WH40K Hero

[knasser2]

Old Man - I do not wish to even talk of the recent abomination. It's also a disaster waiting to happen as GW reveals books designed to encourage young children into the setting and a parent inevitably realises that setting includes elves that literally have to torture people to live and "mutants" are sought and slaughtered by an Inquisition and they're the 'heroes'. It's like the childcatcher from Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang.

 

Ninja-Bear. I wouldn't call the Black Market "legit", but yes, it's been going on for a while. Especially the Forge World models which can be upwards of £400. Do not buy suspiciously cheap WH40K minis from Chinese addresses!

[knasser2]

I've created a template and data store for weapons as well now. If it seems a little odd that I'm creating draft output formats before resolving all the mechanical details, I find it motivating to see something like a final form becoming populated. Even though this is likely to get embellished a lot before I put it all together.

[Ninja-Bear]

And just getting rid of the Squats is mother bone of contention.

[Old Man]

Burn the heretic!

 

WHFB was more my cup of tea, but even that played like a skirmish between individual mages and war machines, with masses of irrelevant troops hanging around to be collateral damage.

[Ninja-Bear]

I played once the Epic Fantasy Game -15 mm size and beat my friend. He was upset cause my strategy was, I march my Dwarven Trollslayers ahead.

 

i also once played at a con intro game and sorta made the demo guy mad cause he was all about Space Marines hiding to get cover, I’m like Marines have great stats. So the next game, I played the Marines, I marched in the wide open and still slaughtered the Orks. Yeah I took casualties but with only four turns of play, I still won.

[knasser2]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I played once the Epic Fantasy Game -15 mm size and beat my friend. He was upset cause my strategy was, I march my Dwarven Trollslayers ahead.

 

i also once played at a con intro game and sorta made the demo guy mad cause he was all about Space Marines hiding to get cover, I’m like Marines have great stats. So the next game, I played the Marines, I marched in the wide open and still slaughtered the Orks. Yeah I took casualties but with only four turns of play, I still won.

 

Varies a great deal with edition. For example, in 2nd Edition with the release of Ere We Go and Waargh Da Orks you'd have been hard pressed to beat orks with anyone except perhaps Imperial Guard who could use their standard tactic of "bury them alive in our corpses". Unless the ork player really didn't know what they were doing, you'd just get this unstoppable green tide. I once created a very tailored Eldar army to fight against orks. It was nothing but Dark Reapers and Dire Avengers (basically supreme vehicle and infantry killers respectively). I think I had some scatter lasers in there too. I had so many model substitutions with the agreement of my opponent, just to see if I could beat them. It was like trying to push back the ocean.

 

Whist in, iirc, 5th, Orks were widely regarded as useless. They are however, both terrifying and hilarious in equal measure.

[knasser2]

Question: I should be building all my guns as OAF (-1), correct?

 

EDIT: Actually can someone just sanity check my Las Pistol build, please? If this is good I'll go on to do the rest of the initial weapons collection.

 

Las Pistol (RKA 1d6+1E; Autofire (3 shots) +¼; Charges (30) +¼; Beam -¼;  No Knockback -¼; Real Weapon -¼; Limited Range (30m) -¼; Str Min (5) -¼; OAF -1) Active Points: 30. Real Points: 8.

[knasser2]

I've now done some of the basic Imperial Weapons and started on the Xeno weapons. I need to do Flamers and Melta Weapons to pad out the Imperial roster and I should get the slug throwers (auto weapons and heavy slugger) done as well. I've also tweaked the layout template so you can see the design details for each weapon in the section as well.

 

If anyone wants to see the weapon builds so far, I've also created a very rough export template that makes it easier to see the weapons builds themselves if anyone wants to take a look.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

3 hours ago, knasser2 said:

Question: I should be building all my guns as OAF (-1), correct?

 

EDIT: Actually can someone just sanity check my Las Pistol build, please? If this is good I'll go on to do the rest of the initial weapons collection.

 

Las Pistol (RKA 1d6+1E; Autofire (3 shots) +¼; Charges (30) +¼; Beam -¼;  No Knockback -¼; Real Weapon -¼; Limited Range (30m) -¼; Str Min (5) -¼; OAF -1) Active Points: 30. Real Points: 8.

Looks good but the biggest question is what is the armor like? That Is the best gauge of the weapon. Also are you going to have ED less than PD? Say Flak armor is 6PD/3ED? Then the Lasgun is useful.

[knasser2]

Just now, Ninja-Bear said:

Looks good but the biggest question is what is the armor like? That Is the best gauge of the weapon. Also are you going to have ED less than PD? Say Flak armor is 6PD/3ED? Then the Lasgun is useful.

 

I haven't done the armour templates yet for nice formatting but you can see my draft values that I posted earlier in spreadsheet form. Generally I'm having ED and PD be the same because in WH40K there's a broad mix of las, bolt, flame and slug weapons and they're all very standard. Energy weapons aren't anything unusual in the setting. If I make gross disparities in the armour, it will add a degree of differentiation that I'm not sure would be good. Bolt guns should be, except in very rare circumstances, a big step up from lasguns, not a situational advantage. That said, I have made some minor changes and there will be several special cases. For example, Fire Dragon armour will be very heat resistant and I'm making Eldar vehicles and armour very slightly extra energy resistant because I think thematically it fits.

[Ninja-Bear]

I found your flak armor and so far it seems good. I just thought of a way to donarmor save. Combat luck on an ACT roll.

[knasser2]

I've also decided that I'll reserve Damage Negation for powerfields, void shields and so forth.

[Ninja-Bear]

Another quick question-how much better do you see Flak armor than real world armor? And are you basing the Autogun on real world pistols? I ask because Tv Trooes point out that Flak armor in TTG is lousy but in real world it would be better than what we have now. Plus do you see any players going to a feral world? That would also determine build.

[knasser2]

27 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Another quick question-how much better do you see Flak armor than real world armor? And are you basing the Autogun on real world pistols? I ask because Tv Trooes point out that Flak armor in TTG is lousy but in real world it would be better than what we have now. Plus do you see any players going to a feral world? That would also determine build.

 

I'm basing autoguns on real world equivalents. So autopistol is a mid-range modern day pistol more or less (I may lean slightly to the heavier side in all examples because I figure that's how they'd build them in the 41st Millenium). And actually that was my starting point for most of the other weapons. I haven't read the TV Tropes article but I'm inclined to just disagree. For one, we don't know that it would be better than our real world equivalent. The setting is not one of high technical understanding. There's a factory on one world that one day just started churning out a different model of tank and nobody knows why! If Flak armour is mass produced on a world it could be anything from using materials we've never dreamed of to pre-kevlar. There's always the eternal balance of weight vs. stopping power. If you come up with a stronger material then maybe you get better stopping power. But equally you might decide to keep the same stopping power but make it lighter. The Imperial Guard don't fight (usually) like our modern Western forces. Instead they fight in massed battalions like the Soviets. When you don't get to deploy for an afternoon by helicopter and then go back to base afterwards, you start prioritising lighter gear. Plus, finally, the Table Top Game turns aren't equivalent to real world turns. So if they're basing anything at all on the odds of being killed by a particular weapon, it's off because a single shot in the TT game might be a dozen or more shots in the RPG version.

 

As regards Feral worlds, absolutely. I want to support the widest possible range of adventures from infiltrating high society to gang warfare in the underhive. How do you see it impacting this? Are you referring to the Primitive / Modern categories in the FFG line?

 

EDIT: I've just read the TV Tropes entry. Admittedly it is true that people refer to IG armour as "t-shirt armour"...

[Cantriped]

I think it is very, very odd that you've given Double Knockback to the bolt weapons.

The first reason is inefficiency, the threshold for causing knockback is 50% higher for Killing Damage than Normal Damage, and KAs only cause 1/6th more BODY per DC (the target's applicable defenses are irrelevent to the Knockback calculation, so it does not matter that the KA will tend to inflict more serious injuries. Attacks intended to cause Knockback usually use Normal Damage instead.

 

The second has to do with the compatibility of the mechanical and special effects. Double Knockback is typically reserved for torrential attacks (I.E. those made with a powerful, but diffuse force, like a gust of wind or wave of water.

As I understand it the Bolt Guns are essentially standard firearms (in that they are ballistic weapons that fire reasonably small, high velocity physical projectiles). Such weapons simply don't cause Knockback, the projectile is moving too fast for the force to be distributed evenly. It is far more reasonable to assume those bullets are going to core out or blow off part of whatever they hit. At most, ballistic weapons cause Knockdown (a limited version of Knockback with a flat push distance of 1 hex/2m).

A Bolt Gun certainly shouldn't be causing an average of 8m Knockback per shot (meaning a single bullet will consistantly hurl a normal human more than 20 feet backwards), nor should it have a maximum of 42m Knockback.

 

Almost all of these powers should (per RAW) have the Beam modifier as well... Although Beam bundles several minor restrictions that I sometimes choose to seperate. For example, a Lasgun can probably be Spread (if it is a coherent beam as opposed to a energy bolt), while a Bolt Gun could not. Meanwhile a lader is not much use for blowing open a hole in something but an exploding projectile might be.

[knasser2]

14 minutes ago, Cantriped said:

I think it is very, very odd that you've given Double Knockback to the bolt weapons.

The first reason is inefficiency, the threshold for causing knockback is 50% higher for Killing Damage than Normal Damage, and KAs only cause 1/6th more BODY per DC (the target's applicable defenses are irrelevent to the Knockback calculation, so it does not matter that the KA will tend to inflict more serious injuries. Attacks intended to cause Knockback usually use Normal Damage instead.

 

The second has to do with the compatibility of the mechanical and special effects. Double Knockback is typically reserved for torrential attacks (I.E. those made with a powerful, but diffuse force, like a gust of wind or wave of water.

As I understand it the Bolt Guns are essentially standard firearms (in that they are ballistic weapons that fire reasonably small, high velocity physical projectiles). Such weapons simply don't cause Knockback, the projectile is moving too fast for the force to be distributed evenly. It is far more reasonable to assume those bullets are going to core out or blow off part of whatever they hit. At most, ballistic weapons cause Knockdown (a limited version of Knockback with a flat push distance of 1 hex/2m).

A Bolt Gun certainly shouldn't be causing an average of 8m Knockback per shot (meaning a single bullet will consistantly hurl a normal human more than 20 feet backwards), nor should it have a maximum of 42m Knockback.

 

Almost all of these powers should (per RAW) have the Beam modifier as well... Although Beam bundles several minor restrictions that I sometimes choose to seperate. For example, a Lasgun can probably be Spread (if it is a coherent beam as opposed to a energy bolt), while a Bolt Gun could not. Meanwhile a lader is not much use for blowing open a hole in something but an exploding projectile might be.

 

Firstly, thanks very much for this. This is exactly the sort of feedback that is useful for someone who has read the rules but doesn't have the experience to know what is standard or what will and wont work well. Secondly, I don't know how to switch the new forum editor to markup and I can't split the quote up into bits so I've just highlighted the parts I'm replying to.

 

What you describe are slug throwers in WH40K terms like the autogun and autopistol earlier. Bolt weapons aren't firing solid projectiles. The ammo is miniature rockets that ignite in flight then accelerate into the enemy. They have explosive tips. There's also a fractional delay on the detonation to try and make them go off inside the enemy / enemy armour. What I was seeking to do (though it appears I've failed) is make them different to slug throwers but still a basic weapon without too much complexity. They are already different to slug throwers by virtue of the higher damage and the penetration, but I have added +1StunX and Double Knockback to reflect you're not just getting hit by a bullet but a tiny explosive. The knockback (which I confused with knockdown) isn't intended to be the primary effect of the weapon, but as a nice little extra to show it's got some kick, even if the target survives. 8m knock back does sound a little high, but they're .75 calibre weapons that fire explosives. This is a bolter (see image). It would be good to have some kind of effect to make them a little more cinematic (and make the players feel like they're badass) but falls short of making them wildly different. Bolters are the standard weapon of 7½' tall Space Marines, so they should be quite powerful.

 

Regards Beam, I've currently given it to all the firearms regardless of type. Lasguns are a little vague in how they work in the fluff but they seem to be treated a bit more like energy bolts rather than coherent beams of light.

[Cantriped]

If the Bolters fire rockets than it would make sense for them to be able to cause Knockback, but the described detonation delay would reduce that potential significantly, so I would still suggest either removing Double Knockback, or adding a -1/4 limitation "Does Knockdown" to represent that the weapon is highly likely to knock you off your feet, but not likely to send you flying all over the map.

 

14 minutes ago, knasser2 said:

Secondly, I don't know how to switch the new forum editor to markup and I can't split the quote up into bits so I've just highlighted the parts I'm replying to.

I don't know how to either... I quote the whole post, delete the unneeded section(s), comment below the quote box, rinse and repeat.

 

16 minutes ago, knasser2 said:

 

Like so...

[Ninja-Bear]

Knasser2 I would make Flak armor and Autoguns better than real world. Mainly because the fluff still states that Flak armor and autoguns are better than what we have now. Now if your players go to a feral world no biggie but if they go to a world similar to ours then the mechanics don’t match well with fluff. Again just my 2 bits. 

[knasser2]

7 minutes ago, Cantriped said:

If the Bolters fire rockets than it would make sense for them to be able to cause Knockback, but the described detonation delay would reduce that potential significantly, so I would still suggest either removing Double Knockback, or adding a -1/4 limitation "Does Knockdown" to represent that the weapon is highly likely to knock you off your feet, but not likely to send you flying all over the map.

 

Very small rockets, but yes, they are rockets. I'd kind of like an effect that knocked people back a bit but I honestly find the Knockback / Knockdown rules some of the most confusing in the book (next to Multiform). For Knockdown it only kicks in with Impairing and Disabling wounds. Both of these are also optional rules but by implication you can't not include them if you include Knockdown. I presume you can disregard the effects of Impairing and Disabling wounds and just use them as entry criteria for Knockdown. But even if you do that they have some very heady entry requirements. You have to inflict half or more of the targets Body. Given the nature of Impairing Wounds and that it doesn't say otherwise, I presume this is after subtracting (resistant) Defence. If someone takes half their body in damage from an attack, I'd imagine falling on their arse would be one of the least of their worries. What would make sense to me is if someone's armour stopped the bolter shell they might not be hurt but they would be knocked back. In fact, if the attack is less likely to knock them back if it does damage in reality (damage being the energy from an attack overcoming the integrity of the body and being knocked back being the body's integrity withstanding it).

 

Knockback is easier to get my head around but is very powerful. 2m x the difference can have people going back 10m! I couldn't find a limitation called "Does Knockdown" but there is a reference in 6E2 to converting the Does Knockback advantage into Does Knockdown (+¼) which means it automatically does Knockdown without requiring an Impairing Wound. Is this what you meant?

[Cantriped]

For a Rocket that relies on actually penetrating armor to be effective I have two ideas.

The first is a higher than normal DC RKA with Reduced Penetration. So that the Bolts can do a lot of extra damage if they can just punch through the armor.

The second is a few extra DCs with the Limitation that they only apply to targets with less than a given amount of PD (based on how much of the rocket's damage is from penetration, and how much comes from the explosion.

Either results in liquifying unarmored opponents. If that isn't a desired side effect... for example because the rockets are designed to explode inside powered armor, and thus punch through an unarmored human so fast they explode behind the target instead of inside... if the warhead detonates at all; is human flesh even resistant enough to trigger the warhead?

The third idea is to buy extra DCs as in idea two, but with harsher limitations: the target must have at least X rPD, or at most Y rPD in order for the additional DCs to apply.

 

PS: Bolter Rockets as described most certainly should be able to blow holes in walls (i.e. they aren't Beams). Logically it would penetrate part way into the surface before exploding, fracturing the entire surface and sending a shower of debries in all directions.

[knasser2]

16 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Knasser2 I would make Flak armor and Autoguns better than real world. Mainly because the fluff still states that Flak armor and autoguns are better than what we have now. Now if your players go to a feral world no biggie but if they go to a world similar to ours then the mechanics don’t match well with fluff. Again just my 2 bits. 

 

There are over 350 published WH40K novels, 60+ anthologies of short fiction and then we begin on the novellas, rule books and codices. So I can't pretend to have read them all but I am curious where you're getting that from. For reasons given earlier, I'm not convinced that is the case and in fact I've seen it directly stated that autopistols are like those we have today.

[Cantriped]

1 minute ago, knasser2 said:

 

Very small rockets, but yes, they are rockets. I'd kind of like an effect that knocked people back a bit but I honestly find the Knockback / Knockdown rules some of the most confusing in the book (next to Multiform). For Knockdown it only kicks in with Impairing and Disabling wounds. Both of these are also optional rules but by implication you can't not include them if you include Knockdown.

You misunderstand a couple points. Knockdown and Knockback trigger in exactly the same circumstances, the primary difference is tjat the effect of Knockdown is very limited. Knock Back is the default rule in "Superheroic" campaigns, Knock Down is the default rule in "Heroic" campaigns like yours appears to be (other differences include whether you pay for equipment with points, and the use of optional combat rules like Hit Locations).

Impairing & Disabling wounds also cause Knockdown, but that is unrelated.

 

9 minutes ago, knasser2 said:

I couldn't find a limitation called "Does Knockdown" but there is a reference in 6E2 to converting the Does Knockback advantage into Does Knockdown (+¼) which means it automatically does Knockdown without requiring an Impairing Wound. Is this what you meant?

Does Knockdown as an advantage is simply the "Heroic equivalent" of Does Knockback in campaigns where it is inappropriate to send people flying all over the place. As a limitation it falls under the umbrella of the catch-all Limited Power (the RAW legal version of "I pulled it out of my ass"). I gave it a value of -1/4 because while it is objectively worse than a power that does Knockback (and is therefore worth some discount), doing neither Knockback or Knockdown is even worse and still only worth -1/4 (so it shouldn't be any higher either).

 

With GM permission, there isn't anything truely stopping a character from having an Attack Power that causes Double Knockback in a Heroic Campaign (using Knockdown by default)... or one that causes Double Knockdown in a campaign where Knockback is the default rule. The default is most important because of how it affects Strength (which causes Normal Damage and swiftly builds to levels that can cause Knock Down/Back.

[knasser2]

23 minutes ago, Cantriped said:

For a Rocket that relies on actually penetrating armor to be effective I have two ideas.

The first is a higher than normal DC RKA with Reduced Penetration. So that the Bolts can do a lot of extra damage if they can just punch through the armor.

The second is a few extra DCs with the Limitation that they only apply to targets with less than a given amount of PD (based on how much of the rocket's damage is from penetration, and how much comes from the explosion.

Either results in liquifying unarmored opponents. If that isn't a desired side effect... for example because the rockets are designed to explode inside powered armor, and thus punch through an unarmored human so fast they explode behind the target instead of inside... if the warhead detonates at all; is human flesh even resistant enough to trigger the warhead?

The third idea is to buy extra DCs as in idea two, but with harsher limitations: the target must have at least X rPD, or at most Y rPD in order for the additional DCs to apply.

 

PS: Bolter Rockets as described most certainly should be able to blow holes in walls (i.e. they aren't Beams). Logically it would penetrate part way into the surface before exploding, fracturing the entire surface and sending a shower of debries in all directions.

 

Well the real world purpose of explosive rounds is (I believe) to improve effect against armoured targets. But in the original fluff yes, a human body is sufficient to trigger the detonation. The fluff varies a little but the basic principle remains Hit -> Microsecond Delay -> Explosion (ideally inside someone), if their armour prevents penetration then I still expect it to explode. It's in a bit of a gray area with Beam. It's certainly going to do more than a bullet or a lasbolt. So that seems to be a good call. I'll remove Beam from it. It's not going to be a great way of bringing down a wall and you're not going to be able to crawl through a bolter hole (unless you're a rat) but it could certainly bring down a wall with enough fire.

 

For the rest though, this is honestly sounding too complex to be fun in play. I appreciate the effort at verisimilitude but when players get their hands on one of these, they're going to want to just blast somebody. I'm just trying to add a little extra to them to separate them from bullets.

[Cantriped]

6 minutes ago, knasser2 said:

For the rest though, this is honestly sounding too complex to be fun in play. I appreciate the effort at verisimilitude but when players get their hands on one of these, they're going to want to just blast somebody. I'm just trying to add a little extra to them to separate them from bullets.

For a KISS approach an extra level of Armor Piercing or a few extra DCs for its tier will be sufficient.

 

Another idea that comes to mind is to apply Area Of Effect (1m Radius) to part of the damage (say half) to represent that a close bystander (not to mention all of the target's accessible equipment) might catch shrapnel from the explosion, but wouldn't suffer the full effect of the explosion. On paper it looks complex (the nature of writing out partially advantaged weapons), but in practice you can simply note it as a Splash Weapon on the weapon tables (indicating the spash damage and radius in parentheses so it can vary from weapon to weapon) and include a defination of that property in the table notes.

[knasser2]

31 minutes ago, Cantriped said:

You misunderstand a couple points. Knockdown and Knockback trigger in exactly the same circumstances, the primary difference is tjat the effect of Knockdown is very limited. Knock Back is the default rule in "Superheroic" campaigns, Knock Down is the default rule in "Heroic" campaigns like yours appears to be (other differences include whether you pay for equipment with points, and the use of optional combat rules like Hit Locations).

Impairing & Disabling wounds also cause Knockdown, but that is unrelated.

 

Does Knockdown as an advantage is simply the "Heroic equivalent" of Does Knockback in campaigns where it is inappropriate to send people flying all over the place. As a limitation it falls under the umbrella of the catch-all Limited Power (the RAW legal version of "I pulled it out of my ass"). I gave it a value of -1/4 because while it is objectively worse than a power that does Knockback (and is therefore worth some discount), doing neither Knockback or Knockdown is even worse and still only worth -1/4 (so it shouldn't be any higher either).

 

With GM permission, there isn't anything truely stopping a character from having an Attack Power that causes Double Knockback in a Heroic Campaign (using Knockdown by default)... or one that causes Double Knockdown in a campaign where Knockback is the default rule. The default is most important because of how it affects Strength (which causes Normal Damage and swiftly builds to levels that can cause Knock Down/Back.

 

I'm a bit confused why it's a limitation. That implies everything does Knockback by default and this is a downgrade to Knockdown. And that is actually how I read the rules but earlier you said weapons don't do Knockback/Knockdown by default. Should it not be a +¼ Advantage to bolt weapons of Does Knockdown?