Hi!

So after today's game session, our group had some brainstorming about the specializations of OW. We decided to do some revamping on this section as we've found it somewhat… confusing. Like, y'know, stuff what often pop up on this forum: the rather confusing Operator (everyone has a different view on this guy), the odd Sergeant (Mister Fluff Choice) the somewhat lackluster Medic (he is either compulsory or you can miss him completely), the Priest and the Storm Trooper. And of course the missing specializations (rifleman, scout).

So after some discussion, we came up with the following Guardsman Specializations (yes, we love the class selection of the Battlefield series):

ASSAULT - The missing 'rifleman' specialization. The backbone guy of every Squad.

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Strength, +5 Toughness, -3 Intelligence

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, Finesse, Strength, Offense, Toughness, Defense

Starting Skills: Athletics, Intimidate

Starting Talents: Iron Jaw, Takedown, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las, Solid Projectile, choose 3 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Good craftsmanship flak armor, M36 lasgun or bullpup lasgun or autogun or combat shotgun, laspistol or autopistol or stub automatic or stub revolver, knife, 2 frag grenades or photon flash grenades.

Wounds: 10+D5

RECON - Another missing class, the scout. Trades versatility for combat capability, so not really a frontline character.

Characteristic Bonus: -3 Toughness, +5 Agility, +3 Perception

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Finesse, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Fieldcraft, Social

Starting Skills: Awareness, Navigate (Surface), Stealth, Survival

Starting Talents: Heightened Senses (Sight or Hearing or Smell), Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile, choose 1 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Auspex/scanner, binoculars, red-dot laser sight or telescopic sight, silencer, lascarbine or long-las or sniper rifle or autogun or bow, knife, 2 stun grenades or blind grenades.

Wounds: 7+D5

MEDIC - Changed, but still the same. Now with increased durability and some extra equipment to boot.

Characteristic Bonus: -3 Ballistic Skill, -3 Weapon Skill, +5 Intelligence, +3 Willpower, +3 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Toughness, Defense, Intelligence, Knowledge, Fieldcraft, Willpower, Fellowship

Starting Skills: Dodge, Medicae, Scholastic Lore (Chymistry), Trade (Chymist)

Starting Talents: Cold Hearted or Jaded, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile)

Specialist Equipment: Diagnostor, injector, medikit, field suture, 8 de-tox, 8 stimms.

Wounds: 8+D5

ENGINEER - The successor of the Operator, now with more "task focus".

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Intelligence, +5 Willpower, -3 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Strength, Offense, Toughness, Intelligence, Tech, Willpower

Starting Skills: Common Lore (Tech), Tech-Use, Trade (Armourer)

Starting Talents: Technical Knock or Weapon-Tech or Armor-Monger, Hardy or Resistance (Fear), Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile, choose 2 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Combi-tool, lascutter, M36 lasgun or combat shotgun or flamer or grenade launcher, 5 krak grenades or 2 demolition charges or 1 melta bomb.

Wounds: 8+D5

SUPPORT - The unholy bastard child of the Heavy Gunner and the Weapon Specialist. Nuff' said. Oh, just one more thing: this specialization can also serve as the "Sergeant" in case the Squad really-really needs one.

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Ballistic Skill or Weapon Skill, +5 Strength, -3 Agility

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill or Weapon Skill, Finesse, Strength, Fieldcraft, Willpower, Fellowship

Starting Skills: Common Lore (War), Inquiry or Scrutiny

Starting Talents: Rapid Reload or Street Fighting, Nerves of Steel or Storm of Iron, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las, Solid Projectile, Heavy, choose 2 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: One of the following:

- M36 lasgun or bullpup lasgun or autogun, auxiliary grenade launcher

- Storm bolter or regimental favored special weapon

- Heavy stubber or regimental favored heavy weapon

- Sword or great weapon or chainsword, laspistol or autopistol or stub automatic or stub revolver or shield

Wounds: 9+D5

Next up: Support Specailists, so stay tuned!

All C&C is welcomed! No playtesting yet, but we are working on it.

Definitely keeping an eye on this.

What are you doing for the Support Specializations?

I don't understand the need of the specialization "SUPPORT"…

I specialy like the idea of an ASSAULT specialization, though. In that one, I would change some things:

- Why photon grenades? It's not even an option in the tabletop game. I understand that the assault specialist is the "grunt" that can handle anything you throw at them, hold his position, entrench himself and empty one lasgun clip after another. Maybe giving them 3 frags would be enough. And an entrenching tool!!

- Why is he able to have 3 extra weapon trainings?? With the three basic ones I think that they have more than enough to do "their job".

I also like the RECON, but I think that you gave them too much equipment (compared to the ones on the book). The specializations that usually have more starting equipment are the ones that are not combat oriented (and so, they don't usually recieve cool weapons at the beginning). RECON and ENGINEER have too many starting toys…

Way too much equipment for all these guys.

Seems like a lot of these builds are things that you could do with the existing specs, with about 1k exp.

The soldiers, initially, are supposed to be generic.

Plushy:

Commissar, Ministorium Priest, Sanctioned Psyker, Techpriest Engineseer and Imperial Assassin. I'll post them sometimes around this weekend.

Whoseyes:

As its name suggests, the Support is about fire support. he is more relaible in this area than the others because of its starting Talents, characteristic bonuses and basic weapon selection.

The Asault is meant to be the jack-of-all-trades with a knack for… well… assaulting. Photon grenades are there to flush out the enemy. And if you don't like them, then you can always choose frags! The reason for the 3 weapon trainings is similar: the Assault is the guy who is supposed to pick up the "leftover" weapons lying around to complement the Support. But yeah, maybe we will reduce it to 2.

The Recon is meant to be a glass cannon class. He has got cool gadgets, but he also needs nurturing and could be the "weak link" of the Squad during bigger fights.

And why do the Enginner have too many toys? One main weapon, one set of explosives, and two tech tools are everything he gets.These are all "tools for the task" and you always have the option to just take the humblest combination (the M36 lasgun and the krak grenades).

In some cases, gear also unlocks "sub-specializations": an Engineer with flamer and demo charges/melta bomb will be a "bunker buster" while with a grenade launcher he will be the "demo man".

Flail-Bot:

Yes, the goal of these alternative specializations is to clean up the current ones. They are pretty cool on their own, but we think that they are also somewhat messy (especially the Operator).

I'll keep my reply civil after how dereailed our debate in the other thread got.

Whilst i can understand why you might think the existing specialisations are 'messy' they are that way because of how the 40k canon has established the Imperial Guard - they are almost infinite in their number and so don't have jack-of-all-trades rambo warriors like the Adeptus Astartes have. Instead they have countless trillions of basic infantry supported by billions of specialists. Officers lead but aren't the best at fighting, heavy weapons are manned by the burliest guardsmen, those with a knack for hitting targets get specialist weapons, those with an aptitude with vehicles become operators just like those with an aptitude with biology become medics. The imperial guard then supplement these line troopers with specialists - commisars to keep the troops morale in check and make sure imperial propaganda is stuck to, techpriests to maintain the myriad fighting vehicles and pieces of technology the guard use, psykers to use their warp fuelled powers against imperial enemies, demi-humans who are tolerated only because of their military application are pressed into service as monstrous assault troops or superb scouts and snipers etc etc.

What you seem to be proposing with these powerful archetypes really doesn't suit the power level and gameplay style of Only War as much as it would the high power commando units that are the Deathwatch playstyle. Each of your proposed classes has two to three times the amount of gear that a starting character should have.

Finally you make mention of the missing specializations but they are already in the game. Weapon specialists can excell at being scouts and everyones comrades are the riflemen of your squad - you don't play the rank and file you play the talented individuals within the unit.

I dunno about the power level… We had the NPC Guardsman profile as our starting point, and that guy is pretty buffed up compared even to these new specializations. I mean, 3 simple Characterisitc Advances (5 up 2 down), 7+2 known Skills and 3-4 Talents aren't exactly the "lowly cannon fodder" category. So to say.

Also it feels like people miss the fact that 3/4 of the listed gear is or/or, so you take either one or the other, and not all of them .

AtoMaki said:

My objection to the ENGINEER equipment list was motivated by the fact that they get cool "tools" and cool weapons too (grenade launcer, flamer…). As I stated in my previous post, in the official specialization list they give more equipment/tools to the guys that have less or worse weapons.

Same happens with RECON: they get über cool equipment and a long-las (if they want to), which is a über cool weapon also, at least that's how I see it.

whoseyes said:

Hmmm… I see. So what if I split up the equipment selection of these two Support style? Example:

RECON

Specialist Equipment: One of the following:

- Auspex/scanner, lascarbine or autogun or bow, 2 stun grenades or blind grenades

- Long-las or sniper rifle with silencer, knife

Assault, Support and Recon? Has some-one been playing Battlefield 3? <shudder>

I can imagine that an field Engineer is something that is missing but a replacement for the Operator? He can't drive a tank for sh!t and having an IG games without the option of vehicle crew is just wrong.

And what's the difference between a Rifleman who can kind of use other basic weapons and a Weapon specialist who's taken a rifle as a main weapon?

Finally I realy think it's a fluff mistake to allow each person to decide whether to take an auto-gun, lasgun etc, It might be a bit more annoying to have to decide it for everyone at regiment design but not even the most wasteful, bloated, inefficient modern army (US) would have a half of a squad with one calibre and the other half with another let alone in the IG and changing that between bullets and charge packs, where that's basically religious dogma now.

Face Eater said:

I agree with you that the weapons should be standardized. And I think it should be lasguns. There's a lot of fluff about how glorious and perfect the lasgun is and VERY few regiments don't use it. Lasguns are Reliable. Equipping a squad with a gun that shoots ACTUAL BULLETS as well as not being Reliable, seems like a massive logistics no-no.

But, I did want to point out that the modern US fireteam has 2-3 different weapons. They're not all unified, even if the army does have a standard rifle.

Well, you always have the option to choose the lasgun… The autogun option is just there for the players who want an autogun Regiment without the "spend equipment points to get it" option. So if you don't like it, then you can go "Laser Squad!" with your buddies, and go all lasguns. It makes like, zero difference.

The Pilot class is currently missing. The Engineer is the succesor of the Operator only as the "tech savvy" guardsman. The Pilot is a project for the future, as the class is rather messed up for the current game mechanics.

AtoMaki said:

I'd like to hear your reasoning behind why you feel the Operator is messed up? I've found them to be one of the more versatile and balanced of the classes available - they have some tech aptitude but its not so overwhelmingly good that everyone else can ignore tech and leave it up to the Operator, they can pilot literally anything with a simple talent purchase and their comrade ability makes a vehicle they are in significantly better than one crewed by anyone else (comrade puts out fire and fires secondary weapons - yes please!).

Kasatka said:

So far we have 2 parties with Operators and guess what… in both cases we were an infantry regiment. And surprise, the Operator was close to the "uber-character" in both Squads. Only seconded by the Storm Trooper (doh). To the point where he was waaaay more useful outside of any vehicle than inside. His aptitudes are simply off the chart for piloting stuff, and his complete lack of durability will give him some hard time (he is dead meat in an open-topped vehicle, and the first whatevergrenade/vehicle critical damage will konck him out for good in closed vehicles). On the other side, he is excellent for stealth, tech, healing and if you can have him a Perception aptitude, then for scouting too. He is simply an "overkill" for a pilot. A Weapon Specialist (or Storm Trooper) can do this piloting stuff much-much better. But he is an awesome tech specialist, medic and infiltrator. What is kinda' sad since you can't use your good Medicae/Tech-Use/Stealth skill through the hull of a Hellhound….

For example, in a Squad where you have 4 guys and 1 Sentinel, you should have 1 Storm Trooper/Weapon Specailist in the Sentinel, and 1 Operator on foot. The ST/WS has much better synergy with the Sentinel, while the Operator will be much more useful on the ground, supporting the other characters. And that's kinda' sad if you ask me.

AtoMaki said:

They're not missing. They're just not classed as specialisations (with an s, because 40k uses British English). The generic rifleman is covered in part by the weapon specialist, and in part by the comrades that most characters get. The scout is covered by the Recon and Light Infantry regiment types - the Imperial Guard fields formations of scouts, deployed in whatever concentrations are necessary at the time, rather than giving the job to individual men (because when you're running a warzone containing (at a conservative estimate) millions of men, individual soldiers are essentially beneath your notice.

When you're playing a first-person shooter with a couple of dozen people on each side, individual people as scout, recon, support, etc makes great practical sense (I'm a fan of the Battlefield series as well), but that isn't the context of Only War.

To other matters brought up in subsequent posts:

The Lasgun is one weapon in the sense that "assault rifle" is one weapon - there are many thousands of different patterns and makes of Lasgun used across the Imperium. The Only War Core Rulebook only covers a miniscule sample of this, but it's safe to assume that a given regiment probably uses a pattern of Lasgun local to the world of their founding - the Kantrael-pattern is common to Cadian regiments, while the Necromundans use a pattern produced on their homeworld, the Krieg tend to be issued with the higher-powered but slow-firing Lucius-pattern, while the bullpup Accatran-pattern is commonly-associated with Elysian regiments.

I flat-out disagree with Imperial Assassin as a Support Specialist in Only War. If there's a Temple Assassin operating on the same world as Imperial Guard forces, then those Guardsmen won't even know about it, let alone work with one directly. Imperial Assassins are specialised living weapons, the most combative of them (in essence, anything but Venenum and Vanus, though it depends on context for the others) able to out-fight Space Marines, their operations concealed behind a veil of secrecy, and their deployment controlled by the direct command of the High Lords of Terra. They're hardly the kind of thing you'd find fighting alongside a squad of Imperial Guardsmen.

Would an agent of the Officio Sabatorum be an acceptable addition to the group, as a sneaky sort that isn't a sniper?

…I miss Demolitions as a skill.

Plushy:

I feel your pain buddy . And I also miss Tactics. That Skill was super-awesome!

So, first, the updated Recon and Engineer:

RECON

Characteristic Bonus: -3 Toughness, +5 Agility, +3 Perception

Starting Aptitudes: Finesse, Defense, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Fieldcraft, Social

Starting Skills: Awareness, Navigate (Surface), Stealth, Survival

Starting Talents: Heightened Senses (Sight or Hearing or Smell), Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile, choose 1 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Auspex/scanner, lascarbine or long-las or autogun with silencer or sniper rifle or combat shotgun, 2 stun grenades or blind grenades

Wounds: 7+D5

ENGINEER

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Intelligence, +5 Willpower, -3 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Strength, Offense, Toughness, Intelligence, Tech, Willpower

Starting Skills: Common Lore (Tech), Tech-Use, Trade (Armourer)

Starting Talents: Technical Knock or Weapon-Tech or Armor-Monger, Hardy or Resistance (Fear), Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile, choose 2 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Combi-tool, lascutter, M36 lasgun or combat shotgun, RPG launcher (with 4 rockets) or 5 krak grenades or demolition charge

Wounds: 8+D5

RPG Launcher profile: Launcher / Heavy / 120m / S/-/- / 3D10+5X / 6 / 1 / Full / Blast (1), Concussive (0) / Average

And now, the Support Specialists:

Rule change: Support Specialist never benefit from any Regimental bonuses, like Homeworld, Officer, Doctrines etc. They don't gain the Regimental Standard Kit either, and they spend the 30 equipment points independently. Also, none of the Support Specialists has Comrades.

COMMISSAR - Much more social/intellectual than its previous incarnation.

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Intelligence, +5 Perception, +3 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Finesse, Intelligence, Knowledge, Perception, Willpower, Fellowship, Leadership, Social

Starting Skills: Command, Common Lore (choose any three), Forbidden Lore (choose any two), Interrogation, Scholastic Lore (choose any two), Scrutiny

Starting Talents: Air of Authority, Cold Hearted or Unshakeable Faith, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, choose 4 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Good craftsmanship sword or chainsword, good craftsmanship laspistol or bolt pistol, good craftsmanship flak armor, Commissar’s uniform

Wounds: 9+D5

MINISTORIUM PRIEST - Just minor changes. And yes, he is effectively a dumb Commissar.

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Toughness, +5 Willpower, +5 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Weapon Skill, Offense, Strength, Toughness, Willpower, Fellowship, Social, Leadership

Starting Skills: Charm or Parry, Inquiry, Common Lore (Ecclesiarchy), Scholastic Lore (Imperial Creed)

Starting Talents: Hatred (any), Unshakeable Faith, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las, Solid Projectile, Flame, Bolt, Chain)

Specialist Equipment: Flak vest, Ecclesiarchy robes, book of scripture, one of the following:

- Good craftsmanship warhammer or chainsword, laspistol or autopistol or stub automatic or stub revolver or shotgun

- Flamer or boltgun with sacred inscription

- M36 lasgun or bullpup lasgun or autogun, exterminator

Wounds: 9+D5

SANCTIONED PSYKER - Fluff changes there and there, otherwise he is the same guy.

Characteristic Bonus: -3 Strength, -3 Toughness, +5 Perception, +5 Willpower

Starting Aptitudes: Offense, Defense, Intelligence, Knowledge, Perception, Willpower, Psyker

Starting Skills: Awareness or Scrutiny, Common Lore (Adeptus Astra Telepathica), Forbidden Lore (Psykers), Psyniscience

Starting Talents: Light Sleeper or Paranoia, Up to 500xp worth of Psychic Powers, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile)

Starting Traits: Psyker, Psy Rating 2

Specialist Equipment: Psy focus, Scholastica Psykana uniform, best craftsmanship staff, laspistol or stub automatic

Wounds: 7+D5

TECHPRIEST ENGINESEER - Fluff for the Fluff God! He got buffed because he lost his Servitor (though he will regain the poor fella later).

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Strength, +3 Toughness, +5 Intelligence, -10 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Strength, Toughness, Intelligence, Knowledge, Tech, Willpower

Starting Skills: Common Lore (Adeptus Mechanicus, Tech), Forbidden Lore (Adeptus Mechanicus), Forbidden Lore (Archeotech) or Logic, Tech-Use

Starting Talents: Cold Hearted, Technical Knock, Mechadendrite Use (Weapon, Utility), Weapon Training (Las, Solid Projectile, Bolt, Power)

Starting Traits: Mechanicus Implants

Specialist Equipment: Power armor, combi-tool, good craftsmanship laspistol or bolt pistol or boltgun, good craftsmanship power axe

Wounds: 8+D5

IMPERIAL AGENT - Okay, with the changed name, I guess everyone knows who this guy is: a collective class for all the imperial weirdos like Inquisitorial acolytes, Munitorioum "special division operatives" and such. A spy, essentially.

Characteristic Bonus: +5 to any two of the following: Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Agility, Intelligence, Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, Finesse, Agility, Intelligence, Fieldcraft, Fellowship, Social

Starting Skills: Choose 5 from the following: Acrobatics, Athletics, Awareness, Charm, Common Lore (any), Deceive, Dodge, Inquiry, Interrogation, Linguistics (any), Medicae, Scholastic Lore (any), Security, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Tech-Use, Trade (Chymist)

Starting Talents: Catfall or Leap Up or Sprint, Cold Hearted or Orthoproxy, Enemy (choose two), Weapon Training (choose 4)

Specialist Equipment: Good craftsmanship clothes, synskin, mono-edged knife, M36 lasgun or bullpup lasgun or lascarbine or autogun, laspistol or autopistol or stub automatic or stub revolver

Wounds: 8+D5

Note: we don't really like the Support Specialists. Like, we currently have 4 gaming groups who play Only War (~20 players) and other than the usual Storm Troopers, we only have/had 1 Psyker and 1 Tech Priest… So yeah, it is highly possible that we messed this one up a little bit !

Next up: Comrade Advances (for the Guardsmen) and Specialist Advancements (for the Support Specialists)!

tactics is still there, it's a knowledge skill "Tactica Imperalis". Also demolitions is also still available, though this time it's in the form of Tech use, which just makes it better since it has other uses as well.

As for all the classes in here, like someone mentioned, the classes aren't missing, it's just not supposed to be the bad ass overpowered versions you seem to want. That being said, if your group wants this, feel free to use it.

The Weapon Specialist is able to become a scout, ranger, melee and/or ranged specialist character. A marksman, melee fighter, survivalist, tracker, stealth specialist and so on. They can, without too much effort, be all of those kinds.

.113 said:

Tactics got turned into a Scholastic Lore, Chem-Use got split between Medicae and Scholastic Lore, and Demolitions got rolled into Demolitions. I kinda miss all three.

.113 said:

I'm going to agree. As I said earlier, but I'll reiterate, you've given way too much stuff to all specializations. There's hardly room for a favored weapon or an upgrade to the Main Weapon in the SRK when _^(nearly) EVERYONE gets a combat shotgun or bolter.

These specializations need to be generic enough that people can grow into them in a natural way and adapt.

Also your Commissar starts with SEVEN knowledge skills? What the hell!?

And your spy gets 5 starting skills, while everyone normally gets 3?

And lastly, everyone gets more stats than the normal spec.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use these in your own game where you're replacing the starting specs with the starts specs +2k exp, but if you want to share your houseruled guys with the rest of the world without the disclaimer "Not equal to starting specs" you're really going to need to tone it down.

Flail-Bot said:

Uhmm… They are not equal to the starting specs. When did I say that they are? They mostly do something similar, but that's all. As I mentioned it earlier our objective with these classes is simplification: so the players don't have to play the "counts as" game with the missing classes (a Weapon Specailist with a lasgun is still a Weapon Specialist with a lasgun, no matter how hard you believe that it is in fact a rifleman), and they can't go haywire with some exisiting classes (hello there, infantry!Operator). Of course, this should have a little "power boost" in form of task-specific supporting skills/talents/gear to give the nudge to the players to do what their characters are supposed to do.

But, hey if you really want it: These classes are not on the same power level as the original classes . We based these classes on the Guardsman's power level in the Allies&Adversaries section who is roughly 1000xp stronger than a starting character with the original classes. So Guardsman Specializations have ~500xp plus, while Support Specializations have more (roughly 1000xp, but it can vary wildly) compared to the original Specializations.

The general lack of info we have on the Officio Sabatorum does make it something we can play with. At the very least, they sound like a rather elite organisation in their own right, but that doesn't entirely preclude them from being used, I just wouldn't consider them a typical specialty to be found working alongside guard units. Something rare.

It seems likely that there are traditional Sapper regiments within the Imperial Guard, Krieg is certainly likely to produce them. Since GW is a British company, it's always better to assume they organise things more along the lines of British military, where Combat Engineers (more awesomely known as Sappers) are often formed in to their own regiments, with pieces broken off and assigned to other units much like we see with armour and mechanized squads in tapletop armies. When working as a more or less whole, they can perform some wonders, like the famous trenchworks of the Krieg regiments, or the Canadians taking Vimy Ridge (Nova Scotian coal miners, fighting hand to hand in pitch black tunnels underneath No Man's Land. Must have been terrifying).

That doesn't necessarily preclude from inclusion either. As either Support of Guardsman.