawing fire on the other hand is getting attacks at you so that your squad may manuevre to take out the target before you get taken out. usuallu this is a very short period of exposuer and often focusses on not getting hit, or in the case of Astartes getting hit a limited amount.

The Roleplaying vs Rollplaying argument in this case exists and is simple. Are you playing your chacater first person with emotions, desires, objectives, beliefs and so forth or are you working as a third person removed party as per a wargame. Power armour is powerful protection but "Tanking" could be considered abusing the Machine Spirit of the Sacred relic that you wear that enables you to fight longer and harder in the name of the God Emperor as you Consistently and Constantly expose it to as much abuse as possible.

Thing is, there is no really pressing reason why a Space Marine rpg shouldn't work like a Dungeons and Dragons/World of Warcraft.

Space Marines remember.

Quite apart from anything else, combat in World of Warcraft/Dungeons and Dragons is substantially more entertaining that in most tabletop roleplaying games, and in a game that is going to feature as much fighting as a Space Marine game is likely to ignores all that work at its peril.

If you haven't done either recently get online or get out a map and minis and just... judge how entertaining you find the combat mechanics compared to, say, Deathwatch.

We need to be asking - is this fight as much fun as it is in WoW?

I just don't feel that being as unalike WoW as possible is going to be a great pull in a Space Marine game.

In Call of Cthulhu? May Dark Heresy? Maybe even Twilight 2000 we want to be putting clear space between us and the great unwashed dungeon crawling masses.

But in Deathwatch we are gonna be Dungeon Crawling, so...

AluminiumWolf said:

All depends on the individual.

I think WoW is a steaming pile. I don't find counting timers to be a fun or engaging game play mechanic.

4E is the most boring RPG, if you can call it that, I have ever played. The combats are nightmarishly boring, slow, and unappealing. The saving grace of the 4E game I play in is everything that happens that is not mechanics related. Spending the time with friends, the RP, and GM's story are what make that game fun.

Moirdryd said:

It doesn't take that much for an Astartes. And actually it's a great idea which should go in the mini-idea dump thread.

Alex

AluminiumWolf said:

I am sticking to my opinion about tankers. It still is not role-playing in my opinion. Everyone who emphasises combat over other skills and traits are on the same list in my book. Perhaps I am too severe, but I advise the PCs in my group to think about who they are, what they need, and what they think is important outside of combat.

I know this is a space marine game. But I throw a lot of mystery, diplomatic actions, negotiating, figuring out at my players and make sure that they use those non-combat skills that they have. If one of them attains a new rank and comes to me saying that he chose only new combat skills for all the XP I gave him, then I will always advise against it. Combat-only characters are dull and boring characters and should not be a part of any role-play, or at least not a part of my (our group's) personal Deathwatch micro-universe. People should be playing the game and not be gaming the system.

Watch-Captain Albus said:

Quoted for truth and agreement. If you want to use MMORPG terms and ideas, even where they don't fit very well, then I can not stop you, but please don't tell everyone to agree or else.

Massive MUltiplayers Online ROLE PLAYING game... MMORPG.

All mmo come from freaking RPGs man, the guys at blizzard probably spent hours playing with their pen and paper elf too...

Anyway what you guys refer as "Tanking" ain't even good IMO, tanking is about temporarily taking a massive amount of damage to allow yoru friends to do what they are good at. (like a fighter would tank the enemy in D&D while the mage is casting and the thief backstabbing, but anyway D&D is a MMO not a RPG right from what you are saying, but that lame, may as well let the mage die and run like a sissy you fighter caus eyou took singing and dansing! YEah!!!)

There are many different ways of "tanking" both in D&D, 40K, etc. You have passive tank (HP and armor buffers)(the flesh is weak2 + master crafted terminator armor, + smoke screen from mechendrite, + cover from anything you can drag or hide behind, + servitors as buffer, + luminem shock,+ etc), active tanks (healers, regeners, drainers, autosanguine, prosanguine), you have situational tanks (dodge, high agility char, cover, intimidate, taunting, shoke screen, etc).

You can "tank", that is attracting fire or attention of the mean monster from those doing something (securing the damage tech priest, setting us up tha Bomb, etc), of course this is not an "video game" where you gain hp and mana super fast to allow you a very fast passed/real time combat game, but a pen and paper game where you are rewarded by using your imangination more then the mechanics or the game, that said all those provides means to insure your end.

You could use any type of combo to "tank", distract or simply disrupt. The purpose of a tank is not to take untold amount of damage but more to hold a line during a precise moment. Even in D&D the fighter rarely coudl tank the end boos for long time, that is the GM parts to balance of course.

A Gm should not penalize a player for playing a resiliant and reliable player that could not falther infront of desperate hods (as long as there is a goal of course, useless suicide is dumb. I suggest XP reduction for new characters that abuse the useless suicide, a godo resiliant tank will know when to call for a retreat and is fellow player shoudl also know when it is time to wing a tanker and take the heat from is back a bit.

crisaron said:

RPG, in the context of video games, doesn't mean the same thing as it does in a pen and paper game. The term RPG, in the context of a video game, means that the player can choose what advancement to take and when. The players advancement path through the game is not ridgedly set and the advancements the player takes can alter the game play.

When the letters MMO appear in front of RPG it just means you have a bunch of idiots standing around yelling at each other and acting like three year olds, while eveyone else is out skinning small woodland creatures or trying to kill each other.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Had much issue finding good groups I see? Ever tried a RP server?

Yeah your so right, I mean DnD is not about selecting a set of SKILLS AND POWER or acsension at level up... You are so totally rigth, they did not even make a huge sets of super dupper classes with combat hability just for players who like to +-...

Man it's an RPG you can't say to anyone how it should be played. And all RPG have the DPS class, the utility class, the tanker classes... sorry m8te to break your little fantasy...

p.s. All pun intended.

p.s. Not all of them are as obvious as 4th ed and some will allow you to create a Tanker mage... but usually will have **** dps or other kind of skills...

crisaron said:

I was describing RP servers.

crisaron said:

Not really. It all depends on the individual player, GM, and the game itself. I find more satisfaction in growing a character not trying to win the game.

crisaron said:

Again, not really. I have had plenty of good pen and paper experiences, generally the best ones, where no one would have qualified for for the title "Tank", "DPS", or "Utility". Then there are the truly classes systems.

Call of Cthulhu comes to mind immediatly as a game where no one really qualifies for any of those titles. Unless you want to try to argue that the guy hiding behind the concrete pillar is the tank, whoever picked up a crowbar is the utility, and the guy holding the shotgun is the DPS class?

LOL are you for real?

I woudl call the guy aiming for high toughness and high willpower as your "main" tank in Chtutlu. I woudl call the one that reads and uses the Elder Spells as your mage and I would guess your scholar horiented dude is the utility class...

All open system give you the hability to create horiented classes... (Alpha Omega, Chtulu, WFRPG, Grimm (the Bully with a good scrapp level!, battletech it's arguable, I haven't read the PC creation section but some of those construct are pretty tough, Heavy Gears pretty much too..., Eclipse Phase (any of the heavy military biomorph or cases). Want to keep at it? Tank as you said is a tactic and a concept that is usually available in most RPG.

Now you should not play a "Tank" going "tadadad dadada da" a la Starcraft siege tank... You have a reasonable amount of buffer hp/armor, reactions, dodge skills etc. that allows you to prevent/soak/mitigate is a tank by my book.

Your devastator as pretty good chances of being the Range DPS, you can still make it a singner, dancer and what not.

BTW I am a heavy role play guy, I usualy create 1 type of char per system, 1 tank, 1 mage, 1 idiot(yes an idiot), 1 scared dude (invisbility/flight/spectral form/darkness bard was my favorite PC, I got it from lvl 1 to like 16 then dual class it all the way to lvl 15... My char would cast nearly no attack spell, lots of defensive and useless cantricts...) I was killed by my party, they wanted me to bring someone usefull (and I also cheated them all repetitively).

My favorite is the double crossing useless mage... Like I am playing right now as an Ad-mech in Rogue Trader, Luminiem CHarge, Maglev grace, tech use up the wazzoo, and but i keep rolling 80+ on my %. I love this guy.

add "true grit" talent to any class with high toughness armor and you pretty much have monster again...

ItsUncertainWho said:

There is a difference between someone being built around being a tank and a group using a tactic that requires someone to act as a tank for the duration. The former isn't really possible in CoC, DW or most any other P&P RPG really. The latter, as Moirdryd correctly points out, is really just another word for the age old tactic of Drawing Fire and can be used by anyone, anywhere.

To take your example: if the guy hiding behind the concrete pillar is actively trying to make the enemy shoot him (because, by virtue of being behind cover, he is the one with the highest chance of surviving said attacks), while the guy with the shotgun tries to use the distraction to get a good bead on the opponent and the guy with the crowbar keeps ready to either help distract the enemies from the guy with the shotgun or help damage them, then you have a classic tank/dps/utility situation. Without anyone having to be specced that way and without any of that badwrong "rollplaying" (heh) involved. Same can happen anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

To get this back on the DW track, if one gets into a combat situation where tanking/drawing fire would be the most prudent course of action and one doesn't solely because you think it's a crpg tactic and thus "rollplaying" (heh) and something that no True Roleplayer would ever step down to.. then you are no longer roleplaying. You are metagaming, have given up portraying a character and are working against one of the core premises of Deathwatch: Use all, teach all.