Unnatural Stats have a beneift besides doubling the bonus. On opposed tests you achieve one extra degree of success per level of the Trait, so x2 adds one success. Bonuses for things like Fellowship can affect the number of people you influence. Intelligence can affect the number of woudns you heal. There are other examples.

In some of the later games it lowers the difficulty of regular tests by 1 degree per level of the Unnatural trait. For example it makes a challenging test (+0) at +10 test.

andrewm9 said:

Like I pointed out above, this rule is in DH, in the Inquisitor's Handbook.

Okay, I haven't actually played Ascension and to be honest I probably won't.  But, Primaris Psykers and Temple Assassins are the deadliest of the Imperiums assets.  Space Marine Commanders prefer not to tackle these guys one on one and a Vindicare should wipe the floor with a Space Marine Squad even in close combat.  I think they got the Temple Assassin about right,  I just don't think they should be PCs.

Zakalwe said:

Zak, I Love ya but, REALLY?? A whole squad? In close combat? Why would a player ever deploy a squad of SM's? Don't get me wrong! Temple assassins are bad! VERY bad! But getting into close combat with an Astartes squad is not going to work out well for the Assassin!  (In 40k TT at least.) Nor should he be able to do that. An Assassin focuses on stealth and surgical precision. Getting into close combat should be something that happens by accident, Not design!

I think the easiest fix for all Ascension characters is to take all the Unnatural Abilities away.  Problem solved for each and every one of them.  Well, maybe not for Psykers, but then again you could state that all powers are based off your Psy Rating instead of your WP Bonus.  I like simple and elegant.

I do agree that the Temple Assassin should have Unnatural Characteristics though, but to make Ascension work for every class to be on equal footing, no one should have them.  :*( 

Radwraith said:

Depending on the Assassin, it can work out that way. In the timeline in the 40k Rulebook, huge numbers of Astartes die attempting to shut down an Officio Assassinorum temple. An Eversor is sufficiently brutal and savage to triumph in such circumstances, for a start, while a Culexus' abominable nature makes him difficult for non-psykers to perceive (which is a huge advantage in combat). In any case, a Temple Assassin won't engage an enemy on their terms - even in close combat, the Assassin will be relying on mobility, evasion and precise, lethal blows to do the job.

Radwraith said:

Awwww, I never knew you felt that way, you say the nicest things  :-)

Let me elaborate.  I can only comment on the wargame through anecdotal evidence and my mates seem to be of the opinion that a temple assassin could, if not a Vindicare then definitely an Eversor (yep, I know I said 'vindicare').  Anyway, that wasn't really the point I wanted to get across.  I think that the temple assassins are the best the Empire has, the preeminent killers and the most skillful fighters with the very best gear.  However, while they may be the best fighters with the best gear, they perhaps havethe least freewill of all and are brainwashed/programmed/condiitoned to the point of being beyond PC material. And that was my point, that the vindicares aren't overpowered, I just don't think they are suitable as player characters.

Zakalwe said:

On a good day, I believe a fully trained Temple Assassin, from the fluff, not the TT, could and would wipe the floor with a squad of Space Marines. Certainly the Vindicare, from a hive spire away, could ping each off, and end their little quest, but if he did get into melee combat, he's still as strong as them (ish), faster than them by leaps and bounds, and trained to kill in a way even Space Marines can't compete with. He'd be jumping, cartwheeling around them, leaping off of their shoulders, breaking necks, and making nasty use of the Exitus PISTOL (it's so easy to forget that they carry those things, sometimes, but it's about as good as the rifle) in close combat. I know Space Marines are supermen, and much of how they work is to offset the limitations of power armor's bulk, but the Vindicare is practically Operative Legolas, and I don't think they'd have much luck touching him; more likely they'd clock each other, trying to strike him. And the other three are MORE melee-oriented than that. The Callidus IS one of them (one Marine down), and will almost certainly kill one of them in the surprise round, and then open up with the C'tan Phase Sword, which wiggles through armor and fields, right to the fleshy guy inside, again as strong as a Marine, and infinitely faster. With repeat feints and stabs, and the neural shredder being a cheese gun, they'll go down pretty quick. The Culexus will possibly have the hardest time, but with the shivers, headache, nausea, and confusion they sew, coupled with the fact that he's practically carrying a melta, they are going to hurt fuzzy-in-the-head Space Marines. Again, as strong, much quicker, cartwheel, ya-dee-dah. If one Marine is a Librarian, he just dies first round, looking at his antithesis. Finally, we hit my least favorite, the Eversor. He's the most melee-oriented, and with his high stats, nice drugs, and chipper demeanor, he has little to worry about. If they hit him, he won't feel it, but they probably won't hit him, and he tosses grenades like candy, and has some nasty weapons. He's a crazy, frenzied dervish of doom.

In the end, a Temple Assassin of any flavor is likely to polish off a group of Astartes; that's, in a way, what hey are made to do. If a force of Chaos Marines appears, and the Astartes are indisposed, a Temple Assassin could do fine. They also have elements of surprise and terrain, whether they look like the enemy to get close, or crash a lander on the group, to soften them up. Then you figure in their pure cheese Agility (practically an Eldar, minus the Unn. Agil.) and their best-end weapons, and they make Space Marines look like they often should; big, cumbersome, slow behemoths, men who can take a good hit, but can't succeed against a much faster, repeat assault of blows. This is all my opinion, of course, but I can't imagine a Space Marine who knows about these, and says "ah, whatever, we can take'em. We're Space Marines!"

As for Vindicare PCs, the book seemed to suffer a bit from "we must fit EVERY entry from Codex Daemonhunters in Ascension" syndrome. That's why Storm Troopers suck, and why all of the Inquisitor's retinue/henchmen choices are in there. Since the Assassins are in there, they gave us the most balanced of the set; a slightly superhuman super-sniper. Better than a psyker-buster (very situational, AND team-dynamic exclusive), a mimic (she's with the bad guys at the start of every mission), or a slavering mental patient trusted with grenades. I muchly appreciate access to the Inquisitor title, but beyond that, much of the classes are lackluster, or broken, and it's a shame, because it is one of my favorite books in Dark Heresy. Apparently, it was such a bad idea none of the other games have tried to emulate, but repair it; they start at a percentagely higher entry level, and you quit at Rank 8, or just keep playing, but never level up again (can always make more money, kill more baddies, and save more Sectors.

venkelos said:

I honestly don't think Ascension has anything to do with other games not getting an "epic level supplement". In my humble opinion, it has more to do with a fact that widening the scope of Rogue Trader or Deathwatch simply doesn't make much sense.

Rogue Trader starts out by giving you one of the highest titles a human can get in the Imperium, and makes expanding your political and financial reach the main motivation behind your actions. Plus, it lets you reach insanely high levels of both personal and political power. Where could the game go from there? What manner of endeavor cannot be handled by the base system? I know some people suggested gaining the title of a Warmaster and leading a new Crusade, but frankly, I think it can be done alright with rules as written.

Deathwatch has a different problem. While you could theoretically expand the scope of PC's responsibilities, there's little in-game justification for doing so. The nature of Deathwatch as a meta-Chapter makes it a temporary assignment for player characters most of the time, and the very role the Astartes play in the structure of the Imperium makes it difficult for them to wield any real political power. Plus, playing the game from the level of Chapter Master seems pretty boring - lots of micromanaging and infighting, little action, quite a big shift from the most action-oriented game line so far.

I suppose one day we may see a Black Crusade supplement detailing the running of the eponymous campaign. BC starts from a relatively high power level, but it doesn't give Heretics much political significance to go along with their personal prowess, and the GM's kit openly admits the game in it's current state is ill-prepared for running a full-scale Black Crusade.

venkelos said:

If we take the Assassin from the Fluff we must also do so with the Space Marines! I am not saying that a Temple assassin could not "pick off" a given marine (That's what they do after all!), but I do not believe that it would work out well if he engaged a squad of them openly! Remember that the marines fight Eldar all the time so a faster more agile opponent is not something they are unused to dealing with. The Assassin is what he is mostly as a matter of training. I do believe the Ascension version to be somewhat broken because of this. As a matter of note, There are probably more Temple assassins than there are Space marines in total! Why would the Imperium ever deploy Astartes! Assassins as a rule should not be exceptionally well suited to open warfare any more than Marines are suited to Espionage! To suggest that the Assassin might win such an engagement given the tactical advantage is assuming a lot! Your Vindicare in a Hive spire may start picking off Marines from his vantage in the spire but, His job gets significantly more difficult when a Thunderhawk (Or devastator squad, Whirlwind, or…You get my point) turns said spire into flaming rubble with him in it! I believe Assassins are playable but the GM must be VERY dilligent against Min/maxing crunchers who would break the class and make the game no fun for everyone!

As an Eldar player, I've had a Temple Assassin go 1 on 1 with my Avatar of Khaine for 3 rounds, and had that same Avatar rip through a squad of Terminators in a round, so I don't think its out of this world to think a Vindicare could off a Marine squad in close combat.

Comparing a squad of Eldar to a Vindicare Assassin is like comparing a Space Marine to a Hive Tyrant. Yeah, both are strong and tough, just one is degrees of magnitude more tough/strong.

 Tabletop mechanics aren't what influence the roleplay however, or at least are not the deciding factor. The reason that Ascension feels 'broken' to some players is, as was mentioned, its attempt to cram in careers of all shapes and sizes on a roughly equal footing… it didn't work too well.

You have several one trick pony careers, which are fine if the players are happy to play a group of niche specialists so as not to step on each others toes. Then you have the totally over the top careeers which whilst perfectly fitting the background and flavour, are just not really suitable to player characters. The two in question are the Vindicare Assassin and the Primaris Psyker.

As people have said, the primaris psyker suffers from having too high a WP bonus for the purposes of psychic powers and effects so perhaps increasing the cost, delaying access to or simply removing the unnatural WP as GMs see fit is one way to deal with it, or alternatively change all psychic powers to run on Psy rating for bonuses, no WP bonus. (This is more how it is in later systems anyway, pointing to it being a good balancing factor?)
The Vindicare on the other hand is entirely balanced and working fine if you follow 2 simple rules:

• Temple Assassins are thoroughly indoctrinated through training, implants, chemical treatments and gene enhancements. They lose a lot of their individuality when they become a Temple Assassin and are little more than living weapons by the time they are ready for deployment. Any player that plays a special snowflower Vindicare who isn't 100% focussed on the art of killing and following orders is throwing off the balance of the character, because thats the offset for all those funky combat abilities.
• The infinite number of dodges issue doesn't arise if you stick to the rules about dodges where it stats that you must be aware of an attack to be able to dodge it. A melee attack from behind CANNOT be dodged, similarly a huge explosive detonating right on top of the Vindicare CANNOT be dodged, nor can environmental effects and literally any number of things that can cause harm that the assassin was not aware of.

These are the two greatest balancing acts of all - the GM being aware of how the game operates, what does and doesn't break and it enforcing rules.

I don't think it's really useful to compare the Vindicare vs Space Marines situation since:

1. they are both on the same side, except if we assume it's Chaos Space Marines we are talking about;

2. everyone describes a situation in which his(her) favorite side wins for X reasons, most of the time discarding a lot of factors that would go against their choice;

3. flamewars caused by assumptions of who wins over who is heresy (and childish in a way similar to "my father is stronger than yours");

4. the fact that in the end, the dices decide who is the winner (failing a dodge roll is still possible, even if it's only 20% chance);

5. it doesn't answer the primary question of this topic being " Taking the Ass out of Assassins" aka "How to make the Vindicare assassin balanced";

That said, it's true that the Vindicare assassin is little more than a living weapon once his training is over. I doubt he would do more than follow orders since his reason for living is to kill for the Emperor, which is a big "fluff nerf" IMO. And if you're looking for "crunch nerf", than there is always the X solutions given by the other forumites since no errata was published for ascension on this subject, most of them being really good suggestions btw.

Adeptus-B said:

Setting aside Force Barrage, which was not designed with Ascention in mind, or even by the same team, Primaris work just fine played straight. Therefore I would advise against swapping Willpower and Psy rating around as this would actually be a buff, rather than a nerf.

Speaking purely statwise, a "good" Psyker would end up with a WP bonus of 7 or 8 (though I suppose 9 is possible with some serious twinkery, but such nonsense aside), etc. So a WP bonus of 14-16 is attainable fairly late in the game, with 21-24 being the levels attainable at the very end of the career progression, which would make them perhaps a rather weak Beta level Psyker.

Psy Rating 10 is a higher number than a WP bonus of 8, and deciding to ignore Unnatural Willpower's multiplication of Psy Rating would just be psyker-hate.


I don't have any easy answers for the Vindicare question, sadly. Anything that can keep up with a Deathwatch Marine clearly isn't designed to play on equal footing to an Inquisitor and his retinue and I expect they knew fact all too well going into it. As far as a faithful representation of a Temple Assassin goes, they pretty much hit the nail on the head, the only thing missing is a disclaimer, a-la Sisters of Battle.

My play groups all agreed that the only reasonable course was to accept that Temple Assassins arn't meant to be balanced, and leave their use to mature gaming groups only. The real tragedy of Ascention is how careers such as the Storm Trooper came out so bland and underpowered compared to the alternatives.

So let me get this straight, you want to take Assassins OUT of their skintight bodysuits?