Not entirely random. There's a reason that their Facebook says that the Plaguebearer excerpt is "useful for those who wanted to add [them] to your sessions of Blessings Unheralded". During Origins, Ross ran just about every game of Blessings Unheralded and made a habit of including two encounters with Plaguebearers in it. Plus, they were also featured in the adventure that Ross ran for the Bell of Lost Souls Twitch stream.
Jesus christ is it just me or is that toxic 7 on plaguebearers really strong and, if I am reading this right, soak 7 against every hit makes them impossible to put down?
I just threw some dice around so this is far from scientific, but testing the tier 3 guardsman and then the marine from the Free RPG module the guardsman got nicked first turn by the toxic sword and went down, then the marine spent 3 rounds to manage all of 1 hit that bypassed soak for 3 wounds, before he was unable to soak any more hits from the sword without going down so he took the hit, failed the test, and went down too.
I wasn't using any... I wanna say Glory is the personal resource and Wrath is the one that comes up on 6s? Anyway I was only using the resources that actually rolled up in the little simulations, I'm sure they would have changed things, but I am wondering if the Toxic trait is supposed to bypass all soak (meaning damage soak, not the actual ability to soak, god that's gonna be confusing...)
Should resilience minus armour (so just toughness) reduce the damage from it or something? I mean a plasguebearer has toxic 7 on his sword and a marine all of 8 wounds.
I dunno, this has probably turned into a very rambly post, I'm just not sure if this is the system working as intended or if I am missing a bunch because I'm trying to fiddle with a third of the actual rules that would be involved.
What really makes the Plaguebearer hard to kill is the Disgustingly Resilient rule. The GM doesn't have to pay Ruin to make Soak rolls for it and ti is immune to Shock. It still can only Soak one wound per Icon or two per Exalted Icon.
Still, its Defense is only 5 and its Resilience is only 9. Every player character should be able to hit the thing. Most are able to inflict a Wound on it, too. The Guardsman might struggle (the lasgun's base Damage Rating is 7+2ED). The Commissiar's power sword (11+1ED), the Pater's Mastercrafted Chainsword and the bolters used by the Space Marine and the Sister of Battle (all DR 10+1 ED), and the Acolyte's chainsword (9+1ED) can do it serious damage.
Remember that if you have spare Exalted Icons left from from a Melee or Ballistic Skill test, you can shift one Exalted Icon to add an extra dice of damage. Three of the player characters benefit from Rapid Fire and gain extra damage dice that way (one for the Guardsman, two for the Sister and the Space Marine). Called Shots are your friend. Spend Glory for extra damage dice or increase the severity of a Critical Hit.
As for its Toxicity, remember that it only takes a successful Medicae Test to end the effect. The DN is X-2, where X is the weapon's Toxic Rating. Dealing with the Plaguesword, the DN would be 5. The Guardsman has a Medicae of 8. I think you can also Soak damage from Toxic weapons. Not 100% sure.
Glory is the group resource. It is generated when a player rolls an Exalted Icon on their Wrath die or chooses to Shift a spare Exalted Icon to the Glory on a successful Test. Wrath is the individual player resource. A player gains Wrath by good role-playing or completing their in-character objectives. Ruin is the GM resource. The GM gains Ruin when player characters fail their Fear or Corruption test or they get an Exalted Icon on their Wrath die. (Also: if players can't think up a narrative complication from rolling a 1 on their Wrath die, they can choose to give the GM a point of Ruin instead.)
Ok well I was playing most of that correctly then. I didn't know the DN on toxic was X-2, the quickstart I have just said X but I don't think it would help much. Yes in a real group scenario a medicae test should be possible but my main problem is does Toxic bypass all damage reduction from resilience?
Because if so it can walk up to the marine, hit him easy because it's only Defense 3, damage is 11+ 1 dice against total resilience of 11 so a 4+ causes a wound. Then if the marine is wounded he has 5 dice to roll 5 (I thought 7, 5 is better though) successes. If he fails he goes down to 0 wounds. He can soak, and in my little roll through he did soak the first two hits to avoid being poisoned, but once he's low on shock he's kinda easy to kill.
I was adding all those nice extra damage dice when trying to hurt the plaugebearer from rapid fire, extra glory, brutal, ect. But damn 7 soak used against every attack is hard to bypass.
I suppose I am just till not sure if this is the system working as intended, because it seems to me like it's a complete coin toss right now whether it's me not really using all the rules and using them correctly, or if marines have just been toned right the hell down to fit into the game. Guardsman I kinda expect to die to a plauge sword easily, but I worry when I see that one's base damage has a 50/50 chance of bypassing power armour.
I’m not sure how you’re calculating the damage for the Plaugebearer and the party members. After getting a successful attack in, you make a damage roll. In the case of the Plaugebearer, you’d be rolling at least one dice of damage. This means that a Plaugebearer should only be getting results of 11 (no Icons), 12 (one Icon), or 13 (an Exalted Icon). You then compare that to the Space Marine’s Resilience of 11. The Space Marine shouldn’t be taking more than two or three Wounds - one or two from the Pleaguesword’s own DR, plus one from Toxic - at the end of the first combat turn.
If the Plaige didn’t get any Icons on its roll, the Space Marine takes 1d3 Shock and doesn’t have to test for Toxicity. If the Plaugebearer rolled an Icon, Space Marine takes a Toughness test against a DN of 7. If the Plaugebearer rolled an Exalted Icon, the Space Marine takes two Wounds and rolls a Toughness year against a DN of 7. After receiving the Wounds from the Plaugebeaer’s attack, the Space Marine can try to Soak. Soaking cost the Space Marine one Shock for the attempt, plus an additional point of Shock for every Wound successfully Soaked. At the end of the turn, the Space Marine would take damage from Toxic. Not sure how much damage that would be. Speculation: If damage is always DR vs Resilience.. Then the Toxicity of the Plaugesword is 7 and the Space Marine’s unmodified Resilience is 6. That means they take a single Wound from Toxicity at the end of each turn.
Try having the Space Marine take the Full Defense action before the Plaugebearer attacks. He halves his base speed and takes an Agility Test (use that Wrath die!). Every Icon adds +1 to his Defense. I assume Exalted Icons add +2? Starter booklet only mentions Icons. The Space Marine has an Agility of 5. After the Plaugebearer’s turn, the Space Marine can also Disengage without suffering a retaliatory opportunity attack from the Plaugebearer. And gives him space to use his bolter.
Quick note on Toxicity. If you're injured by a weapon - like a Plaguesword - with the Toxic keyword, you're making a Toughness test against DN X. If you're making a Medicae test to stop the effect of a Toxic weapon, it's a Medicae test of DN X-2. In both cases, X is the Toxicity of the weapon.
But, yeah. They’re Daemons and they’re supposed to be scary. That is why just one Plaugebearer backed up by Poxwalkers or the Big Bad from Blessings Unheralded is supposed to be a challenge for a full party. Heck, an encounter with two Plaugebearers made the Bell of Lost Souls team cut and run during the livestream.
BlueGrassGamer wrote: I’m not sure how you’re calculating the damage for the Plaigebeaer and the party members. After getting a successful attack in, you make a damage roll. In the case of the Plaigebearer, you’d be rolling at least one dice of damage. This means that a Plaugebearer should only be getting results of 11 (no Icons), 12 (one Icon), or 13 (an Exalted Icon). You then compare that to the Space Marine’s Resilience. If the Plaige didn’t get any Icons on it’d roll, the Space Marine takes 1d3 Shock and doesn’t have to test for Toxicty. If the Plaugebearer rolled an Icon, Space Marine takes a Toughness test against a DN of 7. If the Plaugebearer rolled an Exalted Icon, the Space Marine takes two Wounds and rolls a Toughness year against a DN of 7. After receiving the Wounds from the Plaugebeaer’s attack, the Space Marine can try to Soak. Soaking cost the Space Marine one Shock for the attempt, plus an additional point of Shock for every Wound successfully Soaked. At the end of the turn, the Space Marine would take damage from Toxic. Not sure how much damage that would be. Speculation: if it is just 7, the Space Marine’s Resilience is an unmodified 6. That means they take a single Wound at the end of each turn. A Space Marine shouldn’t be taking more than two or three Wounds - one or two from the Pleaguesword’s own DR, plus one from Toxic - at the end of the first combat turn when in Melee against the Plaugebearer.
Ok thank you yes, that's what I was getting at, if Toxic damage is still absorbed* by Resiliance** (minus armour) then this whole thing makes much more sense.
BlueGrassGamer wrote: Also: try having the Space Marine take the Full Defense action before the Plaugebearer attacks. He halves his base speed and takes an Agility Test (use that Wrath die!). Every Icon adds +1 to his Defense. I assume Exalted Icons add +2? Starter booklet only mentions Icons. The Space Marine has an Agility of 5.
After the Plaugebearer’s turn, the Space Marine can also Disengage without suffering a retaliatory opportunity attack from the Plaugebearer. And gives him space to use his bolter.
Well that just sounds complicated, hopefully it'll be a bit less so when actually playing. The couple of sessions of Blessings Unheralded I ran went fairly smoothly considering it was a bunch of people learning the rules.
BlueGrassGamer wrote: But, yeah. They’re Daemons and they’re supposed to be scary. That is why just one Plaugebearer backed up by Poxwalkers or the Big Bad from Blessings Unheralded is supposed to be a challenge for a full party. Heck, an encounter with two Plaugebearers made the Bell of Lost Souls team cut and run during the livestream.
Yeah see, for a group of acolytes, priests, guardsmen, and maybe even a commissar or SoB that's cool, very Dark Heresy where you're just a mook in a very big, very scary universe and you're up against a real daemon. It feels really weird once you put a marine in the mix though.
*God I am so used to the word 'soak' meaning just passive armour, I keep defaulting to it when I mean Resilience ** Is Resilience without armour (like in this case) just referred to as Toughness or what? It seems dumb to say 'Resilience minus armour' but that's kinda how it's written on the sheet.
I am still sure I'll get this almost as soon as it's out, and have already been working on a several session adventure to try it out with some folks and see what we think, but I'm feeling more cautious than optimistic at this point.
On that note anyone else got any plans on what they're gonna run/play once it's released? I wanna put some players through their paces as a newly minted Inquisitor and warband, off on a seemingly simple job to check out the apparent reappearance of a fellow Inquisitor written off as MIA decades ago, and if possible make contact.
jonolikespie wrote: The combat in this quick start booklet promises to be "a savage, ultraviolent display of carnage and woe" but I ran the numbers and upon hitting 0 wounds with no outside interference you have an 80.06% of stabilizing before you bleed out, and significantly more if you spend a Glory Wrath. The innate soak in the Resilience stat and then a rollable soak on top of that makes this all actually sound really pillowfisted.
BlueGrassGamer wrote: But, yeah. They’re Daemons and they’re supposed to be scary. That is why just one Plaugebearer backed up by Poxwalkers or the Big Bad from Blessings Unheralded is supposed to be a challenge for a full party. Heck, an encounter with two Plaugebearers made the Bell of Lost Souls team cut and run during the livestream.
Yeah see, for a group of acolytes, priests, guardsmen, and maybe even a commissar or SoB that's cool, very Dark Heresy where you're just a mook in a very big, very scary universe and you're up against a real daemon. It feels really weird once you put a marine in the mix though.
What a difference a Plaguebearer or two makes, huh?
jonolikespie wrote: ** Is Resilience without armour (like in this case) just referred to as Toughness or what? It seems dumb to say 'Resilience minus armour' but that's kinda how it's written on the sheet.
It's Resilience. A character's Resilience has two values. One includes the character's armor, and the other value that does not include the character's armor. A Space Marine wearing his armor has a Resilience of 11 while wearing his armor, a Resilience of 6 when not wearing it.
Clearly a couple of Plaguebearers make a huge difference.
Are you sure that's how Resilience works though, I'm looking at the sheet now and it says:
Resilience 11 | (Armour value) 6
A marine also has a Toughness of 5. They nowhere in the quickstart rules explain the math behind it but I took this to mean the marine is Toughness 5 + Armour 6 = Resilience 11.
The wording of Toxic then just says if you fail take X wounds so I initially assumed you just took X. It makes more sense if Toughness is always subtracted from any (or any non mortal?) wounds so that a Toxic (7) weapon doesn't basically 1 hit even marines. Or at least that's how I'm interpreting the quickstart rules.
So with that interpretation I figure "Toughness" is for all intents and purposes the same thing as "Resilience without armour".
Maybe? I'm not able to double check at the moment, I don't have the Starter Booklet to hand.
jonolikespie wrote: I took this to mean the marine is Toughness 5 + Armour 6 = Resilience 11.
So with that interpretation I figure "Toughness" is for all intents and purposes the same thing as "Resilience without armour".
This seems right to me. I'd have to check the Starter Booklet again, or maybe we'll get a clearer answer when the Core Book comes out.
jonolikespie wrote: The wording of Toxic then just says if you fail take X wounds so I initially assumed you just took X. It makes more sense if Toughness is always subtracted from any (or any non mortal?) wounds so that a Toxic (7) weapon doesn't basically 1 hit even marines. Or at least that's how I'm interpreting the quickstart rules..
My reading of the Starter Booklet is this: if you're hit by a Toxic [X] weapon, you make a Toughness test with a DN of X. If you fail, you take damage at the end of every turn. It's not exactly clear what the damage value is. I assume it is X. The Starter Booklet says that damage is determined by checking the Damage Rating against Resilience and/or Toughness. Any excess Damage Rating is then converted into Wounds. To me, that means a Space Marine (Toughness 5) who is hit and wounded by a Plaugesword (Toxic 7) and proceeds to fail his Toughness test would take 2 Wounds at the end of each turn. Wounds can be Soaked, however, so he should still be up for a bit. Until he runs out of Shock, anyway.
That link should get you the discount price of 0. Look for the link on the page it takes you to just under the line that says "And for July, get it for free:"
The Campaign Model
When I was offered the opportunity to craft the Wrath & Glory game line, I jumped at the chance. One of the reasons I was so excited about the prospect was that I could approach Wrath & Glory in a brand-new way. This idea started with the concept of a single, comprehensive core rulebook that would give players the basic rules they would need to play a wide variety of experiences in Warhammer 40,000. From there, I wanted to branch out using a specific, targeted model for the game line that I called “campaigns.”
The idea of a campaign was to provide Wrath & Glory players with a focused, in-depth experience that encompassed different aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Unlike a game line such as, say, Rogue Trader, we would not present dozens of books about a singular place, time, and core activity in the 41st Millennium. Instead, we would use about four books to cover one such experience, covering roughly 4-6 months worth of regular sessions. A discrete, finite campaign that would have a linked set of adventures, detailed setting material, and additional rules and player character options—all of which would be tightly themed to the material. And then we would do that again. And more, and more, allowing us to present several widely different roleplaying experiences in the grim darkness of the far future!
Here’s some of my reasons why I believed in this approach:
Commitment: I’ve found that many gamers find it easier to commit to a campaign if there is a set timeframe. Starting up a new campaign can be easier if you say “This is what we’ll play for the next four-six months,” as opposed to “This is what we’ll play for the next two years.” A clear expectation of how many sessions are going to happen helps people decide whether—and if!—they can join in.
Freshness: Even a genre as broad as “space fantasy” can grow stale if the experiences are too similar to one another. Changing up the themes, tropes, and context of the campaign you play every so often (as my good friend Aaron Allston was very fond of doing!) can keep the game feeling fresh and new.
A Planned Climax: Many campaigns can die out thanks to lack of direction or loss of momentum and interest. If you plan your campaign with an end point in mind, you can include several engaging and memorable story arcs—with the overall arc coming to a satisfying conclusion in the end.
Building a Community: Several gaming groups include GMs and players that participate in events held at gaming stores, conventions, and other gamer gatherings (including websites like Meetup). Using a finite campaign can be a great way to reach out to these groups of players and be appealing to new folks entering the hobby.
Shared Experiences: One thing I love about roleplaying is that players always enjoy sharing stories about their adventures. Often, something that is timeless to the hobby we all love is the idea that you can ask your friends this: “How did you deal with the challenge of X, Y, or Z?” This is usually followed by a reply of: “Well, we did it THIS way!” Detailed campaigns promote shared experiences, and although it is a relatively small thing, I find enjoyment in the idea that we can build on our great gaming memories by discussing them with others who understand just what we mean when we say things like: “Did you jump in the daemon’s mouth?”
jonolikespie wrote: Oh dear god that sounds worryingly too close to 'D&D Adventure league; now in 40k flavour.'
...um, real quick. 1.) Adventurers League is the organized play society/group for Dungeons and Dragons. It isn't a product line. 2.) Just about every role-playing game publisher releases pre-published adventures and campaign books. This includes Dark Heresy (The Haarlock Legacy) and Warhammer Fantasy Role-play (The Enemy Within). 3.) There is often overlap between a role-playing game publisher's organized play society and the release of a new adventure or campaign book. As an example: the first season of Adventurers League was called Tyranny of Dragons, and over lapped with the first two adventures - The Rise of Tiamat and Hoard of the Dragon Queen - released for Fifth Edition D&D.
Yes, I am aware of what the Adventure League is, and what I read from that blog post sounded like it wasn't as extreme as the 'have a character, wonder down to a new FLGS, and slot into an entirely on the rails adventure with strangers' way the Adventure League works.
But it does feel a bit... like it's built to sit down and go with strangers, through preset adventures, and will lack things like just a mechanicum splatbook or inquisition focused players guide.
jonolikespie wrote: Yes, I am aware of what the Adventure League is, and what I read from that blog post sounded like it wasn't as extreme as the 'have a character, wonder down to a new FLGS, and slot into an entirely on the rails adventure with strangers' way the Adventure League works.
But it does feel a bit... like it's built to sit down and go with strangers, through preset adventures, and will lack things like just a mechanicum splatbook or inquisition focused players guide.
...So, it's the same? But different? All the Ulisses NA announcement does say that, going forward, they're choosing to publish campaign books as a means of expanding the product line. The campaign books will likely focus on one area of space (Imperium Nihilus,for example), provides player options specific to that area of space (backgrounds, archetypes, etc), and then the linked adventures. And it isn't all that unexpected, really. We already knew that was how Ulisses NA was going to flesh out the Aeldari and the Orks.
jonolikespie wrote: Yes, I am aware of what the Adventure League is, and what I read from that blog post sounded like it wasn't as extreme as the 'have a character, wonder down to a new FLGS, and slot into an entirely on the rails adventure with strangers' way the Adventure League works.
But it does feel a bit... like it's built to sit down and go with strangers, through preset adventures, and will lack things like just a mechanicum splatbook or inquisition focused players guide.
Yeah, this is increasingly a non-starter with me. I enjoy collecting rpg books, and if this is a one off, like it looked like Dark Hersey was going to be, it's not worth it. It's like buying Collectors Eds of 40k, they're worthless once the next edition is out.
BaronIveagh wrote: Yeah, this is increasingly a non-starter with me. I enjoy collecting rpg books, and if this is a one off, like it looked like Dark Hersey was going to be, it's not worth it. It's like buying Collectors Eds of 40k, they're worthless once the next edition is out.
How do you figure Wrath & Glory is going to be a "one off"? Especially given that it's a mainstay 40KRPG at present. We already know that Ulisses NA is publishing everything from a Core Book, to pre-published adventures (Blessings Unheralded, Dark Tides, and Escape Da Rok), to campaign books that cover new areas of space and/or flesh out the three playable non-Imperial factions, to accessories like dice and cards. And if/when a new edition comes, it will most likely be in response to player feedback and/or need to parse down the rules.
BaronIveagh wrote: Yeah, this is increasingly a non-starter with me. I enjoy collecting rpg books, and if this is a one off, like it looked like Dark Hersey was going to be, it's not worth it. It's like buying Collectors Eds of 40k, they're worthless once the next edition is out.
How do you figure Wrath & Glory is going to be a "one off"? Especially given that it's a mainstay 40KRPG at present. We already know that Ulisses NA is publishing everything from a Core Book, to pre-published adventures (Blessings Unheralded, Dark Tides, and Escape Da Rok), to campaign books that cover new areas of space and/or flesh out the three playable non-Imperial factions, to accessories like dice and cards. And if/when a new edition comes, it will most likely be in response to player feedback and/or need to parse down the rules.
I don't think there will be published adventures and campaign books. There will be campaign books which contain rules and a published adventure. Dark Tides is a small example of what these books are, though future books are bigger (source is Erics comments on the Ulisses page)
I don't mind the approach. As long as there are enough new rules in each book, and they aren't 'too' specific to the adventure, then it should be fine. Most the DH expansions still had short adventures in them anyway, not a million miles different.
BaronIveagh wrote: Yeah, this is increasingly a non-starter with me. I enjoy collecting rpg books, and if this is a one off, like it looked like Dark Hersey was going to be, it's not worth it. It's like buying Collectors Eds of 40k, they're worthless once the next edition is out.
How do you figure Wrath & Glory is going to be a "one off"? Especially given that it's a mainstay 40KRPG at present. We already know that Ulisses NA is publishing everything from a Core Book, to pre-published adventures (Blessings Unheralded, Dark Tides, and Escape Da Rok), to campaign books that cover new areas of space and/or flesh out the three playable non-Imperial factions, to accessories like dice and cards. And if/when a new edition comes, it will most likely be in response to player feedback and/or need to parse down the rules.
I don't think there will be published adventures and campaign books. There will be campaign books which contain rules and a published adventure. Dark Tides is a small example of what these books are, though future books are bigger (source is Erics comments on the Ulisses page)
I don't mind the approach. As long as there are enough new rules in each book, and they aren't 'too' specific to the adventure, then it should be fine. Most the DH expansions still had short adventures in them anyway, not a million miles different.
Though I do realise now that this means that as the only rules found exclusive to cards are campaign decks, and all future expansions will be in campaign format only, then it looks like the cards are integral to the future expansions and not optional for using said expansion without houserules.
It's interesting, the characters are well done, and good use of colour....
But wow it's DeviantArt quality as soon as your eye moves past the three central focal points.
Are the characters in the Blessings Unheralded drivethrurpg entry all of them? I remember there being some issue before where characters were missing or somesuch and they put more out as a download but I can't seem to find a discrete link in the thread.
I'm happy to see that vehicle and ship combat have rules. Rogue Trader was always my favourite old 40K games. I was hoping to see some rules for mass combat, but I guess they're less essential.
Campaign card previews are up. Clearly this is just an extra little thing you don't need to buy... and reading them I'm fairly certain I won't be.
I've enjoyed campaign cards in D&D before, where it was just little narrative things like declaring that an NPC we meet will have X attitude, for better or worse. These ones look like they are much more mechanically focused and much larger effects.
Plus in the facebook comments they left this little extra snippet:
Interesting. Nothing unexpected there except maybe the Inquisitor being at 4; I'd have expected it at 3 personally from a purely in game power perspective (rather than fluff wise). Maybe inquisitors lords higher up...
I'll be curious to see what makes the Adeptus Restarted primaris better mechanically than the adeptus secondus OG marines.
Campaign card previews are up. Clearly this is just an extra little thing you don't need to buy... and reading them I'm fairly certain I won't be.
I've enjoyed campaign cards in D&D before, where it was just little narrative things like declaring that an NPC we meet will have X attitude, for better or worse. These ones look like they are much more mechanically focused and much larger effects.
Yeah, thats just insane. And I cant really see an ingame justification for most of these either. Its just - hey, Ive suddenly got more ammo. Great. **MAGIC**
Definitely not going to use that stuff.
I thought the Flame of the Heart thing was kinda fun looking, a bit of a reference to a classic meme from over on /tg/ and I could totally see scenarios where if you weren't playing a SUPER SERIOUS campaign you could throw a hilarious wrench into the works.
Then I read that there's mechanical benefits for it and I hate that those are there. I don't want to see people playing these cards for mechanical effects.
I think the big thing bugging me about this game is that so much of it is tying narrative stuff to mechanical effects in such a way that it feels like it's holding your hand and forcing you to roleplay, as if it expects without these firm encouragements the players would just sit their silently rolling dice when the DM says so.
Plus in the facebook comments they left this little extra snippet:
Interesting. Nothing unexpected there except maybe the Inquisitor being at 4; I'd have expected it at 3 personally from a purely in game power perspective (rather than fluff wise). Maybe inquisitors lords higher up...
I'm curious about why the basic Tech-Priest is level 3, compared to the Psyker at 2, and why the Crusader is 3 vs the Sister at 2.
Storm Shield, Power Sword and well, training. The Tier 2 SoB is more or less a neophyte, barely inducted into the rank-and-file. The Crusader, on the other hand, is an experienced fighter and has seen stuff a puppy sister cannot even imagine
And as people tend to forget, the Crusader tends to be part of a full order with strong, good training.
Kind of like the equivalent to the better Death-Cult Assassin orders, people tend to think of them as weaker due to their tabletop presence but Crusaders are actually pretty strong in the fluff and that's why Inquisitors and others tend to love taking them along in their cells due to their zeal, dedication, and immense training.
Tend to be renegade shooters, killers, bounty hunters or the like who really are good at murdering who are more affiliated with 40k's underworld like underhives and the like.
I'm curious about why the basic Tech-Priest is level 3, compared to the Psyker at 2, and why the Crusader is 3 vs the Sister at 2.
I can't speak to the crusader but I'm guessing that the tech priest is a 3 because the mechanicum already has a 2 (skitarri). Eventually I'd expect them to further flesh out the various factions at different tiers beyond simply advancing them generically.
I'm curious about why the basic Tech-Priest is level 3, compared to the Psyker at 2, and why the Crusader is 3 vs the Sister at 2.
I can't speak to the crusader but I'm guessing that the tech priest is a 3 because the mechanicum already has a 2 (skitarri). Eventually I'd expect them to further flesh out the various factions at different tiers beyond simply advancing them generically.
The skitarii is a cyborg soldier, not a tech-priest, though. It just seems a bit odd to gate out the "tech guy" role from level 1 and 2 games, rather than have a basic Enginseer or something.
I'm curious about why the basic Tech-Priest is level 3, compared to the Psyker at 2, and why the Crusader is 3 vs the Sister at 2.
I can't speak to the crusader but I'm guessing that the tech priest is a 3 because the mechanicum already has a 2 (skitarri). Eventually I'd expect them to further flesh out the various factions at different tiers beyond simply advancing them generically.
The skitarii is a cyborg soldier, not a tech-priest, though. It just seems a bit odd to gate out the "tech guy" role from level 1 and 2 games, rather than have a basic Enginseer or something.
Makes sense if you have a Mechanicus/Imperial Guard based expansion/splat/whathaveyou down the line. Where the Enginseer can be lower on the totem pole compared to the specialized and fancier variants.
I'm curious about why the basic Tech-Priest is level 3, compared to the Psyker at 2, and why the Crusader is 3 vs the Sister at 2.
I can't speak to the crusader but I'm guessing that the tech priest is a 3 because the mechanicum already has a 2 (skitarri). Eventually I'd expect them to further flesh out the various factions at different tiers beyond simply advancing them generically.
The skitarii is a cyborg soldier, not a tech-priest, though. It just seems a bit odd to gate out the "tech guy" role from level 1 and 2 games, rather than have a basic Enginseer or something.
I agree which is why I referred to the faction overall rather than the hierarchy of the Mars Priesthood; I'm just trying to point out their likely strategy. I'm sure the internet will come up with an appropriate tier 1 mechanicum entry like a servo skull or servitor.
Plus in the facebook comments they left this little extra snippet:
Interesting. Nothing unexpected there except maybe the Inquisitor being at 4; I'd have expected it at 3 personally from a purely in game power perspective (rather than fluff wise). Maybe inquisitors lords higher up...
I'll be curious to see what makes the Adeptus Restarted primaris better mechanically than the adeptus secondus OG marines.
The surprises me the most is that Rogue Traders are only tier 2, I'd expect them up there with Inquisitors at tier 4. After all, don't they usually have a huge number of assets, including at least one huge ship, and a personal army? I'm assuming the Rogue Trader in the book is more focused on the abilities of the individual rather than the resources they can bring to bear, but then, a good chunk of an Inquisitor's power is that they can snap their fingers and have someone disappeared, or call on a unit of Scions to do some wetworks, etc.
I'm thinking that their idea of a rogue trader isn't the ship master or actual charter holder but some officer or trade specialist.
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Rogue trader.....
There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency to it does there?
At first I thought it might be balancing killing power vs social power with the Inquisitor being way up there and techies and commissars being on par with a marine. But that's obviously out the window with the Rogue Trader so low.
jonolikespie wrote: There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency to it does there?
At first I thought it might be balancing killing power vs social power with the Inquisitor being way up there and techies and commissars being on par with a marine. But that's obviously out the window with the Rogue Trader so low.
Agreed... especially considering a Rogue Trader likely has hundreds of tier 1 and at least dozens of fellow tier 2 soldiers working for him.
I think the important part is that Desperado was an ascension class. Alongside the Death Cult Assassin and Crusader it seems they've all made it in as tier 3 based on that.
Though I can't say I really know why, I always thought Desperado was really just a generic term for high end scum gunslinger and not all that important in the grand scheme of things.
jonolikespie wrote: I think the important part is that Desperado was an ascension class. Alongside the Death Cult Assassin and Crusader it seems they've all made it in as tier 3 based on that.
Though I can't say I really know why, I always thought Desperado was really just a generic term for high end scum gunslinger and not all that important in the grand scheme of things.
although Death Cult Assassin is only level 2....
Agree its very wierd and presumably doens not include resources? the average Commissar has a lot less clout, influence and resources than your average Rouge Trader who will at least have a ship cabpable of interstellar travel and all that goes with it.
You'd also think in every way an Eldar Warlock would be above a basic marine, commissar, or tech priest too.
I think someone suggested it's based on gear, so crusaders (and I guess commissars) are so high because of things like power swords and storm shields and whatnot. That could explain a Rogue Trader being so low if they're expected to wear fancy cloths and a pistol on their hip, but that'd be a super weird way to set out the tiers.
I don't understand how a malnourished, cripplingly mutated hive ganger (scavvy) is a tier higher than a normal healthy ganger, trained imperial guardsman, or even a ork!
If it was a scaly I would undertsand, but a scavvy?
I'd guess the non-humans loose tier value compared to the humans just because so much of what they do will be a lot harder since the setting is mostly imperial based
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I'd guess the non-humans loose tier value compared to the humans just because so much of what they do will be a lot harder since the setting is mostly imperial based
Good point. Although, IIRC, supplements will have xenos-main adventures, like the Eldar one that will come soon. Eldar stuff would rank much better than Imperial in such scenarios...
Insurgency Walker wrote: I'm thinking that their idea of a rogue trader isn't the ship master or actual charter holder but some officer or trade specialist.
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Rogue trader....
Certainly a RT will hold a Warrant of Trade but who’s to say it can’t be for just a small vessel on its own or an license of a much larger family concern? It’s a big galaxy after all.
Insurgency Walker wrote: I'm thinking that their idea of a rogue trader isn't the ship master or actual charter holder but some officer or trade specialist.
Automatically Appended Next Post: "Psssst. Hey you, you need a new watch? Step into my office." As he displays his wares from under his trench coat.
Rogue trader....
Certainly a RT will hold a Warrant of Trade but who’s to say it can’t be for just a small vessel on its own or an license of a much larger family concern? It’s a big galaxy after all.
The point is "small vessel" is relative. This is 40K, even the smallest warp-capable ships(outside of ludicrously rare archaeotech accessible only to Assassins, Custodes, and top Inquisitors) have thousands of crew and weapon systems capable of levelling a city from orbit, and even the most piddly, low-grade, granted by the High Lords for saving the Ecclesiarch's favourite puppy from gout gak-tier Warrant would place a Rogue Trader well beyond anyone short of a Chapter Master or Inquisitor Lord or Planetary Governer in the theoretical social-capital rankings. Not to mention they have almost unfettered access to xenotech and archaeotech personal equipment. Rogue Traders command armies and order normal planetbound bigwigs around, have huge numbers of minions, servants, & soldiers, and the ability to travel the stars at will, I can't think of a single measure on which they'd be outweighed by the kind of character a class name like "Desperado" would suggest.
Not that this kind of oddity is surprising, there's no way they were going to create a system that could encompass everything in 40K without some of it being nonsensical.
Yodhrin wrote: Not that this kind of oddity is surprising, there's no way they were going to create a system that could encompass everything in 40K without some of it being nonsensical.
The key point seems to be will it have been worth trying? I hope so, but I'm not optimistic.
Insurgency Walker wrote: I'm thinking that their idea of a rogue trader isn't the ship master or actual charter holder but some officer or trade specialist.
Automatically Appended Next Post: "Psssst. Hey you, you need a new watch? Step into my office." As he displays his wares from under his trench coat.
Rogue trader....
Certainly a RT will hold a Warrant of Trade but who’s to say it can’t be for just a small vessel on its own or an license of a much larger family concern? It’s a big galaxy after all.
The point is "small vessel" is relative. This is 40K, even the smallest warp-capable ships(outside of ludicrously rare archaeotech accessible only to Assassins, Custodes, and top Inquisitors) have thousands of crew and weapon systems capable of levelling a city from orbit, and even the most piddly, low-grade, granted by the High Lords for saving the Ecclesiarch's favourite puppy from gout gak-tier Warrant would place a Rogue Trader well beyond anyone short of a Chapter Master or Inquisitor Lord or Planetary Governer in the theoretical social-capital rankings. Not to mention they have almost unfettered access to xenotech and archaeotech personal equipment. Rogue Traders command armies and order normal planetbound bigwigs around, have huge numbers of minions, servants, & soldiers, and the ability to travel the stars at will, I can't think of a single measure on which they'd be outweighed by the kind of character a class name like "Desperado" would suggest.
Not that this kind of oddity is surprising, there's no way they were going to create a system that could encompass everything in 40K without some of it being nonsensical.
I disagree, not everything has to be GrimdarknEpic nonsensical and OTT even in 40k. It’s a huge background and if your limiting your role playing to codex like fluff then you might as well have a investigating group of Marneus Calgar level characters to get anywhere and the chump that chose to be the Ganger/Enginseer/Joygirl gets to watch the power character pole effortlessly through the scenario.
As with any RPG the has to be a certain level of granularity to pick an interesting scene and challenging plot path.
Insurgency Walker wrote: I'm thinking that their idea of a rogue trader isn't the ship master or actual charter holder but some officer or trade specialist.
Automatically Appended Next Post: "Psssst. Hey you, you need a new watch? Step into my office." As he displays his wares from under his trench coat.
Rogue trader....
Certainly a RT will hold a Warrant of Trade but who’s to say it can’t be for just a small vessel on its own or an license of a much larger family concern? It’s a big galaxy after all.
The point is "small vessel" is relative. This is 40K, even the smallest warp-capable ships(outside of ludicrously rare archaeotech accessible only to Assassins, Custodes, and top Inquisitors) have thousands of crew and weapon systems capable of levelling a city from orbit, and even the most piddly, low-grade, granted by the High Lords for saving the Ecclesiarch's favourite puppy from gout gak-tier Warrant would place a Rogue Trader well beyond anyone short of a Chapter Master or Inquisitor Lord or Planetary Governer in the theoretical social-capital rankings. Not to mention they have almost unfettered access to xenotech and archaeotech personal equipment. Rogue Traders command armies and order normal planetbound bigwigs around, have huge numbers of minions, servants, & soldiers, and the ability to travel the stars at will, I can't think of a single measure on which they'd be outweighed by the kind of character a class name like "Desperado" would suggest.
Not that this kind of oddity is surprising, there's no way they were going to create a system that could encompass everything in 40K without some of it being nonsensical.
I disagree, not everything has to be GrimdarknEpic nonsensical and OTT even in 40k. It’s a huge background and if your limiting your role playing to codex like fluff then you might as well have a investigating group of Marneus Calgar level characters to get anywhere and the chump that chose to be the Ganger/Enginseer/Joygirl gets to watch the power character pole effortlessly through the scenario.
As with any RPG the has to be a certain level of granularity to pick an interesting scene and challenging plot path.
I don't get what your point is at all, can you expand on it and explain how it relates to what I wrote?
Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
The smallest commonplace ship in the Imperial Navy is the Cobra Destroyer, which is ~1.5km long and carries ~15,000 crew. The smallest warp-capable ship depicted anywhere as being used by the Navy etc is the Viper Scout Sloop which is just under 1km long with a crew of 7.5k, and it's noted as being "...among the smallest Imperial ships capable of carrying a Warp Drive.". When you get smaller than that, you're talking about hyper-rare archeotech like the deployment vessels used by the Officio Assassinorum. Imperial ships have to be built big in order to carry a Warp Drive at all, the only small commonplace vessels are system-ships limited to sublight travel within a single solar system - even most Inquisitors have to hitch a ride on a Navy or Rogue Trader ship.
Rogue Trader ships will usually come in three flavours - fast and (relatively) small Frigate-to-Light Cruiser size ships built to transport high value perishables and small high value luxuries, which would have at least several thousand crew; armed traders roughly in the Light Cruiser-to-Battlecruiser range, which would be the kind of ships that go off into the unknown and would have several tens of thousands of crew; and ludicrously XBOXHUEG bulk freighters operating along established trade lanes(often under Chartrist Captains of the Merchant Fleet or in the employ of a Rogue Trader dynasty), like the Universe-class Mass Conveyor at 12km long, a mass of 60megatonnes, 60k crew and space for several hundred-thousand passengers. Given the sheer scales involved they don't need to be a flying fortress to have ludicrous amounts of firepower, the main armaments on even the smallest warp-ships would have a bore of several metres and be firing shells or energy blasts with a multi-kiloton yield. You could park one of those piddly wee Viper Sloops in orbit around modern day earth and wipe out a city with every broadside.
That's why it's a bit hard to buy that in a system which was supposed to be taking more factors into account than just gear and personal skill with weaponry, the person in charge of all that manpower and firepower with the right to travel the stars all by decree of the High Lords or even the Emperor Himself is a mid-tier bloke considered equivalent to a Storm Trooper and lesser than a "Desperado" whatever that is. And sure, they could just be using the term Rogue Trader to mean not-actually-a-Rogue Trader, or flunkie-of-a-Rogue Trader, but that seems a tad daft when they could crack one of the FFGRPG books and pick a half dozen different names for Rogue Trader-adjacent classes.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
Yes.
No one disputes that the huge warships exist, but Black Library books also have examples of smaller vessels more similar to your description.
I don't think justifying the tier placement of Rogue Traders by references to head-canon, hypotheticals, and unprecedented (officially) ships and lore is going to be a debate winner.
Even though small warp capable ships 'could' exist, is that really a good basis on which to rank the Rogue Trader's tier? Seems very niche, given the tier system (and any system) would be designed for typical representations of a character.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
The smallest commonplace ship in the Imperial Navy is the Cobra Destroyer, which is ~1.5km long and carries ~15,000 crew. The smallest warp-capable ship depicted anywhere as being used by the Navy etc is the Viper Scout Sloop which is just under 1km long with a crew of 7.5k, and it's noted as being "...among the smallest Imperial ships capable of carrying a Warp Drive.". When you get smaller than that, you're talking about hyper-rare archeotech like the deployment vessels used by the Officio Assassinorum. Imperial ships have to be built big in order to carry a Warp Drive at all, the only small commonplace vessels are system-ships limited to sublight travel within a single solar system - even most Inquisitors have to hitch a ride on a Navy or Rogue Trader ship.
Rogue Trader ships will usually come in three flavours - fast and (relatively) small Frigate-to-Light Cruiser size ships built to transport high value perishables and small high value luxuries, which would have at least several thousand crew; armed traders roughly in the Light Cruiser-to-Battlecruiser range, which would be the kind of ships that go off into the unknown and would have several tens of thousands of crew; and ludicrously XBOXHUEG bulk freighters operating along established trade lanes(often under Chartrist Captains of the Merchant Fleet or in the employ of a Rogue Trader dynasty), like the Universe-class Mass Conveyor at 12km long, a mass of 60megatonnes, 60k crew and space for several hundred-thousand passengers. Given the sheer scales involved they don't need to be a flying fortress to have ludicrous amounts of firepower, the main armaments on even the smallest warp-ships would have a bore of several metres and be firing shells or energy blasts with a multi-kiloton yield. You could park one of those piddly wee Viper Sloops in orbit around modern day earth and wipe out a city with every broadside.
That's why it's a bit hard to buy that in a system which was supposed to be taking more factors into account than just gear and personal skill with weaponry, the person in charge of all that manpower and firepower with the right to travel the stars all by decree of the High Lords or even the Emperor Himself is a mid-tier bloke considered equivalent to a Storm Trooper and lesser than a "Desperado" whatever that is. And sure, they could just be using the term Rogue Trader to mean not-actually-a-Rogue Trader, or flunkie-of-a-Rogue Trader, but that seems a tad daft when they could crack one of the FFGRPG books and pick a half dozen different names for Rogue Trader-adjacent classes.
Surely though the ability to call down a battalion of Naval Armsmen at will or use your ship's lance batteries to carve your name across half a continent belong wholly within the narrative aspect of the game rather than the mechanical, dice-rolling, "once per encounter, choose one enemy within line of sight" etc level of the rules. Not only would any literal implementation of that sort of firepower into the Rogue Trader's character sheet make it very difficult for any other players to exercise their own abilities, I am sure that even the most power-mad of players would eventually lose interest in a game where every encounter might be resolved by dropping some kiloton ordinance or sitting back and sipping on a grimdark margarita while some NPCs complete the adventure for them. Having a good GM with a solid grasp of the setting should allow a Rogue Trader to throw their considerable weight around in the high-level narrative play but when assassins strike at the Governor's Palace or a poorly stored Dark Age artifact turns half of the archaeological dig team into gibbering mutants, also remind the player that their character is still a squishy human being (albeit one with a lot of unconventional heirloom gadgetry and a suspiciously extensive grasp of Xenobiology).
Surely though the ability to call down a battalion of Naval Armsmen at will or use your ship's lance batteries to carve your name across half a continent belong wholly within the narrative aspect of the game rather than the mechanical, dice-rolling, "once per encounter, choose one enemy within line of sight" etc level of the rules. Not only would any literal implementation of that sort of firepower into the Rogue Trader's character sheet make it very difficult for any other players to exercise their own abilities, I am sure that even the most power-mad of players would eventually lose interest in a game where every encounter might be resolved by dropping some kiloton ordinance or sitting back and sipping on a grimdark margarita while some NPCs complete the adventure for them. Having a good GM with a solid grasp of the setting should allow a Rogue Trader to throw their considerable weight around in the high-level narrative play but when assassins strike at the Governor's Palace or a poorly stored Dark Age artifact turns half of the archaeological dig team into gibbering mutants, also remind the player that their character is still a squishy human being (albeit one with a lot of unconventional heirloom gadgetry and a suspiciously extensive grasp of Xenobiology).
You make a convincing case showing that an actual Rogue Trader should be no where other than a Tier 5 character. If they wanted some version of it slumming around at tier 2 then they should have come up with some other name for it more appropriate for the 2nd cousin thrice removed youngest child of the middle son 14th in line to inherent the Warrant of Trade. In all seriousness, they should probably have divided up the iconic rogue trader over a couple of tiers similar to how the marine was done to better illustrate the capabilities and resources of the archtype at that tier. YMMV.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
The smallest commonplace ship in the Imperial Navy is the Cobra Destroyer, which is ~1.5km long and carries ~15,000 crew. The smallest warp-capable ship depicted anywhere as being used by the Navy etc is the Viper Scout Sloop which is just under 1km long with a crew of 7.5k, and it's noted as being "...among the smallest Imperial ships capable of carrying a Warp Drive.". When you get smaller than that, you're talking about hyper-rare archeotech like the deployment vessels used by the Officio Assassinorum. Imperial ships have to be built big in order to carry a Warp Drive at all, the only small commonplace vessels are system-ships limited to sublight travel within a single solar system - even most Inquisitors have to hitch a ride on a Navy or Rogue Trader ship.
Rogue Trader ships will usually come in three flavours - fast and (relatively) small Frigate-to-Light Cruiser size ships built to transport high value perishables and small high value luxuries, which would have at least several thousand crew; armed traders roughly in the Light Cruiser-to-Battlecruiser range, which would be the kind of ships that go off into the unknown and would have several tens of thousands of crew; and ludicrously XBOXHUEG bulk freighters operating along established trade lanes(often under Chartrist Captains of the Merchant Fleet or in the employ of a Rogue Trader dynasty), like the Universe-class Mass Conveyor at 12km long, a mass of 60megatonnes, 60k crew and space for several hundred-thousand passengers. Given the sheer scales involved they don't need to be a flying fortress to have ludicrous amounts of firepower, the main armaments on even the smallest warp-ships would have a bore of several metres and be firing shells or energy blasts with a multi-kiloton yield. You could park one of those piddly wee Viper Sloops in orbit around modern day earth and wipe out a city with every broadside.
That's why it's a bit hard to buy that in a system which was supposed to be taking more factors into account than just gear and personal skill with weaponry, the person in charge of all that manpower and firepower with the right to travel the stars all by decree of the High Lords or even the Emperor Himself is a mid-tier bloke considered equivalent to a Storm Trooper and lesser than a "Desperado" whatever that is. And sure, they could just be using the term Rogue Trader to mean not-actually-a-Rogue Trader, or flunkie-of-a-Rogue Trader, but that seems a tad daft when they could crack one of the FFGRPG books and pick a half dozen different names for Rogue Trader-adjacent classes.
Surely though the ability to call down a battalion of Naval Armsmen at will or use your ship's lance batteries to carve your name across half a continent belong wholly within the narrative aspect of the game rather than the mechanical, dice-rolling, "once per encounter, choose one enemy within line of sight" etc level of the rules. Not only would any literal implementation of that sort of firepower into the Rogue Trader's character sheet make it very difficult for any other players to exercise their own abilities, I am sure that even the most power-mad of players would eventually lose interest in a game where every encounter might be resolved by dropping some kiloton ordinance or sitting back and sipping on a grimdark margarita while some NPCs complete the adventure for them. Having a good GM with a solid grasp of the setting should allow a Rogue Trader to throw their considerable weight around in the high-level narrative play but when assassins strike at the Governor's Palace or a poorly stored Dark Age artifact turns half of the archaeological dig team into gibbering mutants, also remind the player that their character is still a squishy human being (albeit one with a lot of unconventional heirloom gadgetry and a suspiciously extensive grasp of Xenobiology).
But that's exactly my point, these tiers are supposedly taking more into account than just moment-to-moment reflex & skill, and the social capital and military & fiscal resources of a Rogue Trader are off the scale compared to just about everything else. Your average RT might "only" be a squishy - but reasonably competent and very well equipped - human, but they're a squishy human who can wipe out a city or deploy a small army with a single command, their wealth could well outstrip the combined wealth of the whole planet an RPG game was set on, hell some of them have oaths of fealty & aid from Space Marines they could call upon. I don't think that kind of power disparity is something that can just be handwaved away by exhorting the GM to put a bit more effort in, they'd spend more time coming up with reasons why the RT can't just fix the situations the party find themselves in than they would coming up with the situations in the first place.
I get that they wanted to have that archetype in the game, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
Don't call it a Rogue Trader then same as the Inquistorial Acolyte is not an Inquisitor. You could have gone for Void Trader (ie insystem void capable not intersteller) or a variety of other lower level characters.
Small warp capable ships are the exception so if you are making a general class then its silly to have the exception!
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
Don't call it a Rogue Trader then same as the Inquistorial Acolyte is not an Inquisitor. You could have gone for Void Trader (ie insystem void capable not intersteller) or a variety of other lower level characters.
Small warp capable ships are the exception so if you are making a general class then its silly to have the exception!
That, and it seems a bit weird that you'd have rules for space combat, and then not let the most obvious class for it take a big starship. But we'll see how it pans out--and what Ascension packages allow.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
Don't call it a Rogue Trader then same as the Inquistorial Acolyte is not an Inquisitor. You could have gone for Void Trader (ie insystem void capable not intersteller) or a variety of other lower level characters.
Small warp capable ships are the exception so if you are making a general class then its silly to have the exception!
That, and it seems a bit weird that you'd have rules for space combat, and then not let the most obvious class for it take a big starship. But we'll see how it pans out--and what Ascension packages allow.
Tiers are weird from what I've seen in the previews, because higher Tiers can be progressed to. So a Tier 2 Rogue Trader might be a very local trader, while a Tier 5 might have their own multi-system empire.
This has been confirmed by the developer who said that normal Space Marines are Tier 3, but Deathwatch would be Tier 5.
Galas wrote: Doesnt out there on warhanmer little vessels? Like cargo ships, small civilian transport ships for peregrines, agrarian and food transpirt, etc... I dont think even the smallest warp capable ship is a flying fortress.
But I think the tier is because the "rogue trader" wont be what we believe it is. It will probably be the apprentice/protege of a proper Rogue trader, like the inquisitorial acolyte.
Don't call it a Rogue Trader then same as the Inquistorial Acolyte is not an Inquisitor. You could have gone for Void Trader (ie insystem void capable not intersteller) or a variety of other lower level characters.
Small warp capable ships are the exception so if you are making a general class then its silly to have the exception!
That, and it seems a bit weird that you'd have rules for space combat, and then not let the most obvious class for it take a big starship. But we'll see how it pans out--and what Ascension packages allow.
Tiers are weird from what I've seen in the previews, because higher Tiers can be progressed to. So a Tier 2 Rogue Trader might be a very local trader, while a Tier 5 might have their own multi-system empire.
This has been confirmed by the developer who said that normal Space Marines are Tier 3, but Deathwatch would be Tier 5.
Except there's no such thing as a "local" Rogue Trader. To borrow from the wiki: "A Rogue Trader is a combination of freelance explorer, conquistador and merchant. They are Imperial servants, given a ship, a crew, a contingent of marines or Guardsmen and carte blanche to roam the worlds beyond Imperial control."
You don't start out as a local parcel delivery Rogue Trader on a scooter in your home hive and work your way up the corporate ladder, the moment you're granted or inherit a Warrant of Trade you become one of the most powerful individuals in the Imperium.
Rogue Traders can be forced to remain in system or local cluster as part of penance or by special order of Imperial Authority. The audio drama Corsair comes to mind as a good example of this.
BrookM wrote: Rogue Traders can be forced to remain in system or local cluster as part of penance or by special order of Imperial Authority. The audio drama Corsair comes to mind as a good example of this.
Do they also have to give up their giant city-killing voidship and thousands of subordinates? And I call a Nope on the "by special order" thing, a Warrant of Trade theoretically supersedes any and all authorities, and even in the messier and more feudal practice you would need to have serious political clout to obstruct a RT's freedom to roam. It's certainly not a common enough occurrence to affect the basic presentation of the concept in an RPG.
DontEatRawHagis wrote: This has been confirmed by the developer who said that normal Space Marines are Tier 3, but Deathwatch would be Tier 5.
Wait what? Now that makes all sense to me. Deathwatch being a step above sure, but seeing the huge difference between tiers I honestly expected a marine at tier 5 to be like a Captain or something. Like.. I just don't see how they're that much better. Their equipment could make up for the physical differences between them and a Primaris, but that'd put them on the same level...
Maybe the tiers really are based on equipment more than anything else, and I guess a RT gets fancy cloths and a laspistol, but a DW gets some necron phase sword thing and some really really pimped bolter.
I think I am still very much worried that the reason this is making no sense to me is because I've assumed there is a big leap in power between each tier, but the system actually has the top and bottom end much closer together than I've thought, so the placements that make no sense to me are not hugely out of place, just a little above or below what I expected.
I also saw some livestream on youtube for an adventure that wasn't Blessings Unheralded with one of the designers running the game (I think, I missed the start). He seemed to think that the Acolyte's once per session ability to call up their Inquisitor was super powerful because they literally called in a Navy blockade of a planet or something
It is odd to put Deathwatch there. IMO standard deathwatch should be a cut above a tactical marine largely due to gear (and because in the fluff the chapters typically send the finest to represent their chapter) so maybe a tier 4 equal to a bog standard primaris maybe.. but a 5? That sounds like it should be a Captain or Grey Knight Master of a Custodes...
kronk wrote: Played the 4 hour demo with 3 friends (we finished the story in about 2.5 hours). Bought 2 copies of the rulebook. Good times
Can you give us some details on how scaling up to higher tiers occurs and what type of variety/room for advancement is within a tier? For example, can you take a power sword wielding tactical marine at tier 3 or is that kind of added customization/power increase limited to tier advancement?
The GM picks the tier they want to run. You get 100 points per tier. So, a tier 3 space marine has to spend 150 (50 for astartes race and 100 for Space Marine class) of their 300 build points for race and class. They have about 150 to buy the remaining stat minimums required for a marine and some skills and talents they want to focus on.
Meanwhile, a tier 1 human guardsman will have a buttload of points left after race ( human is 0 points) and class (can’t recall) to really specialize as a sniper or other specialist. They can bump their skills (some cap at level 1), Talent’s, and stats (again, some maximums at level 1).
Alternatively, the GM could say they want a lower powered tier 1 campaign, so you would have fewer points to kit out the tier 1 classes.
Yodhrin wrote: Rogue Trader ships will usually come in three flavours - fast and (relatively) small Frigate-to-Light Cruiser size ships built to transport high value perishables and small high value luxuries, which would have at least several thousand crew; armed traders roughly in the Light Cruiser-to-Battlecruiser range, which would be the kind of ships that go off into the unknown and would have several tens of thousands of crew; and ludicrously XBOXHUEG bulk freighters operating along established trade lanes(often under Chartrist Captains of the Merchant Fleet or in the employ of a Rogue Trader dynasty), like the Universe-class Mass Conveyor at 12km long, a mass of 60megatonnes, 60k crew and space for several hundred-thousand passengers. Given the sheer scales involved they don't need to be a flying fortress to have ludicrous amounts of firepower, the main armaments on even the smallest warp-ships would have a bore of several metres and be firing shells or energy blasts with a multi-kiloton yield. You could park one of those piddly wee Viper Sloops in orbit around modern day earth and wipe out a city with every broadside.
That's why it's a bit hard to buy that in a system which was supposed to be taking more factors into account than just gear and personal skill with weaponry, the person in charge of all that manpower and firepower with the right to travel the stars all by decree of the High Lords or even the Emperor Himself is a mid-tier bloke considered equivalent to a Storm Trooper and lesser than a "Desperado" whatever that is. And sure, they could just be using the term Rogue Trader to mean not-actually-a-Rogue Trader, or flunkie-of-a-Rogue Trader, but that seems a tad daft when they could crack one of the FFGRPG books and pick a half dozen different names for Rogue Trader-adjacent classes.
You forgot a class outweighing the 3 above combined by an order of magnitude, namely D) regular merchant ship that was up-gunned and (sorta) armored but would never stand up to a regular navy vessel in a fight. A vessel that might be 2-3 km long but vast majority of its volume would be cargo holds and ship systems, you know, the actual money-makers, with little space devoted to surplus stuff like armies or obscenely expensive munitions. Things that look like this:
Not like this:
Hell, even the richest Rogue Traders who can afford a sorta-kinda 'real' cruiser, end up with ships that look like this:
You might notice that it most definitely does not look as militarized and optimized for combat as the middle image, no matter what headcanons say. Rogue Traders are equivalent of corsairs and privateers operating in 1600s and 1700s - and while some of these ended up with impressive ships, or even had surplus old fourth rate line ship, the moment they saw modern 44 gun frigate (not to mention stuff like even third rate '74' line ship, which was far from most powerful deployed then) they would turn tail and run immediately. A vessel that is in any way or shape optimized for handling cargo is a bad military vessel simply because both have diametrically opposite requirements that can't be married in one hull without massive compromises. It might look scary but all the empty space inside comes at expense of something.
Also, 'a multi-kiloton yield'? That's laughably low number, if official. British home fleet 120 years ago would reach it with ease. Artillery bombardment in a single front section in WW1, too. In WW2, that was payload of a daily bomber convoy. In Vietnam war, munitions dropped on North Vietnam alone were counted in megatons, and, surprise surprise, not only they didn't not wipe out any cities in North Vietnam, they didn't even convince NV to back off.
Plus, I have no idea from where the idea the Rogue Trader needs to be some sort of top-tier uber-being comes from. He has a ship, sure. He might have a fancy pistol and clothes, but he is first and foremost a noble, living in luxury, with little need or want for grueling training regime. I can easily see even a regular IG veteran to be easily as dangerous and capable in a party as RT. You guys act like ordering people around made you a space marine in disguise - but RT who landed on a planet (or even tries to repel boarders) is just a regular human. It's like arguing Donald Trump (to use one example of a guy who most definitely can order more assets and men around than most RT have) can trivially beat a group of SEAL operatives with his bare hands
To be honest everybody has said that is clear that in combat a Rogue Trader will be a middle of the pack guy, maybe with fancy tech, weapons, defensive systems, etc... but what makes them "OP" and deserving of a higher tier is their influence, power, money, etc... just like an Inquisitor.
Their ships don’t really come into it. Not much any way. There are only like 5 pages on ship combat and only a few example ships. Maybe if they introduce ship combat supplements will the RT’s ship be meaningful beyond getting from point A to point B. That discussion is more useful later.
kronk wrote: The GM picks the tier they want to run. You get 100 points per tier. So, a tier 3 space marine has to spend 150 (50 for astartes race and 100 for Space Marine class) of their 300 build points for race and class. They have about 150 to buy the remaining stat minimums required for a marine and some skills and talents they want to focus on.
Meanwhile, a tier 1 human guardsman will have a buttload of points left after race ( human is 0 points) and class (can’t recall) to really specialize as a sniper or other specialist. They can bump their skills (some cap at level 1), Talent’s, and stats (again, some maximums at level 1).
Alternatively, the GM could say they want a lower powered tier 1 campaign, so you would have fewer points to kit out the tier 1 classes.
Thanks! That's definitely not what I was expecting (a overarching points buy system mixed in with the tiers). I'm ok with it as a general rule (dependent of course on the nitty gritty details) though as I'm familiar with the style from alternate chargen in systems like Shadowrun. I hope there are racial bonuses that help the astartes actually feel like astartes statwise. I'll have to take a closer look at the pregens from the intro adventure to see if that is the case. Can you upgrade/buy equipment with those points as well?
Not sure on equipment yet. I have only had about an hour with the book. It looks like the base space marine price is 100 points for class and race. However, they have minimum stats and skills prerequisites that might take it to 150. Not sure. Tonight is my first chance to really sit down with the book.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It doesn’t look like you buy your equipment. You come with set stuff per your class. Additional stuff is either requisitioned, found, or issued as needed per the campaign.
Yodhrin wrote: Rogue Trader ships will usually come in three flavours - fast and (relatively) small Frigate-to-Light Cruiser size ships built to transport high value perishables and small high value luxuries, which would have at least several thousand crew; armed traders roughly in the Light Cruiser-to-Battlecruiser range, which would be the kind of ships that go off into the unknown and would have several tens of thousands of crew; and ludicrously XBOXHUEG bulk freighters operating along established trade lanes(often under Chartrist Captains of the Merchant Fleet or in the employ of a Rogue Trader dynasty), like the Universe-class Mass Conveyor at 12km long, a mass of 60megatonnes, 60k crew and space for several hundred-thousand passengers. Given the sheer scales involved they don't need to be a flying fortress to have ludicrous amounts of firepower, the main armaments on even the smallest warp-ships would have a bore of several metres and be firing shells or energy blasts with a multi-kiloton yield. You could park one of those piddly wee Viper Sloops in orbit around modern day earth and wipe out a city with every broadside.
That's why it's a bit hard to buy that in a system which was supposed to be taking more factors into account than just gear and personal skill with weaponry, the person in charge of all that manpower and firepower with the right to travel the stars all by decree of the High Lords or even the Emperor Himself is a mid-tier bloke considered equivalent to a Storm Trooper and lesser than a "Desperado" whatever that is. And sure, they could just be using the term Rogue Trader to mean not-actually-a-Rogue Trader, or flunkie-of-a-Rogue Trader, but that seems a tad daft when they could crack one of the FFGRPG books and pick a half dozen different names for Rogue Trader-adjacent classes.
You forgot a class outweighing the 3 above combined by an order of magnitude, namely D) regular merchant ship that was up-gunned and (sorta) armored but would never stand up to a regular navy vessel in a fight. A vessel that might be 2-3 km long but vast majority of its volume would be cargo holds and ship systems, you know, the actual money-makers, with little space devoted to surplus stuff like armies or obscenely expensive munitions. Things that look like this:
Not like this:
Hell, even the richest Rogue Traders who can afford a sorta-kinda 'real' cruiser, end up with ships that look like this:
You might notice that it most definitely does not look as militarized and optimized for combat as the middle image, no matter what headcanons say. Rogue Traders are equivalent of corsairs and privateers operating in 1600s and 1700s - and while some of these ended up with impressive ships, or even had surplus old fourth rate line ship, the moment they saw modern 44 gun frigate (not to mention stuff like even third rate '74' line ship, which was far from most powerful deployed then) they would turn tail and run immediately. A vessel that is in any way or shape optimized for handling cargo is a bad military vessel simply because both have diametrically opposite requirements that can't be married in one hull without massive compromises. It might look scary but all the empty space inside comes at expense of something.
Also, 'a multi-kiloton yield'? That's laughably low number, if official. British home fleet 120 years ago would reach it with ease. Artillery bombardment in a single front section in WW1, too. In WW2, that was payload of a daily bomber convoy. In Vietnam war, munitions dropped on North Vietnam alone were counted in megatons, and, surprise surprise, not only they didn't not wipe out any cities in North Vietnam, they didn't even convince NV to back off.
Plus, I have no idea from where the idea the Rogue Trader needs to be some sort of top-tier uber-being comes from. He has a ship, sure. He might have a fancy pistol and clothes, but he is first and foremost a noble, living in luxury, with little need or want for grueling training regime. I can easily see even a regular IG veteran to be easily as dangerous and capable in a party as RT. You guys act like ordering people around made you a space marine in disguise - but RT who landed on a planet (or even tries to repel boarders) is just a regular human. It's like arguing Donald Trump (to use one example of a guy who most definitely can order more assets and men around than most RT have) can trivially beat a group of SEAL operatives with his bare hands
You have no idea where that idea comes from because, like with the rest of your post, you're arguing against a complete phantom of your own invention. Nobody has claimed RT ships are always equivalent to Navy ships. Nobody has claimed RTs personally are "uber-beings".
RT ships are, even at their smallest, home to thousands of individuals who all exist to serve the RT's will. They are capable of travelling between star systems. They are capable of bombarding a city to ash from orbit(and because this apparently needs to be spelled out - I was referring to the individual munitions of individual guns on the smallest practical warp ship, which would mount many of them - I'm fairly certain if you pelted a city with the payload of dozens of WW2 bombers multiple times a minute for long enough for the word "bombardment" to mean anything, there wouldn't be much left).
RT's themselves are not combat monstrosities. They are well equipped. They are often augmented whether by genhancement or sophisticated bionics. They are often well trained, or at the very least will have large numbers of well-trained people at their command.
The rest of your comparisons and assertions are pretty meaningless when it comes to the subject at hand, because we're not comparing sailing ships to other sailing ships to see what would win, we're comparing a Rogue Trader with thousands of subordinates and a ship that's at least a kilometre long against a Storm Trooper, and some of us are wondering why "well trained guy with a decent gun" is in the same tier as "pretty much a billionaire with a small army" when the tiers are supposed to be more than a measure of raw individual combat ability. Also, it's funny you use the Conquest-class image, given they "...were conceived as heavily armed hybrids of cruiser and transport, with enough firepower to defend themselves and carve apart renegade empires..."(my emphasis, Battlefleet Koronus sourcebook pg 23) - but yeah, sure, popguns and prayers is all the captain of one of those would have to rely on
It doesn’t look like you buy your equipment. You come with set stuff per your class. Additional stuff is either requisitioned, found, or issued as needed per the campaign.
Thanks. I was hoping that you'd be able to customize at least a little bit within the tier (for example taking a chainsword instead of the combat blade the starter marine gets in the intro adventure) at character generation.
Eh, YMMV but I'm not a fan of that laissez faire style of rules writing probably as a result of my start with Palladium's mess of a game system. Of course you can discuss it with the GM; you can do that with almost any game system and/or GM. Guidance about how to do it with some examples is a different story. 40k characters were (prior to 8th edition) almost infinitely customizable and I was hoping that some of that would rub into the RPG rules proper. Don't take that as shooting the messenger though, Kronk, as I'm glad you're filling in the details for us/me even if I don't like the actual answers.
At the risk of belaboring the point, do any of the specializations you mentioned change the gear? Does making your guardsman for instance a special weapons trooper give them a special weapon (or heavy weapon trooper a heavy weapon)? Are they effectively subclasses like in the old FFG games where a tactical marine was different from an assault marine in terms of standard loadout?
So, this is a lot of stuff to go through. So I'm gonna ask the question and I'd love it if you guys have the answer- if you could share it and show it to me.
Let's just say friends and I want to run a 'Deathwatch' campaign? Is that even possible? Are there any sort of rules that support this and reflect things like Special Issue Ammo, Xenophase Blades, or even vehicles like the Corvus Blackstar?
What if my friends and I want our Deathwatch Kill-Team to be mixed with Primaris and standard Astartes? Reivers, Terminators, Scouts, Librarians, Tech-Marines, Chaplains... are there even rules for this?
Are there any rules or anything about Chapters? Does that even matter? Is a Carcharadon, a Black Dragon, a Flesh Tearer- are all of this little more than just something you write on your character sheet and say "I am one of these"?
Also, keep in mind: "You'll have to homebrew stuff like that" when it comes to certain things is reasonable to a point, but after a while it just starts to seem like I'm going to be expected to do all the damned legwork for a shallow product, and at that point I might as well start trying to work and develop my own thing with a group of people and save myself some cash.
My greatest fear- and you'll have to forgive my negative outlook- is that this game is going to be some kind of 'lite' 40kRPG that's basically a shoddy attempt at making a D&D in a 40k setting by watering down everything. Almost like making it more like some weird MMORPG with extremely limited options and the like.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: What if my friends and I want our Deathwatch Kill-Team to be mixed with Primaris and standard Astartes? Reivers, Terminators, Scouts, Librarians, Tech-Marines, Chaplains... are there even rules for this?
There are rules for mixing different tiers of play, with tacs being 3, primaris 4, scouts 2, and deathwatch apparently 5. All can be played together at tier 5. It didn't appear that things like libbies, chaplains, ect exist in the mechanics (yet) though.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: Are there any rules or anything about Chapters? Does that even matter? Is a Carcharadon, a Black Dragon, a Flesh Tearer- are all of this little more than just something you write on your character sheet and say "I am one of these"?
There must be some rules for chapters, the Free RPG day module had a White Scar who had bike skills (despite not having a bike...) and couldn't delay his actions without spending a resource because Gottagofast. I wouldn't expect a lot of them until (unless?) a marine focused supplement comes out with more. First founding, BTs, and maybe a couple of other chapters is all I'd expect.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: Let's just say friends and I want to run a 'Deathwatch' campaign? Is that even possible? Are there any sort of rules that support this and reflect things like Special Issue Ammo, Xenophase Blades, or even vehicles like the Corvus Blackstar?
FFG Deathwatch RPG Seriously, like, that's not actually a joke I think if you want to play specifically as Inquisition/DW/Rouge Traders/Guardsmen the old FFG stuff looks like it covers those specific things in far greater detail.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: My greatest fear- and you'll have to forgive my negative outlook- is that this game is going to be some kind of 'lite' 40kRPG that's basically a shoddy attempt at making a D&D in a 40k setting by watering down everything. Almost like making it more like some weird MMORPG with extremely limited options and the like.
This exact thing has been my biggest fear too, and it's kinda looking that way. For example marines and all their special organs only have a single rule to represent that, and that rule is simply 'if the GM thinks a test relates to those organs gain a bonus dice' (like for example to resist being poisoned or bleeding out).
To me this is feeling like it just can't do the gritty, low power level end of things were a bolt pistol or a heavy stubber is a serious threat (like Dark Heresy), nor does it seem like you can really play out the high end power fantasy of marines being demi gods like they are presented in the fluff (like Deathwatch), and so it's kinda just a bland in between
jonolikespie wrote: There are rules for mixing different tiers of play, with tacs being 3, primaris 4, scouts 2, and deathwatch apparently 5. All can be played together at tier 5. It didn't appear that things like libbies, chaplains, ect exist in the mechanics (yet) though.
So, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that a 'tier 3' and a 'tier 5' can party together in a group, but there's some means to put them on par with one another?
jonolikespie wrote: There must be some rules for chapters, the Free RPG day module had a White Scar who had bike skills (despite not having a bike...) and couldn't delay his actions without spending a resource because Gottagofast. I wouldn't expect a lot of them until (unless?) a marine focused supplement comes out with more. First founding, BTs, and maybe a couple of other chapters is all I'd expect.
Yeah, I was actually expecting this book to be bare-bones and if you want to play the 'real fun stuff' that tons of people are dying to play, you'll need to buy another $50.00 book. Which is great, because I'd wager half my bits box that this book is just crammed full of fluff and has about twenty pages of actual rules.
jonolikespie wrote: Seriously, like, that's not actually a joke I think if you want to play specifically as Inquisition/DW/Rouge Traders/Guardsmen the old FFG stuff looks like it covers those specific things in far greater detail.
I've got them, I was just hoping for some updated rules for Primaris weapons. Hell, when they said the new 40k game would be a 'toolkit' I was hoping it'd come with options for running a Horus Heresy or Great Crusade era campaign. But hey, another $50.00 but in a few years, I'll bet!
jonolikespie wrote: For example marines and all their special organs only have a single rule to represent that, and that rule is simply 'if the GM thinks a test relates to those organs gain a bonus dice' (like for example to resist being poisoned or bleeding out).
So basically 'have the GM just make crap up on the fly' is starting to look like a common theme here. Yeah, this has me genuinely concerned that this 'rulebook' is about 75% rewritten fluff from a few Wikis and a the 8th Edition Rulebook, and 25% rules that they couldn't be arsed to expand and flesh out. Because God Forbid someone make an RPG that requires 8th grade math skills and a little playtesting.
This is starting to look more and more like someone took a basic 'weekender' dungeon crawler board game and slapped '40kRPG' on there with some half-assed 'guidelines' for RPG mechanics slapped in there.
jonolikespie wrote: To me this is feeling like it just can't do the gritty, low power level end of things were a bolt pistol or a heavy stubber is a serious threat (like Dark Heresy), nor does it seem like you can really play out the high end power fantasy of marines being demi gods like they are presented in the fluff (like Deathwatch), and so it's kinda just a bland in between
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's an idiotic idea to try and cram a Commissar, a Deathwatch Primaris Marine, a Hive Ganger, and Poodlepiddle the librarian into a party and think that would work. At any point, that seems like an unbalanced joke- especially at the level where someone wrote this into a damned rulebook.
I think having some kind of power level like 'Space Marine', 'elite trained human' would be adequate enough, and have any encounter tables scaled to that (certain numbers or wargear for certain 'power levels' of the PC's. And while it'd be nice to be able to make a super-badass stormtrooper vet that ate his Wheaties and could fight on par with Astartes... there are just two fundamentally different levels.
Because I can imagine it now, the cliche' party of mismatched 40k characters strolling into the local tavern and trying not to create a stir...
They have been quite clear than any lower 'tier' can be brought up by basically loading them up with XP and advances, so yes you absolutely can play a party of mixed tiers you just have to be playing at the level of the highest in the party.
The Free RPG Day adventure was tier 3 (to fit the marine in) with a guardsman and acolyte pumped up to work alongside him.
Also, just because the rules *technically* support it doesn't mean that you have to or even that it's recommended to take tiers 1 and 5 together just because you can. I just hope the rules can confortably support a three tier spread in the same campaign (so for example a Tier 3 +/-1).
Sorry if this has already been spoken about, but I must be getting this wrong.
Enemies can't seem to hurt the pre-rolled characters due to their resilience being higher than the enemies' possible dmg. Am I missing something?
Edit: I can see with strength added to melee dmg, that melee weapons can hurt people, but guns seem useless. An auto pistol cannot hurt even the priest in robes?
If you're talking about Blessings Unheralded then yeah the difficulty is set to 'pathetically low'.
I think the best bet to hurt them is for the poxwalkers to group up and fish for as many extra damage dice they can get by all making a combined attack against a single target.
jonolikespie wrote: If you're talking about Blessings Unheralded then yeah the difficulty is set to 'pathetically low'.
I think the best bet to hurt them is for the poxwalkers to group up and fish for as many extra damage dice they can get by all making a combined attack against a single target.
That sounds appropriate for the in-universe equivalent of a zombie horde. Is there a "horde" mechanic like in the old FFG games with W&G where groups of low level enemies combine attacks?
Yeah I think it was something simple like for every 2 mooks roll an extra dice on the 'to hit' roll, which gives better chances to roll up the 6s you need to turn into extra damage. Then, IIRC, killing them was as simple as every 2 successes above the 'to hit' number you make attacking a horde is an extra mook hit, and mooks are just 1 HP guys.
The Horde mechanics actually seemed fairly streamlined (in a good way).
The thing is though, a guardsmen cannot be hurt by an autogun. A horde of zombies hurting them is cool, but ranged weapons seem unusable, even for players fighting anyone with any kind of armour. Even a Bolter can only just start hurting things.
Tiberius501 wrote: The thing is though, a guardsmen cannot be hurt by an autogun. A horde of zombies hurting them is cool, but ranged weapons seem unusable, even for players fighting anyone with any kind of armour. Even a Bolter can only just start hurting things.
That does seem odd. I really need to read through the rules in that intro adventure instead of just looking at the character sheet file. Do you maybe add some other attribute (like a dex equivalent) to ranged attacks for damage to simulate better aiming similar to strength and melee weapons?
Tiberius501 wrote: The thing is though, a guardsmen cannot be hurt by an autogun. A horde of zombies hurting them is cool, but ranged weapons seem unusable, even for players fighting anyone with any kind of armour. Even a Bolter can only just start hurting things.
That does seem odd. I really need to read through the rules in that intro adventure instead of just looking at the character sheet file. Do you maybe add some other attribute (like a dex equivalent) to ranged attacks for damage to simulate better aiming similar to strength and melee weapons?
Going on this intro adventure, some ranged weapons get a Rapid Fire trait, which gives them +X Extra Dmg Dice if they're within close range which helps, though I feel like rapid fire should give them extra attacks or something, based on the name. Even then, a las gun can only just start hurting another guardsmen. But ranged attacks don't seem to add another attribute or skill, unlike melee which adds strength.
Also, another small thing; why is there both Wrath points and Glory points to achieve what fate points normally do but split up into 2 separate pools? I feel like it was a gimmick for the name of the game, but why not make it Glory points given to players and Wrath points given to GMs, instead of GMs getting another pool called Ruin points? Anyone who's played the game, is this annoying or does it work better than it seems?
And having Defence, Resilience and Soak all for a person's different defence stats seems like 3 layers of unnecessary to me.
Anyway, I think I'm being slightly salty haha, apologies.
Tiberius501 wrote: The thing is though, a guardsmen cannot be hurt by an autogun. A horde of zombies hurting them is cool, but ranged weapons seem unusable, even for players fighting anyone with any kind of armour. Even a Bolter can only just start hurting things.
That does seem odd. I really need to read through the rules in that intro adventure instead of just looking at the character sheet file. Do you maybe add some other attribute (like a dex equivalent) to ranged attacks for damage to simulate better aiming similar to strength and melee weapons?
Going on this intro adventure, some ranged weapons get a Rapid Fire trait, which gives them +X Extra Dmg Dice if they're within close range which helps, though I feel like rapid fire should give them extra attacks or something, based on the name. Even then, a las gun can only just start hurting another guardsmen. But ranged attacks don't seem to add another attribute or skill, unlike melee which adds strength.
Also, another small thing; why is there both Wrath points and Glory points to achieve what fate points normally do but split up into 2 separate pools? I feel like it was a gimmick for the name of the game, but why not make it Glory points given to players and Wrath points given to GMs, instead of GMs getting another pool called Ruin points? Anyone who's played the game, is this annoying or does it work better than it seems?
And having Defence, Resilience and Soak all for a person's different defence stats seems like 3 layers of unnecessary to me.
Anyway, I think I'm being slightly salty haha, apologies.
Yeah, having two separate resources for the players seems unnecessary. Just drop Glory and change the name of the game to 40k Wrath and Ruin.
Tiberius501 wrote: The thing is though, a guardsmen cannot be hurt by an autogun. A horde of zombies hurting them is cool, but ranged weapons seem unusable, even for players fighting anyone with any kind of armour. Even a Bolter can only just start hurting things.
Don't look at base damage for actual damage. Most of it seems to come from rolling high from your 'to hit' dice then converting excess successes into extra damage dice.
I couldn't be bothered getting the actual character sheets from the other room so I'll fudge the numbers but basically it goes like this:
Guardsman has a defense of 3 and resilience of 8*
Autoguner has an attack roll of 6 dice and the gun does a damage of 7+1D
Autogunner aims and uses a resource to add 2 to his dice pool.
Autogunner rolls (well) and gets 5,6,2,3,5,5,1,6.
Those three 5s are the three successes he needs to hit the Guardsman's defense, then both 6s (extra successes) can be converted into extra damage.
So now his gun does 7+3D of damage.
He rolls those 3 dice and gets 6,3,4
So the gun does 7+2+1 damage, totaling 10, which does 2 damage to the guardsman**
*I assume the really high resilience the guardsman has is because he's ascended to tier 3, a base guardsman should not be that tough.
**The guardsman can also use soak*** to avoid the hits.
***Soak does seem utterly bloated and makes PCs feel too hard to hurt when used, but is basically never used, except for when plaguabearers get it against ever single attack and so can't be hurt... I don't like it.
Tiberius501 wrote: Anyway, I think I'm being slightly salty haha, apologies.
Honestly I think all of us in this thread have been down this spiral of "Oh sweet a new 40kRPG!' to "Oh, these rules seem odd" to "But.. why?" and finally ending in "Why the hell would I want this when I have the old FFG ones "
jonolikespie wrote: Honestly I think all of us in this thread have been down this spiral of "Oh sweet a new 40kRPG!' to "Oh, these rules seem odd" to "But.. why?" and finally ending in "Why the hell would I want this when I have the old FFG ones "
Yeah, I really wanted to be optimistic here, I truly did.
At this point, I'd just have rather seen the FFGRPG's get some updates for the current period and the like and carry on with them.
I did originally have the impression that Wrath & Glory was to be essentially a 'toolkit' for WH40k Role-Playing, a book that could be picked up so that a group could play anything from Alpha Legion Headhunters during the Heresy, to a Deathwatch Kill-Team with Primaris Marines, a group of Arbites for investigation missions, or even a Xenos or Heretic party. The only thing I would have wanted was solid mechanics, a good balance of 'easy to learn' and 'depth of capability' in equal measure, combat that was quick and sensible... and while it seems wild and insane- a means to convert a 40k model's stat line to an NPC/Enemy.
I'm not what I consider a long-time veteran and expert with RPG's- though I have spent quite a bit of time playing them. Had I been given the tools to create what I wanted... I could have very well considered this a product that I could use a lot, and would use for many years. But hey, it's that whole idea that's similar to a 'magic pill that you take one time and it cures any terminal illness'. No money in one singular product that does everything you need, and it's a business so I understand (but I could perhaps understand having several variations of the 'toolkit books' depending on your interests). With any luck, over time we'll have books that I can take and find what I need in them to create the ideal RPG campaign I want.
But for now, I'm getting that bad feeling that this game was developed by people who listened to too many people crying about the old 40kRPG's being 'too hard'. And those were only 'too hard' if you and your group tried to play it like cliche' D&D missions. There was certainly no shortage of GM's that just swapped 'Dungeon' for 'Space Hulk' and 'Boss Monster' for 'Chaos Lord' and wondered why the entire group was staring slack-jawed and wide eyed at dead characters in the first encounter. The FFGRPG's weren't hard, they just weren't games where you can go running into a room with 10 guys, swing your sword, and come out unscathed. And many GM's didn't have enough sense to visualize combat encounters and plan things like cover, or set it up so that the PC's could create an ambush or other things to give them an advantage. A lot of GM's would just treat combat encounters like plopping tokens on a map and call it a day.
jonolikespie wrote: Honestly I think all of us in this thread have been down this spiral of "Oh sweet a new 40kRPG!' to "Oh, these rules seem odd" to "But.. why?" and finally ending in "Why the hell would I want this when I have the old FFG ones "
Hi! OP here. *raises hand*
You can see that initial enthusiasm in the fact that I jumped to start this thread. I've been super-enthusiastic about the 40KRPGs ever since they first announced Dark Heresy, and the idea that the legacy of those games would be continued by one of the biggest forces writing the originals, the man who got me involved in writing the 40KRPGs, that was even better.
And now here we are. I... have zero interest in buying the core rule book. Part of that is "edition wars", but most of it is a big case of "Why?". Why start again? The 40KRPGs cover everything I could ever want, and we haven't even had the time to play Rogue Trader yet. We've spent more time playing Deathwatch than I think any game outside of 40K-proper (and Oldcromunda), and honestly Dark Heresy might be my second fav 40K game (after Necromunda).
So... why would I want a new D6 system that attempts to shove everything from the other games into 'tiers' and tries to be all things to all people?
Weirder, when this game was first talked about, they talked about how they weren't taking the FFG approach and that it would be open gaming to all races (not all at launch, obviously) where you could play anywhere... and yet the core rulebook has its own setting, like the Calixis Sector, like the Kornus Expanse, the Jericho Reach, the Screaming Vortex, the Spinward Front and the Askellon sector. Got quite invested in some of those settings (even wrote a bunch of the fluff for a couple of them).
GW would probably have been better off just hiring some people to make a 40k FATE supplement. It would seem to accomplish all the things this one is trying to do.
D6 system? Check, and you only need 4 dice each.
Character aspects which encourage and/or guide roleplaying for rewards? Check, in the Aspect system where you pick X aspects at character generation which represent parts of your character and can be invoked for both positive and negative effects through the spending of the Fate resource.
Resource that can be spent for in game bonuses? Check, in the form of the titular fate points, which can be spent by players and the GM in order to invoke aspects of characters and the environment for mechanical and narrative effects. The number of fate points you have is determined by the refresh rate of the game, which is set by the players and GM at character creation and increases as major milestones in the story are reached.
Mix of character power levels whilst still maintaining balance? Check, in the form of more powerful characters requiring to spend more of their refresh in order to access their equipment and abilities. This means they have less fate points during gameplay and less refresh to spend on abilities in addition to their base class abilities. So lets say you have a game with a refresh level of 8. In order to play a space marine you have to buy the "Implanted Organs" ability for 2 refresh, the "Power Armour" ability for 3 refresh and the "Know No Fear" ability for 1 refresh, leaving the Space Marine player with 2 refresh points. He is required to have at least 1 refresh remaining so he can buy one other 1 refresh cost ability if he wants. On the other hand the player making the Hive Scum character doesn't have any required abilities for their character archetype and so can spend their refresh on whatever they want from the abilities available to them, or not buy anything and instead have the maximum fate points to spend during the game.
Mechanically simple? Check, every roll is the same. You say what action you want to take and what skill you will use to carry it out, GM tells you the target number to reach and you then roll your 4 dice. Add successes (5 or 6) to your skill level, subtract failures (1 or 2) and then compare. You can also spend fate points by invoking relevant aspects in order to either get +2 to your score or to re-roll the dice and can spend as many fate points on a roll as you wish as long as there are enough relevant aspects to invoke (cannot repeatedly invoke most aspects, though there are some exceptions). So, your guardswoman sniper is trying to pick off a sentry with their long-las, using her Shooting skill of 4. She rolls her dice and gets 2 successes, one blank and a failure. Her total for the test is currently at 5 and the difficulty of the shot is 5, so she will hit and deal damage equal to the weapon damage plus how ever many points she exceeded the target value by. She wants to take out the sentry in one shot and so invokes her character aspects "One Shot, One Kill" ("I aim for his head") and "Never Tell Me The Odds" ("It's a very long shot and no other human would even attempt to make it") in order to get +4 to her skill, which gives her +4 damage. The sentry's head explodes as the las shot hits him right in the eye and he dies without being able to make a sound.
jonolikespie wrote: Honestly I think all of us in this thread have been down this spiral of "Oh sweet a new 40kRPG!' to "Oh, these rules seem odd" to "But.. why?" and finally ending in "Why the hell would I want this when I have the old FFG ones "
Hi! OP here. *raises hand*
You can see that initial enthusiasm in the fact that I jumped to start this thread. I've been super-enthusiastic about the 40KRPGs ever since they first announced Dark Heresy, and the idea that the legacy of those games would be continued by one of the biggest forces writing the originals, the man who got me involved in writing the 40KRPGs, that was even better.
And now here we are. I... have zero interest in buying the core rule book. Part of that is "edition wars", but most of it is a big case of "Why?". Why start again? The 40KRPGs cover everything I could ever want, and we haven't even had the time to play Rogue Trader yet. We've spent more time playing Deathwatch than I think any game outside of 40K-proper (and Oldcromunda), and honestly Dark Heresy might be my second fav 40K game (after Necromunda).
So... why would I want a new D6 system that attempts to shove everything from the other games into 'tiers' and tries to be all things to all people?
Weirder, when this game was first talked about, they talked about how they weren't taking the FFG approach and that it would be open gaming to all races (not all at launch, obviously) where you could play anywhere... and yet the core rulebook has its own setting, like the Calixis Sector, like the Kornus Expanse, the Jericho Reach, the Screaming Vortex, the Spinward Front and the Askellon sector. Got quite invested in some of those settings (even wrote a bunch of the fluff for a couple of them).
I don't want to start again.
Sadly I think you're right, in that the 'talk' about the game before it came out is far, far from what has shown so far (although I'm not overly surprised as a lot of it sounded like something a publisher wouldn't fancy as it would have been hard to sell), now they might get there eventually but at the moment I'd guess its at least 5 years of successful releases away
So... why would I want a new D6 system that attempts to shove everything from the other games into 'tiers' and tries to be all things to all people?
Because they dropped the ball and should have done things using the "D&D Bundle Method"- A rulebook for players with options for the races and classes available to them, a Game Master's guide, and a Monster Manual'. Support this with campaign-specific books with background fluff for a specific region and the pre-made quests for that area. Later books can add expanded classes, more gear, etc. That'd make me happy- just give me the tools in the appropriate books, throw me some Campaign Setting and Adventure Packs and stuff here and there, and I'll make the rest happen.
Because very rarely has 'one book for the whole game' ever been anything other than a watered-down bare-bones 'teaser of the basics' that eventually requires dozens more books to get expanded content to last the group for more than a dozen or so gaming sessions. Eventually you need more and more books over months at a time. Sorry, guys, all the next gaming sessions will basically be filler stuff until I can get information on the next area and give us something different to deal with for a change. This is the kinda thing that ends up with the book going right back on the shelf, and by the time new stuff comes along- everyone's lost interest.
At least with a 'bundle' of several books, some of your players can go get the "Player" book and learn the rules on their own, and make an informed decision about what they want to play. Nothing sucks worse than agreeing to play an RPG with someone, and you sit down with the guy and he's got the ONE BOOK IS ALL YOU NEED for a game you've never played... and he's like "OK so what do you want to be?" At that point, you're just making an impulse decision with little to go on, and it usually turns out not to be any fun at all.
Also, just based on what little I can glean from this new RPG... it's starting to look more and more like the intent was to dumb it down to a point where it could be a game played with 40k miniatures and a bit of dialogue with some hokey voice-acting involved. "Wow, hey guys check out the new 40kRPG! Oh, look at that it uses D6's and what better way to play than with dice for your faction [insert link to GW Webstore]. You can play as a PRIMARIS SPACE MARINE [insert link to GW Webstore], a Prefectus Commissar [insert link to GW Webstore], Tempestus Scions [insert link to GW Webstore] and more! If you can play it, we have the appropriate miniature for you! And while you're there, check out KILL-TEAM, a perfect way to use your new miniatures- and it's ideal for Roleplayers (somehow?)"
Cue Sisters of Battle whinging and gnashing of teeth.
Anyway, I've been known to go full tinfoil hat and gloom and doom, so if I'm wrong- I'll actually be happy. I'll be too happy to care if I have to eat my words and admit I was wrong.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: Because very rarely has 'one book for the whole game' ever been anything other than a watered-down bare-bones 'teaser of the basics' that eventually requires dozens more books to get expanded content to last the group for more than a dozen or so gaming sessions. Eventually you need more and more books over months at a time. Sorry, guys, all the next gaming sessions will basically be filler stuff until I can get information on the next area and give us something different to deal with for a change. This is the kinda thing that ends up with the book going right back on the shelf, and by the time new stuff comes along- everyone's lost interest.
So there's an element of 'be careful what you wish for', with this as well.
For years I watched people go "There should be a central 40KRPG that covers everything!". Ok, here it is, and it seems to be as wide as an ocean, and as deep as a paddling pool.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: At least with a 'bundle' of several books, some of your players can go get the "Player" book and learn the rules on their own, and make an informed decision about what they want to play. Nothing sucks worse than agreeing to play an RPG with someone, and you sit down with the guy and he's got the ONE BOOK IS ALL YOU NEED for a game you've never played... and he's like "OK so what do you want to be?" At that point, you're just making an impulse decision with little to go on, and it usually turns out not to be any fun at all.
I'm not sure what you mean by the above. I'd have preferred a simultaneous D&D style trio release myself as well (or at most staggered one month apart) instead of one book to rule them all but having a single book usually makes it more likely that your players won't make an impulse decision but rather will put a modicum of thought into their character as compared with having multiple books that they may not have or have access to.
For years I watched people go "There should be a central 40KRPG that covers everything!". Ok, here it is, and it seems to be as wide as an ocean, and as deep as a paddling pool.
I can't speak for others but when I expressed that interest I was referring to the core setting of an imperial campaign. I didn't want xenos added in immediately or chaos either but rather as a supplement down the line (but within the first year for sure). They're different enough that they deserve their own books and I think the intial release would have been better fleshed out if it had an initial imperial focus.
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jonolikespie wrote: Haven't watched it yet but apparently WANG (I saw that acronym on 4chan and absolutely love it) content starts at the 19 minute mark.
Thanks for the link; I'll be watching tonight. And, yes, that acronym is golden (if a bit clunky).
H.B.M.C. wrote: For years I watched people go "There should be a central 40KRPG that covers everything!". Ok, here it is, and it seems to be as wide as an ocean, and as deep as a paddling pool.
Not the example I'd use, but I see where you're going. The comparison I'd make is like trying to fit all of your models from multiple armies into one box, and they certainly aren't going to fit- so you decide to start picking and choosing certain ones that you could maybe not bring... and when you arrive at the gaming table, you end up with some of the most basic stuff for several armies, but none of the really fun stuff to make any of them more interesting... and also you realize you forgot Chapter Approved, your measuring tape, and you're gonna have to make do with 10 dice.
warboss wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by the above. I'd have preferred a simultaneous D&D style trio release myself as well (or at most staggered one month apart) instead of one book to rule them all but having a single book usually makes it more likely that your players won't make an impulse decision but rather will put a modicum of thought into their character as compared with having multiple books that they may not have or have access to.
I haven't played D&D in a long time, but I can tell you that quite a few of us had our own 'Player's Handbook' to help us make our decision, and spent significant time using it. If not, we were able to borrow the GM's copy of the book- because he didn't really need it when planning out his campaigns. With a 'ONE BOOK DOES IT ALL', he needs that one specific book. And so do you. So... yeah, it's kind of inconvenient.
I haven't played D&D in a long time, but I can tell you that quite a few of us had our own 'Player's Handbook' to help us make our decision, and spent significant time using it. If not, we were able to borrow the GM's copy of the book- because he didn't really need it when planning out his campaigns. With a 'ONE BOOK DOES IT ALL', he needs that one specific book. And so do you. So... yeah, it's kind of inconvenient.
Are you referring to the price? In both cases, the player is likely to pick up one book if any. I could see an argument being made that a higher price of the book with a bigger page count could diminish the sales potential though.
warboss wrote: Are you referring to the price? In both cases, the player is likely to pick up one book if any. I could see an argument being made that a higher price of the book with a bigger page count could diminish the sales potential though.
I've not seen the size of this book, nor am I sure of its price tag- but I can tell you with the ONE BOOK ALL YOU NEED method- you're just going to have either a smaller page count with less content for a smaller price, or a bigger book with a bit more content for a better price.
But, while it'll never be a perfect example, but... take your typical 'three book pack' for D&D. Now do the same comparison with the Pathfinder RPG core book- pretty much both EXTREMELY similar (for obvious reasons)... but you'll find a LOT more to use in the three-book pack from D&D. Because cramming it all into one core book, something's gotta get left out and come 'later'.
I dig the idea of all of it in one place, but rather than it being a small taste of each flavor... I'd prefer a bigger bowl for that particular dish without it having to share space with other food, if I'm making sense.
I'll admit the 'paddling pool' thing is an exaggeration, but it does seem that by attempting to cover so much ground you inherently lose a lot of depth.
I mean, why include Chaos characters at all? That seems like a real stretch to try and make Chaos, a topic so broad and rich that it takes book after book to cover it in any depth, and shoe-horned them into the basic character creation system.
Something that came up in that Q&A was that there were meant to be 32 classes promised and only 31 in the book. The devs clarified there are 32, chaos space marines are in there. You just use the standard marine class....
H.B.M.C. wrote: I mean, why include Chaos characters at all? That seems like a real stretch to try and make Chaos, a topic so broad and rich that it takes book after book to cover it in any depth, and shoe-horned them into the basic character creation system.
I mean, the D&D books, if I remember correctly, had the Monster Manual with examples of how to make certain monster types as characters- I could imagine doing that with like, Daemons if one were inclined to roll that.
'Human' covers a good chunk of player options as a racial template, with Astartes being a second, then your various Xenos types. I would imagine it wouldn't be hard to get nearly all of the player races and classes into one reasonably-sized book. I don't think you could get LITERALLY EVERYTHING EVER from 40k into the books for Player Characters, but you could do most of what was well within reason.
Adeptus Doritos wrote:Because very rarely has 'one book for the whole game' ever been anything other than a watered-down bare-bones 'teaser of the basics' that eventually requires dozens more books to get expanded content to last the group for more than a dozen or so gaming sessions.
H.B.M.C. wrote:For years I watched people go "There should be a central 40KRPG that covers everything!". Ok, here it is, and it seems to be as wide as an ocean, and as deep as a paddling pool.
There's a whole lot of RPGs that do just fine with a single book, you know. For a great example of complex games with depth that works very well out of the core (or cores) without needing a single additional purchase (but for what you actually want them, because they're great), you just need to go take a look at Runequest 6th edition, WFRP 1st edition, Eclipse Phase, Star Wars 1st edition, L5R (basically any edition), Mutant Chronicles, Conan, CP2020 and a whole lot other games.
Or hell, there's GURPS or Hero, if you prefer not to need a single extra rule forever and ever.
The WANG situation is not derived from any real or perceived fault of the "one core" model. The editorial line? Well, that's another thing altogether.
But for now, I'm getting that bad feeling that this game was developed by people who listened to too many people crying about the old 40kRPG's being 'too hard'. And those were only 'too hard' if you and your group tried to play it like cliche' D&D missions. There was certainly no shortage of GM's that just swapped 'Dungeon' for 'Space Hulk' and 'Boss Monster' for 'Chaos Lord' and wondered why the entire group was staring slack-jawed and wide eyed at dead characters in the first encounter.
That sure wasn't true for Deathwatch, where the Marines were essentially unkillable by standard fare opponents. It was "too hard" because the game was poorly play-tested, unplayable mess. Some kind of reset was necessary.
I feel like the main mistake was the broad selection of such specific classes to choose from. I mean, besides the odd rules choices as well, to be broad, why didn't they do races and backgrounds rather than classes? Being specifically a Scion or Primaris Marine is constrictive in a book that is meant to be inclusive. I want to be smuggler with a rogue trader, but I have to pick a guardsmen. So they did broad sort of wrong, but maybe I'm getting it wrong and you can branch more.
It just seems odd the way they did it, and sort of feels way too much like they're trying HARD to make it tabletop roleplay, and not roleplaying as characters from the 40k universe.
But also, what is with some of the rules choices? I love that it's simpler, it's what made me really excited for this game, DH/BC/RT, they're all awesome and super flavourful games, but they can be pretty harsh to get going if you're starting a new game, especially for players like me and my group, who don't do well with rules crunch. So we were pumped for this. But this doesn't have nearly the same flavour or 40k feeling.
Tiberius501 wrote: I feel like the main mistake was the broad selection of such specific classes to choose from. I mean, besides the odd rules choices as well, to be broad, why didn't they do races and backgrounds rather than classes? Being specifically a Scion or Primaris Marine is constrictive in a book that is meant to be inclusive. I want to be smuggler with a rogue trader, but I have to pick a guardsmen. So they did broad sort of wrong, but maybe I'm getting it wrong and you can branch more.
You might have it wrong. The "scum" selection of characters iirc go from tiers 1-3 so you could play a scavvy smuggler at tier 2 along with your friends tier 2 rogue trader (although the tier on that one is another ball of wax.. see the discussion last page). Or you could ask your friend to level up to tier 3 and you could play a desperado smuggler aka Han Solo.
Tiberius501 wrote: I feel like the main mistake was the broad selection of such specific classes to choose from. I mean, besides the odd rules choices as well, to be broad, why didn't they do races and backgrounds rather than classes? Being specifically a Scion or Primaris Marine is constrictive in a book that is meant to be inclusive. I want to be smuggler with a rogue trader, but I have to pick a guardsmen. So they did broad sort of wrong, but maybe I'm getting it wrong and you can branch more.
You might have it wrong. The "scum" selection of characters iirc go from tiers 1-3 so you could play a scavvy smuggler at tier 2 along with your friends tier 2 rogue trader (although the tier on that one is another ball of wax.. see the discussion last page). Or you could ask your friend to level up to tier 3 and you could play a desperado smuggler aka Han Solo.
Ah okay well that’s better than I thought. And you can be an Inquisitorial Acolyte as well. The classes then seem alright, I retract what I said about that
But also, what is with some of the rules choices? I love that it's simpler, it's what made me really excited for this game, DH/BC/RT, they're all awesome and super flavourful games, but they can be pretty harsh to get going if you're starting a new game, especially for players like me and my group, who don't do well with rules crunch. So we were pumped for this. But this doesn't have nearly the same flavour or 40k feeling.
I'm coming from the same place--the FFG games are gold mines of inspiration and background, but the rules are clunky, fiddly and pretty easy to intentionally or otherwise break (especially as characters become more experienced). So I was pumped for a lighter system that would still have the setting flavour.
Albertorius wrote: There's a whole lot of RPGs that do just fine with a single book, you know. For a great example of complex games with depth that works very well out of the core (or cores) without needing a single additional purchase (but for what you actually want them, because they're great), you just need to go take a look at Runequest 6th edition, WFRP 1st edition, Eclipse Phase, Star Wars 1st edition, L5R (basically any edition), Mutant Chronicles, Conan, CP2020 and a whole lot other games.
Yes, and nearly all of those books are either limited in options for a player in comparisons to the offerings of Warhammer 40k's setting, or they also have a very 'basic starter book' with some samplings, and yet still have multiple books to purchase later to expand your options beyond the default vanilla option. GURPS, an example you gave, is essentially a 'system' book with a LOT of other material that gives you the options.
I suppose what I'm getting at is the impression I took from the development team and various comments from here and there- and while I'm entirely capable of saying that I may have misinterpreted something, you'll have to understand what I was expecting based on that.
The 'end product', as I understood it, was supposed to be something where you could buy the core products, and you and your friends can sit there and decide if you want to be Space Marines, Guardsmen, Arbites, Eldar, Heretics, Necromundan Hive Gangs, or whatever. Essentially, a little box of toys that you could pick and choose for whatever game you wanted to run. Basically, nearly all the options right there from the start without the problem of the Fantasy Flight Games RPG's where you had to buy an entirely new 'game' if you wanted to be something else- despite them all being the same gaming system.
However, it would seem now that the obvious problem is that trying to cram too much into one book means that some of the toys don't fit, and are getting left out of the box.
What I am trying to say is that instead of having one book for an entire game system where you're trying to shove player rules, campaign fluff, GM tools, NPC's and enemies, etc.... it would probably have been wiser to have those various components in their own dedicated books- a player manual, a GM guide, and a bestiary. I know it's cliche' and all, but it's going to include more options for each of them. And while people balk at the idea of 'buying more books', at the end of the day the watered-down 'One Book To Play' model is ALWAYS followed on by multiple books to expand it that you'll certainly need at some point. And I'm pretty sure that's the idea, because it works and people pay for it- despite it being inconvenient for many.
Backfire wrote: That sure wasn't true for Deathwatch, where the Marines were essentially unkillable by standard fare opponents. It was "too hard" because the game was poorly play-tested, unplayable mess. Some kind of reset was necessary.
I've heard this before, and often times when comparing Deathwatch Marines to Chaos Marines in terms of effectiveness. If you put them against one another, and wanted it to be a 'matched fight', you certainly had to beef up the Chaos Marines or put other stuff in there to support them. Or just use some of the gear and skills for Deathwatch marines as a template on Chaos Marines and they could end up being downright scary. Going up against a squad of Iron Warriors that were coordinating their attacks, with skills that complimented and buffed on another was one of the closest battles I've ever had in an RPG.
And yes, standard dudes were easy to splatter in that game- I may have disregarded that as a bit of the appeal to appease some of the complaints people had about Dark Heresy (because some people don't understand concepts like cover, strategically engaging an enemy instead of just running at them and shooting, or coordinating attacks and working together). But I recall playing it quite a bit and we had very, very few issues being challenged by the enemies our GM chose to throw at us. He could have very well tweaked them and I didn't realize it, because I've personally never owned any of the books.
I would say that the one problem I do recall having with a lot of the FFRPG's was when people who were inexperienced with it tried to run it like a D&D game, or when TFG in the gaming group would end up reading the included campaign the GM was using and trying to 'cheat' (though it wasn't effective).
One thing I particularly loved about the campaigns was hearing someone complain that it was short on maps and it was pretty 'basic' with just guidelines and none of the stuff D&D or Pathfinder games have. Another GM I know laughed and said, "Yes, how dare they expect you to be a GM and draft things up and improvise, instead of a guy laying tokens down on a map and reading from a book the whole time!"
Adeptus Doritos wrote: Yes, and nearly all of those books are either limited in options for a player in comparisons to the offerings of Warhammer 40k's setting, or they also have a very 'basic starter book' with some samplings, and yet still have multiple books to purchase later to expand your options beyond the default vanilla option. GURPS, an example you gave, is essentially a 'system' book with a LOT of other material that gives you the options
None of those are "a very basic starter book". None at all. All of those are self contained books with oodles of options. Some are of course more limited in character type choice... but not in setting, only in comparison with 40k. And even that's not true in cases like Eclipse Phase, Mutant Chronicles, Conan, Star Wars or CP2020.
As to GURPS and Hero, I specifically singled them out as rules sets, so I'm not exactly sure what your clarification clarifies.
The 'end product', as I understood it, was supposed to be something where you could buy the core products, and you and your friends can sit there and decide if you want to be Space Marines, Guardsmen, Arbites, Eldar, Heretics, Necromundan Hive Gangs, or whatever. Essentially, a little box of toys that you could pick and choose for whatever game you wanted to run. Basically, nearly all the options right there from the start without the problem of the Fantasy Flight Games RPG's where you had to buy an entirely new 'game' if you wanted to be something else- despite them all being the same gaming system.
What I'm saying is that the fact you did not find what you wanted in this book is not a fault of the "one book game" idea, but of the company and its development decisions. Every single thing you've said above (and a lot more) can be done with Mutant Chronicles, for example... transferred to the setting, of course. Every single thing you've said above (and a lot more) can also be done with Eclipse Phase or CP2020 too, again giving it the appropriate setting berth.
The specific way they have decided to tackle it is what is the problem, not it being a single book.
Albertorius wrote: None of those are "a very basic starter book". None at all. All of those are self contained books with oodles of options. Some are of course more limited in character type choice... but not in setting, only in comparison with 40k. And even that's not true in cases like Eclipse Phase, Mutant Chronicles, Conan, Star Wars or CP2020.
Eclipse Phase, Conan, and Mutant Chronicles- I have very, very little familiarity with. Just a very general 'this is the setting and you can be stuff like X'. Not an in-depth knowledge of them. Admittedly, my awareness of RPG's isn't on your level at all, and I'll attribute that to finding it difficult to get a group together for something other than D&D... and I do not enjoy D&D, if I may be genuinely honest.
Star Wars, to me, is one of those games that I have seen a lot of expanded books for with additional races, classes, etc. But it has been quite some time since I've looked at the books, and I have absolutely no interest in that setting any more, so I'll concede that you could very well be 100% right about it and I could be 100% wrong.
Albertorius wrote: As to GURPS and Hero, I specifically singled them out as rules sets, so I'm not exactly sure what your clarification clarifies.
Yeah, maybe we were on a weird wavelength and didn't communicate with one another very well. GURPS and Hero are basically 'systems', to my recollection. The settings and other stuff is other books. I think I've still got some of the Hero books, I know for a fact I've got a pretty beat-up Dark Champions book somewhere.
Albertorius wrote: What I'm saying is that the fact you did not find what you wanted in this book is not a fault of the "one book game" idea, but of the company and its development decisions.
I do disagree to a point, but I will admit that it could be done in 'one book game'- it'd take considerable work for something like 40kRPG's. Because, hypothetically, if you wanted to give players the options for playing everything from a Primaris Reiver of the Flesh Tearers in a Deathwatch Kill-Team, to Knights serving the Ruinous Powers, or a Radical Inquisitorial Acolyte with a background as Adeptus Arbites... it could very well be possible, but it'd take some significant editing. And that's just me trying to imagine a book that's also going to include things like vehicles, campaign setting fluff, NPC's, enemies, etc. The scope of a 40kRPG, in my mind, is huge- to the point were I recall GM's in older games using a lot of stuff from other games frequently (Ships from Rogue Trader, tanks and stuff from Only War, etc.).
Albertorius wrote: The specific way they have decided to tackle it is what is the problem, not it being a single book.
Maybe we have a different concern for this product, then, and I'm curious about what you mean here. All arguments aside (with my full admission you could be much more knowledgeable than I am and could very well be right about all of this- but in my defense I'm working on memory, because I have no RPG books in my possession here and haven't for some time), I'd like to know what you mean about the method they're using to tackle it.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: Yeah, maybe we were on a weird wavelength and didn't communicate with one another very well. GURPS and Hero are basically 'systems', to my recollection. The settings and other stuff is other books. I think I've still got some of the Hero books, I know for a fact I've got a pretty beat-up Dark Champions book somewhere.
GURPS and Hero are generic systems, kinda like D&D, so you're completely correct in that they are systems without an actual setting attached to them. In those cases you got the D&D route for them: you buy separately the rules and the settings. Another good examples of that kind of games would be FATE Core, the Cortex generic guide, Genesys or Tri-Stat.
I do disagree to a point, but I will admit that it could be done in 'one book game'- it'd take considerable work for something like 40kRPG's. Because, hypothetically, if you wanted to give players the options for playing everything from a Primaris Reiver of the Flesh Tearers in a Deathwatch Kill-Team, to Knights serving the Ruinous Powers, or a Radical Inquisitorial Acolyte with a background as Adeptus Arbites... it could very well be possible, but it'd take some significant editing. And that's just me trying to imagine a book that's also going to include things like vehicles, campaign setting fluff, NPC's, enemies, etc. The scope of a 40kRPG, in my mind, is huge- to the point were I recall GM's in older games using a lot of stuff from other games frequently (Ships from Rogue Trader, tanks and stuff from Only War, etc.).
Any one of the generic systems above could do them:
- With GURPS. Tri-Stat or Hero you'd have a pool of points that you'd use to make the character you wanted.
- In FATE Core, you'd make the character as a set of traits and Aspects that would give you a refresh rate. You could do that either piecemail or via templates.
- Cortex would, similarly to FATE, require you to create the character's distinctions and dice pools, but it's really very easy to do.
- The case of a PbtA 40k would probably be more akin to the old FFG books, but you could make a complete 40k game if you wanted: you would just need to create enough playbooks for all the archetypes you wanted. Or you could go the City of Mist route, which in itself is an hybrid of Fate and PbtA.
And so on and so forth. There's actually nothing in 40k complicated enough to not fit into a book, to be honest. You'd first have to choose how you would want to balance characters, be it from a "power" PoV or from a "character's time in the limelight" PoV.
Maybe we have a different concern for this product, then, and I'm curious about what you mean here. All arguments aside (with my full admission you could be much more knowledgeable than I am and could very well be right about all of this- but in my defense I'm working on memory, because I have no RPG books in my possession here and haven't for some time), I'd like to know what you mean about the method they're using to tackle it.
Well, kinda what I said above: There's nothing inherently that complex in 40k that would make impossible to have everything you need in a single book. Species, types of characters, quirks, traits.... nothing is really that complex to begin with, and 40k being an infinite setting, what you'd need rules-wise is a toolkit to make the stuff your own anyway.
By method I mean that the one they've used, of having very defined "classes", each on it's own little tier niche (although one you can expand from).... is actually pretty restrictive, all told. And takes too much damn space.
For example, say that instead you go the "packages" route: For example, you have a certain creation points maximums you can spend, and the rules you can buy are in smaller "packages", like say, species packages, combat role packages, profession packages and so on.
- You want a primaris librarian? Ok, you buy the "Primaris" species package, the "veteran soldier" package and the "Warp Psyker" package. Done
- Want a skitarii? No problem: "Human" species package, "Cybernetics enhancements" package, "Infantry soldier" package.
- Let's say a Chaos cultist: "Human", "Ork" or "Eldar" species package, "Lost and Damned" package, add whatever else you want depending on the specific character.
There, done. Anything you want in a single book. Even more if you add to the book a package creation rules set.
(DISCLAIMER: Those are, evidently enough, examples I pulled out my ass, right now, thinking about it for like a minute. With a bit more time you could make actually good ones :p).
- You want a primaris librarian? Ok, you buy the "Primaris" species package, the "veteran soldier" package and the "Warp Psyker" package. Done
- Want a skitarii? No problem: "Human" species package, "Cybernetics enhancements" package, "Infantry soldier" package.
- Let's say a Chaos cultist: "Human", "Ork" or "Eldar" species package, "Lost and Damned" package, add whatever else you want depending on the specific character.
Oddly enough, I was thinking on this earlier before I got home to read the response, and I was even thinking something like this because I remember a particular superhero RPG I played (forgot the name of it)- but there was not really a specific thing for creating every hero someone could come up with- you didn't have a 'class' for a hero like Batman, or like Spider-man... and the potential for superhero concepts is so broad you can't even begin to narrow down all those possibilities like that. So in this game, what you would do is pick simple things like "Resilient Form", "Flight" and "Energy Blast". That could very well be a super-durable caped hero flying around shooting lasers from his eyes, or a mechanized android with laser weapons built into his forearms, or a flying insect dude that shot energy beams from his butt. Whatever you wanted, you just picked the best 'general ability' that could suit it and slapped it together. That way you could even work in crazy stuff like supernatural heroes, or tech-origin heroes, or even stuff like mutants.
Now that you think about it in that context, I think you're absolutely correct about fitting it all into one book if you did it like that. However, that almost makes me a bit annoyed because I know game developers probably thought about this method before you or I have discussed it, and it was probably on the table at some point- but it's a lot easier to throw out some pre-assembled 'archetypes' in piecemeal fashion across several books over time, and hey- it's a business, I suppose. Making money with a thing is good, making money for a while with a thing is better.
Albertorius wrote: - You want a primaris librarian? Ok, you buy the "Primaris" species package, the "veteran soldier" package and the "Warp Psyker" package. Done
- Want a skitarii? No problem: "Human" species package, "Cybernetics enhancements" package, "Infantry soldier" package.
- Let's say a Chaos cultist: "Human", "Ork" or "Eldar" species package, "Lost and Damned" package, add whatever else you want depending on the specific character.
There, done. Anything you want in a single book. Even more if you add to the book a package creation rules set.
That just makes everything a variant of 'counts as'.
I'd rather a Skitarius character class than a basic frame-work that mimics the Skitarii.
H.B.M.C. wrote: That just makes everything a variant of 'counts as'.
I'd rather a Skitarius character class than a basic frame-work that mimics the Skitarii.
At the end of the day, with a 'plug in stat packet' system like that, you'd be achieving the same effect. It would certainly be displayed as the go-to template for such a thing. But it would allow certain things to be applied universally. While some of his examples were considerably vague, there would be multiple more 'packets' that are pre-assembled to create the desired character template.
The way I was recognizing it was if one applied basic roles to a racial template, you'd build on top of that from a recipe list to create your character. Within the manual itself it would explicitly lay out how to do that. It wouldn't just be a vague toolkit, it'd be using a very simple reference system rather than filling entire pages with information on one class, in an RPG as overwhelmingly huge as 40k.
I suppose it's easier to think of it like a list of keywords. You look through the book, see Skitarii and its assigned keywords, and those are referenced to tell you what skills and stat modifications to make to your character's racial template.
H.B.M.C. wrote: That just makes everything a variant of 'counts as'.
I'd rather a Skitarius character class than a basic frame-work that mimics the Skitarii.
It seems you have a weird perception of what "count as" is in regards to an RPG.
For a live example of a package system with literally oodles of personality (and no "count-as" whatsoever) you could take a look at Tenra Bansho Zero or The Secret of Zir'An. Both give you packages full of interesting and very steeped into the setting options. And both do it in a single book.
For the sake of argument, though: what would you say a skitarius character would absolutely need for you to regard it as such instead of "a basic frame-work that mimics the Skitarii"? And does the skitarii "class" in WANG manages to do it? Also, are all skitarri from all forgeworlds to conform to that, or would there be variations?
I'm not sure there's much problem with doing a "Skitarius upgrade" package if there are recognizable elements indispensable to it... and you'd still be able to add more packages to give it diverging abilities.
Anyways, to each their own I guess. Likes and dislikes are thoroughly personal.
Anyway, I think I'm being slightly salty haha, apologies.
Honestly I think all of us in this thread have been down this spiral of "Oh sweet a new 40kRPG!' to "Oh, these rules seem odd" to "But.. why?" and finally ending in "Why the hell would I want this when I have the old FFG ones "
«Hope is the first step on the road to disapointement»
I had no hope for this game, I am not disappointed. It began obvious quite soon that it wouldn't be nearly half as good as the old ones.
I heard some things yesterday that I didn't particularly like about the system. It has a random roll based loot acquisition system similar to the FFG games where you have a wealth characteristic and you just make a difficulty check based on the rarety of the item to see if *poof* you get the item with no real consequence to your wealth unless you roll a critical failure on the wrath die or somesuch. While I don't doubt that some like that mechanic, I'm personally not a fan of that kind of purely random acquisition system.
The second is that marines have core rules for their race that gives them a bonus to hit or damage mobs (don't know which) and with the tactical class get some sort of draw two crit cards pick one ability. Unfortunately, the core moral ability central to almost every loyalist marine, ATSKNF, is absent. Sure, you can take a fearless talent at character creation but that isn't the same thing (ignoring fear checks, immune to intimidation). The kicker is that the generic monster manual marine entry has the ability (reroll resolve failed resolve checks) that player character marines lack.
The more I hear about this, the less interested I become. I'll reserve final judgement for when I actually see a copy in person but its starting to feel more and more like the kiddie pool of 40krpgs. I'm admittedly focusing on the marine aspect so I don't know if I'm getting that impression from the attempt to balance marines with everyone else or the jack of all trades master of none kitchen sink inclusive game design.
Yeah the ability the marine has in the Free RPG Day adventure is just that they get a passive +1 Icon to any successful attack against a mob. For every 2 Icons you get above the 'to hit' number you'll hit (and kill because they're mobs) another member of it.
So the "Angel of Death" ability is just an extra half a guy dies every time you unload full auto into a crowd.
warboss wrote: The more I hear about this, the less interested I become. I'll reserve final judgement for when I actually see a copy in person but its starting to feel more and more like the kiddie pool of 40krpgs. I'm admittedly focusing on the marine aspect so I don't know if I'm getting that impression from the attempt to balance marines with everyone else or the jack of all trades master of none kitchen sink inclusive game design.
I'm going to look at the final product myself, but if it's playable- I think it would be fun to get some guys together and play this through tabletop simulator over Skype.
warboss wrote: The more I hear about this, the less interested I become. I'll reserve final judgement for when I actually see a copy in person but its starting to feel more and more like the kiddie pool of 40krpgs. I'm admittedly focusing on the marine aspect so I don't know if I'm getting that impression from the attempt to balance marines with everyone else or the jack of all trades master of none kitchen sink inclusive game design.
I'm going to look at the final product myself, but if it's playable- I think it would be fun to get some guys together and play this through tabletop simulator over Skype.
I'm sure it's playable but that isn't a particularly high hurdle to jump over. I was personally just hoping it would be better than my first impression indicates. It feels like a somewhat shallow (at times poorly organized/thought out) rush job despite the pretty art and the obvious time they had to put into it and the pedigree of some of those involved. Again, it's just an opinion and a first impression at that but I'm not impressed. It's not bad enough from anything I've seen previewed to be unplayable though by any means.
Just read the full rulebook. It covers a lot of ground rules wise, but nothing in much detail. (eg there are base rules for flying ships, but only three ships present. One Human, one ork, one eldar).
Not very much in the way of background/fluff. As an 'introduction' to the 40k lore I would say it is poor and even with your little table of 'objectives' new players to 40k will not have much guidance at all on the lore.
I really don't understand what they were trying to accomplish with the character creation. It is definitely not simpler than previous entries. But it also is definitely NOT the 'play what you want to be' they said it would be.
Character 'archetype' is a misnomer, these are classes and are as limiting as you would expect taking a class to be.
I genuinely find the dice rules to be a lot more clunky. Not necessarily because its a dice pool, but because there are so many added extras (shifting, ruin, wrath, glory, ect). I also saw a fair amount of complaints about the D100 system and how it can be difficult to determine difficulty because of the various modifiers. Well those same issues are pretty much present (add/subract dice and/or DN due to various keywords and other modifiers).
Also the layout of the rules is not to my liking. Feels unstructured and just a dump of words. No clean page breaks for sections, it just continues on like a uni assignment bashed out the night before submission (YMMV)
I hate to be the one that says it, but this looks like another little swindle where they say, "Oh, you will totally be able to be nearly anything, this is just the -starter- book. You see, Deathwatch and Arbites and Tau will be included in..."
Backfire wrote: That sure wasn't true for Deathwatch, where the Marines were essentially unkillable by standard fare opponents. It was "too hard" because the game was poorly play-tested, unplayable mess. Some kind of reset was necessary.
I've heard this before, and often times when comparing Deathwatch Marines to Chaos Marines in terms of effectiveness. If you put them against one another, and wanted it to be a 'matched fight', you certainly had to beef up the Chaos Marines or put other stuff in there to support them. Or just use some of the gear and skills for Deathwatch marines as a template on Chaos Marines and they could end up being downright scary. Going up against a squad of Iron Warriors that were coordinating their attacks, with skills that complimented and buffed on another was one of the closest battles I've ever had in an RPG.
And yes, standard dudes were easy to splatter in that game- I may have disregarded that as a bit of the appeal to appease some of the complaints people had about Dark Heresy (because some people don't understand concepts like cover, strategically engaging an enemy instead of just running at them and shooting, or coordinating attacks and working together). But I recall playing it quite a bit and we had very, very few issues being challenged by the enemies our GM chose to throw at us. He could have very well tweaked them and I didn't realize it, because I've personally never owned any of the books.
When playing one of the ready made scenarios on board of a space hulk, we twice met a legendary Tyranid Hive boss. First time, he charged us for one round and we got so much damage in that he burned a Fate point to escape. Second time, he ambushed us, managed to get I think one hit through to our Assault Marine past the Dodge, Parry and Storm Shield, then we killed him in 1 round. This was against an enemy which was supposed to be pretty much the toughest comer on entire Sector. Granted we had fairly much experience by that point, but still. We played on nerfed Errata weapons (in original tables, Bolt weapons were grossly overpowered) and I had intentionally nerfed my Devastator by avoiding the most OP weapon/feat/ability combos.
There was a thread somewhere where people made optimized Deathwatch builds and most of them could easily solo a Bloodthirster. A Psycher could kill a Bloodthirster simply by walking towards it!
Despite everything I'd hope it's still passable and can be built into a better system.
But I gotta say, a month ago I was really diving in and lovingly crafting an adventure to run for some people as a way for us all to get a real feel for the game and test it out, and now I'm just sorta looking at the half finished collection of word docs I have saved and I have no real motivation to finish it.
OMFG I can't even get my hands on this book yet, and the doom and gloom in this thread is palpable.
This reeks of the edition wars of D&D where every new edition there is a cadre of loyal acolytes to an earlier edition.
Rejoice brothers, if you prefer the FFG40KRPG there are tons of books available for it !!! Play all you want !!!
I'm not crazy about this RPG release apparently being modelled after and actual 40K release, with multiple optional cards packs, poker chips, and a dumbed down starter box.
The starter set is disposable and costs almost as much as the core rules. You might as well just spend the extra $10 and buy the actual rules. Why would you spend $50 to see if you are interested in a $60 RPG ?
$20 Poker Chips ??
Related review video by AirsickHydra, based on his playing through Wrath & Glory: Blessings Unheralded
rules discuassion
I'm picking up a copy in September. I'll share my thoughts on it once I get to actually read it.
The new 40KRPG, to be published by Ulisses Spiele. It is completely separate from the FFGRPGs, and will be far more streamlined, using D6 pools instead of D100s as well as several mechanics designed to make the game simpler to play and easier to pick up for newcomers. Additionally, the game will take place during the "present day" of 40k (I.E. after the appearance of the Great Rift and the conclusion of the Indomitus Crusade). There is an introduction comic here revealing multiple game mechanics. A second and slightly more fluffy introductory piece is available here.
What We Know
The Core Rulebook will contain rules for Humans, Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks. There may be future expansions with other alien races such as the Tau or Dark Eldar.
There will be "Adventure Path" style releases. The first release will follow a group of Imperials in Imperium Nihilus, the second following Ulthwe Eldar.
The game uses a d6 dice pool system. Rolls of 1-3 are failures, 4-5 are successes, 6 is a double success, and if more successes than needed are rolled a 6 can be shifted from the total successes for extra bonuses to the roll effect (such as a boost to damage rolls in combat or allowing a task to be completed faster). One of these dies must be the Wrath die, which is a blatant ripoff of the Ghost die from Ghostbusters RPG or the Wild Die from D6 System: if you roll a 1 on the Wrath die, bad gak happens, but it can also generate wrath points (a consumable resource, like Edge in Shadowrun - for example, you can spend a wrath point to re-roll all failures on any single roll).
You can't reroll the Wrath die using wrath.
"Failing forward" is the name of a deliberate attitude the developers took towards the entire design, meaning that even if a roll is failed, no one failed roll will be enough to lead to a TPK situation; it will still have negative consequences, however.
After choosing a species and character Archetype, characters pick Keywords, suggesting allegiance ("Imperial Guard", "Inquisition", "Ganger", etc.). In addition to fluffing a character out, they have crunch effects like making it easier to get rare gear or aiding in getting help from another faction.
The game has a player "Tier" system, from I-V, which reflect a combination of a given character's combat ability, authority, and wargear access, among other things. A Tier I character would be a Guardsman, Eldar Corsair, or Ork Boy (grunts, essentially), while things like Space Marines, Eldar Warlocks, and Commissars would be Tier III. Any given campaign will have an agreed-upon Tier set for it, which will dictate limits on Archetypes, dice pool limits, and the overall challenge level of the campaign. This ensures that a given campaign won't pit characters against anything too easy or too hard for their expected power level- an individual Genestealer that would be the "main villain" of a Tier I game session would only qualify as a basic mook in a Tier III game, for example.
Characters of lower tiers can join higher tiered games through Ascension, wherein they pick up a new keyword, some form of memorable injury or a number of corruption points, some better starting equipment that would allow them to stay competitive (like plasma weapons), and a boost to attributes, skills, and talents that would bring that character up to the equivalent of a starting character for that tier.
Initiative order is decided by the players "agreeing" instead of rolling. They take turns with the GM (i.e. Player 1, GM monster 1, Player 2, GM monster 2 etc...). HOWEVER, DMs can spend a resource called Ruin to go first, while players can spend Glory to go back to back. In the likely case of disagreement or uncertainty as to who goes first, the characters simply roll their Initiative attribute and compare icons, with the highest number of icons acting first. In the case of a tie, player characters win over NPCs, and if the tie is between two players or two NPCs, the players choose who goes first (or the GM does, in the case of the NPCs).
Individually weak enemies can form a mob- a single group that acts as if it was an individual. Mobs gain bonus dice to attack rolls equal to half their size (e.g. 5 dice for a 10-Ork mob) rather than rolling one die per attack, can divide their attacks across multiple targets, and may split into smaller mobs on their turn.
All damage is calculated by adding the weapon's base damage to a roll of at least a single die. This narrows the range and prevents a bolter from rolling a 2 in the same turn a lasgun rolled a 12.
Extra damage and special effects can be added by moving exalted icons. So far the only thing we have confirmed is extra damage die which can do a max of +2 damage.
Your damage rolls are done the same as Icons/successes. (1,2,3) give you nothing but disappointment. (4,5) give you one piddly bit of extra damage. Roll a 6 and you get 2 extra damage.
Basic number of successes needed to pass is 3 with difficult tasks taking more. Because the average number of successes per die is 2/3, this means "average" tasks need a pool of at least 5 dice for you to succeed on average - anything less, and you should expect failure. In general, you need 1.5*target DC dice to succeed at least half the time, rounding down.
At release, there will be 32 archetypes divided amongst the four races (Humans, Eldar, Ork, Space Marine)
archetypes will be added with the campaign sets (really leaning into the Paizo revenue scheme, aren't we?)
Archetypes By Tier
Tier 1: Ministorum Priest, Sister Hospitaller, Imperial Guardsman, Inquisitonal Acoltye, Inquisitorial Adept, Hive Ganger, Cultist, Elder Corsair, Ork Boy
Tier 2: Death Cult Assassin, Sister of Battle, Tempestus Scion, Space Marine Scout, Sanctioned Psyker, Rogue Trader, Skitarius, Scavvy, Rogue Pskyer, Eldar Ranger, Ork Kommando
Tier 3: Crusader, Imperial Commissar*BLAM*, Tactical Space Marine, Tech-Priest, Desperado (read John Wick), Chaos Space Marine, Heretek, Elder Warlock, Ork Nob
Tier 4: Inquisitor (sick!), Primaris Marine Intercessor
There will be Savage Worlds style Campaign Cards, which are distributed at the beginning of the session, one per player. At any time during the game, a player can use the Campaign card to change the flavor of the encounter. The example given was a card which made diplomacy two steps more difficult, but gave every player an additional Wrath point.
A "Framework" system exists for mixed groups, which gives them their reasons to work together when the individual party members might not be inclined to do so.
Adeptus Doritos wrote: ...so the mechanics for this sound like really simple board game mechanics.
Doesn't sound like fun.
Roll a number of dice depending on your stat, get a number of successes based on the difficulty of the task. That's how FFG's Star Wars RPG (and WFRP 3rd edition) work, and Dream Pod 9's systems, and something else I've played but can't quite remember at the moment. Simple is good in RPGs, IMO.
A lot of the complaints appear to boil down to two main reasons:
Use of cards, either because some people don't like using accessories other than their dice and character sheet in an RPG, or because they fear card decks being used to add extra material or patch issues at additional cost. I disagree with both of those reasons, but they're fair enough.
The scope of the game being too wide - Space Marines and Guardsmen in the same party. I remember there being complaints in the opposite direction (not by the same people, I hasten to add!) about Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, etc - that they didn't cover all of 40k, only a little bit. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose. Personally, I think it's easier to cover everything broadly in the core rules then add supplements later to drill down, but again, I did like the details of the worlds, locations and suchlike of the Calixis sector. I could have done without the fifteen thousand minute variations on lasgun, though - that sort of thing always feels like a cheap excuse to pad out the page count for no real benefit.
Even with Dark Heresy's intentionally limited scope, you could do a lot with it (Indiana Jones-style artefact hunting with a party of tech-priests, a squad of Guard troopers even before Only War was released, Hive Street Blues with a party of Arbitrators were three ideas I came up with, along with the obvious underhive gang adventures), so perhaps you don't need this new game's "little bit of everything" approach. Still, I like anything that is less ... heavy than another iteration of an 80s RPG.
adamsouza wrote: OMFG I can't even get my hands on this book yet, and the doom and gloom in this thread is palpable.
This reeks of the edition wars of D&D where every new edition there is a cadre of loyal acolytes to an earlier edition.
Rejoice brothers, if you prefer the FFG40KRPG there are tons of books available for it !!! Play all you want !!!
I'm sure it's just that, a "cadre of loyal acolytes to an earlier edition".
I mean, it's not like most of the posters here were just commenting with great excitement about a new edition of an RPG without FFG's (for many) overly clunky and restrictive system. No, it's just bad faith comments from disenfranchised people with not a sigle thread of validity, because otherwise you might be wrong.
And god knows we can't have that
As to the actual game, I've yet to form my own opinion on it, TBH. I think I don't agree with some of the design decisions, but the core system doesn't seem too bad, and I've simply not read far enough not really tested the system, so I'll have to withhold any informed opinion for a later date.
adamsouza wrote: OMFG I can't even get my hands on this book yet, and the doom and gloom in this thread is palpable.
This reeks of the edition wars of D&D where every new edition there is a cadre of loyal acolytes to an earlier edition.
Rejoice brothers, if you prefer the FFG40KRPG there are tons of books available for it !!! Play all you want !!!
I don't believe that's an accurate description of the overall mood or tone of the thread. If anything, the portion of your post above puts you in first or second place for the most hyperbolic/overly dramatic prize. I'd say mild disappointment to annoyance is more accurate.
The scope of the game being too wide - Space Marines and Guardsmen in the same party. I remember there being complaints in the opposite direction (not by the same people, I hasten to add!) about Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, etc - that they didn't cover all of 40k, only a little bit. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose. Personally, I think it's easier to cover everything broadly in the core rules then add supplements later to drill down, but again, I did like the details of the worlds, locations and suchlike of the Calixis sector. I could have done without the fifteen thousand minute variations on lasgun, though - that sort of thing always feels like a cheap excuse to pad out the page count for no real benefit.
Even with Dark Heresy's intentionally limited scope, you could do a lot with it (Indiana Jones-style artefact hunting with a party of tech-priests, a squad of Guard troopers even before Only War was released, Hive Street Blues with a party of Arbitrators were three ideas I came up with, along with the obvious underhive gang adventures), so perhaps you don't need this new game's "little bit of everything" approach. Still, I like anything that is less ... heavy than another iteration of an 80s RPG.
I can't speak for others but, as one of the people who brought up the complaint, I feel the problem is NOT that that a Space Marine and Guardsman are in the same party/core book but moreso that page space was devoted to xenos and chaos in the core book in addition to said Space Marine and Guardsman. I fully support the inclusion of Chaos and Xenos in the RPG as a player option but I feel that they'd have been better served as two separate splat books rather than jammed into the core. As it stands, I don't feel that the layout gives justice to any of the above categories (Imperial soup, Chaos, Xenos) to a degree that I'd expect from an RPG product as it feels superficial rather than the detailed, cohesive effort each of them deserves. YMMV.
Thing is... there are plenty of games that let you do anything at all that you could possibly want of a setting from the get go, even with pretty kitchen-sink settings. They usually don't do them as "classes", though, because the aren't usually flexible enough for the task, and tend to take up too much space in comparison with other options.
I'm pretty certain we'll see the 'classes' expanded. We'll see some sort of Space Marine focus book, something on Inquisitors, something on different types of guard, etc.
...which is almost kind of defeating the point. I would have rather had a modular system to build characters rather than relying on old 'pick this one class' systems.
I should not have expected this singular book to carry a LOT of options, but my opinion is that the selection of classes in this almost seems more like 'samples' than an actual selection of classes for something as big as the 40k universe.
It may just be a little bit of a downer to see that if I want to play something like a Primaris Reiver, a Deathwatch Marine, a Grey Knight, an Arbites, etc... I'll probably have to end up waiting months and buying another expensive book.
Got my hands on the PDF and flicking through it I can see why the RT is only Tier 2.
No ship, Warrent of Trade ability I guess would be useful when tracking down items you want, but still nothing exciting. All it seems to have is +2 influence.
jonolikespie wrote: Got my hands on the PDF and flicking through it I can see why the RT is only Tier 2.
No ship, Warrent of Trade ability I guess would be useful when tracking down items you want, but still nothing exciting. All it seems to have is +2 influence.
He has a ship (an imperial frigate). It's his last wargear in the list.
But I don't think the ship should be increasing the RT tier nonetheless. The group will have a ship to transport them (owned by a NPC or a PCRT) nearly every time and it isn't an item making you more powerful than the other members of your group because all the group is using it. It's more a "status" thing inside the dynamic of the team ("the ship is mine", "I'm the one doing orders on the deck") than a thing breaking the balance in a team.
Any thoughts on using the SOB archetype for a tier 2 full marine (instead of a scout)? Unlike in the old FFG system, there is almost no difference between SOB power armor (just 1 str boost difference) and bolt weapons compared with marine equivalents. It's ostensibly a point but system so theoretically adding the cost of the archetype to the Astartes race should be equivalent. I'd just have to change the keywords and trinkets and it seems to make a decent Black Templar as is rather than putzing about with a scout.
At over 450 pages Warhammer 40,000 Wrath & Glory is a veritable tome...
This makes me feel better about the price tag.
I haven't seen anyone mention the bestiary/foes section of the book. Does anyone who's laid eyes on it care to comment on it ?
The bestiary section is 45 pages. It starts with a section detailing how they work (types of threats, how to scale, sizes, special abilities) and a quick NPC creation section. After that, it continues with a list of adversaries, by type:
Other Xenos:
Genestealer
Genestealer Hybrid Metamorph
Clawed Fiend
Gliead Swoopbat
Enochian Death Skate
Ostian Sabretooth Vulpine
Leviathan Worm of Avachrus
Gilead Night Scarabs
After that, the chapter ends with a small section about named adversaries and an example, Arthius, "an opportunistic alien shapeshifter from a nearly-extinct xenos race".
I am the author of the review linked above. I joined to let you folks know that the 2nd part of my review is online.
The forum doesn't allow me to post links, but you'll find a link to the 2nd part under the 1st part of the review. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them on my blog or here in this thread.
Don't get me wrong, it was a nice read, but it is hard to give your review of the system much weight when you have admitted to not having played/tested it at all.
EDIT: This sounded meaner that I intended after re-reading. What I mean to say is, how W&G plays in practice is important. Is there a possibility of you posting a 'part 3' after playing a one shot or something? I meant it when I said it was a good read, and would like to hear your thoughts after some hands on experience.
Grinshanks wrote: Don't get me wrong, it was a nice read, but it is hard to give your review of the system much weight when you have admitted to not having played/tested it at all.
EDIT: This sounded meaner that I intended after re-reading. What I mean to say is, how W&G plays in practice is important. Is there a possibility of you posting a 'part 3' after playing a one shot or something? I meant it when I said it was a good read, and would like to hear your thoughts after some hands on experience.
I fully understand your position. I'd love to play every product I review, but this is unfortunately not possible. Often just reading the book has to be enough. If I actually get a group of friends excited about the game, I'll run it and post my experiences on the blog.
Grinshanks wrote: Don't get me wrong, it was a nice read, but it is hard to give your review of the system much weight when you have admitted to not having played/tested it at all.
EDIT: This sounded meaner that I intended after re-reading. What I mean to say is, how W&G plays in practice is important. Is there a possibility of you posting a 'part 3' after playing a one shot or something? I meant it when I said it was a good read, and would like to hear your thoughts after some hands on experience.
I fully understand your position. I'd love to play every product I review, but this is unfortunately not possible. Often just reading the book has to be enough. If I actually get a group of friends excited about the game, I'll run it and post my experiences on the blog.
I've read a comment about character creation over at rpg.net that I find... less than encouraging, TBH.
I'll repost it here:
Spoiler:
A friend of mine has proposed to run a T4 game of Wrath & Glory. Since nobody has made characters for this game before, I decided to log my adventure through character creation in detail. You can read it below.
Okay, we're Tier 4. This means I have 400 build points. It would be nice if I the book had a pregen for me to work from but it doesn't, so we'll look and see what my options are...There aren't a lot of options! I decide to play an Eldar Warlock. That's a Tier 3 character. It's recommended in the book I do things this way:
1. Build the character at their "original" tier, which is 300 for an Eldar Warlock.
2. Advance them to Tier 4 by spending the appropriate BP.
3. Buy the "Staying the Course" Ascension Package. So that's what I'm going to do.
A few notes: I can't spend more than 150 BP on my attributes as a T3 character. I can't have an attribute or skill above 6 as a T3 character.
Let me mention something great here: Attribute value modifications due to species don't affect XP costs. This means if your primaris marine has +2 strength, and your strength starts at 5? You pay XP to advance it as though it's five, not as though it's seven. This is really good in terms of not creating an incentive to put all your points into the attribute(s) you get a bonus in.
So as an Eldar I get the following stuff from Species:
[*]Build Point Cost 10 (I'm down to 390)
[*]Speed 8
[*]+1 Agility
[*]Outsider: +2DN to all interaction tests with anyone with the Imperium keyword (Ouch!)
[*]Intense Emotion: +1DN to all Resolve tests. Failing a Willpower-based test in a scene involving intense emotion grants the GM +1 Ruin
[*]Psychosensitive: All Eldar may purchase 1 Minor Psychic Power if they also purchase the Psychic Mastery skill. This purchase also gives them the Psyker keyword. In addition, the Tier Restriction for Maximum Psychic Powers for Eldar Characters is increased by 1 to accommodate this purchase.
Then, I buy the Warlock package. It has a build point cost of 80 (!) which is a hell of a lot. This is, no gak, enough to make me want to rethink my entire concept and play something else. Whatever, I'm finishing this sheet and then if I don't want to play it I'll write up something else. I have no idea what is going on at a game design level, like what I'm getting in return for that. The Imperial Sanctioned Psyker costs 50, maybe it's just for the psychic powers and gear?
Anyway, here's what I get:
[*]80 BP cost. I'm down to 310 free.
[*]Prerequisites: Willpower 4, Psychic Mastery 2
[*]Keywords: Aeldari, Asuryani, Psyker, <Craftworld>. This tells me that I need to pick a Craftworld. There's a list of those somewhere that I'll look at later.
[*]Influence Bonus +2. I don't actually know what this does.
[*]Runes of Battle: A Warlock begins play with the Psyniscience and smite psychic powers (these do not count towards the maximum), and may purchase additional Minor Psychic Powers, Universal Psychic Powers, and Runes of Battle Psychic Powers, subject to Tier restrictions. I know that it costs points to buy psychic powers. This is going to be expensive.
[*]Rune armour, witchblade, shuriken pistol, a set of wraithbone runes, spirit stone.
So, let's start on Attributes. I suspect the party is going to be heavy on Astartes and other badasses, so there's not much point in trying to compete in those arenas. Fellowship is also a bit of a waste, with my Outsider trait I'm not going to succeed much on Interaction tests anyway. Instead, I'm going to try and buy up the stuff I want to be good at: Initiative (which is actually the basis for your Defense! That's why it only gets one skill linked to it), Willpower (because psyker), and after that Agility/Intellect (because Eldar.)
So! Scores of 3 for Strength, Toughness, and Fellowship. That's 10 points apiece. Score of 4 in Intellect and Agility (not counting racial bonus) 18 points apiece. Willpower and Initiative of 5 each, those are 33 (!) points apiece. I'm not sure if that's an exponential scale or a logarithmic one or what, but it definitely creates an incentive to shore up weaknesses rather than buy one single legendary attribute. Now let's double check those costs 30 (10x3) + 36 (2x18) + 66 (2x33) = 132. That leaves me with exactly enough points to increase one of my attributes from 5 to 6. I could also increase two of my attributes from 3 to 4, but obviously that's not nearly as cool. I want to increase willpower to 6 because if you're going to roll psyker, you'd best roll a lot of dice. But if I do that, I've spent 240 points out of 300, and I have to fit skills *and* psyker powers in that last sixty points. So instead I'm going to try and be a little more well-rounded, and try to fit in the extra willpower when I "advance" to T4.
And that's 132 (attributes) + 10 (race) + 80 (class) = 222 points spent. I have 78 left to buy skills and stuff with. Sadly, due to how expensive some of my stuff is, I can't even buy the "standard" T3 skill package. I'll go ahead and buy the T2 skill package for 70 points. This leaves me 8 points left (hahaha, so much for buying psychic powers).
[An Interesting Note: Buying Strength & Toughness up to 9, which would bring you to the maximum for an Astartes character if I'm reading this right, would cost 280 points. That would leave you paltry few points for the rest of your sheet, even at Tier 5. What I am getting at is that starting characters of a given tier will probably not be even close to their racial maximums. Primarchs may be Tier 5, but Tier 5 ain't Primarchs.]
Anyway, that package is:
One skill at rating 5
Two skills at rating 4
Four skills atrating 3
One skill at rating 2
So let's go:
Psychic Mastery 5
Weapon Skill & Scholar 4
Stealth, Awareness, Survival, & Pilot at 3.
Athletics at 2.
Now I've got 8 points to screw around with, which is not a lot. It costs one BP to learn a language, let's get rid of a few there. By default I speak Low Gothic & Aeldari. Let's spend 3 BP to be know Ork, Tau, and High Gothic. Now I've got 5 points left.
I'd really like to buy some cool gak in the equipment chapter, but I don't understand how that works at all at this point, and I'm not even sure I use BP to do it. So I'll save that for a later revision, or try to acquire things in play. Like a Jetbike. Jetbikes are cool.
So...five points for Gout of Flame, just because it seems hilarious, is IMO under-costed at 5 points, and I'm not going to have a lot of offensive power.
So, character sheet as a T3 non-ascended dude, except for traits (derived attributes) that reference Tier directly.
Skills Skill rating is below the dash, after the dash is the normal die pool.
Athletics: 2/5
Awareness: 3/7
Languages: Aeldari, High Gothic, Low Gothic, Ork, Tau.
Pilot: 3/8
Psychic Mastery: 5/10
Scholar: 4/8
Stealth: 3/8
Survival: 3/8
Weapon Skill: 4/9
Equipment: Rune armour:
Witchblade: 11+3ED; AP 0; Force, Parry, Warp Weapon
Shuriken pistol: 10+1ED; AP 0; Range 24m; Salvo 2; Penetrating [3], Pistol
A set of wraithbone runes: Not sure what this does
Spirit stone: Only useful if my character dies I think
Psyker Powers Smite
Psyniscience
Gout of Flame
...
And that's it. Let's see what happens during Ascension.
...first off, this bs costs me 40 more Build Points, which let me tell you I rather resent. I have no idea how I'm supposed to buy the attributes, skills, and psyker powers I need to be Tier 4 when I have to pay a giant tax of BP just to get there.
In return for this, I get
One free keyword which can be whatever the GM lets me have. I'm going to take Anhrathi, which is Eldar Corsairs. I think my dude was a pirate for a while.
My skill prerequisite goes up by one, which isn't a problem.
My Influence goes up by 1.
I can gain either 3 corruption or a Memorable Injury (Memorable injuries are supposed to have mechanical effects, but I can't find them anywhere near the chart, so for all I know they were left out.)
Gain either one T+3 Very Rare wargear or 2 T+3 Rare wargear.
Well, let's look at equipment. I think I have basically pretty good weapons and armor. I can't afford a jetbike (notably, I couldn't afford one even if I was ascending to Tier 5 - you're telling me a Tier 4 Eldar, a dude who is the supposed equivalent of an Inquisitor, cannot have a fething space motorcycle. That's dumb as hell. I can't afford a webway keystone, either, although I can imagine those being legitimately not a thing the Eldar hand out very easily.
Hmm, I bet those runes I got are supposed to be a Psychic Focus.
Anyway, I think I'm going to take a jump pack and an Eldar cybernetic implant; Eyes of the Crone. The latter will emulate the effect of a Night's Eye (no penalties from darkness or fog) and a reticule eye (+1d to Ballistic Skill tests. Since I don't have BS at all, I need all the help I can get.) I guess this is going to be my Memorable Injury - Morwyn has some serious scarring around one eye. He probably got that when he was a pirate. Yarrr, matey.
So anyway that was a waste of 40 points, let's see what I can do with the other 60.
18 points to raise Willpower to 6. I'd like to take Initiative up, too, but I just don't think I can afford it.
Skills are actually cheap and there aren't that many, so it's a good place to stash "leftover" points. So I'm going to buy psychic powers next.
Genuinely the major thing I want here is Mind Probe, because this is probably going to be a game where we investigate gak. That's fifteen points. I think I'm better off waiting to buy more psychic powers in-game.
I have 25 points to buy skills.
So let's say:
Ballistic Skill to 3 is 6 points.
Insight to 3 is 6 points.
Athletics to 3 is 3 points (it was already at 2.)
Stealth to 4 is 4 points.
Awareness to 4 is 4 points.
That's 23 points. Umm. I guess I can take Tech, & it turns out Intimidate is based on Willpower. Intimidate 7 might be handy, I could use it for interaction attacks. I hope that Outsider doesn't affect that? I feel like being an Aeldari shouldn't make it harder to scare the gak out of Imperials. Who knows.
So, here's a finalized sheet:
Morwyn of Saim-Hann Former Corsair & Warlock, has a scar around his left eye, and a shining black orb in its place.
Skills Skill rating is below the dash, after the dash is the normal die pool.
Athletics: 3/6
Awareness: 4/8
Ballistic Skill: 3/8
Insight: 3/7
Intimidate: 1/7
Languages: Aeldari, High Gothic, Low Gothic, Ork, Tau.
Pilot: 3/8
Psychic Mastery: 5/11
Scholar: 4/8
Stealth: 4/9
Survival: 3/9
Tech: 1/5
Weapon Skill: 4/9
Equipment: Rune armour:
Witchblade: 12+3ED; AP 0; Force, Parry, Warp Weapon
Shuriken pistol: 10+1ED; AP 0; Range 24m; Salvo 2; Penetrating [3], Pistol
A set of wraithbone runes: +1 to Psychic Mastery tests
Spirit stone: Only useful if my character dies I think
Jump Pack
Eye of the Crone: +1 Ballistic Tests, not affected by darkness or fog.
Psyker Powers Smite
Psyniscience
Gout of Flame
Mind Probe
I'm going to be straight with y'all. This process actively pissed me off. For a game that looks to be very light and fast in play, it took me every bit of 2 hours to make a character. Admittedly that's due to inexperience with the system, but that's going to describe most people who sit down to play the game. Also, I was doing it with the PDF, where I could use the bookmarks to flick instantly to what I wanted. With a physical book this process would have been torture. W&G desperately needs workable quick-start or pregenerated characters.
Secondly, my character at T4 feels like they aren't much more advanced than T3, but they'll probably be expected to deal with more serious issues. I think the "ascension tax" is a mistake. I wasn't trying to power game with some wild combo, there just aren't a lot of archetypes to work with, and none of the ones at T4 looked appealing. There are only two archetypes given at Tier 4, if you play at this tier expect people to have to advance a lower-tier archetype. Like me, they may be annoyed to find they have to pay a giant BP tax to get there.
Secondly, take note of this: An Eldar Warlock (T3 archetype) is 90 points. The quick-start attribute array for T3 is 126 points. The quick-start skill array for T3 characters is 101 points. 90+126+101 = 317 points. Congratulations! Your suggested starting arrays, the closest thing to quick-start in this book, are unusable with the stated point totals for starting characters, and I still haven't bought any psyker abilities, the whole point of my archetype.
I'm not going to check any of the other race/archetype/tier combinations, because I'm exhausted from dealing with this.
While I agree that it's definitely complicated and not in any way fast and light, I disagree with his assertion that the "ascension tax" is a mistake. Each package gives tangible benefits to a player and therefore deserves to have a discrete cost based (supposedly) on those benefits. Making it free is a more than a few steps down the Palladium RPG road to ruin where things are just better for free just because.
I made up a test character myself last week using my idea of a tier 2 "marine" SOB and ascended him to 3. My ascension conversion was relatively easy as it only consisted of the package and two talents though due to the limited budget I had to work with. Alternately, I swapped out one of those talents for a couple of skill and attribute buffs instead.
One thing that did come up was that there is no mention of rank with ascension in that section (although its covered in the GM progression section). If you're organically trying to play the character and then increase them to the next tier as a party due to accumulated build point "xp", you lose all your rank when you ascend which makes certain talents useless again. It felt to me that ascension was more like repeat character generation and should be treated as such thematically instead of "ascending" an existing character unfortunately.
So someone brand new to the system found building an advanced, higher level character somewhat confusing on their first try? With no help and literally no one in the group having made any sort of character for the game before?
That doesn't say anything about the system at all.
It does say one thing: you can't build some Tier-appropriate characters with the points you are given and the suggested, tier-appropriate, attribute and skill expenditures.
That is not exactly good, as is something you really should be able to catch on the first review pass.
Also, it says that there is a "one size fits all" ascension cost. As not every package gives the same benefits, I find this... less than ideal. Cost should always be proportionate with gains.
I didn't catch that they were the same cost. I largely skipped over the psychic one as I had no intention of being a librarian in the test build I did. With only two packages so far, it's hard to tell whether it'll be the same cost going forward but I do hope they price things differently rather than apparently just going with New Tier x 10 for everything. It defeats the purpose of having points if they're not actually tied to benefit level. Thanks for pointing that out.
Yeah, I didn't have much wiggle room with attributes and skills myself either. I basically used the cheapest "packages" and bumped up one attribute a little higher. Same with the skills (lowest package, bump up one). I didn't get no where near the tier limits with the highest base attribute being 3 for me at tier 2. At tier 2, the cost of astartes (which admittedly bumps some attributes to 4) plus a class doesn't leave much wiggle room.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I read through the RPG.net thread and see a bit more clearly what you're referring to now. I do feel the example the original poster is giving is a bit of an extreme case though. He's taking a mid-cost race and adding literally the most expensive class in the entire book and then wondering why in his edge case he can't afford to take tier "appropriate" attributes and skills. Maybe it's the long time Shadowrun player/GM in me but I don't find that to be an issue with these sorts of point buy systems. If you prioritize something (and taking the single most expensive class and then loading it up with even more psychic stuff) then something else has to be deprioritized. In SR, you don't end up with a whizbang troll physad face merc because you can't afford to do all of that well at the same time starting out. YMMV.
Honestly, I think it just sounds like someone who isn't familiar with RPGs with point cost builds, or someone who missed the point that the "tax" is to simulate a more experienced lower tier hero without leaving them the build points to buy attributes and skills equal to the higher tier ones.
adamsouza wrote: Honestly, I think it just sounds like someone who isn't familiar with RPGs with point cost builds, or someone who missed the point that the "tax" is to simulate a more experienced lower tier hero without leaving them the build points to buy attributes and skills equal to the higher tier ones.
I know the poster. That is emphatically not the case. He is a 30-years veteran rpger. And an rpg.net admin for, like, decades, which would clearly rule out him being a newbie.
It might be as simple as the he doesn't like it very much, instead of a fault of his background.
I read through the RPG.net thread and see a bit more clearly what you're referring to now. I do feel the example the original poster is giving is a bit of an extreme case though. He's taking a mid-cost race and adding literally the most expensive class in the entire book and then wondering why in his edge case he can't afford to take tier "appropriate" attributes and skills. Maybe it's the long time Shadowrun player/GM in me but I don't find that to be an issue with these sorts of point buy systems. If you prioritize something (and taking the single most expensive class and then loading it up with even more psychic stuff) then something else has to be deprioritized. In SR, you don't end up with a whizbang troll physad face merc because you can't afford to do all of that well at the same time starting out. YMMV.
It might be that, but one of the other examples was an admech (no extra points iirc) and an Ork boy (lot me, 3 points left I think). That still feels of something going awry with the costs (which if that's all it is is actually a good thing! A slight errata and done).
It might be that, but one of the other examples was an admech (no extra points iirc) and an Ork boy (lot me, 3 points left I think). That still feels of something going awry with the costs (which if that's all it is is actually a good thing! A slight errata and done).
I do agree though that it looks bad from a thematic and game design standpoint to not have your quick buy plug and play system literally not work for so many classes. With the pedigree of those involved, it's a bit surprising but maybe it was rushed due to the breadth of the content and trying to get it out for gencon. Either way, the quick but problematic fix is to adjust the package costs (and obviously contents) so that all combos work out of the box. Players can then either tweaking obsessively or take a talent or two to use the extra points freed up. That of course wouldn't help the people who bought the physical copy though but as long as the packages are correctly calculated then it's not really a big issue but rather just a minor stain on their reputation/editing/proofreading.
adamsouza wrote: Honestly, I think it just sounds like someone who isn't familiar with RPGs with point cost builds, or someone who missed the point that the "tax" is to simulate a more experienced lower tier hero without leaving them the build points to buy attributes and skills equal to the higher tier ones.
I know the poster. That is emphatically not the case. He is a 30-years veteran rpger. And an rpg.net admin for, like, decades, which would clearly rule out him being a newbie.
It might be as simple as the he doesn't like it very much, instead of a fault of his background.
I never accused him of being a newbie. I have friends who've played D&D, Marvel, White Wolf, etc.. for 30 years which are all games where you roll or assign points and they all cringe at character creation in games like DC Heroes or Mutants and Masterminds which have crunchy point buy character building mechanics.
He complained about the tier upgrade costs. He clearly viewed that as a negative concept. It didn't leave him a lot left to buy the good stuff in his opinion. I'm viewing that as a good intentional design decision.
As player, I understand the desire to be as effective as possible. From a game design perspective I understand the intent to represent a lower tier character who's accumulated wealth, perks, gear, etc.. and is not a dice pool match for the higher tier characters.
A lone Guardsman in a group of Space Marines, who has plasma gun, friends and low places, and a komisar who's out to get him, makes more sense than a Guardsman who can go toe to toe with a Space Marine in combat.
W&G is a dice pool game. That guardsman after a few adventures can have a Ballistic and Melee skill equivalent to a Space Marine, but he probably shouldn't start out that way.
I have a question for the dakka hive mind regarding WANG. The marine black carapce impant allows the armor to plug directly into the marine's nervous system for better control/maneuverabilitiy. From the wiki entry which is usually copied from a codex blurb:
"Note that a Space Marine needs the Black Carapace to use his Power Armour to its maximum capabilities, but Power Armour technology in general does not require this implant in order to function. The Sisters of Battle, for example, as well as some Inquisitors or wealthy Imperial functionaries such as Rogue Traders, also wear Power Armour into battle. However, since their central nervous systems are not linked directly to their armour's Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence) as a Space Marine would be, movement is cumbersome in comparison to the surprising grace and natural movement afforded by Astartes Power Armour, and the suit is likewise less capable of efficiently providing bio-monitoring and auto-treatment functions. "
So, with the impant rule for astartes in WANG, should Black Carpace give +1d to all physical tests made in the armor that require coordination (like attacking and full defense)?
warboss wrote: I have a question for the dakka hive mind regarding WANG. The marine black carapce impant allows the armor to plug directly into the marine's nervous system for better control/maneuverabilitiy. From the wiki entry which is usually copied from a codex blurb:
"Note that a Space Marine needs the Black Carapace to use his Power Armour to its maximum capabilities, but Power Armour technology in general does not require this implant in order to function. The Sisters of Battle, for example, as well as some Inquisitors or wealthy Imperial functionaries such as Rogue Traders, also wear Power Armour into battle. However, since their central nervous systems are not linked directly to their armour's Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence) as a Space Marine would be, movement is cumbersome in comparison to the surprising grace and natural movement afforded by Astartes Power Armour, and the suit is likewise less capable of efficiently providing bio-monitoring and auto-treatment functions. "
So, with the implant rule for astartes in WANG, should Black Carpace give +1d to all physical tests made in the armor that require coordination (like attacking and full defense)?
Citing a non game source to get a game bonus seems dubious at best, but even if we went with that concept I've never heard of the armor enhancing coordination beyond it not being a hinderance to movement.
WEG's STAR WARS games almost always impose a DEX penalty while enhancing STR to resist damage, and sometimes lifting heaving things. I see the Space Marine Power armor in the same vain, where the connection to the armor allows the user to move without any hinderance, but doesn't make them better at shooting or hitting things in melee.
Is this the.. official acronym for the game, or is this referring to some other roleplay term?
Wrath ANd Glory
We have 4chan to thank for the nickname.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
adamsouza wrote: Citing a non game source to get a game bonus seems dubious at best, but even if we went with that concept I've never heard of the armor enhancing coordination beyond it not being a hinderance to movement.
WEG's STAR WARS games almost always impose a DEX penalty while enhancing STR to resist damage, and sometimes lifting heaving things. I see the Space Marine Power armor in the same vain, where the connection to the armor allows the user to move without any hinderance, but doesn't make them better at shooting or hitting things in melee.
Fair enough (although I disagree with demoting GW's own codex space marine description parotted on the wiki as just a "non game source" though and all that implies). It's not that it enhances the movement beyond what is normal but rather stops the power armor from slowing you down like it is supposed to do for non-black carapace users. Unfortunately, the lack of diversity between power armors means that the only difference functionally between the marine power armor and SOB is a one point strength boost. Same features and same protection otherwise despite the difference in size and the black carpace. Also, in the previous rpgiirc, the black carapace meant that you didn't count as one size larger (making you easier to hit) with the armor because of the increased coordination unlike others in heavy armor.
And I approve of that being the official one as it wouldn't be appropriate for the other. @Mysterio: I'm not trying to make anything including fetch happen. Call the game what you wish. I simply find the alternative WANG to be irreverantly humorous (similar to Star Trek Discovery's STD nickname).
It's already called WANG in most of the internet communities I visit.
I don't really care either way, it's just amusing that there are grown men in the world who are uneasy with acronyms like WANG. Reminds me of all the tears regarding Star Trek Discovery being called STD.
BrookM wrote: Not so much uneasy, but rather I think immature may be the better description here? Though given the original source it shouldn't be surprising.
What if we paired it with an animated gif of some luscious red lip sticked lips licking?
More on topic though, have there been any more reviews on this thing? I've skipped out on the preorder due to it coinciding with the Imperial Knight release and well.. not getting a great vibe from the last few previews.
More on topic though, have there been any more reviews on this thing? I've skipped out on the preorder due to it coinciding with the Imperial Knight release and well.. not getting a great vibe from the last few previews.
The game has both a static DR pool and a static(ish) damage system. This means for example that a regular Ork Boy is almost impervious to las gun fire, for example a regular hit can never do damage without any special abilities or glory being used. There is a reason that most games either roll for damage (DnD) or roll for Damage Reduction (Shadowrun).
Something similar was brought up here in the thread that it felt impossible to damage the enemies in the intro adventure with some weapons (although they were nurgle iirc so there is some fluff basis to that). Has that potential issue been changed since being brought up? It was in the early summer so likely the books were already printed and on the slow boat from China.
Played today. 6 hour session preceeded with about 3 hours of character generation, which is a novel method of torture in itself.
It's basically like playing D&D 3.0 edited by the GW rules team. A bloated, convoluted, inelegant mess of a book with rules all over the place, inconsistent mechanics, summary tables contradicting each other on a regular basis and page references pointing in random directions.
In essence, this is a 90s RPG crossbred with the latest hipster brew of crunch-disguised-as-narrative. It's like someone played D&D for 20 years, then read FATE once and tried to mesh both together into a 40k simulator under strict orders that buckets of dice are fun, math doesn't matter and players should reference at least 30 pages worth of rules, inexplicably spread out across 300 pages of book, to do a basic attack.
I will actually give it a 0 out of 10. You are seriously better off taking a random d20 sci-fi build, or a FATE build if you're heavy into pretending that crunch is narrative if you put enough fluff behind each number, or just play Kill Team for combat and freeform the story, seriously anything else is better.
I almost forgot the bizarre random starting gear table, where my Priest got a relic straight from Holy Terra and the Rogue Trader scored a parrot servitor mp3 player, while the Scout got a pack of smokes and the SoB got CLEAN SOCKS.
Clean socks can be a life saver... But the rest of that doesn't sound good. I'm hoping to try it out myself in three weeks. Is that random table for trinkets or real gear?
Next morning, thinking back to what another player said, the convoluted mechanics and arduous character generation are that much more disappointing because there's no reward at the end. You don't get to make a clever character build with powerful synergies. For all that work, you still get a dude with core attributes and skills and maybe a feat that all work like in D&D, one class ability and... that's it.
To ad insult to injury, if you take a Tier 1 class (like a Guardsman, Priest of Ganger) for a Tier 2+ game, you need to stat them up for a Tier 1 game first, then level them up, which, unless you want to suddenly discover psychic powers, really translates into a 10% build point tax for virtually no gain, compared to taking a Tier 2 class, and you end up with a character who can barely hit and can't hurt Tier 2 enemies (for example, las weapons and hand flamers literally cannot harm a Genestealer in any way).*
Action resolution is long and convoluted and the rules are scattered all over the place, and this is just the basic rules. As I said, characters don't really have fancy abilities that would reward them for mastering the system. It's just a plain old numbers contest, but then, in classic 40k fashion, there are a bunch of minor special rules about the dice rolls tacked on everywhere that tend to work slightly differently depending on what roll you are making.
* I exaggerate, of course. If you roll at least four 6s out of your your six or so attack dice, then a 6 on both of your damage dice, you can do 1 wound. Repeat 8 times and they're dead. Unless they elect to dodge (soak), which converts wounds into fatigue (shock) and gives them a buffer of another 6 epic critical hits on your part. Of course, a Genestealer will kill you back in 2 hits tops.
Fluff is a bit on the light side, and is roughly comparable to a 40k core rulebook. FFGrpgs delved deeper into their fluff, but could do so because they focused on a particular area.
To its credit, W&G has a LOT more ground to cover (evident in Orks/Eldar fluff, which are sparse).
Thanks for the link! Sucks for those who buy hard copies I suppose but that's one of the benefits of a legal digital copy. I think I prefer the technique of releasing the pdf first and then using the feedback to incorporate the errata into the 1st printing of the hard copy (although I'm not advocating for crowdsourcing proper editing and proofreading as a replacement for a professional pass on both). Since they were rushing it out for gencon, I suppose that wasn't an option.
It looks like they're increasing the easy build array cost for at least one tier which makes the issue of not being able to use it with some combos even worse. On page 1, does this make sense?
PAGE 193 Improve Attributes: Change the BP value for the second improvement to 15 instead of 10; the total points spent is 23 instead of 18.
It's been a while since I looked but that seems to be a big jump. Does the errata need an errata?
I have to admit that I have no idea. On first blush, it seems to exacerbate the issue we already saw cropping up, as less character options will be viable with the suggested stats.
Welp, that's some dedication... maybe send the guy preview copies of the books next time? I mean, as much as a gesture of thanks as to have him pore over the books...
Not to put too fine a point on it but has interest in this product line fallen off of a cliff? Granted dakka doesn't get much RPG talk traffic on average but it is a 40k discussion haven and I'm not seeing much here (in this thread or outside) nor frankly much talk out on other sites. Even posting this gave me the thread necro warning and I'm just trying to find out if I'm missing a shift in the discussion or new announcements.
Thanks for the update. I'm pretty much lost all interest myself but I can't really comment for anyone else. Still, good to know that it finally made it.
I can tell you what it's not worth- the price tag slapped on it.
Sitting down and reviewing this book, its system is 'okay' but it's otherwise a collection of the most generic options for players. Well, everyone wanted 'a book to be anything' but now we got the result- a book with the most generic versions of anything you could be in 40k, with all the flavor of a communion wafer.
Got a link to the review? I'd be interested in reading it. One thing I will say is that the "everything including the kitchen sink" approach was taken a bit too far in my perusal of the contents months ago. If they were going that broad, I think they'd have been better off with a classless system instead of so many similar but not archtypes. People wanted to play marines with normal humans in the core book... not necessarily scout marines, tactical marines, and primaris marines with humans and multiple variants of eldar and orks in the core book. YMMV but I think they shouldn't have spread the content butter so thin over the 40k universe toast. I'd have preferred having those extra variations in supplements with the rest of the core book focusing on making the core system a better foundation for the expansions.
And if you missed it, then, well, Doritos sums it up nicely:
Adeptus Doritos wrote: ... everyone wanted 'a book to be anything' but now we got the result- a book with the most generic versions of anything you could be in 40k, with all the flavor of a communion wafer.
I can tell you what it's not worth- the price tag slapped on it.
Sitting down and reviewing this book, its system is 'okay' but it's otherwise a collection of the most generic options for players. Well, everyone wanted 'a book to be anything' but now we got the result- a book with the most generic versions of anything you could be in 40k, with all the flavor of a communion wafer.
FFG40kRPG's were just fine for what they are, but Wrath & Glory's system just seems to me like they tried to appease people that probably should have been ignored.
People whined because the old 40kRPG's were 'too hard'. Well, if the only RPG you've ever played is D&D, it's gonna be hard. You can't just stand in the middle of a room and have a shootout with six enemies, even if you're an Astartes. You use cover, you use grenades, and you get clever- because the entire game system revolved around leveraging advantages to help your odds of success. You also didn't want to go around kicking in doors and just barging into rooms in a hostile area, because that's how you get killed. People want to treat RPG's like little skirmish games and can't think of it as an RPG because D&D's system is simple.
And all those people wanted only one book with everything, and I'm not sure why anyone would think 'one RPG book with every option' would work for 40k's setting.
The worst defense I've seen for this is, "Well, if you want to be a specific chapter or type of guardsman, you need to get with your GM and create rules that best represent that". Yeah, at that point I may as well just start writing my own RPG. How something as simple as rules for Chapters got ignored is beyond me.
FFG40kRPG's were just fine for what they are, but Wrath & Glory's system just seems to me like they tried to appease people that probably should have been ignored.
People whined because the old 40kRPG's were 'too hard'.
Dakka, just keep on being Dakka.
The FFG40K games weren't too hard, they were just bad games. They weren't fun as WFRP 1E, which I played back in the day. Any one who thinks WFRP-based 40KRPGs are 'fine' really probably can't tell what a good game is. But go ahead and yell TRADITION if it makes you feel good, FFG40Ks still sucked regardless of the new game.
For the record I may pick this up as I am a roleplaying fan. I also enjoyed the FFG games. I think Rogue Trader was amazingly handled. I also remember that Dark Heracy was not a FFG game. My copy says Black Industries and that whole launche was a cluster. The way this game seems to have dribbled along and the way it looked like it was designed to dribble out future content plus it's all in price just comes across as crazy. It seems like they have taken design cues from the drug manufacturers, rather then marketing strategies from drug dealers which given the fact that plastic crack is the staple of their business I find surprising.
The FFG40K games weren't too hard, they were just bad games. They weren't fun as WFRP 1E, which I played back in the day. Any one who thinks WFRP-based 40KRPGs are 'fine' really probably can't tell what a good game is. But go ahead and yell TRADITION if it makes you feel good, FFG40Ks still sucked regardless of the new game.
There's a joke in here somewhere.
By all means, feel free to tell me what a 'good game' is. You know, since I don't know what one is.
"I liked this one because it's more fun" is about is valid as saying "I like corn dogs so hamburgers are just garbage and people who eat hamburgers don't know what good food is".
And all those people wanted only one book with everything, and I'm not sure why anyone would think 'one RPG book with every option' would work for 40k's setting.
The worst defense I've seen for this is, "Well, if you want to be a specific chapter or type of guardsman, you need to get with your GM and create rules that best represent that". Yeah, at that point I may as well just start writing my own RPG. How something as simple as rules for Chapters got ignored is beyond me.
They do have rules for first a select group of core (typically first founding) chapters in the core book. It's not much but it's there.
warboss wrote: They do have rules for first a select group of core (typically first founding) chapters in the core book. It's not much but it's there.
Yeah, I see it now. It's just the first founding. And it's... nothing really. You got more than that out of a demeanor or something in the older games.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've know someone who thinks they can "objectively prove" that the FFGRPGs were bad games. That always amused me.
Well... FFG's 40kRPGs work, and so far are quite more flavorful than the new one. OTOH, they give for granted a certain amount of assumptions (like the "+0 bonus is for 'in combat conditions', anything less strenous should give bonuses" that is assumed the GM will be using, which very rarely happens in real life or the NPC statlines with loads of Talents tha you have to go check at the Talents section) that make the game quite a bit more complex than it should or needs to be.
They are not fun games to GM in my experience, though, and I've found that porting them to other system usually doesn't break them, either.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've know someone who thinks they can "objectively prove" that the FFGRPGs were bad games. That always amused me.
It's a matter of preference, but the most common reason I hear for why they're 'bad' is because people tried to play Dark Heresy like they were playing D&D. Uh, you don't do that... you don't even play Deathwatch or a Chaos Marine like you would play a D&D Character.
D&D is a simple combat system that's been adjusted a bit through the years and had RPG mechanics stapled to that framework. You can honestly package its combat system alone and use it as a skirmish game system, because that's what it was originally designed for. It wasn't designed for a roleplaying game, the roleplaying game was transplanted onto it. I'm not saying that it's a bad game for that, in fact that's a pretty good quality. It just does what it does, as a different game. Sort of like Infinity does what it does compared to Kill-Team.
The FFGRPG's were developed as one RPG system. Combat and all. Roleplaying is very much a part of the combat system, in a way, and some people simply don't get that at all. A lot of gamers rage about it because their initial experience is to play "D&D with 40k stuff", and that fails catastrophically. "I want to shoot at that guy" works in D&D, but in the FFGRPG's... that's usually the last decision you make for a character in a lot of circumstances. It's just not made to work that way, it's made so that you leverage advantages.
Even playing badass Space Marines, you have to roleplay your combat smart. You don't barge into a room, you listen outside the doorway. You don't stand there and shoot, you take cover and brace yourself behind a fallen pillar, and use it to stabilize yourself and take a shot- all of these things can start tacking advantages on to your action, and that's what a lot of people missed...it's all a matter of convincing the GM that what you're doing should realistically make it easier for you to achieve the results you want. You have to do a bit more than play a slightly more complicated skirmish game, you have to immerse yourself and actually roleplay.
Another massive gripe about the FFGRPG's is that the adventures weren't like D&D adventures. Look, hey, I get that a beginner GM is gonna struggle with that- but the overall complaint is that "The FFGRPG's don't layout a specific map with every little detail of every room we go into and have a script and encounter table for the whole mission". Oh, heaven forbid that a Game Master has to do more than read aloud from a book and doodle a room layout on a dry erase mat. That might be asking him to actually be creative and come up with things on the fly, or plan things out ahead of time.
I will, without any shame whatsoever, admit that the FFGRPG's require an experienced GM. And a lot of GM's do neglect to convey to the players the importance of leveraging advantages in their favor as they play and reminding them that this is not D&D with a 40k Costume. In my experience, people who've had absolutely no experience playing D&D or similar games do a lot better- even people who've played WoD games tend to do much better and enjoy the FFGRPG's. It's one of those things that if anyone were to ever want to start playing, I'd suggest finding someone who already has played it and is very familiar with it... otherwise, it'll just be one more group of people on the internet saying it sucks and repeating the "You Died, the 40kRPG" meme.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've know someone who thinks they can "objectively prove" that the FFGRPGs were bad games. That always amused me.
I wouldn't worry about it. Personal preference masquerading as fact is an internet tradition dating back decades and not just "dakka being dakka". It had its flaws but I had fun both playing and running campaigns for years. I've yet to find the universal "perfect" rpg system to rule them all that one poster here seems to have found.
They are not fun games to GM in my experience, though, and I've found that porting them to other system usually doesn't break them, either.
Out of curiosity, what didn't you like from a GM perspective? (Given that it's obviously not a "narrative" system of course) From a GM perspective, I had trouble finding specific rules when I needed them on the fly initially and, from a personal preference angle, wasn't a fan of the Palladium style pages and pages of random tables. I'll admit though that my animosity towards Palladium may have colored my views on that last part as my much younger players with no experience with that had no issues with them. YMMV.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've know someone who thinks they can "objectively prove" that the FFGRPGs were bad games. That always amused me.
It's a matter of preference, but the most common reason I hear for why they're 'bad' is because people tried to play Dark Heresy like they were playing D&D. Uh, you don't do that... you don't even play Deathwatch or a Chaos Marine like you would play a D&D Character.
D&D is a simple combat system that's been adjusted a bit through the years and had RPG mechanics stapled to that framework. You can honestly package its combat system alone and use it as a skirmish game system, because that's what it was originally designed for. It wasn't designed for a roleplaying game, the roleplaying game was transplanted onto it. I'm not saying that it's a bad game for that, in fact that's a pretty good quality. It just does what it does, as a different game. Sort of like Infinity does what it does compared to Kill-Team.
The FFGRPG's were developed as one RPG system. Combat and all. Roleplaying is very much a part of the combat system, in a way, and some people simply don't get that at all. A lot of gamers rage about it because their initial experience is to play "D&D with 40k stuff", and that fails catastrophically. "I want to shoot at that guy" works in D&D, but in the FFGRPG's... that's usually the last decision you make for a character in a lot of circumstances. It's just not made to work that way, it's made so that you leverage advantages.
Even playing badass Space Marines, you have to roleplay your combat smart. You don't barge into a room, you listen outside the doorway. You don't stand there and shoot, you take cover and brace yourself behind a fallen pillar, and use it to stabilize yourself and take a shot- all of these things can start tacking advantages on to your action, and that's what a lot of people missed...it's all a matter of convincing the GM that what you're doing should realistically make it easier for you to achieve the results you want. You have to do a bit more than play a slightly more complicated skirmish game, you have to immerse yourself and actually roleplay.
Another massive gripe about the FFGRPG's is that the adventures weren't like D&D adventures. Look, hey, I get that a beginner GM is gonna struggle with that- but the overall complaint is that "The FFGRPG's don't layout a specific map with every little detail of every room we go into and have a script and encounter table for the whole mission". Oh, heaven forbid that a Game Master has to do more than read aloud from a book and doodle a room layout on a dry erase mat. That might be asking him to actually be creative and come up with things on the fly, or plan things out ahead of time.
I will, without any shame whatsoever, admit that the FFGRPG's require an experienced GM. And a lot of GM's do neglect to convey to the players the importance of leveraging advantages in their favor as they play and reminding them that this is not D&D with a 40k Costume. In my experience, people who've had absolutely no experience playing D&D or similar games do a lot better- even people who've played WoD games tend to do much better and enjoy the FFGRPG's. It's one of those things that if anyone were to ever want to start playing, I'd suggest finding someone who already has played it and is very familiar with it... otherwise, it'll just be one more group of people on the internet saying it sucks and repeating the "You Died, the 40kRPG" meme.
Sounds like it needed a really good starter adventure, with a proper map and an annoying Servoskull belonging to an ex-Drill Abbot set to Tactical Enhancement mode "Consider thee, the strength of this remaining pillar amidst the ruins and how it echos the unyielding spirit of mankind. Did not Saint Perciles of Idomacia himself once say 'a Man without Faith readies his Lasgun upon Sand, yet Man standing firm behind a Bullwark of Faith, will find the Emperor steadies his aim and will get them right between the fething eyes seven times out of ten'?"
"Ah, I see I might have overestimated your current tactical acumen...readjusting instructional psalms to pre-novitiate levels...'let us start with the Book of Munitionum 1:01 Only the Fool and the Heretic truly glimpse the Emperor's wrath - under no circumstances look into the bit the bullets come out of whilst holding your gun.'"
Sounds like it needed a really good starter adventure, with a proper map and an annoying Servoskull belonging to an ex-Drill Abbot set to Tactical Enhancement mode "Consider thee, the strength of this remaining pillar amidst the ruins and how it echos the unyielding spirit of mankind. Did not Saint Perciles of Idomacia himself once say 'a Man without Faith readies his Lasgun upon Sand, yet Man standing firm behind a Bullwark of Faith, will find the Emperor steadies his aim and will get them right between the fething eyes seven times out of ten'?"
"Ah, I see I might have overestimated your current tactical acumen...readjusting instructional psalms to pre-novitiate levels...'let us start with the Book of Munitionum 1:01 Only the Fool and the Heretic truly glimpse the Emperor's wrath - under no circumstances look into the bit the bullets come out of whilst holding your gun.'"
I'd say it was faulty in not making it clear that your 'adventure' was basically a story and some stats and characters and such, and the GM still needed to do sit down and do the map work.
However, we usually used 40k models and terrain, making it significantly easier and more immersive.
FFG40kRPG's were just fine for what they are, but Wrath & Glory's system just seems to me like they tried to appease people that probably should have been ignored.
People whined because the old 40kRPG's were 'too hard'.
What we do have here though is a lot of different people with...different opinions.
For example:
Adeptus Doritos wrote: ... everyone wanted 'a book to be anything' but now we got the result- a book with the most generic versions of anything you could be in 40k, with all the flavor of a communion wafer.
Now, he may be right about the 'everything too generic' thing, but clearly not 'everyone' wanted...this.
Yeah, hyperbole for effect and all that, but still, just one user's opinion!
Was hoping this version of the RPG would be pretty good, most reviews are...not being kind to it though.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Do people think the inevitable Space Marine/Inquisition/Whatever books will flesh things out sufficiently?
Considering how long it took to get to store shelves after the premiere at gencon (and the paucity of discussion in the interim here at least), I'd say that it might be "too little, too late" and that's assuming that they actually get those books. YMMV.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've know someone who thinks they can "objectively prove" that the FFGRPGs were bad games. That always amused me.
It's a matter of preference, but the most common reason I hear for why they're 'bad' is because people tried to play Dark Heresy like they were playing D&D. Uh, you don't do that... you don't even play Deathwatch or a Chaos Marine like you would play a D&D Character.
D&D is a simple combat system that's been adjusted a bit through the years and had RPG mechanics stapled to that framework. You can honestly package its combat system alone and use it as a skirmish game system, because that's what it was originally designed for. It wasn't designed for a roleplaying game, the roleplaying game was transplanted onto it. I'm not saying that it's a bad game for that, in fact that's a pretty good quality. It just does what it does, as a different game. Sort of like Infinity does what it does compared to Kill-Team.
The FFGRPG's were developed as one RPG system. Combat and all. Roleplaying is very much a part of the combat system, in a way, and some people simply don't get that at all. A lot of gamers rage about it because their initial experience is to play "D&D with 40k stuff", and that fails catastrophically. "I want to shoot at that guy" works in D&D, but in the FFGRPG's... that's usually the last decision you make for a character in a lot of circumstances. It's just not made to work that way, it's made so that you leverage advantages.
Even playing badass Space Marines, you have to roleplay your combat smart. You don't barge into a room, you listen outside the doorway. You don't stand there and shoot, you take cover and brace yourself behind a fallen pillar, and use it to stabilize yourself and take a shot- all of these things can start tacking advantages on to your action, and that's what a lot of people missed...it's all a matter of convincing the GM that what you're doing should realistically make it easier for you to achieve the results you want. You have to do a bit more than play a slightly more complicated skirmish game, you have to immerse yourself and actually roleplay.
Another massive gripe about the FFGRPG's is that the adventures weren't like D&D adventures. Look, hey, I get that a beginner GM is gonna struggle with that- but the overall complaint is that "The FFGRPG's don't layout a specific map with every little detail of every room we go into and have a script and encounter table for the whole mission". Oh, heaven forbid that a Game Master has to do more than read aloud from a book and doodle a room layout on a dry erase mat. That might be asking him to actually be creative and come up with things on the fly, or plan things out ahead of time.
I will, without any shame whatsoever, admit that the FFGRPG's require an experienced GM. And a lot of GM's do neglect to convey to the players the importance of leveraging advantages in their favor as they play and reminding them that this is not D&D with a 40k Costume. In my experience, people who've had absolutely no experience playing D&D or similar games do a lot better- even people who've played WoD games tend to do much better and enjoy the FFGRPG's. It's one of those things that if anyone were to ever want to start playing, I'd suggest finding someone who already has played it and is very familiar with it... otherwise, it'll just be one more group of people on the internet saying it sucks and repeating the "You Died, the 40kRPG" meme.
None of that makes them bad games. It just makes them different. I think any system which encourages the players to actually roleplay is a good thing.
For what its worth, I do think their RPGs are better when you are not playing as space marines. Space Marines are very tough to roleplay in interesting ways, and the Deathwatch portion of the RPGs was fairly stale in terms of content. It was really just different flavors of "You are going to deal with X threat of the week with this string of combat encounters..." and not much in the way of non-combat roleplay stuff. The "Only War" portion is similar in that it revolves around soldiers and nothing but soldiers. A little more potential for roleplay stuff, but its still a little constricted. I immensely prefer Rogue Trader or Dark Heresy, its a much more traditional RPG in terms of player freedom as well as being a good mix of combat and non-combat. Black Crusade as well has a similar potential, even with Space Marines being involved still, because being the Bad guys is a cool twist and Chaos Space Marines have more potential for individuality.
It is unfortunate that FFG didn't get more premade adventure modules for their games, because that would I think have helped a lot. Thats not really a mark against the system, its just a lack of pregen stuff that a GM can cut their teeth with. Every RPG starts out that way. Even DnD once had very few modules to run through.
Grey Templar wrote: For what its worth, I do think their RPGs are better when you are not playing as space marines ... Black Crusade as well has a similar potential, even with Space Marines being involved still, because being the Bad guys is a cool twist and Chaos Space Marines have more potential for individuality.
It can be. GW has decided to make Space Marine characters into giant hams yelling at one another, so there's not really much you can do. I've had some groups that were a bit boring, and some groups that were a blast- mostly military guys in a group can somehow make playing Astartes more fun, given both tend to trash-talk one another a bit.
Black Crusade, on the other hand, was quite a bit more fun. I've played two- in one campaign, we were far less serious in our roleplaying and played it up for laughs and snark- and it was honestly a blast.
Our current Black Crusade campaign is a blast. We're a not-quite-trusted rag-tag group of Chaos Marines who have been roped into a Word Bearer invasion of a world, and are being used as a special forces/distraction team.
We've been quite good at bluffing our way of out things, but our team 'face' has some appalling rolls, so much so when we were sent to one space station at the start of the invasion we ended up at the wrong space station and somehow managed to convince everyone that it was a cunning strategy.
In the last game we helped take down an Imperator Titan by... being the bait in an ambush.
Out of curiosity, what didn't you like from a GM perspective? (Given that it's obviously not a "narrative" system of course) From a GM perspective, I had trouble finding specific rules when I needed them on the fly initially and, from a personal preference angle, wasn't a fan of the Palladium style pages and pages of random tables. I'll admit though that my animosity towards Palladium may have colored my views on that last part as my much younger players with no experience with that had no issues with them. YMMV.
I like the FFG games, on the whole. They're gold mines of setting ideas, and the system is.....workable. But here are my issues with it. No one of these is a deal-breaker, but they add up:
--The rules assume the PC's should be fishing for bonuses at all times, but that's not stated very clearly, and it's a departure from most other RPG's where your base stats usually aren't modified very much. A degree of system mastery is needed to know where most of those bonuses are meant to be coming from in the first place, and some players can be reluctant to constantly ask if they get +10 for their Talented / Peer / Voidborn Background Trait / Gotta Get Down On Friday ability in this situation. It also increases the GM load if the "standard task" modifier needs to be adjudicated every time before the players know what they actually rolled.
--In a system with a lot of intricate player options and discrete abilities / Talents, you need a simplified system for NPC's, especially if you're going to be running a lot of them in one scene.
--All the player options increases the potential for min-maxing, or just plain breaking the game. I remember trying to talk an RT group down from their super-carrier ship that could one-round nearly any other ship with massed bomber attacks, and a DH tech-priest who was a demigod at repairing stuff, and terrible at absolutely everything else.
--And it also increases the importance of system mastery, such that one player can find themselves lagging behind another player with the same character concept, simply because one of them knew the rules better.
Overall, I like the FFG games, but I was very ready for something lighter and less clunky, that still had 40K flavour.
I've received a copy as material for a review and to be honest it's not bad. The flavour is spot on, the balancing is okay. I mean it´s not a competetive game, you & your GM can work out all the potential rough edges on the fly.
What really grinds my gears though is the lack of material. They came in swinging with lots of stuff like cards, a gm screen and an adventure but after that? Nothing. And don´t get me started on the adventure. While it has a decent story it is by far the railroadiest adventure that I have seen in years. Such a waste of opportunity...
warboss wrote: Out of curiosity, what didn't you like from a GM perspective? (Given that it's obviously not a "narrative" system of course) From a GM perspective, I had trouble finding specific rules when I needed them on the fly initially and, from a personal preference angle, wasn't a fan of the Palladium style pages and pages of random tables. I'll admit though that my animosity towards Palladium may have colored my views on that last part as my much younger players with no experience with that had no issues with them. YMMV.
Well, it's an accumulation of things. From the player side I felt that the class system didn't really did justice to the setting, and that mostly pidgeon holed characters just because. That, combined with talent tree "tiers", which is something I loathe, and the fact that the XP spenditures on skills very often impacted less the rolls that equipment did ended up with an, IMHO, very unsatisfying experience.
On the GM side, well, it started with the games not explaining well their assumptions for rolls and proper challenges and it went on from there to NPC stats with scads of talents that you needed to go check out in other chapters of the book instead of being integrated with the NPC rules (this is a big pet peeve of mine, NPC stats should be as playable as humanly possible without cross referencing), rulebooks that are very hard to navigate during a game (seriously, they have small rule blurbs scattered all over) and flavorful but ultimately not very practical books from the perspective of using them to prepare a game, and preparing a game was, in all honesty, an annoying experience.
I agree about the NPCs as much info for running them as possible should hopefully be baked into the rules/stats without further page flipping. I could see some core rulebook stuff being glossed over if rarely used but definitely anything not in the core book or the book the NPC appears in should be described at a minimum.
Um... should we be worried that the Wrath and Glory RPG pages on the Ulisses website have been expunged in such a thorough way that even the Inquisition would be proud?
Page not found. Previously, it had the FAQ, news, etc. that you can still see on cached versions that show up on search engines. Wrath and Glory isn't even listed on the "Games" pull down tab any more...
warboss wrote: Um... should we be worried that the Wrath and Glory RPG pages on the Ulisses website have been expunged in such a thorough way that even the Inquisition would be proud?
Page not found. Previously, it had the FAQ, news, etc. that you can still see on cached versions that show up on search engines. Wrath and Glory isn't even listed on the "Games" pull down tab any more...
I emailed to ask and got this reply.
"Rathe and Lori you say? What's that, one them trendy new cupcake shops, ain't never heard of it."
Not a good sign.
Maybe we all imagined it. I'll double check my bookshelf when I get home.
Kid_Kyoto wrote:I emailed to ask and got this reply.
"Rathe and Lori you say? What's that, one them trendy new cupcake shops, ain't never heard of it."
Not a good sign.
Maybe we all imagined it. I'll double check my bookshelf when I get home.
Checking my bookshelf wouldn't help in that regard as I didn't buy it. Someone else said it perfectly in that it felt like it was too little butter spread too thin over a big piece of toast... and I was a vocal advocate of including more than FFG's micropartioning of the IP allowed in the core book. They just took a good thing too far IMO. Not sure if you were serious about emailing but it might be a good idea to see if it bounces back (see Facebook below).
Lord of Deeds wrote:Didn't Wrath & Glory have a multi-page article in the latest White Dwarf?
Possibly but I don't buy WD currently. That said.. print magazines are typically put together a month or two in advance so if there was a sudden change then it wouldn't be reflected for a few months.
Also, the Ulisses NA facebook link on their website comes back as not found as well. It was the only "social" site that I have an account on and figured I'd try to ask what's up. The plot thickens...
Kid_Kyoto wrote: This could be bad, if Ulysses is in trouble we might lose TORG too! Remember TORG? They have the rights to TORG.
I can't tell if you're serious or if you know something that we don't and are just egging me on, lol. The drivethrurpg links still work (although I didn't log in and try to buy them though as I'm not home) and this article is the only recent "news" I can find but it's seemingly only a puff piece by a staff writer for the site and not an official press release.
Nice catch. It looks like someone had the same concerns there and supposedly got an answer on their facebook... Which is now also unavailable. That's an ass backwards way of rolling out the website the game "deserves" if they're pulling the old one down without a link or even mention.
Every time I bump this thread I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. Regardless, this came up in my youtube feed. Miniwargaming has been running a campaign for a few weeks with the ruleset and have posted a review. I'm not able to watch it right now but I'm curious to hear what folks who actually played think of the game later tonight.
Stormonu wrote: Speaking of the Starter set, my FLGS got in about a half-dozen of then. However, at $50, that’s more than most full RPG rulebooks cost themselves.
Got it and the rulebook. Unlikely to play but why not.....
The rulebook looks very good and seems to have plenty of options, artwork is also very good.
The starter pack was less obviously good value - dice are a bit cheap and the rest is a bit thin.
Cubicle 7 is taking over the game from Ulysses. Not sure what that actually means for us. But since it's their first post since March it's probably good news.
Press-Release
"We’ve been busy behind the scenes finalising a deal that’s been a long time in the making. Ulisses has been working increasingly closely with Cubicle 7 Entertainment, and so we are formalising that arrangement with Cubicle 7 taking the lead on Wrath & Glory development. This will make Wrath & Glory the best it can be, and allow us to pursue our other great game lines more thoroughly!
Dom and the team at C7 are huge 40K fans and we know the game is in good hands. We’ll keep publishing the German language edition, of course, as well as working with Cubicle 7 on the German language editions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Our Wrath & Glory team will be working with Cubicle 7 to deliver the supplements planned for wave two, three and beyond. We’re really excited to be working with Cubicle 7 and about the future of Wrath & Glory!"
Not surprising though. I don't run RPGs any more, but I know of five regular 40K groups through friends, and not one of them switched to W&G after trying it out, they all still use the FFG systems.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Not dumping the system, just putting all the RPGs under one roof. Game is staying the same.
I mean they could have done that from the offset, so something must have prompted the move.
Doesn't mean much as far as the game is concerned though to me. Dark Heresy didn't die when the line went from BI to FFG. Plus I am enjoying WFRP 4th from C7 at the moment, so sure it is in good hands.
Are Cubicle 7 a larger or more well-established company than Ulysses? Perhaps Ulysses decided they couldn't / didn't want to support the game the way GW wanted them to, so let it go.
Never heard of Cubicle 7 although I wouldn't consider myself knowledgable about more recent (past 15 years) companies in the industry. Regardless, it's officially a pattern now with the company that develops the 40kRPG to hand it off within a year.
same as the Inquistorial Acolyte is not an Inquisitor. You could have gone for Void Trader (ie insystem void capable not intersteller) or a variety of other lower level characters.
all sense to me. Deathwatch being a step above sure, but seeing the huge difference between tiers I honestly expected a marine at tier 5 to be like a Captain or something. Like.. I just don't see how they're that much better. Their equipment could make up for the physical differences between them and a Primaris, but that'd put them on the same level...
