Thanks. All the credit goes to Relic RTS games Company of Heroes series and DoW2 though

I liked it because it keeps the encounters dynamic. Originally in those video games retreating troops received uber-defence against shooting damage and uber-handicaps against cc damage. It was assumed that they keep a low profile while retreating fast and don't pay attention to who's standing in their way. That allowed you to set very nasty traps:

1. Sneak behind the enemy squad with your cc guys.

2. Pin down the enemy squad with a heave machine gun/heavy bolter etc.

3. Throw grenade at them if they don't wanna retreat or your time is running short.

4. Enemy squad either dies from grenade* or runs to have it's guts spilled out by your cc guys.

*of cours in OW grenades are not that powerful RaW, though they can still frighten the enemy.

If you want you can reflect that in your house rules to balance the difficulty.

As I understand it this system is crazy and has basically really hurt our game. Our combats have turned into whoever can roll under d100 twice wins!

There's nothing in the Suppressing Fire rule about range or training. It says everyone in a 45 degree arc, that's literally everyone in the universe, everyone in that targets light cone.

For orcs who fire full auto inaccurate weapons there is no difference between firing full auto and suppressing (except if you want to fire at -20 twice). Also if they are fighting a horde of minuscule or small it's better to do that! Aiming at a single target gets -30 and just randomly firing with your eyes closed only gets -20!

Pinning itself is ridiculous.

So a guy starts to pin you:

Willpower at -20.

Your turn comes around you are forced to go to cover. Or you can take a half action to shoot at -20. Another pinning test at +30 if you get to cover, +0 if you don't.

Let's say you pass!

The guy fires again, everyone gets to roll -20! If you passed the +0 or +30 you have to make another one anyway!

Now maybe you're thinking fine, you have to pass two tests (+0/+30 then -20) to ever get a full action again, fine it uses a lot of ammo.

Well let's imagine there are multiple shooters now, say 3 Orcs with Shootas. Enjoy trying to pass +0/+30 -20 -20 -20 to ever get a full action! And good luck trying to hit anything with -20 and forced to run to cover!

Meanwhile the orcs have a million of their friends running forward who don't have to take pinning tests who will then get to melee you and you will die because your platoon didn't manage to get suppressing fire off first.

The alternative is that we do it first cause we roll higher on initiative. So we set up suppressing fire and then some of our guys who can actually shoot just pick off each target one at a time using called shots since they have to get to cover. If we got them out in a field they spend 20 turns running 3 metres a second.

Did they playtest this at all? Rolling hundreds of pinning tests is not fun!

I've not actually played only war, apparently my group was tired of 40k rpgs after playing all the others, so knowing how powerful a tool it was in Dark Heresy I thought the changes they made to it were supposed to make it better. Apparently not for everyone.

Don't know about you but I was charmed by the idea of role-play group that doesn't literally all have the equivalent of awareness where possible.

That doesn't mean you won't be able to detect all ambushes though, just make sure you're GM's aware that your in combat formation hugging cover and using scouts where possible.

Now the important stuff, and one that isn't helped by bad wording, the suppressing character "...establishes a kill zone, which is any general area, such as a corridor or tree line, that encompasses a 45-degree arc in the direction the active character is facing."

That's a bit of a mess as far as semantics goes, technically they need to describe a general area that MUST include everything within their 45-degree arc. Which is clearly incorrect based on their example (and would include the pointless linguistic exercise), and in DH (which is not a a great source of intent) it was only to the half range of the weapon. This is actually quite nice for you doing the supressing with a good weapon as you could, say suppress a sniper at decent range rather than a things close to you.

So first thing, assume that encompasses should read lies within, and that it's a distinct area as they describe, not the whole area on wards to furthest range category. Of course multiple firers can cover multiple areas but everyone suppressing is not actually firing to wound.

Also, be careful with the difference between being in cover and not being in the suppressed zone. Being behind a medium sized tree, or thigh high wall, is cover, behind a house or hill is no longer being in the suppression area.

I like the idea of gaining the +30 to the initial pinning test while in cover, not just the recover from pinning.

I also like the idea of being able to back out of the area (at least quicker than the half move per turn), I'd probably still have them make the pinning test but give them a bonus +30 if they only make full move, tactical move or run away from the suppressor.

In Dark Heresy only full auto weapons can supress. Might want to play that by ear, in my games I tend to form groups of spods that fire together so I'll probably only have semi auto suppression for a small group of riflemen, or things like auto cannons.

With regards to the Ork shootas using surpression, that is fine. However, when their friends run towards the pinned troopers they are then blocking the line of sight....