Deathwatch: Sons of Jericho IC

Game Master Rookseye

For untold centuries the Deathwatch have stood vigil over the Jericho Reach. Now, the disparate Astartes of Kill-team Umbra must vanquish a threat and unravel a mystery which portends to place the entirety of the Achilus Crusade in jeopardy.


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Male Catfolk Shade (magically altered human) Monk-8, Mage-16

I am giving Quintus these advances: Intermediate advance for BS(500 xp), Command(400 xp), Dodge(300xp) for a total of 1200 xp.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Ellipsis is correct, every Deathwatch marine is considered trained in the Dodge talent. Since the Dodge +10 advance is not available until Rank 5, for those of you who selected Dodge, please re-spend those experience points.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Edit for above, that should read Dodge skill, not talent.

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GM W.R. Monger

Alright I will change it then and will get BS simple advance for 500 will consider what to do with the reminder 400 points probably take the Tech Use Skill also so there is 2 of us as suggested.


ok then I need my character sheet updated to have dodge trained as it is not showing it now. The points I will hold on to for later as the next skill/talent is 400 or more in cost.


Brother Emeric will take:

Intermediate Advance, Intelligence, 500
Lore, Forbidden: Adeptus Mechanicus, 400
Lore, Forbidden: Jericho Reach, 400

Really tempted to take The Flesh is Weak for 800 but am holding off for now.


Male Catfolk Shade (magically altered human) Monk-8, Mage-16

I will switch out dodge and replace with with survival for 300 xp's.

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GM W.R. Monger

Well Im busted I can't get Tech Use it's 800 and only got 400 left.

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GM W.R. Monger

OH YEAH! Got me a Black Crusade book..........


Congrats Deiros :-)

Mine is still stuck somewhere in the warp :-(


Because we are about to start a new chapter in the campaign, I would like to recommend everyone to load up on frag grenades. The 3 that we were issued proved insufficient against a tyranid horde.

Moreover, the ability to change ammo type proved critical in some encounters so I urged everyone to have their bolters, heavy bolters and bolt pistols equipped with the necessary upgrade.

Finally, I encourage all to carry chainswords.

P.S. I will be taking the Perform (Skald) skill when the next opportunity presents itself so please let me be witness to your awesomeness.


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

Actually Vex still have the majority of his grenades. He wound up handing off most of his extra's to Decius.

Will save his requistion points for specialist equipment for his class, and leave the munition upgrades to those who will use them most.


Dark Angel, the Allfather has marked you for something else when He granted you your powers.

Be that as it may, you should try this Fenrisian mead. Tis good, you know.


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

I see no problem with that Lol.


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

Okay finally decided taking Initiate of Secrets 300xp from Rites of Battle and Long Range Telepathy for 750xp. Will buy Astropathy next time around. Saving the remaining 150xp for a rainy day.


Rookseye wrote:
My first topic for discussion, is what did you think of the game mechanically? Is there anything you would like to see done differently with the rule system or the way combats are run? Admittedly, in play-by-post, combats take a little longer to run than at the table, but I really don't see a viable means of speeding them up without losing something along the way.

I think it's fine. Occasionally someone needed a reminder when it was their turn but no big deal there. I really like the tactical maps you provide.

Rookseye wrote:
From my point of view, I learned that eight Deathwatch space marines are nothing short of staggeringly powerful in combat together. I tried to scale the difficulty of the various encounters along the way, but felt I may have come up a little bit short on the challenge. What do you think? I will admit it gave me a better idea of what poses a realistic threat to Astartes and what amounts to merely an inconvenience. I like them 'playing powerful' though, they are space marines after all, so I really am pretty good with how things turned out.

1. I will advocate (again) that maybe we take a look at the errata suggestions that scale back bolter damage. On the FFG forum it sounds like the newer rules have been met with favorably. Yes, I know that takes away full-auto from the bolter.

Here's the deal. When even our Space Wolf Assault Marine chooses to fight the hordes with a bolt-pistol there's something wrong. In our early battle with the five shrikes at the gatehouse I invoked Burst of Speed to charge at the enemy. I'm a Black Templar, right? We like to fight up close and personal, right? So I post that I charge then dig out my rulebook and start looking at chainsword damage vs. bolter damage against hordes. The difference, imo, is ridiculous. So next round I checked my advance and let loose with full-auto. You would be dumb not to fire away from a distance so it really cuts down on the opportunity to game the different specialties and chapters.

Maybe as we advance and get more powerful melee weapons it will be different, I don't know.

We pretty much stood and blazed away in most combats. There was a little tactical decision-making other than entrenching ourselves for the final battle and the Com-Tower Team's ploy to lead the shrikes towards the auto-bolters. I'm wondering if we scaled back our weapons with the errata rules would we be forced to act more as a team? At the gatehouse those five shrikes got chewed to bits in a couple of rounds. It would be interesting to replay it using the errata rules.

As a side note, I will be interested to see how the Black Crusade rules look w/regard to bolters, etc.

2. Not to be nit-picky but it seems like the encumbrance issue should be revisited. I don't know if anyone has seen the "rule of 5" discussed on the FFG forums.

This discussion might be worth looking over.

I had considered taking an astartes shotgun in addition to a bolter but I thought that might be too much. Not trying to be a jerk here but I think maybe the devastators should have to choose heavy bolter OR sniper rifle. Flamethrower OR bolter. I don't play table top so I don't know what the figures show (or if that even matters). It just seemed a little over the top to me. It even seemed a bit over the top to take a bolt-pistol and a bolter, to be honest!

Here's an equipment sheet that provides limits on what can/can't be taken. Food for thought.

Rookseye wrote:
Also, what did you think of the story? As you can probably tell (I assume many of you had read Extraction prior to this) I did expand the adventure somewhat in an attempt to tie it in to the larger campaign, The Emperor Protects. Overall, I felt that the Kill-team is coming together quite nicely. It took a little while, but already it seems distinct characters are emerging with a great deal of personality.

Have not read Extraction yet but plan to! Even though it was pretty much a hack n slash type of mission I like it. I think our time on Erioch and future missions will hopefully afford us more role-playing opportunities. The Dark Heresy campaign has some fantastic interactions and I'm hoping we can match that on the DW side.

One way to deal with the mega-destruction capabilities of the Kill-Team is to force, er, encourage us to split up into smaller teams. I had the most fun when Emeric went to the Com-Tower on two different occasions with a demi-squad. I think that really enhances the Oremor campaign when smaller groups are out trying to accomplish objectives.

All that said, if you don't change a thing I am completely content. Also I hope I didn't step on any toes.

Finally let me say (again) what a real treat it is to play with everyone here. And Rook your creativity and strong descriptive prose really makes this game shine. Moreover you have a relaxed, friendly way of dealing with gameplay that simply makes things fun. Great job!!


I do not own Rites of Battle so if anyone thinks I should do something different with my X.P., please let me know.


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

I agree with toning down the bolter damage. Seemed a bit over the top, but then again I am just a starting Librarian, and my powers increase along with my Psy Rating. My Force Weapon also scales up according to this as well.

Ask Lorm to look up Rites of Battle stuff. I don't have the book yet and nagged him over the phone if they had any background concepts I was looking for.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Eradico, I'll keep it short and sweet, I can't disagree with anything you've said regarding combat. It is spot on.

One thing to note is that you gain an extra hit for every two degrees of success with a melee weapon against a horde, but even this pales when compared to some nice modifiers and four hits with a bolter, never mind you're only getting one swing tops against a non-horde opponent. I am leaning toward using the errata rules myself, but will ultimately leave it up to a group decision. I do think some of the overpowering devastation you guys unleashed has to do with the fact most battles involved 8(!) space marines. This would likely be mitigated somewhat by splitting off into tactical demi-squads to achieve objectives, but in the end I think the folks at FFG inserted the weapon table errata for a reason. I have been perusing discussion threads on this since we had the original conversation when the errata was released, and I have been pretty much swayed.

Honestly I had not considered encumbrance too much, but will look into that as well.

One step that I kept forgetting to do when setting up the maps is overlaying the coordinate key. This should make movement a LOT easier in the future. I'm also considering some more icon based maps for running gun-battles at range. Most of the action happened up close and personal in Extraction.

I'll check into Rites of Battle for both of you Eradico/Bal, and suggest anything that looks appropriate for your respective characters. Bal can then follow up with Lorm, and I can always send Eradico a summary of anything that applies to Emeric.

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For Rook

Spoiler:
I browsed through Rites of Battle for a Deed (Background Package) costing just 100XP (unspent) and I have settled on Ritual Duel Fighter (p. 77) I rolled 1d5 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 1 = 6, which says I overwhelmed the Dark Angel in a matter of moments. However, since I already have Swift Attack as part of the assault marine package, is it alright if I downgrade the result to 4 so I can at least get Sure Strike and not unduly upset the 2 Dark Angels on the Kill Team with the ease by which I defeated their brethren? Otherwise, I'd be getting the Rival (Dark Angel) at no extra benefit to balance out the inherent role-playing difficulties posed by this. The other 100Xp packages - Reclaiming the lost and Lone Survivor - do not suggest a very cheerful background. Thanks for reading.


If Hrothgar ever leads....

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GM W.R. Monger
Brother Hrothgar wrote:
If Hrothgar ever leads....

flash gordon xD hell you can lead the Iron Snake I won't even say no hahahahaha

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

One of the best 'worst' movies ever. I think it is the insanely synth/keyboard Queen soundtrack.

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GM W.R. Monger

Just for those that still don't have their great copy of Black Crusade.

1)You can play as a human or a chaos space marines
If you choose chaos space marine for example you have your race traits,talents and skill as normal but you have no career you have archetypes instead that add talents, abilities or skills to your character. All archetypes start as unaligned.

2)It has a nicely detailed section for the 4 ruinous powers.

3)There is an extra characteristic called Infamy.

4) Chaos Space Marines are about 8,000 exp and humans about 7,000 exp compared to Dark heresy characters.

5)Talents and traits have different costs.

6)Alignment determines what talents/skill you can get from a ruinous power. For example if you are aligned towards Nurgle you can still buy unaligned traits/talents and from papa nurgle, you can have some advancement from other ruinous powers but players usually lean towards one ruinous power or the other i suppose. Each god has an "attribute related to him like Khorne is Strength, Nurgle = Toughness, Slaanesh = Fellowship, Tzeentch = Willpower and Unaligned = the rest. Each god has talents tied to them and skills you can only access tot hem if you are devoted to them. Khorne and Nurgle are allies and oppose Slaanesh and Tzeentch (they are allies of course) and Undivided is friendly to all and all to them.

7)There are rules for creating demonic weapons/artifacts ^^
Bolter Statics for CSM since someone asked it.

8)Corruption points measure how "good" you are doing in the chaos way and there are rewards that the gods might grant you.

Bolter
Class: basic, Range: 100m, RoF: S/3/-, Dam: 1d10+5X, Pen: 4, Clip: 24, Rld: Full, Speacial: Tearing, Wt 7kg, Availability: Very Rare


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

Thanks Deiros.

Looking forward to getting it. My LGS forgot to order it even though I had it preordered months ago. /grumble


I personally believe that the bolter damage is fine. You cant take my results as any indication against hordes. I took the ammo I did to fight hordes as that is what nids usually are even on the table top. When you fight mass armies that are melee based you take heavy bolters and flamers and most of the special weapons are flamer based as well. You need to take down their numbers before they overwhelm you in melee. The ones that can go toe to toe in melee with things like a hive tyrant are captions and the like. Thats rank 5 plus in this game.

Look at it this way there is a reason why we dont have swords being carried any more by most military...guns are better. The rules for horde and melee are prohibitive for the meleer and are horde centric. Now if you could make dodge and or parry attempt but at a minus even at an extreme one might make it more viable. Even a small horde 10 against a single non melee focused marine would take a on average of 5 rounds of combat to take out if they hit every time and by 2 degrees and the horde does not dodge or parry. By this time the horde would have hit maybe 7 times and penetrate 5 times to do did enough damage to have the marine take 5 horde damage let alone the weapons damage each hit. Thats 25 wounds plus 5 times average weapon damage. Its enough to take out the toughest beginner marine. The only reason I survived my melee was because I had ranged help.

Now a assault/ melee focused marine would do a lot better if they take the right skills and talents. But then they are focused in doing just that. It leaves them behind the curve in the shooting department.

In the last battle Rook took it easy on us in my opinion. If he focused on one of us at a time with the 3 warriors we would have gone down and with the hordes the others would not have been able to help much if at all. Now I am not saying that I was not grateful. :-) It probably would have only taken 1 to have axed me by that point. We used tactics to defeat the incoming mass swarms and that was a skill and frag grenades and land mines. we would have been a lot worse if we had not set it up that way.

Well I have rambled on enough now. All in all I really loved the by play and the o sh1t moments. For a while there I though I was going to die. I was even thinking on how to make the next character to fill the spot because I still would have wanted to play. This and the other game has hooked me that much.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

It should be arriving tomorrow for me, looking forward to getting my hands on it. Sounds great!

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Thanks for your thoughts Catman, in many ways I do agree. The Astartes when confronted with the Tyranid should be focusing on annihilating the xenos before they ever get into melee range. What made these encounter have especial potential for danger is that they all occurred relatively close-up. I won't completely discount that there were places were I pulled my punches a little (although not much, given the small quantities of the marine-equivalent opponents), although it was mostly to get a feel for combats without needlessly killing anyone outright with a flurry attacks from three Tyranid warriors at once. I needed to see how someone would fair against one in melee before opening the floodgates.

That being said, you all have learned to importance of concentrated firepower, and how to apply it. It is the marines true advantage against the Tyranids. In other words, the training wheels are off come the next melee, so take my advice and exploit terrain and cover as well. I truly felt were it not for a few poor rolls, one or more of the seriously injured marines was sure to fall (at least burning a Fate Point) to either the final hordes or the Tyrant. Check the last melee round for the Tyrant, three rolls of 90+ when it would likely have ended poor Sepheren and Vex. I shudder to think what would have happened had Quintus not defeated it before its next attack. The numbers are quite strongly skewed toward the Tyranid in melee, even against marines, as it probably should be.

You guys performed well as a group overall, which is something I'd recommend you continue to foster. It sure doesn't get any easier from this point forward.


Male Catfolk Shade (magically altered human) Monk-8, Mage-16

I made a suggestion to Balfic for a choice from Rites of Battle that fits his background. He probably will contact you later about.


Male Catfolk Shade (magically altered human) Monk-8, Mage-16

Sent you an E-mail, Rook.

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Linky.


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

Saw it a couple a days ago on the 40kradio Forums. Was funny and enjoyed it alot. Though the Ultramarines were no where near Terra when Horus was there =P.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

That was hilarious Rad, thanks for the link.

Here is a link for you guys, just something I could not get out of my head as I was writing the last post describing the Exterminatus of Tantalus (I think Extraction's author may have been inspired by this little story somewhat, too), so I had to find a good video of it for viewing. The End, indeed. Great movie, great song.

Tonight will be a bit of bookkeeping in OOC for the most part, so I probably won't post the IC epilogue/debriefing until Sunday night. So, if you have not already done so, and you have the opportunity, please post your choices for advances.

In a short while, I am going to go over the posts above to compile a list of advances and XP expenditures to post them in a convenient format here for everyone. Following that I will begin calculating Renown awards and updating character sheets for posting to the wiki.

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Sent u an email Rook :-)


Nice, Rook. I have a former student who worked at the local Borders. He told me he and the staff made a music mix and that was the final song that was going to be played in the store when they finally shut down.


Male Catfolk Shade (magically altered human) Monk-8, Mage-16

I remember when a rock station was going country at midnight. The DJ threw out the play lists and played nothing under 6 minutes long. The last two songs she played were: When the Music is Over and The End. The last notes of The End were the last notes of that station as a rock station.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

OK, sheets are mostly done save for a few minor details. I have posted updates to your Advance pages on the wiki (found off the link on your character page).

Bal, please roll 1d10 for Insanity Points gained for Initiate of Secrets.

Ellipsis, I have no problem with you taking Mark VI Corvus Armor (no XP cost required), if you would like to adjust your armor history, please roll your results below per the tables in Rites of Battle.
I'm assuming you are taking Enhanced Healing as your Apothecary ability, if not, please let me know.

Will probably have a few more question for the rest of you, and will post them as they come up.


Male Half-Orc 9th lvl Cleric, 4th lvl Ninja, 1st lvl Black Flame Zealot

Insanity Points (1d10=5)

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Almost forgot, Caledonii, you get a pretty good XP refund for Air of Authority being included under Second In Command (Deed). You presently have 1200 XP left to spend, so I'm not sure if you want to leave that all on the table before the next mission begins.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Thanks Bal, will note it now.


Male Catfolk Shade (magically altered human) Monk-8, Mage-16

Rook, when I tried to access my character sheet, it said broken image where the link would be.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

OK, preliminary updates have been made to all of the sheets. Please check them over to make sure I haven't missed anything. There are still some adjustments that need to be made to certain characters (Syne's final decision on armor traits, Caledonii additional spends if needed) but everything else should be set.

As a side note, I've elected to try the new weapon damage from the Official errata in the first mission of the Emperor Protects, so you should see adjusted statistics for your weapons on the second page. We'll give it a test run in this scenario and see which method seems preferable after a comparison.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Should be OK now, Lorm, I was probably in the process of updating it.

Also, I will be adding Renown totals soon, but probably not tonight. I need to review the rules and determine individual results for everyone, which I will post here when completed.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Please ignore the 'fat numbers' in the some of the formfields, too. For some reason Cute PDF editor doesn't like some of my form-field defaults, and increases the font size. I've been trying to remedy this for a while with no success.


So I will take simple BS for 500 and Interrogation for 400. The last 300 ill keep for later. That is unless form some miracle I get to the next rank of renown. Then I wont be taking interrogation but a Signature weapon for 500.

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GM W.R. Monger

I'll buy the Peer talent from my chapter for 400 and make it with the karlack regiment ^^ since it is fluff wise accurate to have.

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

OK, will update those changes soon for Caledonii and Decius.

Now, on to Renown Awards.

This will become clear when I post later tonight, but Kill-team Umbra was successful in completing all of the Primary and Secondary Objectives in Mission to Tantalus, and managed to even achieve all of the Tertiary Objectives as well.

Objectives for review.

Here is the breakdown of Renown Awards:

All Marines:


  • Completed All Primary Objectives: 1 Renown

  • Completed All Secondary Objectives: 1 Renown

  • Completed All Tertiary Objectives: 1 Renown

  • Completed Five or More Objectives of Any Kind: 1 Renown

In addition, the following Renown Awards were issued for the following characters for remarkable deeds:

  • Brother Quintus: Slaying the Hive Tyrant, 2 Renown

  • Brother Caledonii: Heroism at the Comm Tower, fighting on while seriously wounded in the face of overwhelming odds, 1 Renown

  • Brother Emeric: Honoring the Omnissiah, by successfully interfacing with and rescuing Magos Vyakai, 1 Renown

  • Brother Syne: Slaughterer of Tyranid, kill-tally leader for the mission, 1 Renown.

  • Brother Vex: In the Face of Certain Death, standing fast by Brother Sepheren in the shadow of the Tyrant while seriously injured himself, 1 Renown.

Renown Totals for Mission to Tantalus:

Brother Quintus: 6
Brother Caledonii: 5
Brother Emeric: 5
Brother Syne: 5
Brother Vex: 5
Brother Hrothgar: 4
Brother Decius: 4
Brother Sepheren: 4

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Cool, ready for the next round :-)

For Rook

Spoiler:
Rook, in the next stage of the game, I'd like to try the option of not wearing a helmet to boost Hrothgar's Renown (p. 152, Rites of Battle)

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Male Human Warhammer 40K GM

Funny you mention that, Rad. Was just reading the rule today. I'm all for it, but want to modify it a little to keep the instant death aspect to a minimum.

Basically, as written, you are either dead or burning a fate point every time someone gets a lucky bolter shot at your head. Here is what I propose: whenever a hit would otherwise kill you, the marine has the option of spending a Fate Point to take the hit as a normal hit as if their head was actually armored (the assumption is the shot or damage strikes a neck cowling or something similar). If you are out of Fate Points to spend, you would take the hit as normal and possibly need to burn a Fate to survive.

Sound fair?

Oh, and just a reminder, Ryuk is up next in the Oremor Affliction plague toad combat.


History:
1d5=4, 1d5=2
1d10=1, 1d10=6

Results:
Battle Scars - Blood of the Enemy
Skill of the Artificer - Gauntlets of Xirion

He will be taking "Guardian of Purity," he is a Dark Angel after all.

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