They usually publish it online a week or so after the release for Free RPG Day. Expect to see it soon.

I was so happy that we can play Ogryns in Only War… until I saw their stats. 17 wounds?! It must be a joke. Strenght and toughness bonus of 6 when SM have 8?! So now Ogryns are just slighty bigger and stronger humans. Were people responsible for creating their stats even bothering to read some fluff about Ogryns? I can only hope that in full game that idiocy will be corrected. 

 @Shadow Walker,

Do mind that they must consider game balance and that ogryns are not genetically engineered super soldiers but just evolved humans.
The average human can lift some 74kg or 163lbs, according to the ogryn in EH the average starting ogryn can lift almost 500lbs, that is a lot more.

The character in in EH is a starting Ogryn, it wouldn't surpirse me if they could buy more unnatural strength and I'm sure they can buy more strength.
Judging by the stats Ogryns have a starting strength of 30+2d10 and according to the sheet they can buy another +30, for the sake of argument lets say +20.
The same goes for Toughness.

So an advanced Ogryn, a veteran, could have a strength and toughness of 70, add the unnatural stats to it and our ogryn could lift almost 6000lbs.

So I think they did a good job thus far…
 

I do not agree about need of nerfing them to balance against other specialities.Each one has its niche to fulfil. Storm Trooper is a beast when its come to all things special forces are for but he will probably suck at inspiring troops. Thats why you have Commissar and Ministorum Priest. And we have the same case with Ogryns. They are huge brutes that can beat even Ork Warboss [see Nork Deddog in latest Imperial Guard codex]but in all other things they will suck because they are dumb. This is exactly how they are balanced toward other specialities and thats is why they stats should not be nerfed. They should be as they are in fluff because strenght and toughness are what they excel at.

Santiago said:

There's balance.  Then there's ridiculous to the point of them not even being accurate to the fluff.  Heck, the ones in Disciples of the Dark Gods have Hulking AND Unnatural Str and Toughness.  Plus 30 wounds.

And unnaturals?  We don't even know if they get them.  Remember, Hulking gives the bonus too. 

At first I was worried Ogryn would be too hard to balance with other PCs if they were portrayed right, and despite that I would rather have had Hulking Brutes with the right stats and deal with it than I would see them this pathetic.

But gimping them this far is simply ridiculous.  Even normal human gene augmented sorts can be stronger than that.

Let's just hope this is an Ogryn that rolled very poorly on their Str and the range is 40-60 for starters, at least.  Or they were extra gimped for the sample adventure.   Admittedly, I still argue they're poor PC options to begin with due to being dumber than most orks.  And even with the sort of stats they should have, (even as this one is portrayed) they completely rule out ever bothering with stealth options and pretty much make expected assaults your only option, which only further makes things tough in an already military RPG - harder to do anything different.

 For the Demo they cut down on the rules. In the book you will see they have the Hulking Trait, Unnatural Toughness and Strength 2 and 5 more wounds than the rest.
You might say this is too little, but imho Space Marines should be more dangerous than Ogryn. As I said, they are just devolved humans who happen to be very strong.So if the Ogryn are not strong enought we should give the Astartes an Unnatural Strength and Toughness 6 or even 8.

So the setting is going to be "the Spinward Front"? 'Spinward' is the outer edge of the galaxy, right? So, I'm guessing this will continue the tradition of adjacent settings- maybe the Spinward Front is just 'South' of the Calixis Sector?

One thing worth remembering is that the characters in Broken Chains (last year's Black Crusade demo) weren't strictly by-the-book characters - the Chosen's heavy weapon doesn't exist outside of that adventure, and the Heretek's capabilities and armament weren't from the rulebook either. The rules and characters both are designed for quick-start demo games rather than being an in-depth preview of the rulebook.

In short, don't be so quick to assume that everything you see in the demo is an accurate representation of what you'll see in the published rulebook.

Santiago said:

Um… that's really not that impressive - and is exactly what we see already.  Unless Hulking has changed and now offers the equivalent of a rank of Unnatural S and T on top of them having a level of such. 

Ignoring astartes for a moment, that's still only -as- tough as a normal Ork. And only barely stronger.  In the BL novels they are physically stronger than a Power Armored Astartes.  And Hulking doesn't give a Str and T bonus, so just one level of the Unnaturals doesn't allow that, they're actually weaker.  Now with some stupid justification of this being a young, not fully grown Ogryn at Chargen, sure.  Now if UN S and T at level 2 or higher is part of their advance schema (especially right away), then fine. But as it stands? These aren't Ogryns, these are barely modified humans. BOgryns are otherwise so big that they're on par sizewize with Ork Warbosses, and as strong or stronger (again, I only mean physically!  I am NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT EVER saying 'better' - my use of "Stronger" in these posts is ALWAYS referring to physical strength alone) as all but the biggest orks.

  And I do agree that Astartes should be -better-.  My argument has and always will be I don't think the Ogryn as we've seen so far is -strong- (as in physically, not caps!) enough comparitively, these are things that routinely do out strength Astartes in Black Library novels.  Just because Ogryns are stronger doesn't  make them more dangerous than an Astartes, the Astartes has brains, and skill.  The Ogryn's got the fact it's a 10 foot tall hulk of muscle and fat and little else.

Heck, the fact Power Armor allows Astartes to ignore the "Hulking" penalties alone is a huge advantage.

 As I said earlier, the stats in the freebie are compressed, it is not the full rulebook. Also the ogryn in the story is a starting ogryn.
They als need to make it a viable player character. So lets wait what the book tells us.

 Ran this for 3 friends of mine. Had the Weapons Specialist, Heavy Gunner and the Tech-Priest. Game went pretty smooth and everybody had a good time. They managed to get out with 2 left on the timer even.

What's the weapon specialist armed with?

BYE

Pistol shotgun… the size of a massive rifle (according to the picture) and with an ammunition capacity of 8. Ok,. it is called a "hand-held Combat Shotgun" but it is apparently "pistol" class.

The heavy weapon specialist had a flamer (statted up as Blast (3), I presume for simplicities sake)… and Target Selection. Err… useful… not.

As far as the Ogryns: It was probably done for game balance, but it does make you wonder if the scale if stats is actually judged differently from the other lines (Deathwatch's scale is a bit overblown compared to the previous ones already). Not surprising that they nerfed them for game balance. Same thing happened to Sisters of Battle to try and "balance" the fact that they got Power Armour at 1st Rank (the idea of full Sister Militant at Rank 1 still hurts me).

A flamer? That's surprising.

BYE

@borithan

What does Target Selection do in this game?