So I would like to set up a titanic set-piece battle where a kill squad take on one of the greater daemons from Mark of Xenos. Those are double-hard bastards though, and I'm not sure what Rank or XP level the marines should be at if I'm not looking for just an instant TPK. So! Who has gone up against one (or more!) of the Greater Daemons with a squad of marines? What was it like? What was the scenario, and what were the circumstances of the encounter? How did it play out, and what would you pass along as tips involving this sort of battle? Or maybe you ran an encounter like this?

When the stats get as high as they do here, it's hard to just eyeball it - and I'm a stickler for good encounter-design, too, so I'm looking for any insights that we can share.

Played against a Keeper of Secrets once.

GM had sent us into this network of underground caverns. A band of Emperor's Children had set up some sort of daemonic shrine/structure, and we had been given a set of strange devices which we didn't know how they worked, only that we needed to put one at each corner of the structure. We fought our way down there, past loads of Noise Marines, and eventually found the structure. We got the devices in place, and that set up a warp-field around the building, but not before the Emperor's Children managed to bring in some Daemonettes and a Keeper of Secrets. The devices also acted as beacons, and a small squad of Grey Knights suddenly appeared to help us out.

Well… that turned into a cavalcade of fail, as the Grey Knights wiffed their attacks almost every turn, and did nothing. Eventually it came down to my Sword Brother and all his anti-Daemonic abilities to bring down the KoS, whilst the rest of the Kill Team dealt with the Daemonettes and remaining Noise Marines. I had about 3 GK's "helping" me in that combat, but most of them just acted as extra wounds their rolls were so bad.

BYE

Mr Adventurer said:

The problem with 'good encounter design' with such powerful individual creatures is that Deathwatch is very much a glass cannon game.

Generally, the combat will be over in the first few rounds. Either the marines will trigger the right Squad Mode abilities and get enough Righteous Fury and pushed psychic powers to do hellish damage early on, or the Daemon will unleash it's own might, incapacitating Marines with single blows quite easily.

It will either seem anticlimactic or as if you were trying to punish the players, with the exact same encounter.

Still, fighting such monsters is what the game should be about !

I'm not entirely sure on how best to model this. Perhaps lots of decent-powered enemy Chaos Marines trying to summon it, and who must be stopped? In a fight against a fair number of reasonably tough enemies, it doesn't slide too much toward a single round combat.

I had my Kill-Team encounter a Keeper of Secrets in the bowels of a Space Hulk. Between the KoS's ungodly dodge save and my Kill-Team's collection of field saves, dodges, and parries, along with a decent dusting of whifftastic rolls, I think it took three rounds to even lay a finger on the thing. Then the Devastator landed a clean shot with his assault cannon, the Librarian channeled Smite, and everything lined up. In short, a Greater Daemon fight really depends on how you set it up. I guess the first question would be, what rank is your Kill-Team?

We were still learning the game mechanics and working out the rules when my party encountered a cave full of chaos marines trying to summon a deamon prince, nothing special but still fairly impossible for a rank 1 marine (80 some odd wounds and a really choice armour rating). As we moved on and the mechanics of the game such as the pary system became more fluid single combat is rather difficult, it almost requires a two on one or a multiple attack skill to allow you to overcome the pary or dodge feature. Also with the healing system and requirirng of fate points to heal treated but not healed wounds, if you have a rather drawn out conflict to have the marines fight thier way to the greater deamon I could see that there would definatly be a problem with wounds and possibly ammo if you are playing an ammo limit campaign. Needless to say, my crew managed to slay the chaos marines before they could summon the deamon prince.

I might recommend a rank greater than 3 with the options of escape routes or grand GM intervention (wonderful reserve drop of grey knights). Or, allow the players to use the un errata'ed weapons while the deamons have weapons errata'ed down, that would also preserve the more epic space marines of the movies feel. Then again none of my marines had access to a multi melta and maybe that would have been enough to take the deamon prince out.

Best case scenario, have prepared an exit or aid to avoid a total party kill as that always puts a sour taste in the mouths of the players.

H.B.M.C. said:

Ha! Nothing beats the will of the dice, even with the best intentions. You say you killed lots of Noise Marines - you must have been fairly high Rank, then?

Gaire said:

Hmm, another Keeper of Secrets huh. As I recall from Second Edition, they were kind of the "weakest" Greater Daemon - is this also true, or is this just a holdover perception from the wargame? What Rank were your Kill-Team?

As I allude in my original post, I won't put this into the game at a Rank that I don't think it'll make a good challenge for the Marines, so it can wait until then.

My Kill-Team was either high Rank 5 or low Rank 6, I can't quite remember which. The Keeper of Secrets isn't as tough as the Great Unclean One or as melee super-strong as the Bloodthirster, and the Lord of Change has his massive array of psychic powers. In a stand-up fight, yeah, the Keeper will go down before any of the others. But a Greater Daemon is still a Greater Daemon.

Mr Adventurer said:

The end of a "great crusade" rogue trader/deathwatch campaign involved our party versus an invisible greater daemon of Tzeentch. Not sure exactly what it was, since it was customised from the Daemon Hunter rulebook. It also brought along two waves of about a dozen Thousand Sons rubric marines each. The space marine half of the party was roughly rank 5-6 and had recently gained enough reknown to pull out relics. Also, they had started with killmarine for free. 4-5 players present for the last session.

The rogue trader half were incredibly rich (the RT had paired thunderhammers and at least four fields to switch between) and past their usual advance scheme and had been given an Ascension class to start advancing in. The SM equivalent was another advanced specialty for free (watch captain for my marine).

Both had about a thousand additional xp at the very beginning of the campaign to spend in a Dark Heresy class to round out a character. Scum for my Alpga Legion tactical marine. "Alpharius" of course, later nominally known as "Azor".

Azor/Alpharius entered that last fight armed with the Skapulan Bolter loaded with stalker bolt rounds, a camo cloak and an iron halo amongst other bits of gear. Sniped the daemon who couldn't figure out his location for most of the fight, even when he switched to killing rubric marines briefly.

The rogue trader charged into melee with the daemon straight away, which might have gone better considering the rest of the party were ranged specialists…

We beat the daemon, even if the RT got mangled and ploughed through fate points. No deaths on the party side, but a rough fight.