(First question is about rules but is related to my other Tech-Marine questions.)

1.) When using a pistol in melee to make a standard attack is SA attack allowed? Note: I have a Techmarine with the Auto-Stabilized trait.

2.) Does anyone find the Luminen Shock/Blast talents useful or used often? Personally my unarmed damage is superior, my other talents/ability don't apply and the Shocking quality has never worked. I prefer to use my built in Servo-arms or my plasma pistol on my servo-harness.

3.) Has anyone successfully made use of Ferric Lure/Summons talent? By that I mean: Has it been useful for the completion of a mission?

4.) Would other Tech-marines agree that the flavor talents are much less useful than straight skill/characteristic upgrades? Of course we have our share of great armor talents and I'm not saying the class isn't tough as hell. Just feeling flat compared to mechanicus characters from the other game books.

Forge Master said:

What do you mean by SA attack? Acramimes are good but for something like this it is probably better to just spell it out.

Forge Master said:

The only Luminen that I have ever used was the Charge as it reloads the ammo for all of our players. We have only one player that uses a bolter as everybody has switched over to Plasma and Melta so they don't have to worry about reloads and the higher damage output.

Forge Master said:

I do not have Furric Lure/Summon's as the way that I have read it, it really does not do anything for the Tech-Marine/Forge Master.

Forge Master said:

I personally think that we have a lot better starting point than most other Mechanicus arch-types in the other books. While yes we are in a more confined role in the Deathwatch book we are a lot better off in that we have access to fare more assets that we can draw upon. Tech-Marines / Forge Masters also get access to the upper end of Mechanicus implants at master crafted quality that grant way better bonuses then say the Heritech in Black Crusade who could end up with a Poor quality implant. Also, Tech Marines can also take any piece of equipment from any of the other books without having to pay thrones too.

Firing a pistol in melee only allows single shot, not semi-auto. Haven't played a Tech character and I've never seen those talents used, so I can't answer to their efficacy. HPred, I'm gonna assume 'acramimes' is supposed to be acronyms, and SA means semi-auto. Also, Luminen Charge can't be used to recharge Plasma and Melta weaponry, only Las weaponry. Plasma and Melta use photonic hydrogen and pressurized gases as ammunition, respectively, and thus a Tech character pumping electricity into their magazines will do nothing good and might, if a GM is vicious enough, damage the weapon.

When firing a pistol in melee, as said above, you may only make a single shot. This single shot is a straight BS test. There is no bonuses for range, size, or any upgrades or add-ons for your pistol. You are shooting the pistol "from the hip" versus aiming it as you would do with any specific attack. I'm pretty sure this is described thus in the main rulebook.

In RPGs, you should build your character to suit a path or motivation (the character's desires-hence you are roleplaying the character). Building your character simply to build damage output at the expense of roleplaying is not what RPGs are about, thats called munchkining and frowned upon by real RPGers.

Example, you make a devastator. You decide his primary motivation is to bring back honor to his battle company (of which he was the sole survivor). He would then logically take any talents to increase renown, be vocal in any mission which would possibly increase renown, and possibly take any talents which would decrease corruption or insanity. As he's a dev he's also obsessed with not failing his brothers in his role in the team, thus taking BS upgrades and any talent that increases accuracy or weapon effectiveness (not necisarily damage though) would be viable. toughness, WS, Strength, Intelligence, agility, and perhaps fellowship and any talent not related above would be secondary and not a focus for a good RPGer until the character has some roleplaying need for it. Such as he took too much damage in last fight and became a burden as his team had to pull him out and give up on an objective so he'd focus on some toughness advances until he was a little tougher then go back to normal stuff.

p.140

You don't get bonuses or penalties for range or targeting equipment like scopes, but it still counts as a ranged attack for everything else. Scatter weapons still count as point blank for scater effects. Size still counts, any other talents you have for ranged combat still count. Talents for melee combat do not count. I have to assume you would not have a firing into melee penalty.

Forge Master said:

1. No, single shot only.

2. Not at all really. Maybe more in Dark Heresy when you can't just strongarm doors open as easily. And yes, your punching is better, if you could channel it into a punch it might be worth something.

3. I haven't made use if it but I could see instances of it being useful. Completely depends on the GM giving you opportunities to make it useful and player creativity for finding a use.

4. Absolutely. That's one problem with the DW system: it ports a lot of things from Dark Heresy, which is for the most part played at a much lower character power level. Some of the Talents which could be nice for a chargen 400 XP Tech-Priest are very meh for a 13,000-XP starting Techmarine, both in terms of what they can actually do for you and their increased cost. That being said, some are very nice.

herichimo said:

Really? Paying the finite resource of XP for things that are mostly useless is bad from both an efficient character perspective and bad from a game-design perspective. Who wants to buy something they will get very little or no use out of? Also you sound ridiculously judgmental and condescending. I don't get a lot of enjoyment funneling XP into fluffy but useless powers, I guess that means I'm Doing It Wrong.

Also your example is good for both how to improve a character based on his story and how to improve a character for mechanical superiority. The two are not completely distinct at all, because IC efficacy is closely tied to efficient and thoughtful OOC XP spending. Nobody's talking about building for pure damage output, but if something that actually costs XP is supposed to improve that character (both from an OOC good game design perspective and an IC "this is a good upgrade to help my Brothers" perspective) and it fails at both of those, what is the incentive in taking it?

I read through the pistol in melee rules in the beginning of the equipment section of the core book, but was unsure about firing mode since I have the standard plasma pistol on my servo-harness. It has a semi-auto mode that is now a half-action since I'm auto-stabilized which led me to question if I still had to use it as single shot in melee. Single shot will still be fine for me

Herichimo, I DID purchased those "role-playing" talents. They were crap and I couldn't use them successfully. Is it great roleplaying if my unarmed techmarine uses his Luminen shock and is the only member of his squad unable to subdue his enemy? It was not my intention to create a story where my advanced unarmed attack I installed was inferior to all other space marine attacks. Find something that a Space Marine does that does less damage, I challenge you!

The key thing in the pistol rules it the 'Standard Attack' with the capitol letters. this means the Standard Attack action as opposed just some standard attack type.

Forge Master said:

Obviously they aren't the most damage heavy attacks, but especially with the shocking quality they can be good if you need to subdue a squishy human without killing them. Haven't personally done this, but just a thought. Not all talents (even ones that do damage) have to be combat focused.

Forge Master said:

The techmarine in my group used it to marvelous effect several times. He basically was able to pull of some cool Magneto style stunts, lifting heavy cables and the like. Was it used exactly the way it's written in the rules? No, certainly not. He was essentially lifting thousands of pounds. But the times he used it was an incredibly clever way to solve a situation, and so the GM allowed it. And I should note, the GM allowed it with a WP test at extreme negatives (probably arduous, at least), and if I recall correctly it did actual physical harm to the character, not just fatigue.

It's also **** useful for grabbing things out of people's hands, which we run as successful WP test followed by opposed S test. Though the GM limits this one a lot, so that the techmarine can't just disarm people left and right in combat.

Forge Master said:

While I agree that the Luminen talents are… of varying use, at best, in the game I run, Ferric Lure/Summons have been used to great effect - largely in the field of demolitions. The Techmarine in my games has used the Ferric talents to place and arm Krak Grenades and Melta bombs in places that can't otherwise be reached, or even in places that have been closed off to the marines. A good example was a time they were attacking a bunker. The bunker was protected by a number of tarantula turrets and a void-fence. While they took down the turrets without issue, they couldn't work out how to get around the void-fence, their weapons coun't overload it. Rather that going with my original plan (call in their Imperial Guard assets to overload the fence with sheer weight of fire), the Tech-marine got as close as possibe, used bionic eyes and an inbuild auger to see inside the bunker to where the Genesteaer Hybrids were lurking, waited for one of them to walk near the void-fence controls, then pulled the pins out of all the guys frag and Krak grenades. Fence goes down, internal explosion kills half the hybrids, easy mop up.

The flavour talents for Techmarines are only as useful as you can make them. If you can think of a cool stunt to pull with them, they're worth the experience IMO.

Forge Master said:

That is a problem with Deathwatch. The whole system is a bit off the mark in a lot of parts. The game itself tends to punish good roleplaying. Whether that is due to poor GM interactions (GMs should take into consideration and integrate the roleplaying elements), poor ruleset, or crazy balance issues (Aurum genestealers… or just anything from aurum for that matter…) The deathwatch ruleset isn't that solid for RPGing. Which is a shame, it really isn't any fun to see everyone gunning for the same thing, the same builds, and the same in game actions. This game should be more than just an up-scaled 40k tabletop game.

Now I'm not saying anything you put above is 'wrong' per-se, but I will state, the techmarine's role in a kill-team isn't to beat up on people, sure he may have to do that every once in a while, but he's there to provide technical support. To fix broken equipment, commune with friendly and enemy machine spirits, and provide any mechanicus support where necisary. Of course, having a Unnatural Strength 75 pen rediculous arm that also includes a free talent doesn't hurt either…

professor_kylan said:

Awesome!! Never underestimate the players' ability to circumvent GM expectations!

Alpha Chaos 13 said:

And I personally think the mark of a good GM is to roll with whatever your players throw at you and reward them for thinking outside the box.

professor_kylan said:

It seems that we're cut from the same cloth, sir!