Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ok so here is my question about only war:

Now we all know that it is about guardsmen right? so how can we make characters that will only last about 15 mins? I mean we all know the fluff and we all know fine well guardsmen have a very short lifespan, so how can FFG make a game about characters which can only last about 15 hours maximum?

happygolucky wrote:Ok so here is my question about only war:
Now we all know that it is about guardsmen right? so how can we make characters that will only last about 15 mins? I mean we all know the fluff and we all know fine well guardsmen have a very short lifespan, so how can FFG make a game about characters which can only last about 15 hours maximum?

Simples. Don't expect to kick everyone's ass. People who prefer strutting about, dispatching hordes of enemies and epic boss creatures with ease whilst flashing their overpowered weaponry would be better off playing Movie Marines in the Deathwatch RPG. Only War is for those players who get a kick out of gritty realism, who actively enjoy the prospect of their characters' lives being in imminent danger 90% of the time. This is not to say that people would not stand a chance (in fact, OW is still pretty generously biased in favour of the Guard), but the game will be way more fun if you expect not to live long and can then be happy about having made it in spite of the odds.
It's a known phenomenon: the harder it is, the more rewarding it will it feel in the end. Here, you really need to use cover and maximum teamwork, or you'll die.

Or, to illustrate with a similar comparison:

Just replace 1994 with Only War and 2010 with ... eh, D&D or whatever.

Translating all the turns into time, my first character (for the moment still linked in my sig) had a longevity of about 2 minutes, and though I lament her for such a quick death after the amount of time I've put into her background, I still don't regret it and had a lot of fun. Plus, I can always recycle that character for a game with other people. We also had some very bad dice luck, though!
Basically, our dropship crashed right into the LZ, our squad hopped out and rushed towards the nearest piece of cover. On the run, our medic already got his first injury, a critical hit into his right arm, causing him to drop his gun. As soon as we had reached the trench, the enemy charged us and we got mauled in CC. On top of this, a frag grenade hurled towards the approaching enemy rolled back into the trench, and our missile launcher kept making misfires the whole game. If you'd make a movie out of it, this would be a very short scene (about as comedic as it would be bloody), but we actually played several hours on this!

So, even though we didn't make it this time, I still thought it was fun - and perhaps, with Only War, you really should consider that "the journey is its own reward" rather than expecting some kind of happy end with an epic bossfight shortly before. This may still happen in Only War, it's just a lot less likely.

My group is currently in the process of selecting another regiment. This Thursday, we're going back to that planet, and we're going to rescue the men who were sent to rescue the men who were sent to rescue the President. Hot Shots-style.

Sounds like fun, Lynata.

Not my kind of fun, I'd rather Movie Marines with Overpowered Weaponry...or better yet, Aspect Warriors, but still, fun.

Sometimes playing a Death Cult Assassin, and frothing at the mouth, charging, and dying without inflicting a single wound in a ridiculous and ignominious way was fun in Dark Heresy too, even if I always wished for more.

If you just want to play an overpowered character who steamrolls everyone he runs across (and it's hard to say that without making any judgement on it), Deathwatch is probably your best bet.

Well, I am pretty sure there are a lot of things that can drop a Marine, and a GM can use to challenge the players.

But ignominious death 4 seconds into the first combat from a lasgun isn't one of them, luckily.

My first Dark Heresy character was an Arbite. We (the scooby gang of the inquisition) knocked on some ganger door for info or something during our investigation. Ganger opens the door and shoots me. I die immediately. I have a list of these stories.

Honestly, I'd prefer to play a game where I get at least a chance to play the character before I die in some grimdark comedy death. I felt like I was in a cartoon with the 16 tons anvil landing on me over and over, except I had to make a new character each time instead of just standing back up =P

Your GM was probably giving the enemy too high of stats and too good quality equipment.

Maybe, but when you have 9 or 10 wounds, a decent to hit roll on a semi-auto pistol can easily kill you.

Anyway, even Dark Heresy has the potential for fun, and at least there are fate points.

So, for this threads purpose, my favorite games in this line:

1) Black Crusade: Dark Atmosphere, and the potential for either a sturdy character (Aka, Spess Mehreen) or a human makes for extremely interesting groups, imo.

2) Rogue Trader: While I am not a fan of, and do not care about, ship combat, the character creation is great...Origin Paths for all games, imo, and characters are more sturdy than in DH, allowing for a small margin for error.

3) Deathwatch: Takes a good GM to make it anything other than a combat-centric game, although I'm not completely averse to a combat-centric game anyway. I feel it suffers from a serious lack of options for female characters, and as my group is half female...yeah. Unfortunate.

4) Dark Heresy: The investigation and stuff is interesting, although I wish it had way less skills. Less is more, sometimes, you know? It reminds me of Call of Cthulhu, which I also didn't care for, as the entire game just seemed like a countdown to character death. Benefits from having the only thing in the entire Imperium of Man I actually LIKE, though, which is Sisters of Battle. Oh, how I love thee.

Well, unfortunately you picked arbites, which itself is a very weak class sadly :/

DH is somewhat unbalanced in its classes.

My second character was a Scum. Seems from the FFG boards they aren't well thought of for power either.

Scum have a very wide variety of skills and talents to choose from. I don't think they're under powered.

Though their starting equipment and income are both lame, they have a lot of potential in stats and skills.

This compared to Guardsman or Priest, whom have good starting equipment but mediocre skill and talent choices.

Melissia wrote:If you just want to play an overpowered character who steamrolls everyone he runs across (and it's hard to say that without making any judgement on it), Deathwatch is probably your best bet.

Based on this statement alone (And much of what Lynata said) it sounds like Only War is the system I'm going to settle on.

Is there a break up of classes or specialties or whatever? Could I be a sniper, for example?

In my group we're all Orks in RT.

Makes for hysterical campaigns.

Archonate wrote:Is there a break up of classes or specialties or whatever? Could I be a sniper, for example?

Lemme whip you up something real quick:

Guardsmen
Heavy Gunner: the heavy weapons guy; stuff like heavy bolters, missile launchers, lascannons, ...
Medic: just what it says on the tin; rather useful considering the game's theme
Operator: your friendly driver (depending on your choice of regiment, your squad can play as a tank crew, or use a Chimaera to get around, or have a Sentinel walk with them for fire support, etc)
Sergeant: the squad leader, can dish out some very useful "buffs" for the entire team
Weapons Specialist: has the best access to ... well, special weapons, and equipment in general (my current character got 8 grenades of 3 different types during chargen, I almost felt like Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Closseau)

Specialist Classes
Commissar: can actually *BLAM* people to raise squad morale (intended to be used on NPCs tho)
Priest: the Emperor watches over you (make no mistake, though - the Ecclesiarchy is a Warrior Church, and their priests act and fight like it!)
Enginseer: tech-specialist and repairs guy
Ogryn: -10 Intelligence, but a walking tank with a friggin' huge ripper gun
Psyker: yer a wizard, 'arry
Ratling: marksman
Storm Trooper: the die-hard assault class

Most of the aforementioned classes also get an NPC "comrade" to aid them in their daily jobs - for example the Sergeant gets a Vox Operator, the Heavy Gunner gets a Loader, etc. For a Sniper, you can either play a Ratling, which is basically the Sniper class coupled to a specific species, or work around the system by picking the Weapon Specialist and an accurate weapon such as a long las. The WS is not as good as the Ratling, even going so far that it absolutely doesn't make sense (as per RAW only the Ratling actually gets a Spotter comrade, which is a bit silly), but it still works out.

Needless to say, the classes work nicely with each other. There's really a lot of teamplay going on, which is both fun as well as absolutely necessary for survival. Shouldn't be too hard for your group to come up with a good role coverage that has everyone play something they like as well as being useful for the squad as a whole.

Enjoy.

DeffDred wrote:In my group we're all Orks in RT.
Makes for hysterical campaigns.

I can believe that.

DeffDred wrote:In my group we're all Orks in RT.

Makes for hysterical campaigns.

How's that working out? As soon as I saw the Ork career I knew that doing an all Ork campaign would be possible. And when the new Navis book comes out, you can add Weirdboys into the mix for some extra 'Eadbanging powah!!!

H.B.M.C. wrote:

DeffDred wrote:In my group we're all Orks in RT.

Makes for hysterical campaigns.

How's that working out? As soon as I saw the Ork career I knew that doing an all Ork campaign would be possible. And when the new Navis book comes out, you can add Weirdboys into the mix for some extra 'Eadbanging powah!!!

A group of Orks with a Doc is unstoppable. Our group had only played for 2 sessions and we already caused a mutinany, killed our own warboss (by kickin him in the face till he let go of the door frame in a bay exposed to vacuum) and my character even tried to get mega-armourfrom a rival mek. I melted him with my burna... and the armour with him .

DeffDred wrote:A group of Orks with a Doc is unstoppable. Our group had only played for 2 sessions and we already caused a mutinany, killed our own warboss (by kickin him in the face till he let go of the door frame in a bay exposed to vacuum) and my character even tried to get mega-armourfrom a rival mek. I melted him with my burna... and the armour with him .

That sounds hilarious. I reckon you need a "special" kind of player to make this work, but I can imagine it being quite the show at the table.

Lynata wrote:For a Sniper, you can either play a Ratling, which is basically the Sniper class coupled to a specific species, or work around the system by picking the Weapon Specialist and an accurate weapon such as a long las. The WS is not as good as the Ratling, even going so far that it absolutely doesn't make sense (as per RAW only the Ratling actually gets a Spotter comrade, which is a bit silly), but it still works out.

See, I'd love to play a sniper, but I don't want to play some stupid looking ratling. I suppose I could just take the ratling stats and call it a specially trained guardsman...

And thank you for the writeup, I'm already getting cool ideas for game groups...

Ask your game master to houserule allowing you to take the ratling's comrade skills, and weapon specialist works just fine for sniper.

Archonate wrote:See, I'd love to play a sniper, but I don't want to play some stupid looking ratling. I suppose I could just take the ratling stats and call it a specially trained guardsman...

Stats aren't the issue. Only War has a comparatively open progression, so you can buy just about anything you need with XP. The only difference will be that you might have to buy some stuff the Ratling already has, or that some things are a bit more expensive for you. On the flipside you also get some stuff cheaper etc.
But no, the true kicker is that the Ratling's NPC comrade gets a rather neat ability - "Setup Shot" - which prevents your target from dodging an attack. You can work around this by delaying your own initiative until one of your friends triggered that dodge (as most opponents can only try it once per round), or you can ... well, houserule this rather silly and nonsensical limitation, as mentioned in the post above.
Some people also think that the Weapon Specialist's own comrade's ability is just as cool, but personally I found the ability to have one's attack count as "Pinning" to be neither as fitting nor as useful, considering a marksman's role.

My first character was a Sniper WS as well, by the way. Didn't live very long, but was very cool to play: http://dark-heresy.wikispaces.com/Dasha

Archonate wrote:And thank you for the writeup, I'm already getting cool ideas for game groups...

Working as intended, then. I too found it easy to come up with ideas whilst browsing the options. It just lends itself so well!