Hi, im Joonas from Finland and iv been playing deathwatch now for about year and iv been most happy with rules and the whole game. Good job FFG ! Im totally new on the forum so be nice:D I do both GW and player stuff...

We have transfered some rules from black crusade to our DW and some åproblems occur time to time but we try to work them out.

About parry. How much should it pay ? i mean for those characters who could buy it and for what cost?

So i play with Tyranid war veteran and i have few quoestions about it. Tell me how u have dealt with it...

Slaughter of Swarms. Does it actually mean that if I use half action to Aim and other half to standard attack (+20 to hit ) I score 1 (hit) + 1 (x) + lets say 4 extra hits with Int 42...for total 6hits against horde. This sounds odd to me...

Mekolomus said:

Your easiest option is to make it the same cost and rank as the Dodge skills.

Mekolomus said:

No book at hand to double check on this one.

I'm not certain if its different in dark heresy, but parrying requires no skill or talent. Its just a basic WS test. I would though, only allow a character to parry only with weapons he has profficiencies for.

herichimo said:

But in BC it is a skill. WS based, but separate skill, like Dodge. Marines are proficient with pretty much every weapon they ever want to use anyway.

Well in this case, if you're using Black Crusade rules. Space Marines would already have the skill trained. They get it right off the bat in Deathwatch, they shouldn't loose it with another system.

Just another thing which makes Astartes training and skills rightfully deadly.

True. But the question was when would different ranks of it would be available to different specialties and at what cost.

Making it equal levels and cost to Dodge would be the easy option.

Anyway, the bigger thing is Slaughter of Swarms. It can easily triple single shot damage. 1 + 1(X) = 2. Stat of 40-49 pushes that to six. It gets sillier with other weapons lets say combat knife or fist. From 1 to 5. And that is assuming average values of stats. For 1 cohesion that ultramarines can regenerate anyway.

Now lets say we have Space Wolf tactical or devastator, rank 5+ with perception of 50-59 with Storm of Iron. Nothing OP.

(1 (hit) + 1 (X) + 10 (per bonus 5, Unnat from solomode)) x2 (Storm of Iron) = 24 mag damage on single shot. O_o

4 marines, bolt pistols, rank 1, 0xp. Lets assume average stats of 41. Horde of 50. Bonuses to hit +30 (Horde Size) +10 (singleshot if BC rules, semi if DW rules). 81% to hit.

Without Slaughter of Swarms that is 8 mag per round, more if they roll well. if rolling well, they might get it up to 10 and reduce the amount of attacks horde makes.

With Slaughter of Swarms that is 24 mag per round, more if they roll well. If anyone rolls above average result, horde must test WP not to break.

For simplicity I assumed one bad roll is compensated by another rolling well.

How to balance this?

Not doubling or more every horde the team encounters, that would make game boring and make using it a must. Marine did put significant chunk of his xp to it, this would make it meaningless and actually hinder others.

Using more Elites & Masters? possibly, but they require more bookkeeping so it might slow the game down.

Elites/masters are the real opponents anyway. Hordes are great for distractions, pinning, and and tarpits...but not much else. Though IIRC the nerd to bolsters was primarily due to how easily they chewed up Hordes and other enemies and thus GMs had to create giant hordes to even let them stand a chance (boring). I threaten players with multiple small hordes - make them prioritize their targets and if one gets chewed up, there's still a couple more shooting.

True that. And hordes can do much more than just CHAAARRRGE.

Hordes could use tactics, cover, suppressive fire, some overwatch, shield rating(Tau drones, sorcery etc). So even small horde could be challenging. There were rules for psyker hordes somewhere. That could get interesting.

Its just it is easier to run hordes than elites/masters. They tend to have loads of skills, talents, traits, special abilities etc. Hordes usually much less.

Yeah I agree sometimes it's easy to forget all the cool talents that elites and masters have. I try to make a cheat sheet before I run just so I play them as they're intended.

Also consider the changes to Unnatural characteristics in BC. They are a +N instead of xN. The abilities that add unnaturals should be changed to add a specific amount. I suggest GM decides I tend to go with +3or +4 depending on what it did before, but some things should be a lot less. compare the marks of chaos from DW and BC for examples.

And Storm of Iron is no longer x2 in BC. it is a plus 1/2 your BS bonus. so a little less crazy, but still quite strong.

I was briefly enamoured with the idea, but after playing some sample combats with myself I don't know if importing BC rules is a good idea. The weapons and so forth in DW are not designed with them in mind. For instance, if you get rid of the +20 from Full Auto an ork will never hit anything and the Mega Nob's heavy sluggas become rather laughable.

bogi_khaosa said:

I'm pretty sure that the Orks won't care if they don't hit anything. Failing that, give them the talent "Give It Sum Dakka" from Into the Storm to let them use Suppressive Fire as a Half Action.

Also note that the errata'd weapon profiles are in most cases the same as the Black Crusade ones, and thus can be considered to have the Black Crusade rules in mind.

I'm pretty sure that the Orks won't care if they don't hit anything.

The GM will.