Warhammer 40K roleplaying system ideas

[Koumei]

The latter would be pretty crappy. They get the former. It's not amazing, being 2d6 at their starting level of 6, 3d6 at level 9, 4d6 at level 13, and 5d6 at 17th. Still, every little bit counts.

[Username17]

I'm not actually sold on the idea that "Psykers" can progress from Hiver level to Assassin level. Sure, in a nominal sort of way a Farseer or a Codicier is a "Psyker", but they are also Psykers who happened to start off life as an immortal bad ass instead of starting off as "some dude". Normal humans who become Psykers go off and join the Adeptus and get folded back into various levels of civilian and military life as guys who come with a heavy bolter and shit. Seriously, they never amount to much compared to even a regular Space Marine.

A serious problem that I see you having attempting to put everyone on the same 20-level scale is that you end up with "Space Marines" all being pretty much the same. And for a game that is probably going to be Space Marine centric, that's bad. What you want is to have all the default "you must be at least this tall" crap out of the way at Space Marine level zero so that you can have a whole rack of space marine classes that people can take.

I mean you have Space Marine Scholars, Marksmen, Infiltrators, Mechanics, Pilots, Skin Flautists, Warriors, Medics, Tacticians, Heavy Weapons Experts, Technicians, Priests, and Psychics. And that's before we get into the crazy bullshit that shows up in the non-Astartes Chapters.

Blood Angels are literally vampires and they have people whose whole job is to stand around in Eurotrash outfits and pine after lost loves. They also have crazy near-feral guys whose job it is to track the enemies of the chapter by sensing their pulsing blood. The Space Wolves are all Nordic and shit and they have berserkers, animal trainers, and guys who do crazy bullshit with runes.

People in a Space Marine level game shold be doing cool and distinct whacky shit right out of the gate. Because that's more fun, but also because that's what happens in the actual 40k storyline.

----

Things you need to settle on (in no particular order):

• The Mechanics of Bad Assery
  A Space Marine walks into a bar... and shoots everyone in the face. Most enemies die before they even get to draw their gun. Is this because Initiative is a power-based function and one is allowed extra actions every N Initiative counts? Is this because you are allowed to shoot extra targets by taking a penalty to your BAB? What? D&D "Fighters" don't really do this sort of thing without massive ability injections. Even the RoW Fighter is intended to be good at neutralizing and grinding down a single powerful foe and is pretty ho-hum when faced with large numbers of hobgoblins with crossbows.
  
  
• The intended level of the simulation. For all its talk of "Epic Level Play" - we all know that D20 is inherently limited by the Random Number Generator in a serious way. Even looking at the "cat" and the Balor show us how thoroughly the system breaks down as it gets even close to the edges of its intended field of view. If you intend to put Guardsmen on the same progression as Space Marines, you'll end up squashing the differences between the two (and likely end up being unable to really see the power disparities well amidst the background noise of opposed die rolls). Worse still, you'll find yourself making characters too similar within an archetype.
  
  Champions is a great system: for Superheroes. But Fantasy Hero is shit. The strength scale that allows us to play Dracula and A-Ko in the same team comes around and bites us in the ass when we're doing Sword and Sorcery - there's just one value for "human strength". If you have a big chunk of your "variable" scale eaten up with "being a Space Marine" you've basically run yourself out of ways to differentiate characters in a Space Marine party.
  
  
• The Mechanics of Lascannons
  40k pretty much revolves around the interchangability of equipment and personel. But that's not good for a level-based system. Hell, it's pretty sketchy for any role playing game. In the source material, the lascannon costs as much as any two space marines, and that's not inaccurate. Of course, allowing the power of the party to up or down-shift by two entire player characters depending upon whether the heavy weapons guy took the bigun out of the locker is probably not good.
  
  
• The importance of combat and non-combat roles.
  In 40k, the tech scavengers, the scholars, the mechanics, even the medics - don't really mean shit for shit. Sure they are around. But noone gives a damn. On the flip side, if your enemy has a Leman Russ the entire battle has been changed to "face the battle cannon" and if you don't have a major heavy weapon on your team that battle won't go well for you. In a role playing game, that could actually be upheld. You could have the entire team's job be to keep the heavy alive long enough to bring down the MBT and have the NCs be sitting around doing their non-combat bullshit and not give a damn. Or you could have most of the game be social as the players uproot daemonic conspiracies and shit and then have just a few token fights that the combat characters mow through. Either one would work, but if you don't make the system's goals explicit you're going to disappoint people.
  
  
• What combat feel are you going for?
  You can make a very real argument that 40K characters don't have hit points, they just throw SoDs at each other. That is, after all, how the wargame functions. Or you could have the Space Marines have about 100 hit points while guardsmen have 8 and then have the Power Armor provide DR and stuff and have Marines get taken down only by plinking them to death with attacks. But again, you can't mix your metaphors. If Space Marines are supposed to be plinked down, Psykers can't be shooting SoD mind control rays off left and right.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

...Skin Flautists...

You had to sneak something sketchy in your rage, didn't you?

[Koumei]

I'm a bit confused about the Skin Flautists.

Anyway, as it stands, I'm not sure I know how to make this work. Because Frank is making some good points, they just happen to be points I mostly don't know how to answer. So I'm going to use a very cunning solution: make it someone else's problem.

If someone else has the time and care factor to assemble this and make it work, they're welcome to do so.

[Username17]

The short version is that despite what GURPS enthusiasts try to tell you, you can't tell every story with the same system. That's why we have more than one game system. Hell, you can't even neccessarily tell every story set in the same world with the same game system. You wouldn't try to model the comic where Conan goes to the 1970s and becomes a pimp with a pet leopard under Champions even though that supposedly happens in the same world as Spiderman and Thor. You wouldn't bother trying to model the battle between Grummsh and Elfgodude in the same system that Jozan face smashes orcs.

This comes around and becomes accusatory when you contemplate a game where the characters might be a bunch of guardsmen who team up to take down a single Chaos Marine in epic battle. Or a game in which the players are Space Marines who plow through hordes of humans and fight a single Lictor in epic battle. Whether or not it's obvious, these are not the same game.

At the level of simulation where Space Marines are plowing through humans as an afterthought you aren't going to be taking a party of humans and fighting one in epic battle. It's going to take an "eliminate the PC's squad" action and that's going to be that.

So you have to narrow your focus. Figure out exactly what stories you want to tell and then craft a set of numbers around that concept which mathematically generate those stories. Picking numbers out of the air won't get you where you want to be. You'll end up being surprised by the results that the numbers generate in actual play and the chances that the stories you were after will be there waiting for you are slim.

40k is a big universe. It's so big that the entire world that Warhammer Fantasy Battle is set in is just a single planet in contested Eldar/Chaos space. You can't really expect to fit everything in, and given the limited scope of any campaign there's no reason you should want to.

-Username17

[Catharz]

The alternative is to make the game unfairly biased towards players. If a PC human is just better than an NPC human, then they can take down NPC space marines while PC space marines wade through oceans of NPC humans.

[Bigode]

Frank, I'm not saying that different types of characters would be miscible, but why couldn't all Warhammer folks be just d20 characters over a wide range of character levels and races? You've used the "+23 BAB" example yourself ...

[cthulhu]

Okay, lets recast this in terms of franks flowchat.

Players are a 'team' which might be: a Group of rogue traders/ hired guns, a deathwatch fire team or a inquistorial investigative team.

Every crew will have a spaceship, and that spaceship - and interplanetary travel and shooting problems will be the focus.

Sample Teams:

1) A Rogue Trader: Veteran trader and hired gun, this guy is the captain of the ship and point man for the team. Will have social skills, combat skills and a variety of complex and confusing alien artifacts. Think Mal off firefly.

A Novis Nobilis: Can fly spaceships through the warp and kill people with eyerays, however thats not really a 'role' and needs work. <-- Maybe just roll this guy up in someone else.. like the Trader, or the tech priest.

2) Tech Officer/Tech priest: Might be an actual tech priest who has gone rogue (and in the imperium who is to know?) might be a squat the captain has hired, might just be some guy with an apptitude for technology and a distaste for the imperiums ideas. Hell, he might even be an abominable intelligence in a robot suit.

Can use advanced technologies, such as drones and plasma guns without them breaking, fix shit, use technology systems, hack through locked doors.

3) Hive world Guardsman/Hired gun/Gang Heavy/Enforcer: The groups muscle. Hardened fighter from one zillion conflicts on 49 planets. Can use heavy armour, big guns like grenade launchers and heavy bolters and demolitions. Probably knows how to intimidate people, streetsmarts and fix guns too.

4) Delaque ganger/Deathworld Guardsman: Sneaky son of a bitch. Forsakes heavy weapons and armour, but is really damn sneaky, a crack shot with a sniper rifle and faster than a snake, and can survive in the wildness or the underhive with ease.

5) Rogue Psyker: Maybe he wasn;t good enough to get noticed by the black ships, or maybe he just wasn't there - or he was in the underworld. Learnt enough to not get eaten by demons. Mentalist type

Okay, I am screwed for the 6th archtype? I don't actually have one.

Options I am thinking about

Telekentic Psyker <-- Very possible and the front runner
Combat Monster <-- Covered off, really a variant of 3.
Priest <-- Doesn't fit.
Mutant <-- Similar to franks role, combat skills, mobility?

Thoughts?



6) The Super-Human: Some people are more human than human. This guys could be mutants, biologically/cybernetically engineered guardsmen created to fight in one warzone, servitors with more than the usual intelligence with grafted on weapon systems.

Edit: Okay, Dude 6 and 3 are not that differentiated. .. or maybe they are. And I can always have 5 do double duty as a mentalistist or a telekinetic.

[cthulhu]

Assuming I run for the telekinetic as Archetype 6

* Smuggle guns past imperial checkpoints - The rogue trader is essential for bluffing past the guards, or the mentalist can pull jedi mind tricks. The tech priest is going to be essential for engineering improvised smuggling compartments, and maybe the deathworlder and the hive ganger have to move a particularly obtrusive item via an alternative route.

Telekinetic makes distractions.

* Fight off an planetary guard patrol that springs them conducting a deal.

Everyone has big guns and badass attitudes, psyker can make them hallucinate or whatever.

* Find Ancient Relics so you can on sell them. Rogue Trader and Tech priest give invaluable contributions during research and selling stage, while the gangers lend obvious skills in the 'finding shit' stage.

Not sure what the mentalist and telekinetic do.

* Infiltrate a social grouping - maybe paid money. The Trader, The guardsmen, and mentalist all have obvious jobs to do. The tech priest can spy on people with fly spies or something, which just leaves the telekinetic.

* Board a space hulk - The trader, the mentalist and the tech priest have obvious jobs, as do the guardsmen. Not sure what to do with the 6th archtype.

[cthulhu]

Okay, the pulling every 2nd guy out. Gives us

Rogue Trader, Forgeworld Guardsman, Mentalist.

Can fight and do the face work. Short on sneaking but with two faces bluffing should work.

Tech Priest, Deathworld Guardsmen, Telekentic.

Er.. no face.

What they do have is staggering firepower and a some considerable mobility/sneaking skills. Maybe they rely less on talking and more on punching in the face, and are really hired guns rather than rogue traders.

[cthulhu]

4 Hour adventure:

Inquisitor hires them to get him <some alien artefact> from his nemesis, who is auctioning it off on another planet. Players have to

Find out where the dude is selling it - doing legwork on the part of the team to find out where black market deals going down, hang out in bars, spy on people's movement, follow them around, talk to shady people, breaking their arms etc.
Infiltrate the sale - Fast talking and mind hacks from the mentalist, tech priest looks like a serious buyer.
Buy the stuff - ??
Smuggle it off world, and get attacked by the jilted second bidder and his crew, who figures if he doesn't get it above board, he can get it via killing the people who do have it. Guns crew have to fight the guy off while the tech priest and the sneaky dude infiltrate their ship and sabotage it.
Smuggle it on world past Adeptus Arbites looking for shit like this by a combination of deception and bribery.

[cthulhu]

Going to jump back to the top end of the power scale I want to fit in this game - I'm envisaging a game where the GM hands out like 400 points if he wants Rogue Traders, 600 points if he wants an Inquistor and his Retinue, and 800 points when he wants a Xenos Kill team.

So what a Xenos Kill team looks like. This guys are the top of the power scale, but they are materially killable by the bottom end. It's just unlikely.

There are 3 differentiations between the 'power levels' and as I'm thinking of shadowrun as my endpoint for this because the base mechanic is easy (All rolls are Stat + Skill + Gear, compare this totally to the other guys, you get more you win, so fast talking is Charisma + Con, while shooting someone in the face is Agility + Heavy Weapons + Targeter resisted by Agility + Dodge. Stabbing them is Agility + Blades + Equipment vs Agility + Closecombat + Equipment. Damage is soaked with Body + Armour).

So the main power points are going to be

Increased access to gear. Marines have power armour. The other three don't. Power armour makes you stronger, tougher and can soak most of the weaponary in the game. A xenos kill team has access to nasty chemical weapons, grenades, select fire assault rifles, powered melee weapons. Specalists will have forcefields, plasma or heavy weaponry, jetpacks or personal teleportation devices or terminator armour.

A inquistors squad will be almost on par with the Xeno kills team, EXCEPT they will not have power armour. People will have heavy armour or supernatural toughness, and a semi automatic weaponry as a baseline, with specialist exotic weapons appearing.

A Rogue traders team will have have a motely assortment of gear. Some guys might have big guns and very clunky heavy armour, but alongside him will be a guy with a camo suit and a sniper rifle. Weapons will predominately be semi automatic. Some guys will have advanced exotic equipment.

So the heavy weapons dude in each team might look like

Deathwatch Kill Team: Auto cannon (Heavy machine-gun that is capable of frontally penetrating all but the heaviest tanks, has shells armed with chemical weapons too.), Powered armour (offers heavy armour, massive strength boosts (up to 4 times a normal humans lift capability, automatic medical care and other survival bonuses), bolt pistol (select fire pistol, extremely dangerous), chainsword.

Inquistor: Biologically altered veteran guardsmen with a heavy bolter, Carapace Armour, Laspistol (semi auto pistol), Demolitions charges.

Rogue Trader: Veteran Guardsmen, Meltagun (Highly dangerous short ranged anti armour weapon), sword, laspistol, demo charges.

The second big separator is Initative Passes <-- The mechanism that determines how many times you act in a round

4 - Space Marines, Top Tier Assassins (Eversor assassins routinely have 5 or even 6), Top shelf inquisitors, Eldar Exarchs

3 - Second Tier Assassins, Space Marine Scouts, Eldar Aspect Warriors

2 - Augmented or very experienced guardsmen, most inquisitors, some techpriests, most eldar, most orks.

1 - Most guardsmen, techpriests, some inquisitors, the civilian population.

So when a marine kicks down the door to the bar and starts hosing the room down, everyone else goes for their guns, and then he acts *three more times* and those actions can be "stitch up the room with high explosive rounds"

Stats: Average joe has a 2 across the board. Veteran Guardsmen/Guys from deathworlds, rogue traders and the very canny average out at 4.

Beyond this point the situation changes. The imperium hasn't worked out how to make people smarter. Tougher yes, smarter no. So intellects tend to top out at the human maximum of 6. This holds across all races except eldar (and possibly chaos/necrons) Eldar may potentially have logic and inituition scores in the high teens. Farseers do.

Inquistors, Augmented tech priests/guardsmen/people, second tier assassins have 6-8 in physical stats.

Marines and top shelf assassins typically have 12, or there about. A marine in powered armour may have a strength of 24 when using a power fist.

The game breaks when a Hive Tyrant rolls onto the field, who's going to have insane stats across the board, high skills, huge strength and natural armour etc.

So with that in mind, back to sample teams.

[Cielingcat]

But the Hive Tyrant is a boss-monster who can seriously take out an entire squad of Space Marines without even caring. So when one of those comes around the game changes to "do X before the Hive Tyrant catches and eats you." Unless you're playing at the level of an Eldar Farseer or a Chaos Lord, in which case you are capable of dealing with it.

[cthulhu]

True! and I'm aiming at topping out at the Space marine level so I suppose that works.

I'm struggling conceptually with Psykers. It's not a problem for 'normal' people because a psyker can trade other stuff for being a psyker. But it's not like codiciers are 'weaker' than other regular marines. Which means a deathwatch kill team is going to have too look something like this.

All marines come with skills to make them a well rounded hard ass. They have bolters, chainswords, power armour, a variety of special ammo for the bloody things, survival gear and extensive biological augmentation. All marines across chapters for the purposes of this are going to be functionally the same with different flavour text. The rage curse the blood angels suffer from is cool flavour text, but it would suck for that to happen to your character.

1) Veteran Sargerent. Sneakiest of the marines. Marines arn't really sneaky in general, as they wander around in brightly painted armour and shoot stuff up. This guy is. Also provides tactical leadership and face skills.

2) Devestator Marine: Has inordinately large guns, keen knowledge of demolitions, strong enough and tough enough to fire a two man machine gun from the hip. Most physical member of the team

3) Chaplin: Forcefield, power weapons and the ability to bring faith, hope and protection to his brother marines, and rally them to the cause. Inspires troops & protects them from adverse mental influences.

4) Tech Marine: A marine with significant cybernetic augmentation in addition to his biological augmentation. Understands machines, hacks the planet, has extra arms.

5) Librarian: Junior Librarian. Has some (not huge!) psyker powers. Can do both telekinetics and social manipulations.

6) Apothecary: Heals people with ninja skills, harvests the geneseed. Can also hulk out for a quick burst of X-tra power via experimental drugs.

Okay now there is considerable overlap between 2 and 4, and 6 has a pretty shitty extra ability compared to the others. And it's not like he's an ork so he's not dispensing the fighting juice and performing radical surgery on himself, like a Mad Doc.

Man, orks are so cool.

.. Maybe he can just be dispensing experimental stimulants and other things allowing the apothecary to

[Cielingcat]

Orks iz da best, so dey iz 'avin' da best boyz.

Wun: Da Boyz. Dey 'ave choppas and sluggas an' dey can 'it da 'umies.

Two: Kommando. Dey iz sneakin' about wit' deir smaller choppas and den dey 'it da umies in da back.

Da numbah aftah two: Mad Dok. 'E iz fixin' up da boyz an' 'e 'az da 'urty syringe.

Da next numbah: Big Mek. 'E iz 'avin kustom dakka an' forcefields, an' 'e can kustomize da boyz' dakka.

After dat: Wierdboy. 'E 'az dose mind powaz, an' dey don't always make 'iz 'ead explode.

I'z dun know wut da next wun shud be.

[Judging__Eagle]

Youz forgoted da' stormboyz, doez no good rebelz wit' der "formashuns" and "drillz" and uh.. ah, theyz a'rit ladz.

Dey have big rokkits and wear 'em to get into da' thick of da fightin'. Deyz looney boyz.


or

Flash gitz, dey' havz de' biggest gunz of all of da boyz, and can make new wunz outta anything. Deyz also hav' big armour too.

da cult o' speed is also good.

[Cielingcat]

Oi, I'z knew I wuz fergettin' sometin'. I tink dat da Flash Gitz or da kult o' speed iz more orky den da stormboyz, but yaz cud 'ave all, uh... all wutever dat numbah iz.

[cthulhu]

wat 'bout doz boyz dat are bigga dan da rest o' em?

[Cielingcat]

Dose boyz iz 'igher level dan da rest, ya git!

[Username17]

This is why I didn't even consider using Orks as an example. God damn Liverpool accents are not funny!

It's like doing Gulley Dwarf imitations. I know why you do it, but you should still probably be shot for your pelt.

-Username17

[Cielingcat]

1191588797[/unixtime]]This is why I didn't even consider using Orks as an example. God damn Liverpool accents are not funny!

Says you.

[cthulhu]

Did you ever play dawn of war? The orcs had the best unit chats. Chaos and Eldar just sucked, marines where pretty good "While the enermies of the emporer still draw breath, there can be no peace" which I feel sets the tone nicely, the ork warboss with "I'm da biggest, so I'm da boss" was just fun.

[Koumei]

I was cursed with a rather British accent from birth (well, actually, I picked it up from my English father), so unless I go out of my way to put on a specific voice, anything I say tends to sound like one of the various dialects.

But I still think Liverpool accents are funny. You're usually right, but you lost this one, Frank.

[Judging__Eagle]

Well... orcs were meant to be dummies, and in England, speaking with a Liverpool accent sounds a bit dumb.

So the guys at GW decided to pull a bit of, I guess, racism and assigned Orcs with that accent.

We're sorta stuck with it. I think it's pretty amusing to have an entire space-faring race of genetically modified creatures that all speak the same language as the humans do. Albeit poorly.

Cthulu, Chaos units had very appropriate unit chats and I thought they fit in with the flavour text that most of the books for the army had in my opinion as a long-time (albeit infrequent and thus more than an inadequate) chaos marine player.

I would have liked for the "Maim! Kill! Burn!" (repeats) quote to have been reserved for the Khorne Berzerkers in Dark Crusade (or, even better a Kharne the Betrayer 'special' unit, since it's his ranting), but it's a good quote and 'zerkers weren't in DoW until the 3rd expansion.

The Marines were pretty much spot on all the way through the unit types. The Librarian's quote of "An open mind is like a fortress with its gate unbarred and unguarded" is a quote that has been in one book or an other for quite a while. So it was a nice touch for long-time tabletop players or at least those who own and read the books.

The Eldar may have sucked, but its hard to make a cold impassive race that barely clings to existence sound 'cool'.

The newer Tau unit chats were fine, and the Necrons are non-existant, but that's expected. Since they don't have means to vocalize.

Overall I thought that most of the unit chats matched well with the way most of the armies have been depicted in the books.

[Koumei]

...I wouldn't mind the necrons to mention the C'tan Party Van, personally. That'd rule.