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It's an issue, I suppose, if people cannot separate the actions of the character from the actions of the player, which is going to come down to OOC discussions between the GM and the players in the group.

One alternate way of dealing with that situation is to make the RT a GM-only NPC, much in the way DH suggests the Inquisitor character be (pre-Ascension)... but, this is 40k. One should expect treachery at every turn.

 Psienesis wrote:
It's an issue, I suppose, if people cannot separate the actions of the character from the actions of the player, which is going to come down to OOC discussions between the GM and the players in the group.
.

If this is the caste then it becomes a real problem. I wasn't even considering this situation. My point was that it isn't as fun for other players. This game is about back stabbing, cold trade and other almost legit things. Most of that will stop to be fun if your rogue trader disagrees with you and the power balance will become clear.

Player A: Can I do this fun thing, that was totally the idea of my character.
Rogue trader: No. End of discussion

next planet

Player A: can I
Rogue trader: no etc.

Or worse if the rogue trader slowly becomes a powerhungry idiot and starts to to do stuff all the other players are not that into. And there are a lot of suggestions in the core book alone for the rogue trader to choose from.
I feel this RPG would have been better if the pc's would have gone into this as equal partners of their enterprise.

I deal with inter-party conflicts in my DH games all the time, so I have significant experience in working through them, both as the characters and with the players.

From a character/story POV:

If the RT goes off the deep end, the other PCs should stage a mutiny and throw him out of an airlock. It's the 40k thing to do.

Especially if the RT in question doesn't outright own the ship and is beholden to some other enterprise for its financing. Such an organization isn't going to care who sits in the big chair, so long as the payments are being made on time. In fact, if the others can show how the RT in question is limiting that group's profits, the financiers may fund a "regime change" endeavor.

The non-RTs can hop off the boat at the next port and go to work for someone else. An RT lacking his Navigator is *fethed*.

The non-RTs can, through some work on the side/backroom deals/chicanery and shenanigans, get funding from another of the aforementioned financiers to get their own ship. Then, when the RT is off boozing or whatever it is that they do when at port, take his entire crew (all 35,000 of them) to their new ship and fly off, leaving the RT marooned.


For the players themselves:

The easiest way I have found to prevent conflicts is to remind everyone that it's a cooperative game, and that every character needs spotlight time. No one PC is intended to be the best at everything in every situation, and there are times when a specific PC is going to need to take a back seat to someone else's PC.

Another way to handle this, as the GM, is when 2 or more PCs are working against one another, is to tailor the results of their ambitions so that neither "faction" has total victory. In every event, both sides win something, both sides lose something, which maintains the power base between them.

I actually have a situation similar to the above going on in a DH campaign, where one of the Scums has decided to take over a major trade center on the planet the campaign is based on. In said city there were three "Trade Barons" that ruled, all of which have some business alliances with some of the other members of the party. While they're busy fighting Chaos half-way around the world, the Scum has bought some Ork Freebooters to help him claim the town.

It is likely the Scum will take the town... there's just not going to be much left of it when the Orks are finished with it. Pyrrhic victory for the Scum.

If the RT goes off the deep end, the other PCs should stage a mutiny and throw him out of an airlock. It's the 40k thing to do.

I totally agree with you on this one. This is how our player group handles these kind of situations when it gets out off hand like that.

But this is extremely hard to do in this setting unless you change some things as a GM to make the playing field more equal. All major trades and major actions are made in his name. This player has a actual document signed by the high lords or terra that give him total power. He will have a staff that is needed to start the ship without it it will not run.
On higher lvs he will have class abilities that make most of the crew next to absolute loyal to him.
He will have a comm link to his personal army, engineering and his fleet and without his personal.

On top of that he will have faith points.these are deus ex points to survive anything he will have at least 3+ of them.
A large part of Rogue traders take the paranoia trait since they will have to take some disadvantages and this one is really good or they might have made some enemies. Most of them they will have made some preparations to survive a personal attack and money isn't an issue in those preparations.

Sure the players and the GM can find a way to pull it off but it is really hard and it can all be prevented to not just crown the pc absolute king of his ship and just add some of the things you just suggested or other ways to bring back some balance.

The Warrant is not always held by the RT, the book provides examples of situations where the RT might not actually own the ship, or that his Warrant is not in his name, but held by some other RT, a Dynastic Lord or Lady, so on and so forth.

There's also the fact that, while the Warrant might be in the RT's name, Terra is very, very far away and, in space, no one can hear you scream.

After all, if the RT gets killed, when someone asks "What happened?" at the next port, the rest of the group can shrug, "Eldar. Eldar happened." and the questioner has nothing to gainsay their perfectly-reasonable (and totally fabricated) explanation.'

Basically, all I'm saying is that there's means in the GM's toolbox for resolving such issues. Especially when it comes to the Faith mechanic... as the GM, you are the God-Emperor, the distributor of Fate Points and the driving force behind the power of faith. Maybe The Emperor doesn't have the RT's back.

I played it a lot, and came to hate the system more and more. It's the worst of all Warhammer themed FFG rpg's (though I haven't played DH 2nd edition which is supposedly real bad).

As said the game is almost unplayable without errata. Original weapon tables are totally broken, with all other weapons but Bolters completely useless. Errata tables nerfs the bolt weapons somewhat, but they are still almost always much better than all other weapons, especially Storm and Sniper bolters.
Marines have absurd number of various traits, talents, feats and other special abilities, it's almost impossible to keep track of them and this is even before going to all special issue wargear.

Marines are enormously powerful. Of course, they're supposed to be stronger than in tabletop game where Marines are seriously nerfed, but in DW they're gross even by standards of the lore. It is pretty easy to build a character who can solo a Bloodthirster. Once while we were exploring a space hulk, we were attacked by supposedly a legendary Hive Tyrant. We nearly killed him in one round of firing, after which GM burned a Fate point to let him escape. In next session he attacked again and we killed him in two rounds. He concentrated his attacks on our Assault marine who with all his dodges, parries, force fields and whatnot, did not take single point of damage. I know it's supposed to be 'movie marines' but it takes a lot out of the atmosphere when GM has to throw multiple Daemon Princes at you just to provide modest challenge.

Yeah DW is totally out of whack I was the GM and had to throw deamon princes at my group to have any chance of threatening them.

The newer systems fix a lot of the dumbness. Only War and Dark heresy 2.0 are far more balanced. 2.0 being the pinnacle of balance since its the newest iteration of their core rules.

Backfire wrote:
I played it a lot, and came to hate the system more and more. It's the worst of all Warhammer themed FFG rpg's (though I haven't played DH 2nd edition which is supposedly real bad).

As said the game is almost unplayable without errata. Original weapon tables are totally broken, with all other weapons but Bolters completely useless. Errata tables nerfs the bolt weapons somewhat, but they are still almost always much better than all other weapons, especially Storm and Sniper bolters.
Marines have absurd number of various traits, talents, feats and other special abilities, it's almost impossible to keep track of them and this is even before going to all special issue wargear.

Marines are enormously powerful. Of course, they're supposed to be stronger than in tabletop game where Marines are seriously nerfed, but in DW they're gross even by standards of the lore. It is pretty easy to build a character who can solo a Bloodthirster. Once while we were exploring a space hulk, we were attacked by supposedly a legendary Hive Tyrant. We nearly killed him in one round of firing, after which GM burned a Fate point to let him escape. In next session he attacked again and we killed him in two rounds. He concentrated his attacks on our Assault marine who with all his dodges, parries, force fields and whatnot, did not take single point of damage. I know it's supposed to be 'movie marines' but it takes a lot out of the atmosphere when GM has to throw multiple Daemon Princes at you just to provide modest challenge.

Hordes are the way to deal with DW Marines, because you cannot dodge their attacks. You just take damage.

IIRC Force fields still work against Hordes. Someone with Storm Shield is next to impossible to kill.
Hordes were mildly threatening sometimes because they could not be dodged but they had to be very large, single Marine can easily kill 10+ enemies per turn.

Backfire wrote:
I played it a lot, and came to hate the system more and more. It's the worst of all Warhammer themed FFG rpg's (though I haven't played DH 2nd edition which is supposedly real bad).

As said the game is almost unplayable without errata. Original weapon tables are totally broken, with all other weapons but Bolters completely useless. Errata tables nerfs the bolt weapons somewhat, but they are still almost always much better than all other weapons, especially Storm and Sniper bolters.
Marines have absurd number of various traits, talents, feats and other special abilities, it's almost impossible to keep track of them and this is even before going to all special issue wargear.

Marines are enormously powerful. Of course, they're supposed to be stronger than in tabletop game where Marines are seriously nerfed, but in DW they're gross even by standards of the lore. It is pretty easy to build a character who can solo a Bloodthirster. Once while we were exploring a space hulk, we were attacked by supposedly a legendary Hive Tyrant. We nearly killed him in one round of firing, after which GM burned a Fate point to let him escape. In next session he attacked again and we killed him in two rounds. He concentrated his attacks on our Assault marine who with all his dodges, parries, force fields and whatnot, did not take single point of damage. I know it's supposed to be 'movie marines' but it takes a lot out of the atmosphere when GM has to throw multiple Daemon Princes at you just to provide modest challenge.

Sounds like the GM just needed to balance things vs the party. You really need to had out less exp to DW players, let them build up over time.

I totally agree about the errata though, lowering the Bolters to 1d10+9 helped, but you can still build to make that 1d10+12 in Solo Mode, and with a Raptor with decent perception you can bump the Pen from 4 (on the base Bolt) to 8 with their chapter trapping.

Backfire wrote:
IIRC Force fields still work against Hordes. Someone with Storm Shield is next to impossible to kill.
Hordes were mildly threatening sometimes because they could not be dodged but they had to be very large, single Marine can easily kill 10+ enemies per turn.

Yeah, that was the issue with DW I found when GMing it. I had a party of 5 people, that were (with difficulty, mind you) taking on a Tyranid invasion on their own. It was only about the 4th session.

I would like to see an update to DW that tones down the power level a little and adds some danger back to it.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

Sounds like the GM just needed to balance things vs the party. You really need to had out less exp to DW players, let them build up over time.

I totally agree about the errata though, lowering the Bolters to 1d10+9 helped, but you can still build to make that 1d10+12 in Solo Mode, and with a Raptor with decent perception you can bump the Pen from 4 (on the base Bolt) to 8 with their chapter trapping.

One issue I had with Bolters was that Special ammo was way too easy to acquire. There was just no point not take Kraken rounds even with errata cost. Acquisition system was pretty bad and if I was ever to run DW, I would rewrite whole thing.

Yeah one problem with our campaign was that GM was bit of 'rules light' type, and that doesn't really work with system as complicated as Deathwatch. But even with expert GM, players still have the edge as the players have so many more potential combos to abuse.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/20582687/

In general I'm pretty disillusioned with FFG 40k rpg line. The books are good looking, lore is usually well written, but rules-wise they are a mess and every edition and expansion piles more crap on top of it.

Special issue ammo should be easy to acquire though, thats always been the Deathwatch's big thing.

I honestly like the FFG system, they dont seem like they are anymore of a mess than Pathfinder.

The only thing is I'd like them to not have felt like changing how unnatural characteristics work every couple of books. Though I can see why they changed it for Black Crusade after running a game with the DW Unnatural Characteristics rules. The one Marine in the party pretty much was the party.

After my first DH campaign, we adopted the "Only Human" rule for non-Marine PCs.

Also, twin-linked lascannons are Marine-killers without being *too* unfair. You still need the 2+ degrees of success on the attack to score two hits, but each of those hits is doing 5d10+10 Pen 10 (6d10 if it's an Astartes lascannon)... you've basically got a 50/50 chance to be rolling Righteous Furies (which, for enemies, I refer to this as Wrath of the Dark Gods), which re-rolls the entire damage set of the weapon. So, with a bit of luck, this lascannon is pumping out 10, 15, 20 d10 +10 damage, at Pen 10, vs a single target.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Special issue ammo should be easy to acquire though, thats always been the Deathwatch's big thing.

Sure thing, but there is no practical penalty of ever taking them, and they are usually so effective that non-Bolt weapons are of no use. I often ran my Devastator as a quasi-assault marine with Plasma gun or Flamer, Jump Pack and Power Axe because if I loaded up with Heavy Bolter w/ special ammo and suspensor, it wasn't any kind of challenge anymore.


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 Psienesis wrote:

Also, twin-linked lascannons are Marine-killers without being *too* unfair. You still need the 2+ degrees of success on the attack to score two hits, but each of those hits is doing 5d10+10 Pen 10 (6d10 if it's an Astartes lascannon)... you've basically got a 50/50 chance to be rolling Righteous Furies (which, for enemies, I refer to this as Wrath of the Dark Gods), which re-rolls the entire damage set of the weapon. So, with a bit of luck, this lascannon is pumping out 10, 15, 20 d10 +10 damage, at Pen 10, vs a single target.

We once faced some sort of large Mutants (almost Marine equivalents) armed with lascannons, but really after the first shock, they weren't very threatening. Lascannon only fires once per round, opponents generally miss half the time or more, if they hit you just dodge, if your dodge fails you use Fate point to reroll it. If you get hit despite everything, you just use more Fate points to regain HP. Marines have 4 Fate points on average (I had six!). Rank & file enemies do not have Fate points and thus cannot Fury their attacks.
Sure if you throw very large number of Lascannons and MultiMeltas then Marines start to get seriously hurt but then it just gets kinda silly.

Not played deathwatch but I have played only war and rogue trader. They are 2 brilliant games and from what I have read with deathwatch it is pretty epic.

Fate points is literally plot armor. Of course they make it silly.

I was Deathwatch GM for a large group, for a long time. I restructured a lot of the rules, took some things from the errata and left some things. I buffed Marines by granting them +10 to all attributes, +5 wounds and +2 to all non-Scout armors, for example, but also changed many enemy stats. In the end, it was very exciting and we enjoyed it a lot, but we moved on to RT as my players preferred free exploration over mission-based gameplay.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Fate points is literally plot armor. Of course they make it silly.

There are reasons you never explain them to your group... They can suffer the consequences of their actions.

We once faced some sort of large Mutants (almost Marine equivalents) armed with lascannons, but really after the first shock, they weren't very threatening. Lascannon only fires once per round, opponents generally miss half the time or more, if they hit you just dodge, if your dodge fails you use Fate point to reroll it. If you get hit despite everything, you just use more Fate points to regain HP. Marines have 4 Fate points on average (I had six!). Rank & file enemies do not have Fate points and thus cannot Fury their attacks.
Sure if you throw very large number of Lascannons and MultiMeltas then Marines start to get seriously hurt but then it just gets kinda silly.

Twin-link them, and put a lascannon on each arm of a giant gun-servitor or similar creature. You get a +20 to hit (Twin-Linked) and, if you score 2 or more successes on the attack, you hit twice. SM only gets 1 Dodge (as a base), and needs at least 2 degrees of success on that test to dodge both hits. The creature has 2 (or more) lascannons, and with the Multiple Limbs trait can make multiple attacks. The SM can only dodge so many.

Each hit is basically 1 fethed Marine (Pen 10 ignores all but Terminator armor, 5d10+10 damage is, on average, 37 Wounds of damage). Even with Unnat TGH x4 and an 8 TB, the Marine is taking 25W of damage (average rolls) per hit. Two hits = dead Marine, burn a Fate Point.

 Gamgee wrote:
I would like to see an update to DW that tones down power level a little and adds some danger back to it.

Black crusade rules are a lot better balanced.

That said, Deathwatch characters can be beaten, but a GM should not, ever, be "nice". The power level of Deathwatch characters is insane.

Taking a bloodthirster as an example, you have access to killimg strike. Stprm shield force fields can still stop it, but as a weapon, the storm shield can be affected by disarm. Which require an opposed WS test. With a bloodthirster.

IIRC, the BT also gets something like 8 attacks in a round, 5 of which can be auto-hits with no chance to Parry.

 Gamgee wrote:
Yeah DW is totally out of whack I was the GM and had to throw deamon princes at my group to have any chance of threatening them.

The newer systems fix a lot of the dumbness. Only War and Dark heresy 2.0 are far more balanced. 2.0 being the pinnacle of balance since its the newest iteration of their core rules.

I'm still a fan of DH 1's bs though. It's one of the few systems I've played where it seems like the rules themselves are intent apon your death.

"Oh your psyker tried to cast a basic ability? Now he's an unbound demonhost, and you're all dead."

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
Yeah DW is totally out of whack I was the GM and had to throw deamon princes at my group to have any chance of threatening them.

The newer systems fix a lot of the dumbness. Only War and Dark heresy 2.0 are far more balanced. 2.0 being the pinnacle of balance since its the newest iteration of their core rules.

I'm still a fan of DH 1's bs though. It's one of the few systems I've played where it seems like the rules themselves are intent apon your death.

"Oh your psyker tried to cast a basic ability? Now he's an unbound demonhost, and you're all dead."

I played 4 DH campaigns in college. Three of them ended with the group's Psyker rolling a Perils of the Warp.

Thing is, there are so many ways for a Psyker to avoid Perils in DH1, and they get *so* powerful so quickly that, really, it's worth the risk.

Between Favored By the Warp and spending (not burning) Fate Points to re-roll on that table, plus being able to cast powers Fettered (in Ascension), which provokes no Phenomenon or Perils at all, Psykers in DH1 are god-like.

Especially if you get one that's particularly power-hungry, and goes for all the side-talents and traits that grant additional Psy Rating. Warp-Tainted Psyker, Sorcerer, Master Sorcerer... getting to Psy Rating 8 or 9 is fairly easy, and when you're Fettering, you're still rolling a handful of dice to manifest powers (with an effective WP Bonus of 12+ if you played your cards right).

Yep, it's a high-risk, high-reward thing. Much like how psykers are presented in 40k generally, that's the reason why I love it so. I dislike it when psykers are presented as just wizards.