EXPERIMENTAL - SKILLS FROM FO49

[The Arbitrator General]

Now, there have been requests to try to finalize these previously released Experimetnal Ruels from FO49.  There has been a lot of discuss on this in the past, so lets take a look at them.  Please see the below and add your comments to this thread.

[Ravendas]

Great! There was a thread on this in the warseer forums, did that give you the idea to post this?

Just downloaded it, I think the next campaign I have will use these, just because it helps to balance some of the more ludicrous powers, and makes some skill tables, like muscle, more appealing.

One thing I notice right off, the Disarm skill allows the owner of the weapon at least some chance to retain their weapon after the game, assuming they win the fight. This is an improvement, but what about the heavies that are so easily taken out in hand to hand? They can lose a 120+ credit weapon permanently in just one fight. This makes this skill potentially very costly for any opponent used against.

Perhaps you could limit the disarming ability to weapons useable in hand to hand? Limit it to pistols and hth weapons, so as to make it more of a useful fighting skill, not a 'destroy expensive stuff' skill.

[Ravendas]

Few questions.

What is the difference between the old feint and experimental feint?
Original:

3 Feint
The model may ‘convert’ any parries it is allowed to
use into extra attacks at +1 A per parry. The attack is
used instead of the parry. The model may choose to
feint or parry each time it attacks (eg, you could parry
one time and feint the next).

Experimental feint:

3. Feint. A fighter with feint may trade any
parries he has for extra attack dice instead. Each
parry can be traded for one extra attack. The
fighter may choose to parry or feint each turn,
i.e. he may parry one turn and then feint the next.

Seems like it is merely reworded. Instead of +1 dice per parry given up, you 'convert' them on a 1 to 1 basis. Same thing, different wording.

The change in the Leap skill just seems to be dropping one common sense sentence.

Berserk Charge seems to be just reworded, but the same.
Same for Killer Reputation.
Fast Shot and Gunfighter seem to remain the same, just clarified what skills they stack with.

Just flipping through, a lot seem to not really be changed. They just had their faq rulings bundled into their description. I do like these changes though, and will probably use them in a future campaign.

[Caelwyn]

Its talking about attack dice specifically rather than +1 A. Unscrupulous people might try to feint and fast shoot.

The change in leap means you can't move your base movement, leap and still shoot.

The change to berserk specifically talks about the attack profile, preventing quadruple attacks in conjunction with frenzy, etc

Killer reputation specifically says the fighter causes fear instead of just the fighter causing fear when he charged (making it the worst skill in the game)

Fast shot and gunfighter had the answer to the most frequently asked question put into their text.

The main changes were moving bulging biceps and armourer to the heavy table, the creation of the heavy and leader table and the replacement skills on muscle and techno.

[Ravendas]

Whoops, I understood the leap change, I brainfarted. I meant Leap Back or whatever the disengage from combat thing is.

Besides killer rep, the others I listed were basically faq updates to prevent exploits and such, which is still welcomed of course.


Oh, one little change I thought was funny. The wording for Hip-Shooting changed from 'you cant do this with heavy weapons' to 'you cant do this with move or fire weapons'. That little change means you can't hip shoot grenade launchers anymore!

[Mask]

Fast shot seems like it needs to do something in case the model does not have an increased attack characteristic. It's the only advance that demands that you've gotten another specific advance, and a relatively rare one at that. I've used these rules in three campaigns now, and rolling up Fast shot is considered to basically be the same as to roll a blank. I've gotten this skill on someone in every campaign, but it's never been used.

I think it would be better if you got one additional shot for each attack characteristic. So you got (1+A) number of shots, instead of just (A). Then it wouldn't be a total waste. Perhaps balance it by giving a -1 to hit for each consecutive shot?
Or maybe just allow people to reroll this skill if they don't have any attack characteristic increases?
I mean, it doesn't make much sense as-is. "Hey, look at me. I'm a fast shot, in the time it takes anyone else to shoot one shot I can shoot... uhm... one."

Also, if you already cause Fear from one source, say scars, Killer Reputation does nothing. I can understand this, in a way, but it's another one of those situations where the player has spent an effort to gain a rare advance for his guy, manages to get a skill and is rewarded with absolutely nothing. Maybe they should stack somehow? Terror?

Chemist - Very, very weak skill. First there's a 1/6 chance that anything happens at all, and all the results are very cheap and on top of this you can get addicted. To a drug that you have 1/36 to be able to get a hold of again. Could maybe work as the drug dealer contact. Once the chemist has made a dose of the stuff the gang can buy one dose of the drug in subsequent post-battle phases where he didn't go OOA, the cost representing the cost of the chemicals?

Disarm - Is the point really to destroy valuable shooting weapons? Because that's all the skill has accomplished in my games. Charge the specialists, instantly destroy/disable that pesky plasmacannon. Either the weapon should not be permanently lost, or this should only be usable on weapons used in CC.

Other than that, these skills are very good.

[Ravendas]

Mask brings up something that has been bothering me. I bought my leader a skullchip awhile back, so he re-rolls all failed Initiative tests. This last game he leveled up, took a ferocity skill and got Nerves of Steel, which allows him to re-roll a failed pinning test. Since we all know you can't re-roll the same die twice, and you can't transfer a skullchip, this is 100% useless on a character that really doesn't have that many levels to work with.

Same thing for killer rep and someone with scars. My group just basically said 'sucks for you' and left it at that.

As for Chemist, only 1 of the drugs, Slaught, can get you addicted. But I do like the idea of making him into a fixer for it, as long as the player pays for it. Another version of the Alternate Skills tables posted on another site made the Chemist ability trigger on a 5 or 6, not just a 6, making it more useful, since as you said the drugs are pretty cheap overall.

Disarm - Houserule it like most people do. "Weapons are not permanently destroyed, just unusable for that game." There, fixed.

[Mask]

Disarm - Houserule it like most people do. "Weapons are not permanently destroyed, just unusable for that game." There, fixed.

Yeah, I´ve seen people do that. As a matter of fact, everybody I´ve ever seen use the rule seem to do that... Which might sort of make a point of changing the rule somehow.

[Mastermime]

There are a few things that really bug me about this update that bugged me the first time and still do now.

1) I understand that shifting Armourer to a Heavy Skill is in keeping with the fluff but other than what possible benefit does it provide?

For a start it robs Outlander Gangs (No Outlander can ever get the skill ever, Deacons lose their advantage, scavvies cannot up gun their awful 4+ ammo saves.) Means that Van Saar become Drug Barons instead of the most reliable shooting gang going.

Leap is still the most pointless skill going. Instead of either moving then leaping why not make it more realistic and use it like a run 'up'.

I.E. for every 2" moved the model may leap 1" and the model may hurdel any obstacale 2" or smaller. This mean that if a model wants to jump across a 2" gap he needs to have run a minimum of 4". More realistic and makes roof jumping vent deployed gangers a viable tactic again.

Disarm is broken: Whoever wins the CC gets the weapons, end of story.

I understand the need for a replacement skill now Armourer has moved but I dont think it should be Chemist. Again it robs Outlanders of a unique Item and would mean the Gang could get outlawed really easily. Also if the Dice Gods favour a Van Saar Gang they get double the chance to roll up an inventor style skill, meaning even with crap territories they get an unfair income boost, albiet a small one.

[Ravendas]

The armorer skill was moved to limit the number of armorers you could have. Typical gangs are limited at 2, but other gangs that don't have heavies get a bit screwed. Really though, if you have a ton of armorers the weapon balance just breaks, so I don't mind it really. Maybe add in that Scalies can take from that list for the Scavvies, and similar changes to other heavy-less gangs as needed.

Also, I don't understand why you dislike leap? Originally you could run 8 plus jump d6, now you walk 4 and jump d6 and count as a run. Sure it's random but it's useful in making you faster, if a bit unreliable for actual span crossing jumps.

You want to drop the d6 and just make it a number based on half the distance you ran? So if I run 6", I could then jump 3"? In your version, could I then continue 2" further, or does the jump signal the end of my movement? It's a pretty interesting idea honestly. It makes the max distance lower, and kills standing jumps, but makes certain leaps a 100% chance to pass.

[Caelwyn]

Previously with leap:

You could walk and leap, then shoot, no problem.

You could leap out of hand to hand combat, no charge, any phase. Making Jump Back redundant and even worse than it already is (which is pretty bad).

You averaged an extra 3.5" of movement regardless of walking, running or charging.

Now you still average 3.5" of movement with leap but it will prevent you shooting if you travel over walking distance, and isn't a better version of jump back.

[Mastermime]

I understand the reasoning for moving armourer but I don't see why it had to be moved. House Gangs get too many advantages as it is without sole ownership of a particular skill. Scavvies are severley hampered as it is, forced into making raids and being unable to buy no more than a single auto pistol most missions without attemping a robbery of some sort every game.

Now it makes sense to me from a fluff perspective that if I was having to go on a dangerous raid against minigun toting bad asses I would at least make sure my weapon was clean.  Again my gripe seems to be with the sensless advantages House Gangs get over outlanders.

With my suggestion to leap I would say yes you can still shoot.

[Caelwyn]

Why not just give them +2 Mv then? It does effectively the same thing except allow them to jump stuff. However written that way it looks a lot more powerful to my mind. I dislike your skill idea for a few reasons.

The extra movement it provides is more reliable, making charging a greater distance easier (i dislike sprint as well). It interacts on a stupid level with sprint. Move 12" get an extra 6" guaranteed, be moving across the battlefield at 18" a turn. Escher gangs that rolled solely on agility to get sprint and leap were already powerful. Please no.

As to armourer moving to heavy, i like the change. Try calculating the odds for an outlander gang of picking it up. 1/18 chance of rolling on any table, followed by a 1/6 chance of getting that actual skill on the techno table.

This is not to say I like chemist as it's replacement.

Revisions to Necromunda rules are very much a hit and miss affair. Apart from a few niggling issues though AG's experimental revisions are by far the best that have been printed in the FOM.

[Ravendas]

As to armourer moving to heavy, i like the change. Try calculating the odds for an outlander gang of picking it up. 1/18 chance of rolling on any table, followed by a 1/6 chance of getting that actual skill on the techno table.

The thing about the new heavy skills is that only a heavy can take them. Even if you roll a 2 or 12, non-heavies aren't allowed to select from the heavy chart.

Oh, and the chance of a scavvie getting to pick from any table is actually 1/36, since on a 12 they get a mutation instead 

[Caelwyn]

I meant the old odds of getting a techno skill. The only one it really affects is the deacon. And frankly, redemptionists don't really need armourer.