How did Regiment Creation go? Did you choose a pre-made Regiment, or did you make your own? In Regiment Creation, are there certain options you would choose every time? Are there certain options you would never choose?

Overall, we really like the Regiment Creation system. It not only gives the characters all a common base and background, it also helps to shape the kind of game you want to play. A Line Infantry regiment will be a very different experience than an Armored regiment for instance.

We prefer to make our own regiments, because it lets us bring our own color to the 40k universe which is fun. As a GM, I enjoy "world-building" and this is a chance to create the players' homeworld, even if we never see it. That said, I would like to see a pre-made Schola Progenium Storm Trooper regiment. The background for the Storm Trooper speciality says there is only one of these (I think maybe two, one Recon and on Drop Troops) which all Storm Troopers are seconded from. It would be handy to have this.

I didn't find any options we would always take, though for my group since they are new the setting, I tend to lean toward Imperial World as a generic homeworld.

Generally, the only options I think I would never take are Armored regiment and Hunter-Killer regiment, both because we favor infantry over armor as a roleplaying experience. Die Hards and Iron Discipline seem a little weak, only granting a single aptitude. I'm still not sure how beneficial that really is. Fieldcraft, as I have said elsewhere, is confusing… it doesn't grant the Fieldcraft aptitude, but does grant a "Fieldcraft" trait which is a different thing entirely. My players got very confused and even after pointing this out several fimes, still kept thinking they had the Fieldcraft aptitude during character creation. Perhaps this Doctrine could be renamed Scouts or better yet, actually grant the Fieldcraft aptitude?

Standard Regimental Kit is largely ok, though one thing I noticed and didn't like is that while I can upgrade a unit's standard weapon, I can't upgrade its standard armor. The reason it came up actually is another issue, Light Infantry get's "flak jacket" as standard kit but there is no "flak jacket" in the Armory chapter.

Which Specialities did your group choose? Are there certain Specialities your players gravitate toward or avoid? Once your starting group has been assembled, do any specific Specialities feel too powerful to begin with? Too weak?

First round, my players made a Medic, a Sergeant, a Weapon Specialist and a Heavy Gunner.

The Medic and Weapon Specialist both went together very smoothly, no problems.

Heavy Gunner "needs some tweaking" according to the player writing them up. She questioned why they didn't get Finesse, in order to make Ballisitic Skill an easy characteristic advance or Strength, since they're lugging around this huge gun. The whole business with not getting the talents to use all your standard kit options was also mentioned. We think they should get weapon training for their regiments prefered heavy weapon.

The player making the Sergeant threw up her hands in frustration and declared it totally broken and impossible. She couldn't take the recommended skills or talents because she didn't have the right aptitudes for them. She pointed out that Combat Formation, which she wanted, was the only Talent which didn't have a Characteristic for one of it's Aptitudes, pricing it out of reach. Iron Discipline, as discussed on another thread, is useless. She was simply unable to create a good sergeant using the rules.

Which brings us to Comrades. My players ignored them when buying advances and it wasn't until I have them a "free" 300 exp to be used only for buying Comrade talents that they even considered them. I did this to make them look at the Comrades at all. My players would much rather develop their own characters than spend points on a minion with minimal abilities. We really think the Comrade rules need to be revamped.

All my players chose Guardsman specialites for their frist attempt, feeling that the Support Specialities "needed to be from another Regiment, didn't they?" We wondered how "mixed Regiment" groups would work. No one wanted to play an Operator, but my group is more interested in footfloggers than tankers so that makes sense. We're going to sit down later this week and make some Support Specialists, just to try them out.

I think most of these things are fair points, but the complain about Combat Formation makes me wonder. Combat Formation is Tier 1 with Leadership and Fieldcraft as Aptitudes. For a Sergeant this means One Aptitude, so a cost of 400xp. Is this really too much? Still, the Sergeant has a couple advances on his "Recommended Advances" list that he has indeed no Aptitudes for (namely, Navigate [surface] and SL [Tactica Imperialis]). That seems supremely silly.

Finesse on Heavy Gunners would seem somewhat weird to me, but they should definitely have Strength, I concur.

Saibot said:

Well, Finesse couples with Ballistic Skill to make it a cheap advance, and they are Heavy Gunners , so they should be good a Ballistic Skill. At least, that was my players arguement.

I agree the Sergeant is really strange. The Weapon Spec. gets Common Lore (Guard and War), the Sergeant, basicaly the highest ranking guard you can make, doesn't? He only has access to what 2 skills? but the Weapon spec. gets 4 at creation? The Sergeant is broken in a lot of ways I think.

I agree with most of the points in this thread, some of the specializations (Sergeant in primis) need some heavy revising.

TCBC Freak said:

In regards to the bit I emphasised, that assumes that the Sergeant is actually the sergeant. As with many of the careers in the 40k RPG, just because a career/rank is named something doesn't automatically mean that they have that title. Sergeants are the type to give orders, but they don't have to be the squad leader, or the highest ranking guardsman.

I agree, though, that Sergeants could do with Common Lore (Guard and War) too though.

MILLANDSON said:

Rename it to "Leader" then. Or something else. Because without it being explicit, I can guarantee you any group I've ever played in would treat it AS the Sergeant.

Regiment creation:

I tested the creation of 2 regiments, dusk Death world regiment (light infantry, Fieldcraft, maverick) & a malfi hive regiment (drop troops, die hard, choleric).

It was fun but I had 1 point left over for both regiments.

The death world regiment had agility as an aptiude, the hive world had toughness.

Then I rolled a sergeant, heavy gunner, medic, weapon specialist, commissioner and cleric and compared them.

I found that the 'death world ' Sergeant was very weak and everything useful was really expensive. For example, as Leadership is not linked to a characteristic, he can only advance in toughness, but does not even have BS or finesse. A sergeant who cannot shoot is weird. By contrast, the Hive drop troop sergeant could take BS as a replacement for toughness, making him considerably more useful.

The death world heavy gunner had easy access to toughness, but not strength, which I found strange as Ideally they would be standing way back and heavy weaponry is heavy. Also, i think Bulging biceps would make a lot of sense but is pretty expensive to acquire. So, a deathworld heavy gunner would be better off with a heavy flamer i think. By contrast, the hive world heavy gunner could replace toughness with str and have much easier access to the important advances.

I did not have as big a problem with the other characters

I guess the problem here is that the design of the regiment can have a big impact on the sergeants and heavy gunners .

For the death world light infantry, I would expect awareness and stealth to be a natural fit, but both are rather expensive as rank 1 advances. Also sound con was really expensive for them, but the + 2 starting wounds helped a lot.

The hive world drop troops have better armour, but are much weaker (-1 wound) and have difficulty acessing agility skllls, i.e dodge. Also, a lot of the hive world traits are negative (your probably not running thorough crowds and outside a hive a lot).

Final thing, the cost for single & zero apptitude characteristics/skills is really steep so players are very limited in their choice of progression. I guess this is intended (but not a lot of fun).

Dulahan said:

+1

If they're not really Sergeants but Officers (NCO or commissioned) than it needs to be renamed and the background rewritten. I get that you can use it as something else, but operating under the assumption that everyone will recognize that isn't wise.

Regardless, we are agreed that Common Lore (Guard and War) ought to be no brainers for the specialty, in matter what you call it.

breez said:

+1

I agree with the comment that it's not a lot of fun… and since this is a game with the objective of having run, having "not a lot of fun" is not a good thing for the rules to intend. I would like to at least see single aptitude characteristics and skills reduced. I'd suggest 200/400/600/800 for skills and 250/500/750/1000 for characteristics. I think costs for zero aptitude skills are OK, but I'd like to see zero aptitude characteristics as 500/750/1000/1250 (if only to mirror the DH and RT cost schemes)

When my group was selecting additional gear, it was very difficult to pass up on Best Quality armour and micro beads.Chronos are also immensely useful, still fairly expensive. Finally, the 3 point cost of the Munitorium Manuals (something the Fortress World regiment's "By the book" quality) was very hard to fit in with anything else useful. Especially given the actual description for them.

Adding mono to the knife costing more than buying a chainsword seemed a bit strange. Adding a bayonet lug and a mono knife just didn't seem cheap in any way possible (its less relevant since knives are no longer primitive), whereas everyone could get a chainsowrd for less cost in points.

Group wise, we had quite a few people wanting to play specialist classes (commissar, priest, storm trooper, psyker), but this changed as some of the players got a better sense of the type of squad Only War was geared for. Eventually, we had a Sergeant, Commissar, Medic, and Psyker. At this point, it still felt there was too much role overlap between Sergeant and Commissar (and the Commissar's lack of any comrade made a sergeant's sweeping orders less useful), that the sergeant rolled a weapon specialist instead. At this point all players have been happy.

Still, sad to see that Sergeant and Commissar step on each others toes too much in that fashion.

It was hard for us to choose a doctrine that didn't include an aptitude. We immediately ruled out any doctrine that didn't have one if there was an opposing option with an aptitude. Iron Discpline was eventually chosen as Willpower aptitude had the most overlap between the currently taken specializations

We ended up selecting the augmetics doctrine as we had run out of points by then. Overall, it still felt useful though.

In the end it was

-Fortress world (players liked its base attributes, skills, background, talents, etc.)
-Fixed CO (mainly due to the "by the book" aspect of the homeworld. Also, Command is useful, and its a cheap choice)
-Mechanised Infantry (A toss up between Drop, Line, and Mechanised. It was decided we all would rather have a vehicle to use for transport than foot slogging or dropping behind enemy lines, also, a full suit of guard flak was almost required by us, we ignored most other choices. Also, we didn't want to have too heavy a vehicle influence (we intend to use the chimera mostly for transportation))
-Iron Discipline (cheap aptitude doctrine. Willpower had a high overlap, and is still useful lower the cost of an otherwise unatainable advance for that characteristic)
-Augmetics (all we had points left over for, and we felt we didn't really need/want drugs, or explosives; also, with the way crit effects are with righteous fury, always helps to have easier access to replacement parts)

Overall, we enjoyed the collabarative process of creating the regiment. We even came up with slogans, history of previous battles, a banner, fleshed out the home world, etc.

On one hand, I'll admit I don't quite like that all players have the exact same cookie cutter package, but at the same time the collaboration is fun. I would seriously reccommend wording it such that an individual player can actually make any decision point from regiment selection for their own character. E.g. when selecting homeworld, player A can choose to take +3 TB +3 Will, and player B can take +3 BS/+3 TB. This way everyone ends up with their own set of bonuses, while still claiming the same regiment/homeworld.

LuciusT said:

Don't worry, I agree - it's been the same since Dark Heresy, when people used to argue that getting to the Magos rank in Tech-Priests automatically made you a Magos. It's one of the reasons why, for RT and DW, they changed it to Rank 1, 2, 3, etc instead.

Something I noticed as someone who is playing a Sergeant in a game: The problem is that an actual NCO in an actual army should be able to do a bit of everything (except in-depth medical care and tech stuff). He is the leader of a squad and NCO for a reason, but in OW the actual role of the "Sergeant" Specialty in the game is very limited (basically: melee, not dying, buff-machine, and the melee is not that good either, compared to other melee specialties). The Sergeant as written cannot really do the things you would expect a sergeant to be able to do. This makes sense from a mechanical perspective, but in-game it is very sad when the Sergeant has to ask his grunts to read a map for him or his medic to come up with a good idea how to fortify this piece of forest below their feet. It might also just be subjective perception, but it seemed to me like other Specialties had a greater selection of cheap advances relating to their specialty.

I do not think this problem would go away if you just renamed the specialty to "Leader". In fact, this would require an even stronger re-working of his Aptitudes, in my opinion.

I worked up a Ministorum Priest for our regiment. As a social preacher, he worked OK but I would have had a hard time if I wanted to take a more militant, "let's go kill the heretic ourselves" angle with him. A scholarly angle looks like it would be flat out impossible.

I'm starting to think maybe we need some options among the starting Aptitudes… like for the preacher, either Social or Defense or Knowledge, Strength or Intelligence…

Also, I've said it before but it bears repeating… not all Ministorum Priests are Redemptionists. I know FFG seems to love the Red Redemption but some of us want to play Imperial Priests who aren't pryomanics. The Codex Imperial Guard gives Priests an option for Shotguns. So, how about Weapon Training (Flame or SP) and Starting Gear of Flamer or Shotgun.

Well the topic seems like the right place, so I will also post the impression of my player group.

How did Regiment Creation go? Did you choose a pre-made Regiment, or did you make your own? In Regiment Creation, are there certain options you would choose every time? Are there certain options you would never choose?

Well my player group of course made their own regiment even so some wanted to play one of the premade regiments. In the end they chose to create their own because it was more fun to do and contributed to a more personal regiment. Well, but because they mostly wanted to create the regiment according to flavour and not the best options, they only chose according to description of the options and the cost, so they would not excess the 12 points you ve got to create a regiment.
First we chose the type of the regiment and in the end, even so some wanted to play with some other options, it came to Imperial World, because of the low costs and the blank slate which would allow them to have a wide variation of background options (even the Commissar and the Storm Trooper wouldn’t be too out of place), a Maverick commanding officer, which was wanted by everyone but one person who just wanted to take a commanding officer with a cost of one point for more options when selecting doctrines, Mechanized Infantry, because having only one tank was a bit weird with eight players and quite a few players feared that too much would revolve around the tank and not the soldiers, also the majority didn’t want to play a normal frontline soldier so mechanized infantry was a good compromiss and allowed for quick transportation.
Well, the doctrines were a little bit harder to choose because of the lots of good options. At least Die-Hards was quickly established, because together with Maverick it was the core concept of the regiment, the second choice was Demolitions in the end and established the miner origin of the regiment. Choices like Sharpshooter for our main combat players or Augmetics had been considered too, though.
Well, my players hadn't known the advantages/disadvantages you get with each choice before they took them, but they created a fun regiment which most of them really liked. So that would be a success, but they cannot comment on the other options. The only thing that established some friction was the fact that everybody got the same things, which was better for only some of the players and not all. The rest wanted perhaps a little bit more options to personalize their character stats, independently from the regiment.
As the gamemaster, I can at least answer the question about how I view the different options. The home worlds seem okay, with a little preferableness for Imperial Worlds because of the low cost and freedom in the background. Most of the three point-options are okay for three points I think, even if they limit the other options.
The commanding officers personalities are great I think, but the costs are a little bit off. In my perspective, this choice should be a little bit more about flavour and not about cost, so maybe same cost for every personality or some other changes? And I do not know if a Talent is really more worth than two lore skills or one other skill. Well, at least I had the feeling that you should choose a one point cost-personality for more options at the end.
Well, the regiment types are fine and cover at lot of options. The only issue I see and some players mentioned are the regiment types with vehicles other than a Chimera, because most vehicles don't support a group of eight people, and only tagging along seemed rather lackluster for the rest, especially with only one tank or Sentinel, which would be rather slow waiting for the others or faster and alone most of the time.
Well, now the trainings and equipment doctrines. Lots of nice options, but I think some are a bit off. Fieldcraft has already been mentioned, granting the Agility aptitude, which seems a bit unintuitive. I also think Demolitions and Augmetics are a bit off. Both offer the same benefit in two different areas, but Demolitions costs 3 and Augmetics only 2 points. I think Augmetics is even better while Demolitions is only useful in special circumstances and the special tank ammunition is only useable by armoured regiments. Another strange option is Warrior Weapons. I find it really cool to make regiments with outdated firearms or primitive weapons, but it has a drawback and I believe Hardened Fighters is better with only a cost of 2. So Warrior Weapons should be a bit cheaper I think.
Well and lots of regiments, especially those from three point homeworlds suffer from the one-point-left-syndrome, which is not breaking anything, but an option for the one point would still be nice.

Which Specialities did your group choose? Are there certain Specialities your players gravitate toward or avoid? Once your starting group has been assembled, do any specific Specialities feel too powerful to begin with? Too weak?

Well for this test my group consisted of eight players so there were quite many specialites that had been chosen. In the end we got a medic, an operator, a heavy gunner, a sergeant, a weapon specialist, a sanctioned psyker, a storm trooper and a commissar. Well, most players wanted to play the “normal ones” who were not support specialists, except the storm trooper option which seemed to be really popular. It seems Techpriest was not really an option, because you can play one in every 40k-system, Ogryn hadn't caught anyones interest and one player wanted to play a ratling but his BS roll was too low so he chose something else. During the creation process my players mentioned some issues:
They wondered why the heavy gunner didn’t get to choose which weapon training he started with so he could learn to wield the right one from the start. They suggested Heavy Gunner should receive Weapon Training (Choose one) instead of Weapon Training (Launcher), so that you could wield the heavy bolter or the heavy stubber from the start without spending xp. Also the Heavy Gunner player and another one possibly interested in playing one wondered why this specialization didn't grant Strength or Finesse aptitudes; most of the players think one of them would be apropriate, one mentioned Fellowship seemed out of play for the Heavy Gunner. Well, the rest seemed content with their choices, only the Heavy Gunner wondered about the speciality as mentioned above and one of the players swtiched to Psyker for those reasons. Well, and the sergeant wondered why he'd got no Social aptitude, but it didn’t seem to bother him much. Well, we will see in the future if someone turns out too strong or too weak, but this will take some time unfortunately.
More to come if more comes up in the future.

KommissarK said:

I've been thinking about this… I think it's Gaunt's fault. Dan Abbnet has admitted that the whole Colonel/Commissar business was a screwup on his part. Gaunt is more an Imperial Guard officer than he is a Commissar. Commissars aren't meant to be command officers. They are political and morale officers, heroic examples of the Imperial ideals and objects of terror to those who don't toe the line. They should really be closer to Minsitorum Priests than Sergeants in their role in the squad.

On the subject of Techpriest Enginseers… I think it's odd that they start with Weapon Training (power) but don't start with a power weapon. I think it is also odd they they don't start with at least carapace armor, when the description on page 39 says: "Enginseers wade into battle clad in thick armour." Perhaps that bit of color text needs to be edited?