Stats - Bs

[Kaled]

I think this sums up the reason we are having these reoccurring discussions. We all want to be able to a 'fun game' without worrying that the person who we face is going to wipe us off the table in the first turn.

Just to come back to this point because I didn't address it before, even if we manage to come to some consensus about stats, there's still plenty of opportunity to end up facing a warband that's able to wipe us off the table in the first turn.  For example, Marco and I seem to play using characters who fit roughly the same standard, but I could go to my shelf and choose a warband made of savants, archivists and led by a Sister Hospitaller and they'd have barely any armour or weapons between them, and Marco could turn up with his stormtrooper, bionic IG veteran and Inquisitor, and wipe the floor with my guys when it came to a fight.  Or I could bring a marine, Custodian and Necron Pariah (now that's a warband that would take some justifying) and Marco's team wouldn't stand a chance.

Inquisitor isn't meant to be fair and balanced, and even if we agree on a standard, it still won't be - hence another reason that I don't see reaching a consensus on stats as being all that important.

[MarcoSkoll]

For example, Marco and I seem to play using characters who fit roughly the same standard, but I could go to my shelf and choose a warband made of savants, archivists and led by a Sister Hospitaller and they'd have barely any armour or weapons between them, and Marco could turn up with his stormtrooper, bionic IG veteran and Inquisitor, and wipe the floor with my guys when it came to a fight.

... and pretty unwillingly. I don't know if my opponent is going to turn up with a warband that's above, below or completely average as far as combat potential.

Even if my warband is perfectly balanced against the average, if someone does turn up with a Marine or a small girl (not that I know anyone that would do either of those... ) as part of their warband, then that balance is going to be thrown out of whack one way or the other.

Or I could bring a marine, Custodian and Necron Pariah (now that's a warband that would take some justifying) and Marco's team wouldn't stand a chance.

And of course, that doesn't mean I don't have a few things in my collection (or in the pipeline) which couldn't tip the balance once again...
But I'd only normally turn up to a game with those models if I was about to GM it.

In the end, a demand for "utter balance" can only really get us back to something like the Ready Reckoner, and I don't want to be labelling my characters with "points values" - that's not why I create them, and I don't choose to use them in a game because of the number of "points" I have left in my warband selection.

That's not what Inquisitor is about.

[Kasthan]

I apologise my original post appears not to be that clear. I am not suggesting 'utter balance' it can't and won't happen, good and original characters would not fit within these bounds. (The ready reckoner should have never been included, it just confuses beginners) 

What I was hoping to get across was that if I place down a model/character and it has a specialism in a certain area it should be roughly equal to the other characters on the table that have specialised in a similar area. e.g. an expert swordman and a highly skilled spear fighter should be at about the same WS. (It might be an idea to introduce specialisms that add to your base stats much like in DH and WHFRP)

More or less powerful warbands are very dependant on the scenario, a high BS armed-to-the-teeth Storm Trooper will be almost useless when the objective is to open a safe that requires a high Sg (and by now we should know that stand up and shoot games are boring and tend to just drag on).

(Sorry Cade for derailing your topic even further)

[Kaled]

What I was hoping to get across was that if I place down a model/character and it has a specialism in a certain area it should be roughly equal to the other characters on the table that have specialised in a similar area.

But don't we roughly have that already?  As I said before, in most cases there's not more than about 5-10 points difference between most PCs that are supposed to be the same level.  And by considering stats in isolation you're not going to get the sort of 'standard' you're looking for anyway - for example you can have two characters with the same WS, but one might have more skills than the other, or he might have a higher Speed and so be able to make more attacks, and so on.

[MarcoSkoll]

e.g. an expert swordman and a highly skilled spear fighter should be at about the same WS.

And, as Kaled says, they usually are, pretty roughly.

I take Silva to be an expert hand to hand combatant, and she's therefore WS 72. Most characters taken as being the same level will usually be in the 65-75 region (possibly with a skill or two), so there's not exactly a vast yawning chasm between them.

I think the matter is necessarily disagreement on similar skill levels having similar stats, but disagreement on how high stats fit together.

I wouldn't have a problem with a character whose stats lay mostly in the 60s and low 70s. I wouldn't do it for every character, but these are larger than life heroes who are frequently one in a million (or rarer), I don't think that it's like it should be forbidden to have some characters like that.
But, it seems quite a few people however think that stats of that level should be far more mutually exclusive.

[Alyster Wick]

I know I said I was done with this but I got sudden inspiration.

Why not create a database of characters of various backgrounds?  Take the stats, rules, and 500 words of background and create a file with Inquisitors, Guardsmen(women), Techpriests, Assassins, etc.  That way you could see how others designed archetypes with different focus (the Inquisitor who studies and strategizes versus the Inquisitor who investigates and battles to give two very general examples).

While it wouldn't give a consensus necessarily it would give a good indication of the broadness of the spectrum.  If nothing else it would give folks new to the game something to look at.

[MarcoSkoll]

Why not create a database of characters of various backgrounds?

Cade actually did something similar a while back: http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=162.msg1626#msg1626

[Alyster Wick]

Cade actually did something similar a while back

What I meant is that we make a database of actual characters that players had created, real characters with backgrounds, not generic ones.  The issue with the generic characters seemed to be that everyone made characters out of sync with these in various ways.  If a cross section of characters that have actually been used on table are put together in a database then that will offer up a lens through which new players can judge characters.  It also gives other claver's a basis upon which to judge. 

Rather than pointing to the examples at the back of the Inquisitor book we can point to "The Conclave Database of Standard Characters" (just came up with that now).  It could be a collaborative project and rather than critiquing individual characters someone's contrary views can be expressed by them posting a character more in line with their views.  If we get maybe ten conclavers who post a couple of their inquisitors and a variety of henchmen we could then split them into categories, vote on which ones to keep, then present it to the Conclave as a guide for new players. 

I think this would be way more productive (and most importantly way more fun) than arguing about stats.  Heck, we could start using these characters as a basis for critique, and it'll also answer the question of what the Conclave Standard character looks like.

[Kaled]

That's basically how I create my characters.  I have a spreadsheet with all of their stats in it (some of which have been playtested and I know I'm happy with) - then when I create a new character I figure out his stats by looking at how he should compare to the other characters.

It's a good ideas, but I see a couple of issues.  Firstly, why would I want to post the stats of all of my characters where everyone can see them?  Why should you know going into a game what my character's Wp is?  If you want to find out whether he's suceptable to psychic attack, then you'll have to give it a try.  Secondly, it should probably be restricted to characters who have already been used at Conclave events - if someone is only playing in their own gaming group then there's little point in other people comparing their characters to them.  Including them would give a wider spectrum of stats used in the Inquisitor community as a whole, but as the main problem seems to be what happens when people from different groups come together at things like the Spring Conclave, I think restricting it to characters who have actually been used at such events makes most sense.

If I were doing it, I wouldn't bother with background - I'd keep it to profiles only.  With 500 (or even 200) words per character and a load of characters it's going to be so big few noovices are likely to read it all.  I know this means you can't see the 'justification' for the stats, but since everyone has a different idea about what it takes to justify a particular value I don't see losing that information as a problem.  In fact, you could just keep it as archetype, stats, skills and psychic powers and then it's be fairly anonymous, which would get around my first issue.  Of course, I can see some people using it to say 'my character is the best swordsman, I'll have a look and see what the best WS is at the moment and then go one higher', regardless of whether their character should actually be higher than whoever was at the top - but I guess people can pretty much do that at the moment anyway.

[Flinty]

I think Mr Wick's idea is going to be as close to an answer as we are likely to get - and Kaled's suggestion of just the anonymous stat lines gives all the info one would need.

As an Inq. noob, I have been struggling to work out what is the generally ''accepted'' range. Everyone mentions the Conclave Standard and front of the LRB, but these are either very general/vauge or devolve into an opposite series of viewpoints being batted back and forth (interesting and stimulating though that is).

I personally shy away from high stats in any gaming system, but I think I would probably have ended up with some very low level Inquisitors/retinue leaders, which, should I have turned up at the conclave, (next year, next year...) would have been rather boring to play with/against.

I dont see anyone wanting a set rule like ''character type 1 must have a bs betwen x and y''  but I would like to get a general flavour, the spread of stats/bell curve, that other players use so as to feel I could play anyone anywhere and there would be a broad (cant stress that enough) similiarity.

[Kaled]

Just to add to what I said before, I think the idea about voting which characters to include on such a list is only likely to lead to yet more arguments. I think it could only really work if it were a list of characters that people had used at Conclave events and were happy with how they performed; including untested characters  or ones from other gaming groups would dilute its usefulness.

[Alyster Wick]

I think it could only really work if it were a list of characters that people had used at Conclave events and were happy with how they performed; including untested characters  or ones from other gaming groups would dilute its usefulness.

This makes sense and indeed the thought crossed my mind after posting.

To assuage concerns over knowing a given character's stats, we could do archetype, ordos (where applicable), school of thought, and special notes.  These categories would obviously have to be slightly modified based on archetype, but I think it would give those four categories would give a flavor for a given character without giving too much away. 

What say you esteemed colleagues? 

[Shard]

If somebody (such as myself) thinks the list of characters will be a waste of time, they're unlikely to tell you so in a thread on 'Bs'.

Incidently, I think it's a daft idea that isn't really needed and will only lead to more 'heated debate' as we have already seen on some very trivial matters. Oh noes! Someone has 3 points more in their Sg than human average, but nowhere in their profile does it say how clever they are! Ack! Etc, etc.

[Kaled]

I'm all for trying to help people when they're just starting out with the game, but to be honest I don't really see why people seem to find this whole stats thing so difficult.  There are loads of places you can look to for help in choosing stats - the rulebook, the 'Conclave standard' thread, profiles of characters you're likely to face.  Would adding yet another place to look actually help?  Or would it just be another set of profiles to argue over because they're not consistent with what it says elsewhere?  And unless enough people who attend one of the Conclave events step forwards and post their character profiles to get a meaningfully large sample size, this idea is not likely to be of use to anyone anyway.

[Kaled]

I've been thinking some more about how to help new players when it comes to creating stats for their characters and although I do want to help I really don't know the best way to proceed.  As I see it there are a few options...

Firstly there are the descriptions in the rulebook, 'competant', 'expert' etc - we could expand that list so every 10 point range has a description against it.  But we'd still be still left with the question of what constitutes 'competant' for example, and I don't see any way to define that unambiguously.

Secondly, there's the route Cade tried with his list of archetypes - so a typical Guardsman might have a Balistic Skill of 60, a Stormtrooper might be 75 (or whatever the values in his list were).  But that obviously that approach didn't really help as people still find it difficult to assign stats.

I see a few other options - we could define a baseline position and then what sort of training/experience might be needed to increase that.  (Ignore the numbers for now, it's the approach I want opinions on.)

The vast majority of untrained humans would have a natural Ballistic Skill in the range 20-40.  Most planets will give members of their Defence Force some training and this will likely add between 5 and 20 to the character's natural Ballistic Skill (with characters who already had some natural ability likely seeing a smaller increase due to a training regime which generally only aims to make everyone competant rather than develop the skills of the best shots).  Characters who have been trained by elite fighting forces such as the Imperial Guard, Arbites or Cadian PDF will likely see an increase to their natural Ballistic Skill by between 10 and 30 points.  A veteran of many wars who has honed his shooting skills in battle, or a character who has undergone training to make him 'the best of the best' (for example a stormtrooper or Imperial Guard sniper), might increase his Ballistic Skill by an additional 5-10 points.   Only the very best natural shots who have undergone an inordinate amount of training (such as that practised by the Vindicare Temple) will have a Ballistic Skill much above 80.

Or, rather than define character archetypes with a single value, we could give ranges that we'd expect an 'average' character to fall into.  For example (again, ignore the actual numbers for now);

Untrained human: 20-40.
PDF Trooper: 25-60
IG Trooper/Arbites: 30-70
Veteran/Elite Trooper: 60-80
Highly Trained: 80+

But I don't see how that approach is much different from looking at the Ballistic Skills of the archetypes in Cade's list.

Or we could take a completely different approach and look at what each statistic represents and how it works in the game.  So simplifying Ballistic Skill slightly;

Ballistic Skill represents a character's ability to hit a static, man-sized target at the optimal range of his gun without aiming or even raising the gun to eye level.  If you think your character should be able to hit 50% of the time under those conditions, then his Ballistic Skill should be 50.  Or if you think your character would be able to hit that target 90% of the time if he simply raised the gun to eye level (one aim action), then his Ballistic Skill should be 70.  If you think he'd need to aim for a moment (a second aim action) before making each shot to hit 90% of the time then his Ballistic Skill should be 50.

The idea of making a list of characters that people are happy with so novices can see how their creations compare does have some merit, but I think the practical difficulties of compiling such a list will kill that one.  (But on that subject, if someone is planning to attend the Spring Conclave and is really stuck as to what stats they should give their character - PM me and I'll compare your character to ones I've used at such events in the past and will offer what advice I can.)

So, to all the people who either have difficulty, or have had difficulty, in working out what stats are appropriate for their characters - what approach would you find most helpful?  Is it that working out stats is actually difficult?  So you go to choose your character's WS, look at the rulebook and read 'A competent human's WS would be between 50 and 60, while an expert swordsman may have a WS of 80 or more.' and then don't know where your character should fit on that scale?  Or is it a confidence thing?  I.e. you've chosen stats that you think are okay but want some way to know if they're fair/balanced/appropriate/justified/reasonable?  I'm not sure which way to approach things.

- Dave