A selection of rules questions after my first three games

[Wifstrand]

So, I've gathered a few questions after my first three games, I hope you will indulge me and bear with this little noob.

1. Either I failed hard, or the Daemonhost is a bad character. Considering my experience in the game, I wager it will be the first option. I had a 'Host with about average stats with Gnawing and Deflect Shot on his hands, and with Blood Boil, Enforce Will and Hammerhand. It got absolutely shredded before I even realized it. This question will link to the next.

2. Toughness. Am I wrong when I say it doens't do overly much in a close combat fight? I realize a high Toughness increases your Base Injury value and your Total injury Value a little, as well as make Recovery faster, but it doesn't have a direct impact from hit to hit, does it? This is one thing that made me feel my Daemonhost was a bit redundant. With T51 and no Armour, even with Impervious he went down fast - his Injury total simply skyrocketed, unless I have missed something about Impervious.
I ask because Strength affects each individual hit, I would have assumed Toughness would do the same though the other way around

3. Line of Sight, do you automatically become aware of something in your Line of Sight if it is behind some cover? My Techpriest was standing behind the Battle for Macragge flyer wreck and we made Awareness checks for his Enforcer (who promptly failed almost all the time).

4. A rolled Assassin with, among others, Blademaster and two knives with some poison seems ridiculous to me, or am I wrong? Darting in with a charge attack then breaking off and disappearing.

5. I need to get my own terrain. I borrowed my cousin's Cities of Death buildings which were very good, but they are too expensive for me to invest in, what with the number of buildings I would need.

6. I would like a gang of civilians (rioters, rebels, meat shields, stuff like that). Where can I get suitable (and preferrably cheap!) models like that?

I probably have more questions so I will post those later. If you would indulge me please label any answers you have with the same number I gave the questions - this makes it easier for me and others to track Qs and As!

Thanks a lot.

Steffen.

[precinctomega]

1. A lot of psychic powers are less awesome than they might seem at first glance.  You might like to look for my old Fanatic article - The Power of the Mind - in MarcoSkoll's archive for tactical hints and tips on using psychic powers..

2. Toughness. You're right that it has no effect beyond BIV and total Damage Points.  To be fair, Strength doesn't have much of an effect either.  Short answer: don't let your Daemonhost get into fights he can't win!

3. Awareness is not well covered in the rules at the moment.  Generally speaking, if there is no reason for character A to not be aware of character B (i.e A's looking right at B, the light is normal, B is moving around doing stuff and not hiding, and A takes a Pause for Breath) then he should spot him automatically.

4. Blademaster is, indeed, ridiculously powerful.  Most of us don't use it or use a variation that's less evil.

5. Cardboard boxes are a great option for creating simple mazes of alleys and corridors.  For something more purpose-built, constructing buildings from foamcore is really quick and easy and much cheaper than CoD terrain (although the latter is, undeniably, awesome).

6. Check out the P&M forum.  The Russian guys whose names I can't remember who make the plastic 54mm Insurgent minis would be a great place to start.  Someone will be along shortly to post a link, or search on eBay for "Insurgent 54mm".

R.

[MarcoSkoll]

PrecinctOmega has covered most stuff, but I'll add a little more.

1. Either I failed hard, or the Daemonhost is a bad character.

The daemonhost is a bad close combat character! It should predominantly use its high willpower and psychic abilities.

I don't currently have any DHosts, but my closest equivalent in rules terms is Maya Avens, a Zeta-level psyker. Similar, although a little below, most stats to the Rulebook DHost statline (except Sg and Nv, which are much lower, but she has a better Ld), she doesn't even have daemonic immunities.
She's vulnerable and somewhat unreliable (damned Risky Actions!), but when she gets into her stride...

Highlights include using psychic suggestion to convince an Inquisitor that his trusted henchman was actually a Callidus in disguise, a Matrix-esque leap across a river to escape a pursuer, poking a Space Marine off a five storey building and decapitating an arcoflagellant with her white-hot hand.

What I do think is wrong with daemonhosts is that for characters who should specialise in psychic powers, they seldom have more than a few.

In my opinion, while the powers should be themed to just 2 or 3 disciplines (or more ideally sub-sections of those disciplines*), they should have a lot - double digits - and be encouraged to use the theme of their powers in new ways, with the GM inventing modifiers as appropriate.
*Because just saying "Telepath" means you've got an excuse for giving them every telepathy ability. Saying something like "can control/read emotions and basic state of mind, but not higher level thoughts" means you've got a more focused description.

Read down from the quote in this post to see more of what I mean by this.

[Holiad]

2. Toughness. Am I wrong when I say it doens't do overly much in a close combat fight? I realize a high Toughness increases your Base Injury value and your Total injury Value a little, as well as make Recovery faster, but it doesn't have a direct impact from hit to hit, does it? This is one thing that made me feel my Daemonhost was a bit redundant. With T51 and no Armour, even with Impervious he went down fast - his Injury total simply skyrocketed, unless I have missed something about Impervious.
I ask because Strength affects each individual hit, I would have assumed Toughness would do the same though the other way around

BIV and consciousness value count for more than you might expect-having played with and against both low toughness characters with BIV 4, and significantly tougher characters, I've found that there's a marked difference in resilience. For an unarmoured character, T51 is moderate at best, so yes I would expect such a character to go down quickly. However, a good roll for blood boil could equally quickly incapicitate an adversary, so I wouldn't be so fast to call the character redundant.

[GAZKUL]

most;y a note on the blademaster ability, one of my regular opponents uses an assassin with this but during all of our skirmishes she's ended up getting shot from a very long way away with a big gun before she could make any impact, a good balancer is to simply give the assassin ridiculously low armour and T.

[MarcoSkoll]

2. Toughness. Am I wrong when I say it doesn't do overly much in a close combat fight?

Partially. The big thing I find about changes in Toughness is not so much BIV (although that is important), but System Shock and Recovery

I did a bit of maths on this a while back. Take a 2D6+2 stubber (a fairly typical damage), and ignoring armour for the moment:
T 30: ~64% of SS, 3.3 Injury levels
T 40: ~43% of SS, 2.6 Injury levels.
T 50:~21% SS, 2.2 Levels
T 60: ~6.6% SS, 1.9 Levels
T 70: ~0.8% SS, 1.7 Levels.
T 80: 0% SS, 1.6 Levels
(I'm not including the chance of system shock from the injury levels, just based on whether the damage has exceeded the SS value)

As you can see, the number of injury levels doesn't change much for a +/- 10 shift in toughness. However, it hugely affects the chance of system shock, as well as the character's recovery. Looking at the expected injury total recovered for each turn/healing action:
T 30: 0.6
T 40: 0.8
T 50: 1
T 60: 1.8
T 70: 2.8
T 80: 4

Obviously, the expected change of a character healing an injury level is the % of their toughness.

So, toughness, while it doesn't necessarily shrug off a lot of Injury levels (and let's be fair, being hit in the face with a sword is going to make quite a mess regardless of how tough you are), but it still has a pretty big bearing on the game.

[RobSkib]

1. Either I failed hard, or the Daemonhost is a bad character. Considering my experience in the game, I wager it will be the first option. I had a 'Host with about average stats with Gnawing and Deflect Shot on his hands, and with Blood Boil, Enforce Will and Hammerhand. It got absolutely shredded before I even realized it. This question will link to the next.

T51 characters with no armour are going to get ripped apart if someone gets it into their head to kill them. Three games might not be enough to get a good feel for a character, as the dice can be nefariously fickle. You can take some steps to make him a little more survivable though - experiment with different 'themes' like Marco touched on. Have a look at the Alien Bounty Hunter rules (Dead or Alive, You're Coming With Me... is the full title) available in his ultramegapack - there's loads of cool rules there to play with, something like Instability so it can phase in and out to avoid damage. Might be worth looking at the Chaos Psychic Powers as well, there's loads of fun ones in there!

4. A rolled Assassin with, among others, Blademaster and two knives with some poison seems ridiculous to me, or am I wrong? Darting in with a charge attack then breaking off and disappearing.

Well, I hate to say it, but that's what Assassins are supposed to do They would be pretty crap assassins if they couldn't!

With that in mind, Assassin characters are incredibly powerful, to be used on their own or at most with a second character in a warband. They are incredibly fragile, so if they get caught out they will get turned into swiss cheese, but that suits them. They should use stealth, cunning, agility and guile to outfox an opponent, lure them into a secluded part of the board and then give them a good hard shanking.

A player who can pull that off in a game should be rewarded by a brutal, swift kill and an evil cackle. A player who mucks it up deserves to be filled with more lead than a pencil factory. They are powerful, but when used sparingly, they can be perfect PCs in Inquisitor.

5. I need to get my own terrain. I borrowed my cousin's Cities of Death buildings which were very good, but they are too expensive for me to invest in, what with the number of buildings I would need.

I've got a bit of CoD scenery that I've built specifically for Inquisitor. Some of the doors and hatches can be a little on the small side for Inquisitor, but if you build them big enough, it'll look so damn impressive that you won't notice! In lieu of awesome expensive scenery, you can bodge it very easily. In the past I've used all manner of cereal boxes for buildings, DVD cases blue-tacked to the side to provide ramparts and walls at the top, a combination of loo roll tubes and DVD cases (again!) make an excellent elevated/abandoned highway. Use your imagination and anything can be turned into scenery.

[Adlan]

Also very effective is using the CoD stuff to enhance your scratchbuilt terrain.

[Wifstrand]

1. A lot of psychic powers are less awesome than they might seem at first glance.  You might like to look for my old Fanatic article - The Power of the Mind - in MarcoSkoll's archive for tactical hints and tips on using psychic powers..

2. Toughness. You're right that it has no effect beyond BIV and total Damage Points.  To be fair, Strength doesn't have much of an effect either.  Short answer: don't let your Daemonhost get into fights he can't win!

3. Awareness is not well covered in the rules at the moment.  Generally speaking, if there is no reason for character A to not be aware of character B (i.e A's looking right at B, the light is normal, B is moving around doing stuff and not hiding, and A takes a Pause for Breath) then he should spot him automatically.

4. Blademaster is, indeed, ridiculously powerful.  Most of us don't use it or use a variation that's less evil.

5. Cardboard boxes are a great option for creating simple mazes of alleys and corridors.  For something more purpose-built, constructing buildings from foamcore is really quick and easy and much cheaper than CoD terrain (although the latter is, undeniably, awesome).

6. Check out the P&M forum.  The Russian guys whose names I can't remember who make the plastic 54mm Insurgent minis would be a great place to start.  Someone will be along shortly to post a link, or search on eBay for "Insurgent 54mm".

Thanks for clearing the T thing up. Is it enough to simply remove the Reach 4 thing from Blademaster? I took a look at those Insurgents, they look awesome. If they really are 54 mm I'll maybe get a box or three of those! The only thing is, they look a little too much like Hive Gangers, but that can work too, I guess.

PrecinctOmega has covered most stuff, but I'll add a little more.

1. Either I failed hard, or the Daemonhost is a bad character.

The daemonhost is a bad close combat character! It should predominantly use its high willpower and psychic abilities.

I don't currently have any DHosts, but my closest equivalent in rules terms is Maya Avens, a Zeta-level psyker. Similar, although a little below, most stats to the Rulebook DHost statline (except Sg and Nv, which are much lower, but she has a better Ld), she doesn't even have daemonic immunities.
She's vulnerable and somewhat unreliable (damned Risky Actions!), but when she gets into her stride...

Highlights include using psychic suggestion to convince an Inquisitor that his trusted henchman was actually a Callidus in disguise, a Matrix-esque leap across a river to escape a pursuer, poking a Space Marine off a five storey building and decapitating an arcoflagellant with her white-hot hand.

What I do think is wrong with daemonhosts is that for characters who should specialise in psychic powers, they seldom have more than a few.

In my opinion, while the powers should be themed to just 2 or 3 disciplines (or more ideally sub-sections of those disciplines*), they should have a lot - double digits - and be encouraged to use the theme of their powers in new ways, with the GM inventing modifiers as appropriate.
*Because just saying "Telepath" means you've got an excuse for giving them every telepathy ability. Saying something like "can control/read emotions and basic state of mind, but not higher level thoughts" means you've got a more focused description.

Read down from the quote in this post to see more of what I mean by this.

Very interesting thoughts about Psychic Powers. I would have thought the Powers could help my Daemonhost tear someone in two in close combat, but Impervious didn't make it as tough as I thought it would have.

BIV and consciousness value count for more than you might expect-having played with and against both low toughness characters with BIV 4, and significantly tougher characters, I've found that there's a marked difference in resilience. For an unarmoured character, T51 is moderate at best, so yes I would expect such a character to go down quickly. However, a good roll for blood boil could equally quickly incapicitate an adversary, so I wouldn't be so fast to call the character redundant.

Can you please explain to us how Daemonic – Impervious really works, then?

most;y a note on the blademaster ability, one of my regular opponents uses an assassin with this but during all of our skirmishes she's ended up getting shot from a very long way away with a big gun before she could make any impact, a good balancer is to simply give the assassin ridiculously low armour and T.

The thing is, I don't think it is fluffy if you could just shoot the Assassin down – Assassins (depending on the temple/cult) are masters of stealth! What about simply removing the Reach 4 thing? It is not like the Assassins need the bonus % to hit 

2. Toughness. Am I wrong when I say it doesn't do overly much in a close combat fight?

Partially. The big thing I find about changes in Toughness is not so much BIV (although that is important), but System Shock and Recovery

I did a bit of maths on this a while back. Take a 2D6+2 stubber (a fairly typical damage), and ignoring armour for the moment:
T 30: ~64% of SS, 3.3 Injury levels
T 40: ~43% of SS, 2.6 Injury levels.
T 50:~21% SS, 2.2 Levels
T 60: ~6.6% SS, 1.9 Levels
T 70: ~0.8% SS, 1.7 Levels.
T 80: 0% SS, 1.6 Levels
(I'm not including the chance of system shock from the injury levels, just based on whether the damage has exceeded the SS value)

As you can see, the number of injury levels doesn't change much for a +/- 10 shift in toughness. However, it hugely affects the chance of system shock, as well as the character's recovery. Looking at the expected injury total recovered for each turn/healing action:
T 30: 0.6
T 40: 0.8
T 50: 1
T 60: 1.8
T 70: 2.8
T 80: 4

Obviously, the expected change of a character healing an injury level is the % of their toughness.

So, toughness, while it doesn't necessarily shrug off a lot of Injury levels (and let's be fair, being hit in the face with a sword is going to make quite a mess regardless of how tough you are), but it still has a pretty big bearing on the game.

Those are some interesting figures. I guess the only thing Daemonic – Impervious really does is to prevent the character from going OOA from System Shock and the like.

5. I need to get my own terrain. I borrowed my cousin's Cities of Death buildings which were very good, but they are too expensive for me to invest in, what with the number of buildings I would need.

I've got a bit of CoD scenery that I've built specifically for Inquisitor. Some of the doors and hatches can be a little on the small side for Inquisitor, but if you build them big enough, it'll look so damn impressive that you won't notice! In lieu of awesome expensive scenery, you can bodge it very easily. In the past I've used all manner of cereal boxes for buildings, DVD cases blue-tacked to the side to provide ramparts and walls at the top, a combination of loo roll tubes and DVD cases (again!) make an excellent elevated/abandoned highway. Use your imagination and anything can be turned into scenery.

The problem is, I don't really have much imagination when it comes to such things! I don't see potentials in all manner of stuff around me.

Also very effective is using the CoD stuff to enhance your scratchbuilt terrain.

That's something I have thought of before. Combining foamcore and CoD would be awesome. One storey could be foamcore and the second could be CoD, sort of like old style brick houses.

[MarcoSkoll]

Those are some interesting figures. I guess the only thing Daemonic – Impervious really does is to prevent the character from going OOA from System Shock and the like.

Only being able to take a single injury level from any one hit at a time, and never taking more than 10 points of injury total from any given hit is quite a boon.

It won't protect you from the death of a thousand cuts where an opponent is hitting you lots of times for little damage, but it does mean that a meltagun is barely more threat than a laspistol.
In this case, it roughly means that your character cannot be taken out of action with fewer than three hits, unless those hits come from a silver or holy weapon.

[Wifstrand]

With Impervious I meant Invulnerable! I meant the power which doubles T on anything other than Head and Chest, where T is halved.

[precinctomega]

As for Blademaster, amend to Reach +1 instead of Reach 4.  That should sort out most of the problems.

R.

[ismeno]

Insurgents;

http://cgi.ebay.com/INSURGENTS-5-Toy-Soldiers-54mm-plastic-NEW-/290530253548?pt=Toy_Soldiers&hash=item43a4f3daec

Works very well with GW =I= minis sizewise. rather beefy and with lotsa guns but you could always do some minor conversions. Ordered mine a while ago, they arrived here in Sweden in less then a week-nice! (and they're really cheap too!)

[Wifstrand]

Great! Could you please take a few photos of them alone and with some Inquisitor miniatures? The concept is goodd but I must say I have my doubts about these models. Perhaps some photos would help clear that out.

[Wifstrand]

Also, I bought the Simeon 38X model because I love Arco-Flagellants. What is the, in your opinion, best way to represent his claws if one does not have access to the appropriate Exterminatus magazine?

I was thinking Power Fists without the 'power' part.