I've run into a problem lately with some high level characters in my campaign. One is a BA Apochathary. He signatured a Glaven Encarmine and took the DW champion prestige class. He always takes a jump pack and a storm shield, and he also has the extra dodge and parry, with an absurdly high Agility and weapon skill. He also has alot of CC abilities, including Lightning attack and Counter Attack. With his high Intelligence and gear, he can also almost always heal everyone back to full wounds.

The 2nd is a Space Wolf tactical marine. The only problem I have with him is that he has a high BS and a heavily modded Storm Bolter, and he almost always gets 6-10 hits on a guy, which will usually kill them.

So how can I help make a challenge for these guys in my campaign. Daemon Princes and Carnifexs dont pose a threat to them. There are also 2 lower level Librarians that also like to push the AOE attacks. Can anyone also explain how Medicae exactelly works? I've read that entry some many times and I still dont fully get it.

Okay, got some good news. Just a LITTLE bit of bad news first, that'll make the good news seem that much better.

Bad news? You're boned. Your players are crazy powerful and direct threats are no longer threats.

Good news? That just leads to a new and exciting career of unpleasant things you can do to your players! Try some missions along these lines:

*Scout mission where the characters are expected to slip into an enemy forge complex and gather information. The camp uses a large number of genestock - genetically modified pack humans bred for size and strength - as mining slaves to power their manufactoria. The characters have to slip into the camp clad in the dirty rags that the mining slaves wear; barter, beg or steal access to the crudely made melee weapons and blackpowder rifles that the gangs amongst the mining slaves use; then stealthily murder their way into the forge complex to place tracking devices into the weapons being made so that the Inquisition can find where the weapons are being sent.

*A race against the clock, as a fairly simple, boring mission to hunt down some xenos cultists goes bad as a xenoform plague the cultists were gestating inside their bodies is released upon their explosively violent death. The Apothecary has to try to find an immediate cure as more cultists close in - each laden with the virus and adding to the difficulty of the task when any of them are killed in a way that spills their blood.

*Play a mission where the group get to play the bad guys - cultist or Xenos profiles as they are given an evil plan to try to accomplish, depsite their own characters advancing. See how long they can avoid being killed by their own overly potent characters.

*A political mission, where the voidship of a Rogue Trader has been infected by a xenos abomination. The Rogue Trader is highly influential, and has the potential to severely hamper the crusade in the area if he is upset. He has given a number of strange rules about how combat must be engaged, and the Inquisition are ordering the kill-team to play along and try to find out why the Trader is so very suspicious.

Merc-with-a-mouth said:

Maybe the enemy, whoever you want, has created a specific task force to take down these guys and thus operate with alot of info gathered about how these guys works, and then draws them into a well-preapered ambush to finish them off. And they could also have waves of lesser enemies ready to provide cover occupy the Space Marines while the real killers move into position, and perhaps tries to jump a single guy all at once. Can the Apothathary handle five Chaos Champions all ganging up on him while the rest are occupied with hordes of cultists and Stigmaritus soldiers?

Maybe the solution isn't necessarily only to make harder enemies but also to make these enemies fight smarter?

First of all, are you using the errata version of righteous fury and weapon stats? I find those help to bring combat back to some semblance of sanity, without one-shotting hive tyrants at rank one.

Second, are you strictly enforcing the psyker rules? Pyschic phenomenon rolls cannot be re-rolled with fate points and can be only be re-rolled *once* even if the character has both favoured by the warp and the oath of knowledge.

Third, are those master level enemies fighting the party alone? Because they shouldn't be. Every single master in the core book has a rule that enhances hordes. And in background, those masters should almost never be on their own (except maybe accidentally summoned daemon princes). They should have "honour guards" of elite troops and waves of expendable minions in the form of hordes. And none of them are slouches at planning either (hive tyrants are *not* mindless animals).

Fourth, how fast are you handing out xp and reknown?

As for medicae, a character with it trained gets to make a roll on an injured character. This takes a full action from both of them, because the injured party needs to stand still while the apothecary gets to work patching them up. If the test is successful, the injured character regains the apothecary's INT bonus in wounds back if they are lightly wounded or 1 wound if they are heavily or critically wounded. Twice that if the apothecary has a functioning narthecium (which they should).

Any wounds not healed by the roll, either because there are too many to heal fully or the roll fails, count as "treated" and *cannot* be healed with first aid. They can only be healed by long-term care or fate points. No repeated medicae rolls in mission unless the characters have days or weeks to spare (which they shouldn't).

I hope that helps.

Yes, I am using the errated weapons and RF rules. I myself realized how powerful it was when I had my own BA Techmarine in another campaign. I've also been strict on Psychic Phenomenon and Perils, my psykers have just been very fortnate in their rolls. The worst they have done is summon a DP and they killed in 1 round.

I have done some masters with body guards, but not alot. I haven't tried a HIve Tyrant with some Guard yet. Ill give it a shot. AS For renown and XP, most of your missions can last up to 2 sessions (5 hours each) and I usually give 2000-3000 xp and 5-10 renown, plus bonus for RP/actions.

Thanks for the Medicae explination. I kept using degress of success for some reason. The problem is he has so many bonuses ontop of his high intelligence that he almost always heals up to full wounds. Which Brings up another question. What do you do when some one's skill reaches over 100 with bonuses? I just say you cap at 100 and cant go higher.

I guess I should also make some things clear. The group is a big one with 6 guys in it. They are all 40k tabletop players and we decided to try DW out because some of them had some RP'ing experience. They don't take Role Playing there characters very serious, and I'm fine with that. They mainly just want to hang out and have some fun. But lately I feel that I cant even challenge them at all. I'm having trouble of thinking up new missions to challenge them , because they all invested their skills in combat and because they all are 40k players, they already know what's gonna happen as soon as they spot something familiar.

I may be thinking about starting over with new characters or maybe even give Black Crusade a try with these guys. Any advice on this? Also, how can I make requisition go faster? It always takes to long.

Well, I know I can make things a bit easier for you on the Apothecary. Unless you've houseruled it (or he's wearing Terminator armor, I suppose), the Glaive Encarmine is a two-handed weapon. He can't use a Storm Shield and a Glaive Encarmine at the same time.

In light of what you've writen I think you should make new characters or give Black Crusade a try.

If a skill total is over 100, then it's over 100. For a lot of rolls, degrees of success matter. There are guidelines in one of the Dark Heresy sourcebooks about GMs disallowing excessive bonuses from gear to stack if they feel the figures are getting ridiculous but there isn't anything inherently 'wrong' with high skills for high level specialists.

Personally I think you're giving out quite a lot of xp. For ten hours of play, I'd be giving out roughly half as much. But then again campaigns vary. If characters are roleplaying well, fighting and winning against entire armies and taking down valuable enemy commanders more xp can be appropriate. If a master and a few bodyguards aren't working, then why not throw entire armies at them? Enormous hordes, speckled with elites and led by a cunning master (or masters) who has prepared the battlefield should be a threat.

Healing everybody to full between fights is not that big a deal. Just start getting them into crits, or don't give them time to heal between fights every once and awhile. And yeah if you're admittedly running masters alone then in part you're contributing to your own feeling that you can't challenge your players.

First of that’s a lot of XP, i would start over with new chars. And give less XP and renown (about 750 -1200 XP & 2-5 renown per mission).

If you want to use the high level chars modify the enemies, against chaos make heretical weapon with higher rates of fire or more damage

If the Librarians keep on pushing psychic powers modify the perils of the warp, give marks to the prince or something like that. Make sure they understand how dangerous the warp is.
When fighting ‘nids are you using shadow in the warp? (if I remember correct -10 -> -50 on Focus tests)

I tend to give out MUCH lower XP, like 100xp per hour of gameplay. Another alternative would be to use the specific objective based XP system they use in the book.

Though once players reach a high level, irrespective of how fast they got there, they're going to be a tough lot to handle- high level Marines are hard to contain.

I suggest trying out using numerous enemies and buffing the stats of the ones in the book. If there are enough people caught in hand to hand with your hand to hand expert, he's going to take hits, and a lot of them. Hit them with lascannons or fire warrior squads from afar, don't be afraid to throw anything and everything at them. Make those Fire Warriors an elite squad of veterans armed with experimental weapons.

When you run elites and master, give them friends. Use hordes to distract or slow down the team and separate them (not into totally different areas but say out of support range, weapon wise as well as squad mode ability wise). Have the masters sneak in- a Daemon Prince charging from the warp with preturnatural speed will hurt a lot of characters. A Blood Thirster, if supported by allies and played 'proper' will cut through even high level characters.

Use cover, bunkers, buidings, circumstances, stealth suits, etc. Have your enemies use tactics to pincer attack your Marines, attack the team from ranges and in situations where they're not maxed out (if it's a melee based squad, go ranged on them, looooong ranged, if it's a ranged based squad throw genestealers at them, etc.), lead them into traps and ambushes, make them deal with unclear enemies and political situations.

Not trying to hijack your thread, Merc, but it's a similar issue and I'd like to spare the board the same thread twice over.

So I have a couple… problem characters. The first, played by a dear friend of mine, is a Storm Wardens Techmarine who I'm having the same problem that everyone has with Techmarines: he's **** near impossible to hurt. I hit him with a 31 wound penetration 10 attack last night, and it ended up dealing three wounds to him. Now, that isn't to say I haven't hurt him; when I manage to land hits, I typically land him in low criticals. I guess I'm asking: how do I get around that armor and toughness without slaughtering him in the process? Warp weapons are my only recourse right now.

My other problem character is one I wouldn't have too many moral problems killing. He's playing a White Consuls Assault Marine who is minmaxed for melee combat- like any self-respecting Assault Marine. Part of the problem here is a house-rule I implemented that allows for the Counterattack talent to be used after a dodge as well as a parry, meaning that he can easily land five attacks in a round with his dodge check of 93 (63 Agility + 10 for Corvus armor + 20 for Dodge skill). He wields the Righteous Fist out of First Founding, so he's dealing 2d10+ ~27 damage per hit, plus 8 on larger foes. All that, and he always carries a Storm Shield and has an Iron Halo Signature Wargear'd for back-up (which, in hind sight, the Deathwatch might say no to the S.Shield since he has the Halo). In short, he's **** near impossible to actually connect with, and he usually gets to strike back when he does. Death of a thousand cuts is hard to do against that shield, and my bigger foes typically get counterattacked to death. My new plan for dispelling the aura of invincibility involves an Ork Big Mek with some gubbins that'll muck with his shield while the Kill-Team takes on a Warboss (using Nathan's stats instead of the one in MotX). Again, though, the problem is challenging him without killing the Librarian, the Devastator, or either of the two Tactical Marines.

Gaire said:

What rank are these guys, out of curiosity?

While I've not personally witnessed rank 8 terror yet, judging from early forum posts, once you hit ranks 7/8 your PCs are nearly impossible to kill. I have enough trouble nickle and diming my characters wounds at early ranks- with the high defense low wounds system we have it's ridiculously easy to do no damage or knock the player out of the battle.

I'd consider stacking on special abilities to the enemy weapons like felling and high pen. The trouble I've had is that it's not just armor that goes out of control, it's the Toughness Bonus, so felling sometimes feels like the only option. Another thing I would consider is upping the base bonus damage to further reduce the randomness of the dice. A Lascannon can does 26 - 60, which is a pretty big swing and can be the difference between scratched paint and critical wounds. Give your enemies 'experimental' weapons or similar with slightly modded damage profiles (which the difference in the weapon performance could even be a set of adventures on their own).

To counter the Storm Shield, you can try things like Machine Curse to stop the power field from working, EMP grenades/Haywire grenades, or give your enemies the equivalent of the Assassin Shield Breaker rounds. I'd personally not allow him to carry both an Iron Halo and a Storm Shield, for both requisition and balance reasons. You also might consider recinding the house rule on counter attack if it's getting out of control- simply cite balance as the reason.

They're rank 6, but they're 500 XP away from 7. I realized while I was at work that I could rescind the dodge-counterattack houserule and still let him have his counterattack, since he can parry with a physical shield. Since the Iron Halo is S.W., I can't exactly take that away, so would a low-requisition storm shield replacement that has no field but still grants the +4 armor and the defending property work, do you think? I mean, he's still gonna be parrying at close to 80, but that's better than 93 dodge. Also, he has step aside but not wall of steel, so I'll have to be careful about that- then again, that means one less counterattack a round until he buys wall of steel. Good call on felling weapons and Machine Curse/Haywire Field.

Merc-with-a-mouth said:

I would maybe suggest having them do a campaign that involves investigating and Intelligence Based Skill Tests. An example would include them figuring out when or where a chaos cultist group will strike or how they are able to prevent a ritual from being performed. It is good sometimes, if the players are into actually role-playing, to pit them against one another by putting them through moral dilemmas. In my campaign, one of the players was given the option of poisoning a water purifying plant in order to kill both enemy Xenos and Xenos sympathizers. The team leader had no idea about this and is a huge humanitarian based on his chapter history (Salamanders).

Gaire said:

Would you be able to parry and counter attack with a shield though? Wouldn't you need to attack with the shield itself? I always read as using the weapon that parried, but I think I can see how it would be interpreted either way.

Also for parry penetration, you can only counter attack what you can parry, so if you run out of parries you can't counterattack any more- three genestealers from The Emperor Protects will quickly eat up all of his parries (even with wall of steel and step aside) in two of their 12 hits. One of the genestealers (at least) will die in the counterattack, but their initiative and preternatural speed means they should be able to hit him a few times, and with luck a couple will get through the Iron Halo. At rank 6/7 with an Iron Halo as signature gear, and a storm shield picked up along the way, as a player I'd expect my reputation and wargear to draw the enemies to me. I'd also expect my Watch Captain to be sending me into the most dangerous situations given my badassery.

Well, I hit him with three mega-armored nobs last night, all with Swift Attack, so that's six attacks per round. They just rolled poorly for their attacks and he rolled well for his shield, always reducing it to an amount he could counter. I'll probably allow a counter with another weapon after a parry, even with the shield.

EDIT: I've also realized that, beyond the problem of logistics involved in carrying two shields, there's also the issue of what other Astartes would think about him carrying a Storm Shield and an Iron Halo. Would that be seen as improper use of the equipment? Or perhaps even cowardly?

Sorry for the double post, since it's been up too long to edit: I've decided to solve the problem of my assault marine by removing the houserule and returning to the rule book's definition of Counterattack. So no more power fist counterattacks.

AFAIK you can only counterattack with the weapon you parry with. And yes, attacking with a storm shield is going to be that much less effective than attacking with an actual melee weapon. It's a trade off.

Only one shield can be active at a time remember. So there is no situation where a character can get to roll against both shield for the same attack.

As for requistion, technically every loadout has to be verified by the quartermaster/watch captain/superior and if needs be justified to them. I usually handwave that since my players bring completely gear for the missions they undertake. It could be interesting rp to have one of those call out a character on "improper" use of equipment but that imples that they have clear opinions that the loadout is suspect or improper, which will require you to sort that out first.

By background, I have no idea if there are characters who take both a storm shield and an iron halo. Perhaps chapter masters?

Oh, I know about the only one shield thing. I haven't been allowing him to roll against the Halo after the Storm Shield fails to stop it. He understands that the Halo has to be activated if the Storm Shield overloads in order to gain its shield. Going over the rules, you're correct, you can only counter with the weapon that parried, which I've noted in the email that I sent to my players. Since that completely eliminates the power fist counter that has been making running encounters against him a living hell, I'm not that worried about him carrying two any more. Push comes to shove, I machine curse or haywire field him.

One perspective on the 'two shields' thing; does the Marine really have so little else to purchase, and does he have so little faith in his own abilities and the ability of the shield that he feels it's neccesary to take both? Is making him double shielded worth it from the Watch Captain/Commander's perspective, when that other shield could be used to save a different Astartes on a different mission? Those are questions that would be asked, IMO, to answer whether use of the two fields was considered acceptable. Howver you slice it I'd not give him bonus renown for making himself unwoundable.

Also, where do the 6 attacks come from with swift attack? Swift attack gives you 2 with your primary weapon, if you're two weapon wielding it you get a bonus attack with your off hand for 3. With lightning attack you'd get a 4th. With an ability like a Techmarine or an extra arm, you could in theory get a 5th. Am I missing something?

Lightning Attack for 3 on his turn during the round, then Counterattacking twice.

Edit: And I now realize what you meant. I was referring to six attacks coming at him from the three Nobs, two per Nob.

Gaire said:

Ahhhh, I forgot to add in the counter attacks. Give him something to think about if you give a Nob or two two weapon wielder, ambidexterous, and counter attack.

Even if it doesn't do much to the player, changing up the talents and abilities can make them more cautious and worry a bit more.