Not-40K Friday - The Old Chaos Army for Old World

 

I've had the 3D printer running this week to finish out the movement tray expanders for Old World. Something bit me and I got fired up to get the trays I needed done and I also decided to go back through and check figure-by-figure what kind of shape they were in after a decade of disuse.

Somewhat to my surprise they were in really good shape. I haven't used my chaos warriors "in anger" since the first few months of Age of Sigmar and I think the last time I talked about them here was right after the move. I played a lot of chaos armies back in 4th-5th-6th with 7th trailing off into not much by 8th. In the earlier days a chaos army was truly "Chaos" as it mixed warriors, daemons, and beastmen all together and as they were gradually separated in the rules I found myself without enough of any one part to make a real army. I decided to focus on the warrior branch of things and had a pretty solid army there painted up during 5th. That continued into 6th with many battles against my friends' Empire and Dwarf armies and people playing my High Elves.

The silver chaos warriors here are that first multi-part Warhammer regiments set they did in the 90's promising us that troop costs would be a lot more reasonable ... uh, yeah. I liked the rough metal look and so did most of the army this way, discovering that drybrushing silver over a black base coat went pretty quickly and looked pretty good. The banners in this army are paper, drawn up in Visio which was fairly new at the time, enahanced by some interesting fonts - an Ultima font among them - and then printed out, painted, and with some decals added on I thought they worked pretty well. They are still holding together 25+ years later so I can't really complain.

Old Two-Blades over there on the left has seen many hours on the table in both Warhammer and as a D&D character, maybe a GURPS character, and maybe even a Fantasy Hero character so he is well-loved here.

There are a couple of converted chaos wizards in the back and then a unit of marauder horsemen after I mostly got over my "I don't need puny skirmishers" phase. At the very least they are good for soaking up those goblin fanatics before they hit my real units. 

Here in the center is the real heart of the army. The red-armored warriors were my Chosen of Khorne - yes kids there was a time when "chosen" were a paint job, not a special model. The kits at the time only had weapon & shield, then later they added a halberd option - in metal. But in the rules we had an option for two weapons and with Khorne's frenzy rules you can bet I wanted that two weapon option. So, I hand-drilled all of those left hands and added in weapons from various other kits, including 40K Ork melee weapons from Gorka-Morka I believe. The unit leader has a pair of spiked maces and a big cape and he has served as an RPG character more than once too.

On the left middle is my first converted mounted hero - he's one of the metal champions of Khorne (he has a bloodletter-y head) that I cut in half at the waist and mounted up I think using a rough rider of Attila lower half. He usually ended up with a magic sword and then for a long time my favorite thing to put on him was the Chaos Runeshield. Unfortunately his shield has gone missing but I remember what it looked like and I am going to have to recreate it and get him back on the table.

On the right in the middle is my usual warlord for my later games, the metal mounted chaos lord that came out a little later than the rest. He has a huge axe, a decent-looking shield, and is on a nicely sculpted horse. Smaller fights were led by the bloodletter-head guy above but any bigger fight from probably 6th edition on was led by the Horned King there. 

Then in the back we have my beloved chaos knights - no. no one really needs a block of ten chaos knights but it is the hammer of all hammers if you do use the full unit. Shoot them, fireball them, drop a cannonball on them - they can lose half the unit and still blow almost anything off of the board with a charge. They were usually led by the Horned King or Bloodletter-Head which just made them nastier. Granted, for many fights I just took 5 or 6 of them and I'm sure I broke them into two units a few times but the back rank is mostly fill-in guys (including some plastic Battlemasters chaos knights) so I didn't really like fielding them separately.

Almost every force selection started with these two units and one or both of these leaders.

The righthand section of the army has another big block of chaos warriors and these are the earlier chunky monopose versions that I think originally came out with Heroquest but were later sold as a straight-up Warhammer unit. I ended up with a bunch of them through trades and such and decided to make another regiment. I liked the irony of a unit of "chaos" warriors made up of identical models. I used the metal 4th edition era command trio for them, did the same drybrush look as the other unit, and painted up their shields to add some nice contrast. They've been used as guards and evil fighters in many RPGs as well.

Next to them is one of my favorite character models for chaos that I used as a wizard. he has a staff, and has a helmet with no face, but his raised hand has what could be an eye in the middle of it - very strong on the creepy to weird chaos scale.

Then in the back we have a unit of chaos knights from about 3rd edition, with weirder poses, proportions, and looks than the later ones. It's good to mix in some older units into your army when you can - especially a chaos army.

Yeah, these guys. I like mine better but they definitely have a look.

So there is the army that's intact after 25+ years and getting ready to get back on the table. I do have some additional units of similar vintage that I either never quite finished or took a beating in a move at some point, or that my kids got a hold of when they were toddlers - never leave your army out on the table overnight if you have toddlers! -  so I have some additions to make and I am really looking forward to working on them again. 

Old World-wise my next-most-finished army is my High Elves so they will be getting some attention this weekend, then I have a huge pile of orcs & goblins to go through, some Undead to assemble, the Beastmen I finally caved and converted over to Sigmar bases two years ago only to see them eliminated and returned to the Old World line ... sigh ... and then that shiny box of Bretonians guilting me from the shelf. 

More to come for sure.

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - Combat Discussion

 

Initial discussion in the previous post.

OK let's look at some of these new combat interactions. First up the general Degree of Success chart:

A critical hit here (Nat 20) adds one degree of success
A critical miss (Nat 1) adds a degree of failure

• Hits and misses are determined using a d20 + your relevant attack bonus vs. a DC of 10 + your Defense score. As long as you get a success - meet or exceed the target DC - you have scored a hit on the target and now you need to check for damage.
• An extra success here adds 5 to the Effect rank
• An extra failure here, if it somehow still hits, gives the target a +5 on their Resistance check
  
  
• Damage is handled by rolling the d20 + your toughness rank vs a target of 10+ damage rank. That's a change from the 15 + damage of 3E. Then Degrees of Success enter the fray:
• Success (two or more degrees): If the target has Hardened, Impervious, or Impenetrable resistance against the attack and this degree of success, they receive no damage conditions. Otherwise, this is the same as one degree of success.
• Success (one degree): The target receives the Hit condition. For each Hit condition, apply a –1 penalty to the character’s further resistance checks against Damage.
  
• Failure (one degree): The target receives a Hit condition, and the Dazed condition. If the target already has the Dazed condition, it becomes Stunned instead.
  Compared to 3E this adds Dazed - in 3E this was just a -1 to future Toughness checks
• Failure (two degrees): The target receives a Hit condition, the Stunned condition, plus the Staggered condition.
  In 3E this was just Dazed & a -1
• Failure (three degrees): The target receives the Hit and Staggered conditions, plus the Incapacitated condition. If an Incapacitated character fails a Damage resistance check, their condition becomes Dying. If a Dying character fails a Damage resistance check by any degree, they are Dead.
  In 3E this was just Staggered and a -1, and an additional Staggered result went to Incapacitated which could then go to Dying and then to Dead in the same way.
  
  Some significant changes here: From 3E the target number has dropped by 5, but the table has bumped everything up a notch for starters. Then we add in Hits being cumulative so even resisting the damage to a degree means they are still piling up. I like this as it puts more of a clock on the combat. 3E had a similar condition but it was only applied on a failure. Now with it applying to at least some successful saves it will accumulate that much faster. It also adds a benefit to doing really well on a Toughness check as you avoid this cumulative penalty. Players tend to be disappointed when they roll really well and there is no additional benefit to it so this feeds right into the drama of each roll. 
  
  (Also, this is starting to look like Savage Worlds' system a bit - "Hit", or "Hit and a Raise to add damage", failing the save by more causes a worse effect, etc. Lot of parallels there.)

Let's talk about Conditions real quick. Beyond "Hits" the damage table can make you:

• Dazed - One standard action, no reactions, still get free actions. 
• Stunned - No actions at all and Dodge rank is halved. I'm wondering if this is correct or if it's supposed to affect Defense scores as well? In 3E it was just the "no actions" part so I don't know. 
• Staggered - Dazed and Hindered (that means half movement speed)
• Incapacitated - Stunned, Unaware, Defenseless, and usually Prone. This is the KO you're looking for in a fight.
• Dying - Incapacitated and making death saves ala D&D 5E. 

Characters might be Resistant to a particular attack - that means they cut the effect ranks in half before making the roll. Immunity means you make no roll at all - so you won't be accumulating hits from those attacks. Susceptible means you have a penalty to resistance checks of half the incoming effect rank. Weakness is that plus your best result is one degree of failure on the check.

With the basics out of the way, let's say our Battlesuit faces off against their evil twin - how does that go?

• Evil Battlesuit flies up and blasts Justice Battlesuit:
•  Evil shoots with a d20+8 (Their Attack of 8 is the modifier here) against a Defense Class of 18 (the target's Defense of 8 + the basic 10). Needing an 18, an average roll will get them a 10-11 and so they hit!
• To resist damage Justice will be rolling a d20 + 12 (their Toughness) with a target of 22 (base 10 + 12 for the Rank 12 Force Beams). Another average 10-11 roll here will match that target for a success and while it is Hardened it is Rank 11 while the force beams are Rank 12 so no extra roll and Justice will take a Hit even with the success. 

This could go on for a while but at least those -1's will be piling up until someone gets lucky.

Let's say Justice has been rendered Vulnerable by some other attack or event. The Vulnerable condition reduces Defense by half so he would be a DC14 to hit - you just need an slightly better average roll of 11 + 8 (Attack Bonus) = 19 which is 5 over and so an added success on an attack check which increases the Blast Effect by 5.

Now the resistance target will be 27 (base 10 + 12 + 5) and an average roll for Justice will give us 11 + 12 (Toughness) = 23. That's a failure so he will be Hit + Dazed.

Clearly Vulnerable is a good thing to have on your side and outside of any powers it comes up when one is Surprised: "A surprised character is Stunned and Vulnerable, caught off-guard and unable to act. Surprised normally only lasts for one round." So there's one way to set things up in your favor.

It looks to me like combat could go on a bit but with those Hits stacking up on most attacks it should go quicker than 3E's combat. I do wonder about the effect of numbers now, both with a team of PC's attacking a single villain and with a group of mooks ganging up on one PC, and will that make for a significant impact in a fight.

Final point for today: One of the long time debates in 3E is over Defense versus Toughness. Many players thought Toughness was just better, as far as game effectiveness in 3E, and while that's not everything it did come up fairly frequently. Here's why: 

• Toughness is not reduced by Vulnerable or Defenseless Conditions
• Toughness is not ignored by Perception or Area Effects
• Toughness increase is 1/2 the PP cost of Dodge/Parry increase 

Most of these are still true. The only exception is that while an overall Defense is still 2 pts to Protection's 1 pt, you could raise either ranged or close defense for 1 pt per level. Despite this list remaining true I feel like the other adjustments to the way damage works alongside the Defensive Roll update should help balance this out. Against area effect attacks the 4E version of Evasion gives a +5 to avoid with 1 rank and "no damage on a success" with 2 ranks so there's another way to mitigate that. 

Defenseless is just bad for everyone, and Vulnerable is still mainly bad for Defense-shifted characters. The other consideration is that Vulnerable is still a first degree condition for the Affliction power so it's not too hard to land on someone. I'd say until I see a problem in-game that it's just something you need to be aware of.

That's all for now but I do want to try out some more combat examples. Look for that down the road a bit. Please feel free to check my math and thinking here too and let me know if you see something off.

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - First Impressions

 

Alright I've read it. I haven't tried to run it yet or make a new character, I just compared some old ones and looked at possible changes but I need to dig in a little more and have some of my players update their old characters too, just to give it a workout. My short take is: it's an evolution, not a revolution.

It's more like 3E in my opinion than 3E was to 2E. I was thinking the loss of the Fighting and Dexterity stats was an indicator of larger changes but I don't feel like it turned out that way. There are a lot of smaller changes and adjustments and tweaks but the basic structure of the game and of characters is very similar. 

4th Edition Battlesuit Archetype

3rd Edition Battlesuit Archetype

Comparing the two you can see that it works pretty much the same way - both provide enhanced Protection , flight via boot jets, life support, radio comms, a sensor suite, some combat computer enhancements, and then a two-power array to throw power into either blaster beams or enhanced strength. Many of the point costs are quite similar and many of the ability scores are the same (and if you're wondering the number after the slash is the "out of the suit" number). The game is still a d20 + modifiers vs a target DC or a contest of rolls so the basic framework of the game is the same as well. You still have power levels and there are still limits related to it like Defense & Toughness needing to add up to PLx2. 

Now there are some differences:

•  Right up front Fighting and Dexterity have been shifted over into a different set of stats: Attack and Defense. Instead of a built-in split between Melee and Ranged capabilities here the default is now that you have one number for both. You can certainly split those up through various means to have a lower default and then a bonus on either Ranged or Melee or unarmed or a specific weapon type to have more of a focus for your character, but you don't have to. I actually do like this change as it will be simpler for someone new to see and I think it's just a clearer label overall. Who knew you could have a superhero game with one Offensive Combat Value and one Defensive Combat Value? 
• The defensive numbers are rearranged a bit. Toughness is still your damage save, and Fortitude/Dodge/Will are now strictly your other "saves". Parry goes away as you just use your Defense for your to-be-hit target now.
• Advantages have changed in many places too. 
• There are more types of advantages and each type can have some limitations or conditions. For example Heroic is a new class of Advantage and characters are limited to half Power Level in ranks of these - because they are more powerful.
• In 3E there was a set of combat maneuvers one could do - Accurate Attack to trade damage down to increase attack bonus, All-Out Attack to trade Defense for an attack bonus, its opposite Defensive Attack to trade hit bonus for improved defense, etc. - and these gave a +/-2, but if you took the related Advantage gave a +/-5.
  In 4E these maneuvers now just grant a straight-up +/-5, no Advantage needed, so these moves will be more consequential. Note that this is "up to +/-5", not automatically the maximum bonus. So the maneuvers are better and the Advantages related to them are gone.
• Defensive Roll is better now as it still adds +1 Toughness per rank but also gives the "no effects with a 2+ degrees of success" like Hardened (see below). You lose that extra when Vulnerable or Defenseless but keep the Toughness - unlike 3E. You do lose all of it when Stunned though so it's not a perfect replacement for pure Toughness which makes sense.
• Finally let's talk about Improvised Effect. This is a new one that is really the gateway to the variable power effects so many players love and so many GM's hate. The description is innocent enough: You can use a technical skill to prepare and use Improvised Effects. Now it's tied to one skill like Technology or Magic but you can take it more than once to cover more skills. This is a Heroic advantage so it is limited by PL but this is your gadget pool or magic crafting ability right here. Looking it over again I don't believe it requires any additional power points, like a pool, but it does calculate the points required and that does affect the skill roll needed to create and use the effect, plus they are only good for one scene, so this might be OK after all. That said, it's potentially a lot of flexibility for a highly skilled character for all of one point.
  
  

  

  Absolutely love this artwork

  
  
• For Powers the degree of change depends on the power. Some changed a great deal, some barely changed at all. You can see here that even the point costs are very similar for most of this character's powers. One significant change is with Protection and the options one can apply, so let's look at that one more closely:
• Protection itself is still a Permanent Defense so the default assumption is "armor" of some kind and it's +1 Toughness per rank. You can make it sustained instead if you want a more force-fieldy power, etc. But for Extras we now have Hardened, Impervious, and Impenetrable.
• Hardened: If the damage coming in is at or below your ranks of Hardened resistance then you roll two dice and take the highest - so basically our Battlesuit here in 4E has advantage on damage saves at rank 11 or less. I like that this is now an option. There is a second clause though: If you get two or more degrees of success on the save then you take no damage conditions including Hits, which is a new thing I will discuss below. I like this though -  something better than standard protection but not immune to a bunch of stuff.
• Impervious: This continues much like it did before where a character is just immune to incoming damage at or below their Impervious Protection rank. Note that last part - equal to or less than ... not half! Now it is capped at Power Level and it does cost 2 per rank instead of 1, but ridiculously resistant Bricks are certainly back! This one also has the "no effects with a 2+ degrees of success" like Hardened.
• Impenetrable: This is the same as Impervious but ignores Penetrating. Alright, let's look at that.
• There are several levels of defense in M&M. One of those is "Resistant" which means you take half of the damaging effect. "Fire Blast 10" is effectively "Fire Blast 5" to a Fire Resistant target.
• "Immune" means you are unaffected by attacks based on whatever you are immune to. If you are Immune to fire then "Fire Blast Whatever" means nothing to you.
• Except ... ranks of "Penetrating" ignore some of this. If our Battlesuit with Force Beams 12  shoots them at Dr. Impervious (Impervious Protection 15) he does nothing. If he upgrades to Force Beams 12 with 6 ranks of Penetrating and hits then Doc Impervious is going to be rolling to resist rank 6 damage - so a DC16 Toughness check. Penetrating doesn't add anything to your attack - it just ensures some of it gets through. Unless the target is Impenetrable  - then you are out of luck.
  
  You can add these modifiers on to your normal Toughness too -  you don't have to buy Protection to unlock them.
  
  Now you're not going to take all 3 of them on one character as they overlap. If our Battlesuit took Impervious 11 on their Protection then Hardness becomes redundant as it's giving you Advantage on a roll you're never going to make. Same with Impenetrable - it's the highest level of defense.
  
  Now you might take more than one to represent some kind of layered defense. Say, Protection 11 with Impervious for 6 ranks and then Hardened for 11 - that would mean you don't even have to roll against the smaller stuff, then you get Advantage up through the remaining ranks. I don't know that it's cost effective but it would still help against Penetrating attacks with the extra roll. Say you get hit with a Blast 5 (Penetrating 3). The Impervious 6 would normally stop it but Pen 3 means you have to roll against a DC13. Hardened would give you the extra d20 for that.
  
  By wording it would also give you the "2+ degrees of success = no damage conditions) as Penetrating specifically mentions negating only Resistance and Impervious but I'm not sure that's the intent.
  
  It's interesting. I suspect my Battlesuit player will be digging into all of this a lot.
  
  

  

  No not him ...

  
  
• Regeneration is one I've seen people complain about with 3E and in 4E it's a lot simpler. There is a table that lists what it does for each rank and I do really really like the clarity:
• Rank 1 is "Recover your least Severe Damage Condition every 10 rounds". 
• This improves by 1 round per rank until at Rank 10 you're dropping one every round, then it goes to multiple conditions removed per rank.
• Then at 15 you start recovering from being Dead in ever-decreasing increments of time up to Rank 20 where you recover from everything every turn. Nicely done Green Ronin! 
• Yes there is still a Variable Power, there are about two pages of discussion on it, and the described way of handling it is excellent. Unlike the Advantage this one is based on a pool of points. That said I will leave this one with the last sentence in the sidebar discussion for this power: In short, Variable is a “last resort” in power design, and the GM should treat it as such.

So lots of interesting changes without too much being drastically different. I do want to check on the Defense-is-inferior-to-Toughness debate as I'm still not sure about that one so let's work through a combat example tomorrow and see how it works now.