Hello all. I have been a long time 'lurker' on this forum, but this is my first time posting, so here goes.

I was inspired to post because I am just beginning to GM 'The Frozen Reaches', where one fights orks in very large numbers. We have fought orks before of course (like in the adventure coming in the rulebook), but this if the first time they have been the major antagonist…and I for one find them far too tough. An ork with unnatural toughness is very, very difficult to kill with small arms fire. When I think back to 40K (which I haven't played since I was around 15, in the early 2000s), an Ork was tough, but not that tough.

I seem to recall that a common human soldier killed an ork around 1/6 of the time (well, 5/36 of the time, but near enough - 1/2 shots hit, 1/3 shots wounded, and the ork should pass 1/6 of his armour saves). An ork shooting at an average Imperial guardsman would kill 5/27, I think (1/3 hit, 2/3 wound and the human would pass 1/3 of his armour saves).

Now I know RT is a different system, and that 'one shot' in 40K might not equate to 'one shot' in RT (which follows a quicker time frame, whereby one shot is quite probably one shot, whilst in 40K a 'shot' might equate to a whole volley). However, I feel the ratios should be more-or-less similar - i.e, that is a human fights an ork, the ork is only at a slight advantage (I seem to recall in 40K the cheapest guardman was 6 points, whilst a basic ork was 8 or 9 points, depending on whether he was equipped for shooting or melee). Or, to put it another way, three average guardsmen should be a fair fight for 2 average orks - but, when thinking about the Frozen Reaches, I would back the orks to massacre the Damaris levy on those odds; an average RT human with a lasgun doesn't stand much chance against an ork - around 1/3 shots hit, and less than half of hits do any damage at all !

In short, an ork with a toughness modifier of 8 (or more) wearing a bit of armour is at least as hard to wound as an un-augmented human in power armour (say, TB 4 and 8 points of armour); when one considers that high AP weapons are fairly common, I would say the ork was better protected than someone in power armour. Which, when one considers the wargame, which in my opinion should be the inspiration, is bordering on absurd.

Anyway, these de facto power armoured orks got me thinking. Because though their very high TB was hugely useful in combat, it has relatively few benefits outside of it, certainly not enough to illustrate an ork's extraordinary toughness in the literature (or rather the literature 10 years ago, but I doubt things have changed much).

I then thought of the poor old Eldar, with their unnatural agility - it does have its uses for concealment and such like, but is not overly helpful for dodging, which is the single biggest use it is put to, in the games I have been involved in anyway.

In short, I feel an Ork should be very tough in all situations, rather than extremely hard to hurt in melee and only marginally tougher than a human outside of it, whilst an Eldar should be staggeringly agile, rather than more agile than most humans, but with crazy agility benefits in some situations.

What I am going to try so as to remedy this (which I see as a problem, but others, I concede, might not) is experiement with doing away entirely with unnatural characteristics, and simply give those who have it a boost to that characteristic. I thought that simply adding 5 to the characteristic for every 'ten' of the unnatural bonus would be fair - so an unnatural characteristic bonus of 6 (double 3), would garner a +15 to that characteristic. So an ork would get a toughness boost of +20 (giving a total of 65), whilst an Eldar would get +25 for a total agility of 77. A Kroot would gain +15 to strength, for a total 50 and a +20 perception, giving a total of 64. And so forth.

This means that the basic characteristic score is likely impossible for an un-augmented human to reach, which I approve of (I do not think that any normal human should be tougher than an ork or swifter than an eldar etc), whilst giving the alien/antagonist in question a more rounded advantage - less powerful in a situation where one needs that characteristic bonus (most commonly used for SB and TB), whilst giving a meaningful boost to other checks on that ability.

Personally, I am happy with very high charactersitic scores (I am also happy for them to go over 100, as one still has a 5% chance of failure, and means that extremely powerful characters can cope with penalties better).

Anyway, I will see how these play in the coming couple of weeks, and maybe report back.

I am sorry for a really long-winded post; I didn't mean it to get this long…

All best, and many thanks in advance,

David.

So your solution to Unnatural abilities is to make them natural.

Why not just go with the Black Crusade/Only War approach in which Unnatural statistics are a flat modifier instead of a multiplier? For instance, Dark Eldar get +3 to their Agility Bonus instead of the +5 they would get if they had Unnatural Agility (x2).

Dear Errant,

Yes, that is a very succint (and probably better) way of summing up what I would like. I am sorry, I am new to forums, and have yet to master the whole 'getting to the point' thing… I am sorry to say that I have never read or played the chaos 40k RPG.

I suppose one thing I have in the back of my mind is that I find unneccessary to add the 'unnatural characteristic' rule at all - instead of giving a special rule to make orks have a high toughness modifier or eldar a high agility modifier (but otherwise only 'above average' toughness etc), when one could just make orks really tough, or Eldar super agile. It just seems simpler.

My party has a feral world arch militant who, at L3, has a toughness of 55. That is higher than most orks, and from a fluff point of view seems strange to me (as he isn't all that powerful a character really - his profile isn't maxed out yet) - yes, the Ork has the higher toughness modifier, but in most non-combat situations our low-to-middle rank arch militant is effectively rather tougher - which I find a bit strange. If orks had a starting toughness in the low to mid 60s it means that an exceptionally tough human could be about as tough as an average ork, which seems reasonable.

Also, I find it mildly irritating that as written unnatural toughness is really powerful, unnatural strength is very handy, and most of the others are not that great except in a few circumstances (as has been said elsewhere, unnatural intelligence, which sounds really cool, is in fact bordering on useless).

Anyway, many thanks for your reply, I do appreciate other thoughts.

All best,

David.

David B said:

The issue, I think, would come from the way this game scales in terms of power.

Orks, Eldar, Tau, maybe even Kroot… these I could see maybe being represented by a higher stat. The issue really comes to light when starting to go up the exponentially increasing tiers of power in the Warhammer 40k universe. What happens when you start encounting Space Marines, who by all fluff accounts are an order of magnitude (or more) stronger than even the most buff guardsman? How about things like the larger Daemons or Tyranids, who are orders of magnitude stronger than even Space Marines? Does one cap a stat at 100?

Personally, I feel there needs to be a distinction between the exponentially scaling abilities in fluff and the linearly scaling characteristics. Black Crusade and Only War seem the best method, though I don't remember if they take into account skill checks (DH/RT/DW all give extra degrees of success for opposed tests, and some systems decrease the test difficulties when not opposed). If yes, then that allows Unnatural Characteristic to balance an NPC's stats based on how tough they should be to particular inputs (In combat, in opposed checks, and in terms of general applicability).

Dear Unusualsuspect,

Thanks for that - I hadn't actually thought about what to do about enormous tyranids or greater daemons et al. For the Ork warboss you have to kill at the end of the Frozen Reaches I was perfectly comfortable to give him a strength and toughness of around 90 (I seam to recall that as written he has a strength and toughness of around 60, but with the unnatural trait).

In principal I am personally happy with abilities over 100 - even as written it is not that uncommon for individual skill checks to be over 100 anyway - our super-brainy seneschal (who also is a xenographer) takes forbidden lore xenos checks at 107 (he has the skill at +20, the respective 'talented' talent, and has an intelligence of 67). This doesn't strike me as problematical - he can just deal with heavy penalties - a -30% isn't a problem, and a -60% can sometimes be handled - and he has spent a lot of XP in making that his out-and-out speciality. Anyway, having individual checks over 100 isn't a problem normally, as there is always the 5% chance of failure, it just means one can suck up penalties fairly well, and have a massive advantage in opposed checks, which seems fair enough (Agrippa our senschal would wipe the floor with most people in an opposed forbidden lore - xenos contest, which is as it should be - not that such tests would come up much outside of a possibly heretical 41st millenium game show, but nevermind).

In principal therefore I wouldn't mind abilities over 100, at least for RT and DH (these are the only 40K RPGs I own and have played, by the way) where such beasts would be pretty rare and the heroes of the tale are unaugmented humans (albeit unusually gifted ones). If one gave a hive tyrant a strenght of 150 he would nearly always win any opposed strength checks with a human (fair enough…) and could shrug off massive penalties to any strength tests he might take (I image swimming through a swiftly flowing river bothers a hive tyrant a lot less than a human).

I do appreciate that when one plays as a space marine however you need more of a scale - you will no doubt fight normal humans (and orks, eldar etc), and the big monsters will be relatively common - for RT I have only GMed some of the published adventures (the one in the rulebook, the one in 'Edge of the Abyss' and all of 'Lure of the Expanse'; we are about 1/4 of the way through Frozen Reaches - no fighting has broken out yet), so big monsters have not featured (and conversation/intrigue is more interesting to my group anyway) - in RT campaigns I am likely to run, anything with abilities over 100 would turn up very rarely, so facing something with even a strenght of 120 or an agility of 130 would be horrifying and very rare, which is fair enough.

I suppose the biggest potential niggle might be trying to shoot something with multiple dodges and an agility over 100 - but I suppose the only foe like that I can think of off the top of my head is some kind of high ranking harlequin - and I suppose they are very rare (and not something one wants to fight)…

Anyway, thanks very much for what you said - I hadn't really thought about some of the other implications.

Many thanks,

David.

Oop, the seneschal has a xenos check of 97, not 107 (but it is still very good). Tiredness, typo, mistake…anyway, my apologies.

Anyway, the point still stands, that skill checks over 100 are not uncommon (explorators and tech use spring to mind).

Apologies,

David.

That's more down to the vague nature of the additional bonuses they can get from their gear and augmetics than any particular endorsement of the ability to never fail at a task.