Deathwatch (RPG)

Deathwatch
RPG published by Fantasy Flight Games
Rule System	d%
No. of Players	3+
Session Time	10+ minutes
Authors	Ross Watson, Jay Little, Sam Stewart
First Publication	2010
Essential Books	Deathwatch Core Rulebook The Game Master's Kit The Emperor Protects Rites of Battle Mark of the Xenos The Achilus Assault First Founding The Jericho Reach Rising Tempest Honour the Chapter The Outer Reach Ark of Lost Souls The Emperor's Chosen

Not to be confused with the titular Deathwatch organization, though it is about them.

Deathwatch is the third Fantasy Flight Games Warhammer 40,000 Role-Playing Game, and the first to focus on Space Marines - specifically, the alien-hunting Deathwatch stationed in the Jericho Reach. It's pretty cool; /tg/ uses it to make custom chapters.

System

Identical to the companion games published by Fantasy Flight Games (see below under See Also), Deathwatch uses a roll-under-or-equal 1d100 system. Also unchanged are the 9 primary stats, similar in range to those in Warhammer 40,000, which you roll against when making tests. The lethal combat of the other 40K RPGs is preserved, but at a much higher scale; players may pick weapons that deal far more damage than human-standard ones, but enemies are now more powerful, cunning, and can come in a Horde variety that is capable of pulling down a Space Marine through sheer numbers.

The core rulebook states that Dark Heresy characters with 12000 XP are roughly equal to starting-level Deathwatch characters, but despite what the rulebooks say while this is fair based on the value of the Astartes inherent abilities granted from their gene-seed organs and power armour traits it is not necessarily equal, as such high-level human characters will have highly increased stats, talents and skills far outside of the reach of many Astartes players as well as gear appropriate to their level, so a human character at equal XP could essentially run rings around a Space Marine.

Weapons and gear are requisitioned in Deathwatch, rather than bought. Each mission assigned to the kill-team comes with a certain number of points for each marine, and each piece of the Deathwatch's armory (apart from the usual standard issue boltgun etc.) comes with a points cost. At the end of the mission the requisitioned equipment is returned to the armory, and the players requisition new gear at the start of the next one. This is extremely helpful to the GM as he has less need to worry about players looting everything in sight either to keep for themselves or sell to break in-game economies as in most cases each player will have exactly the equipment they need to do their jobs which is better than their opponents and will also get a different loadout next mission.

The game also promotes good team co-operation with the unique addition of Solo/Squad modes. Players in solo mode get a nice bonus as they can focus doing their jobs, but if they join squad mode they can learn and use a range of tactical abilities that benefit the entire group, often in a much bigger way than solo mode does. As characters progress they can learn the unique tactical abilities of members of other chapters and benefit from them too, which is very much in the flufy spirit of the Deathwatch.

Playable Chapters

The Chapters found in the PHB are:

• The Ultramarines
• The Blood Angels
• The Dark Angels
• The Space Wolves
• The Black Templars
• And Fantasy Flight's own chapter, the Storm Wardens

Rites of Battle added:

• The Imperial Fists

First Founding brought in:

• The Salamanders
• The Iron Hands
• The White Scars
• The Raven Guard

Honour the Chapter added a shitton of Chapters in the form of:

• The Blood Ravens
• The Red Scorpions
• The Marines Errant
• The Flesh Tearers
• The Crimson Fists
• The Howling Griffons
• The Novamarines
• The Raptors
• The Carcharodons

Of course, you can play as any chapter you like or even make your own, thanks to the Space Marine Chapter Creation Tables from Rites of Battle.

List of Specialties

Deathwatch uses the term "specialty" to refer to what other games call "classes." The specialties available in the main rulebook are:

• Tactical Marine - all-rounder/command
• Assault Marine - close combat jump troop
• Devastator Marine - heavy weapons specialist
• Techmarine - engineer/scientist
• Librarian - psychic powers
• Apothecary - medic/scientist

Rites of Battle, First Founding and Honour the Chapter contain "advanced specialties" that can be taken in addition to the normal ones:

• Blackshield - effectively a Chapter rather than a Specialty; makes your chapter a seeeecret!
• Champion - a hero-hunter
• Chaplain - buffing & "spiritual guidance"
• Dreadnought - walking rape-machine
• Epistolary - super-Librarian
• Forge Master - super-Techmarine
• Keeper - one part emissary, one part kill machine
• Kill-marine - solo operator, can squad mode with himself
• Watch Captain - The Hero, and the guy who gets all the bitches
• First Company Veteran - All round badass who's seen it all and done it all

First Founding provides Chapter-specific Specialties:

• Deathwing Veteran - free Terminator Armour
• Ravenwing Veteran - free bike
• Sanguinary Priest - super apothecary, also buffs Blood Angels & Successors
• Librarian Dreadnought - fuck-yeah
• Wolf Scout - recon tactical specialist
• Wolf Priest - cross between a Chaplain & Apothecary... broken as fuck in-game
• Tyrannic War Veteran - Nid-killer
• Honour Guard - EPIC Mary-Sue (though the book attaches them to the Ultramarines, it does say any "codex" space marine should also have access to this speciality)

Honour the Chapter describes:

• Sword Brethren - Black Templar version of the First Company Veteran, more close combat focussed
• Emperor's Champion - A tougher Black Templar with a selection of mission-long buffs and a one-time upgrade that turns you into the toughest motherfucker on the Kill Team but it lasts only one mission and costs 500 xp that you are not getting back.
• Tempest Blades - A special class exclusive to the Storm Wardens, who wield massive two-handed Power swords around on the battlefield duelling worthy enemies, which will eventually end in their deaths.

Splatbooks

• Core Rulebook - The Player's Handbook, which also contains everything that the DM will need.
• The Game Master's Kit - Not the Dungeon Master's Guide, despite the name. Contains a prewritten adventure and a DM's screen.
• Final Sanction/Oblivion's Edge]] - Free downloadable adventures with pre-made characters to immerse first-time players into what this game's all about.
• The Emperor Protects- Pre-written adventure about Rogue Traders, traitors, and missing Inquisitors. Generally everything you'd expect.
• Rites of Battle - /tg/'s favourite supplement, Rites of Battle is the biggest expansion to date, containing not only rules for creating your own chapter, the Imperial Fists, and advanced character creation, but also advanced Specialties.
• Mark of the Xenos - Extra content on enemies and aliens.
• The Achilus Assualt - Gives a bunch of background fluff on the setting, Jericho Reach.
• First Founding - Finally getting around to adding the remaining four First Founding Chapters and gives additional information about the other First Founding Chapters along with the Traitor Legions, along with ways to use the latter as antagonists.
• The Jericho Reach - Another fluff book, this one focuses on notable kill-teams and their locations in the Reach. Also comes with a pre-written adventure as well.
• Know No Fear - A History of the Jericho Reach - A free download that explains the history of the Jericho Reach in the context of the Imperium.
• The Nemesis Incident - A free download that explains a critical part of the history of the Storm Wardens.
• Rising Tempest - Interesting adventure book focusing on the Tau trying to weasel their way into Imperial space, and what will happen if the naive blueberry cunts do it.
• Honour the Chapter - A shitton of new Successor Chapters from the later Foundings for players to use (such as the Blood Ravens), as well as rules for Successors that don't know their parent chapter or aren't closely linked to them.
• The Outer Reaches- Extra content introducing the Eldar (Craftworld, Dark Eldar, and Harlequins), as well as the local Necron dynasty.
• Ark of Lost Souls - Pre-written adventure book that takes place in a Space Hulk. Provides rules for generating your very own space hulk!
• The Emperor's Chosen - Pretty much another Rites of Battle, with the first half being fluff on legendary missions and the latter half on playing and equiping 'inheritors' to those legends. Adds squad-level prestige classes/doctrines, allowing even more coordinated rape of the GM's plotline, and an adventure to try out said crunchy bits.

Things that rock

• Contains rules that actually encourage roleplaying.
• Lets you play as whatever Chapter you want.
• The game can be exploited to do hilarious things, like caber-tossing Chaos Lords in Terminator armor almost 200 meters, or Assault Marines running at 276 km/h.
• You can play as a Dreadnought!

Things that suck

• The Ultramarines are once again shown to be the best Chapter ever at everything... sorta. Crunchwise, they're only really good as support, team leader, and "diplomat" characters--other Chapters are much, much better at combat, technology, and other roles. However, in the fluff, there's still a strong emphasis on how great the Codex Astartes is and how all real Chapters follow it to the letter (although, to be fair, that is what many Imperials actually believe).
  • For example: The Ultramarine sustained squad mode ability grants each member a flat bonus on ALL tests equal to his fellowship bonus and also grants one floating re-roll to the team ever turn, which so unbelievably handy it's almost broken. While this is normally only available to those who have learned the Ultramarines tactic, a Tactical Marine can attempt to confer his chapter squad mode ability onto the non-chapter members of the rest of his squad by passing a command test, which an Ultramarine Tactical Marine is just built for so that the squad should just have the ability switched on all the time.
• Characters are overpowered compared to normal humans, making it very hard to use characters in the other 40k RPGs (But what did you expect from Space Marines?)
• Critical Damage tables remain unchanged from the other 40k RPGs because FFG copypasted them, so take enough damage and you'll see your badass Space Marine start whimpering and acting in a very non-Space-Mariney way. E.G.- "...gasping in wretched pain." "Screaming incoherently, he twists about in agony for a few seconds before collapsing to the ground and dying." etcetera.
  • "A blast of energy envelopes the target’s head, burning his face and hair, and causing him to scream like a stuck Grox. In addition to losing his hair..." Very much copypasted, because everyone knows being bald is a requirement to be a space marine, hair-esy aside.
• A fanmade Salamanders codex that hews closer to the spirit of the chapter than the FFG version.

Links

• Dark Reign - A W40kRPG fansite, it has additional fan-made materials for all the W40kRPG line.
• Character Folio - Yet another huge character sheet, now Deathwatch flavored.
• A free PDF made by FFG that gives free NPCs based on Ultramarines: The Movie, as well as a relic from there.

Warhammer 40,000 Role-playing games made by Fantasy Flight Games
Dark Heresy - Rogue Trader - Deathwatch - Black Crusade - Only War - Dark Heresy Second Edition