Welcome to the Guard!

Game Master Swordwhale

Choon: I think nades are BS based, so you probably have to reroll both of those anyway ^^"
And since they are thrown at 3x Strength mod and miss by 1d5 meters you should be pretty safe
Bad things only happens on a jam result(95+) and a 1d10 landing on a 10
(Missing and Scattering - p254, Scatter diagram p255, Throwing Grenades p184)

Also: Do we play this round by round or in tripple rounds(between airstrikes landing)?

I was thinking there are no more airstrikes as the orks are close now. But then again... orks.

Yeah, no, I'd totally would bet on us being shelled even if we're in melee with other Orks :p

May I just say that I hate the BS vs WS distinction.

In this case its STR vs BS tho.
BS -> aiming at things
WS -> fighting ppl
STR -> Well, acts of raw strength - using your muscles for power.
for reference ^^
Pretty sure that's written down in the campaign tab too if you want to check before rolls =3
I think you got confused because last time you threw one of those weird ork contraptions they call nades, that one needed a str roll in addition to the BS roll because they are effing heavy.

And actually I'm pretty damn sure that even the guard would not stop shelling just because orks have engaged us in melee. Especially not a green regiment which is just there to hold them long enough until the veterans are less busy.

Guardsmen in melee: dead guardsmen. Might as well wipe out the enemy along with them.

Theres a reason why there are Guardsmen Memes ...

:p

Okay let's see:
- you just go and post triple rounds to speed things up. As soon as they get really close, we'll switch to single round (2-3 triple-rounds from now), as the artillery shells are the only really dangerous thing atm, since Orks just are so bad at shooting + they receive -20 from breaking the speed limit as well ...

@Choon: Yeah, its a little bit confusing at the start but think it that way: WS represents your attack roll with melee weapons, BS the attack roll with ranged weapons and strength as usual, including bonus melee damage. It's really like Pathfinder if you think it that way.

May I add that I loved that last random artillery hit on the tunnel...?
Playing the screaming, bonehead commissar is just annoying, but you cannot have the commissariat look like a bunch of nice guys, can you? xD

Gaunt came out of the books looking pretty good, but he was always more concerned about achieving efficient victories than he was about enforcing religio-political minutia.

Also, guys, we've lost two Commissars in two engagements. We're going to draw some ugly attention if our political officers keep having unfortunate accidents. :p

Yeah, but he is one of few. Would be ... inappropriate to have many nice/competent black-guys walking around ^^

@Leni: Give me a Command +20 for that call, to keep morale of the mudfeet in your part of the trench up.

But we have nothing to hide Ashora! They DID die in the line of duty! Its not like the Imperium has rampant corruption and guardsmen like us are viewed as an expendable ressource worth less than the equipment they wear! I mean, cmon! Whats the worst that could happen!

Pretty big fan of commissar "hero of the empire" cain myself - but the thing is, they stand out BECAUSE they are so damn rare =3

Short boni/mali in the current situation:

-20 Speed malus
-20 called shot if attacking the driver/Ork clinging to it's side/special region of the vehicle
+10 if simply targeting the bike for it's size
+20 if targeting the truck for it's size

Brace, aim, comrade, single/semi/full as usual.

Range at the end of the current triple-round: All at normal range (+0)
Bike: ~100m from you
Truck 1: ~150m from you
Truck 2: ~180m from you

The current will be the last triple-round.
We will go single-round after it, as the foremost bike is quite close by now.

Hope this will help ^^
Big battles at longer distances are a mess in OW and I still struggle to keep it reasonable fast and fun.

If our Operator player is gone (haven't seem him post in a long time) could our most generous and glorious GM maybe throw some NPC multilaser volleys at those Orks?

Check the last gm post again - Doombringer is already doing stuff. Lasering some trucks and ork bikes =3

Jup.
NPCing Doombringer atm, but with full-auto-only weapons at rather long distances and speeding opponents is quite hard. So only one actual hit until now.
Also it had lost about three-third of its hp by that one artillery hit ...

My bad for missing it before.

No problem, Ashora.
My round-posts are quite long. Some NPC actions can get lost quite easily xD

Btw a word about grenades:
They have NORMAL range of Strengh-Mod * 3.
As with all weapons, you can throw them (with appropriate modifiers) up to four times that value!
So Thud'dr has a normal range of 3*6=18m.
So he can throw up to 2*18=36m without BS penalties.
In between 36 and 3*18=54m is long range, so a penalty of -10.
And in between 54 and 4*18=72m he throws with a penalty of -30.
Short range (+10) would be anything closer than 9m.

That's the power of Ogryn-Grenadiers for you!

In that case he'll start unloading at long range. Which means this grenade will be tossed as the first truck crosses the 50m mark.

Ohhh.. what are the Righteous Fury rules?

Damn, internet-packman ate my post again!

@Simmins: Warhammer systems have that high-level rule of: "No two action of the same type in one round". So you cannot attack two times a round, even if attacks are only half-actions. It's weird but has the purpose of allowing you to take other actions (movement, aiming, readying items ...) and keep shooting. Earlier systems had semi/full auto fire as full round actions, and it was ... problematic.

RF in Only War:
- if damage after soak > 0: roll d5. Check crit-table depending on damage type and hit location. apply effect, but no crit-damage.
- if non-damage would be dealt: deal 1 damage

With stacking aim actions, you mean: 1 Round aim, next round shooting, not full aim + half aim stacking, right? At least that is how it works.
At least as long you are not forced to take another action in between ... like ... dodging, or changing the target.

Ahhhh... ok. So if you don't mind. I'll change my first round action to half aim plus fire and just go with 0 DOS for the first roll I had. Then round 2 and 3 are the same as I posted.

I'm pretty sure that a roll of 14 pen 3 should get through even on a trukk so I'm rolling righteous fury here.

RF: 1d5 ⇒ 4

Ohhh. I didn't know you couldn't shoot twice in a round. Add in a half aim to those shots then save the last when he'll ready a krak.

@Choon, you can't shoot twice in a round. Whether your shot is a Half or Full Action you still only get one attack. The only kinda-sorta exception is if you have the Lightning Attack talent, which lets you attack multiple times (treating it sort of like a Full Auto ranged attack).

I was unaware of that. Man, I'm learning things left right and center in this combat.

@Choon: Yeah, I can guess. That's the backside of an complex combat system (and certainly the effect of a rulebook written by the Riddler himself). But I like it somehow. And learning things on the fly works best anyway. The burned (blasted off?) hand teaches best ;-)

@Initiative: Essentially it will be like this: The high initiative people act first, then I'll resolve the orks, then you guys all act together, then Orks, then you again ... Hope that will help to clear how we are doing this, as strict initiative tends to bogg down pbp as hell

@Simmins: This was the damage before your soak (your armor + toughness) so, yeah it probably mean no damage for you. Not dodging because you can see, that it will deal no damage ... is a bit meta gamey, don't you think?
Aiming is gone anyway with your pinning roll gone bad ^^
And yes, throwing grenades while pinned is okay, but it will get indirect[3] that way, as you have no line-of-sight to your target if throwing it 'blind'.
But don't worry, at the start of the next round you can re-check pinning with a +30, to break it again and act normal again.

if you're wondering ...
I'm quite unsatisfied with the way artillery works in Only War, as there is - due to the way Blast[x] works - no difference between a direct hit from a shell and getting hit by shrapnel's several meters away from the impact... which certainly is simply wrong.
A tank will likely explode from a direct hit (which is extremely unlikely, and probably only happens if Tzeentch personally guides the shell), while it will totally ignore any shrapnel's swirling around.
Infantry hate shrapnel's of course, but most shrapnel wounds are not instantly fatal - while getting a direct hit certainly is.

I am currently rework that system - which will likely include the good old grenades you all wear around - to make it more plausible.
Currently I plan on define a new weapon property: Shrapnel[x], which will be somewhat of an cross between Blast and Spray.
It will have fixed damage (unrelated to the weapon causing the shrapnel's - that damage depicts a direct hit from the weapon), and will trigger some kind of random chance whether you get hit or not (currently it is agi-related, but it way well be pure random, independent of any characteristic/skill/whatever).
Laying prone will greatly increase that chance, same goes for being behind cover, in a trench, etc while being large/small will also impose certain penalties/boni for that check.

Any thoughts about that at the moment?

Alright fair enough let's say that Simmins used up his dodge on the incoming fire and either way managed to escape damage.

Seems like your rule changes will make the game combat more deadly GM? :)

I think that may be the point?

I'm fine with it, either way

Mhh it largely depends.
Do you mean all changes or that part about artillery?

The latter I hope will make it more ... linear you might say? I dislike the way it is by now - that is: if it lands withing the blast radius of you: you are DEAD - unless you have a really good bunker or tank between you and the explosion. If it lands outside - you don't care at all.
And this is regardless of whether you are naked & on foot, or inside a Leeman Russ battle tank.

What I try to achieve is something along this:
- Infantry hit by shrapnel's (but not the blast/direct hit) will be likely wounded if standing upright but may be lucky and don't get hit at all - or only take a minor scratch
- Infantry laying prone may more likely evade wounds from shrapnel's and even more so if they are in cover
- Armored vehicles / emplacements (bunkers, buildings) should not care about shrapnel's at all due to their amazing armor values, while still getting stomped by a direct hit, and damaged by a close-call (blast)

Oh yeah, fixed damage of shrapnel's, doesn't mean "you're hit by a shrapnel, that's 10 damage" or something, but rather shrapnel's caused by different weapons will have the same damage profile (2d10+2 or something).
So frag-grenade shrapnel's = artillery shrapnel's since, well ... it's a heated metal fragments with the speed of an explosion that flies around and penetrates people ... the difference between artillery and hand-thrown grenade is mostly blast-range, not much else.

I'm really strongly weighing giving Ashora Heavy Weapon Training and gunning for a Krak missile launcher or a lascannon and becoming an anti-vehicle sharpshooter. Those Trukks are going to tear us a new one and we can't do crap about it.

I was thinking of doing the same for Olways with a missile launcher. We're very much infantry focused right now.

I'm hoping krak grenades are good against trukks.

My next character is going to specialize in the grenade launcher weapon. :)

Remember that you can throw more than one grenade at a time - stacking up damage High enough to scrap even armored vehicles

Also it might be possible to shoot out the tires to make them go out of control and topple - depending on how well those are armored.

In the very worst case it's the content that will kill us, not the trukks themselves.

Since those are speed freakz they might also just stay out there and drive in circles trying to hit us for the kicks - or try to just go straight for the road inwards in which case the mines will help us.

Multiple grenades at the same time? How is that possible?

Is throwing a grenade not "firing a weapon"?

As you cannot throw two grenades after another, you can bundle them together for a better punch - with much worse aerodynamics of course.
Resulting in an awkward weapon to throw .... like an Ork grenade.

What I'm hearing is "your not using that strength to its full potential"

Think of the random bombs twitch always builds - its one thing to throw but made from a lot of detpacks, grenades and maybe lasgun ammo packs.
Just using grenades makes building them easier because you just have to pull all pins to detonate them at the same time.

I remember there being a "weight grenade" action to try to get a feel for throwing them which could be repeated to negate the negative mods and even gains positive ones. Haven't seen the rule since dark heresy but I'm pretty sure sarge uses it on the smokey daemontrope when tink refused to sacrifice spot to bring the last ditch bomb to the right height.

Sarge swung the bag back and forth by its straps, gauging its weight, the speed of the incoming Flyrant, and the angle he'd have to hit the wall at, and then as the countdown reached five, decided "to hell with this" and just dropped the thing.

For me that would be a fluffed-out aim-action for throwing a grenade.

Oh yeah, any result on Simmins Know War when not doing any damage on a trukk with his Stubber?

Oh sorry Simmons, I will give you a spoiler as soon as I have time for the next gameplay post.
@Improvised Explosive Devices: To determine their effectiveness, everyone doing it, give me a tech-use test. It will likely not explode upon you, but how effect your combinations are may be effected by DoS/DoF.
Also throwing such things is ... Awkward.
Throwing one has your strength score as base range. It's more like throwing a heavy rock than a baseball-like object after all. Maybe if you do this more often, I will come up with actual rules for it. We'll see.

So a max range of 63 yards. I can accept that.

tech use, untrained? Target...?: 1d100 ⇒ 20
I have an intelligence of 9, but this isn't exactly techy. I'm just duct taping stuff together. It isn't even symetrical.

Int 58
untrained -20
+30 because I'm just taping the pins of 2 nades together and it doesn't realy get any easier? ^^"
Tech use: 1d100 ⇒ 77 ?DoF

Oh I forgot, I'm not allowed to pass anything other than medicae *sigh*

Anyway I'm not going to throw them. With my imba str mod of '2' they are just going to kill me if I do. My plan is to plant them at the newly blown out 'front entrance' to the bunker and fasten a cable or string to it so I can trigger them from the back.
-> I'm not going to pass that pinning test _ever_ so might as well get ready to greet them.

Hey, GoW, what would you rule as being the limits of the Spontaneous Combustion power? Can I use it to set objects on fire and how specific can I get with setting things on fire? Like, can I specifically set a vehicle's fuel tank on fire or can I only specifically aim for the vehicle itself with more DoS determining how much burninating occurs?

I ask because the description insinuates that its only biological matter and google-fuing hasnt really gotten a specific answer most of them being "Ask your GM" :P

I'd assume that, if I can in fact target a specific part of a thing I want to burn first that a form of "Called Shot" Modifier could come into play? But what would you rule this as being? Since some/most powers don't require a BS Test to hit, they just need to pass the Focus Power Test to occur (this to me being the equivalent "to-hit" roll), making them harder to manifest seems fair but how much harder? Psy powers dont really get any bonuses to manifesting unlike, say, BS or WS; at least not to the same extent.

Happy Easter folks!

Yeah, hope everyone got some nice days off with family (and lots of good food!).
Lots of office today, so you'll likely see some new action over the course of the day.
:-)

@Monia,Psyker Stuff: It is states in page 226 of the core book:

"The psyker must nominate a single target within range and line of sight;
if the Focus Power Test is successful, then the target has been successfully hit... (and later:)
Psychic Bolts of all kinds may be dodged as if they were any other kind of ranged attack. A successful Dodge Test is sufficient to avoid a normal Psychic Bolt."

So at the very least you will need line of sight to your target - so no manifestations inside a fuel-tank.

I would be okay to allow aimed-psychic bolts. That is, you can opt to actually aim with the power after manifesting it, using it as a 'normal' ranged weapon, applying every boni/mali you would have for a normal attack - with the risk that you simply miss if your BS roll fumbles. That way you would be able to announce a called-shot to a fuel-line (as long as you exactly know where it is!) or anything like that.
Weapon range if used like this, would be normal range as stated in the power description.
You cannot use the power at targets beyond normal range, but you would receive a +10 at half range for aimed-shots or even a +30 for point-blank-range.

Hope that helps and seems reasonable? Feel free to ask further questions.

@Monia: Was your last shot targeting the driver or simply 'the bike'? Because vehicles have other crit-tables (and obviously other armor values) than infantry. Seeing no 'called-shot'-penalty and you applying size-modifier, I'd guess you were targeting the bike rather than the driver?

@Leni: that certainly is more than you can say in about 6 seconds. But you certainly can spread it over a couple of rounds. While doing so, you take a -5 on all test requiring concentration (like shooting razing orks, patching someone up, ...) for doing easy multi-tasking.
2-3 short sentences per round should be ok. Everything longer has to be spread over multiple rounds and induce that light penalty.

Works for me, she'll eventually learn to keep it brief - unless she dies before that. So 3-4 Rounds for all that?