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PensacolaWarhammer Joins Deathwatch


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A quick little post detailing my gaming group's starting of Deathwatch. I'll be posting the campaign story and characters' back story and sheets for everyone to follow. I'm also doing this so those who have more experience with the game and GMing can give some pointers.

 

Case in point, last night one of the characters hosed a Nid Warrior and basically killed him out right, a hoard of gaunts got into close combat with one of the characters and he took no damage, and finally, a couple of shoot attacks to that Mag 30 hoard down to Mag 14. So I'm going to have to figure out how to balance things out. Thankfully, none of this took place during a campaign. It was just us learning, experimenting, getting the hang of the combat system.

 

Like I said, I would love to hear any pointers about handling the game and GMing in general. To help with that, I'll be using the two campaigns provide by Fantasy Flight on their web site: Final Sanction and Oblivion's Edge.

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Greetings, and welcome to the wonderful world of GMing for deathwatch... you poor soul :-p

 

First off, I'd recommend using the erranted weapons stats provided by FFG on the deathwatch website.  The initial stats for the weapons had them overpowered. (for example, Astartes bolters were 2D10+5, pen 5, ROF 1/2/4 initially.... which could hose down just about anything. They changed it to 1D10+9 pen 4 ROF 1/3/-.

The Heavy bolter was doing more damage and firing as fast as an assault cannon...., ect)

 

Secondly.  It is more challenging to the players to run multiple smaller hordes then one giant one. The reason for this is that hordes are limited to the amount of damage they can do (a 35 mag horde will do the same damage as a 135 mag horde)

 

When dealing with adversaries....  use a combination of elites and minions for every encounter.

 

Don't be afraid to be lethal against the players.  (I told my players in advance that I would try to kill them off frequently.  I had a fairly decent body count in my games as well)

 

But most importantly, experience is what is needed to effectively balance encounters.  The books will provide useful guidelines, but there is no substitute for actually learning and working the system.

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@blackoption

Thanks for the tips, and I'm already going to be making the change to using the errata. Last night was a trail to get the mechanics in our head. We were also curious about the damage we were taking which was basically none.

 

The toughness and streigth stat has us a bit confused. We've had a debate about what goes in the big box and what goes in the little box. For example, brother X roles a 45 for his streigth and a 39 for toughness. Do the the 4 and 3 go in the bigger box with 10 and 6 going in the smaller boxes to represent the armor and Unnatural characteristics.

 

I fully believe this is going to be a learning experience for all with each side learning a little bit more with each game session.

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on unnatural characterstics.

 

As written in Deathwatch, a characteristic bonus goes in that upper left box, with the actually characteristic score going in the normal box.  Normally, the bonus is the number in the tens column for that characteristic ( someone with a willpower score of 43 would have a willpower bonus of 4 where applicable, the 4 would be in the small box while the 43 is in the larger)

 

However, deathwatch rules for unnatural stats require you multiply the bonus by the level of unnatural bonus you have (Astartes come with unnatural strength X 2, thus a strength of 51 would have a strength bonus (and damage bonus) of 10 (5*2=10) as opposed to 5.) Please understand, that in this example, I am NOT including the bonus to strength given by power armor.

 

GM's note: This method of using unnatural characteristics was done away with in the Black Crusade rule set. Mainly because by multiplying the unnatural characteristic, marines start hitting really hard at the 50 and 60 level of stats (which is possible through character advancements)...

 

In Black Crusade (and Only War) unnatural characteristics provided a flat bonus to a stat bonus (marines unnatural strength X2 became unnatural strength 4). Under BC rule set, it became impossible for a character to have a stat bonus of 12 or high by just increasing the characteristics.  For math differences a marine with a toughness of 53 will be used as an example

 

DW rules: 53 unnatural toughness x2: (5*2=10)

BC Rules: 53 Unnatural toughness 4: (5+4=9)

 

The ending result is, while astartes are still quite powerful, they no longer increase exponentially with every stat increase.

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Interesting. I working the character sheets out by putting in the full base stat to the right of the large box, putting the stat bonus in the larger box, and putting the unnatural characteristics and armor bonus in the smaller box. The Black Crusade rules for Unnatural Characteristics is interesting too. Something that I might look into ecspeically due to the fact that I have a techmarine in the group. His Servo Arm replaces is normal stat with a 75 with Unnatural Streigth x2. As I was working it out, that would be a base score of 75 with a 7 in the larger box and then a 14 in the smaller box.

 

I'm also conflicted with my players' choice in armor. 3 out of 5 players picked "Corvus" and then all three picked the Fury Like Lightning history. I'm thinking I shouldn't have let them pick the history as on average they are in double digits for Inititative.

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You have valid concerns.  Frankly, I never gave my players choice in what kind of armor they got.  They rolled for it based on the tables provided in rites of battle. The only choice I gave them is what tables they could role on for power armor history (and even then, i changed up some of the results for the skill of the artificer table)

 

An Astartes power armor should be a character unto itself if done properly. If players get to pick what they want (armor wise), they can very easily start min maxing which I always found extremely annoying. Another house rule I had is that the maximum bonus a player character could get for anything was 6. (for example, a character with agility bonus of 5 and an armor bonus of +1 to initative, as well as the paranoid trait (which is a +2 to initiative roles i believe) would have an 8 bonus to initiative before even rolling... lightining reflexes (deathwatch variant) doubles that to 16. With a + 16 to initative, dark eldar and slanneshi daemons start becoming slow.... However, with the bonus limit of 6 (which actually fits with the rules that no task can have more than a 60 pt bonus/penalty) it dampens minmaxers quite nicely. Marines are powerful... but they should not become miniprimarchs.

 

GMs note: once again, Black Crusade/Only War modifies lightning reflexes... it no longer doubles the initative bonus, but instead roll 2 dice for initative and discard the lowest.

 

Pro tip:  In my games, I charged players who "held " their action as a half action.  Munchkining is one way to very quickly annoy me.

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I have to say that I really appricate the tips, and based on your points I may have my players redo their armor and armor history limiting them to Mk 6, 7, and 8. I also really like the idea of bonus and modifyer caps. The character who hosed the nid warrior basically had to roll less than a 90. i'm glad we did a test run last night because even my players were thinking things were lop sided.

 

As you've pointed out with Black Crusade and Only War, I wondering if I should get one those and begin modifying the rules to Deathwatch.

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I have pulled rules from BC and Only war, but my group discusses them first before implementing them. I would recommend Black Crusade over Only war in this case because you can have direct, Astartes to Astartes comparisons

 

And there is nothing wrong with mk 4 or 5 armor on the random role chart.  3 armor histories isn't too overpowering unless the dice magically align

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I know one player that can make the dice gods do his biding. It's nice because with each new post in the different forums I learn a little bit more. One tip that I was told to make things difficult and interesting for characters are surprises, ambushes, and traps. I just wondering how a surprise attack would work on a group of player characters. I know they would have to take an Awareness test, but what if one character passed. Would that character not be surprised, but the rest of the party would be surprised? Could I do a majority roll, meaning in a group of 5 players is 3 players fail their Awarness test then the group is surprised.

Edited by PensacolaWarhammer
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If the characters fail an awareness test for an ambush... unless they have the trait rapid reaction, they count as surprised for the first round of combat and do not roll initative till the second round.  Depending upon the nature of the ambush, surprised characters might not even be able to make a reaction.

 

If they pass the awareness test, then they roll initiative as normal.

 

GM tip... "Warning my friends so they can act"....  You will run into this, frequently.  The way I handled this is as follows.  First off, talking is always a free action, but you are limited to six seconds of dialogue (a round is about six seconds). However, while talking is a free action, I only allowed my characters to speak in initiative order (combined this with costing a half action to hold action...) Even if they do warn their allies, if the most the allies might be able to get out of it is a reaction. (As a soldier, i can agree that certain commands/calls in the field warrent immediate reactions, hence why I only allowed reactions).

 

As for how to ambush players... Have a prepared kill zone where all the enemies are already holding action (technically from a previous turn) for a trigger event. If the players miss identifying where the ambushers are, or walk blindly into a kill zone, they get one awareness check (very hard -30 in this case) in order to be able to act on the first round. Remember, marines are to fight the most lethal of foes.... otherwise the Imperial guard could handle it.  The enemy will try to pick off isolated/wounded characters and characters that would be the most threatening.  Ambushes can be near or far range.  They can include artillery fire and armored support if given enough time and the enemy force is competent enough. 

 

Basically, do not be afraid to be as lethal as you can when fighting Astartes... they are walking around in power armor... they can take a few hits.

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I like your stance on talking. I was trying to figure out how to make Command and being a Squad Leader a bit more significant. As the rules have, the only thing going for the squad leader is he sets Cohension, breaks ties among players, and repairs cohension. I've been trying to figure out how my squad leader could actually issue some orders. I just trying to figure out the mechanics of it, and trying to figure out how to get players to try and follow orders.

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I'll be following you reports with extreme interest. I'm planning to post reports of my 40K RPG campaigns too but I'm currently undecided on the "format".

What format do you plan to use for your reports?

 

The "strictly narrative" approach with dialogues and description (de facto a story/novel like writing), the log (like the classical Captain logs) or a brief description of events (like those we find in the codices fluff)?

 

As I said I'm very undecided...

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@Cmdr Shepard

I'm thinking either the narrative approach or the log approach as I want both followers of the blog and the players to read and maybe get sucked into the story. By doing the narrative format, both readers and players may have some way of effecting the outcome of  the story through plot twists, character development, etc. I do plan on listing citations, awards, honors, experience points at the end of each post, so both players and readers can see a maybe draw a correlation between the story and game play.

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@Cmdr Shepard

I'm thinking either the narrative approach or the log approach as I want both followers of the blog and the players to read and maybe get sucked into the story. By doing the narrative format, both readers and players may have some way of effecting the outcome of  the story through plot twists, character development, etc. I do plan on listing citations, awards, honors, experience points at the end of each post, so both players and readers can see a maybe draw a correlation between the story and game play.

 

Do you plan to actually write a story, then ;)

I say that because if I'll ever decide to write a true narrative description of the campaign from Rogue Trader rulebook I just completed, with all dialagues and in-depth analysis of characters' behaviour, reactions etc I'd write a short novel... and it's only a single campaign.

I took a lot of notes during the campaign and I massed a huge number of data and words.

Sadly I have not the time to write short novels, right now...:sad.: so I'll have to choose the log format.

For example if the characters fought a mob of orks I'd write a brief description of the most relevant events of the fight instead of portraying every single event like the effect of a single bolt shot on the Ork's head.

Even though I find the idea of describing every single event from the game session very interesting and that's why I'm taking detailed notes of every hit and every critical damage: when I'll finally decide to write the detailed narrative report I'll have all the details I need ;)

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GM accounts can very easily, and very quickly, populate an entire series of novels... Considering the notes I have from my last campaign, I could write a black library book series.

 

If I ever got around to compiling it that is.

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@Cmdr Shepard

I'm thinking either the narrative approach or the log approach as I want both followers of the blog and the players to read and maybe get sucked into the story. By doing the narrative format, both readers and players may have some way of effecting the outcome of  the story through plot twists, character development, etc. I do plan on listing citations, awards, honors, experience points at the end of each post, so both players and readers can see a maybe draw a correlation between the story and game play.

 

Do you plan to actually write a story, then :wink:

I say that because if I'll ever decide to write a true narrative description of the campaign from Rogue Trader rulebook I just completed, with all dialagues and in-depth analysis of characters' behaviour, reactions etc I'd write a short novel... and it's only a single campaign.

I took a lot of notes during the campaign and I massed a huge number of data and words.

Sadly I have not the time to write short novels, right now...:sad.: so I'll have to choose the log format.

For example if the characters fought a mob of orks I'd write a brief description of the most relevant events of the fight instead of portraying every single event like the effect of a single bolt shot on the Ork's head.

Even though I find the idea of describing every single event from the game session very interesting and that's why I'm taking detailed notes of every hit and every critical damage: when I'll finally decide to write the detailed narrative report I'll have all the details I need :wink:

 

 

GM accounts can very easily, and very quickly, populate an entire series of novels... Considering the notes I have from my last campaign, I could write a black library book series.

 

If I ever got around to compiling it that is.

 

Writing the "narrative" of a campaign or game session is something that I have more experience with that GMing as I'm a writer, so knowing when to add description, action, and dialogue is something I'm fairly good at. Trust me, I wouldn't put down every detail that a squad did to a horde of Orks or nids as there's not real way to know what happened. Also, writing the "narrative" of a campaign or session through my blog helps as a single blog post will only detail the events of a either a single gaming session, encounter, or event. Example of what I plan on doing: the first blog post(s) will be the kill-team assembling which would simply be the back ground story and character sheets of each player character, the next blog post(s) would be a prologue which would encompass the planet and relative information leading up to the kill-team's insertion, and after that would be the events of the campaign. The first post of that would describe how the kill-team was inserted (drop pod, teleport, drop ship, etc), the first combat encounter after insertion, and the first social encounter (meeting NPC, getting their bearings, deciding on objects and order of attack, etc).

 

I realize that it will probably be an undertaking, but again, keeping in to a blog post will disperse the load as I only have to worry about writing one "chapter" or really "one scene" at a time.

 

Back to figuring out some mechanics of the game and general tips. How do either one of you handle a characters facing? Are there any penalties/bonus for characters or NPCs having their back to any enemy?

Secondly, I'm trying to make being a squad leader a bit more special than just generating and repairing Cohension. How would you handle a squad leader issue orders to other player characters?

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on facing:

 

The only time I really held players at a penalty for facing (assuming one on one) was when a threat was in their rear arch (back 45%).  However, there are penalties (and bonuses) for being double teamed or outnumbered in a fight.

 

On squad leader: Before I can answer this question, i'd need to know are you more likely to have the same player(s) consistently being the squad leader. Player dynamics can make that a tricky issue (particularly when it players do not understand or live in an environment where a chain of command is important).  I had an easy time with this issue (for the most part) because most of my players were either active duty or veterans.

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To your first question about squad leader, I think that all the players have unanamimously picked one of the players to be the squad leader for the entire campaign. As for the second, I think only a couple of the players have lived in an environment where a chain of command exsisted. I'm not looking for anything really in depth. Just something to make being the squad leader a bit more special, or to give the player that thinks tactically, which is the player everyone picked as the squad leader, to use his strength and help the group.

 

I could be way off on this and probably making it harder than it should be.

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Writing the "narrative" of a campaign or game session is something that I have more experience with that GMing as I'm a writer, so knowing when to add description, action, and dialogue is something I'm fairly good at.

Nice to read :thumbsup:

I'm quite good at writing too, or at least that's what who read my writings say ;), but sadly English is not my native language so I usually don't post stories here because I'm aware of my language limitations and I don't want to post a work if I know  it won't be of very good quality.

There is a difference between make sure others can understand me when I post a comment and writing a story. For the records consider about 6/7 years ago I was quite skilled, not supremely qualfied but at least decently good, at writing stories in English, then "life necessities" forced me to stop that hobby and after such amount of time I find myself a little "rusty"...

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To your first question about squad leader, I think that all the players have unanamimously picked one of the players to be the squad leader for the entire campaign. As for the second, I think only a couple of the players have lived in an environment where a chain of command exsisted. I'm not looking for anything really in depth. Just something to make being the squad leader a bit more special, or to give the player that thinks tactically, which is the player everyone picked as the squad leader, to use his strength and help the group.

 

I could be way off on this and probably making it harder than it should be.

 

I'll pencil down some thoughts for this circumstance... But having a "Watch Sergeant" (default leader) is a useful thing

 

A couple of suggestions: 

Establish a who and what your watch captain is.  It will be your squad leader's job to be the primary inteface with that individual. This can provide plenty of roleplaying opportunities there.  Several of the supplements (rites of battle, GM screen adventure, Achillus Assault) have examples of what a watch cpt should look like.  I'd also strongly recommend Rites of Battle as your first supplement, followed by first founding and honour the chapter (between those 3 books and the main rule book, players will have a wide range of chapters they can come from along with the ability to make their own: 30+)

 

If you have a group like I did, railroading a game will not work.  I've learned that it is better to leave breadcrumbs then neon signs to get the players to go in the necessary direction...

 

If they don't go in that direction (which will happen at least once), have enough background material and understanding of the larger situation that you can adjust as needed (for example... the team decides that the imperial governor is a xenos sympathizer and starts ignoring/missing the fact that the real culprit is a genestealer cult)...

and bring the necessary consquences of their actions.

 

If you haven't already, look at the erranted stats on the Deathwatch website regarding weapons damage.

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@Cmdr Shepard

I'm sure you could find a couple of edits at wrting forums and sites that would help you out with that is you broke things down in chunks.

 

Thanks for the "motivation" ;)

 

Anyway I'll follow your reports with great interest. I'm liking 40K RPGs so much that it won't be long before I start to play Astartes too. Black Crusade then Deathwatch... there is no reason for not running three RPG adventures, after all... I'll just have to make schedule like one per week ;)

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Careful... I have run that many games before... It can burn out a GM fairly quickly.  If you are looking for longer campaigns, then i would limit to running no more then 2 games.  Now if, you have other GMs who are willing to run games, that would be better.  However, then you are going to have the issue of which game do we play today...

Edited by blackoption
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Careful... I have run that many games before... It can burn out a GM fairly quickly.  If you are looking for longer campaigns, then i would limit to running no more then 2 games.  Now if, you have other GMs who are willing to run games, that would be better.  However, then you are going to have the issue of which game do we play today...

 

Wise suggestion.... right now I'm limited to one campaign. I'm planning to make a Black Crusade character and try to "recruit" more players by showing some Astartes versus Hordes action.

It will pass some time before I start DW, since I want to be extremely familiar with 40K RPG mechanics before starting to play my favorite Astartes organization ;)

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