Doc Savage said:

You gotta admit that is a good match for a Space Marine game!

:0)

Have you ever done grinding-style leveling on WoW? No tabletop RPG needs to emulate that. it's boring as all hell.

I can live without the grinding but the combat in WoW is quite fun. Especially the teamwork elements. Everyone has to play their part.

You're talking instances/raiding which ultimately boil down to long-term spell rotations to optimize DPS/HPS and threat mitigation for non-tanks. There's not much innovation there. The optimum actions are predetermined. The most fun part of that is all the failing and dying when you're learning the raid and the initial "you're my *****" feeling when you just farm it, but at that point it's grinding for gear instead of XP.

AluminiumWolf said:

Nope. I don't believe it is at all.

I can't stand WoW. Never found that type of play style entertaining in the least. I tried playing for a while but grew tired of it quickly.

I find most multi-player expereinces lacking in video games.

??? Doc Savage ??? Wher did that come from?

ItsUncertainWho said:

+1 to all the above & Pathfinder ftw.

As to WoW, never liked it myself. Boring as hell, it's far to much like my job: a lot of repetition with near zero thought or involvement. Just gathering shinies. "Oooh, look: a flashlight!"

Kshatriya said:

Well, it is probably easier to mix up the encounters on the tabletop, and you'd need real dedication to actually grind as many combats as you can in a computer game.

And there is still more teamwork and tactics in DnD than in Deathwatch...

AluminiumWolf said:

What D&D levels are we talking about? Because high level wizards pretty much remove teamwork and tactics and replace them with their raw magical power. Scaling in D&D 3.X is much worse than in DW.

Alex

ak-73 said:

And are we talking 3.5 or 4 here? 3.5 the tactics consisted of "okay, who has the highest AC and hit points? okay, you kick the door!" Can't speak to 4

You might play to a larger crowd via d20 (I have no stats on which game sells more with any accuracy), but you'll almost certainly frustrate your existing base and never catch what you're imitating. I can list 100 examples, from games to corporations.

In part I think a Space Marine game is a perfect match for DnD.

The usual critisms, namely that it is combat focused, little more than a small unit tactics boardgame is not a vast problem. People are playing Space Marines. Much of what they do is fight. A Marine game is probably one of few games that can approach a dungeon crawl for the amount of fighting there is!

Mighty heroes fighting monsters is what DnD does !

Of all the games that got unecesscary d20 versions when d20 was big, few would actually be as good a match as a Space Marine game.

--

I would also accept a Savage Worlds version. :-)

You're obviously not going to accept the belief that lots of HP/no real mechanical damage consequences before death/slogging as opposed to potential one-shotting are gaming decisions not fitting with 40k's themes of grit and ease of being killed so I'm not sure what the point of continuing the conversation is.

If you want be Marneus Calgar, play Exalted or Scion and deal with their terrible mechanical issues. 40k is closer in theme and lethality to L5R or Shadowrun than to d&d.

Charmander said:

Not in my estimation. The wizard simply casts Knock and the door opens. The 20 mid- to high-level orks behind catch an area-of effect spell and mostly die. Then the group enter the next room where the BBEG awaits them. A few time stops or sleep/paralysis/petrfy/blind spells later the BBEG is helpless and the irrelvant non-magic users can about the business of killing him safely.

It's not called the wizard's edition for no reason.

AluminiumWolf said:

I thought it was wizards and clerics doing their business and everybody else more or less supporting them.
Anyway you desire attrition battles between big baddies and PCs, got it. The simplest way to get into that direction under the current rules is to provide more wound points (cheapen Sound Consitution?) and to make Critical Damage non-cumulative (you'll have to change the mechanics of True Grit though).

The game is still more of a thrill if at least the biggest monsters around can kill your PC with a single attack (more or less). The tension with each die roll is enormous. Every Player's Righteous Fury becomes cheered by the other players. Every Parry or every Force Field save is a huge relief.

I still think they should change the system so that the master-tiers have fewer attacks. The Daemon Prince doesn't have a problem with marines dodging/parrying them, he's got Killing Strike if he needs to drop one. Force Fields might be a problem. I am not sure if they aren't under-priced anyway. A team should normally not be able to afford 1 or 2 SS on top of everything else. Sorry for the guys who don't have one. Chances are those that would get one would need it (Assault Marines?).

Alex

Oh sweet mother of . . .

DnD has NO place in the 40K universe. Period. 3.5, 4, or even Pathfinder. (Even though I will admit that Pathfinder > 3.5, and 4 = Video game on paper, which is a waste of time, paper and effort).

DnD uses AC as Avoidance, which sucks, because if the GM wants to hit you, he will. Your Mitigation is your Health. Which when you have a d10 HP class, stupid high CON and a GM that doesn't monitor HP gains, means you have so many **** hit points you rush into everything and expect the guy that drew the short straw at the campaign beginning to play your Personal Hit Point Band Aid.

DW might not be perfect, but a high Agility, Weapon Skill, Dodge and Parry are your Avoidance. Your Mitigation is your Armor, and 20-ish Health with True Grit backing all that up. If you are lucky, and proved to your Watch Commander that you are not a reckless idiot, you may even earn some sort of Field save to add as more Mitigation.

Combat is fast, gritty, and deadly which is what 40K is. There is only war.

Lucrosium Malice said:

I dunno. My reading of the fluff and fiction is that epic duels between mighty heroes also feature, especially at the Space Marine end of the scale. You get the lowly guardsman trying to survive his 15 hours, but you also get the exploits of Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex at the end of the siege of Vraks.

By and large, I think the Deathwatch fanbase would be better served with a system that reliably generates fun combat.

AluminiumWolf said:

Has it not registered that some of us, who are part of the fan base, think the combat is fun they way it is?

I think even you would be happier with a system that worked properly.

D&D 3.x doesn't work properly. In my book it's a lousy system set in a lousy world. Oh, it works well enough for CRPGs but my expectations for vidya games are substantially lower. In over 25 years of RPGing, I haven't seen a single system that worked properly. I have seen systems that worked properly enough to make them work for me with some house rules. Deathwatch is one of those systems, at least up to rank 3 or 4. And D&D 3.x does only work at levels 3 to 10 or 12. Below that, PCs are laughably weak, above that spellcasters take over.

Anyway this isn't about D&D vs. DW. It's about mutual attrition-based boss fights vs. DW's do-or-die master tiers. As I said, I like diversity. "D&D, D&D everywhere" gets boring fast.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Sure, but I don't think a Space Marine game is the place to be fighting the good fight.

And if the system was going to be Fast and Furious it could do with being a lot simpler. Like Savage Worlds. Or WFRP (v1) at low level.

I actually prefer the Deathwatch combat system over the ones from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd/3.5/4th Editions (Can't speak about Pathfinder). Sound tactics actually have a place in Deathwatch where as in Dungeons & Dragons a party can just...wing it with varying degrees of success. The notion of a Kill-Team fighting a Bloodthirster atop the peak of a tower might seem epic, but if a fight becomes a battle of attrition, it would just suck the theme of a grim and dark universe right out. Combat is fast, it's deadly, and make no mistake is it unforgiving. If you don't a plan on how to approach a combat encounter, then what are you doing in an essentially special forces operation consisting of Space Marines tackling the biggest xenos threat in the world? For crying out loud, they capture the bloody things so they can study their weaknesses and kill them faster. A Kill-Team will be outnumbered on most missions and the sooner a threat goes down, it better the mission will proceed. I acknowledge you have an opinion on the subject matter on hand but I will present my opinion that I disagree with your assessment and there appears to be others who are in the same camp.

Grim and gritty is for Dark Heresy losers. For Marines I am looking for something more epic. You can see the difference in the Space Marine video game by the by. The player is an awesome Space Marine with no dependents who is more than capable of looking out for himself. But there are audio logs scattered about the place from regular people caught up in the invasion who are not genetically engineers supermen bred for war. They are pretty grim. But the contrast between the mighty Space Marine and the Completely ****** peasants makes a nice juxdaposition.

And the last fight is a quick time event with the Marine skydiving down an orbital elevator after a recently ascended Daemon Prince and button mashing to punch him in the face.

And like I say, if you wanted fast and deadly there are better systems out there.

I played the Space Marine game, thank you. Found the single-player to be repetitive and tedious. The last boss fight was a bore (the fights before him though was a chore). The multiplayer was more to my liking, which features (Chaos) Space Marines dying in a few hits from Meltaguns, Thunder Hammers, Lascannons, and the like. The imagery was well-done, but for a Space Marine game, it was underwhelming. If you want to incorporate video game mechanics into your campaign, go ahead. Nobody is stopping you from changing your game. This forum is here to just express opinions in a moderated fashion.

ZyloMarkIII said:

It would have been more satisfying to have a more traditional attrition boss battle yes.

:-P

Lucrosium Malice said:

I would certainly disagree, epic drawn out fights do have a place, and some people prefer games that way. I do however like DH/DW the way they are, again, a few tweaks could certainly iron out some of the rough edges. And I too, like a bit of diversity in my games, and this system is an interesting mix of gritty and fantastical, which I think works in the setting. But it's not for everyone.

Lucrosium Malice said:

By fudging rolls or increasing their to hit? In DW I can pull the same type of tricks: I can surprise them, I can snipe them, I can fire so many rounds that they can't possibly dodge all of them, I can use a horde (which you can't dodge or parry), I can simply throw more enemies at them than they know what to do with, I can use a creature like a Blood Thirster which has specific abilities that prevent dodges and parries. If the GM wants to kill your PC, the GM is going to kill your PC.

And if a game is poorly run, the GM is going to muck up all kinds of things. If DW isn't run with a watchful and careful GM, you end up with Rank 2 Marines in Terminator Armor Dual Wielding Assault Cannons killing multiple greater deamons in two turns.

AluminiumWolf said:

AluminiumWolf said:

You keep saying it works improperly. I think it just boils down your opinion of properness. There's no objective standard. Stop talking as if there is.