Deathwatch: The RPG

[spiros14]

I ambushed him alone, with a Hammerhead gunship then proceeded to take him on in a fire fight. That should have been enough to kill him, but instead he downed it and took part of the tank's railgun as a trophy! And don't even get me started on what happened to the Hive Tyrant.

 

I understand the situation perfectly. Playing RogueTrader a while back with my character who was dual-wielding a heavy bolter and heavy stubber in his power armour. My ship was getting blasted down after an epic duel with another vessel. Emergency lights were blaring and I'm standing in the cargo bay with some of the men looking out at the enemy. I turn to the GM and say, "MEN! It looks like we need a new ship!" and proceed to jump out of the cargo bay towards the enemy ship. Couple of Agility, Intimidate, and Ballistic skill tests later...

 

....A single man shouldn't be able to take a new ship by himself after throwing himself AT it.

 

#169: Never, ever, give special issue ammunition to the Devastator using a Heavy Bolter, especially if he doesn't ask for it.

 

Allow me to impart my own experience with the Heavy Bolter. This may get long winded; there will be a TL;DR at the end.

 

We're attacking Eldar from behind as they fend off a mob of Orks. My Ultramarine Devastator's first target is the Falcon Grav Tank. He presses the selector rune, and the Heavy Bolter automatically pushes the normal bolt rounds back into the ammo backpack and loads the link of 60 Kraken rounds the GM gifted to him prior to the mission start (I want to be clear: I did NOT request these! lol... all he did was increase the armor penetration by 2.). Three turns of shooting later, the Falcon is weaponless and minus one engine. The Marine runs up to the Falcon, hops onto one of the wings, and point blank fires into the intake of the one working engine, immobilising it.

 

He hops off of the Falcon, runs around back, and sets a Krak charge on the rear door. Not only does it blow the door off, but every single Eldar inside are completely unconscious. (GM rolled 100 for them to withstand the concussion... including two Warp Spiders put there just to ambush him.) The Marine steps inside and executes both Warp Spiders with a bolt pistol round to the head each- then gets a call from a fellow Marine that he's getting his arse kicked by a Warlock... so he casually drops a frag grenade behind him as he exits the tank to finish off the Falcon's crew.

 

Sighting the Warlock who is standing in the doorway of an Imperial pillbox, the Devastator fires his only missed volley of the session- but the flying chunks of rockcrete cause the Warlock to retreat inside the pillbox. Next turn, 3 bolter rounds make it through the firing slit, 1 gets negated by his Invulnerable Save. One of the remaining 2 score a Righteous Fury roll and kills the Warlock.

 

Another friendly is having trouble with an Autarch, so the Devastator moves to assist... except he critically succeeds at a Perception test and notices a... metal bush?... Which turns out to be an Eldar camo net covering an Eldar Vyper jetbike. So the Devastator pulls out Krak grenade #2, sets it for a 5 second timer, and then moves to help the friendly with the Autarch again... Only to watch the Autarch get clipped by the friendly, so he then tries to run- warping over to his jetbike, he mounts it just as the Krak charge goes off. He survives, kipups out of the way of another Devastator's Heavy Flamer shot, only to be cut down by another hail of Heavy Bolter shells.

 

By this time, the Orks have overpowered the other Eldar defenders and are now rushing the Marines. Except... there's plenty of distance between them and the Marines. The Devastators pop Squad Mode for their Unrelenting Devastation. 48% Ballistic Skill + 30% autofire bonus + 60% accuracy bonus for the size of the horde of Orks = Heavy Bolter Devastator who can't miss, and rolls superbly... killing 111 of the 120 magnitude horde of Orks. (Shot the mob 4 times: 10 hits, 10 hits, 10 hits, 7 hits. 1 magnitude for hitting, 1 magnitude for Explosive damage, 1 magnitude Unrelenting Devastation. The other 9 magnitude went to the Heavy Flamer Dev when some of them finally got close enough to him that he could fire.)

 

TL;DR:

Final score:

Heavy Bolter: 1 Falcon and crew, 2 Warp Spiders, 1 Warlock, 1 Autarch, 1 Vyper, and 2-300 Ork Boyz.

Enemies: Not 1 wound on the Heavy Bolter Devastator.

epic

[The Emperor's Champion]

Octavulg: Tying in Dr. Demento's The Dead Alewives' D&D skit is pure brilliance. I can just see the Space Wolf shouting from the other room in a pre-teenage voice "Am I drunk yet?"

*fixed ;)

 

#20: Someone will want to be a sparkly Blood Angel.

You better be sorry.... ;)

 

Rule 21: Someone will insist that Librarian Dreadnoughts exist.

Yea.... Too bad not even GW knows their own fluff...

 

Rule 27: Alpha Legion.

Oooo.... I actually really like the idea of having an Alpha Legionnaire in the party. There's a lot of different ways I could apply that. *strokes goatee*

 

Can't speak for the other play test groups, but the B&C play test group has not run into any of those circumstances.

Yea, my group hasn't really run into any of the things listed on the first page.

 

Rule #29: Someone will try to take on a Hive Tyrant, solo.

I did.

...

Didn't end well.

A guy in our squad did. He completely wrecked the Hive Tyrant. Course, he plays to be a power gamer....so...yea....

 

#44: Some fangirl/fanboy will try to create either a BA named Edward, or a SW called Jacob. If this happens: Banhammer

 

;) I swear if someone in my group even throws one of those comments my way....A WILD HIVE TYRANT APPEARS WHAT DO?

LOL!

 

Rule #51: Someone will want to play a Black and White Space marine, on a Black and White bike ...

Oh man...I'd managed to forget that nonsense....

 

#71 Someone will play the Storm Wardens, see the Sacris Claymore and will hence forth play through the game with a thick Scottish accent and act as though he is Shaun Conery from Highlander.

 

#71.5 Said Storm Warden player will then ask if he can have a bagpipe in exchange for his bolt pistol

YES! I'm going to do this now. He's going to have one eye and a bunch of grenade launchers too. :devil:

"T'all you fine dandies so proud, so cock-sure, prancin' aboot with your heads full of eyeballs! Come and get me I say! I'll be waiting on ya with a whiff of the 'ol brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end! Oh, they're going to have to glue you back together... IN HELL!"

 

Rule #82: Every powergamer in your group will be either a Dark Angel of a Blood Angel.

Yea...

 

92. Someone will whine or joke when another player chooses a chapter he doesn't like.

93. Someone will suggest sacrificing a calf and slitting its throat to appease the Dice God.

93.5. Someone will actually sacrifice a calf and slit its throat to appease the Dice God.

92. - Yea. Tell me about it...

 

93. - That's not how you make sacrifices to the Dice God... You get a sledge hammer and obliterate GW's small red dice with it as a sacrifice to bless the small black dice.

 

Rule 96: Someone will believe that krack/frag/melta-bomb would bring a Close combat fight to an end without any negative consequences for any party members fighting.

We came to believe our Black Templar's helmet was magnetic. Somehow, every time someone tossed a grenade it would end up stuck in the collar of his armor....

[The Emperor's Champion]

Rule 101: The most inconvenient psychic phenomena will happen when it's most inappropriate.

I made a Sanctioned Psyker in Dark Heresy...the first time I used my psychic powers I Perils Of The Warpped TO THE MAX. I wiped the party.

So I mad ANOTHER Sanctioned Psyker. Same deal, only instead of 100's it was up in the 95+ for everything. Luckily, I was alone the second time, so when I blew up, or became a black hole (or whatever it was that happened exactly(My DM wouldn't let me be in the room to witness what actually happened...), so I only ended up killing the Greater Daemon...

So I rolled up ANOTHER Sanctioned Psyker... I kid you not....same thing happened. First power, Super Perils dooms rolls. By this point my DM had decided to just ignore the charts and insert whatever otherwise utterly improbable event he wanted to whenever I rolled high on Perils.

Unfortunately, that's the last time I played Dark Heresy (had to go back to school). XD

 

# 70. Someone will play a space wolf character and read the Wolf-Tamer history option. Following this, said space wolf player will argue that he has a fenrisian wolf.

Happened. This same guy completely broke a D&D game I ran a few months back upon insisting on having a raptor mount. Cue a level 1 party going through high level encounters in 1 round.

You can't imagine what it means to be broken in D&D until you see my group play... For example, one guy knows how to become a blue dragon at level 1. Well, we all know how...but he figured it out...

 

Rule 121: Do not shoot a Heavy Bolter into a combat featuring allies, particularly unarmoured allies.

Nah... They'll be fine...

 

#139: Roleplayers used to D&D will need dodging, parrying, fate points, squad mode abilities, and solo mode abilities drilled into their heads. It does not help when the GM (me) forgets too.

For realz...

 

#144: Somebody will commit fluff heresy in their character background.

#144a: Extra points if two characters commit mutually exclusive acts of fluff heresy in their respective backgrounds.

Without me there, yes. A lot.

 

#147: Your players will ask for a Thunderhawk, or at least a Stormraven. Don't let them have one, unless you want them to constantly use said vehicle to saturation-bomb their objectives from the air.

Our DM gave us a Stormraven. We didn't even ask for one... But since we know each other so well he knows exactly how to DM us and not even give us an opportunity to go nuts with it. Honestly, I don't see how that could get out of hand unless you LET IT.

 

[

I'm talking from the position of a GM here. It's not that it's physically impossible, it's that they can whittle down just about anything I throw at them.

Then you are throwing it at them, wrong. Smart enemies (should) isolate, ambush and destroy lone Heavy Weapon marines. ;)

If your Kill-Team has a lone Devastator, you're doing it wrong.

 

#158: No you can't be named Spartan 117 and your rank isn't Master Chief.

#159: No the ship's machine spirit can't be named Cortana!!!

Sure you can. Just beware that it's grounds for immediate execution.

 

#162: Somebody will want to play a DH or RT character with :cuss loads of experience.

Why not?

 

#170: If anyone turns up with a heavy bolter the GM has every right to have them end up facing 1D100 Daemon Princes/Hive Tyrants/Ork Warbosses/Autarchs.

A Heavy Bolter is basic starting equipment for a Devastator.... :ermm:

[Something Wycked]

#170: If anyone turns up with a heavy bolter the GM has every right to have them end up facing 1D100 Daemon Princes/Hive Tyrants/Ork Warbosses/Autarchs.

A Heavy Bolter is basic starting equipment for a Devastator.... :tu:

I can take it! Whatever you want to throw at me ;) :wub:

[eyescrossed]

Our group has nerfed all Bolt Weapons slightly. Except Heavy Bolters. We nerfed them massively, yet they STILL do great O.o

[Codicier Lucion]

#71 Someone will play the Storm Wardens, see the Sacris Claymore and will hence forth play through the game with a thick Scottish accent and act as though he is Shaun Conery from Highlander.

 

Connery was armed with a katana in that film. He, uh, also delivered the line "I'm not Spanish, I'm Egyptian" :)

 

Also, I have a question. On average how useful are multi meltas in missions?

[Brother Nihm]

[

I'm talking from the position of a GM here. It's not that it's physically impossible, it's that they can whittle down just about anything I throw at them.

Then you are throwing it at them, wrong. Smart enemies (should) isolate, ambush and destroy lone Heavy Weapon marines. :huh:

If your Kill-Team has a lone Devastator, you're doing it wrong.

 

Which is why

 

Smart enemies (should) isolate, ambush and destroy lone Heavy Weapon marines. :D

:tu:

[The Emperor's Champion]

And a smart Kill-Team should make that mostly impossible :(

Buddy system!

[Hellios]

And a smart Kill-Team should make that mostly impossible :)

Buddy system!

 

Thats all good if you have enough members to make pairs... but if you are say a small group of 3 people and you need to do something other than fight maybe even multiple things that require your group to be in at least two places at once.... at best you now have one person on their own and another two in a pair... Also should you be ambushed in a non combat situation when your group might not be together...

 

Let me give you an example! Genestealers have got onto your ship while you were dealing with stuff on the planet (you are not aware of this) so you get on your ship and make a warp jump. Brother Gideon and Artekus are in the practise area of the ship testing their close combat styles on each other and learning new things. Brother Azamel the Dark Angels librarian is in his chambers out of his armour cleaning his equipment which he finds help him meditate. Genestealers pop out of the air vents in his room... What do? (at least he is a librarian but it could have been tactical marine Gideon who liked to spend his time alone, he would ahve far more trouble with genestealers catching him with his power armoured pants down!)

 

All I'm saying is if the GM wants to make a scenario where you can be caught off guard he can do it if you guys are role playing properly. He might not make such scenarios occur and that is up to him...

[The Emperor's Champion]

And a smart Kill-Team should make that mostly impossible :)

Buddy system!

 

Thats all good if you have enough members to make pairs... but if you are say a small group of 3 people and you need to do something other than fight maybe even multiple things that require your group to be in at least two places at once.... at best you now have one person on their own and another two in a pair... Also should you be ambushed in a non combat situation when your group might not be together...

 

Let me give you an example! Genestealers have got onto your ship while you were dealing with stuff on the planet (you are not aware of this) so you get on your ship and make a warp jump. Brother Gideon and Artekus are in the practise area of the ship testing their close combat styles on each other and learning new things. Brother Azamel the Dark Angels librarian is in his chambers out of his armour cleaning his equipment which he finds help him meditate. Genestealers pop out of the air vents in his room... What do? (at least he is a librarian but it could have been tactical marine Gideon who liked to spend his time alone, he would ahve far more trouble with genestealers catching him with his power armoured pants down!)

 

All I'm saying is if the GM wants to make a scenario where you can be caught off guard he can do it if you guys are role playing properly. He might not make such scenarios occur and that is up to him...

Granted, when they're safely in their own fortress and not expecting to be attacked, yea, smart enemies should be able to isolate and kill an unarmed Marine. I'm pretty sure all of that falls under the "mostly impossible" category, tho. Genestealers infiltrating a Marine warship or a Watch Fortress... Or catching a Marine in the few minutes each day that he's NOT armed to the teeth and fighting/training with their Brothers...

Granted, Deathwatch Marines might have more free time to pursue their individual projects than your average Marine....*shrug*

[Hellios]

Granted, when they're safely in their own fortress and not expecting to be attacked, yea, smart enemies should be able to isolate and kill an unarmed Marine. I'm pretty sure all of that falls under the "mostly impossible" category, tho. Genestealers infiltrating a Marine warship or a Watch Fortress... Or catching a Marine in the few minutes each day that he's NOT armed to the teeth and fighting/training with their Brothers...

Granted, Deathwatch Marines might have more free time to pursue their individual projects than your average Marine....*shrug*

 

Ah but even in battle... as I say I only have a party of three and in one of the stories the Kill-team had to escape using a civillian transport (their hawk had been destroyed and they had a time limit and the only space worthy ship was an Avus cargo hauler in a hanger (on the planets surface), unfortunatly the enemies attack from orbit had caused damage to a lot of the city including the hanger doors... so to open them we needed someone to operate the controls in a room above the hanger while we needed at least one person to push the doors to aid the damaged mechanism... Now we made good time so we didn't actually face any of the enemies who were chasing us but if you imagine we had been slower in previous parts of the mission and had to fight a combat while doing that with only three people... it could have been bad.

[The Emperor's Champion]

But see, in that case you're not a real Kill-Team, IMO. You SHOULD have 2-7 more guys. 2 NPCs probably being the way to do it.

 

We had:

Ultramarines Devastator (me)

Ultramarines Apothecary

Space Wolf Assault Marine

Black Templar Assault Marine

Blood Angel Techmarine

[Something Wycked]

But see, in that case you're not a real Kill-Team, IMO. You SHOULD have 2-7 more guys. 2 NPCs probably being the way to do it.

 

We had:

Ultramarines Devastator (me)

Ultramarines Apothecary

Space Wolf Assault Marine

Black Templar Assault Marine

Blood Angel Techmarine

 

That team is startlingly close to my game's setup- especially you and I! lol

 

Ultra Dev (me)

Ultra Tac (NPC)

SW Dev (player)

BT Assault (player)

BA Apoth/Sang. Priest (NPC)

And an NPC Inquisitorial Acolyte that we've resuced who is handling the techy stuff for us.

 

As for the question about the multi-melta, I have no idea- haven't seen it in action yet.

[Hellios]

But see, in that case you're not a real Kill-Team, IMO. You SHOULD have 2-7 more guys. 2 NPCs probably being the way to do it.

 

We had:

Ultramarines Devastator (me)

Ultramarines Apothecary

Space Wolf Assault Marine

Black Templar Assault Marine

Blood Angel Techmarine

 

Well NPCs wouldn't be hard to split off and kill as the GM and that would leave me in the same position... or I could just do something that required more than tasks being done... or make a situation where the devastator can't really shoot anything. The best way to kill people as a GM is however to make rocks fall out of the sky.

[Something Wycked]

Additional fluff heresy:

 

172: With Black Crusade coming out, someone will want to play a normally uncorruptible Marine, eg Grey Knight, and make them fall to Chaos.

[eyescrossed]

Random question: why are FFG releasing playable Grey Knights into Dark Heresy and not Deathwatch?

[Brother Captain Ed]

Random question: why are FFG releasing playable Grey Knights into Dark Heresy and not Deathwatch?

 

Because the Ordo Malleus fights daemons and incursions of Chaos...alongside the Inquistors who are the centerpieces of Dark Heresy.

 

The Deathwatch fights Chaos where applicable, but their primary mission is hunt and kill the alien who threatens the Imperium.

 

Yes, both work with the Inquisition but think of it thusly: An Inquisitor lands on the hiveworld of Malicon IV and discovers a cabal of heretics who are beginning to summon daemons and consuming the world in Chaos and slaughter. So he calls the Grey Knights to help him deal with it.

 

The same Inquisitor lands on Malicon IV and instead discovers a Genestealer cult preparing to overthrow the Imperial government and lay the planet bare to the machinations of the Hive Mind. This time he calls the Deathwatch to purge the alien.

 

Could the GKs or the DW fight the other enemy? Of course, and would probably do so in a pinch. But, assuming they are both availible, each example clearly falls into their respective responsibilities which also, coincidentally, are the purview of Dark Heresy and Deathwatch, respectively.

[The Emperor's Champion]

It's as simple as that. Deathwatch are alien hunters, Grey Knights are daemonhunters.

 

Dark Heresy is about daemon hunting, more than anything, and Deathwatch is about the Deathwatch and, thusly, alien hunting.

[eyescrossed]

Eh, still strikes me as odd that they release playable Space Marines in the human RPG rather than the Space Marine one, regardless of what they fight (especially seeing as you can play the Grey Knights in Deathwatch too).

[Something Wycked]

Eh, still strikes me as odd that they release playable Space Marines in the human RPG rather than the Space Marine one, regardless of what they fight (especially seeing as you can play the Grey Knights in Deathwatch too).

The entire game, every "core" book, is designed to be able to work together so it doesn't matter in which "game" they are released in.

[The Emperor's Champion]

Yea, they're all basically the same exact game seen through different lenses.

Dark Heresy is based on a "low powered" game and set in a certain part of the galaxy where they deal mostly with demons.

Rogue Trader is a "mid-powered" part of the same game set in a neighboring part of the galaxy.

Deathwatch is a "high-powered" part of the game set on the opposite side of the galaxy from the other two, but with a convenient super portal that links them all together.

You can level up a Dark Heresy character to Mid-power and use him in Rogue Trader, or level a Dark Herest or Rogue Trader character up and use him in Deathwatch.

Or you can take a Deathwatch Marine and make him part of a Dark Heresy campaign and thereby allow the low level Dark Heresy party face off against far more powerful foes and still have a chance of winning.

There's loads of ways to do it. *shrug*

 

Grey Knights got put in their thematically appropriate setting.

[eyescrossed]

They may have designed them to be compatible, but it's an extremely loose fit. Lvl5 Dark Heresy characters will always outclass starting Rogue Trader characters in nearly every way, Space Marines will always be the shining star in a game and steal all the glory if there's even 20% combat and Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader characters in Deathwatch will get killed in the first few seconds - especially without any real way of dealing with Hordes.

 

The point I'm trying to make is that it just seems... Weird. It'd be like if they released an expansion for Dark Heresy that had rules for space ships and stations (different from RT ones) and had a few rules for integrating them over to Rogue Trader. It just seems like a waste of space, especially since they'll have to include rules for all of the implants and such.

[The Emperor's Champion]

Lvl5 Dark Heresy characters will always outclass starting Rogue Trader characters in nearly every way, Space Marines will always be the shining star in a game and steal all the glory if there's even 20% combat and Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader characters in Deathwatch will get killed in the first few seconds - especially without any real way of dealing with Hordes.

Good. They're properly balanced then.

[eyescrossed]

By fluff, yes. Doesn't make it playable at all.

[Marshal Rohr]

But adds a touch of realism to the setting.

 

I'd love to play a game like that.