What do you think about the BC/OW RF compared to the DH version? I'm a bit mixed because it removes those awesome moments when your lowly character kills a Lictor in one hit through sheer luck.

1d5 temporary crit is less silly, but a lot less impressive.

I much prefer the new Sytem (though I've been using it since some time now). Since there's a reduced chance of insta-gibing anything on a shot even mooks can have RFs leading to more usage of those delicious crit tables.

The new system is versatile, and perhaps more balanced, though it also reinforces any power issues some weapons can have: you can no longer say an autopistol could kill a space marine like in the tabletop, for example, because the 10% chance of massive damage explosion is no longer there.

I gotta say though, losing the exploding dice makes it a lot less fun, especially as the low crit results tend not to matter quite as much for the players dealing them, than when rolled AGAINST the players. That guardsman probably lost his head to that blast anyhow, ya know?

You may have missed the part where a critical hit will always deal 1 wound, even if the dealt damage would not normally overcome the targets Toughness and Armour.

Thus massed fire with autopistols will cause wounds to amass, and so now no one is immune to small-arms fire any more. Whether the odds have increased or decreased I am not so sure about

I did not miss that. Without a Horde-Rules damage boost, that's akin to nothing against hard targets.

Let's take a normal, starting Black Crusade marine, that started with minimum wounds: 16. Let's further decide that he's some mook that'll automatically die at 0, instead of going into the criticals chart for another several hits before he actually goes down. AP8, TB8

Now let's assume he's for whatever reason not annihilating your squad while you attempt this, and so all four of you with comrade support get to fire their autoguns at him every single turn, rather than running out of squadmates sometime before that. Your Autogun can deal potentially up to 10 hits, though that requires rolling 90% under what you needed. Special ammo won't be enough to change the damage here. Ten percent of hits will cause Righteous Fury or Zealous Hatred, dealing a single wound. So we need 160 hits to take him down.

You could potentially, with your three buddies, finish him off with 4 rounds of sustained fire in what can only be described as ideal laboratory conditions.

Of course, No one's getting that many hits in every single round, if they even can: You're more likely to average four on full-auto, and then the guy could dodge [he IS better at that than a guard]. This is no mook, he may not have rolled just a 1 on his starting wounds, and he can survive a little into criticals though he'll be more and more debilitated during that time at least. Also he's shooting back with something that on average will drop you cleanly into criticals in two hits if it were the weaker human version. Can all of you survive about sixteen rounds, including one where you're doing nothing but reloading? Did you have that spare magazine handy? Are you so lucky that he doesn't have a friend?

You need a horde to actually be a threat with such a weapon against those guys. But that's the bonus damage of horde rules, not something a character can use to ensure his own weapon can do the job. The 1 wound is a consolation prize for those whose squad-members have weapons that can actually take him down, not a method by which you could actually deal with a target beyond your weapon's capabilities in any reasonable fashion.

Kiton said:

Thats why autoguns tend to suck and lasguns (with variable settings) are standard in the guard, hehe. (with a lot of luck and a lasgun you can do more impressive hits when you right fury through spacemarine armour).

Also, take into account that most IG soldiers have frag grenades as standard gear, and some of them have also krak grenades.

Finally, no squad should go to the front without at least a special/heavy weapon!

Overload on a Lasgun will net you 1d10+5E Pen 1. This leaves us at a max of 15 damage, minus 15 [TB8 + AP7] with a standard marine's toughness and power-armor. Thus, the Lasgun is in the exact same territory.

Technically the Autogun's higher RoF is a better choice as a result, but in practice they're both exhausting their charge or ammunition on the target.

Comparatively, a Hot-Shot, though it has very little ammunition [3 or 3.2 shots per kilogram for the 10/25 backpacks respectively vs 60 shots for 450 grams] or range [seriously, what the dark gods happened here? And this is supposed to be the upgrade replacing hellguns?], will be dealing 5~14 against just 9 combined toughness and armor, allowing you to deal 1 wound on a 6, up to 5 wounds on Righteous Fury. This is still not very good at all, but given a whole squad using them, you should be able to take the target down in a handful of volleys.

Frag Grenades can deal 2d10X with no penetration. They can be dodged [blast is 3; successful dodge does it for most guardsmen too], but are capable of causing damage if the result on the dice is 17 or higher. A Krak Grenade can certainly cause damage if the dice turn up a 7 or higher, though they do have to hit directly. Range could be an issue but grenade launchers are a possibility.

Kiton said:

On my book overloading a lasgun grants you +2 Damage +2 Penetration

Obviously OW rules do not make sense if compared with the tabletop game, but there's a reason for that. OW demands the players more strategy and lateral thinking ("try to make the spacemarine fall off the cliff" kind of stuff). Also, chaos space marines don't appear in the corebook for a reason! If I am not mistaken, its on the first Gaunt Ghost's book that a single chaos space marine appears and they start firing absolutelly everything on him (longlas, heavy weapon, bolter, overloaded lasguns, etc.).

In our first OW game I has a GM was struck by reality when a single ork outmatched my close combat specialist ( True Grit , I'm thinking about you). Since then, orks have been a minor threat because players have developed several strategies (sneaky ones) to defeat them. I love how Only War shows you how weak you are and makes you think a little!

my bad, was off by 1 pen. Still leaves a max of 1 wound, unfortunately, still requiring a 10. Not a good deal for either by any stretch of the imagination, especially given overload's unreliability.

Actually, a Long Las is a fine choice against Astartes, Spiky ones or Orks, if you can force him to expend his dodge against something else. Even on just Overcharge and an 'average' aimed hit, that 2d10+4 Pen 1 gets a mighty boost from Felling[4]. So long as you get 8 or more on the two dice, you're wounding that marine, and its even easier against the Ork if he's not wearing mega'armer. a good roll off triple dice could be chopping half or possibly even all of the thing's wounds despite the Power Armor.

Can't say I'm surprised about the close combat specialist though. Even a normal Boy is as strong as a human that focused on his strength, tougher than a stormtrooper, and rather brutal on the charge. They're luckily not particularly accurate up close [and truly atrocious from afar] and don't have the armor to complement their toughness. You can certainly outmaneuver or outsmart them, but its still something that can tear your arms right out if you're not careful. I've seen RT Freebooters tear apart a Dreadnought, and the prospect of a Nob getting in melee with an OW squad is about as reassuring as getting run over by a tank. A big tank. A big green tank.

Kiton said:

Just a small not to this: it is very hard to properly outmanauver an Ork in a fight. Orks have good Strength, average Agility and the Athletics Skill, so they can jump/leap/climb/swim rather well. And another thing what was quite surprising for me: Orks now have Unnatural Toughness (2) and not UT (4). This is still 0 Damage on average with a lasgun, but hey, at least you can kill an Ork Boy on a damage roll of 8+ with overcharge mode (and f* you True Grit ;D)!

Kiton said:

The problem with your comparison of different systems is just that -they are different systems.

The characters are constructed differently, spend xp differently, their combat actions have subtle differences and the equipment available to them is A) different and b) where there is overlap the stats often change.

Then there is the AMOUNT of xp spent on a starting character…

Dark Heresy starts you off at 400xp.

Rogue Trade starts you at 5,000xp.

Deathwatch at 13,000xp.

Black Crusade at 7,000xp iirc.

Only War at 300xp or 600xp dependant on class.

So yeah, comparing Only War characters and their STARTING gear to high powered combat characters from a different game line that start with over 10x as much XP factored into their build is both ludicrous and completely unfair.

The incompatibilities Illustrate the need for FFG to perhaps set things up with a living rulebook [far as I know, barring possibly old battletech, it would be the only sci-fi system with one] to keep things updated.

There's a constant crossover of equipment and adversaries by groups and GMs, though a party will generally be built all within one system. Their XP values aside, it certainly won't change the fact that, as I tried to get across in my example, its very unlikely the stats will be all that different. And you know what? That's overall a good thing. The rules have greatly improved, have gotten quite refined, and though they certainly aren't ideal everywhere they deserve a unifying 'reprint' to bring the systems closer together by this point. It also means we can estimate what folks'll be dealing with a little better.

A Chaos marine will certainly have at least 40% agility, TB8 and be wearing Power Armor. Its highly unlikely his Legion Bolter will have dropped in power or his wounds be below my rather conservative 16 either. In fact, the NPCs are usually roughly equivalent to a character that's purchased a single advance in four or five characteristics but otherwise rolled quite average. The Chaos example above was running on very IG-Friendly, fatally optimistic numbers most likely.

Bloodletters for example have only changed in that their movement rate in OW has the modification from their Hulking size written in, rather than just the Agility Bonus typo'd in Black Crusade. NPC Guardsmen are the same in both games, Kabalites seem to have lost dark sight at first glance but are otherwise identical, and the same goes for all those weapons. Further examples will, with a strong majority, give similar results, but would require digging up through multiple books of each game since there's usually different examples [one book has mandrakes, the other grotesques… almost as if the designers knew we'd probably own both and don't want the same critter six times in a row]

Additionally, if you wish to compare starting XP values, you also have to compare the XP systems. Those 13000 in Deathwatch, when the difference is given to a Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader or Black Crusade character, cause the latters to catch up and surpass the marine's capabilities in most fields quite handily; and paying almost triple anybody else's costs, the difference will just continue growing. Rogue Trader had a similar problem with imported Dark Heresy characters of course.

Ideally, all of those would be unified under a single XP system, the costs and values recalculated as they've been obsolete for a while now, and from that, equivalencies listed out.

Oh. Also, you confused the "if importing into this system" 'total values' with the extra characters start with at creation. 600 or 300 is NOT the total value of those characters.

Kasatka said:

Only War characters are considered to be at 2000xp plus their starting xp making them roughly halfway between Dark Heresy characters and Rogue Trader characters.

Anyway, carry on.

So if you want to play IG super-commandoes on the level of starting Deathwatch characters, you 'only' need to add 11,000xp!

I'm sure such character won't be as durable as DWSMs, but they'll be FAR more versatile.

FWIW, I found that adding 6,000xp to a Black Crusade archetype (or 3,000xp to one of the advanced archetypes) was a pretty fun place to start.