Greetings. I have not played the game yet, and am going to be gamemastering the intro adventure for a small groupin the near future.

My question about True Grit is twofold.

Firstly, am I correct to understand that True Grit in Only War means that a character can apply twice his toughness bonus to resist critical damage?

*SPOILER ABOUT THE INTRO ADVENTURE IN ONLY WAR*

Secondly, for those of you that have played through the introductory adventure, how does this make the ork encounters feel? It seems to me that the advantage of True Grit makes orks very tough indeed. And in the adventure as printed there are a lot of orks to contend with. I am very curious as to the experiences you have had with the intro adventures, or orks in general using the rules in Only War.

I'm thinking about toning down the orks' toughness somehow, whether by changing True Grit or just dropping it from the ork talent list I'm not sure.

If you think its just right as written let me know. If you think it could benefit from some adjustment, whether to True Grit or just adjusting the orks, I'd like to hear what you think.

behrg said:

Spot on and working as intended. Characters with TG are immensely hard to finish off, though they take no longer in knock down wounds than anyone else - it just means that the killing blow needs to be delivered with a high amount of damage (think plasma/bolter/melta/chain/power).

I've had no trouble downing orks as a Sergeant - the chainsword is such a potent tool because of its Tearing trait, which greatly increases the chance of rieghteous fury triggering (which against low threat NPCs is an instakill anyway).

TRUE GRIT makes orks reduce Critical Damage they recieve by their TB (which I think is 6 for a Boy).

So everytime they recieve damage, you have tu substract TB as normal AND if that damage does Critical Damage (in case the Ork run out of wounds), you substract TB again from the Critical Damage recieved.

Bear in mind that you always recieve at least 1 point of Critical Damage with true grit, doesn't matter how high your TB is…

I think that orks are incredible adversaries as they are, but that makes them really interesting! The first encounter in the sample adventure will make your characters realize how tough they are. If your players are overwhelmed by the first wave of orks, make some guardsmen appear and save their asses, deus ex machina style.

Hopefully, your players will learn that they can't approach a combat straight forward, they have to make use of stealth, long range weapons, explosives, tanks or watever they can think of to get rid of orks.

Also bear in mind that Righteous Fury's "Critical Hit" isn't reduced by True Grit. As in RF description it says "Talents that modify Critical damage (Such as Crack shot and True Grit ) do not modify the critical effects generated by Righteous Fury." So pray the Emperor and all his Saints that he sends many dice rolls of 10 to your player characters. "Emperor Protects"

whoseyes said:

I'd actually suggest just letting them die. The next group of PCs can then be the squad sent in to replace them. It seems more IG to me than a deus ex rescue. Part of the feel of OW is that the body count can get quite high. Often that's going to mean dead Comrades, but sometimes it means PCs are going to get fed to the grinder too. I'd rather teach that lesson right from the start than to give players illusions of PC invulnerability.

HappyDaze said:

Only would play this card in a situation where players have, by their own making, cornered themselfs. Like charging fully defended enemy outpost and still think that they have possibility to survive by burning fate point.

I'm little bit harsh GM about this kind of situation. They could burn fate point but what is it going to help them if they fall unconsious inside Chaos or Ork encampment.

Ritual Sacrifice or "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"

Thank you for the responses, brothers. I'll use the rules as written, and be careful to make suitably strong weapons obtainable by the players. Hopefully we'll have some tense close battles full of blood and guts and glory.

Part of my problem is unfamiliarity with the system coupled with having a group of players who are also unfamiliar with the system. I'll be winging and making rulings (as opposed to closely following the rules), and I'll be the only one in the group to know, as nobody else has a rulebook.

@HappyDaze: Love the sentiment. I may do just that and let them die. For me and my group of new players it will depend on how I read their enjoyment of the gameplay and atmosphere.

After playing a campaign against only orks, as droptroopers with more or less no hope of backup (including being shot down in the air, on route to objective, more than once) I can tell you this:

Fighting orks is all fun and games until the heavy weapons guy goes down.

More than once we have met just a few more than us, we are 5 players, so around 7-8 orks. They just never die. We all had hatred vs them before, now the players have it too

note that Fire is very effective though (until they run of in a random direction which happens to be you and your whole group is on fire).

I understand the sentiment that orks are tough as nails and don't go down easy but True Grit as written in Only War makes things a little bit ridiculous, imo. Guardsmen nail an ork a few times, gets it down to 1 wound, then they stab the **** thing about 5 times before it finally dies. I'm still playing the rule as written but honestly… an ork can soak 10 hits (TB 6 + Toughness 4, not including flak armor) anytime it's in crit range? That seems a bit extreme even if you always add 1 crit regardless.

Round 3 the ork is at -1

Round 4 the ork is at -2

Round 5 the ork is at -3, etc.

*sigh*

@Eradico It makes perfect sense. Orks are absurdly tough and only go down after being hit by hails of lasgun rounds, unless you get that luck shot while it's charging you screaming and you put one through its open mouth that blows out the back of its head too. That's why the game has righteous fury and also why the pcs are issued a chimera and heavy bolter.

You want to kill orks then lay into them with heavy weapons and flamers and lots and lots and lots of lasgun fire. Single shots just don't do the trick.

Droma said:

Nah… According to canon, Orks can survive decapacitation. So yeah, headshots are fairly useless. The brain is the least used organ for the Ork anyways .

User ripper guns isntead! They are dead killy (technically, you can one-shot Orks with it!)!

About npc : in the core book there is a good advice : if wound = 0 or Rightnous furry : Kill it

Critical table is just for boss or PC.

And about Crit table for ork bosses : dont use true grit on the table, only for damage… it s not fun to play all night long a fight :-)

If that were always true, than what would be the point of giving Orks True Grit?

It doesn't modify critical effects from Righteous Fury after all, only critical DAMAGE. Which you can't get if you die at 0 wounds.

Darth Smeg said:

I don't know how literally you want to take the word "minion," but the RF section (without looking at my book) says that it does not apply to minions.

And Olr Boyz are Troops.

Either leave them their True Grit or increase their number of Wounds, because orks going down after taking 12 Wounds at TB 6 is stupid.

BTW if you use Critical Effects only for "boss" characters, that makes a lot of the Talents in the book next to useless (like Street Fighter)..

bogi_khaosa said:

Well the book is as awlays a recommendation - if your players struggle killing orks by crit damage, you can opt not to use it on the hordes and reserve it for important Orks.

As for Talents being pointless, remember that enemies can have the same talents as players and so they will have an affect AGAINST the players!

Kasatka said:

Ouch, that's poor consolation for the players.

I like the idea of adding wounds to troops with True grit as that's the overall effect of it in the macro scale, perhaps TB/2 in extra wounds that particioned. So the wounds for an ork are listed as 12 (15) and street fighter (or other effects that add critical damage) are applied if you do 13 or more wounds.

Once again this is all assuming the players are using regular lasguns or something equivalent when most will be using a weapon that is a great deal more powerful on top of the extra accuracy and possibly damage provided by their comrades.

I know I stated this in my previous post but it makes complete sense for an orc to only go down after having taken a barrage of lasgun shots. If your players are struggling to kill the orcs then have some npc's possibly from another regiment recommend using different weapons, such as heavy weapons, bolters, flamers, plasma, or weapons with the felling property.

Even the sergeant who doesn't have ready access to awesome weapons can issue orders so that anyone who still has a comrade will have their damage increased by 5.

Any weapon that can on average do greater than 13 points of damage per attack will very quickly take out an orc even with true grit in place. This includes the long las, sniper rifle, rippergun, autocannon, heavy bolter, krak missiles, melta, and plasma weapons. Flamers also work well because of orks have an extremely hard time passing the test against the flame quality and will most likely run around burning after they are hit the first time.