And where did you get the idea that Eversor Assassins make the best fighters?

In Ascension, for example (and I feel dirty for bringing this up), a Vindicare wins over an Eversor, period. And I'm not talking about "Bam, Headshot" kind of win. No, the Vindicare may as well get his trusty standard issue mono-knife and stab the Eversor to death, and statistically he's better prepared for it than the other way around.

Fluff-wise, the Vindicare is also trained to much higher standards, exactly because his profile necessitates him being an intelligent operative rather than a drug-crazed berserker, and much better equipped - Eversor's dreaded pistol is really nothing more than an Astartes-caliber bolt pistol strapped to a slightly better needler, whereas Exitus weapons fire friggin' intelligent bullets, Wanted-style. Clearly the allmighty Officio invests more in a Vindicare than it does in an Eversor.

Also, again, Vindicare training is pretty much the classical ninja training from 90's acion movies, starting with candidates killing each other en route to the training facility, and ending in unbelievably harsh punishments for the slightest failure. Even their personalities tend to epitomize the action heroes badassery - silent, focused, stoical, often possessed of a dry wit (pretty much a direct quote from the book here). In short, they're everything you want the Assassins to be, and they're already made playable in Dark Heresy.

But no, for some inscrutable reason, the Eversor must be the same thing, except with a pistol instead of a sniper rifle. Why? Because AlluminiumWolf thinks the Eversor Assassins are the coolest and most ninja.

Many design choices GW made over the years have made me cringe, but compared to your understanding of basic principles of game design, Matt Ward on his worst day looks like the lovechild of Gygax and Dostoyevski.

I'm just saying that Eversors are the Assassin melee class and I have the perception that the melee class tends to be the most popular. I accept that could just be me projecting.

+++++And I always thought you figured Space Marines were the end all be all+++++

Hey, everyone loves ninjas. I think one could do a lot with 40k assassins. The Imperiums gothic architecture would be great to parkour over in Assassin's Creed style, and 40k assassins could be every bit as cool as Raiden.

I just... don't have a lot of patience for emotionless killing machines who live only for war. Emotionless killing machines are BORING to read about and difficult to write for. Especially if the character takes off and you have to churn out fifteen novels a year about their adventures.

Like I say, fluff writers who write about characters who live only for war should be... severly disciplined.

Eversors aren't "Assassins Melee Class", for two reasons:

1. Officio operatives are modeled on the needs of the Imperium for elite assassins and not on D&D classes.

2. Eversors don't really specialize in melee, they specialize in wrecking as much stuff as they can with whatever means they have on hand. They are the most elite shock troops and one-man terrorist armies, that is all.

Also, like I said, in DH: Ascension, a Vindicare can easily outfight an Eversor in melee. He can also outfight a Death Cultist in melee, but any Officio operative can do that per the rules, so it doesn't really count.

Oh, and Eversors aren't exactly mindless, or emotionless for that matter. They are intelligent, sentient beings, whose minds are put in the constant state of paranoia and aggression. If a good enough author wrote a book from the perspective of the Eversor, it would read like a mix of Watchmen's Rorschach, Rambo (from the novel, not the movie one) and Charles Manson's personal journal. It could be **** fascinating, and still totally unplayable.

That's because playability doesn't equal quality.

The fluff I've read of the Eversor Assassins, and the outlook I've seen here really just don't make for a playable character sadly. It would make for an amazing NPC that you hear about in a game through various channels, or see the carnage left behind by one, but even having the Vindicare as playable is debatable. Some would say that any Temple Assassin being deployed to an Inquisitor would be something that is beyond extremely rare. Having an assassin of that caliber called in for anything other than a relatively quick engagement, before being shipped out on another highly time sensitive engagement in another sub-sector; is like saying the Imperial Navy can glass a huge portion of a planet, just because a city or two were found to have been minorly corrupted by Chaos.

From what I can tell the Eversor would probably be called upon in a situation where no one else would be worth the risk. You can take a "fairly" well trained human, pump him full of combat drugs that make him the equivalent of a bull in a china shop, and let him loose on a couple of blocks in a city. This is far more cost effective than say calling in the IG who might overstep their orders a bit, while loosing a ton of troops, and using up a lot of resources in the process; or calling in a squad or two of Space Marines for the manpower to get it done right, when they could be better suited to a higher priority target. A lone Eversor is trained well enough and given the right amount of combat drugs to allow him to get the job done in a cost effective manner. All while allowing for the Space Marines to be deployed as a part of their Chapter Company on a far higher priority task.

As I mentioned earlier though, I think it would be hilarious to come upon the carnage left behind by an Eversor Assassin in a game where one was called upon a separate mission that was parallel to the main Deathwatch one. The scout spots a vehicle upside down and parked in a wall half way up a twelve story building, as if it had been driven across the huge gap from the building across the street. While taking cover in a large dilapidated building, the kill team finds a tank that had been dropped in through the roof. Come to find out it had been air dropped in, and "flown" into the building as a quick entry with firepower. If you've seen the new-ish A-Team movie recently, you'll notice I got a little bit of inspiration from it, because that's kind of how I imagine an Eversor Assassin. One person fighting in a very off the wall kind of manner that gets done what would take a whole company or so of IG to do, and doing so in a much more effective way.

While it could be argued that a group of Acolytes could work in a very similar manner as the A-Team, I feel that an Eversor Assassin is someone who would be risked before an Inquisitor's Acolytes in many situations. Especially if there are orginizations with conflicting orders in the area, instead of siding with one or the other, they just send in their own people so that they show favor to no one in particular. It also seems to me that while many of the other Temple Assassins are "built" to take out singular or smaller targets, the Eversor are "built" for larger groups. An entrenched Chaos cult, renegade IG, ect. Not huge armies, but too large for an infiltrator or sniper to be able to take out alone.

+++++1. Officio operatives are modeled on the needs of the Imperium for elite assassins and not on D&D classes.+++++

Sure. But at the same time Eversors are totally the melee class of the Imperiums ninja.

+++++It would make for an amazing NPC that you hear about in a game through various channels, or see the carnage left behind by one+++++

I dunno. I have come to feel that if someone is doing something interesting it should be a PC. Watching NPCs be awesome is less entertaining than one might expect.

And I play ninja computer games all the time. This is well covered territory.

I would just like to point out that you don't go to the trouble of implanting a second heart, numerous combat-drug producing glands, and enough muscle to give a Space Marine a run for his money in raw strength, for an operative that could be considered expendable and only of mediocre competance.

And no AW, they're not ninjas.

Blood Pact said:

Well, I wasn't saying they are of mediocre competence, if anything it's quite the opposite. Considering all of the combat drugs they're pumped with, it's quite possible they are on par with, if not more powerful than Space Marines. However, they are not recruited or deployed in the same manner of a Space Marine, nor have the same level of training or backing at their disposal. Space Marines take the best of the best of populations, I'd say Eversor take probably mid to high ranged people, but they have to be of a certain psychological mind set to be able to become a good Assassin. Thus I'd say they'd have far fewer numbers than Marines, which is why they're deployed in the small numbers they are.

Still, they are far more expendable than a Space Marine squad, for the simple fact that it's just one Assassin that they'd loose. I see Eversor being "built" to burn out in a blaze of glory, rather than last for the extent that a Space Marine does. A Space Marine is always fighting and training; they eat, play, and sleep combat. Eversor are similar, but in a different way. Space Marines are a genetically engineered army, Eversor are a genetically engineered weapon, there is a huge difference. SMs have a personality, a life with their battle brothers, can interact with the Imperium at large, and generally fill the role of an elite force above all others. Eversor on the other hand are so drug addled they are put in cryo between each mission, if they survive it. They land in their drop pod, go boom, and if they survive then the Imperium didn't loose it's weapon.

These two examples are deployed against highly different threats however, much in the way that you would use different weapons for different threats. You wouldn't dispatch an Eversor for a huge Ork/Tyranid invasion, that's just too large of a job for them to take on. Neither would you dispatch a couple squads of Space Marines for a small rebellion on a planet. (When I say small, I mean relative to the Imperium/planet. Part of a city up to a whole city.) Now, if there's a Company of Space Marines fighting an Ork/Tyranid invasion, and an Eversor is dispatched to disrupt war fronts, that's far more understandable. Or if an Eversor is disrupting the rebellion of a city, and Space Marines are called in to quickly clean things up so that the IG can take over, again that could be understandable.

AluminiumWolf said:

Just because you don't know other types of assassins than ninjas doesn't mean a thirty years old setting has to conform in any way to your ignorant standards.

Ah dude, they have always been ninjas.

Facemask. Sandals. Ninja .

Seriously dude, the guy is wearing sandals . He is totally a ninja.

And what is wrong with ninja? Ninja are cool. Or at least they can be.

So, we're keeping this at the level of comparing random images? Okay, then I claim the Eversor is a D&D Deathknight.

See? Skull for a face, flaming eyes, segmented armor, hatred of all life... it makes perfect sense. And since Deathknights are quite popular these days, WoW and everything, I think Eversor backstory should be changed so that they used to work for Chaos but have managed to redeem themselves and are fighting for the Imperium as wandering do-gooders with a dark past and disturbing powers. It's obvious that the person who wrote them up as part of an elite organization of assassins missed out on so much story potential by not making them undead instead.

See how easy it is, making stuff up based on superficial similarities and using vague, emotional arguments to support it? I came up with it in the span of minutes.

Except doing so is trolling, because I know Eversors are not Deathknights. They aren't ninjas either. Maybe they were somewhere in an early edition, but they're long past it, just as Eldars are long past looking like bastard children of Japanese delinquents and hair metal fans.

What's wrong with ninjas? Absolutely nothing. Well, maybe besides the fact that they're overused by everyone in most stupid ways, but the underlying concept is solid.

What's wrong is accusing Eversors of not fitting the ninja mold like being a ninja is an objectively positive thing. If you want ninjas in your 40k, try Death Cult Assassins, or hell, come up with your own Officio Temple - no source ever said their numbers and profiles are limited to what we know from the books - that trains highly indoctrinated, highly honorable operatives with a preference for melee weaponry. There is a place for something like that in the setting, no doubt.

But don't try to shoehorn existing concepts into your wildly non-canon expectations and complain that they don't fit, because that's stupid.

Eldar are still space elves though. If your Eldar acts like Elrond from Lord of the Rings you will get a pretty Eldarish kind of story.

Frankly, Eversor assassins would be more compelling characters if they acted like ring wraiths. Which is a pretty damning conclusion.

--

I propose that wargames fluff writers should try to ensure that their characters can pass a modification of the Bechdel test:- http://bechdeltest.com/

To wit,

1: Is there more than one X in your story?

2: Do they talk to each other?

3: About something other than killing?

To the beginning, yes and no. Your rank-and-file assassins are in DH. Your cool Assassins, the Officio ones, are about 50/50. The Eversor is statted in Ascension (p.198), if you believe he's good enough to kill a group of Marines. The Vindicare, my overall fav from the TT is also there, as an Ascended path for Assassins and twinked Guardsmen. With the rules for them there, they can be VERY efficient, and work well, especially since they don't have to incorporate "character" stuff, to make them more like people, rather than awesome sniper rifles with feet, and rifles that are far enough away that the Marines can't counter easily. The other two, the Culexis and Callidus, have not been penned to sheet officially, TTBOMK. Two books, DH: The Radical's Handbook (p.38) and DH: Disciples of the Dark Gods (p.28) have the much-feared Untouchable trait any Culexis Assassin must have, so a tweaked Eversor or Vindicare-based build COULD be used to make one of them, preferably adding FEAR (X) to the build, for non-psyker opposition. If something could sap Cohesion, that might also be broken-cool. The Callidus, by far, is the hardest one, with their total-loner mission styles, shape-shifting, and long-term undercover mole actions (at least compared to the others, who might be dropped in, and act right away), but a build using some bits of the Lacrymole (DW: Mark of the Xenos, p.71) or Simulacra (DH: Creatues Anathema, p.104-105) to explain the function of their polymorphine, and the impersonating skills to act their part, could make for frightening Assassins. Attached to an Inquisitor with the Kill Team, it could sneak in, collect intel, and return to the group, or stay to run some interference, and cause much havoc that the Marines could benefit from, as they rush the place, and all without ever getting caught. With the right stuff, and a GM willing to let these individual characters be really cool, one would be more than enough for most situations.

In short, depending on what you wanted, one is built to go (Eversor), though it might need its Flintstone's and Wheaties to fight several Astartes, one is all there for you to build (Vindicare), if you want to take the time, and two need to be made (Culexis and Callidus), but all could be VERY nasty, either as allies of a Kill Team's resident Inquisitor, or as something the players must battle. If they are to be opposition, please remember to pimp them up, as Space Marines, in groups, are often cheese, and most Assassins are supposed to work alone, even if that means rushing a squad of Marines, in order to kill Target X. If you are interested, I could attempt to write some things up, for your perusal, and if you never used them, no skin off my teeth. Let me know if it'd help any. Assassins were one of my favorite TT Daemonhunter units, and the fact that they aren't all printed out is a sad fact I've often considered remedying, though I haven't been in a position to be running a game, so it has gotten away from me. There are definitely others here who might do it better, but here an offer to is made.

AluminiumWolf said:

Dude, come on. Come. On. Yes, and there are 101 different types of 'elf' in fantasy, and GW Eldar went through a phase where they were pretty obnoxious. GW can and does change the way their stuff works all the friggin time. Just look at the Squats.

AluminiumWolf said:

What does this have to do with anything? I'm assuming you're trying to say that right wraiths are boring and uninteresting, yet more compelling than Eversors?

I think you are missing the point that Eversors are actually kind of interesting as characters, they're just not interesting as player characters. The Emperor makes an interesting character, but a terrible PC. Should they also go and retcon servitors, because that makes for a pretty uncompelling character, but they're the backbone of the service industry and I should totally be able to play one, it's not fair that the writers haven't made servitors more compelling because they're the bestest.

AluminiumWolf said:

Do we need to go through characters in literature that would miserably fail a test of this nature but still manage to produce something compelling? You're reaching here.

AluminiumWolf said:

AluminiumWolf said:

That's only because you don't get what goes on in Eversor's head. The paranoia, the aggression, the drug-induced haze, litanies of hate surging through your mind... it's like Rorschach hooked on Angel Dust. A **** compelling character, despite not being playable. Sometimes, the most interesting concepts don't lend themselves to a RPG-like experience.

AluminiumWolf said:

Man, at this point, I think the only thing that can satisfy you is writing your own version of the 40k setting, pretty much from the ground up.

Fortunately, we even have subforums dedicated to that.

venkelos said:

Hey, no fair going back ON topic!

The one caution I would have here is I've seen plenty of campaigns where the group splits up a lot, especially when a single character is ace at stealth and no one else is. It in a sense creates a private side mission for the stealthy character and the rest of the group gets bored waiting for the one guy to go do his magic thing. This can be very easily compounded if said player is a spotlight hog.

I'm not saying it can't be countered by a clever GM, it just needs to be considered ahead of time.

venkelos said:

IMHO, if you want an assassin to be good *versus* PCs just leave them as is but play them to their strengths; fight from the shadows and use your wargear, and an assassin can do some serious hurt to a KT. Invisible and impossible to hit creatures are the bane of many players.

As a player character, I'm liking the suggestion more and more from the board, to make the surplus dodges at a flat 50%, like a force field that never goes down. The stealth skills they have access to should keep them out of the hordes line of fire, but the 95% dodge all attacks can get old.

The Emperor makes quite an interesting PC. He is Space Jesus with a side order of Brutal Warlord.

Lot of stories about Jesus.

And the Emperor does stuff. He walks the Earth. He reunites Terra at the head of an army of Techno-Barbarians. He creates sons from his own genetic material. He goes out in to the universe to find them when they are lost, and recruits them one by one in to his crusade. He worries, he doubts, he takes action.

Sure it is a high powered campaign, but playing losers no one cares about doesn't make you a better person.

I'm just saying, if you find yourself in a position to write wargames fluff, for gods sake try to give your characters more internal life than KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL.

Kagra said:

I sort of thought that way, too, at first, but without taking away anything from the Vindicare, who is my fav of 4 Assassin, training someone to be a super-sniper is comparatively easy to, say, taking one of the rarest things in the Universe, a Null, and saying "of the 1-in-a-billion, people, lets take the ones we find, and then, of those that survive our ludicrously hard Officio tests, make a Culexis. If there were an officio assassin that could be played as a character, it was the Vindicare. Callidus need to be alone, and undercover, while Culexis are rarer than repentant Word Bearers, and Eversors are drug-crazed lunatics that no one would play. As for the character progression, taking Assassin to an Ascended level, there really was no better path than Vindicare, plus it let them off the hook with the other three. As for Eversor characters, they would fail, as there isn't a "person" in there, anymore. They are mind-fonged robots, more or less, let out of their freezer tubes and tranqs every so often to slaughter, live through it, get shot down by an Inquisitor's tranq again, and put back on ice, till needed later. If left up, they'd start killing civilians and allies.

Kagra said:

I don't know for sure, but they rarely seem to use the Officio Operatives this way. No person in all 40k has ever given a **** about sending whole divisions of Guardsmen off to their certain deaths, hoping they'll accomplish an objective while dying; they're expendable, and then some. There are days I feel Eldrad felt more sympathy for the soldiers Orks killed at Armageddon than the Imperium did, and he's the Eldar who got the Orks there, in the first place. Training any Operative is time-consuming, expensive, and not to be taken lightly. They are dropped into open acts of cultism, to obliterate leaders as violently as possible, and show heretics that the Imperium will use ANY means, no matter how violent, to stamp out their heresies, a rule-through-fear tactic.

Kagra said:

I smiled, but Eversors aren't that Deadpool. They aren't so much off the wall as off their nut. Imagine you are an Inquisitor, standing next to a crate. You open the crate, and there's a bound, drugged humanoid in it, wearing all kinds of bizarre apparatus, his learing skull mask looking down at the floor. Your aides get him out, holding him, while the medic delivers the anti-hibernetic drugs. As he starts to move, they hold him tighter, and point his head toward the structure where the enemy is hiding. As he begins to almost flail against his restrainers, you lean down, and whisper in his ear "kill them all", as you push the button on an injector. Fluids rush into his body, causing him to cease up. For a minute, he's rigid, like a man having a heart attack, and only the support of your men keep him upright, but then he practically throws them away, and begins to rush the building. You stay there, monitoring, and waiting for cleanup time. Guards see him, freak, and open fire, but his preternatural training allows him to avoid these, and he will shrug off any that do hit, thanks to his drugs. He reaches them, splutches them, and breaks down the door. For a while, you hear the sounds of screams over the micro-bead, and can tell he's slaughtering many. After the sounds of combat have receded, you send your men in to survey the scene. Upon entering, you find various men, some torn to bits, others with a rictus grin, but all dead. Further in, more of the same, and a dead cult priest to cap it off. Upon finding the Eversor, covered in gore, and breathing frantically, looking for more victims, your acolyte fires a tranq dart, as your Crusader keeps the Assassin from mauling you, and after the drugs kick in, he blessedly drifts off to sleep, before you put him into the cryo-tube, and he dreams till the next job. Meanwhile, your men go around, cap everyone to be sure, and you collect any artifacts or whatever, and call it a successful mission.

Of course, I overdramatized it some, and yes, I know it's a bit more drawn out, since he has gear that obviously requires intelligent planning to use, and such, and will probably use some decent level of tactics better than rushing in, headlong, but he isn't going to say "hmm, how do I get in there? Oh, I know, I'll ramp a tank into the side, and work my way further from there." He could, and I'd laugh, but that seems more comical than the archetype is capable of managing.

AluminiumWolf said:

This is a negative thought to have. Usually, the players are going to be acting because someone else did something cool. There are, and should be, plenty of NPCs who are "player characters" that the GM controls. They have all the same abilities, gear, and mindsets, plus some extra added crazy that makes them the bad guys. They aren't wallpaper, and the players aren't the Emperor. Otherwise, your players would be unchallenged. For the Eversor, it's more likely that the party finds what he did, finding heaps of corpses, and never seeing the Assassin. If the DW were called to deal with a cult or Tau, rather than the Nids, their Inquisitor-in-tow (a concept that almost seems standard, considering how often it seems to come up) might get an Eversor, and use it to soften up a base, before the group moves in to finish up, and the party could watch an Eversor be awesome, but for both to be in the same place is likely bad communication between agencies, and they won't likely have to fight. Watching him be cool might seem a bit un-fun, but it begs the question why both are there, then.

AluminiumWolf said:

Right, for a one on one session, it's pretty sweet, but in a group when one guy is Neo and the rest are chumps, that's pretty craptastic for everyone else in the group.

venkelos said:

You're missing the point again, Eversors do have more internal life than that, and could make for a very interesting story. Just not one that unfolds in an RPG inside of a group of other people, or one that the vast majority of GMs (no offense to any GMs here) could pull off with success.

+++++Right, for a one on one session, it's pretty sweet, but in a group when one guy is Neo and the rest are chumps, that's pretty craptastic for everyone else in the group.+++++

Horus almost took him down. He did kinda, if we assume the current Imperium isn't what the Emperor was aiming for.

In a game though, you'd probably be looking at something like South Parks Super Best Friends, with Space Jesus teaming up with Space Muhammad, Space Buddha, Space Moses, Space Joseph Smith, Space Krishna, Space Laozi and Space Sea Man to battle evil.

+++++or one that the vast majority of GMs (no offense to any GMs here) could pull off with success.+++++

Characters that no one can play are useless characters. Ninja, on the other hand, are easy. Everyone can play a ninja. I'll take a concept people can run with and have fun over some idea that you are sure would be interesting if only it could be done right (only it never is) every time.

+++++This is a negative thought to have. Usually, the players are going to be acting because someone else did something cool. There are, and should be, plenty of NPCs who are "player characters" that the GM controls. They have all the same abilities, gear, and mindsets, plus some extra added crazy that makes them the bad guys.+++++

I'd argue that freed of the limits the character creation system imposes on players, NPCs have a nasty habit of power creeping and being substantially more interesting than the PCs. Now, if the GM could only make up characters using the same system as the PCs, creating a level playing field...

--

This isn't, incidentally, limited to 40k. Halo Spartans are the least interesting characters ever created. And Star Wars: Clone Wars. Clones vs. Robots. Who the heck thought that would make a compelling conflict?

--

And we are roleplayers. Gamers. Would we rather watch a cutscene of an awesome fight, or would we want to pick up a controller and take charge?

Charmander said:

I was addressing it more as an NPC Callidus, working for an Inquisitor who is either PC or NPC. As a rule, I try to keep my party groups from splitting up, just so one can have his own show, while all the others wait for me to get back to them. The infiltrative nature of a Callidus' job description places them rather firmly NPC, in my thoughts. This is an individual who can walk right up to the enemy Master unit, and talk to it like he/she belongs there (unless it's a psyker, Nid, or a similar cheat), and even interact, while surviving to walk away, and maintain cover, or kill it, and slip away in the chaos. That makes for a game-wanking character, and a crappy group-dynamic. If you really wanted that as a character, yeah, a good GM could manage, but I wouldn't want the hassle. For a video game, an Eversor character could be fun, but for RPG, which demands character interaction and growth, and consequences for actions taken, the Eversor is a bad character choice.

Charmander said:

As a player character, I'm liking the suggestion more and more from the board, to make the surplus dodges at a flat 50%, like a force field that never goes down. The stealth skills they have access to should keep them out of the hordes line of fire, but the 95% dodge all attacks can get old.

I'm sorry, I wasn't shooting for over-the-top enemies there; it's just that it was made for DH/Ascen, and so many things there can't stand up to a group of Space Marines, it seems. If a group of starting out Ascension characters can take it, it often seems that even Rank 1 Space Marines just crack a smile, give praise to the Emperor for making them so cheesy, and then putting down all weapons, punch the idiot to death, for forgetting which game he was in. I was just suggesting in case someone looked at the writeup, and thought it seemed too squishy, when Space Marines can drop 40 Mag hordes of hundreds in a round (when kitted to), and only fight Masters singly (meaning even Elites need small groups of Elites to be scary), to not hesitate to boost him a titch, so he is a one-man challenge to the players. If the writeup is kosher for battling Marines, with intelligent actions used by both sides, certainly leave it as is. I've seen each assassin-type in TT pwn squads of most things, so if the party somehow had to fight an Eversor, they should not be allowed to play the "but we're Space Marines, so we win" card; it should have a very good chance of killing one or more of them, without having to only do so by blowing up when it dies. It often won't have help, and won't have backup. If that block can do it, awesome, and if not, then maybe bump up the damage it does a hair, to get past that mighty armor all Space Marines wear (not sure if its weapons have the pen to manage, otherwise).

I've never gotten to run/play this game, before, and can only go by the fluff I know, and the stuff I've read from all the books I've accumulated (far too many for not being a GM at it, already), so I don't know how well this writeup would fare against a group of Marines forced to fight it. I'd rather it be balanced and fair, if it can do so, and if the book has it so, cool.

AluminiumWolf said:

Do you want to be Lex Luthor? Darkseid? Apocalypse? Sure you might, they're powerful, have all the cool stories, and get their hands on the best gadgets. They can say what happens, and it just does, because they have everything. But you can't play them, because what's supposed to challenge you, then? Also, some/most bad guys have power creep because either:

A.) they are dicks who will do anything, kill anyone, give ______ ( anything you think is appropriate there will do ) to whatever daemon for their power, in order to win. You, the player, are usually expected to have restraint, and things you won't do, or the people you fight for would be coming after you. You wouldn't give your wife's soul to the Devil for magical power, or slaughter newborns for wealth, or sell your entire hometown into slavery because they were mean to you, as a child (I hope), or

B.) because they are loners against a party of players. You have friends, while they, being tools, don't, either because they don't think they need them, can't trust them, or already used them up. They are better than you (the PC) because they have to be to fight a group of you, and not go down like Boba Fett (in one hit, by surprise, and done). I don't care how cheesy you build him, if he's the same as you, he can't absorb 12 hits from various levels of weapons, and/or several psychic barrages, and/or such crap, and have much hope of still being there next round, and he has a handful of enemies to kill, while you guys have just him, so he either has to focus on one of you, making that player feel picked on, maybe, since he's the only one who won't be around playing next game, or divvy up his attack assets, and not really hurt any of you, while all of you can focus on one target.

Most games also have a group that guides you, or gives you a mission, at least. These people will also be better, at least probably by title. You can't be King/Emperor/Supreme Lord of... because they sent you in their name. They aren't useless, even if you can't be them. You seem to want each member of your team to be as powerful as the whole team (to be on par with the power-creep foes), which begs the question why does he need the team?

AluminiumWolf said:

I already touched on this above. The field isn't supposed to be fair, since the players are supposed to be challenged. There isn't anything lost if the NPCs die. The GM isn't going to feel slighted that the character he spent an hour building went down, there's more of them to use, and it was sort of the point. The players, on the other hand, will often be grumpy if their time investment dies, even if sheer idiocy on their part was the direct cause of it. The foe should be tougher, so that the victory over it is all the better, and worth the XP they receive to become better. You could shoehorn NPCs by building them with the same rules as PCs are built with, but they'd still be that bit better, so that they were worth XP, and to keep it exciting. Also, most NPCs don't get XP. They don't grow, while you do. It's assumed they'll die after the first encounter, or escape, but not really improve meaningfully, so they are better because they won't get better. If you've ever played d20, you might've seen ECL. Basically, you can play as a character with extras, and you count as higher level for purposes of encounters and XP. The trick is, your level 3 (ECL 5) character doesn't level up till they hit the XP to get to level 6, rather than 4, because their bonuses make them better, and they count as level 5 when the GM makes encounters, which can hurt for your squishier buddies, if they don't have perks, too. Villains, however, don't gain XP, and are usually the same from encounter to encounter, assuming they survive it, so they are better to be cool once, and go out like a champ, rather than a chump.

To the Star Wars bit, no one thought that it would be a good conflict; that's why it wasn't in the movies, originally, and only alluded to. If you're as old as me, you remember when it wasn't even that Clone War, and there was no droid army (two Clone armies, with one serving the Clone Masters, and no Sith), and the current cartoon series could as easily be viewed as a means to keep kids feeling patriotic while their parents are in the Middile East, fighting an equally endless seeming conflict, even though we all know that the Clones become bad guys, and kill all the Jedi, rather than a good story. It wasn't there, but it made a good backdrop for the main three movies, explaining how the Empire came to be, and why no one tried to stop it when such was possible. When George Lucas got away from his coloring book, and wanted to make more money, without progressing the story further, he made the prequels and cartoons to fill in the gap, and "explain" what happened, altering things to fit with today, and pocketing a nice paycheck.

For Halo, I never played it, but Master Chief is as good or bad as the player, not his story, and made to be alone, not having the benefits or sucks of 3-7 other people, each wanting their turn. If there is one god, fine, but when each player needs to be equal, ergo each be a god, then the game falls apart, and they should have stopped at one, because what gives a group of gods pause for concern?

I think every one of us has played that one videogame (we all know that it was more than one), and saw that cutscene that made us say either "why couldn't I do that? Didn't have any faith in me, game?" or "If I could have just had control, that wouldn't have happened." They have those cutscenes because story demands a few rails, and because cameras can't keep up with that action, if you are inputting into the controller. It can't push the wrong button and fail the quicktime event. Your RP doesn't have to have those, but the GM will make some things happen, to keep the plot relevant, and going in the right direction (no GM wants to be so over a sandbox game, where you can just walk off, and do whatever). You are a player part of a narrative, and you aren't the writer, so things happen, and you might not like them.

venkelos said:

The trick, as you can see from some of the responses, is that they have some ridiculously powerful abilities. Psykers and Temple Assassins from Ascension were brutally powerful, and unbalanced within their own system (due in no small part to them being some of the only ones to get unnatural traits).

The dodge ability of the assassin is one of the most deadly things in their arsenal. As per the RAW, they get a number of dodges up to their agility bonus. With UA this turns into 14 dodges or something for an assassin with a good agility, and with a good agility comes the 100%+ dodge roll. Then if you're a Vindicare add onto them their amazing rifle that will do something like 26 pen 8 on an average roll while aiming with a standard bullet, meaning if they use specialty ammo they can fell a Marine in a hurry if they need to.

If they're an NPC trying to kill the PCs, and they act like an assassin, they're going to be hiding, nearly invisible, and inflicting lots of wounds on the players. Then if they get clever and use something like EMP grenades or Melta Charges it's even more dangerous. A mid level assassin playing to his (or her) strengths could make quite a challenge for players. The Eversor I'm less familiar with, but using clever tactics could do much of the same I imagine (especially with the use of their drugs as well, which will mean they win initiative and will get a charge attack with 1d5 extra melee attacks or something out of control).

From the PC side of things, the trick is the dodge feels too powerful in comparison to other PC's abilities, and can make it a nightmare for a GM trying to create a challenge for you (it did the same thing in Ascension, only more so since the rest of the party was probably considerably squishier). I think the 50% force field style rule, while significantly gimping them, isn't bad because it makes them think twice about walking in the field rather than just going "are there less than 14 of them?", so it puts an emphasis on them staying hidden while still giving them quite a powerful ability to stay the hell out of harms way.

And BTW, your guidance on places to go for stats is pretty good, I tend to agree there.

@AlluminiumWolf

So, you want a game with literally no restrictions?

Try GURPS, or Mutants and Masterminds, or pretty much any other universal system. There, you can do whatever you want, there's no setting to constrain you and the rules are specifically designed so you can mold them to your liking.

Trying the same with a game which has a pretty narrow focus, and that's written with a specific, well-established setting in mind, is an exercise in futility, and so far into the House Rule Country that frankly, it's not interesting for anyone but you.

Can you play the Emperor? Sure, if someone's willing to run it for you. But are you playing Deathwatch then? No, you're not. So maybe stop spamming this board with your ideas that do not relate to the Deathwatch game whatsoever?

venkelos said:

You... don't have much experience with Ascension, do you?

Because there are Ascension Careers that make DW Space Marines of equivalent exp look like wimps. RAW, a Vindicare of Rank 1 (well, Rank 9 technically, but it's equivalent to Rank 1 Marine) can take a power sword and kill a 4-5 person Kill Team in melee without breaking a sweat. By contrast, a properly built Primaris Psyker at max rank can kill several Greater Daemons per turn, including those from DW bestiary. Or, he can kill one Vindicare instead. Which makes him virtually the only guy in the game who can take out a Vindicare one on one. Those two classes, the Vindicare and the Primaris, are per RAW the be-all, end all of 40k RPG powergaming, and Deathwatch characters have nothing on them. The Eversor can't touch either of those guys, but he can still kill or incapacitate several Marines before going down, or he can troll them with dynamic entries and expeditious retreats, winning wars of attrition against Kill-Teams easily thanks to his combat drugs that let him return to full functionality in the span of minutes.

Ascension is seriously broken, and doesn't balance with other lines at all.

+++++Also, some/most bad guys have power creep because either:

B.) because they are loners against a party of players.+++++

A fair point well made.

But bad guys can come in teams as easily as good guys. And anyway I don't so much complain about the guys you get to beat up, as the ones who are supposed to be so much higher on the food chain than the PCs that the party are supposed to bathe in their magnificence.

+++++So, you want a game with literally no restrictions?+++++

It is more a conviction that you shouldn't have restrictions that come about because something is 'too awesome' to be played with by players. Whatever game we play we play because we want to, not because what we really want to play would be too cool.

So I dunno. Someone loves assassins. We should be able to give them assassins. Any kind of assassin they like. If they like Ghost Dog we can do street level heroics. If they like Ninja Gaiden, we can do that. Easily.

If someone wants to play a Primarch, well, Black Library puts out a whole raft of novels about their adventures. And they probably have more personality and freedom of action than regular Marines.

--

Did I mention that I have always felt that trying to use the WFRP system, renowned for adjudicating the low level adventures of cripples and retards is perhaps the worst possible system to use for all the possibilities of 40k?

Burn it down and start again.