/40krpg/ Ascension Edition

How would I go about mixing games.

I've got a Dark heresy 1e group that have a couple ranks in ascension, last session had some party members killed and they're rolling new characters and one floated the idea of playing a marine which I'm OK with just not sure how to implement it. Figures just letting him use deathwatch rules would be the way to go but not sure how much of an XP handicap to gove him so he's roughly on par with the rest of the party? How powerful are DW characters relative to DH characters?

Doesn't seem too complicated to me, but I can see why it might be confusing considering they insist on using terms like icons and shift instead of normal language.

If a lot of people aren't getting it would they like a break down/explanation of what I thinks going on?

That would be helpful, I can understand how he hit the mutant with the lasgun but not how the damage is calculated.

So is there any purpose to getting a good or best quality lasgun? Enhanced reliability is the last thing they need. I was just looking at some of OW's advanced specialties and wondering why you wouldn't go for the lower-quality-but-more-advanced options over the higher-quality-basic ones.

I recall there being a houserule for better high-quality weapons in the old homebrew gdoc, but it seems to be gone.

Check XP chart in Ascension, think you'll find starting DW marine is approximately late 8th / early 9th level, ie. roughly equal to a freshly ascended character.

>using terms like icons
You have to show that this isn't your normal RPG and plays in the dark future of the 41 millenium.
Otherwise normies might confuse it with DnD

Guants ghosts has people recharging las-guns in campfires.

Yeah because las-packs recharge with solar power, thermal power, electical conduction and whatnot.
Because the Mechanicus can't into engineering and just create one designated charging device.

It's also a mechanic in 40k rpgs.
Halves the ammo of the pack permanently, if it doesn't bust it completely, and causes the Lasgun to lose the reliable trait iirc

Initiative sounds fucking stupid.

That's my initial reaction. I also know from The Banner Saga experience that if initiative works like this, you're going to be opening up a lot more attacks as the enemy dies because the enemy has more turns to take compared to each individual player.

What the fuck are you talking about? Abnett has the Ghosts recharging lasguns in Only in Death with fire pits.

Better base damage.

I though ranged weapon quality only affected reliability though. I'm talking about OW, if they changed it by game.

They should be more accurate, or give a bonus to hit I think.

...

Initiative system seems exploitable from the players perspective. As long as the layout of the battle area doesn't prevent you from attacking any specific enemy with your first turn you could completely prevent them from fighting back.

>Everyone has LoS and is in range to attack everyone else
>Party gets to go first
>Party selects heaviest hitter to go first (1)
>DM pick [1]
>Party selects next heaviest hitter (2)
>DM pic [2]
>party selects next heaviest hitter (3)
>etc

>(1) attacks [1], killing them
>(2) attacks [2], killing them
>(3) attacks [3], killing them
>(4) attacks [4], killing them

They're still at the mercy of the dice + DM deciding what enemies to pit them against, but in the comic he's shown to be able to kill an enemy with 1 attack, so let's assume that's not uncommon. So if your party has a lot of heavy hitters you could wipe out a chunk of encounters without even getting damaged, and even if they kill [1] and [2] but [3] survives to manage to attack them, (4) can still choose to attack [4] and possible kill them, or to finish off [3] (assuming the attack wasn't a complete miss), if they kill [4] then it loops back to (1)->(2)->(3)->[3] (unless they do initiative at the start of every round, in which case it's still (1)->[3].

There's a section on Craftsmanship that describes other modifiers that a GM can put on Good and Best Quality weapons.

Realistically speaking you're not going to chunk encounters like that. That's what CRs are for and such.

It doesn't say initiative is set, just that players pick. That could mean if the GM's big monster dies to player 1, he can just make second biggest monster go next before player 2 can have a chance to attack it.

>hit roll
Mutant had a defense of 4 (base 3 + 1 from Dark and Gloomy area). You need a number of icons equal to the defense to hit (in this case, 4).

>damage roll
Lasgun deals a base damage of 7 + (1d6 icons (roll 1d6: if it's 4-5 you get 1 icon (+1 damage), if it's 6 you get 2 icons (+2 damage)).

Since in his hit roll he got one 4, one 5, and two 6s (totaling at 6 icons) when he only needed 4 to pass he gets to shift one of the 6s. Check by just removing 1 exalted icon at a time, if it still would've succeeded without that exalted icon, you get to shift it for bonuses, if it was on a hit-roll, the bonus is always extra damage. That means his lasgun which is normally 7 + 1d6 icons (7-9 damage range) is now 7 + 2d6 icons (7-11 damage range).

It does show in the comic that initiative is passed from 1 side to the other each time so it looks like it'd always be either
DM->Party->DM->Party
or
Party->DM->Party->DM

and it seems pretty clear that you pick initiative for (at least) the entire round at the start, so players always know which order the enemies will be attacking in. In the comic the players know that the order the enemies attack will be.

In the comic it goes
>Guardsman
>Psyker
>Commissar
>Mutant A
>SM scout
>Mutant B
>Skitarii

What they decided to do was Guardsman attack (and kill) Mutant B. Now assuming that the Psyker is more durable than the mutants and he couldn't be killed in one turn (and they know or at least think this), his better course of action would've been to attack (and possibly kill) Mutant A. If he failed to kill Mutant A the Psyker would still get to go followed by the Commissar (assuming she lives), then she targets Mutant A and hopefully finishes it off. Now since SM scout knows that the Mutant B attacks next, he can try to kill it, if he succeeds that frees up Skitarii to attack Psyker followed by turn end with it going back to Guardsman next turn to try to finish off the Psyker.

In that scenario if the Guardsman HAD managed to kill Mutant A, that would've freed up the Commissar to attack Mutant B, if she had successfully killed Mutant B in one turn then that frees up SM Scout and Skitarii to attack the Psyker without him being able to fight back before the turn ends and it goes back to Guardsman (who also shoots the Psyker).

I haven't played with an initiative system like this before on tabletop, but I have on some games (Hyperdimension Nuptunia series as an example). Since you know the order all of the enemies will attack in it's typically best to to target them in that order, starting with the ones you'll be able to completely kill before it reaches their turn and they get a chance to attack.

/40krpg/-approved kino, go!
>The Book of Eli
>Dredd
>Blade Runner

I honestly don't think it's going to work anything like what you're suggesting.

Where is it? I'm not seeing it.

alright cool thanks.

The issue is that DW marines buy advances at an inflated rate whereas 1e advances are cheap.

there are desugbated charging devices. The powerpacks are just also able to be crudely charged in the field, because thats a very useful thing to have.

The Man from Earth could be about a perpetual.

is that going to be an issue?
will the marine that started as strong as the party be left behind as they advance?

Yes. At that point, they actually would be just as strong or stronger.

ok. i guess I'll keep an eye on things and fudge the marine advances cheaper as we go to try keep rough balance

There is also the issue on the other end with the non-marines having a much more skills and talents over the marine.

>that initiative system
>that damage system

hmmm.
i guess I'm lucky I've got a gos group who aren't so competive about interparty "powerlevel" I'll just keep a close eye on it i guess.

is there any general rule i could follow like marine skills at half exp?

>initiative
Well, we don't know yet whether the alternation would be Banner Saga mandatory, or if it would be possible to empty initiative slots with losses.
>damage
Confusingly worded in the comics, but it's definitely not terribad. After all, FFG SW/Genesys has fixed damage modified with successes too, and it seems to work.

>if you throw the swords at the enemy?
In DH? Yeah right, that would require some real houseruling.

Regarding the balance issue
The marine would have less skills and talents, but with exp he'll be a much stronger combatant when all the unnaturals and marine advances starts staking up with each other. The only two characters that could be as strong as a lategame marine would be vindicare assassin and a primaris psyker/psyker inquisitor.

seems not very good system - logic said that psyker are much more dangerous enemy, and he must be killed first, in case of real skirmish party wouldn`t know who`s turn now

It's almost identical to Shadowrun's damage system. Shadowrun just adds net successes to the weapons fixed base damage, this turns extra successes into a chance to add extra damage to a weapons fixed base. The swingy nature of damage is my biggest complaint with FFG 40k.

I'm almost certain each 'side' will get to choose which character/npc activates at the beginning of each activation rather than deciding at the beginning of the round. A lot of these rpgs with simplified intiative mechanics also add a mechanic or some GM resource to spend if he wants npcs to act first as well.

I'll just wait till it's out, seems to be overall less... "complex", than the systems we got nor for 40k rpgs

This entire post.
People that can't understand the comic insert either need to know something about the game, or need to play a larger variety of rpgs.
W&G isn't going to be a Dark Heresy hack.
>logic said that psyker are much more dangerous enemy
No, prior experience in Dark Heresy tells you that. You have no idea how psykers work, or the length and breadth of powers, and it is highly likely that psykers will be extremely prescribed in their power sets to fit into tiers properly.
A mutant that can rip+tear your guts > tier 1 psyker who could possibly throw a minor fire bolt at you.

Yeah, we have to treat this as a whole new game. I can't assume anything from the FFG line matters anymore.

I play 1st, but 2nd is widely considered to be mechanically cleaner and superior. 1st has really good fluff though.
Most of this advice should apply though:
>This is a game about hunting for bonuses. Don't be stingy, remember that a roll with no bonuses is supposed to be pretty challenging.
>Remember equipment bonuses! A medi-kit can mean the difference between life and death.
>If you have a psyker, carefully read over the rules for their powers, and the interactions between fate points and psy-powers.
>To keep combat fast, only have "significant" enemies use the critical damage charts. Everyone else dies at zero wounds. For a more cinematic feel, consider cutting most mook's wounds in half.

>You have no idea how psykers work, or the length and breadth of powers
Not the other user, but psykers have baseline assumptions from a lore standpoint, even if we're getting a whole new game. They are feared, persecuted, they have otherworldly powers and even if they are utterly weak and fail at doing whatever it is they were aiming to do, there's a horribly high chance they explode into deamons that procede to murder/rape/eat everyone and wear their skins(in that order if you're very, very lucky)

So on any battlefield where your guys are hardened, seasoned agents that've seen some shit and know how volatil the warp can be, shooting the dumbass without a gun waiving his arms about is a damn good strategy cause you just don't know if he's gonna set everyone on fire, turn all you're allies against you or simply explode into a greater deamon. Always geek the mage first when possible.

You're arguing from a lore standpoint. If W+G follows the tabletop, which it looks like it does because of abundance of soup and fixed values, then psykers are wet kittens unless they're spamming a select few powers.

Time will tell if psyker supremacy is in or not. Lorewise though, shooting the psyker first is always the right decision.

The initiative system is obviously

>Players choose a character to go first, that character gets it's turn

>GM then chooses an npc to go

>Then the players choose

It's not a set order at the beginning of combat that example just shows what the initiative looks like at the end of the round.

As a quick and dirty patch for this problem, I like to use the craftsmanship rules from Deathwatch. Good craftsmanship grants +1 damage to ranged weapons, and best craftsmanship is +2, in addition to all the normal craftsmanship rules. It at least fixes the problem of a Good craftsmanship lasgun being no different from a common one, but I'm sure there are some better homebrew ideas out there.

Yeah, I recall there being a group homebrew gdoc for OW floating around on Veeky Forums back when the system was new, that had (among other things) a variant system for quality that gave low levels of Proven after reliability was maxed out, but the link seems to be dead now. Shame, it also had a non-ratling sniper guardsman specialization. (Though it'd be easy enough to just strip out the abhuman stuff from ratling.)

Question, how far do you think an inquisitor will go if the cold trader group she's investigating appears to have ties to an otherwise clear Rogue trader with significant assets, and a dynasty that has had a checkered past?

On an unrelated note, how far would they push it if they are undercover on the RT's ship and have learned that the captain sent a prize crew to investigate a derelict ship in the warp?

She's free to go however far she deems necessary. The only caveat to an Inquisitor's powers are that they are only theoreticaly limitless . If you don't have the balls, the guns and/or the army to back you up right here, right now, an overenthusistic Inquisitor is likely to take a dirtnap or get spaced. Thinking that waiving a pretty bauble around gets you everything while protecting you from everyone is a clear sign of an incompetent moron.

Find evidence, forge alliances, make plans(and back-up plans, and Oh-Fuck!-plans) and never show your hand until you're damn sure you've got more guns present than the other guys.

I imagine weaker enemies would be in mobs/formations (though they might change the name to show how different and speshul they are from Fantasy Flight). That seems to be what's happening in the comic with the mutants at least.

My idea was that the dynasty's detractors have attracted attention from several sources - one more direct one is starting to do a clean up among the cold traders, another to put agents on the ship to get an idea of just what this scoundrel is up to and if he should be tolerated, coopted or sent a callidus girlfriend.

Generally, how likely is an inqusitor to call for a formal excommunication of a Rogue Trader, who is himself a peer of the Imperium?

What happens if the party disagrees on who goes first? What if they are fighting each other for some reason?

You're not allowed to fight each other, silly! You're only allowed to fight enemies of your respective faction!

>What happens if the party disagrees on who goes first?
The GM bangs their heads together and tells them who's going first.

Alternatively coinflip.

>play RT campaign a few years ago
>dynasty ends up conflicted with Inquisitor over some archeotech
>we largely prevail but the Lord-Captain gets eversored in the grand finale and the inquisitor escapes
>young successor & dynasty swears revenge and we spend half of the next campaign trying to kill the inquisitor and finally succeed
>starting next campaign with the same group a while later
>another inquisitor, the protege of the one we killed shows up and gets the new Lord-Captain and half the group killed
>yet another successor swears revenge, currently we're busy with more pressing issues but we're hoping to take the inquisitor down at some point

Fucking hell the archeotech this feud started over crashed into a star 200 in-universe year ago.

Not sure if this is the right place, but what would be the best edition to play the fantasy RPGs? We come from OW and would try something different. Are the rules the same with a different coat of fluff or are there big differences?

shoggy thread soon right?

*to be fair to the initial Inquisitor we tried to assassinate him first and even thought we did but it was a body double

The archeotech stopped being the point decades ago for the characters. Cycle of revenge is a hell of a drug.

>Generally, how likely is an inqusitor to call for a formal excommunication of a Rogue Trader, who is himself a peer of the Imperium?
They can try, and if they've got the backing of powerful people, have turned the Rogue Trader's allies or assured their neutrality or eliminated them, the Inquisitor might even get away with it. Otherwise, retaliation is assured and it's a piss-poor Rogue Trader that doesn't have obscenely powerful allies/contacts/friends, and that includes some in the Inquisition. If said trader is more useful to another Inquisitor(or worse, a group of them) alive and prosperous than not, they might just show up to call your claims bullshit.

Sorry, I was reading the Rogue Trader rulebook and that part refers to services, not weapons and armor.

Really, what is the point of a Best Quality lasrifle/laspistol? The Archaeotech weapon takes the spot it should occupy.

There isn't any, outside of maybe a conversation piece or a status symbol for their underlings.

What I'm wondering is, just how much do you have to piss an inquisitor to go that way. How much would an inquisitor expect a RT to stray?

2E. 3E is shitty special dice, and 1E is just a less refined 2E.

It takes me about three days to create a base specialization, and a day to create advanced specializations. Armories and vehicles are easy, those shouldn't take more than a day each. I estimate completion of Chapter 1 by no earlier than March 23. At this moment, it looks like both Allarus and Aquilon terminators will be combined into a single "Tharanatos Terminator" entry, since I can't see what differentiates the two beyond wargear, while the Moritoi Dreadnoughts will become an adspec if one dies, since they're kind of important.

Icons? Shifts? What? Where is this from?

The little graphic seems to suggest that initiative is sorted out right at the start but to be fair it doesn't explicitly state that.

They just include a normal fucking initiative system? Some things are the way they are for the reason.

Honestly the whole system seems to be shaping up to be way too simplistic to me, it looks like it's leaning towards being an easy pick up game with a narrative focus, which is annoyingly typical of modern games it seems. Hopefully there will be some depth in character creation at least.

Wrath and Glory

Icons = Successes
Shift = using excess successes to get different bonuses

Yeah, it's on now.

was it at least nice tech?

So, based on the comic, it seems like it's a pool system with successes and failures. Everyone has relatively low numbers for their Attributes and skills. Might be cool. I think I still prefer FFG's version.

>was it at least nice tech?
No.

It was a crashed DAoT battleship controlled by a Chaos-worshipping Abominable Intelligence. Which we blew up. But a copy of the AI's data banks got stolen and ended up in the hands of an Inquisitor who thought he had shit under control until the first ships started going rogue while transmitting "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" by every means they could. Naturally he did the responsible thing and blamed us.

Ultimately we helped with the cleanup and someone else (conveniently dead) got blamed, but not before our good Lord-Captain got Eversored for his trouble.

Also the ship itself got looted by Orks but we managed to get Deathwatch to crash it into a star. Hell of a campaign.

Oh yeah and in the end the Inquisitor responsible for the Lord-Captains death was killed by Ovi's mind bullets.

What if the players disagree on the order?

You're supposed to be friends. There is no disagreement.

Characters of the same xp level should be *ROUGHLY* the same power in different ways. Remember that a starting DW character has something like 12,000 xp, so take that into account in comparison to the humies.
I played a Marine in an ascension game after my beloved tech priest got gobbled up by Tyranids. The thing that was fun about it was remembering that there's a BUNCH of stuff an astartes is terrible at compared to human operatives in a Dark Heresy scenario. Subtlety, negotiations with the scummers, not scaring the living shit out of everyone you meet, those are all things SM are pretty bad at. They're good at frightening people, they're good at fighting, and in a pinch they can do some negotiations with people of sufficiently high rank, but other than that it's everyone else's show. Of course, the balance is that when you actually get into a fight and start busting out squad powers and blasting apart foes with your bolter it's pretty fun, but even then there are plenty of humans who can go toe-to-toe with an Astartes at that level. In general, I found playing a Marine really enjoyable without being a total spotlight-stealer outside of battle.

Oh shoot I'm way behind on AGP. Time to catch up on my lunch break tomorrow.

>tfw campaign soon

>Everyone else dies at zero wounds
Can't say I agree with this, as there are crit results which have an impact on the environment and shit and make you rethink tactics. Having slippery blood spray over the half of the battlefield your melee combatant was just about to charge down is an interesting risk situation for example and you're robbing yourself of stuff like that.

>For a more cinematic feel
No just stop.

Not that guy, but crit wounds slow the combat down to a crawl.

>No just stop.
Cinematic feel is cool, when you have to go through like 20 mooks.

Me? I'm the one converting Epic 40k.

They don't though? Either have a screenshot of the crit table handy or have a GM screen with the quick reference stuff, wow that was hard.

>when you have to go through like 20 mooks
This isn't Deathwatch though.

>he doesn't do Ascension
Low Energy as fuck, senpai desu senpai

>1e

Disregarding your shit choice of edition, yes higher level characters can still chew through enemies without you having to gimp them by halving their health.

If you want to, you could just double the wound count. But considering criticals for every mook and horde they go through is dumb as fuck.

>not liking 1e
You just don't have the stamina to handle it

>you could just double the wound count
What is this supposed to achieve? You've lost me.

>considering criticals for every mook and horde they go through is dumb
No? It's just part of the game and takes two seconds. The GM should know the type of damage you're dealing by just basic GM knowledge (oh it's a sword so rending etc...), should just have the tables handy (like I said just use a GM screen, ez) and then it's simple to apply the crit. Most are just alive with some drawback or dead, sure, but I have some great memorable moments from stuff like the slippery blood, or the time where we accidentally knocked like 5+ heads into a pool of Tzeentch warpfire and then got interrogated about it.

>stamina
No, it's just a clunky outdated system that gives you very little mechanical character choice.

So one year and a half ago I handed my DW kill-team (Apo, Tech, Arch, Dev) a strike frigate full of archeotech as a reward for a hard mission. Now they rule 5 systems, 6 planets, 4 warships, they have looted 3 chaos cruisers recently. The different systems (DW, DH and RT) really merge well.

"hey, let's give the unstoppable killing machines more unstoppable killing machines. What could go wrong?"
nek minit

>yfw I have to create NPCs with 40k XP worth of skills, talents and caracteristics to stop them
To be fair it's fun as shit. We've gotten to the point every non-monodominant inquisitor in the Jericho sector hates them and will probably betray them, the few ennemies that manage to flee become memorable (like Borgrot, da Ork wiv da Plan) and the endgame (for them) is to conquer the fallen Forge-world of Samech.