Ran something over IRC today.

Party was a Medic, Tech-Priest, Heavy Gunner, and Storm Trooper.

First thing, the Comrades rules placement baffled everyone without fail. The entire book between rules for generation and rules for use just confused the group, and nobody wanted to keep track of them. They just gave the order for +3 damage each turn and ignored them. The rules for them taking a hit for you don't come up nearly often enough.

The Storm Trooper  definitely needs the Ballistics Skill aptitude, and should maybe have that as his starting bonus instead of Toughness. The Medic did his job admirably, and scored a few kills with an acquired Grenade Launcher. Our Heavy Gunner had a blast; his Heavy Flamer (named 'Suzie') devastated the enemy, with one poor heretic suffering three Righteous Fury hits from one attack (a total of 45 damage.) The tech-priest found himself a little bored, with a lack of a distinct niche beyond "guy who opens doors." He enjoyed his Servitor though, using it to grapple an enemy general that he then executed with a mechadendrite.

They all seemed to enjoy my homebrew Valkyrie (being a door gunner is fun when you're packing a Heavy Bolter) and were happy to have flak armour to keep them safe. One player remarked that he enjoyed the simplicity of it much more than Dark Heresy, and they enjoyed the more limited focus of the game.

A lack of weapons with Pen seemed to be an issue, with many rounds of combat being lucky hits that did no damage.

Overall, a real blast!

It is literally impossible to deal 45 damage in one hit, on a single target, with a Heavy Flamer. You need to go back and read the RF rules, they are significantly different than the rules used in DH.

You can make the Tech Priest feel a lot more useful by giving him other things to do. With just Tech Use he can do a whole lot, like create explosives, repair vehicles, and straight up forge weapons, armor or other gear for the party. Considering he has the time and the tools of course. If he gets Trade [Armourer] he can do some pretty cool weapons modifications for the group too. It is a chap advance with his Aptitudes.

 I agree that stormtroopers not getting the cheap BS is kind of dumb they are supposed to be the elite of the elite.

Harmlesscarp said:

Giving them one of the better guns in the game at chargen and then making them not good at shooting makes very little sense.

 Medic here. (The internet is such a small place…)

I always assumed that the idea of a Stormtrooper was an elite can-handle-any-situation kind of guy, not necessarily the shootiest. The only problem is that giving him the cheapest BS upgrade outmodes the Weapon Specialist. I guess there's the argument that specialist gets more weapon proficiency's, while the SM gets more variety, but considering the WS is all combat skills (with little exception), the SM would easily outclass him in every other situation but combat, where he would match him. However, I think the new Characteristic Advances chart should fix this problem.

As this is an Aptitude flaw, I simply think that this reflects the underdeveloped Aptitude system we currently see.

Same goes for the Sergeant/ Commissar Fellowship debate.

Of course, the Stormtrooper in our game fell out of a Valkyrie before he really shot anything, but that's a different issue…  

Several things are confusing in your report:

1. Where is this Order that grants +3 damage? I know Sergeant has something to that effect, but there was no sergeant in your group.

2. How did the Tech-Priest grapple anything with his servitor?

Morangias said:

1) On a second read through, it would appear we all suffered a mass hallucination and mistook Ranged Volley's +5 BS for +3 damage. That one's baffling.

2) We figured that the Servitor was strong (looking at the profile) and the Enginseer had bought it the Servo-Arm upgrade. Perhaps not technically in the rules, but I'd say that it's fine, narratively.

Plushy said:

What profile? The way I understand it, Tech-Priest's Servitor is a Comrade like all others, and thus has no profile of his own.

Would you allow the Heavy Gunner's Comrade to grapple someone?

Morangias said:

All Comrades have a profile that they may use whenever the GM deems it neccesary. The one for the Comrades is obviously the one of the Imperial Guardsman whereas the Servitor Comrade is obviously the Servitor.

Edit: While I can't find where it says that Comrades have a profile at least in the Enginseers entry it says: "If anything ever happens to the Servitor that requires information from a profile, refer to the Servitor profile on page 245 of Chapter X: NPCs: & Adversaries.

I would say the worst part is that the servitor was instrumental in defeating what I assume is the BBEG in the session (the general). This steals the spotlight from what would otherwise be an achievement of the players, and the players alone.

Also, yes, comrades really shouldn't be taking direct actions.

Kainus said:

Nope. Storm troopers are shoot-y. I know people hate it when I drag out the tabletop game but that is a source material for this… A standard storm trooper should have a BS roughly equal to veteran guardsman or a tactical Space Marine.

It remains to be seen if a Stormtrooper in tabletop = a starting Stormtrooper in OW. Many of the other skills present in the RPG line tend to not be manifested that well in TT, so its difficult to determine if a Stormtrooper is not a highly capable individual beyond shooting.

Also, once you consider it may very well take a character 5000+ XP to become "TT equivalent," its less of an issue.

KommissarK said:

This frankly is an attitude that I am SICK of!

If takes 5000 exp for an OW Storm Trooper to become a Codex:IG Storm Trooper, then call them something else. I buy a 40K rpg to play a 40K RPG…. if I wanted to play a random rpg that happened to use the same names as 40K, I could play any number of other games from any number of different companies. Heck, I own GURPS. I could make it up myself.  

LuciusT said:

Haven't we had this discussion already?
In short:
Players do not start of at the top of the food chain. The beginning of the game sees the players at the beginning of their careers (though GMs may modify this with starting XP). So if a player plays a Storm Trooper he starts as a beginning Storm Trooper. He has finished whatever training a Storm Trooper goes through and is ready for battle. He is not yet the elite of the elite. That's the end of the game.
If 0 EXP (or actually 300) would represent an experienced soldier there would be no way to model a non-experienced soldier in the system. So just accept that 300 EXP means you have little experience. If you want to play an experienced soldier, you need…experience. You can represent experience using experience points.

If mimicing TT is so crucial, then how do explain the obvious point differences between characters? 1 Commissar != 1 weapon specialist with flamer point wise, and yet both are available to PCs as an option.

Certainly, the true strength comes from a combination of the two. Its realizing that its not a matter of balancing player X's ability to player Y's ability, but rather balancing X and Y vs. opposition Z. That said though, I still feel its appropriate to attempt to "normalize"the power levels across the specialties. Players shouldn't be made to feel bad about their character's inadequecies right out the door just because they picked the wrong specialization.

Also, with Storm Troopers, note that they currently possess 3 of the 4 aptitudes that could be selected at regiment creation (agility, toughness, ballistic skill), By doubling up, they then just take finesse and are good. Except for having the +5 base toughness over +5 BS (which doesn't really bother me, as toughness is still quite an important attribute). Because seriously, who in their right mind would make a regiment that doesn't get a bonus aptitude?

Morangias said:

Page 63 of the book says that if it ever comes up to use the Servitor profile in the back of the book.

I let it slide because he spent the xp to give the servitor a big grabbing arm and thought that he should get to use it.

I might let it count as a modifier to help Grapple or would let it succeed if the target was crippled enough, sure.