You need to be careful importing a single aspect of OW ruleset.

For instance, parrying multiple melee attacks might seem wonderful, but DW gives characters a lot of options to mitigate the number of attacks not found in OW. Characters in OW do not need the perternatural speed ability to make multiple attacks, therefore moving a character out of engagement range with, say assassin strike, doesn't work with OW rules. In DW, that character just forced the other character to either move and sacrifice all of its additional attacks (even TWF is a full action) or abandon melee combat altogether.

By introducing the 1 parry for all attacks by itself, you are stacking the deck too far into the defender's favor.

Even in OW a character can only take actions on his turn. Therefore when a character uses the overwatch attack he is interrupting the active character (even in the middle of a run action) and temporarily becomes the active character until the overwatch attack is resolved. The defending character is no longer the active character until the attack is resolved. If the defending character is aware of the overwatching character he may dodge if possible.

Well I have moved all Actions from OW to DW and it didn't brake. Also Traits are modded to use OW (Unnatural giving +4 gives more manageable bonus than x2 or x3)

So for example when making Lightning Attack your WS bonus is maximum number of attacks you make (per melee weapon) so Dual-wielding you make double that in possible hits.

So WS 50 guy can get max 5 hits per melee weapon, so total for dual wielder would be 10. Dodging all those is quite a feat, so you would have to roll 10 DoS in Dodge/parry for not gettin hit.

Also for Overwatch, you don't interrup other characters turn but you both take action at the same turn.

From Overwatch action description

"If this attack occurs at the same time as another character’s Action, the character with the higher Agility acts first . If both characters have the same Agility, they make an Opposed Agility Test to see who acts first ."

It's good to have your players stats handy as you can make some dice rolls for them and then say "Sorry you didn't notice anything" or in case someone has paranoid talent "You feel your neck hairs raising as you notice something is foul"

And I use software to make dice rolls so I can show my players how I rolled for them after declaring they are suprised so no one can say I have cheated. Not that they are demanding it as they know I don't fudge or cheat on rolls.

Even in OW a character can only take actions on his turn. Therefore when a character uses the overwatch attack he is interrupting the active character (even in the middle of a run action) and temporarily becomes the active character until the overwatch attack is resolved. The defending character is no longer the active character until the attack is resolved. If the defending character is aware of the overwatching character he may dodge if possible.

In the OW errata (I think?) it specifically states that you cannot Evade an Overwatch attack.

I know... different game line.

So WS 50 guy can get max 5 hits per melee weapon, so total for dual wielder would be 10. Dodging all those is quite a feat, so you would have to roll 10 DoS in Dodge/parry for not gettin hit.

The chance of Dodging 2x5 attacks with a Dodge of 50 and Step Aside is higher than the chance of making 2x5 attacks, actually. I think. So it is less of a feat than getting those 10 hits.

EDIT: Math time!

WS50 - 10 (Lightning Attack) - 10 (Two-Weapon Wielder) = 30%... actually he can't get 5 x 2 = 10 hits, he can only get 3 x 2 = 6 hits. Around half the time, he will get zero hits.

vs. Dodge of 50%.

The chance of getting 3x2 = 6 hits is 1%.

Thc change of Dodging (or Parrying) 3x2 = 6 hits is 30 x .3 = 9%.

Yeah.

Even in OW a character can only take actions on his turn. Therefore when a character uses the overwatch attack he is interrupting the active character (even in the middle of a run action) and temporarily becomes the active character until the overwatch attack is resolved. The defending character is no longer the active character until the attack is resolved. If the defending character is aware of the overwatching character he may dodge if possible.

In the OW errata (I think?) it specifically states that you cannot Evade an Overwatch attack.

I know... different game line.

Different line, more evolved (better) rules.

In the OW errata (I think?) it specifically states that you cannot Evade an Overwatch attack.

I know... different game line.

No.

If it did I would have seen it when I checked the errata when doing my research for the above post.

As for other comments. Please refrain from moving the goalposts.

When another character activates his overwatch the active character's turn is interrupted so the overwatching character can make an attack. The target character cannot move away from the killzone before the attack takes place for instance (which would be possible if he were active at the same time as the shooter) since he cannot do anything until the attacker has resolved the attack. Overwatch is similar to delay (not identical, but similar) in which the normal initiative order is modified allowing a character to take his turn (using actions which can only be used on said character's turn) outside of normal initiative order.

A standard attack, semi-auto burst, and full-auto bursts are all attack actions which cost a Half, full, and full action to use. A character cannot use these actions outside of his own turn. Overwatch allows a character to use one of these actions outside his own initiative order, allowing him to have a limited Turn to carry out those attacks outside of its normal initiative order.

It would be interesting to see if anyone would be so pro-"no reaction" if their GM ever used it intelligently against the players. Say a platoon of veteran heavy infantry troops with 12 twin-linked scoped lascannons with the following conditions: Gun 1 fires at first target (Astartes) who comes around the corner, gun two fires at second (or first if it isn't killed), gun three the third, etc.. and being a good GM he doesn't tell you what just shot (and likely) killed you, as your fellow kill-team members wouldn't actually know, they'd just see you get hit and fall over with a gaping hole in your chest.

Yeah, TPK sure is fun.

It would be interesting to see if anyone would be so pro-"no reaction" if their GM ever used it intelligently against the players. Say a platoon of veteran heavy infantry troops with 12 twin-linked scoped lascannons with the following conditions: Gun 1 fires at first target (Astartes) who comes around the corner, gun two fires at second (or first if it isn't killed), gun three the third, etc.. and being a good GM he doesn't tell you what just shot (and likely) killed you, as your fellow kill-team members wouldn't actually know, they'd just see you get hit and fall over with a gaping hole in your chest.

Yeah, TPK sure is fun.

1. The GM can TPK you anyway and anytime he feels like it. This rule is bad because the GM could use it to TPK you isn't a very useful argument because it applies to almost every rule in the game.

2. Your example is actually pretty bad at doing what is supposed to be doing. Even if you were allowed to dodge the first attack (and if you weren't wearing termie armor, if you rolled high enough as marines suck at dodging etc.) you only have 1 Reaction. Let's say yo dodge the first Lascannon shot.Now you're back to square one vs the remaining 11.

3. If the first guy goes around the corner without peeking first (which since AFAIK you can't delay/Overwatch/whatever Called Shots means they'd be shooting him in a situation where everything other than his head has a ton of cover) and the kill-team do go around the corner without taking any precautions after the first guy dies, then they deserve to get aTPK.

I'm very new to the system and our group has just had its second fight. After rolling an insanely good attack (seriously, like a 1 when I needed less than 104), an ork was able to dodge the bullet and take 0 damage. Seems like Dodge (and probably parry) are all or nothing. So is there a way (traits, etc) to make it more difficult for someone to dodge/parry your attack?

The DH2 Beta is testing making Dodge and Parry opposed tests rather than flat pass/fail checks.

I'm very new to the system and our group has just had its second fight. After rolling an insanely good attack (seriously, like a 1 when I needed less than 104), an ork was able to dodge the bullet and take 0 damage. Seems like Dodge (and probably parry) are all or nothing. So is there a way (traits, etc) to make it more difficult for someone to dodge/parry your attack?

The DH2 Beta is testing making Dodge and Parry opposed tests rather than flat pass/fail checks.

The result of that is going to be a lot more hits.

The result of that is going to be a lot more hits.

Especially with semi and full auto, which will become nigh-undodgeable (assuming that the SA/FA system is not changed).

Accurate will become even scarier, because the same die roll that gives you more damage will make the attack harder to avoid. Ditto Razor Sharp and other weapon qualities.

One balance is auto fire going to negative mods instead of positive. But it really can be trivial to get +30 to hit mods. There's no competing way to do the same with Dodge/Parry mods. Hence why I think opposed tests for hit/avoidance are a truly terrible idea: offense scales much more quickly than defense.

I had a huge uproar amongst my players when we first tried out the combat system - of course because a truly beautiful melee attack with a truckload of DoS was parried with a barely successful test. We even tried using Parry as an opposed skill, but an encounter with genestealers (and their 60+ Ag) demonstrated why it's such a bad idea. It nearly broke the game. Since then, we agreed that however perfectly you aim your chainsword, if someone puts something in the way, even clumsily, it still throws your attack off target.

I'm still a bit unclear on the topic of multiple attacks though. A standard attack is just a half-action, so even a mediocre enemy could theoretically attack twice in its round, while you can parry only once. How do you handle this? Ruling that the 2nd attack connects every time seems a bit harsh for me. The characters are still on the first level, mind you, so no fancy talents are factored in at the moment; think very basic, very vanilla tactical SMs.

EDIT: I just checked the core rulebook following a heads-up in a different thread, and I found the answer. So apparently one cannot use two half actions of the same subtype in the same round. Huh. Yay for research!

I had a huge uproar amongst my players when we first tried out the combat system - of course because a truly beautiful melee attack with a truckload of DoS was parried with a barely successful test.

This is why Only War's Swift/Lightning Attack are great because they work like auto fire, so a barely-successful parry will only negate one of possibly several full hits. Of course, in DW RAW, most enemies only have 1 Reaction and Swift/Lighting is going to be 2-3+ attack rolls (more if TWF is used).

I was thinking about something like this;

If attacked by multiple hits - furious assault or swift attack - players roll their parry as normal. If they succeed by more DoS than the attack against them, they will be given the opportunity to parry a second attack. I was thinking that having a second melee weapon (TWW talent) would grant an additional DoS to the defender.

What do you think? Is it still stacked too heavily in the defender's favor?

We cannot forget what a parry is though. You aren't resisting force with force, i.e. putting something in the way. To stop a sword a la hollywood sword blocking, you have to be around 3 or 4 times stronger than the other person. (Was going to say 2 times, but the muscles used to hold the sword in "blocking" position are less used than those used for swinging so...)

A Parry is using your skill to strike the attacking weapon in such a way it is deflected away from your person. You aren't stopping the attack, just nudging it a few inches to the side.

EIther way, both methods of parrying have their positives and detractors. I personnaly prefer the DW version as a melee centric character has the opportunity to earn additional parries. While the OW version may seem better at first glance, as musungu brought up, super melee characters can become practically unkillable in melee with their 60+ WS + a (possible?) 10-20+ parry rating. Combine that with high damage, high armor pen, and rediculously fast movement and you have a recipe for tedium as the party either gets TPKed by enemies doing 5-6 hits average and can't be hit due to a rediculous parry, or sits there for 2 hours rolling dice at a couple of enemies till one finally takes enough damage to kill it by bombing parry rolls.

It's very difficult to have a character that does an average of 5-6 hits in Only War: a Genestealer -- the apex of meleedom -- with WS 65, Ambidextrous, Two-Weapon Wielder, Multiple Arms (4), and Lightning Attack has 5 hits on average. (If ya don't believe me, do the math. )

I don't get why people think that a high DoS standard attack should be hard to parry -- as if Degrees of Success were real things as opposed to an artifact of the the rules -- but that's another story.

Interestingly, the genestealer was the exact example I had used to represent a character with a large number of attacks combined with high WS to parry most, if not all (on average, since there is no penalty to parry while there is for multiple attacks) attacks going his way.

I think the issue is more with parrying.

The Genestealer is supposed to carve apart things in close combat, and it only has an average of 5 hits. I don't think even the Keeper of Secrets as written up in BC gets more hits on average, but I'd have to do the math.

****, how does Multiple Limbs affect melee attacks?

****, how does Multiple Limbs affect melee attacks?

In which game? They work differently in DH/RT/DW than in BC/OW.

Ah, sorry. Deathwatch.

It gives you one extra attack in DW, if I remember right. So a Genestealer has four attacks (3 for Lightning Attack + 1 for Multiple Limbs).

Oh wow, so a creature with swift attack and multiple limbs would have 4.

Remind me, swift attack/lightning attack does NOT stack with Furious Assault, right??

Oh wow, so a creature with swift attack and multiple limbs would have 4.

Remind me, swift attack/lightning attack does NOT stack with Furious Assault, right??

Right, Furious Assault is its own thing.

A creature with Swift Attack and Multiple Limbs would have 3.

Now it is unclear to me, and never explicitly spelled out in the books (in DC/RT/DW), how this interacts with Two-Weapon Wielder.

If you have a critter with Lightning Attack, Multiple Limbs, Ambidextrous, Two-Weapon Wielder, and scything talons and rending claws, does it have 3 attacks with lightning attack with one weapon + extra tattack from ML with main weapon + 1 attack from extra weapon? Or two attacks from extra weapon because it has 4 arms?

As far as I remember multiple arms only gives an extra attack to multi-attack actions, so I'd say no to extra attack for offhand. All in all, 4 Attacks with one + 1 attack with the other hand are quite enough ^^