Power gaming is crunching the numbers to min/Max your character. So asking for a comrade that negates your weaknesses is power gaming. While not all meta-gaming is power gaming it can be used to do so.

Of course your going to know who is more capable in you squad. But intentionly throwing the less capable in harms way is not realistic no matter how grimdark and if your doing that you should be making corruption test as you fall to chaos.

I spent six years in the infantry and there where less capable infantrymen in real life too. No fellow infantrymen would intentionly put that person at greater harm though because of it. When I was a squad leader I would have gladly stepped in the line of fire to protect my weakest man. Unless you've been to combat you wont understand that bond.

Now I'm not saying that playing that way is wrong. Its a roleplaying game and you should play however is fun for you.

Admittedly I'm probably taking it a little personal because of my life experiences and I apologize for that. This'll be my last post on the subject as this got way derailed.

DrNo172000 said:

I don't think that you can use your real life experiences on the Imperial Guard. Or at least if you do that then you are either glorifying the theme or you served in some sort of last-hell-hole-third-world milita where torching a random village (****** the women, mutilitating the men and conscripting the children) is just another boring day in the office. I've also served 5 years in the military, I had a tour in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo and Bosnia, but still it doesn't stop me to abuse my Comrade - because I know that the Imperial Guard is not a First World Army where the invididual trooper is the greatest and most valuable asset. It is the USMC from Hell, where people are the most expendable (and as such, they should be treated like that) and not the other way around.

OK I lied one more post LOL. Can you qoute a fluff source that supports your arguement that guardsmen loyal to the emperor would treat their comrades that way? If you can I'll retract my arguement. I know people who served in Vietnam which was a third world hell hole their even tighter than today's Marines. By the way don't know if you where a Marine but Semper Fi brother. Got plenty of respect for anyone who served no matter the MOS or branch. Out of curiosity though where you Marine Corps security forces sounds like it based on your deployments.

DrNo172000 said:

From the 5th edition Imperial Guard codex:

Countless billions of soldiers fight and die for the Imperium. They are the footsloggers, the dogfaces, the poor bloody infantry. Guardsmen are used for every conceivable action the Imperial Guard may undertake, from holding ground to forlorn charges against enemy positions.

…

…the primary strength of the infantry regiments remains their huge and expandable mass of manpower.

From the 6th edition BRB:

Despite the prodigious battle tanks and thunderous artillery of the Imperial Guard, it is most often the common soldier what win the battle. Rising up from trenches, amnning firing lines, or advancing in waves, the cruel truth about manpower in the Imperial Guard is that it is the cheapest currency in the Imperium.

…

The Imperial Guard can afford huge losses, expending the lives of their men more carelessly than it does ammunution.

So yeah, I don't even start with the "Roleplaying Killer Regiment" aka the Death Korps of Krieg, because I don't want to spam my post with quotes …

DrNo172000 said:

I'm a hungarian, not an american. I've served in the Hungarian Army and we have/had lots of peacekeeping/rebuilding missions all around the world. I was in Iraq (mostly guarding hungarian oil company assets) and Afghanistan (part of the rebuilding project) with Army missions, while Congo (guarding some sort of random airfield, it was really weird) and Bosnia (general peacekeeping) were UN missions.

AtoMaki said:

That doesn't show that indivdual guardsmen will act cruel to each other. Here's a qoute that seems to support the brothers in arms.

"Always, always lead from the front. Never expect a man under your comman to undertake an action you're not prepared to make yourself" ~ Commisar General Delane Oktar

and that's comming from a Commisar who are generally regarded as ruthless.

Just pouring dudes into the meat grinder doesn't mean a it's a "crue" act. General Grant from the American civil war used the numbers tactic, but he wasn't cruel to his indivdual men. I wanna to see a qoute where a indivdual guardsmen is actually using a comrade as a shield to save his own skin and isn't regarded as a terrosist.

There's in fact a qoute from the new Necron codex where a Sergeant tells his guardsmen that when faced with scarabs that they should run as fast as they can in hopes they can outrun there comrades and get away because the other guy got caught. It mentions he was executed for saying that. So it seems that such behavior is frowned upon.

Edit: I apologize for assuming you where American, that was pretty lame of me. Semper Fi to you anyway, still respect any military service men regardless of Country.

DrNo172000 said:

He was executed for telling his men to run, not for suggesting that those that run faster might live.

HappyDaze said:

States he was executed for cowardice if I remember (I left my Codex at my buddies). Grabbing your buddy and putting him in front of you is being a coward.

DrNo172000 said:

Guess what, people must be power gaming IRL all the time. Most occupational teams at evry place I've ever worked are assembled with min/max in mind. Not doing this is pretty stupid IRL, and pretty stupid in games too.

DrNo172000 said:

Actually this support the cruel guardsmen better. I mean, if their officers are cruel then why should the grunts act otherwise? Oh… And Oktar… The mentor of Gaunt (a commissar who doesn't shoot men)… Yeah, the Gaunt's Ghost is kinda' off-universe .

DrNo172000 said:

i can't give you such specific quote, but hey, we know the gneral mentality of the Imperial Guard, so why would a guardsman be any different? sacrificing people is the general way to win. If you are a general, then you will drown your enemy with the corpses of your men in order to win the battle. and on the battlefield, the gunner manning the lascannon will sacrifice his loader to save the weapon when he faces an enemy battle tank. So whats the difference? Why is the method of the general is justified, while the gunner is a "terrorist"? Later, the general goes down to his troops to brofist the survivors, but the gunner can also have a drink with the medic and tell him how he had to assist his loader to die a heroic death.

DrNo172000 said:

He was shot because what he said was cowardice. Running away is wrong. Throwing a guy to the scarabs and use some flamer love to torch the amassed buggers (what my party would do when they face a carpet of scarabs) is a lot different .

AtoMaki said:

To offer a counter-point, I suggest you look at the stereotypical image of World War I… with the generals sitting back, miles from the lines, drinking cognac and smoking cigars while calously sending hundreds of thousands of young men over the top to get slaughted by machine-gun fire, all of the sake of winning a few square feet of blood soaked earth. That is the image these quotes always conjure up for me. The guys in the trenches didn't treat their comrade lives like a they were worthless. They fought and died for themselves and for each other. It's the generals who spend their men lives like cheap currency.

Well key word is teams. No one individual is good at everything. Since comrades are part of your I'll agree with on that. But why not just make them fully fledged npcs as a house rule if your looking for that? Only thing I can't stand is stuff like stacking prestige classes in 3rd edition DnD to make yourself invincible. I like immersion and munchkin behavior bothers breaks it for me. Also there's really no stupid way to play a role playing game despite your personal opinion. Don't you agree a RPG should be played how you enjoy it? There's no right or wrong way to play.

LuciusT said:

Yeah, but the fighting environment makes a huge difference. In WW1, it was normal humans vs. normal humans. Nothing extraordinary. In 40k, even if you face humans, they are usually chaos-infected fanatics or super-desperate rebels. And facing humans is the best case scenario. How could you possibly retain your humanity here? How could you act accoridng to positive moral standards? The WW1 soldiers had an easy job to do this, but personally, I can't see the guardsmen doing the same…

AtoMaki said:

You ask some interesting questions. To the first, how cold you possibly retain your humanity, I would answer: you can't. I expect an average Imperial Guard veteran is, by any reasonable measure, simply insane. I intend to make extensive use of the Fear and Insanity rules when I get my Only War campaign going. As for acting according to positive moral standards, I think that depends on the moral standards being impressed upon the line guardsman… which do not need to be reflected by the moral standards of their command officiers. There is a practical military advanatge to training "support your squad mates" as a value. In fact, my admitted civilian understanding is that this is one of the big things they strive to drive home in modern military training. I can definately see the Imperial Guard preachers and commisars driving home, violently even, ideals of squad unity, espirt de corp and such in their troopers. After all, you're facing against insane heretics, unspeakable alien horrors and worst… all you have is your squad mates and the rightious cause to defend Humanity against these monsters.

Meanwhile, the command staff who almost all have enough Insanity Points to suffer the Delusion "Rightiousness" (page 307) - which I feel is standard for high ranking members of the Imperium- believe in doing anything including sacrificing the lives of millions for that rightous couse… and are hated by the rank and file troopers for it.

LuciusT said:

Doh, this sounds pretty cool !

Oh, and I think you brought up a very good point with the WW1 parallel. But hell, it is quite hard to actually compare the two, or to compare any IRL thing to something from the 40k as i don't think that any of us ever fought against a walking fungus killing machine .

LuciusT said:

That's a great way of seeing things. I think I'll go with something like that for most of my "normal" regiments.

AtoMaki said:

No, but I think charging headlong into the fire of weapons against which you have no realistic defense, watching your friends die by the thousands around you, all for the sake of a shell pocked, blood soaked plot of land unthinkably far from home which means nothing to you, simply because some distance, faceless authority figure demands you do so "for God and Country" is about as a close as modern human experience can get.

LuciusT said:

Yes, but it will be still a human thing. Both sides will possess roughly the same understanding of morality and values. Now, for a guardsmen, you should feel yourself lucky if your actual opponent even have a distant comprehension of the morality and values you have. It's not like a guardsman can just have christmas with the Iron Warrior CSM in the opposite trench. IfyouknowwhatImean .

AtoMaki said:

Yes but that's why the Imperium has such a xenophobic attitude to keep humans away from filthy xeno immorality. In fact I would imagine that facing down enemies that where not human in nature would make you bond even closer to the fellow guardsmen around you, this fits in with the Imperium's belief that humans are in all ways superior to xenos and the chaos corrupted.

Edit: People did lose their humanity at times even in WW1 but it was always directed at the enemy, not your brother on your left and right. And I think GW must have drawn some inspiration from WW1 I mean side sponsons on a tank!

No offense to AtoMaki, but I'd consider that kind of behavior to be what some people call "Grim Derp". Something pointlessly or absurdly grrimdark for the sake of grimdark. I know some brutal GMs who would actually use that tactic against you IC--the Commissar suspects your party since all the new people keep dying far above the average casualty rate in the local area.

I do get Comrades are meant to be red-shrits, but I'd rather have pseudo-NPCs than talking buffs to your statlines. Say, they attack if you have at least [X] DoS, and if it's an automatic attack, merely add damage/pen up to the RoF, where the attack does an average amount of damatge by default.

No offense to AtoMaki, but I'd consider that kind of behavior to be what some people call "Grim Derp". Something pointlessly or absurdly grrimdark for the sake of grimdark. I know some brutal GMs who would actually use that tactic against you IC--the Commissar suspects your party since all the new people keep dying far above the average casualty rate in the local area.

I do get Comrades are meant to be red-shrits, but I'd rather have pseudo-NPCs than talking buffs to your statlines. Say, they attack if you have at least [X] DoS, and if it's an automatic attack, merely add damage/pen up to the RoF, where the attack does an average amount of damatge by default.

Frankie said:

Welcome in the Warhammer 40k universe ! Where the shiny knights slays some young nuns and cover themselves with the girls' blood for no other reason just because it is grim dark… But seriously, this is a canon story!

AtoMaki said:

It's also one of those canon stories that most people I know agree to that it is grim derp at it's strongest.

Musclewizard said:

And the universe is full with these stories….

AtoMaki said:

There are also stories that are about hope and humanity. Depends on the author I suppose.

AtoMaki said:

Yeah, and I'm not alone in thinking it's also one of the most awful Grimderp stories. Matt Ward is a serious blight on 40k canon so I tend to ignore any fluff he writes (his rabid hate of SoB and love of Ultramarines isn't a well kept secret either). Grimderp is just bad, though. Grimdark for the sake of grimdark while keeping a straight face is just silly and forced. It doesn't make the setting more "cool" or interesting, just dumber.