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Some rules questions

Started by inquisitor_eisenhorn, August 28, 2021, 12:01:34 AM

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inquisitor_eisenhorn

I recently decided to finally take my Inquisitor rules off the shelf and try a good faith effort to play through, even if just solo a bit. 

I have a pretty solid handle on the rules generally I think, but I've encountered a couple interesting situations regarding space marines, which I have gathered have some issues that DM tried to sort out (I read the article). 

I was looking at the rules for Chaos Space Marines and was wondering what would happen with Marine/Vs/Marine shooting combat, and with the profiles taken as in the original rules, it seems like most bolt weapons will only marginally injure a power armored space marine, meaning that marines can't really injure each other by shooting their standard issue weapons.  (I know about throwing them, lol, I just mean shooting)

Is that why people think they are broken?  I can understand a character being impervious to like basic weapons in the game, but is there an issue with extremely high-level characters not having ranged weaponry outside of extreme heavy weapons that can injure each other?


greenstuff_gav

Welcome To The Conclave

this is a big problem with Marines having AV10 all round - without hitting them in the head, there's really not alot that can be done.

although i am a fan of using Machine Empathy to turn off the armour (and thus requiring strength checks for everything, and if the helmet is on, running out of air...), there are a few methods of limiting a marine's impact on a game.
So, despite Having A Few, i recommend using marines sparingly

on the solo-note, alot of the scenarios i've written don't need a GM and i suspect would work just as well solo - i did toy with some basic NPC rules somewhere...
i make no apologies, i warned you my ability to roll ones was infectious...

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inquisitor_eisenhorn

Ok, glad to know I'm not missing something!  Yeah without many options for negating armor (there doesn't really seem to be an "armor penetration" stat for weapons) it takes around 22-24 damage to injure a marine I think, which is the absolute limit for a bolter  ;D

I couldn't find it anywhere but are there crits for doubling damage or anything, like if you roll a 5 or under on a shot? 


MarcoSkoll

Quote from: inquisitor_eisenhorn on August 28, 2021, 12:52:17 AMOk, glad to know I'm not missing something!  Yeah without many options for negating armor it takes around 22-24 damage to injure a marine I think, which is the absolute limit for a bolter
Then it seems you might have misunderstood something - any damage that exceeds armour will increase the injury level on that location, but you need to beat the target's Base Injury Value (BIV) in order to cause more than one level with a hit.

With the standard Astartes profiles though, this means that very few weapons are capable of causing a really major injury in one hit, even a short range meltagun, so for this reason I mostly recommend swapping to the Dark Magenta rules (which you already seem aware of) - these considerably lower their strength and toughness, but trade them a lot of special rules and ability to partially or fully negate certain injury effects, and it generally works a lot better.

Quote(there doesn't really seem to be an "armor penetration" stat for weapons)
There isn't by default (the armour penetration mechanics usually halve armour) but that's arguably a good thing.

Dark Heresy (a spiritual successor to Inquisitor in many ways) has a simple Penetration stat for weapons, which ignores that many points of armour), but over the many years I've been playing in a DH campaign, it's become clear what this mostly does is make light armour pretty redundant; it's easy to get a weapon with Pen 2 or Pen 3, which makes light armour mostly dead-weight that most weapons will ignore (particularly if the GM has to keep giving enemies high penetration weapons to deal with more heavily armoured members of the party).

(Our eventual solution to this in our game was when the characters who shouldn't be walking around in half a tank worth of armour got access to forcefields, which ignore penetration).

And because it's simply subtractive, and many/most enemies have some level of armour, it almost becomes extra damage at that point.

In comparison, using a dividing mechanic for armour penetration (as Inquisitor does) actually works well, because it doesn't entirely negate light armour, but remains effective against heavier armours. Inquisitor's damage system is more complex than Dark Heresy's, but it is much more nuanced.

QuoteI couldn't find it anywhere but are there crits for doubling damage or anything, like if you roll a 5 or under on a shot?
There were some optional special rules for "lucky hits", where rolling maximum damage on an attack allowed you to add another die (whichever the weapon used) worth of damage, but this is obviously quite a rare occurence for a 2D10+4 bolter. (Or the 3D8 Tearing bolters I wrote for the Revised Inquisitor Armoury, for that matter).
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

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