Shadow Walker said:

Especially when they're SUPPOSED to be as large and strong as the largest Ork Warbosses. This one isn't even as tough or strong as a rather basic ork troop type. That's not an Ogryn. That's not even CLOSE to an Ogryn.

and for emperors sake, make more weapons ogryn-proof, or make it a weapon customization. This has nothing to do with balance, it's just not fun to have such a limited arsenal. If they have to stay canon, please include ripper saws (giving the "warhammer" stat 2 pen, tearing and making it rending).

In addition the BONE enhancement should be noted somewhere. I guess every player ogryn is a bone'ead. otherwhise they could'nt even talk coherrently.

I think an ogryns best bet with the rules that are in place now, is getting Unarmed Master as soon as possible and aim for skeletal petrification.

My favorite canon Ogryn profile was the Chaos-tainted Ogryn from Achiles Assault (Deathwatch). The thing was truly monstrous and although not nearly as powerful as Astartes overall, it could seriously inconvenience one if it got up close.

I'm all for beefing Ogryns up a bit. I understand they can't really be as powerful as the fluff indicates, and not dwelling too much on how dumb they are besides the abysmal Int score is acceptable if people are to play them, but the way I see it, anyone who wants to play an Ogryn sacrifices practically everything else for the chance to be the insanely strong and tough giant.

I'd up the Unnatural Strength and Toughness to +4 each. Combined with the stat boosts they have, this puts the starting Ogryn on the level of a starting Astartes character when it comes to these characteristics, which sounds like a reasonable starting point. Then, I'd either give them the option to increase their Unnatural bonus at a hefty price, or perhaps give them two extra Characteristic Advancements instead.

I'd argue that their current downsides still manage to balance that - remember that even if he's as strong as a Space Marine, he doesn't fight anything quite like one, and is very limited in his choice of equipment. But if that doesn't convince people, giving them, say, -5 Agility and -10 Fellowship sounds fine.

I think the biggest downside is the size. everyone and their grannies have +10 to any test to hit you. that's insane. there has to be some kind of "cookie" to compensate that. grappling is great, but if you grapple against more then one enemy, you are dead meat (everyone not involved in the grapple is getting +20 to hit you).

I will try to integrate my two propositions (increasing the unnatural attributes and the use of vehicle weapons as heavy weapons) in my group.

Size (Hulking) is perfectly fine.
Anything larger would be completly silly. After all Size (Enormouse), which is one category larger than hulking is the size of a MBT or similar vehicle like the Defiler and would be far to large.

Unnatural Toughness and Strength starting at +2 is also fine I think. Now the thing that is important here is to allow the Ogryn to get some Upgrades on those to better reflect what an Ogryn can become.

The Ripper Gun should be changed to Heavy type but this doesn't really make a difference to the way it is now I think. It's more of a crunch reflecting fluff thing.

Now intelligence:

Ignoring the hole BONE thing isn't really a problem for me since I like my player characters to be able to form basic sentences without having to spend a lot of experience points on it.
How about giving the Ogryn a penalty on most intelligence tests instead? I think the problem here is the difference between knowledge and inteligence which are not neccesarily the same thing.
Kinda like the Hivers in Dark Heresy give the Ogryn a hefty inteligency test penalty on all non-primitive tasks (this may need a bit of refining to reflect just the type of intelligence an Ogryn might have).
The mistake some people are making here is that they seem to be judging the Ogryns intellicenge by his ability to speak
I'm not familiar with the tabletop wargame but let's just consider an Orks intelligence An Ork boy has an int of 24 and a nob has 29.
If I remember my rules right an Ogryn would start with 2d10+5. So only a extremely intelligent Ogryn would be as smart as an Ork boy whereas an average Ogryn has an Int of 16 (2 * 5.5 + 5) which is just 6 points over a Squig, one point above a predatory beast from a deathworld,

Musclewizard said:

That is because vehicles should be one size bigger than they are now. They size was wrong [too small, for example how is Land Raider same size as Tyranid Warrior?] in Rites of Battle and this mistake is repeated in OW beta. According to Table 5-6: Size MBT should be Massive [which make sense] not Enormous. When size for vehicle will be corrected then size Enormous for Ogryn will be no problem.

cybernetics need also clarification in connection with ogryns. Like synthmuscles. do they add +1 (+4) to the ogryns unnatural strength?

And Equipment in general. How much heavier is ogryn equipment? for example armor.

Shadow Walker said:

Well okay so (some / all) Vehicles are too small, according to the size table on page 112 vehicles should be massive and larger (at least for tanks and similar armored cars).

This doesn't mean that the Ogyrn is too small. Once again going by table 5-6 size enormous is a Sentinel Walker or a Krootox. I'm not sure about the Krootox (though it's probably a hight and width thing) the Sentinel is certainly larger than a Space Marine in Power Amour and smaller than something that would belong in the Massive Cagetory (like any Tank which would be wider and longer than a Sentinel). From what I can gather from the Lexicanum a sentinal is between 4.8 (15 feet) to 5.34 (17.5 feet)meters high and roughly 2.3 meters wide.
I doubt an Ogryn would fit very well into this same category. After all an Ogryn is up to 10 feet so he's still 5 feet (or 50% of his height) short of even the smallest of Sentinels.

Just a short side note:
Could somebody post the Strength, Toughness, Wounds of an Ogryn in the Tabletop as well as a few reference stats? (Like a space marine, an ork and a normal guardsman or something similar).

Musclewizard said:

Ogryn: S 5, T 5, W 3

SM: S 4, T 4, W 1

Orkboy: S 3, T 4, W 1

Guard: S 3 T 3, W 1

Although TT stats should not be taken too seriously because it is all done for balance = money - you would have to play only 1 squad of proper statted SM + Rhino to make it fluffy [and we know that GW want you to have big army ]. Still it doesnot change that in fluff Ogryns are far tougher and stronger than SM.

Shadow Walker said:

Wow they really are tough as nails.

Musclewizard said:

Yep, and that's how they're treated in the fiction too. That tough. Remember, these are Fantasy Ogres in a Sci Fi setting. 10 foot+ tall, muscular, strong…

Dulahan said:

10+ feet tall?
The Lexicanum (which seems to be going by 6th edition rules, not that that tells me anything really) has them at between 2.5 and 3 meters. I.e. up to 10 feet but not really more.
The point I'm trying to make is yes they are tough, no doubt about it, but they aren't supposed to be the same size cagetory as a Sentinal Walker (which is Enormous) therefor one category smaller than Enormous (Hulking) is fine.

Edit: I just noticed that you never had a problem with Ogryns being Hulking so I guess I made my point for nothing.

haha we play with the point allocation rule. so of course i don't put any points into intelligence. My Regiment gives me a malus of 3 points in Int. After the ogryn stat chages I have an Intelligence of 02. Yes ZERO TWO. Pretty friggin dense if you ask me lol.

how does the average npc ogryn (p.245) manage to get 22 Int if every ogryn hast to reduce his int by 15. They would have had to roll 17 for their Int-stat or raise that stat. Does that mean all standard ogryns are genius?

beware of int damage to 0, that would be bad.

From just righteous fury crits:

Explosive head crit of 4
Impact head crit of 5

Not to mention any normal crit damage.

02 int is still very dangerous, and quite possibly a solid way to ruin an ogryn.

so basically the rules force me to put at least 10 points into a stat I will never use, just to remain playable? So basically I just have 90 points to allocate. And even with 10 points into intelligence I would end up with 12 Int. That's 2 more then a squig and half that of a normal orc. To get to the amount of the standard ogryn on page 245 I would have to put in 2 advances which costs 2000 Exp.

Maybe change that malus to -10 int, so a normal PC-ogryn ends up with 20 intelligence.

I'd say -15 is fine, its just a matter of being careful with a point buy system. Putting 0 points in int is dangerous, even if you have no intention of using the stat.

Well, one thing… 15 int or less is considered sub-human. Like, dumber than any human. Animal level.

On the subject of Ogryns and "what they should be", it's worth noting that the appendix on Abhumans in the Imperium (which lists the fifteen known and sanctioned stable sub-species of humans currently in the Imperium) actually mentions that there are several sub-strains of the Ogryn breed, with sufficient variation between them that the Adeptus Terra is considering a re-evaluation of their classification (similarly, Homo sapiens variatus , otherwise known as Beastmen, are regarded as a prohibited breed across a third of the Imperium and are under consideration for reclassification as mutants rather than abhumans).

Now, as we don't know specifically what each of these variations of Ogryn are like, it does allow ample room for different Ogryns to be portrayed differently in different sources.

All that said, I'm personally all for removing the Comrade from the Ogryn speciality (and from all the Specialists, except for the Enginseers, as their servitors are very fitting), and boosting it's stats (primarily it's Unnatural Strength and Toughness up further. IMO, if an Ogryn is going to buddy up with a guardsman in a squad, it should be one of the player characters - as a bodyguard for leaders (like Nork), as a stable mount for a heavy gunner (like the Ogryn in the novel Imperial Glory , who carried an autocannon on his back - he'd kneel down to let the heavy gunner fire, passing up ammo drums from his satchel on request) - rather than a faceless Comrade.

KommissarK said:

it's not only a problem with the point buy system. if you roll average on the int roll you end up with 15 int (20+10-15). chances are good you get a regiment with a -3 int (Line Infantry) you will have 12 int. That's below animal int lvl. and even if you aren't in such a regiment you will have 15 int. Way below the 22 from the standard ogre. If roll bad you will have 7 to 14 int.

I bet they started with a base of 25 for the standard characters.

Anyway -15 int will put your average ogryn at animal level. and with the point buy system you will be at plant level unless you burn you points in a useless stat. That's just silly.

vogue69 said:

I wouldn't call intellicene a useless stat when using point buy system. Sure it might not make the Ogryn a better fighter (i.e. it does not "help his build" if you are going to min/max) but if you use point buy and make the decision not to put any points in intelligence you are actually making the the decision to play an Ogyrn of below average intelligence. Which for the already very stupid Ogyrns makes them even closer to an animal or, if you don't put ANY points into intelligence into a stupid animal.

This is an active decision on your part to play this character. There's nothing stopping you from putting a few points into intelligence.

Now the standard Ogryn might have too much intelligence or the developers assumed that the standard Ogryn bought one level of intelligence with starting xp (not sure if an Ogryn has enough for that though).

If you go back to the first few pages of this thread you'll see a discussion around the BONE Implant for Ogryns which is an implant that certain Ogryns get to act as squadleaders for a troop of Ogryns. This imlpant increases their intelligence so far that they can speak somewhat reasonably and understand and relay commands that they are given.

Once again the average Ogryn would have an int of 16 (2d10+5 = 2*5.5+5 = 16) which is more or less in line with that they are supposed to be like. More intelligent than an animal, but not by a lot.

so is it canon that the average ogryn is as intelligent as a terror cat, and every infantry ogryn is dumber then an animal?

BONE augmentation is only for the most intelligent of ogryns, so maybe after int 25 ? buying 2 advances in intelligence cost an ogryn 2000exp.

What exactly would a BONE augmentation do? Int+5?

Musclewizard said:

well it's not a decision on my part if I want to play a living organism, that can actually move and pick up stuff, maybe talk, not soil itself, understand language. With 2 int you can't do any of that. The lowest int score in the book is 10. that's servitor, squig level intelligence. by rolling a 2, 3, 4 or 5 you are lower or equal than that. 6 to 10 puts you in animal level, so still no language, coherent thought, following of plans or whatever, after 11 you can start talking and understanding the spoken word a bit and only with a rolled 17 in int you are at the level of the dumbest human possible. if you are in a line infantry or siege infantry regiment you can add 3 to those rolls.

so unless you roll 11 or higher you are absolutley unplayable. 11 to 16 borderline unplayable and 17+ ok. That can't be right? The system with a base stat of 20 can't support a 15 point penalty. even the rattling getts only a 10 point penalty.

vogue69 said:

I guess now we are running into a definition of what the Intelligence attribute actually represent. You are saying that having an intelligence of 6 to 10 means not being able to follow plans, not having coherent thoughts and no language but I'll say that all of this is based on wrong assumptions.

Being able to speak a language is based soley on having the skill Speak Language which Ogryns do and as long as you have at least 1 point of intelligence you are able to use that skill.
Furthermore nothing says that an intelligence of 10 or less means no coherent thought. I'd say having fewer points in intelligence represent a character relying more on instinct than on careful planning or learned knowledge. For example a servitor would not "think" about his actions, instead he acts according to his algorithmic programming, if this then this.
It's similar with the Terrorcat. It's usually following it's instinct but it is also capable of clever tactics and using things it has learned in thte past (such as what makes for good eating) since it has a certain amount of intelligence.

Now you are right in saying that it is a problem if you roll low on intelligence (even including the reroll) since the Ogryn this creates will be extremly simple compared to other characters and even other lifeforms such as predatory animals.
Saying that an intelligence of 11 to 16 is borderline unplayable however is simply false.
Sure a character with such an intelligence would rarely think for himself or think about the consequences of his actions for anyone but himself but even a common animal, be it a beast of burden or a pet is aware of the relationship between things. Fire hot, bullets ouch, guy with large hat scary, greenskins bad.

At the end of the day all the mechanics say about a low intelligence value is this:

• You are bad at intelligence based skills.
• If your intelligence drops to 0 you fall into a dreamless coma.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I completly agree