Request for Feedback on Warhammer 40,000 Handbook

[Fennefell]

Hey, I'm looking for some feedback on a Warhammer 40,000 handbook that I'm writing. If anybody with significant experience with running games in a high power, scifi setting, or with significant experience in Warhammer 40,000 in general, or with a strong technical understanding GURPS mechanics, design choices, and statistics is here, your help would be greatly appreciated. If anybody was looking to run a game in Warhammer 40,000 and is willing to playtest/run with the handbook, that would also be greatly appreciated.

Enclosed below is a public release preview of ~60% of the handbook's current scope in an alpha-beta state. If you are interested/want to help, please either leave a comment in the thread or contact me on Discord (Fennefell#4034).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nY...ew?usp=sharing


PLEASE READ BEFORE PROVIDING FEEDBACK

1. Please ensure that you have read and understood the relevant section.

2. Please take a few moments to think of the relevant design choices made about that section. Internal balance and FEELING like Warhammer 40,000 is the most important design factor; no weapon should dominate, each should fit their roles, and so on. Expanding the GM design space and maximizing fun is the next most important, followed by balance with other GURPS things, followed by adherence to Warhammer 40,000 lore. If you make an argument entirely based off lore, it's likely that it will not be useful feedback.

3. Please understand that I've been working on this PDF for a while and have considered a lot of rules and different ways to design things. If you see something and think "You should do x instead, that's obvious", please take a moment to consider I've likely already thought of that, and try to understand the design choices behind it, as per step 2.

4. When providing feedback, please provide constructive feedback. If you think something needs to be changed, please provide a rationale about why, keeping design choices in mind. If possible, give a proof-of-concept of the replacement, and why this proof-of-concept would be better. I likely will not consider feedback of the form "I don't like x. You should do y instead" with no other backing. Instead, try wording it "I think x has problem A. If you instead used y, you could solve problem A within your design choices. Here is an example of that.".

5. Please do not send me angry messages on Discord if I don't take your feedback.

[Fennefell]

Thanks to the people who contacted me to give feedback on my Warhammer 40,000 handbook. If you want to give feedback for what the handbook is, or in future want to use parts before it's released, please contact me. Otherwise, enclosed below is a public release preview of ~60% of the handbook's current scope in an alpha-beta state.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Xr..._7xYIQq-e/view

[MrFix]

I found it of dubious need to have a separate Legality Class for Astartes equipment. Normally the rarity of items is appraised by the penalty to Merchant roll to purchase it, with LC indicating how illegal it is to hold it - meaning government will shoot at you for having certain stuff beyond your clearance.

Scout Marine equipment is certainly not LC4 in normal understanding, which adds confusion, and it doesn't really help with figuring out how to purchase 'rare' gear.

Ditto for Inquisition gear.

Legality to Money conversion is just weird, it has no reason to exist unless it is a flat tax on owning items of this legality.

In short, I'd advise against using Legality Class as a stand in for item rarity, and advise against having multiple different types of legality classes that are seldom about legality and do not really interact with each other. Instead, look into Merchant skill.

In equipment section, Laser weapons have no business running off of Guns skill instead of Beam Weapons. Giving Lasguns (2) AD seems weird when Dark Heresy equalized Autogun and Lasgun damage, with both having 0 pen and 1d10+3 damage die.

[Fennefell]

Originally Posted by MrFix

I found it of dubious need to have a separate Legality Class for Astartes equipment. Normally the rarity of items is appraised by the penalty to Merchant roll to purchase it, with LC indicating how illegal it is to hold it - meaning government will shoot at you for having certain stuff beyond your clearance.

Scout Marine equipment is certainly not LC4 in normal understanding, which adds confusion, and it doesn't really help with figuring out how to purchase 'rare' gear.

Ditto for Inquisition gear.

Legality to Money conversion is just weird, it has no reason to exist unless it is a flat tax on owning items of this legality.

In short, I'd advise against using Legality Class as a stand in for item rarity, and advise against having multiple different types of legality classes that are seldom about legality and do not really interact with each other. Instead, look into Merchant skill.

In equipment section, Laser weapons have no business running off of Guns skill instead of Beam Weapons. Giving Lasguns (2) AD seems weird when Dark Heresy equalized Autogun and Lasgun damage, with both having 0 pen and 1d10+3 damage die.

Legality class is meant to represent a conjunction of faction (General, Astartes, Inquisition, etc.) and rarity within that factioann. The "General" subclass maps to the standard LC-4 - LC-0; the other's do not. As noted on page 6 and 7, the other factions map to between LC-2 and LC-0, depending on the item. The standard LC system is not sufficient for the needs in this case, as the granularity is not sufficient. Please reread page 6-7 to understand the exact mappings.

Similarly, the legality to money conversion is not a flat tax, nor is it meant to be a conversion but rather guidelines. Wealth is not in scope of the book, and abstract wealth is meant to be used. It's reason to exist is to provide guidelines on cost for items based off legality, as both are linked in Warhammer 40,000. The legality classes are about legality, and do interact with each other; please reread the specific section for each legality class to see their relative interactions and specific legality. They also act as a guideline for the cost of items. It is highly unclear to me how the Merchant skill would aid in this.

As per the lasgun, it acts as a Gun because it, for all purposes, a Gun (with the slight exception of bullet drop); a person with Guns who picked up a lasgun would be able to use it with familiarity penalties, not as a default. Beam weapons is reserved for weaponry that has significant differences from Guns, such as the meltagun. I am not using Dark Heresy as a metric for anything for multiple reasons, the most relevant in this case being that I need to balance the handbook with the rest of GURPS. The handbook is meant to be read considering internal balance, balance within GURPS, and design considerations to maximize GM design space, with strict adherence to lore being one of the lowest priorities.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Rank and Status system is really off. The Imperium of Man is a macrosociety, so Rank should range from 0 to 12. Beam weapons are radically different than conventional firearms, so they should not be part of the same skill.

[Fennefell]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Rank and Status system is really off. The Imperium of Man is a macrosociety, so Rank should range from 0 to 12. Beam weapons are radically different than conventional firearms, so they should not be part of the same skill.

The rank system is currently only partially complete. Currently, the mapping between ranks is missing. However, the Imperium does not have cohesive ranks, and does not function as a macrosociety. Each Adeptus has it's own ranking structure, which may or may not interact with the ranking structure of another Adeptus.

I am not clear on what your issue with Status is.

Please provide what you would see 0-12 ranks as in a unified Imperium, and provide what advantage you would see over having a unified ranking system over having split ranks per Adeptus with mapping. Thank you.

EDIT TO YOUR EDIT: Please see last paragraph of post above yours for reference for las weapons. They quack like guns.

For reference: "As per the lasgun, it acts as a Gun because it, for all purposes, a Gun (with the slight exception of bullet drop); a person with Guns who picked up a lasgun would be able to use it with familiarity penalties, not as a default. Beam weapons is reserved for weaponry that has significant differences from Guns, such as the meltagun."

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Rank and Status system is really off. The Imperium of Man is a macrosociety, so Rank should range from 0 to 12. Beam weapons are radically different than conventional firearms, so they should not be part of the same skill.

This would be a great comment for you to stop on this forum. We are asking you to look for positive discuss more often, not posting so much time being negative in posts you dislike (in fact, make it an actual rule -- don't posts about this or any other Warhammer posts).

[Thorbjørn]

Originally Posted by Fennefell

Thanks to the people who contacted me to give feedback on my Warhammer 40,000 handbook. If you want to give feedback for what the handbook is, or in future want to use parts before it's released, please contact me. Otherwise, enclosed below is a public release preview of ~60% of the handbook's current scope in an alpha-beta state.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LXT...lcWafdG1b/view

Hi Fennefell

Could you send me or share in a way so I can add it to my own drive, the above document?

I've been working on the same on and off for years, though at the moment mostly with pen'n'table as the goal. But have used it for Pen'n'paper earlier.

cheers

[naloth]

I skimmed and read chunks. It's clear you've gone to a lot of work and detail.

General thoughts:

1) It looks like a good supplement for a Space Marine (kill team?) campaign. I'd push it a bit more in the Inquisitor direction to open up select xenos, demonhosts, and corrupt types. That just seems like it would be improve variety.

2) The Space Marine template (while accurate and nicely detailed) is awfully bloated. I'm worried that it wouldn't balance well against an Inquisitor, Imperial Guard commando, Eldar, Daemonhost, or Adeptus Mechanicus.

3) For simplicity and flavor I see quite a few possibilities for Talents, bang skills, and meta-traits.

4) Ogryn are generally bigger, stronger, and tougher than marines. I'd make sure at least two of those three things are true in your adaptation. I missed the stats for other most of the other main xenos. I'm guessing they just haven't been added yet?

[Fennefell]

Originally Posted by Thorbjørn

Hi Fennefell

Could you send me or share in a way so I can add it to my own drive, the above document?

I've been working on the same on and off for years, though at the moment mostly with pen'n'table as the goal. But have used it for Pen'n'paper earlier.

cheers

You should be able to download the PDF from the Drive link, there's a download button at the top right. You should then be able to reupload that PDF to your Drive. You can also star the Drive link in your Drive, under Shared with me, but I can't guarantee the Drive link won't disappear at some point. This forum post should be the source of truth for updates.

Originally Posted by naloth

I skimmed and read chunks. It's clear you've gone to a lot of work and detail.

General thoughts:

1) It looks like a good supplement for a Space Marine (kill team?) campaign. I'd push it a bit more in the Inquisitor direction to open up select xenos, demonhosts, and corrupt types. That just seems like it would be improve variety.

2) The Space Marine template (while accurate and nicely detailed) is awfully bloated. I'm worried that it wouldn't balance well against an Inquisitor, Imperial Guard commando, Eldar, Daemonhost, or Adeptus Mechanicus.

3) For simplicity and flavor I see quite a few possibilities for Talents, bang skills, and meta-traits.

4) Ogryn are generally bigger, stronger, and tougher than marines. I'd make sure at least two of those three things are true in your adaptation. I missed the stats for other most of the other main xenos. I'm guessing they just haven't been added yet?

1) The Inquisition portion is coming. It should be next on the list after finishing the Astra Militarum and the Navis Imperialis.

2) Well, it depends what you mean by balanced. It's... likely never going to be balanced against an Imperial Guard commando in the points or equipment sense, as a very well-trained and equipped human is not comparable to a centuries old supersoldier clad in the best armor and weaponry in the setting. An Inquisitor could, theoretically, go toe to toe with an Astartes given enough weapons training, relics, and powered armor, but they likely wouldn't want to, as they are still just a well-trained and equipped human.

It works out much better in the Eldar in the speed sense; my test campaign had the Eldar perform very well against the Astartes, though that's primarily from a speed and firepower standpoint. A bolt shell will core most Eldar, but even a shuriken catapult can pierce powered armor. The stats for the Eldar will come later, but it was not a problem when I ran it.

I have not touched the Adeptus Mechanicus or Daemonhosts too much yet.

Fundamentally, I don't want to make the Astartes template less detailed if there is no pressing reason to do so. They are stated at their intended power level, which is very high. I may in future offer a secondary template which is simpler, but I see it as a low priority issue right now.

3) Those can be added later as optional rules. My main goal is to provide something that works first, making it fast can come later. I'll likely offer a page or two of suggestions on Talent and Wildcard skills appropriate for the setting eventually. I don't know if I'll touch meta-traits much apart from racial templates.

4) All Xenos are currently not present in this handbook (minus mutants), they will be added later. I am hesitant to make Ogryn stronger, as to not make playing an Ogryn in an Imperial Guard campaign much harder. I'll add a note in my revision list to review them; I may make them SM +2 and 25 ST. I'll need to run the numbers on this. They almost certainly will not be stronger than a power armored Astartes nor as tough. They may gain some additional HP.