Hello, Very new to DW or any of the FFG games. Played one game last night, and now we have a bunch of questions...

1) We are using miniatures, and they suggest 1"=1m.
That means the Frag missile has a 16" diameter blast, and the heavy flamer can shoot 30" away. That seems like a *really* big AoE... am I missing something?

2) Jump packs double your base movement, does that mean it doubles all of the movement distances? (half/full/charge/Run) Does it stack with the +1 from power armor?
IOW, if I have and AB of 4, in power armor with a jump pack. Is my movement 10/20/30/60?

Again, that seems to cover a *lot* of ground really fast.

3) You need Pilot(personal) to operate a jump pack; does that mean you need to take a test every round you move? Or only for difficult maneuvers?

4) I realize Penetration has an effect of the 'armor damage reduction', does it have any effect on the 'toughness damage reduction'?

5) Assuming a 1v1 melee fight. Every time the bad guy hits me, I get to parry, and vice versa. So if my WS is 75, I have a 75% chance of hitting him, and a 75% chance of parrying his blow. Degrees of success do not play a role here, correct?

6) Aside from critical wounds, is there any significance to what type of damage is done? (Energy, rending, etc.)

7) Aside from another psyker, is it outwardly observable when using psychic powers? Or could a librarian activate something like Possibility Shield without anyone realizing it?

That should do it for now.... thanks in advance.

1. No

2. Yes, yes.

3. No, yes.

4. No

5. Yes (they don't)

6. No

7. No

Hello, Very new to DW or any of the FFG games. Played one game last night, and now we have a bunch of questions...

1) We are using miniatures, and they suggest 1"=1m.

That means the Frag missile has a 16" diameter blast, and the heavy flamer can shoot 30" away. That seems like a *really* big AoE... am I missing something?

2) Jump packs double your base movement, does that mean it doubles all of the movement distances? (half/full/charge/Run) Does it stack with the +1 from power armor?

IOW, if I have and AB of 4, in power armor with a jump pack. Is my movement 10/20/30/60?

Again, that seems to cover a *lot* of ground really fast.

3) You need Pilot(personal) to operate a jump pack; does that mean you need to take a test every round you move? Or only for difficult maneuvers?

4) I realize Penetration has an effect of the 'armor damage reduction', does it have any effect on the 'toughness damage reduction'?

5) Assuming a 1v1 melee fight. Every time the bad guy hits me, I get to parry, and vice versa. So if my WS is 75, I have a 75% chance of hitting him, and a 75% chance of parrying his blow. Degrees of success do not play a role here, correct?

6) Aside from critical wounds, is there any significance to what type of damage is done? (Energy, rending, etc.)

7) Aside from another psyker, is it outwardly observable when using psychic powers? Or could a librarian activate something like Possibility Shield without anyone realizing it?

That should do it for now.... thanks in advance.

1) No. 30m isn't that much for a heavy flamer.

2) Yup, yup.

3) Only difficult manoeuvres, which could mean anything from landing exactly where you want, or make a take-off that won't burn the face of people around you, but yeah.

4) No. Penetration only penetrates Armour Points, and does not affect the Damage Reduction from Toughness.

5) All things being equal (i.e. modifiers due to vision or otherwise), you are correct. Also, with just standard attacks and parries, with no Special Qualities on the weapons, Degrees of Success does not matter, no.

6) Usually, no. It is relevant to keep track of, however, because there are circumstances where it is relevant, but they are rare.

7) Depends entirely on the power. You will have to read the entries and ask your GM to make a call if it's ambiguous. There are powers in 40k that makes the psyker's eyes glow, or surrounds you with light, or just all-out throws multicoloured flame from the palm of your hand, so, yeah. Possibility Shield is a good example of something that I do not think would have any kind of overt effect.

Keep in mind that not only psykers can have psyniscience, though.

Cool, that all makes sense.

About the scale... I realize that the 'reality' scale seems okay. (20-30m flame throwers, 16m diameter missile blast, etc) but when I think about the logistics of actually playing it out on a game board it seems like a battle would take over all of my living room, and part of the kitchen. When a running model can cover more than 3 real-world-feet a turn.... how do you guys keep the battle on a single table? (not to mention the guy in a jump pack pushing 7' of movement.)

I am guessing the blasts and flamers end up being not quite so bad, since most models will be farther apart than I am used to; and since hordes are dealt with in a much more abstract manner.

Any insight into how this actually plays out in actual battles?

The thing with miniatures is that they lend themselves to close-quarters fighting -- which is actually not most of the fighting you would realistically be in.

30 meters is not far at all in a firefight. That will just reach halfway across the street from where I'm sitting.

Cool, that all makes sense.

About the scale... I realize that the 'reality' scale seems okay. (20-30m flame throwers, 16m diameter missile blast, etc) but when I think about the logistics of actually playing it out on a game board it seems like a battle would take over all of my living room, and part of the kitchen. When a running model can cover more than 3 real-world-feet a turn.... how do you guys keep the battle on a single table? (not to mention the guy in a jump pack pushing 7' of movement.)

I am guessing the blasts and flamers end up being not quite so bad, since most models will be farther apart than I am used to; and since hordes are dealt with in a much more abstract manner.

Any insight into how this actually plays out in actual battles?

As stated by bogi_khaosa, minatures are better at the scale they were designed. In the visual translation, using a hex-grid map sheet (for example) with 1cm grids to scale your scenario map for the game, placing your models to "represent" their location may actually help bridge the visual gap. Keeping in mind that an exact scale translation just isn't practical in game terms. If it were, then you'd be playing with Epic scale minis and then you lose the visual detail in the modeling for "exact scale" representations. There will be trade offs, ALWAYS.....it's just a matter of where you are willing to draw the line.

An option you may wish to consider is Roll20.net. There are a plethora of GM tools available to customize the experience to suit your needs.

1) We are using miniatures, and they suggest 1"=1m.

That means the Frag missile has a 16" diameter blast, and the heavy flamer can shoot 30" away. That seems like a *really* big AoE... am I missing something?

2) Jump packs double your base movement, does that mean it doubles all of the movement distances? (half/full/charge/Run) Does it stack with the +1 from power armor?

IOW, if I have and AB of 4, in power armor with a jump pack. Is my movement 10/20/30/60?

Again, that seems to cover a *lot* of ground really fast.

3) You need Pilot(personal) to operate a jump pack; does that mean you need to take a test every round you move? Or only for difficult maneuvers?

4) I realize Penetration has an effect of the 'armor damage reduction', does it have any effect on the 'toughness damage reduction'?

5) Assuming a 1v1 melee fight. Every time the bad guy hits me, I get to parry, and vice versa. So if my WS is 75, I have a 75% chance of hitting him, and a 75% chance of parrying his blow. Degrees of success do not play a role here, correct?

6) Aside from critical wounds, is there any significance to what type of damage is done? (Energy, rending, etc.)

7) Aside from another psyker, is it outwardly observable when using psychic powers? Or could a librarian activate something like Possibility Shield without anyone realizing it?

That should do it for now.... thanks in advance.

1) Yes. The Deathwatch Living Errata. See the Deathwatch Support Page. The Astartes Frag Missile was toned down to Blast (5), Devastating (1). Which is still, I must admit, one hell of a ka-boom. The rules changes are generally nice, because, amongst other things, they generally up the fixed damage bonus and reduce the number of dice, making things faster to roll for. It also makes astartes bolters somewhat less ridiculous.

2) Again, yes. You're an assault marine. I think the +1 AB comes from being size (hulking), not from the armour, though, so you get an extra metre of movement relative to your agility bonus even in scout armour.

3) As said above, you should only make tests when doing something 'interesting' - trying to hover, trying to land in a specific small(ish) spot, trying to pass through a small gap, trying to evade attacks whilst jumping, doing a last-moment HALO-style drop, etc, etc. ANY marine is competent enough to use a jump pack to get from A to B, just as they're all competent with astartes heavy weapons, and kitting the entire kill-team out as an assault squad or a devastator squad from time to time helps keep things interesting.

4) No. However there is a weapon trait called Felling (X) which can ignore some of the unnatural toughness of big things like marines, big tyranids, etc. Vengeance rounds and higher end sniper weapons have it. Equally, lots of the 'if you do damage, you can then do this' rules, like Toxic or Force, ignore toughness.

5) In a straight fight just using standard attacks, no. There are some special abilities which are triggered by degrees of success (Razor Sharp weapons, for example), and the number of degrees of success affects the number of kills you get when attacking Hordes of opponents.

6) None, really. In theory armour types might be more effective against one than another but I can't think of any off-hand that are. The one big advantage is again, when attacking Hordes. Explosive damage does one more point of magnitude damage than it should do - so a bolter scoring two hits "kills" three magnitude, whilst a hotshot lasgun or heavy stubber doing the same would only inflict two.

7) Depends on the power, as noted. I would suggest that any pushed power would be obvious, regardless of how subtle the effect might be, from unnatural energy glows, psy-frost forming on things, etc, etc.

I tend to run actual battles with a sketched map on a piece of paper. Given that a major fight is likely to happen over several hundred metres, and that over the course of a mission several fights, in different areas, may occur, I prefer to do things narratively but with an A4 sketch so people can see what's what.

The last major battle my team fought had them leading a (nearly) full strength guard infantry regiment, engaging waves of 1,000 plus opponents out to the very edge of standard bolter range (400M), so trying to do it with models per se doesn't really work.

That said, I wholeheartedly encourage people to convert up their marines. Having a model to track where you are - at least narratively - is sensible, plus deathwatch marines look badass. Essentially, you might have an A3 map of a town centre, and still use a standard 40k model - just for quick reference as to what building or street each marine is stationing himself in. Single models to represent a horde also works in this sort of 'strategic' scale.

Regarding miniature scale: I started out using the recommended 1" = 1m scale, and had problems with the battle regularly spilling off the kitchen table. So, I switched to 1/2" = 1m for most skirmishes, and 1cm = 1m for long-range firefights. Of course, 1" = 1m is fine for indoor combat, where ranges and line-of-sight are artificially limited (I usually play on a standard 40K table with 3D terrain for outdoor battles, measuring ranges with a tape measure just like the tabletop game, and on a wet-erase board with a grid of 1" squares for indoor combat).

And speaking of minis, here's a suggestion for representing Hordes: I didn't care for either of the 'official' recommendations from the rulebook (using 1 mini per point of Magnitude is too unwieldy, and using a single fig for a whole Horde lacks visual impact), so I started using discs cut from cardboard (the size of a CD), with a number of minis set on top of it equal to the '10s'-digit of the Horde's Magnitude; the Horde can make Melee attacks up to this number of inches from the edge of the template.

In an effort to reignite this, 2 questions:

1) I know explosive type weapons gain an extra hit against hordes. Do they also gain an extra hit against single enemies - say Elites or Masters?

2) I have an Elite buried in a horde. With a called shot one of my players successfully engages it with 5DoS. Does the Warrior get to attempt to Dodge the rounds or is this negated because he is compacted within a horde?

In an effort to reignite this, 2 questions:

1) I know explosive type weapons gain an extra hit against hordes. Do they also gain an extra hit against single enemies - say Elites or Masters?

2) I have an Elite buried in a horde. With a called shot one of my players successfully engages it with 5DoS. Does the Warrior get to attempt to Dodge the rounds or is this negated because he is compacted within a horde?

1 No

2 If you are targeting a single character within a horde, that character may dodge. (You aren't trying to hit 1+ out of 20, you are trying to hit 1 out of 1.) As GM you may apply any penalty, or even decide he may not dodge, if you think it appropriate.

1. That is how I ended up ruling it.

2. I actually decided that with the horde magnitude what it was, that creature had no room to dodge and therefore didn't allow it. But in the future I will keep in mind that they can, in fact, dodge.

Do multiple melee hits follow the same chart as multiple hits from a ranged weapon, or do they each count as a separate hit to be determined individually. I just had a Tyranid Warrior with swift attack and multiple arms attack one of my players Assault Marine and am trying to allocate hit locations.

If you use DW RAW, Swift Attack is 2 separate 1d100 rolls, and you reverse each result to determine hit location.

If you use Only War's changes to Swift/Lightning Attack (making them mechanically identical to Semi-/Full-auto ranged fire) you roll 1d100, note DoS for number of hits, and use the multiple hit chart.

OW sounds easier. more streamlined. And the creature had multiple arms so it got 3 attacks.

Luckily, one was parried with a chainsword. Sparks and blood everywhere.

OW sounds easier. more streamlined. And the creature had multiple arms so it got 3 attacks.

Luckily, one was parried with a chainsword. Sparks and blood everywhere.

I am guessing the blasts and flamers end up being not quite so bad, since most models will be farther apart than I am used to; and since hordes are dealt with in a much more abstract manner.

Any insight into how this actually plays out in actual battles?

In your post you alluded to it, but I thought it might be worth pointing it out explicitly. If you place your 16" (16 Meter) template over a horde of enemies, even if you cover all of them with the blast template, the number of 'hits' is defined by the horde rules - so even if there are 40 models representing 40 Magnitude, you aren't going to kill them all with a single missile.