So, let's forget for a minute that some of us (me, for instance) are desperately hoping that the general vehicles of the Imperial Guard make it into the first book, while several others are hoping they skip it; how might the book deal with human fragility vs big guns? What mechanics might be employed to save the PC Guardsman from meeting the messy fate his nameless colleagues next to him will? I've never played Deathwatch, which is the set that seems to most incorporate ground vehicles on a scale with infantry objectives. I wrote a thread on DW for how might one destroy a tank, without getting killed, but now I am just wondering what will save the PCs from a single shot of the looted Leman Russ battle cannon? Whether a party of Space Marines can take a Defiler or not, they aren't Guardsmen, so I am wondering how Humans might fare when the "best tank in the Guard" rolls in.

Looking at many of the vehicles, their weapons seem to be mostly infantry-scale, mounted on an armored vehicle, protecting the operator from return fire. A person could survive a hit from a multi-laser, maybe, or a lascannon, and certainly some of the pintle-bolter/stubbers, but even Space Marines, with their excessive durability, excellent armor, and such would be hard-pressed to survive a hit from a battle cannon, or heaven help them, a Basilisk's earthshaker. I don't think Fate recharges faster than Earthakers are loaded, so I'm not sure how much help that will be. My guess is that the Guardsmen are going to be around the power level of a Dark Heresy character, or maybe between that and a RT character, at best. This means that, as soon as the vehicle rolls into range, the player might need to dig into their folder for the third backup character that they made for the night.

So, some of this might just be me over-elaborating, but what are some ideas that might save the PCs, leaving the vehicles the efficient asset that they are, but not at the expense of players having to hide from the enemy's vehicles the whole encounter? I assume Size might help, with an Enormous vehicle trying to fire with a penalty at a regular sized person, and if the game gives the character the protection of another vehicle, or maybe a Magnitude, for being in a horde, they might be able to survive, but a small group, say a Vet squad, might not have any of these to fall back on. What are people's thoughts, and some other ideas, for surviving the gauntlet?

As an unrelated second, does Only War have an official release date, yet? I went to Amazon, and it said a date for preorder, but it also still lists it as a DH supplement, so some updating might not hurt. I know there's a Con involved, I think GenCon, but I don't know when that is.

Not getting spotted is more than likely what your average guardsmen would hope for, but I think you could rule that with some added difficulty modifiers one of your accurate or lucky players can put a missile through a hatch or viewing port. Have to remember that even on a modern battlefield armored vehicles that wander into an urban area with out infantry support are in a lot of danger from guys with cheap rockets and bombs. You can get very creative with how to take them out. Maybe collapse a building on one of them, or possibly a bridge they are driving over. Honestly avoiding fighting vehicles in a straight fight should be a primary goal for any grunt on the ground. Even the smaller(that being a relative term) weapons mounted on a tank or apc are deadly to them.

Could also have a group of secondary characters who just so happen to be crew members of a Leman Russ Vanquisher or even some pilots flying Thunderbolts to come in and strike the offending enemy armor.

I think that is mainly up to the GM. If your GM sends out a wing of Eldar Grav Tanks you are screwed anyway.
I think such games should be about tactics (and drama). Sneak in, get a locater beacon on them and hope that you are gone before the orbital laser strikes. Or like in Saving Private Ryan, hide until they pass, quickly attach a melta charge and run for cover.
Surviving an artillery barrage should be about either: "**** I was lucky" or "Why my best friend and not me"
I also hope they cover derangements such as shellshock and survivors guilt.

Using the current RT or DW veh. rules you are quite capable of putting sizable holes in armored vehicles w/ Lascannons, Krak missiles or Melta weapons. The their is always the cliche (but still possible) idea of popping the top hatch and dropping a frag grenade into the nice tight quarters of a tank! The rules for vehicles already exist in the 40k rpg so I hope OW fleshes them out and includes the classics (Leman Russ, Chimera, Thunderbolt fighters etc.).

venkelos said:

Well if you think it's okay for an average human, even one in the guard, to survive a lascannon blast then you may need to re-read the fluff behind and some of the stats on them. The latest stats for a lascannon, as seen in Black Crusade (won't post the whole stats, but basically with the Proven trait which gives each d10 for damage a minimum roll of 3, the minimum damage is 25 pen 10 with a max of 65 pen 10) will instantly melt a human, and take a marine potentially into crit as well.

In comparison, the heavy weapons published to date (vehicle weapons from Rogue Trader and Deathwatch) seem to hint that battle-cannon will be more about range and Blast, but not have much in the way of penetration. As such, flak armour will benefit from +2 AP versus weapons with the Blast trait, which will help the player characters survive stray shots. Utilizing cover and terrain vehicles cannot get into, ambushes and of course your own armour support will all contribute to survival.

As such i don't really see it as some major issue that player characters will get constantly wiped by a single tank. I mean if your GM is forcing you to fight a tank on unfavourable terms with no chance of victory then they are the problem with your game, not the rules!

venkelos said:

Perhaps borrow the Imperal Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy rule from GURPS - the bad guys always miss with their first shot.

Although I guess if they are in the Imperial Guard that should mean the PCs always miss with their first shot.

Kasatka said:

Please note, I said COULD survive, though it isn't likely. I don't think it's normal for a lone Guardsman to survive the hit of a big gun, and that's why I asked this question; because eventually, they will have to face one. Whether a Chaos Guard Leman, a looted Ork Leman, or even just another Leman of the IG, if two groups are forced into conflict, it could happen, and if I use the Battle Cannon from Deathwatch (I figure the one mounted on the Defiler should be a close approximation to the Guard-variant gun) it would be a bit messy. I also won't put it up here (DW: RoB, p.192) it hits with multiple dice, high Pen, over a rather large zone. With such a setup, even a group of players, if in the same unit, could be wiped, with just a stray shot. I was trying to see if there were any good Talents to assist, or if we might expect some new options. Yeah, I like the idea of cover, and as long as the battlefield supports it (and how often is there really a big, flat, cleared area of battle?) it seems like a good plan. I didn't notice the rule for flak armor, so that's my own oops. Can always hope that allied armor makes for better targets, but I believe battle cannons are more designed to wreck infantry groups, and ping tanks if necessary (hull-mounted lascannon, or sponson multi-meltas/plasma cannons seem better for armor-cracking).

I was just curious. As with so many things here, my question is motivated by a lack of knowledge concerning game-scale; will most encounters be warring armies, or actions by smaller groups, on the edges of overarching big battles? Will infantry be hiding in hordes, or will the whole party be in one squad? How important, in game terms, will vehicles, such as the aforementioned Leman Russ, be overall? When the book finally gets here, whenever Gen-Con is, then I'll have a better idea, and know how survivable the game is to an "average" Guardsman, people known to die all the time. I don't expect a GM to just willy nilly toss a tank squad at infantry; I am just trying to get a grasp on how this all might flow.

I'd think this would go the same way as any other soft target in combat with a tank. Don't get shot by something intended to kill other tanks.

Fighting armor as unsupported infantry should be tense and deadly, and your best bet is probably to hide and radio in a Lightning Strike wing or somesuch. Otherwise it's going to be messy, and require a few tense ambushes with anti-tank weaponry.

I haven't actually run a pure tank vs infantry fight yet, but the closest my group got was a fight between a DW predator and LasBack with the PC kill team fighting a LRBT platoon and company of infantry. The battlezone was a mostly open ash waste, with little cover. The dismounted group of marines kept well away from the tanks while the vehicles and a marine with a missile launcher at long range bombarded them.

I'd imagine this would be similar in OW, though without a company vs squad engagement being fair.

Or there are the grenade rules from… either Feng Shui or Hong Kong Action Theatre! (I forget which) whereby the amount of damage you took from grenades and similar weapons depended on how important you were to the story. So mooks took lots of damage, henchmen took a little damage and characters with names took no damage at all.

AluminiumWolf said:

I really like this idea. I've seen similar things in other games, such as the way various incarnations of the Fate3.0 rules handle it where mooks die really easily.

However PCs should be hiding from armour and not trying to fight it directly. If by some horrible stroke of bad luck the PC's position takes a hit from something big, well, that is what fate points are for.

Since OW probably has a very different theme from Feng Shui and its kind, I don't think we're going to see too many "PCs are better" rules apart from Fate Points. This of course suggests SomVone's strategy: Either call in a strike or fight as dirty as you can.

That being said, the description of the system on its page states that we'll be mostly acting behind enemy lines, skipping the whole "Send in the next wave!" business. That means we have the element of surprise or at least the initiative reasonably often.

The idea of focusing on small groups of covert operatives, behind enemy lines, when "normal" IG are vast armies of endless men and munitions, seems interesting; at least not the same thing the Guard always do.

Wish that the game would come out. already, so I can look it over, and decide if I am really into it.

Sounds familiar to me.. oh yeah isn't that what DW is about just on a more epic scale

Sounds familiar to me.. oh yeah isn't that what DW is about just on a more epic scale

Yeah - I really wonder why they even bothered to make Saving Private Ryan when Rambo was already out…

Maybe because Saving Private Ryan was a better film, which had a good cast and array of characters to empathise and asociate with.

Rambo, while fun. is really nothing to write home about unless you are into the "hurr durr i did da mostest damage with ma gun!" kind of game.

Someone's sarcasm detector needs a recalibration…

Cifer said:

Well the use of sarcasm (which largely depends on inflection and mannerisms in its successful delivery) is so useful in text format on the intertubes… oh whoops.

Back to the OP instead of talking about some movies.Taking out an enemy vehicle could indeed make a very nice mission or part of one. Though going head to head against one is a folly. Most vehicle mountd weaponry will make mincemeat of any pc and you only have so much fatepoints to cheat death. To take one out, would require the use of intelligence. Setting an ambush, a trap or a sabotage mission could win you the day instead.

Recomended playing :

Battlefield 3, in a Tank, on a city map, without using 3rd person camera.
Unless you know exactly what you are doing you'll quickly find out why tanks need to be supported by infrantry in close quaters battles. Furthermore even in hardcore mode BF3 is still an arcade-ish game, especially when it comes to vehicles. The tanks accelarates, turns and reverses far faster than a real tank would. But still it's an interesting experince when your field of view is limited (which is even more true for WW1 and 2 style tanks that the imperiums tanks a based on) and you can be attacked from almost every angle.

I'd probably handle an encounter with a vehicle (and some soldier that are with it) kinda like this:

The players somehow become aware of the vehicles existance (i.e. they hear it crush some fortficiations nearby or encounter the broken remains of a squad of soldiders that were attacked by the metal beast).

In narrative time the players probably formulate some sort of attack strategy that ends with them either being detected before they can significantely damage the vehicle or with them using explosives, rockets or whatever to get the "first strike" against the vehicle. Before this happens they may run into some sort of encounter with the soldiers scouting around the vehicle or whatever.

So either: direct encounter with the vehicle because the PCs failed to do "something" or they get the first hit against the vehicle.

In either case next would be some sort of combat encounter, depending on the PCs succesfullnes the vehicle could be fully operational, unable to move, unable to shoot its main gun thereby turning into "just" a fortified machine gune, or the vehicle completly disabled.

Assuming the vehicle is fully operational the encounter would probably end in a lot of fate points burned or generally unsuccesful.

I think that a GM should always allow for the players to act before the vehicle becomes a direct threat. I.E. a vehicle should never "sneak up" on a party. A tank moving whether moving through a city or an open landscape would always be spotted before it notices any infrantry. Whether by sound, line of sight or combat reports from other units. I think a vehicle should force the players into a situation where they have to use their surroundings, their skills and smart play to overcome something that would easily crush them in direct combat. After all, direct combat is what most combat vehicles are made for.

As the PCs are infantry they are more mobile and flexible than a single tank. Everyone spreads out, uses cover to get around to sides / back of vehicle and hit it were it is vulnerable. Any one who attracts the attention of the tanks will probably die, but should buy enough time for the rest of the squad to take out the tank - that would be the reality of Guardsmen taking on a tank. If you can get the drop on vehicle, then you should be able to hit it first, so areas with lots of cover like cities would be perfect for taking care of tanks without infantry support. Undoubtably at least someone in the squad will have some weapon capable of anti-tank duties, particularly if you get to call shots at weak points. Bearing in mind we are dealing with 'normal' humans as PCs, it would be very unrealistic for them to deal with numerous battle tanks all at once without serious assists from NPCs.

Scribbs said:

Perhaps this should read: If the Pc's are infantry….

Ok '…if the PCs are infantry..', fair enough comment. Playing as part of a tank crew is obviously very feasible for OW, but I'll confess that in my mind the core experience of being in the Imperial Guard is to be a poor grunt in a very hostile universe. You're pretty much at the bottom of the pecking order, with every xenos stronger, faster,more teche- up or just out-right nastier than you. The goal is not so much beating the enemies of the Imperium so much as just surviving. I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with this, but that's just my opinon. I think the best war films are more about the comradeship at arms and getting out alive from conflicts rather than battlefield heroics (although both things are obviously not mutually exclusive). I think OW will give a real chance of capturing that dynamic in the 40K setting.

While 40k IG infantry is arguably one of the weakest individually they are VERY dangerous in numbers and cheaper (Point wise) than any other unit. Also, While IG infantry may have their weaknesses IG armor is unmatched by anything out there except maybe the Necron Monolith!