Kshatriya said:

I'd be inclinded to agree. How much of a deed is a speciality trait worth? 300 points?

I don't know that there's a hard and fast rule.

I emailed FFG the question of if they feel it needed to be changed, and if Bolter Mastery was given how much should the cost increase, and got the stock answer of "its written how we meant it to be, but feel free to houserule it." Which is unsatisfactory to me, I suppose because what, in the end, I really want to know is why. Why is the Wolf Scout the only Advanced Specialty to not feel like one? I mean even the **** Black Shields get an awesome advantage for their disadvantage, anytime someone uses Chapter specific squad mode abilities they get to join in on them, no matter what chapter they came from, but Wolf Scouts get no bonus and they get a penalty. I know that they do get some good talents, but you cant get those off the bat.

For example, I'm currently playing through Final Sanction, Kill-team Warhound is made up of A Space Wolf Devastator, a Tyranid War Vet Assault Marine, a Salamander Apothecary, and my Wolf Scout. They all do something really well, I don't. I'm in my Mk 8 power armor because well its not bright to drop into a possible Tyranid invasion site in crap armor with no backup, and its a good thing its Mk 8 too because that gorget has saved my life at least twice, because I go helmet off so the Dev doesn't have to be exposed and because my Perception is better. But the Dev rains hell on all the hordes we meet, the Assault drops on them like a **** bomb, the Apothecary heals like an act of God, and my Scout....has swift attack and is a pretty good shot, not as good a shot as the Dev, who has a higher WS and BS and also has Swift Attack, and not as good in melee as the Assault, who is stronger and has better WS and a bolter and Hellfire rounds. Hell even the Apothecary has better weapon skill and one shotted a Genestealer with his ******* Combat Knife. So I guess what I'm saying is why do they feel the need to make the first several game sessions feel like this for the Wolf Scout? And before you guys talk about good rolls on stats we used the point buy, and no I didnt neglect my combat abilities.

I mean sure once I get the unique talents I'll be able to do decent against Hordes.....on the first hit, and I'll be hard to spot, and be one hell of a sniper once I get the 20 Renown to be able to get a Stalker Pattern, but even then the usefulness of a Scout is very situational, if we're fighting things with unnatural senses...its hard to hide from those, if we're in urban warfare closed in on all sides by hordes its kinda hard to hide, so what I'm saying is why did they feel the need to gimp the Wolf Scouts?

You pay for the potential and the gear. Simple as that. Hence why the buy-in is so cheap.

Adding Bolter Mastery IMO is worth 500 XP on top of the base 200 for the gear and table access. A 700 XP buyin isn't bad; you can still afford a Deed or something off a table.

Paying isnt the point though. Balance. Making everything equal. And even being the sneakiest git in the galaxy doesn't mean you won't get hit, or that you won't be found, and in Scout Armor when that happens, you will get hurt, badly.

I see that its a good thing to take, but honestly if it weren't a Space Wolf thing (provided that the thing with Wolf Sense was traded out for something equally useful) then there's no way in hell I'd take. I'm playing this Specialty 90% because I like the fluff and maybe 10% because I like some of the talents I can get later. Which penalizing something early on because they can get something good later isn't balance, especially when you consider that what they get later won't make them categorically "better" than a Tactical Marine without the Advanced Specialty, but the Wolf Scout is categorically worse starting out.

Not everything is equal...nor is it intended to be. What you consider a penalty early a lot of people might see as paying dues. I agree that the Scout might need some love but I don't expect equality in a game with psykers. Good on your Apothecary though! You will get better...he won't, at least not with his base table.

Re:Black Shields - moot if you have a normal Tacmarine. That bonus isn't anything to write home about in most groups.

If you have a normal Tac Marine who has Tactical Expertise and passes the roll every time.

An I agree Psykers aren't exactly balanced...but the possibility of you head blowing up any time you do something extra crazy mitigates that somewhat.

Also just from a game standpoint.... why don't Wolf Scouts get Deathwatch Scout armor? Its infinitely better than regular Scout Armor, plus regular Scour Armor seems like it should have AP on its legs like Deathwatch Scout Armor does anyway.

Never sen a Tacmarine not take Tactical Mastery. Sharing, say, Lightning Strike is too good to pass up. Not to mention that Solo Mode is typically not a good place to be most of the time unless you rely on active type Solo Mode powers.

See its the opposite with me, I've never seen a Tac Marine who didn't take Bolter Mastery, and I've ran 5 or 6 games, and like you'd expect every one of them had at least one Tac Marine in them.

Though just to share a funny anecdote, the one time I had a Librarian play he was almost immediately used as a battering ram to bash open the door of a drop pod who crash landed by the Black Templar Assault Marine. It was great.

Having 2 kinds of scout armor is idiotic. So everyone but the Deathwatch is too stupid to upgrade scout armor to make it more effective, or they just don't care to. Can't suspend disbelief.

Totally with you there, I've thought about house ruling that all Scout Armor is Deathwatch Scout Armor, because what I remember reading about Scout Armor in one of the war game books made it seem like the regular armor had all that stuff in it. But in all honesty I hate houseruling stuff, I prefer hard tested rules that don't throw the game out of whack, or at least get a nod from the production team, I like to be offical so no one can say I'm lending favor or trying to screw them over.

The way I read it, they call it "Deathwatch Scout Armor" to cover their butts in any case where something affects or has to do with "all Deathwatch wargear" or what-not, to fend off rules-lawyers. I mean, it never explicitly says that anything included is special to the Deathwatch, it just refers to everything in the situation you will find it in in the game: being used by a Deathwatch marine. Exchange "Deathwatch" for any Chapter name, and you'll see that it doesn't make single bit of a difference.

TempestSatori said:

The main reason? Deathwatch Scout Armour isn't in the Core Rulebook, so I would have had to copy the full Deathwatch Scout Armour rules over into First Founding to include it. In terms of available word-count, it was that or an entirely new talent.

As for the Wolf Scout itself - the buy-in is 200xp, for which you get access to an additional advance table (with a couple of unique advances), on top of those you already get for being a Space Wolf, a member of the Deathwatch, and a Tactical Marine. It's the single cheapest Advanced Speciality in the game, and a major part of that is that it provides essentially no up-front perk beyond that additional advance table, where others that do provide an up-front benefit (the Ravenwing Veteran and the Sanguinary Priest, to list the other Rank 1 Advanced Specialities) cost more as a result.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Either that or shortening the Wolf Scout Fluff a little bit. Guess what I had preferred.

Kain McDogal said:

I didn't write background for that book (in that chapter, with the exception of the Imperial Fists stuff, all the rules are mine, while the background is from Andy Hoare), so it wasn't a consideration with my word count.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

See and that's a reason, which is what I was asking for, as per my previous post. If you made it a balance issue because you feel having the options to buy the talents later is justifications for making them completely non-sociable and have no Special ability, then ok. I'm not trying to bash your work, be a ***** about anything, whine, or start a fight. It just seemed to be Wolf Scouts were the only ones who didn't fit into the formula that all the other advanced classes fit and I wasn't sure if it was intentional or something that needs to be fixed. I still don't think its the best way to handle it, but I don't like to houserule, and you'll note I've said that before, which means I am playing, and will continue to play it the way its written until there is an official change.

And though I don't like houserules overmuch I think I will see about incorporating the all Scout Armor is Deathwatch Scout armor thing, just because it fits with the setting a little better and it does make more sense.

Though I will say, all the people who seem to think its some over powered Specialty either read it wrong, have GM's that let them get away with far more than what I would consider prudent, or run a game that's sole purpose is imaginary violence porn. Which I played an Ork Freebooter in a Rogue Trader game that was the violence porn and I kept having to try to reign the GM in and give us an actual challenge.

In the end, I like First Founding, and I'm not disparaging it, and I'm trying not to disparage the Wolf Scouts, because fluff wise they are the best (not in mechanics, just in my opinion), and I'm honestly not trying to fanboy them and say that the rules should make them the ultimate killing machines. But crap armor (if you want to be good at the things you get talents to be good at), no special ability, and losing any chance at having the command abilities that Tac Marines can normally get seems like a pretty steep price, I guess is my point, if it isn't changed I'll still play it the way its written.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Sorry, I didn't knew this. Then you are right because leaving out some new stuff in favour of repeating some old stats isn't the way to go.

I would really know if the available word-count is tied to an already existing layout or if this simply preset by FFG for some other reason. If it's the first option it would be a media designers dream come true to work for FFG because being a media designer myself I never had the opportunity to prearrange the layout and always had to design it around the content reducing spacings etc..

From what I understand from my friends in the industry, wordcount interacts with long-term dead tree publishing costs and sometimes freelancers are paid by the word. Seems to me that if game companies no longer made physical books then word count would become largely a non-issue.

Kshatriya said:

Pay by the word and page count are major factors in cost. A word restriction also helps keep writers on track and more concise in their verbiage. A lot of writers suffer from diarrhhea of the pen, so to speak.

Kshatriya said:

It's slowly going in that direction.

The new Exalted book is 20 000 words over the limit and they had no problem publishing it that way. Under the old model that would have been impossible.

It's just that no writer got payed for any of those 20 000 words..

Kshatriya said:

Which is a big reason why I don't plan to ask any GM's to let me use a modified version of Wolf Scout to represent a Scout Sergeant sniper (honestly, I find a regular Tac Marine works fine. Besides, I'm going to be a White Scar, I'll be bringing a long a bike when it'll be handy).

Regarding books, I'm not sure I'd want FFG to switch over to WW's current publishing method, cause FFG gives us such nice books. Sewn binding? I didn't see that from WW before they switched to Print on Demand (and I'm assuming PoD uses glue). Not to mention, WW's latest book can afford to go over wordcount because it's PoD, meaning that if you want a hardcopy you gotta order it special, so to speak.