In play, I don't see dropped weapons becoming narrative tools because of their frequency. Literally every combat I've played in has seen people dropping weapons when they want to switch. That's no longer a narratively interesting thing to have happen. I can take any crappy system and use creativity to make it mean something. That doesn't mean the system can't be improved. I'll ask again, to everyone, what is your actual play experience with players dropping weapons?

My actual experience with players dropping weapons is that it's entirely a non-issue. Your problem with your players dropping items is likely more a facet of your players' personal gaming culture than it is a fault in the game system.

The ready action has never been a problem at my table. PCs dropping items has never been an issue at my table either, it usually means that they are in a serious hurry for a narrative reason and it actually makes sense from an RP standpoint. If the devs really have the time to devote to such tedium, I'd suggest that the rule be rewritten to allow PCs to stow a weapon as part of a ready action to draw another weapon. In my experience this sort of thing should be left to house-ruling and is hardly evidence of poor game design.

Before you decide to browbeat me for disagreeing with you, Nimsim, consider that you started this discussion for a reason. If you didn't wish to discuss it, if you just wanted to hear your own ideas echoed back at you, you shouldn't have posted on the forums.

I've only argued when people make points that are arguable, and I only browbeat when people are adding in non-sense reasoning. You've made your argument and also bothered to express how your gaming group handles it, so no issue there. I accept that, though the reason I've brought this up is that I saw the same thing happening in the PBP I'm doing on this board, so I am beginning to suspect it doesn't have to do with my group alone. I don't want my opinions echoed back at me, I'd just like to hear people's honest response to the questions, rather than pretending I didn't ask them to make a point about how getting rid of the Ready Action is Mary Sue Magic or causing players to run around swapping out different rocket launchers.

I don't know that I'd call this kind of thing tedium, given that it's one of the basic actions for combat, and also given the things that the devs have actually worked on for the updates. Still, it seems like you feel it would be an inoffensive change to make to the game.

I've recently played some other games which abstract actions down your character just doing something significant and making things like drawing a weapon. It didn't seem like it created a huge problem with the narrative. I'm fine with making drawing cost an action if the weapon is obviously not in an easily accessible holster, or even just penalizing a roll. In fact, this is a case where I'd be totally fine with penalizing, because its for the sake of moving forward to the more interesting action of combat, rather than book-keeping actions.

I don't know that I'd call this kind of thing tedium, given that it's one of the basic actions for combat, and also given the things that the devs have actually worked on for the updates. Still, it seems like you feel it would be an inoffensive change to make to the game.

There's your problem, Nimsim. Any change to the game is offensive. WH40kRPG was perfected in OW and our task now is to iron out the theming in porting it to an Inquisition setting.

There's your problem, Nimsim. Any change to the game is offensive. WH40kRPG was perfected in OW and our task now is to iron out the theming in porting it to an Inquisition setting.

Oddly enough, some changes can actually be bad, even if you try to sarcastically imply that they aren't.

There's your problem, Nimsim. Any change to the game is offensive. WH40kRPG was perfected in OW and our task now is to iron out the theming in porting it to an Inquisition setting.

Oddly enough, some changes can actually be bad, even if you try to sarcastically imply that they aren't.

Thank you for illustrating my point.

You'll note that no one who heavily advocates for changing things is not putting any thought into the changes. That is the difference. One side sees a lot of problems and wants to address them all with changes and is willing to take an informed risk by trying out new things and *gasp* playtesting them to see what their own problems are. The other side thinks that everything can just be fixed with slight modifications and that any assertion that the core mechanic has intrinsic problems can be brushed aside under the logic that if the system has existed for any amount of time that it must not be that flawed.

As to ready actions, I like them because they drive home a bit of the unpreparedness suffered when PC's get taken by surprise. And no, I wouldn't miss their absence just because they were there before. The earliest games I played had no mechanic for weapon readying and it irked me.

As to stow actions, my feelings are a little less strong; at least for this game. I don't know how much of a problem it would be in DH, but I've run other systems where every different type of weapon has some kind of advantage. Combined with generous or non-existent encumbrance systems, this encourages "swiss army characters" who are constantly switching from one weapon to another as the conditions of the battle changes. As long as that's causing them to lose out on attacks here and there, that's fine; but if they could do it instantly, it would be really annoying to other players carrying a more realistic load of a single mean weapon and perhaps a backup. But again, I'm not familiar enough with the weapon options and carrying capacities in DH to know if this sort of thing would be a likely problem.

As to dropping weapons, most of the time it doesn't matter. This causes characters to get comfortable doing it, which makes things interesting on that less common occasion when they have to beat a hasty retreat or are fighting on a narrow catwalk over a long drop. I had one player try to remedy this by tethering every single weapon he had to his belt. He stopped doing that the first time one of his dropped weapons got tangled in a conveyor belt and he almost got killed.

So in summation, I'd rather see ready actions kept in. Either way, it's easier for those who don't like them to just drop them than for people who want them to put the back in.

I've always found weapon readying to be a dull mechanic. It just creates a mentality where the PCs are desperately scrabbling to say "I draw my weapon!" the second there's any slight threat of danger, plus the aforementioned weapon dropping issues.

I'd say make readying a non-heavy weapon a free action once per turn, and make stowing a free action no matter what. That way you still won't get people switching weapons at breakneck speed like they're playing DOOM, but at the same time there's no real burden on your actions for drawing a weapon, or switching once a turn.

I've always found weapon readying to be a dull mechanic. It just creates a mentality where the PCs are desperately scrabbling to say "I draw my weapon!" the second there's any slight threat of danger

You should honestly look at this as an opportunity.

Sometimes it isn't best to draw your weapon at any slight breeze.

I mean, if you're running a nearly combat-only game where the acolytes only ever draw once, and almost always win the fight, then you may find it somewhat tedious.

But for an investigation game about subtlety, there is some real helpfulness to having rules that assist in the generation of threats.

Will dropping a weapon leave behind some evidence? Will the next corner be an assassin, or a regular arbite who's now arresting you for brandishing a weapon?

Is he actually an assassin that followed the characteristic scuff marks of dropped lasrifes?

It's perhaps as Vorzakk says: This is a very easy rule to remove if you don't like it, but likely more annoying to add if you do like some more 'survival horror'.

I like what it lends to the game. Character's with quick draw can ready for free already, which gives them an edge on those who can't and in ambushes. In terms of 'coolness' this has allowed me to do several things that wouldn't be possible if both characters can quick draw for free.

It also creates interesting situations where Players without quick draw have to decide if they are going to un-holster their guns before something happens, which can create some dynamic tension because having weapons drawn might make a subsequent deceive test harder.

Correct me if I'm wrong, because edition creep may have gotten the better of me and I'm not sure which version of the rules I'm remembering, but doesn't 'ready' allow you to stow one weapon and draw another as a single half action, instead of taking a full turn to change guns?

You'll note that no one who heavily advocates for changing things is not putting any thought into the changes. That is the difference. One side sees a lot of problems and wants to address them all with changes and is willing to take an informed risk by trying out new things and *gasp* playtesting them to see what their own problems are. The other side thinks that everything can just be fixed with slight modifications and that any assertion that the core mechanic has intrinsic problems can be brushed aside under the logic that if the system has existed for any amount of time that it must not be that flawed.

Neatly summing up the reason playtesting the first beta evolved into what is rapidly turning out to be a complete re-write of the system.

But on topic: yeah, we've dropped Quick Draw entirely for the moment and turned Ready/Stow of light/medium (aka pistol/basic & most melee-) weapons into a Free Action that can be taken Out of Turn.

Our group is very much a waaay down low-powered bunch of gritty grimdork lovers. But throwing weapons around - which happened - in tactical combat using miniatures and proper terrain (read: stuff we build, not a hex/grid mat you can draw/erase on) primarily brings fiddlyness to the table. Pretty much anything more elaborate than a blast marker or a single die on a mini's base becomes an obstacle to actually playing.

I'm happy to report this change has so far not transformed anyone who wasn't into a Mary Sue, nor produced weird situations where an actor juggles weapons infinitely - though technically I don't suppose anything in our preliminary rules re-write would prevent either. But perhaps our group is simply more interested in playing the game than in gaming the game - a quality I suspect isn't terribly unusual.

It has, however, made one player drop what had become his usual edge-of-seat-preempt-the-GM-with-my-character-draws-his-gun routine. Which, like the little plastic guns scattered all over the place, shan't be missed.

Veeery tangentially: I'd really love a completely abstract "quick narrative combat" type system for when the actual fight matters less than the fact that it occurred. We've experimented a little bit with resolving such things like Extended Tests, but... We've so far failed to come up with something that feels right.

Veeery tangentially: I'd really love a completely abstract "quick narrative combat" type system for when the actual fight matters less than the fact that it occurred. We've experimented a little bit with resolving such things like Extended Tests, but... We've so far failed to come up with something that feels right.

Gumshoe handles a lot of contested conflicts by establishing an initiative order and then basically resolving things as each person involved rolling the relative skill (with modifiers and etc) until someone fails. It's a decent way to do quick and dirty conflict scenes. It's got slightly more granular rules for combat, but they're still relatively light. Maybe give it a look? There's an SRD document out there if you look hard enough.

I'm happy to report this change has so far not transformed anyone who wasn't into a Mary Sue, nor produced weird situations where an actor juggles weapons infinitely

It's certainly not a guarantee for every single person, nor may it ever happen in your group.

But the probability overall is raised by such a rules change for seemingly little gain: Most of the people who claim they don't like it just changed it. While the people who did like it seemed to appreciate the detail.

It's perhaps not really about 'infinite' weapon juggling, but the 'swiss army knife' effect as was mentioned:

"Okay, this round I pull out my longlas, aim, and shoot the back one."

"Alright, this round I pull out my hand flamer and burn the hall."

"Now I'd like to take out my plasma pistol and fire it on Maximal, after aiming of course."

"Okay while that recharges I'll lay down a grenade from my Mezoa pattern launcher."

"Right, they got close, I'll pull out my Mezoa flamer and douse them."

Yeah, that's only 28kg, by the way. All basic weapons and pistols. Rogue Trader.

Since your first rant was directed at me (Admittedly in response to my frustrated post,) I'll answer. Please bear in mind that this is not really intended to stroke my ego but to illustrate my response to your "Do you actually play games?" question. I have been playing these games for 37 years! (Since Gygax/Arneson's first Greyhawk/Blackmoor pamphlets!) Given that fact I think I can safely say I've "Played these games"! Since CPS has mentioned he used to know Dave I suspect he's been at this a while as well! I can also say that the number of times a player has dropped one item in order to ready another in my game has happened too many times for me to count! Since I wouldn't mention someone's name on this forum I will simply say that I have indeed had player's that have attempted to abuse this to one degree or another and a few stick out in my memory! This is at the heart of my personal frustration with this permissive attitude! Calling a given action "uninteresting" is simply a Pejorative way of saying "I don't want to be limited like that!" I am not argueing for Hyper realism in a fantasy setting! Contrary to the multiple personal attacks I've seen here what I and I think others are saying is an argument for immersion. At one point someone mentioned videogames:Has anyone ever played a videogame where your character is carrying heavy weapons, grenades, machine guns and who knows what and said Huh? How is that possible? Atomaki has stated that He's a veteran so I'll ask him: If you're carrying an M60 or M240G how many other weapons will you be carrying. Having hauled around an M60 on my ship I know my answer would be that that's about it!

So Our hypothetical character (A Sage just to illustrate my point!) is marching along with his rifle (no Bayonet) when he is ambushed in melee. He passes his awareness check but loses initiative. The enemy attacks and our intrepid character survives and poof! He is now armed with his power sword and performs a lightning attack that turns his foe into chop suey! The VERY NEXT round another enemy tries to fire at him with an autogun at 50 meters! Since hero guy obviously has Vindicare like agility (Why wouldn't he!) the bad guy of course misses! Poof! Super Rambo now has his Storm bolter in hand (His power sword safely resheathed) and has time to Aim and Fire (Full auto of course!) and creates an instant red spot over there too! Does this sound "Interesting" to you? It sounds ridiculous to me! And believe me I've seen players try to tell me they could do it!

Since your first rant was directed at me (Admittedly in response to my frustrated post,) I'll answer. Please bear in mind that this is not really intended to stroke my ego but to illustrate my response to your "Do you actually play games?" question. I have been playing these games for 37 years! (Since Gygax/Arneson's first Greyhawk/Blackmoor pamphlets!) Given that fact I think I can safely say I've "Played these games"! Since CPS has mentioned he used to know Dave I suspect he's been at this a while as well! I can also say that the number of times a player has dropped one item in order to ready another in my game has happened too many times for me to count! Since I wouldn't mention someone's name on this forum I will simply say that I have indeed had player's that have attempted to abuse this to one degree or another and a few stick out in my memory! This is at the heart of my personal frustration with this permissive attitude! Calling a given action "uninteresting" is simply a Pejorative way of saying "I don't want to be limited like that!" I am not argueing for Hyper realism in a fantasy setting! Contrary to the multiple personal attacks I've seen here what I and I think others are saying is an argument for immersion. At one point someone mentioned videogames:Has anyone ever played a videogame where your character is carrying heavy weapons, grenades, machine guns and who knows what and said Huh? How is that possible? Atomaki has stated that He's a veteran so I'll ask him: If you're carrying an M60 or M240G how many other weapons will you be carrying. Having hauled around an M60 on my ship I know my answer would be that that's about it!

So Our hypothetical character (A Sage just to illustrate my point!) is marching along with his rifle (no Bayonet) when he is ambushed in melee. He passes his awareness check but loses initiative. The enemy attacks and our intrepid character survives and poof! He is now armed with his power sword and performs a lightning attack that turns his foe into chop suey! The VERY NEXT round another enemy tries to fire at him with an autogun at 50 meters! Since hero guy obviously has Vindicare like agility (Why wouldn't he!) the bad guy of course misses! Poof! Super Rambo now has his Storm bolter in hand (His power sword safely resheathed) and has time to Aim and Fire (Full auto of course!) and creates an instant red spot over there too! Does this sound "Interesting" to you? It sounds ridiculous to me! And believe me I've seen players try to tell me they could do it!

So...you've had players try to play the game in a certain way more times than you can count and rather than seeing that as a problem with the system you see it as a problem with the players? I know that people aren't perfect, but come on man, surely this sends some kind of message that there's an issue at hand.

You gave your most hyperbolic example so I'll give mine.

The sage is ambushed by an assassin with an autogun. He fails his awareness roll and is taken flat-footed. Thank the emperor, though, the assassin somehow missed! The sage on his turn dives behind a dumpster, pulls out his stub revolver, and takes a potshot at the assassin, missing. As the sage hides behind cover, another assassin kicks open a door beside him and rushes in with a knife! The sage is pierced by the blade, but not out of the fight. The autogun assassin rakes the dumpster with fire, but again doesn't hit the sage. The sage then stows his revolver, grabs his staff, and takes a measured swing at the assassin with the knife.

You know what felt most unrealistic about that? The sage drawing a weapon in melee. So I will actually revise my suggestion to this: Readying and stowing is normally a free action. It costs a half action to ready or stow a heavy weapon. It costs a half action to ready or stow something while engaged in melee.

Does that seem reasonable to you?

You'll note that no one who heavily advocates for changing things is not putting any thought into the changes. That is the difference. One side sees a lot of problems and wants to address them all with changes and is willing to take an informed risk by trying out new things and *gasp* playtesting them to see what their own problems are. The other side thinks that everything can just be fixed with slight modifications and that any assertion that the core mechanic has intrinsic problems can be brushed aside under the logic that if the system has existed for any amount of time that it must not be that flawed.

I think that's horribly over simplifying the issue because it makes you feel vindicated.

As I have said in a previous thread, there is a huge difference between saying "This system does not need improvement" and "I don't think the changes you are proposing are the best way to improve this thing". There is a level of play testing going on, for example in this thread opinions are split on something that many people have already houseruled and had a mixed experience with. Dismissing those who have had a bad experience (whatever their feeling on why that occurred) with this change and are therefore against it as just being the equivalent of RPG luddites shows an incredible bias on your part.

The other problem is that there are a large portion of players who like the current system, recognise its faults and would like to see it perfected through minor changes. Having that opinion doesn't make them stupid, its just a preference. I would be the first to admit that DH1 has become a mess, not least in part to the clear difference in design goals between BI and FFG which has lead to some... inconsistencies and poor compatibility with the later FFG only produced material. It needs an overhaul, and it needs to be made internally consistent, that much there is no denying. However there are people who don't believe that means a full re-write of the core mechanic is necessary or even beneficial (for example it would make large parts of previously published material incompatible).

You can play 40k with any system (within reason), if you want to see the system rebuilt from the ground up wouldn't it just be more prudent to use one of those for your gaming group instead?

@The Inquisition: I guess a situation like that could arise without the GM deliberately manufacturing it in Rogue Trader. And since I'm at least theoretically still an advocate of cross-Core rules consistency, I have to agree our way isn't a good way of handling it.

However, dropping weapons all over the field of combat is problematic in terms of housekeeping. That was our initial reason for changing it, actually. In the process we realised the ability to switch weapons in, for example, the middle of close combat, was more fun for us.

Also, I'm not convinced the combat mechanics is the right place to address the Swiss Army Knife Issue. Without doing any deep thinking on the problem, my feeling is that will remain an issue whether or not drawing/stowing is an infinitely repeatable free action.

But... RAW is problematic for miniature combat in a great many ways (and it seems very few people play that way), and RAW draw/stow at least reigns in any Swiss Army Knife Issues. So... Perhaps RAW is the way to go.

Gumshoe handles a lot of contested conflicts by establishing an initiative order and then basically resolving things as each person involved rolling the relative skill (with modifiers and etc) until someone fails. It's a decent way to do quick and dirty conflict scenes. It's got slightly more granular rules for combat, but they're still relatively light. Maybe give it a look? There's an SRD document out there if you look hard enough.

I actually have NBA (but no one to play it with *sulk*) so I'll definitely give that a look. Thanks for the suggestion

Quick Draw should probably be axed if people are this intent on keeping Ready actions significant. No mechanic that can be totally invalidated with a tier 1 talent that can be bought at chargen is a mechanic that's considered remotely significant by players.

You gave your most hyperbolic example so I'll give mine.

The sage is ambushed by an assassin with an autogun. He fails his awareness roll and is taken flat-footed. Thank the emperor, though, the assassin somehow missed! The sage on his turn dives behind a dumpster, pulls out his stub revolver, and takes a potshot at the assassin, missing. As the sage hides behind cover, another assassin kicks open a door beside him and rushes in with a knife! The sage is pierced by the blade, but not out of the fight. The autogun assassin rakes the dumpster with fire, but again doesn't hit the sage. The sage then stows his revolver, grabs his staff, and takes a measured swing at the assassin with the knife.

You know what felt most unrealistic about that? The sage drawing a weapon in melee. So I will actually revise my suggestion to this: Readying and stowing is normally a free action. It costs a half action to ready or stow a heavy weapon. It costs a half action to ready or stow something while engaged in melee.

Does that seem reasonable to you?

More so, But try this: The sage is ambushed by an assassin with an autogun. He fails awareness and is somehow missed anyway! The Sage dives for cover and draws his pistol. (a move and ready action) As bullets fly into the stack of crates in front of him the Sage hear's crash and turns just in time to see another assassin charging at him with a knife. Using the staff in his other hand (Staves are rarely actually stowed. It's a walking stick after all!) the sage manages to ward off what might well have been a fatal attack! ( A standard Parry reaction). Realizing that he's in trouble the Sage panic fires with his stub automatic (Semi-auto burst,All out attack ) at the nearest Assassin and luckily hits twice! The Assassin is not so lucky and fails is dodge. He goes down gurgling blood. Now hiding behind cover that's rapidly disintegrating, The Sage calls on his com bead for his "Tactical support" (Warrior) to get his a** in gear and become useful right now!

In this example the only thing lost from the entire engagement is ONE shot that in your example missed anyway! Note that this was done exactly as the RAW would have it. In my opinion, This engagement gives more of the "feel" of just how desperate the Sage's situation is!

BTW: My problem was not in not seeing it as a problem with the system since I have seen essentially the patterns in multiple game systems. The problem is that as a Gm you must enforce some sort of economy of action! Whether you are an advocate of AP or the current Half/full, reaction system is irrelevent. Drawing a weapon takes time. Stowing it takes time. Being able to draw a weapon and immediately put it to use takes discipline and skill (Or, A talent).

Do you see what I'm getting at?

The difference in your example is the Sage spends a whole turn doing nothing particularly interesting or exciting.

The difference in your example is the Sage spends a whole turn doing nothing particularly interesting or exciting.

Ducking for cover while bullets fly around you is not exciting? You are a particularly jaded person! Having been shot at I'm here to say it gets the adrenaline going pretty good! Had our Sage been a warrior or outcast with the quickdraw talent he would have possibly reacted differently. My point was meant to illustrate that the RAW in this case seems to be a more 'natural' action flow. If you hate it that much than by all means, house rule it away! But I wouldn't support taking it out of the rules.

If a talent that you can get with a session's worth of experience is all you need to totally ignore a gameplay mechanic, why the hell is it a mechanic in the first place?

If a talent that you can get with a session's worth of experience is all you need to totally ignore a gameplay mechanic, why the hell is it a mechanic in the first place?

The cost depends on the aptitudes, meaning that some characters will more easily have an edge in firefights. From experience, yes everyone buys it eventually, but that just feels like a natural progression from "Adept who has rarely used a gun before" to "Adept who has been serving the inquisition and accepts gunfights are now a depressingly common part of his existence".

Removing it changes the dynamic of certain characters. If I want to play a gunslinging desperado I like that I can draw my gun faster that the average guy. It lets me play the character in the way I imagine them acting knowing that I have the edge if things go to hell. It also stops the initiative roll being the be all and end all in determining who does what first. This guy might go before me, but he'll have to snap fire if he draws his gun while I can draw, aim and fire.

Since your first rant was directed at me (Admittedly in response to my frustrated post,) I'll answer. Please bear in mind that this is not really intended to stroke my ego but to illustrate my response to your "Do you actually play games?" question. I have been playing these games for 37 years! (Since Gygax/Arneson's first Greyhawk/Blackmoor pamphlets!) Given that fact I think I can safely say I've "Played these games"! Since CPS has mentioned he used to know Dave I suspect he's been at this a while as well!

Just so we're clear the post in which I said I played games with Arneson was a facetious attempt to argue from authority some grognardy position. Never knew the guy (I'm not that old).

On topic: In our short lived OW game, one of the players used a plasma cannon and had disastrous luck firing the **** thing. It overheated a half dozen times in 2-3 sessions. RAW, you take damage, or you drop it. So he dropped it every time. His turn following that was always the same: half action to pick it up, half action to brace it. He was not impressed with the thing.

If a talent that you can get with a session's worth of experience is all you need to totally ignore a gameplay mechanic, why the hell is it a mechanic in the first place?

That argument could probably be made for many talents. The answer is that some people will chose to spend the XP on it and others won't; leading to a more interesting diversity of characters.