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Kai Tave posted:Deathwatch seems like it could be cool in an over-the-top sort of way, stomping around in power armor and challenging ork nobs to headbutt-fights, but compared to Only War it just feels like there's a bit too much stuff, y'know? Like your character sheet for even a starting Deathwatch character just has lists and lists of talents and gene-boosts and your armor gets modifiers and then you've got gear and tactics etc. etc. Definitely but to be fair you can ignore 90% of the junk they slap on your character sheet for just being a space marine and just operate under the assumption that your a giant tank capable of surviving ridiculous stuff, go shoot some mans.
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Feb 12, 2014 05:26
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kingcom posted:Definitely but to be fair you can ignore 90% of the junk they slap on your character sheet for just being a space marine and just operate under the assumption that your a giant tank capable of surviving ridiculous stuff, go shoot some mans. Basically. I take my RPGs way to seriously for my own health here on the forums, but when it comes to Deathwatch, you really have to let the players be more slapstick/80's action hero. If the players want to get all serious into their demeanors and the Templar wants to be a bitch to the Ultramarine librarian great; but if they just want to walk around just shooting missiles at hordes of cultists while insulting them, just let them. Hell I'm having fun with my trash-talking, space Celt, who sings Gaelic songs, and has an unhealthy obsession with the group razorback in frajaq's Deathwatch game, and that's about as non-serious as any of my characters in any of the games I'm in. Or as I like to call it, "your deathwatch character should have just as much depth as the old 80-90's G.I. Joes did." Yes my name is Shipwreck, and yes I look like a 1940's sailor, and yes that is a parrot on my shoulder.
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Feb 12, 2014 06:04
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Yeah, but that doesn't really have much to do with the fact that Deathwatch characters, whether you play them as grimdark super-serious characters or 80's action movie stars, are still made up of a laundry list of stuff compared to even a moderately advanced Only War character. It's kind of the Eclipse Phase issue...in actual play maybe it's easy to ignore 90% of that stuff but you have to go through chargen first. It also depends on the "table" dynamic...like, if the GM wants to shoulder the burden of remembering what all those bits of stuff do when the dice hit the road then that's cool for the players who can just do whatever they want and let him deal with it. If the players are expected to know how their own stuff works, things become a bit different.
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Feb 12, 2014 06:12
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kingcom posted:Definitely but to be fair you can ignore 90% of the junk they slap on your character sheet for just being a space marine and just operate under the assumption that your a giant tank capable of surviving ridiculous stuff, go shoot some mans. Basically this. The Space Marines operate pretty much how you'd expect them to, and the character sheets have a handy reference table for the stuff that isn't just folded into obvious things like your strength and toughness bonuses . And that mostly comes down to everyone getting to ignore fiddly rules like blood loss and knowing that you're a ridiculous badass and you'll have things that apply if you encounter poison/environmental hazards or want to do totally normal Space Marine things like spitting poisonous acid, eating brains, or hibernating in deep space.
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Feb 12, 2014 06:17
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Don't worry, if you tell the players that they're stuck behind iron bars or whatever, one of them will remember that they can spit acid. Put the players in outlandish scenarios and let them space marine their way out of it. The DM doesn't have to remember all that poo poo.
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Feb 12, 2014 06:50
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When I ran Deathwatch, I went full ridiculous with it. Any time they got the paint blasted off their Rhino or their armor, I'd describe the metal underneath as having a glossy grey plastic sheen. I also made them fight a Slaneeshi version of the Ginyu force in a series of one-on one duels to determine the fate of an entire battlefront.
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Feb 12, 2014 07:04
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MilkmanLuke posted:When I ran Deathwatch, I went full ridiculous with it. Any time they got the paint blasted off their Rhino or their armor, I'd describe the metal underneath as having a glossy grey plastic sheen. I also made them fight a Slaneeshi version of the Ginyu force in a series of one-on one duels to determine the fate of an entire battlefront. You did it right. Good job man.
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Feb 12, 2014 07:30
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MilkmanLuke posted:
Congratulations, you understand the strong parts of 40k better than most people.
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Feb 12, 2014 08:38
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Welp, my group continues on in their perilous quest to become the most insufferable assholes to every sentient species within the Koronus Expanse. Having captured a Dark Eldar raider that had been preying upon shipping in an area, they immediately use him as a way to find a way into the webway because clearly making both the pretentious, better than thou space elves that dwell in Commoragh and their not so evil counterparts on craftworlds angry is a marvelous idea for PC's. The way into the webway was of course, a trap because what kind of dark eldar is going to tell you the honest truth? During the ambush in which the group is set upon by warp beasts, the seneschal came up with a marvelous idea. There was a group of sentient beings that they hadn't managed to make angry yet, themselves! He used the inferno pistol on a warp beast that the missionary was fighting using a chainsword and...well, he somewhat missed. The missionary was killed so drat hard by the shot that not only did he instantly jump up 10 on the energy crit charts, but the ensuing promethium flame tank explosion hurt and nearly killed every other person in the group, along with the beast that he was intending to kill. Mission accomplished? Gaghskull fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Feb 12, 2014 |
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Feb 12, 2014 10:00
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Kai Tave posted:It also depends on the "table" dynamic...like, if the GM wants to shoulder the burden of remembering what all those bits of stuff do when the dice hit the road then that's cool for the players who can just do whatever they want and let him deal with it. If the players are expected to know how their own stuff works, things become a bit different. Seriously, nobody needs to remember it unless your in a very specific situation where it matters. Other than giving you unnatural toughness/strength its all pretty much irrelevant. Hell half the abilities are essentially 'ignore this rule'. Like the black carapace which lets you ignore being slower in power armour.
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Feb 12, 2014 13:31
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kingcom posted:Seriously, nobody needs to remember it unless your in a very specific situation where it matters. Other than giving you unnatural toughness/strength its all pretty much irrelevant. Hell half the abilities are essentially 'ignore this rule'. Like the black carapace which lets you ignore being slower in power armour. Actually the power armor gives you +1 movement speed anyway, but they get rid of you being hulking. But yeah, the rules are basically "Don't worry about anything but killing poo poo, and if you get into a bad situation, you can get out super fast, so just kill poo poo and be badass". Also, if you wanna be grimdark and gritty and the world is out to get you that's fine, but this is a game where all of the Space Marines can synchronize and kill a tau commander at full health with one good shot (as happened in my game). So theres that.
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Feb 12, 2014 15:53
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So, I was indulging my inner  trying to figure out the crunch for a combination space colony/Warp ship, basically taking the Voidborn origin to its logical extreme.I think I'd work it by dropping a colonial venture, most likely the industrial one, into a Universe-class Mass Conveyor. I would probably argue that an Industrial Colony should allow the ship to take the Manufactorum upgrade. While I think it's a very  idea, it also seems like it have an extremely difficult time in combat no matter how it was built. The only combat niche I could really see it being any good at is using a Teleportarium or Assault Boats to overwhelm enemy ships with Stormtroopers, Murder-Servitors, and hordes of garrison soldiers.To tie this back to the Squat-game, how would you represent the unfortunate situation of "All of the Squats in the Galaxy are on board your ship(s); there are no more, anywhere." in founding colonies? Both that your overall population is limited, limiting how many colonies you can place and limiting their population growth (unless Squats are like Dorfs and start working at approximately one year of age). Do they start getting human migrants when colony size increases? Squat refugees coming back from the Imperium? That would go against the "you're the only Squats" idea, but similar pressure could come from worrying about the Squat civilization not being able to survive being homeless refugees. Or do you ignore this and stick to the PF abstraction, but now with PF representing your entire race's prosperity? Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Feb 12, 2014 |
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Feb 12, 2014 21:37
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It would more likely be the heavily guarded prize at the centre of a swarm of defensive ships. It could only be a warship if it was closer to a Kroot Warsphere. Huge, lumbering, but covered in guns and massively redundant. You could also ignore the "only one per ship" fluff and replace all four integrated cargo holds with hold landing bays. That would give you a lot of small ships to do the fighting with, and play on the BSG side of things. As for colonies, Squats are meant to be miners used to working in low-to-zero atmosphere, so they could found asteroid belt colonies rather than planetside ones. That would also make their new homes much less appealing to the Tyranids in their endless hunt for biomass. Colony growth would then not represent population increases as much as they did self sufficiency. Your colony is productive and produces income when the inhabitants no longer have to worry about basic survival, and can instead focus on setting up new factories to produce the advanced "human" technology poo poo you can sell to those idiots in the Imperium for mad bank.
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Feb 12, 2014 21:54
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I like those, though now you've got to balance profitability versus firepower...such a strange concept in 40K. At least the ship has plenty of room for more holds and supply vaults. Though I think the limit on hold fighter bays was to keep someone from filling a Unvirse class with fighter bays and vomiting out thousands of fighters at once. Give it a Spacedock and I'd say it'd be great for fleet logistics. The speed issue is bad, but seems manageable if you don't have to travel far in realspace. The other niche would be a spaceport and factory you can relocate, like for colonies that temporarily need space infrastructure or heavy industry. I'll keep working on it and see what I get. I want to say it looks like a really clunky  version of a Craftworld. A crafthold?Haha, Venture idea; "Archeotech" device factory. You get more money from the humans if you rub your gadgets down with dirt to look old. Complications; the Adeptus Mechanicus found out, and they want their cut. Or the glut in archeotechnology causes prices to drop.
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Feb 12, 2014 22:48
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Don't forget about the possibility of cloning technology to increase numbers. If Krieg has them, surely the Squats can too. If you want to keep the "last Dorfs standing" feel, go ahead and make them incredibly laborious to set up, so you need to found a colony purely as a "Population Seed" colony, rather than manufacturing or research or whatever. Maybe also have similar problems to how the Raven Guard hosed up, where you can choose either the slow and steady reproduction system, or accelerate the process at the risk of creating terrible monsters. EDIT: The slow realspace speed also works great as a plothook. Need to jump outsystem? Better stall those Orks long enough for the Fortress Ship to reach the Warp limit.
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Feb 12, 2014 22:54
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Have the crew be the only living squats, but the ship has a cloning bank and all of the genetic info of their race.
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Feb 12, 2014 22:57
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So my (Fortune-oriented) Rogue Trader set up a meta-endeavour with the weird she-male from my last post, shipping slaves between two worlds while I go do more heroic stuff. Rolled 7 degrees, seems straight-forward right? ..Except my socially challenged astropath suddenly blabs about our "human resources side job" while my prideful ex-freedom fighter voidmaster happens to hear. So I cut him off and talked about how we were setting up guided tours for the pilgrims to holy sites, bring your family sort of thing. ..I'm going to grimdark hell when I die 
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Feb 12, 2014 23:09
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I think our group is about to face a Bloodthirster next session.  I mean, I really hope we don't but it sort of seems like the GM thinks we might be able to take it on, and if it fights "smartly" it can kill two PCs a turn and there's pretty much nothing we can do about that. It doesn't help that we can do a lot of damage if we are all dead... I really hope he reconsiders the choice of demonic boss monster, we haven't seen it yet so he might change it but I think one of the players sort of goaded him into choosing that as the boss monster. Blergh. Our Rogue Trader group is really powerful in combat but it isn't that powerful... I really hope reason wins considering that Bloodthirsters are supposed to be loving Deathwatch end of campaign boss monsters, facing one is supposed to decide the fate of multiple worlds and where we are going it really shouldn't be a "save the Koronus Expanse"-sort of deal. Oh well, at least my Genetor has 4 fate points and can survive whatever happens. gently caress burning fate points to continue combat against a loving Bloodthirster.
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Feb 12, 2014 23:39
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The Bloodthirster is a badly designed monster precisely because there's no way to tank a hit from it, it isn't going to miss, and it can outright ignore your ability to active dodge its attacks. Just take away that active dodge negation and it's the usual 40KRP rocket tag that all high level combat is, mind.
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Feb 12, 2014 23:42
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So, one of my DMs is trying to put together a group currency system to replace requisition in OW. Has anyone done something like this? If so, can you post your notes? It sounds like he's pretty far along with it, but I figure he can maybe steal some ideas if they fit.
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Feb 13, 2014 00:12
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Can't you drop bombs on the Bloodthirster to make it go away? "More like bombthirster, amirite?"  Man, I am going to have to ask my players what aspects they like best, because I'm not sure I can fit all of them into one game, or it's going to be a loving immense game. Desperate preparations? Doomed fight? Fleeing across the galaxy? Rebuilding and revenge? Knowing my luck with dice  + the usual TG players, they're just going to get enough PF to build enough ships to just evacuate all of the Squats when the Tyranids show up, then fly past Macraggre.I've never even watched Battlestar Galactica. All I know is  "By your command."So this ship is more like Babylon 4 or Deep Space 9 for me. Or the Whitebase. Ooh, cloning fuckups. "What the hell? What do you mean, they came out too tall and covered in black plastic? Argh, they're dripping acid on my rug!" Squats are probably pre-servitor, but a servitor reclaimation center or a servitor crew would be a pretty desperate step to free up colonists, and represent the slow change from Rogue Trader to creepy skull-obsessed modern 40K. The weird thing with my build so far, with the Warpsbane Hull and the Markov Warp Engines, plus maybe a Warp Sextant, this thing is a slug in realspace but crazy fast through the Warp. It'd make for an interesting dynamic for an endless fleeing game; you have a huge headstart with each warp, but your ship is so slow that it is a risk to drive insystem to pick up more resources.
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Feb 13, 2014 00:19
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SpiritOfLenin posted:I think our group is about to face a Bloodthirster next session.
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Feb 13, 2014 00:29
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Rockopolis posted:The weird thing with my build so far, with the Warpsbane Hull and the Markov Warp Engines, plus maybe a Warp Sextant, this thing is a slug in realspace but crazy fast through the Warp. It'd make for an interesting dynamic for an endless fleeing game; you have a huge headstart with each warp, but your ship is so slow that it is a risk to drive insystem to pick up more resources. Hah, excellent. You can play 33 minutes (33 days?) without even knowing what it's referring to.
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Feb 13, 2014 00:51
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Rockopolis posted:The weird thing with my build so far, with the Warpsbane Hull and the Markov Warp Engines, plus maybe a Warp Sextant, this thing is a slug in realspace but crazy fast through the Warp. It'd make for an interesting dynamic for an endless fleeing game; you have a huge headstart with each warp, but your ship is so slow that it is a risk to drive insystem to pick up more resources. That reminds me of that Mass Effect 3 thing when you're in the star map flying around going from planet to planet while the Reapers follow you and they're GETTING FASTER AND CLOSER OH GOD 
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Feb 13, 2014 01:24
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Werix posted:Basically. I take my RPGs way to seriously for my own health here on the forums, but when it comes to Deathwatch, you really have to let the players be more slapstick/80's action hero. If the players want to get all serious into their demeanors and the Templar wants to be a bitch to the Ultramarine librarian great; but if they just want to walk around just shooting missiles at hordes of cultists while insulting them, just let them. I'm personally trying to put together a game with my friends. Since it's their first time playing, I only had one simple question for them to determine which pre-generated character that they would get. "What is your favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie from the 80s?" In another game I played at my FLGS, the GM basically had us name our favorite character from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I named Sir Bedivere. I got a badass Techmarine that Robot-Punched the head off of an Ork Warboss.
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Feb 13, 2014 03:21
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Night10194 posted:The Bloodthirster is a badly designed monster precisely because there's no way to tank a hit from it, it isn't going to miss, and it can outright ignore your ability to active dodge its attacks. Just take away that active dodge negation and it's the usual 40KRP rocket tag that all high level combat is, mind. Burn fate points...AVOID fighting it! I think we have brought up ridiculous monster stats before, and honestly the Bloodthirster isn't even the most powerful monster in the game by a long shot. Clearly acolytes should not be fighting it in melee, NO ONE SHOULD! That is the point.
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Feb 13, 2014 04:16
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Oh wow, I had no idea he was talking about a RT group. Nobody but a high level DW team or maybe a super swole BC group should take on a bloodthirster. A RT group sure, but from loving orbit. That's nuts. I had a RT captain take on an ork boss in solo melee and barely win, and that's nothing next to a what you're talking about.
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Feb 13, 2014 04:31
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Pharmaskittle posted:Oh wow, I had no idea he was talking about a RT group. Nobody but a high level DW team or maybe a super swole BC group should take on a bloodthirster. A RT group sure, but from loving orbit. That's nuts. I had a RT captain take on an ork boss in solo melee and barely win, and that's nothing next to a what you're talking about. High level DH.
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Feb 13, 2014 06:38
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The thing is there's no way to fight the drat thing safely, RAW. It can just up and decide you don't get to dodge its 3d10+25 Pen Everything 99% to-hit axe 4 times a day. Most parties are about 4-6 people. Wounds are very hard to get a lot of and TB isn't going to stop 28-55 damage hits all that well.
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Feb 13, 2014 06:45
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For what reason would you ever want fighting a greater daemon to be SAFE?
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Feb 13, 2014 06:48
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Alright, let me correct that. There is no way to fight it in such a way that you do not eat a hit from that weapon (which is nearly impossible to tank a hit with without burning Fate/Infamy/whatever) unless you circle strafe around it with a lascannon armed guncutter or something. Which would be a hilarious way to kill one of Khorne's stupid bastards and perfectly in keeping with RT, mind.
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Feb 13, 2014 06:59
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Uroboros posted:Burn fate points...AVOID fighting it! I think we have brought up ridiculous monster stats before, and honestly the Bloodthirster isn't even the most powerful monster in the game by a long shot. Clearly acolytes should not be fighting it in melee, NO ONE SHOULD! That is the point. AfD Single Evesor w/Halo Artifact seeking greater demon for casual encounter
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Feb 13, 2014 07:35
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Night10194 posted:Alright, let me correct that. There is no way to fight it in such a way that you do not eat a hit from that weapon (which is nearly impossible to tank a hit with without burning Fate/Infamy/whatever) unless you circle strafe around it with a lascannon armed guncutter or something. Which would be a hilarious way to kill one of Khorne's stupid bastards and perfectly in keeping with RT, mind. Start the fight outside melee range? Beat it in initiative?
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Feb 13, 2014 08:02
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We are going to be meeting it inside some mining facility where everyone died suddenly and everyone sent in to check what happened also died so no, we can't bring tanks in there unfortunately. If it was outside we could use our "shoot it with a Fury's Lascannon barrage"-tactic but that is currently out of the table. Plus Bloodthirster has a stupidly high fly speed and I think it had the talent that gives it double charge range so it could probably just charge the bloody Fury. I hope DM is going to nerf it some way if he actually uses it because RAW it just kills us and everyone burns a fate point, and I don't think that's what he wants. If he makes it so that it doesn't use its "gently caress this dodging and parrying thing"-specialty we have a chance, but no way otherwise. He has put some tough foes against us before, but we always had fair chances. With Bloodthirster it's just stupid, especially since most of our heavy hitting comes from melee - I'm the only one with a heavy ranged weapon, my Autocannon, although I guess the Accurate sniper our Seneschal has might be able to do some damage from range as well.
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Feb 13, 2014 09:23
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SpiritOfLenin posted:We are going to be meeting it inside some mining facility
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Feb 13, 2014 09:28
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If the place is too small to fit a tank in, how did the tank-sized daemon fit in? Have you considered luring it outside? Or fighting at range without vehicles (yes yes a bloodthirster has a long charge range, but you do realise that it's still going to take ages for it to close into melee from the other end of a heavy weapon's range)? If you know where and what the enemy is, why would you rush into combat on it's preferred ground, with only the gear you have on you, with no preparation? If you intentionally engage on the enemy's terms with limited equipment and backup, why would you assume that the encounter will end in your favour?
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Feb 13, 2014 09:35
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Zereth posted:So... why are you not just demolishing the mining facility? Because it belongs to Chorda and we just made peace between her and Winterscale and we don't want to ruin our relationships with them. Plus there is an Inquisitor's sword in there we are supposed to get, and the sword probably had the demon in it. Either that or the Inquisitor dropped it when he ran away after he accidentally summoned the demon. One or the other. Waci: IC most of our characters don't even know what a Bloodthirster is, we know OOC that the GM intends to use a Bloodthirster most likely. By the time our characters realize what it is we are locked in a room probably less than 100 metres from it and it is going to charge us in two turns. Plus it is most likely confined to a single vast room inside of it - most of the facility is hallways and such, but there is a larger central room where the demon is, whatever it is. And no, it is not going to take ages for a Bloodthirster to close in to melee range, it has double charge range, over 50 agility and a flying speed of 10(!). It is not slow against foot sloggers, it is really goddamn fast. And I repeat, we don't know IC that it's anything other than some sort of demon, no IC idea on power level, and we have made some preparations specific against demons such as sanctifying weapons and blessing the mission to slay it, but not against a Bloodthirster. There is nothing you can specifically prepare against a Bloodthirster besides either not fighting it or fighting it with artillery. It is a loving Bloodthirster. We are not going to be able to fight it in some optimal situation we have specifically prepared, I remember exactly once we could prepare a battlefield ourselves and even then if it was some arbitarily long space it has a super high flying speed and it would be on top of us in a couple of rounds at best - not nearly enough time to kill it. I have no idea where you got the "Bloodthirster is a slow melee slogger"-idea, but that's not the case. Sure if we could fight it outside the facility we could bring tanks and such, but there aren't going to be ways to get a tank inside - especially since all the power in the facility is off since Chorda remotely shut the power down after everyone died, and we know that the facility was specially designed in a way that only the Nephilium being refined is going to get out easily (so no way for a vehicle to get in or out) because Chorda uses slave labor and wants to keep them in. Oh also remembered what the facility was actually, it was a Nephelium refinement facility or something like that, and where the demon is supposed to be is in the largest room (quite obviously), something with a Nephelium pool in it or something like that if I remember correctly.
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Feb 13, 2014 10:26
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I forget, does nephelium, like most other weirdly named compounds, explode? I like the idea that the Bloodthirster got summoned into the main chamber, but the halls are much too small for it. "Face your doom, mor - No, wait, come back, I'm so lonely!" If you see the bloodthirster, just turn around and leave. Hope it doesn't nptice you. Do they have super senses? Can you stealth around it? If you can't just leave and call the Ordo Malleus, or if it notices you, flee, hope he charges after you into a hallway, and gets stuck. Then plink him to death. Or just camp in the hallway, but it's funnier if he's stuck, and whoever else coming to the facility has to deal with a giant bloodthirster rear end sticking out of a door.
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Feb 13, 2014 13:28
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Why don't you try to find a way to banish/bind a daemon?
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Feb 13, 2014 13:31
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SpiritOfLenin posted:Oh also remembered what the facility was actually, it was a Nephelium refinement facility or something like that, and where the demon is supposed to be is in the largest room (quite obviously), something with a Nephelium pool in it or something like that if I remember correctly. E: We took out half a hive, but it was worth it. Talkie Toaster fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 13:33
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