Thoughts on some house rule ideas for Deathwatch
I've been DMing a campaign for a long while, and possibly will be playing in the next as a PC (rank 3 assault marine).
I've noticed a couple of issues:
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as an assault Marine you are usually first in the turn order, especially if you take Lightning Reflexes at Rank 2. This means on your turn every enemy has all their reactions refreshed and available. In this sense high Initiative is actually something of a hindrance.
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in part due to the above it seems like the Charge attack is severely limited. It should be a big iconic move, especially given all the additional bonuses that can be purchased for it. But so far it seems like anyone worth charging can parry it more often than not. It's pretty anticlimactic I find.
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due to the way the action and movement rules work I often find both PCs and NPCs just standing still and shooting what they can see on full auto.
Here are some potential fixes for these I came up with:
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make Delay a free action i.e. PCs can hold their whole action for later in the turn order, instead of only a half action. This would make Delay a viable choice and open up tactical possibilities for all PCs, not just the high Ag Assault Marine. It would also make that high initiative a pure advantage.
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expand the "spend a Fate point to make All-Out Attack unparryable" rule to include the charge attack. This would help make those upgrades seem worth it, but still at a cost.
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separate the move and attack choices in the action economy (like in DnD). If there should still be some link then make movement add a penalty to BS
Happy for any feedback/thoughts/suggestions for these. Has anyone tried something similar? Any problems I haven't thought of?
Posted Jun 2, 2022, 7:44 AM UTC
Correct that this is a thing but that isn't a problem. Reactions refresh at the start of a round and so while opponents may have all of their available reactions it would be unwise to simply blow them all immediately in response to the first player because it leaves them nothing to deal with anything else. It's never a bad idea to be measured and careful with how reactions are used. But even if they do burn all their reactions, that means the assault marine has done good work and deprived the enemy of their defensive measures so anyone else can attack freely knowing that the enemy has nothing left.
High initiative is never a bad thing because it makes it more likely you are able to control the field and where people are. You have the prime position at the head of the round, often with most of your stuff refreshed as well, and can really make some impact.
Charge meanwhile, biggest value is the extra movement over a full round action. You get to cover a good amount of distance as a full round action and still manage to get a single attack in on the target which then means you both can count as engaged in melee right away as opposed to doing it slowly. I also don't have to revert to a Run to cover the distance which would leave me vulnerable to melee attacks. It is only a single attack and yes you can miss or react to it but it's part of tying the enemy up in combat so they can't do some other things to everyone else because they now have a charged marine in their face.
Full auto in DW was borked, it made it easier to hit spraying more bullets so it was often just better to sit there and go dakka. Later books made it so that full auto had you firing at a penalty, although even then shooting still works. You do tend to get pitched battles with two sides both in cover plinking shots at each other or maybe a half action move and a short burst of fire.
Problem with delay is it's including mechanics to allow a side to reshuffle their place in the initiative order for free. That to me slows down play. I know where I am in the order, I know where everyone else is in the order and I know where my enemies are within the order. I can factor that into what I do on my turn because I know when everyone is likely to do what or roughly when that enemy is about to shoot at me. Delay buggers that up by meaning that character has a full round of action at an unspecified point.
It also makes the concept of initiative less valuable if characters are effectively able to reshuffle themselves freely throughout the order each round. As stated above, high initiative is almost always a pure advantage as it is.
Delay mechanics within DW are already stupidly flexible. You get a half action at your disposal to be used at any time you like before the start of your next turn. I don't need to state when I want to go, what my triggers are or anything. I can use that to interrupt an enemy turn at any time and they can't do anything about it. It took until DH2 before they changed that delay is now part of the original characters "turn", just later and can be reacted to as a result, plus clarified the limits of interrupting an enemy turn with it.
Fate points are way too valuable for things like rerolls, breaking stun lock, instantly recovering wounds etc that the option to use it on a single charge might be a bit much. You're spending a fate point to make one hit impossible to dodge. Just one. Using it for All Out attack, where I'm adding +20 to my melee and can then combine it with Lightning Attack doing multiple unblockable strikes is far better. Using it for a single attack is almost criminally inefficient unless somehow that enemy is on low enough health to die to a stiff breeze.
Maybe we're just running NPCs wrong, but to me it seems odd to willingly accept an otherwise guaranteed hit now to save their reaction for another possible attack later. Unless the second attack is going to be from a lascannon, would anyone ever just accept blows from a chainsword? They'd be dead in two rounds.
They will all attack freely on full auto either way, killing whoever they want from across the battlefield with multiple shots which are unlikely to all be dodged. And it's not very satisfying to be a chainsword-wielding angel of death who does no damage. I want my job to be slaughtering the enemy in close combat, not setting up the ranged guys to kill even more of them :D
This would be fine were it not all the upgrades, chapter trappings etc pushing for more damage on charge. All that XP spend and opportunity cost seems more or less wasted. The upgrades and options all seem to push towards the idea that the charge attack is a big dangerous cinematic smashing blow, not just some extra movement.
Yes not sure if this was corrected in the DW errata but I think we need to move to that system. Might be tricky persuading the Devastator that I'm not just picking on him though :D
Fair - they are slow enough as is.
Not sure what you mean, can you give an example? How would you use it?
Overall you're probably right on Delay, maybe it's best left as is. We have literally never used it once so I thought maybe full delay would make it useful, but perhaps we're missing how it already is useful.
I agree that there are other very useful ways to use Fate points, and our kill team almost exclusively use them for healing since there are so many buffs to BS they almost never need to reroll. We haven't had much dealing with stunning, IIRC Space Marines can only be stunned for 1 round max anyway.
IMO giving the option is not a bad thing, it provides choice and makes the actual charge attack more significant (at a cost - up to the player to decide if it's worth it).
Unless I'm missing something, RAW you can't combine them. All Out Attack is one Full Action combat choice, Multiple Attacks is another completely separate one (only available with Swift/Lightning Attack).
To me this comes down to combat intelligence or how "smart" I try and have NPCs play or just how arrogant they are. Generic Enemy #2401 will probably just attempt to react to the first hits they can because they are probably living for the immediate moment and if they even survive a round it'll be impressive. So to them I don't bother having them think about what may hit them.
Although if I'm playing "smarter" enemies such as that Exalted Chaos Champion, I may try to have them not bother to react to simple chainsword attacks or low grade shots because its sod all damage to them (perhaps arrogance or whatever) or because it's them recognising that they really don't want to get smited again for 40+ damage in one shot from the Librarian over there, or be pestered by a shedload of vengeance bolter fire from the devastators so may hold a reaction back specifically to deal with that but this is just about how I personally try and play them.
Realistically a character only gets a potential three reactions (one standard, bonus dodge with Step Aside, bonus parry with Wall of Steel) so I may try and think what's the greatest threat to try and avoid with those limited reactions?
As the combat shifts you may adjust that priority later, particularly if its getting desperate and you want to survive long enough to get a final blow off. This isn't making either of our ways wrong either, it's just different methods.
There are indeed a number of talents to add to this and it comes back to the above, how willing is your enemy going to be to resist your single charge attack when there are potentially just as great threats all over?
Delay has no requirement to state what you are doing and when it happens, you just save a Half Action to use it later whenever you want.
As a quick example a long while ago I was playing a Librarian who had an affinity for pushing powers. I knew there was a target somewhere out there, stealth'd and shooting at us but I couldn't target them because I don't know their location so I opted to delay and wait till eventually the enemy broke cover after an ally flushed them out. They attempted to move into new cover and then attempt to conceal again however with no restriction on when to activate, I can trigger my delayed half action to use a Half Action Smite after their move but before they could hide.
You've also got the example out the book. You cannot shoot into melee without risking hitting an ally or taking heavy penalties. So I can hold back a single shot with a potent weapon and wait for our melee enemy to disengage from a big threat before firing.
Delay has utility depending on situation and encounter. It won't always be used but even a half action banked for as the battle scene develops, it has its moments.
You can have that one, I was getting mixed up with something else. DH2 has a talent in it, Devastating Assault, which grants an extra hit with AOA instead of the one but that still doesn't make my original accurate. I need to execute a minion for failing to provide sufficient caffeine.