Deathwatch - Brother Mortis's Continuing Adventures...

Well we've been playing Deathwatch pretty much every Saturday for months now so our characters have all come on a long way. We usually spend the whole day at it so we get some fairly substantial missions done.

Over recent months we've captured a Chaos Ship, Cleared a planet of Chaos taint,  Wiped out a Hive Fleet, Cleansed a Space Hulk of Orks (part of which used to be an Imperial Fist Star Fort so we managed to get them some of their relics back as well) and most recently we've had to help out one of the Imperial Fist Strike Cruisers that had come for the aforementioned relics when some followers of Nurgle managed to sneak aboard the vessel using methods that were never really explained adequately.....

What do you mean, I don't look like an Imperial Fist.....

Rather amusingly the leader of the Plague Marines was a former member of our kill-team that we'd presumed had simply returned to his own Chapter. Well as an Imperial Fist I suppose he sort of had.....just not in the way we thought. I'm now eagerly awaiting all the other 'guests' we've had start reappearing in various ways.....No wonder we've got a fucking Chaplain attached to the team now, lol.

The team now consists of a Librarian and a Devastator (the only original characters remaining), A Black Shield Apothecary, My Techmarine (not technically an original member as they'd already done a single session when I started), a Chaplain and a 'Keeper' NPC who's controlled by our GM. We've also had a few 'guest appearances' from other friends for one or two missions but they usually die heroically the next session when our GM gets bored of controlling them on the absent players behalf.

Brother Mortis is now mostly augmented bionics rather than flesh though some organic components do remain. I also had to slightly alter his character model to take into account his 'Signature Wargear' Storm Bolter,

Of course with all the extra hardware he has now, I'm working on a completely new model to represent him and as I'm only 75 XP away from being able to take the 'Forge Master' advanced speciality which gives me Artificer armour, a Servo Harness and a Power Axe* I'll need to add all that stuff as well.

* For some reason the Forge Master only gets a standard Power Axe rather than the far more appropriate Omnissiah Axe. I may have to start negotiating with my GM about that....

My GM has also started insisting on quite detailed reasons for anything other than bog standard upgrades and equipment which forces me to write stuff like this,

"Brother Mortis held his detached forearm in place with his Servo Arm and carefully reattached the neuro connections and servo actuators that joined it to the upper part of his bionic left limb. Once the connections were completed he ran through the sacred rituals of blessing in order to placate the Machine Spirits within. His limb had been designed specifically with this upgrade in mind so it had taken almost no time at all to complete the integration, besides which the enhancements themselves were well known by the Techpriests of a dozen Forge Worlds so the necessary rituals and blessings were freely available (to those initiated in the ways of the Omnissiah at least) and relatively simple to apply...

The Firing Ranges and training areas were almost completely empty as most of the Deathwatch Marines on board were preparing to deal with the recently encountered Space Hulk in one way or another. Mortis activated a combat Servitor and prepared for his newest systems first true test run.

The close combat equipped Servitor jerked clumsily into life and began to advance towards the Battle Brother in front of it, it's simple system programmed with a single purpose.....destruction.....whether it's own or that of it's target however meant nothing to it.....

With the speed of pure thought Mortis activated the weapon now integrated into his left forearm and there was a satisfying mechanical hiss as the firing port in the palm opened up and the unmistakable barrel of a Bolt Pistol slid into place through its carefully aligned counterpart in the Armoured Glove of the Marine's Power Armour. Targeting systems in his helm aligned perfectly with the direction of his outstretched arm and a burst of explosive shells hurtled towards the mindless automaton destroying much of it's armour plating. A second and a third burst tore into the unit at various locations but none of them were particularly critical. Of course had Brother Mortis intended it's destruction then it would now be little more than scrap but then that meant his other new addition could not be tested...

The bulky barrel of the Bolt weapon retracted into it's housing at the same time as a blade slid smoothly from the back of Mortis's other Arm and locked into place, Power flowed from his Potentia Coil through specially designed connections in the blades killing edges. Though having nowhere near the penetrative power of a true Power Weapon it nevertheless increased it's killing power by a satisfying margin. Belying his tremendous bulk Mortis avoided the first swing of the servitors Power Fist having calculated it's most likely direction of attack with startling speed and accuracy and drove his Blade through the gap created by the Bolt rounds and into a vital system in the drones chest...Genetically and Bionically enhanced muscles tore the weapon sideways through the doomed Servitors primary cables and power core before decapitating it with a brutal back-swing. The Techmarine watched impassively as the broken and headless machine fell in a shattered heap on the floor.

The test had been the expected success, both his Bolt Pistol and Combat Blade were now fully integrated into his enhanced form and as an added bonus he no longer needed to think about where to carry them....."

Just to get a couple of Bionics that I'm only taking for 'Fluff' reasons anyway, lol.

As soon as I've made some progress with the new model I'll post some pictures but as I'm off to act as team photographer for a number of people going to the Throne of Skulls tournament in Nottingham this weekend it's unlikely that we'll get any actual Deathwatch done for a couple of weeks. Though on the bright side this means that you'll all have lots of pretty pictures to look at next week ;-)

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Forge Master Idea.....

For those of you who are unaware I've recently rekindled my interest in RPG's with a bit of Deathwatch...

In an effort to make us create models of our characters our GM offered an 'in-game' reward for doing so* which was a pretty clever idea.

* It was only an extra point of Renown, but every little helps.

Of course about a fortnight after creating him his wargear changed so I had to do it again. So I promptly built my Techmarine character model with his 'Signature Wargear' Storm Bolter added to his single Servo Arm and was pretty much done.....until recently that is.

You see Brother Mortis and his Battle Brothers in Kill-Team Epsilon have been making quite a name for themselves and Techmarine Mortis is nearing the rank at which he can start looking at becoming a Forge Master and getting a whole heap of new toys...

While searching the internet looking for ideas to steal inspiration I stumbled across some pretty inspiring (for me at least) Techmarine sketches.

I have therefore decided to model my character in what I (currently) foresee as his ultimate form should he survive to Rank 7 or even 8.

I have certain things that need to be included amongst which are the fact that I want to represent his 'Tank' stats by using Terminator Armour as a basis. I also want to include his full set of Servo Arm attachments as well as all the possible Mechadendrites from various of the 40K based Fantasy Flight books which I'm reasonably sure my GM will allow as none of them are game-breakingly useful.

This means he'll need to be equipped with...

1) A Storm Bolter with a suitably badass looking sight on the top as I've paid the extra requisition for a Motion Predictor already. I'll probably just duplicate the one I made for Mortis's current incarnation as I'm quite happy with it.

2) A Thunderhammer, as I'm going to try to negotiate with my GM to get one instead of the Omnissiah/Power Axe as my character is more of a bruiser than a skilled melee warrior and they have the exact same Requisition and Renown requirements. They are also somewhat ironically a more common Tech-marine weapon in the various codices than the Power Axe is so from a background point of view it makes sense.

3) The following arms and attachments relating to his Servo Harness,

Servo Arms x2,
a Combi-Tool,
a Fyceline Torch (basically a Flamer),
a Plasma Cutter (can also be used as a short-range Plasma Pistol),

and the following Mechadendrites,

Ballistic Mechadendrite (contains a compact Pistol weapon so should be easy to model),
Manipulator Mechadendrite (basically a mini version of a Servo-Arm),
Medicae/Torture Mechadendrite (as a Techmarine can't take Medicae till rank 7 this will be an aid to Interrogation for now),
Optical Mechadendrite (To all intents and purposes a tentacle with cameras and a spotlight in the end),
Utility Mechadendrite (A slightly improved Combi-tool),

and finally a Breacher (a drill, basically) which comes as part of another bionic upgrade that I wrote some amazing 'Fluff' to justify and that's not even getting started on how he's going to be plugged into all those Servitors, lol.

Of course the tricky part is working out how the fuck I'm going to do it.....

The other Battle Brothers were unsure about the practicality of Brother Mortis's newest Servitor.....

Any bright ideas anybody???

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Beginners Guide to Deathwatch - Part 6 - Deathwatch Devastator Marine

Deathwatch Devastator - An Overview.
If your idea of a good time is watching things die from a good safe distance then this is the character for you. As with the Assault Marine, the Devastator has a fairly well defined area of expertise and all his upgrades are biased towards that speciality. He has upgrades for the improvement of both Full Auto and single shot weapons as well as those that increase the damage of his shots and pretty much none whatsoever for the purposes of hitting things better in assault.

He shoots at shit and it dies.....that's what he does ;-)

Characteristic Advances.
Primary.
Ballistic Skill, Strength and Perception. Strength and Perception are more there for 'Fluff' reasons than anything else as you don't need a high Perception score to hit things and Astartes heavy weapons can be lifted and used by even the weakest of Marines. Ballistic Skill is the one that all your points should be going into for reasons that I'm hoping I don't need to explain, lol. Ballistic Skill is also the characteristic score used if you need to unjam a weapon which is another good reason for having it high.
Secondary.
Toughness, Willpower and Fellowship. Toughness is always useful as the Marine that just made a large chunk of the enemy forces disappear in an explosion of blood and internal organs is likely to leap up the enemies target priority list quite quickly. The other two abilities can be ignored for the most part unless you have a role-playing reason for doing so.
Tertiary.
Weapon Skill, Agility and Intelligence. You don't need any of these though Agility is required for both the 'Dodge' Skill and for deciding who goes first in combat situations so could be worth enhancing....prepare to pay through the fucking nose for the privilege though.

Standard Equipment.
As should be expected you get the usual Astartes Power Armour, Astartes Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades (3), Krak grenades (3), Astartes Combat Knife, Repair Cement and one Chapter Trapping that everybody gets.

In addition the Devastator gets given the following,

Astartes Heavy Bolter with Backpack Ammo Supply.
The Heavy Bolter is an excellent weapon for dealing with pretty much any foe, especially when combined with the wide variety of requisition-able alternate ammo types available for any weapon that fires bolts. Heavy Bolter rounds are more expensive than standard Bolter ones but that's to be expected. The Backpack Ammo Supply increases the weapons capacity from 60 to 250 which is a considerable increase.

A brief interlude on weapon damage.
In the latest errata for the Deathwatch RPG system there is an alternative (and apparently optional) set of weapon stats that reduce the effectiveness of a number of weapons for reasons of balance. Though the errata refers to them as optional it's worth noting that all Fantasy Flight books set in the '40K' world released since appear to be using the errated stats for any Marine or Marine-like weapon. Which you use will be up to your GM but bear in mind that when people on forums complain about the Heavy Bolter being 'broken' they are referring to the original non-errated version. Our groups GM has recently started to make us use the new stats and to be honest it hasn't really effected us greatly though he may have altered our opponents power-levels accordingly.....Maybe he'll have something to say on the matter in the comments section.....

Starting Skills.
None.
Well other than the Standard Marine ones which all Deathwatch Marines get. None extra then if your being picky.

Special Ability.
You get to choose one of the following pair of options. One is a 'Solo' mode option the other is a 'Squad' mode one.

Immovable Warrior.
Solo Mode ability first. If your standing behind cover and wielding a heavy weapon then you get a +10 bonus to all Ballistic Skill tests as well as gaining the 'Sturdy' Talent. The Sturdy Talent gives you a +20 bonus to tests to resist being grappled and also gives the same bonus should somebody attempt to use the 'Takedown' talent on you.

Unrelenting Devastation.
This is the Squad Mode ability and has been re-worded in the errata so I shall therefore be quoting the 'new' version.

When the Marine successfully attacks and damages a horde with a heavy weapon he does an additional 1d5 damage to the hordes magnitude. Rather nicely this extra damage stacks with any other ability with similar effects. The effect applies per attack so under normal circumstances this will only happen once per turn. If you happen to hit more than one horde, you get to pick which one takes the extra damage.

Of the two I personally prefer Unrelenting Devastation as our GM is rather fond of hordes of enemies and cover isn't something you can consistently rely on being where you want it to be. Neither are bad though.

Advance Tables.
The Devastator Marines own Advance Table has all the shooty upgrades in it as you'd expect.

You'll be wanting to take 'Mighty Shot' straight away as it adds 2 to the damage of any weapon you fire. What other abilities you select will depend entirely on which weapon or weapons you intend to focus upon. 'Cleanse and Purify' is useful if you plan on taking Flamer type weapons for example. From the Space Marine Advances the 2nd level of Signature Wargear (Rank 2) is a common investment (you need the first level beforehand, though) as most heavy weapons can be acquired permanently for under the 40 requisition your allowed with only the exotic stuff being out of your price range...

Heavy Bolter - 20 Requisition (you get this as default wargear anyway)
Plasma Cannon - 30 Requisition, Distinguished Renown.
Multi-Melta - 35 Requisition, Respected Renown.
Heavy Flamer - 15 Requisition, Any Renown.
Lascannon - 30 Requisition, Respected Renown.
Missile Launcher - 10 requisition, Any Renown.

As with any character the two extra wounds available at 500 XP each at rank 1 of the Space Marine advances is always useful. Unfortunately most of the Deathwatch Advance Tables Skill increases apply to Weapon Skill not Ballistic Skill as apparently hating something makes you better at chopping it's head off but not blowing it's head off.....

Some General Advice.
This bit is fairly obvious, lol. Up your Ballistic Skill to the maximum possible as soon as possible, take the 'Mighty Shot' talent and 'Signature Wargear' your favourite toy as soon as your at sufficient renown. Our own Kill-teams Devastator has developed a liking for the Plasma Cannon...

Next time...The Deathwatch Librarian.

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Beginners Guide to Deathwatch - Part 5 - Deathwatch Assault Marine

Well lets get stuck in shall we?

Deathwatch Assault Marine - An Overview.
If your idea of an ideal Space Marine involves wading into the enemy and then hacking him/them to pieces then the Assault Marine is the character for you.

Though each Specialisation has access to abilities outside of its expected range of expertise, it's unlikely you'll have the points to spare on them for quite a while if you choose the Assault Marine. Due to the combat mechanics of Deathwatch your far more likely to get hurt in melee than at range so if your going to be charging into the enemy as your primary method of getting shit done then you need to be wholly dedicated to it from the start. I'm in no way trying to put you off the Assault Marine because they're extremely fun to play, It's just that unlike a more support character (like a Techmarine or Apothecary) your role in the team is focused exclusively on one thing.....Of course if your into that 'one thing' then your going to enjoy this guy a lot, lol.

There are of course still role-playing opportunities to be had.

My own group has two Raven Guard characters in it (One's a Tactical Marine geared towards sneaking and sniping and the other is an Assault Marine) and they quite often work together with the sniper wounding a powerful enemy or forcing it to waste it's dodge move and then the Assault Marine leaps in and finishes it off. Though this might not seem like typical Assault Marine behaviour it is very typical Raven Guard behaviour as they are known for exploiting enemy weaknesses. Conversely we previously had a Black Templars Assault Marine who would just charge headlong into any enemies (regardless of their strength or numbers) meaning that the rest of the team had little choice but to join him as we were all now at penalties to shoot because the fucker was in the way....

As you can see from those examples, hyper-specialised needn't mean one-dimensional ;-)

Characteristic Advances.
Primary.
The Assault Marine advance table prioritises Weapon Skill, Strength, Agility and Perception. Weapon Skill decides how likely you are to hit what your swinging at, your Strength bonus adds to your Melee damage done and your Agility governs how easy you can dodge an enemies attacks as well as deciding who goes first. As you can see you need to increase an Assault Marines Characteristic scores in a number of areas (rather than for example a Techmarine who only really needs to up Intelligence at first) to make him effective. Of the three areas I mentioned Weapon Skill and Agility are (imo) the most important as a Space Marines strength bonus is already doubled due to Unnatural Strength and will get an extra +2 on top of that due to your +20 strength from wearing Power Armour. Perception isn't anywhere near as important in comparison. It's also worth mentioning that your Agility bonus governs how far you can move as well which becomes important when charging (or running away tactically withdrawing to a superior position in order to reassess the situation).
Secondary.
Toughness and Fellowship. Any damage received is reduced by your Toughness bonus and as Marines come with Unnatural Toughness they can absorb quite a lot of damage by default. Saying that though you can never be too tough in a game of Deathwatch so I'd be increasing that stat as soon as possible. Fellowship is only really an issue if you want your Marine to be in a command position in the group.
Tertiary.
Ballistic Skill, Intelligence and Willpower. The first time our Black Templars Assault Marine used his Bolt Pistol the GM made him use a half action to take the wrapper off.....I'm joking of course but none of these stats are of any real importance to you at first unless you have a pressing role-playing reason for wanting them to be.....

Okay then. Weapons Skill needs to be upped as a priority with Agility a close 2nd then follow that with increases to Strength and Toughness. As your Primary characteristics can be upped relatively cheaply it's worth upping all those (except for Perception) by two levels at first and then seeing how it goes from there.

Standard Equipment.
So you get the usual Astartes Power Armour, Astartes Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades (3), Krak grenades (3), Astartes Combat Knife, Repair Cement and one Chapter Trapping.

Additionally an Assault Marine gets,

Astartes Chainsword.
It's a better weapon than the standard Combat Knife but as hitting things is your 'bread and butter' you'll be wanting to use the 'Signature Wargear' Talent to get yourself something better as a matter of priority. Signature Wargear is available at Rank 1 for an item of up to 20 requisition and you can up that item (or exchange it completely) to one of up to 40 Requisition at Rank 2. You'll need a renown level of 'Respected' to get a Power Sword or Power Axe (both 20 Requisition) so be patient and then grab one or the other as soon as they're available.

Astartes Jump Pack.
This doubles your Base Movement when using it and obviously allows you to leap over things while your doing it. It also gives you the equivalent of the Flyer (12)* trait for up to a minute. You need the Skill Pilot (Personal) to operate one effectively but Assault Marines get that ability for free anyway.

* there's a whole section on Flying in the rulebook and I'm not going to be covering it her, sorry.

Starting Skills.
Pilot (Personal).
You can use an Astartes Jump Pack.

The Personal Pilot Skill is governed by the Agility Characteristic so that's another good reason for making sure it's as high as possible. You shouldn't be required to make a test in normal circumstances but expect to take one if your attempting to do something.....tricky.....

Special Ability.
You gain the 'Swift attack' Talent as standard and then get a choice between either 'Wings of Angels' or 'Wrathful Descent'

Swift Attack.
As a Full Action in combat you get to attack twice. This Talent and the similar ones available later are what makes the difference between a character suited for combat and one that isn't and it's why it's difficult to make an effective melee character who isn't an Assault Marine. Later on you can purchase Lightning Attack which ups your attacks to three and this can be done as soon as Rank 2 for a mere 600 XP.

And now decision time. You can only choose one of the following and you can't change your mind later (Unless your GM is very kind or you can come up with a clever reason for doing so , I suppose).

Wings of Angels.
You can go an extra 20 metres of Movement if you pass a Challenging (+0) Pilot (Personal) test. If you use this ability in conjunction with a 'Charge' you add additional 1d5 Damage to your melee attacks. This only works in Solo Mode.

Wrathful Descent.
When making a Charge against a Horde you may inflict an additional 1d10 damage to the Hordes Magnitude** on his first successful attack. You need to be in 'Squad Mode' to make this work.

**Basically this means he'll kill an extra 1d10 of the enemy Horde he's charged into.

Which of these you pick is entirely up to you and will somewhat depend on whether your particular Kill-Team uses the Squad Mode rules much. If forced to make a choice I'd go with Wrathful Descent as my GM seems to turn anything we face into a Horde of some description, lol.

Advance Tables.
As I'm sure you've guessed these are biased towards abilities that enable you to kill shit more efficiently in assault.

The various 'Hatreds' from the Deathwatch Advance Table are nice for their +10 Weapon Skill Bonus but you need one for each race. Hunter of Aliens also gives +10 Weapon Skill and additionally adds 2 to your damage (Vs. Aliens only obviously) and stacks with Hatred for a nice +20 should your 'Hatred' be appropriate to the race your fighting.
The Generic Space Marine Advance Table has Sound Constitution at Rank 1 for the bargain price of 500 XP and you can take it twice at that Rank for an always useful extra couple of Wounds.
There's nothing particularly exciting at Rank 1 of the Assault Marines Advance Table and you'll most likely be using all that initial XP on statistic upgrades anyway. However at Rank 2 you'll be wanting to take Lightning reflexes (Doubles your Agility Bonus for Initiative rolls) and Lightning attack (So you get three attacks in melee). Occasionally overlooked is the Sure Strike Talent which you may find particularly interesting. Basically when you roll to hit in Deathwatch the number on the dice is reversed to decide upon hit location. Sure Strike allows you use the result 'as is' which makes your chance of hitting somewhere vulnerable a bit more likely ;-)

Some General Advice.
I think I've covered most of it as I went along, but to summarise.
Up Weapon Skill, Agility and Strength as soon as possible, followed by Toughness. Get yourself a better weapon via Signature Wargear as soon as your Renown level is high enough and make sure you buy the Lighting Reflexes and Lightning Attack abilities as soon as they're available.

I think were done now.....Next time....the Devastator.....

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Beginners Guide to Deathwatch - Part 4 - Deathwatch Apothecary.

Lets go with an age old system and go through these in Alphabetical order. Apothecary first then and I'll be using the system detailed here to do it,

Deathwatch Apothecary - An Overview.
As expected the Apothecary is the member of your kill-team who patches you up when the dangerous world of 40K role-playing decides to bite you, shoot you, explode around you or otherwise subject you to some event that lowers your Wounds total in some way.

Though each Speciality has it's own role to play, the Apothecary is pretty much essential. Whereas some skills can be attempted by anybody (classed as Basic in game terms) albeit at a penalty, due to the way that Skills work in Deathwatch only those trained in any Skill classed as 'Advanced' can actually attempt to use it at all. Basically this means that even a guy who's never exercised in his life could attempt to jump across a hole in the ground but would be unable to perform brain surgery without the necessary training. The relevant Skill in this case is called 'Medicae' and an Apothecary gets it for free whereas any other Marine would be unable to gain it until Rank 7 (ridiculously high in Deathwatch terms).

If your team doesn't have an Apothecary your going to be in serious trouble should your team get badly hurt in a combat engagement of any kind.

Characteristic Advances.
Primary.
The Apothecaries primary skills are Weapon Skill, Intelligence and Perception. Of these the most important is Intelligence as it directly effects Medicae. The other two have obvious uses but none of these are important to the Apothecaries primary function.
Secondary.
Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Agility, Willpower and Fellowship. So basically everything else then...As you can see there's great scope for shaping your Apothecary into a wide variety of secondary areas of expertise as the ability to heal others can be enhanced relatively easily and early on in your career path.
Tertiary.
None. Apparently Deathwatch Apothecaries are very well rounded individuals, lol.

If your Intelligence score is below average then you should use your one re-roll at character creation to attempt to improve it if at all possible.

Standard Equipment.
Astartes Power Armour, Astartes Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades (3), Krak grenades (3), Astartes Combat Knife, Repair Cement and one Chapter Trapping. All Deathwatch Marines get these but I've listed them here just so you don't forget about them.

Additionally an Apothecary gets the following,

Astartes Bolter with Fire Selector.
The signature weapon of a Space Marine as I'm sure you all know. The Fire Selector allows you to switch between up to three different ammo types as a 'Free Action'* and is fitted to Deathwatch Bolters for free.

* In game terms this basically means you can do it so quickly that it doesn't impact on your ability to perform other actions that turn.

Reductor.
This allows an Apothecary to retrieve the Progenoid glands (or Gene-seed as it's also known) from a dead Battle Brother. Though he could still extract the glands without it, the Reductor reduces the time needed considerably (down to a single turn per gland). It can also be used as a melee weapon that doesn't do a great deal of damage but has an excellent 'Penetration' rating so will punch straight through most standard Power Armour (which is sort of the point, I suppose). Progenoid retrieval is extremely important in game terms as it gives some bonus's to the stats at the character creation stage when you build a new character to replace the one that 'died'. This is another reason why the Apothecary is an essential part of any kill-team.

Narthecium.

The 'Tool of the Trade' for any Apothecary worthy of the name. In rules terms this device adds +20 to Medicae tests when used on a Space Marine patient, raises the threshold at which a patient is considered Lightly damaged** and doubles the amount of damage healed by first aid. It also can contain up to ten doses of any one drug, but this drug (if any) must be requisitioned separately.

** Briefly then...A lightly damaged character can be healed by more than a heavily damaged one. The Narthecium raises the threshold of Lightly Damaged to three times the characters Toughness bonus rather than two times.

You may also want to requisition yourself a Diagnostor Helmet (15 Requisition) as it gives a further +10 bonus to Medicae. As it's below 20 Requisition you could also take it as Signature Wargear so you don't have to requisition one from the armoury before every mission.

Starting Skills.
Medicae.
Well what were you expecting, lol. This means you can heal people.....without it you can't.....It's that simple.

Performing 'First Aid' on a subject involves rolling against your Medicae score which as a starting character will be you your base Intelligence (40 is average) added to the +20 bonus from your Narthecium (detailed above). If you roll below this score (60 in this example) each of your subjects wounds suffered will be healed by the Apothecaries Intelligence bonus (which would be 4 in this example).

Example: Brother Tripsalot has suffered several different wounds in a recent encounter with something or other scary and is considerably below his starting total of 20 (for the sake of this example). He has taken 3, 7 and 5 Wounds of damage respectively and has asked his teams Apothecary to patch him up. Brother Sawbones has an Intelligence Score of 45 so (but for some reason has left his Narthecium at home) needs to roll under 45 in order to successfully heal his Battle Brother. Sawbones rolls a conveniently below average 40 and so therefore succeeds on his test. With his intelligence bonus of 4 (the first digit of his Intelligence score) he heals 4 wounds to each separate injury. So the 3 damage is healed completely and the other two lots of wounds are reduced to 3 and 1 respectively. Brother Tripsalot is now restored to a more respectable total of 16 and marks this on his character sheet. The 4 wounds total that were not healed are still classed as 'treated' and can not be healed further until extended medical care can be obtained. If he had his Narthecium then he would have needed to roll 65 or under (due to the +20 it gives him to his Medicae score) and would have been able to double the amount healed from 4 to 8 therefore completely restoring Brother Tripsalot to full health.

Special Ability.
You get a selection of three but you can only pick one so choose wisely.

Guardian of Purity.
As long as the Apothecary has access to his Narthecium any Corruption points picked up by him or his team are reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 1). I'd personally only pick this ability if I had an extremely strong role-playing reason for doing it as it's (in game terms at least) the least generically useful.

Create Toxins.
If you can get a tissue sample of a specific race you can manufacture a poison specifically to poison that enemy type. This takes an hour of game time and adds the Toxic quality to the kill-teams weapons for a number of rounds equal to the Apothecaries Intelligence Bonus. This ability isn't bad but as with 'Guardian of Purity' detailed above I'd only take it for role-playing purposes because of...

Enhance Healing.
On a successful Medicae test for First Aid you heal an additional 1d5 Wounds. This is the one that most players should take as it's the most generally useful.

Advance Tables.
As you'd expect, the Apothecaries advance tables deal primarily with the use of chemicals and drugs (Chem-use), bodily enhancements (Resistances, Hardy) and also Interrogation. What you take will depend entirely on how you perceive your Marine's character to be. Fortunately most of the Apothecaries upgrades are pretty obvious in purpose.

Some General Advice.
Re-roll your Intelligence score if it's particularly bad, upgrade your Intelligence score with experience points as a priority and take Enhanced Healing as your Special Ability and your basic duties should be easy to accomplish. What else you wish your character to be good (or bad) at is entirely up to you ;-)

Well I hope that was of some help. Next time we'll look at Assault Marines.....

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

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Deathwatch for Beginners - Specialities - General Information.

I'm going to start briefly with some generic information about how I'm going to format this particular part of the series of articles and then I'll get into the specific specialities later in the week.

An Introduction.
So It's time to look at which career we'd like to pick for our character. 
As I've touched upon in earlier articles the character generation system (if taken strictly in order) generates your characteristics first, followed by Chapter selection and then speciality. This means that strictly speaking you could roll your stats, pick a Chapter that improves those you like and then pick the speciality that your profile would best exploit.
However it's far more likely that you've already decided that you really want to be a Blood Angels Assault Marine or Ultramarines Techmarine or whatever and that's what you'll be playing regardless of your dice rolls. This 2nd method I find makes far more interesting characters as they have often end up with flaws that allow for role-playing rather than have you end up with a 'perfect' starting character which can be quite boring to role-play. For example your Assault Marine might have a low Weapon Skill but shit-loads of Toughness which immediately brings to mind an image of your Marine as a grizzled Veteran who wins combats by just plain refusing to fucking die...

Anyway,

Characteristic Advances.
Everyone's got to be good at something....
Each speciality has their own chart which details just how easy it is for them to increase their particular abilities. These are divided into four levels each of which gives a stat increase of five. These are described as Simple, Intermediate, Trained and Expert and the XP cost goes up each time. In broad terms the skills that are iconic for your character will follow a 200, 500, 1000, 1500 XP progression. Those that are somewhat alien to your archetype follow a 750, 1500, 2000, 5000 progression with the general ones in-between costing 500, 1000, 1500 and finally 2000.
As you can see the system 'encourages' you to increase certain stats over others while still giving you the option to increase those others should you feel so inclined. For simplicity in future articles we'll refer to the various skills as 'Primary', 'Secondary' and Tertiary. For example, A Techmarine's Primary skills are Strength, Toughness and Intelligence with Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill and Perception being Secondary. Last and apparently also least are Agility, Willpower and Fellowship. It's however worth noting that not all specialities have all of these divisions. I'm personally a big fan of this system as it guides you in the right direction without outright banning you from increasing an unlikely stat if that's what you like*. In the write-ups for each speciality I'll be giving some recommendations on which stats are mandatory and which you can be a bit more flexible with as well as some idea of just how far you need to go with the upgrades.

* Of course your GM might still ban you from doing it...

Standard Equipment.
Cool free stuff.
So each speciality gets the equipment appropriate to his profession. In this section I'll be detailing what equipment they get, what their used for and what other equipment might be useful to get as 'Signature wargear' or to requisition for each mission. In 'background' terms Deathwatch Marines get very little in the way of personal possessions so you'll need to pay XP for the various 'Signature Wargear' upgrades if you want to keep anything different with you for every mission. You don't get many of these as you work through the ranks so the bulk of your 'toys' will be coming from the Deathwatch armoury and I'm afraid the Deathwatch wants them back afterwards. What war-gear you take is entirely up to you but certain choices are optimal.

Starting Skills.
You've done the training course to operate that haven't you?
Certain specialities get Skills and/or Talents for free without needing to pay XP for them. Most of these are pretty obvious as your not going to be much of an Apothecary without the Medicae Skill now are you? We'll look at what you get and how best to utilise them as well as any other abilities that compliment them well.

Special Ability.
You can do WHAT?
Sometimes you'll get a list to choose from and with others you'll just be told what you have been given. In the event that your speciality gets a choice we'll look at what they are, what they do and which are the most useful. If you don't get a choice we'll just look at what they do, lol. At this point I'll mention that just because certain choices are better from the point of view of the games mechanics doesn't make them the only choice....this is a role-playing game after all ;-)

Advance Tables.
But I want my Assault Marine to be a technical expert!!!!!
Bad luck then you should have rolled a Techmarine. There's a wide selection of choices regarding Skills and Talents and it's just plain impossible to earn enough XP to take them all. Certain choices are more optimal than others but it's easy to get caught up in the 'power gaming' frame of mind and neglect the fact that this is an RPG. I'll go through some of the more obvious upgrade choices and tell you which ones are the most useful but like all advice you can ignore it completely and I won't be offended in any way....well not much anyway.....
There is a get-out clause of sorts called 'Elite Advances'. Basically you can take any skill or Talent you like as long as you pay at least 750 XP for it and can justify it to your GM. These sort of upgrades are ENTIRELY up to your GM to approve or refuse and if he's anything like mine the answer will probably be no.....They should also really only be used for character development purposes rather than as an attempt to turn your Techmarine into a close-combat god...

Okay so that's what I'll be doing and how I'll be doing it. If you have any specific questions then you can e-mail me at the address on the right-hand side and I'll see what I can do to help.

For those of you who are interested I'll be starting with the Deathwatch Apothecary ;-)

The rest of the Battle Brothers began to suspect their Apothecary of being a Slaanesh worshipper...

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Beginners Guide to Deathwatch - Part 3 - Other Bits and Pieces

So far we've looked at the basic game mechanics as well as a look at the various characteristics which govern just how good our particular Space Marine is. Now lets look at the different ways of making your character unique as well as enhancing his own specialities* particular abilities.

* For those familiar with other RPG systems think of your speciality as your 'Class' and your Chapter as your 'Race' and you'll do just fine ;-)

I'm going to cover a number of general rules that apply to all specialities in this first article of this section rather than repeat myself in every article on specialities that follows, but I'm hoping you'll read them in order anyway, lol.

Advance Tables.
When it comes time to spend all those experience points that your kind and benevolent GM has graciously gifted you out of the goodness of his heart** you will have certain limitations on just how you spend them. There are a number of lists referred to as 'Advance Tables' that contain various upgrades, their XP cost and any prerequisites that apply to them. Your 'Rank' is decided based on how many XP you have spent so far and each advance table is split into a number of Ranks from 1 (starting) to Rank 8 ('Uber' marine). It's worth noting here that you have to actually have spent the XP for them to count towards your Rank. This obviously means that your character needs to have spent points lower level abilities before he can start spending points on fancy ones and makes a fair bit of sense for exactly that reason.

**Sucking up to the GM is a vitally important RPG skill.....especially when you want something .....dubious ;-)


General Space Marine Advances.

All Space Marines have access to the 'General Space Marine Advances' table which includes a large number of generically useful Skills and Talents such as common areas of learning as well as skills that don't fit into a specific specialities area of responsibility (Things like 'Demolition' for example) and at higher Ranks has some skills that other Marines get earlier (An Apothecary gets 'Medicae' as standard whereas a normal Space Marine would have to wait till Rank 7). Most likely you'll be using this table early on as at Rank 1 it contains the rather useful 'Signature Wargear' Talent which allows you take a piece of Wargear up to 20 requisition value and count it as 'Standard' Wargear from then on rather than have to requisition it before every mission. It also has the 'Sound Constitution' upgrade which gives your character an extra wound (you can take it twice from the Rank 1 table) at the bargain price of 500 XP*** (It's 1000 XP*** everywhere else).

*** this is one of the most common areas that gets 'House-Ruled' as quite a few GM's halve this cost (mine doesn't, but then again I've never asked him to, lol).


Deathwatch Advances.

Any Marines of the Deathwatch also gain access to the 'Deathwatch Advance Table'. The bias of this table is towards abilities which give you knowledge about Xenos races (Various 'Lore' and Cipher knowledges) and those that enable you to kill them more efficiently. Amongst other things this table gives you access to the various 'Hatred' Talents (Hatred gives you +10 Weapon Skill against the Race that you 'Hate' but must be taken for each race individually) and other more generically useful and subsequently more expensive abilities such as 'Hunter of Aliens' (which adds +10 to Weapon Skill and adds 2 to Melee damage). Pretty much all abilities in Deathwatch stack so a character with Hunter of Aliens and Hatred (Orks) would get +20 to his Weapon Skill vs. the aforementioned Orks as well as the +2 to damage.

Chapter Advances.

Each of the Space Marine Chapters mentioned specifically in the Core Rulebook and in Rites of Battle have their own Advance table with appropriate abilities in it. Additionally there are a number of tables in Rites of Battle that cover specific chapter preferences that you can use for home-grown chapters and/or successor Chapters that they haven't covered yet. Unlike the other advance tables there are no rank requirements for Chapter advances, simply pick one and pay the points (some may have prerequisites, obviously). Though still useful for the most part this is were you find abilities that can add that extra bit of Role-playing flavour to your character. Space Wolves for example can buy 'Carouse', 'Performer' and 'Hardy' (amongst others) that greatly help your character if he needs to impress his pack-mates by telling a rousing tale while pissed out of his head. Ultramarines get things such as 'Charm', 'Command' and 'Tactics' which are more suitable for a load of 'by the book' twats with sticks up their arses****

**** Neither me as a real person or my RPG character particularly like Ultramarines ;-)

Speciality Advances.

Each Speciality gets their own Advance Table which contains abilities that reflect their own particular area of expertise. Assault Marines have access to the expected upgrades required to kick ass while the Apothecary has access to the sort of skills required to sew your ass back on again after a Carnifex bites you in half, lol.

So these will be the charts were skipping to as we work out which upgrade allows us to power-game role-play our character in the most min/maxed fun way possible.

Ranks.
All characters generally start at Rank 1 and work their way through to Rank 8. The only real exception is if your creating a character to join (or re-join with a new character after your old one dies) an already established Kill-Team. Once you reach a predetermined total of XP spent you automatically become the next Rank up and can then choose abilities of that Rank. You can also still pick abilities from ranks lower than your own if there are still lower ranked abilities that you think would be useful. Certain Squad and Solo Mode abilities also become more powerful at higher Ranks and some aren't available at all till your of a certain level.

Renown.

I bet this guy doesn't need to justify his equipment requisitions.....Of course he's an Ultramarine so there's likely still forms to sign....in triplicate most likely.....

Renown level is a measure of how famous, popular or just plain feared your Marine is. Renown is awarded after each mission by your GM at the same time (and in the same way as XP) based on your exploits and success (or failures). It's also entirely possible to lose renown should you do something particularly bad such as losing a sacred Deathwatch Relic, failing a mission utterly or killing a Novamarine that's on your side by setting him on fire with your psychic power after his armour was already full of holes after being attacked by Tyranids*****.....

Certain equipment has a renown requirement to it as well as a requisition cost in order to indicate it's rarity and/or importance to the Deathwatch. Any Marine could requisition himself a Chainsword, but he's need to be 'Respected' to get a Power sword and 'Distinguished' to get a Power Fist. Chapter Relics are understandably only available to Hero's.

***** Our Kill-Teams Librarian actually did this due to grossly underestimating the amount of damage that the 'Avenger' psychic power could do if you rolled above average. Which is why our kill-team now has the dubious honour of having the 'Talent' Enemy (Novamarines) even though we spent most of the missions bailing the useless motherfuckers out due to their utter incompetence.....

In Conclusion.
So as you can see many of the stats that make up your character are intertwined with one another. Experience needs to be spent in order to increase in rank which will mean your team will obviously need to be given more difficult missions appropriate to their new ability levels. This increased mission difficulty will require you to use more formidable equipment which can only come with a subsequent increase in your renown which you get from.....doing missions, lol.

Well that's the generic bit of character development covered. I have received a few e-mails from people wanting to start Deathwatch asking if I can do some more specific articles on the various specialities.

Though I enjoy Deathwatch a lot I don't particularly want turn this into a blog just about a specific RPG, lol. On the other hand I also want to give my 'followers' what they want. Therefore I'll do the articles on specialities that have been requested as well as the usual Saturday article covering our Deathwatch sessions (when we have them) and see how much feedback I get on those. I'll still have the usual 40K content in-between so there will be plenty of that stuff for those of you who come here for that ;-)

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome as I'm basically a comment whore with one eye on the site hits counter, lmfao.....

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Beginners Guide to Deathwatch - Part 2 - Characteristics

Due to problems getting us all together in the same place at the same time we didn't manage to get a game of Deathwatch in today and due to me being extremely unsatisfied with how the narrative I did for the 2nd part of the last mission turned out I've decided to redo it which will take a bit of time. Fortunately I have something Deathwatch related for you all anyway (whether you want it or not, lol).....

So following on from part 1, here's a look at some of the basic game mechanics of Deathwatch the RPG.

As mentioned previously most checks are done by rolling two d10's to end up with a number from 01 to 100 and then comparing it to the appropriate characteristic on your sheet. If it's equal to that number or under then you've passed. Each multiple of 10 that you beat the characteristic by is referred to as a 'degree of success' indicating that you've been even more successful which can mean you have managed to accomplish something extra special, conversely each multiple of 10 you fail a test by can mean something quite spectacularly bad has happened. So if your testing against your Perception score to see what's sitting in the dark corner of a room a success might mean that you can work out it's an Ork, whereas succeeding by several degrees might mean that you can also tell that it's an Ork Nob armed with a Power Klaw for example. Failing the test would mean you spotted nothing, failing the test by a lot may mean that the Ork sees you instead.....

There are also a large list of Skills that relate to certain areas of expertise to show if you actually know something about the activity your attempting. Broadly speaking skills are either 'Basic' or 'Advanced'. Any character can attempt to undertake an activity that's classed as a Basic skill even if he doesn't possess it but does so with the appropriate characteristic halved. For example your character might wish to climb up a rickety ladder in order to get to the floor above, which in this case would be an Strength test. If he has the 'Climb' skill he would use his Strength score, if he didn't he would have to halve his Strength score for the purposes of the test. So a character with Strength 40 would have to roll 40 or less to make the climb if he had the appropriate skill or 20 or less if he didn't. If the ladder is particularly shoddy then your GM may impose further penalties on the test or require a different test altogether (Agility instead perhaps).
An 'Advanced' skill on the other hand cannot be attempted at all unless you have the appropriate training. While attempting to leap out of the way of a moving car (Dodge) could be reasonably attempted by anybody, performing brain surgery (Medicae) obviously couldn't.

Test Difficulty.
Your Characteristic scores are representing the peak of your ability in certain areas so a character with an Intelligence of 65 isn't going to be exactly pushing his abilities to open his front door but might have trouble rebuilding a Cogitator unit while blindfolded ;-).
In game terms a test would have to be challenging in order to use your full characteristic whereas an easy task would give you +20 to your score for the attempt. Modifiers range from Trivial (+60) to Hellish (-60) and no test can ever be modified by more than +/- 60 regardless of the help or hindrances effecting the outcome. Skills can also be upgraded to give you bonus's to tests by spending experience points. If the aforementioned smart-arse with Intelligence 65 also had the Skill 'Tech-use' at +20 then he might actually be able to rebuild that Cogitator whether he's blindfolded or not.....

Specific Characteristics.
Characteristic scores can be increased (by up to 20 points in intervals of 5) by spending experience points but the cost varies based on your chosen speciality. An Assault Marines first Weapon Skill upgrade costs a mere 200 XP whereas upgrading his Intelligence by the same level would cost 750 XP.

The first number in each characteristic is called the characteristic bonus and is used in some tests and abilities. A character with an Agility score of 39 would have an Agility bonus of 3 for example.

Weapon Skill (WS).

Weapon Skill measures the likely hood of you being able to hit an opponent in hand-to-hand combat whether that be with your actual hands or a fucking great Power Fist. You can gain -10 to this test if you 'charge' an opponent (you need a run-up though) or -20 if you 'all out attack' but the latter means your so committed to the attack that you lose the ability to Dodge. An important characteristic for a Space Marine (as your going to end up in combat eventually) and is an essential one if your going to be a character who makes a habit of hitting things (such as an Assault Marine).

Ballistic Skill (BS).

Ballistic Skill represents your accuracy with ranged weapons as well as throwing accuracy. Firing a weapon on semi-auto would modify the test by -10 and full-auto would reduce the difficulty of success by -20 but either way if your planning on a career as a Devastator this is the stat your interested in. Like Weapon Skill this is another important statistic for a Marine character but is in some ways less important that Weapon Skill for most characters. An Assault Marine (who probably rarely uses his Bolt Pistol at all) could survive quite happily with a low BS score whereas avoiding close combat altogether is an unlikely proposition for any character ;-)

Strength (S).

This statistic decides how much weight your character can carry, lift or push and it's bonus is also added to the damage done by melee weapons. Space Marines come with Unnatural Strength (x2) which doubles their Strength characteristic bonus and wear Power Armour which adds a further +20 to their Strength (added after the Unnatural Strength, not before). This stat can also be upped by certain Bionics and Power Armour modifications. Space Marine weapons are extremely formidable anyway and with the bonus's you get for implants and Armour this means that even the puniest of Marines will still happily punch a humans head off his shoulders without breaking a sweat.

Toughness (T).

Represents your ability to resist Diseases, poisons, toxins and the like as well as reducing damage taken. All Space Marines get Unnatural Toughness (x2) as standard which (as with strength) doubles the characteristics bonus. Any damage taken by the character is reduced by his Toughness bonuses value making a Space Marine extremely hard to hurt with primitive weapons and that's not even taking his Power Armour into account. Certain Bionics increase toughness as well but for the most part only in the specific area in which it's installed.

Agility (Ag).

A measure of speed, reflexes and general acrobatic ability and is also important when driving vehicles or being sneaky. Primarily used in conjunction with the 'Dodge' skill to avoid being hit by enemy ranged weapons and also to get out of the way of melee attacks. Your Agility bonus also directly effects how far you can walk, run or charge. Additionally, when deciding who gets to go first in combat all characters (bad guys included) roll a d10 and add it to their Agility bonus to decide the order of attack.

Intelligence (Int).

A measure of your particular Marines reasoning abilities and knowledge. An important statistic for Apothecaries and Techmarines as their signature abilities (Medicae and Tech-use respectively) are both governed by Intelligence. Also is used when deciphering languages, using 'Lore' abilities and other similar tasks. Both Apothecaries and Techmarines get access to a wide variety of equipment to supplement their aforementioned abilities so a low score isn't necessarily a complete disaster.

Perception (Per).

Perception decides how observant your character is about his surroundings and is used primarily in awareness tests. Space Marines come with the 'Heightened Senses' talent for both sight and hearing which give him a bonus of 10 to tests using those senses. Power Armour's Auto-Senses add a further bonus of 10 to tests making sneaking up on (or hiding from) a Marine a somewhat tricky proposition.

Willpower (WP).

A guide to how resilient your Marine is to the horrors of the 40K universe and is also the primary characteristic that Psykers use to see how effective their powers are. A Marine Librarian with a low Willpower score isn't a great person to stand next too when he's ready to use an ability ;-)

Fellowship (Fel).

The ability to befriend other characters and creatures and by extension also to charm and/or deceive them. An important characteristic for any Marine with the desire to be leader as it is the characteristic used for Command tests. As the leadership of a kill-team is meant to change based on the missions primary objectives it's not common for one person to lead a team exclusively though certain characters personalities may push them more in that direction. Whether team leader or not it's nice to have at least one character in your group who's capable of the diplomatic sides of dealing with people.

In Conclusion.
Pretty much every test involves a roll against a characteristic modified by the appropriate skill's modifier which makes specialisation a way of life in a Deathwatch Kill-team. As characters stats are generated at the very beginning of the creation process it's relatively easy to pick a character specialisation and Chapter that suits the values that you rolled. However most people will have a concept in mind before this stage so it can lead to slightly odd circumstances such as rolling a dumbass Techmarine or an Assault Marine who can't hit an opponent for shit. Fortunately the advance tables for Talents and the XP costs for characteristic upgrades are heavily biased towards abilities appropriate to your chosen career path so there's no such thing as an unplayable character regardless of how poor your starting rolls are. It just may require spending your initial experience points allowance on 'bread and butter' upgrades rather than fancy ones ;-)

Next time I'll have a look at the various specialisations and also my personal opinions on what makes a 'balanced' and playable team of people.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

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