Hi!

So after today's game session, our group had some brainstorming about the specializations of OW. We decided to do some revamping on this section as we've found it somewhat… confusing. Like, y'know, stuff what often pop up on this forum: the rather confusing Operator (everyone has a different view on this guy), the odd Sergeant (Mister Fluff Choice) the somewhat lackluster Medic (he is either compulsory or you can miss him completely), the Priest and the Storm Trooper. And of course the missing specializations (rifleman, scout). 

So after some discussion, we came up with the following Guardsman Specializations (yes, we love the class selection of the Battlefield series): 

ASSAULT - The missing 'rifleman' specialization. The backbone guy of every Squad. 

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Strength, +5 Toughness, -3 Intelligence

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, Finesse, Strength, Offense, Toughness, Defense

Starting Skills: Athletics, Intimidate

Starting Talents: Iron Jaw, Takedown, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las, Solid Projectile, choose 3 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Good craftsmanship flak armor, M36 lasgun or bullpup lasgun or autogun or combat shotgun, laspistol or autopistol or stub automatic or stub revolver, knife, 2 frag grenades or photon flash grenades.

Wounds: 10+D5

RECON - Another missing class, the scout. Trades versatility for combat capability, so not really a frontline character. 

Characteristic Bonus: -3 Toughness, +5 Agility, +3 Perception

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Finesse, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Fieldcraft, Social

Starting Skills: Awareness, Navigate (Surface), Stealth, Survival

Starting Talents: Heightened Senses (Sight or Hearing or Smell), Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile, choose 1 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Auspex/scanner, binoculars, red-dot laser sight or telescopic sight, silencer, lascarbine or long-las or sniper rifle or autogun or bow, knife, 2 stun grenades or blind grenades.

Wounds: 7+D5

MEDIC - Changed, but still the same. Now with increased durability and some extra equipment to boot.

Characteristic Bonus: -3 Ballistic Skill, -3 Weapon Skill, +5 Intelligence, +3 Willpower, +3 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Toughness, Defense, Intelligence, Knowledge, Fieldcraft, Willpower, Fellowship

Starting Skills: Dodge, Medicae, Scholastic Lore (Chymistry), Trade (Chymist)

Starting Talents: Cold Hearted or Jaded, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile)

Specialist Equipment: Diagnostor, injector, medikit, field suture, 8 de-tox, 8 stimms.

Wounds: 8+D5

ENGINEER - The successor of the Operator, now with more "task focus".

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Intelligence, +5 Willpower, -3 Fellowship

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill, Strength, Offense, Toughness, Intelligence, Tech, Willpower

Starting Skills: Common Lore (Tech), Tech-Use, Trade (Armourer)

Starting Talents: Technical Knock or Weapon-Tech or Armor-Monger, Hardy or Resistance (Fear), Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las or Solid Projectile, choose 2 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: Combi-tool, lascutter, M36 lasgun or combat shotgun or flamer or grenade launcher, 5 krak grenades or 2 demolition charges or 1 melta bomb.

Wounds: 8+D5

SUPPORT -The unholy bastard child of the Heavy Gunner and the Weapon Specialist. Nuff' said. Oh, just one more thing: this specialization can also serve as the "Sergeant" in case the Squad really-really needs one. 

Characteristic Bonus: +3 Ballistic Skill or Weapon Skill, +5 Strength, -3 Agility

Starting Aptitudes: Ballistic Skill or Weapon Skill, Finesse, Strength, Fieldcraft, Willpower, Fellowship

Starting Skills: Common Lore (War), Inquiry or Scrutiny

Starting Talents: Rapid Reload or Street Fighting, Nerves of Steel or Storm of Iron, Weapon Training (Low-Tech, Las, Solid Projectile, Heavy, choose 2 excluding Exotic)

Specialist Equipment: One of the following:

- M36 lasgun or bullpup lasgun or autogun, auxiliary grenade launcher

- Storm bolter or regimental favored special weapon

- Heavy stubber or regimental favored heavy weapon

- Sword or great weapon or chainsword, laspistol or autopistol or stub automatic or stub revolver or shield

Wounds: 9+D5

Next up: Support Specailists, so stay tuned!

All C&C is welcomed! No playtesting yet, but we are working on it.

Definitely keeping an eye on this.

What are you doing for the Support Specializations?

I don't understand the need of the specialization "SUPPORT"…

I specialy like the idea of an ASSAULT specialization, though. In that one, I would change some things:

- Why photon grenades? It's not even an option in the tabletop game. I understand that the assault specialist is the "grunt" that can handle anything you throw at them, hold his position, entrench himself and empty one lasgun clip after another. Maybe giving them 3 frags would be enough. And an entrenching tool!!

- Why is he able to have 3 extra weapon trainings?? With the three basic ones I think that they have more than enough to do "their job".

I also like the RECON, but I think that you gave them too much equipment (compared to the ones on the book). The specializations that usually have more starting equipment are the ones that are not combat oriented (and so, they don't usually recieve cool weapons at the beginning). RECON and ENGINEER have too many starting toys…

Way too much equipment for all these guys.

Seems like a lot of these builds are things that you could do with the existing specs, with about 1k exp.

The soldiers, initially, are supposed to be generic. 

Plushy:

Commissar, Ministorium Priest, Sanctioned Psyker, Techpriest Engineseer and Imperial Assassin. I'll post them sometimes around this weekend.

Whoseyes:

As its name suggests, the Support is about fire support. he is more relaible in this area than the others because of its starting Talents, characteristic bonuses and basic weapon selection.

The Asault is meant to be the jack-of-all-trades with a knack for… well… assaulting. Photon grenades are there to flush out the enemy. And if you don't like them, then you can always choose frags! The reason for the 3 weapon trainings is similar: the Assault is the guy who is supposed to pick up the "leftover" weapons lying around to complement the Support. But yeah, maybe we will reduce it to 2. 

The Recon is meant to be a glass cannon class. He has got cool gadgets, but he also needs nurturing and could be the "weak link" of the Squad during bigger fights. 

And why do the Enginner have too many toys? One main weapon, one set of explosives, and two tech tools are everything he gets.These are all "tools for the task" and you always have the option to just take the humblest combination (the M36 lasgun and the krak grenades). 

In some cases, gear also unlocks "sub-specializations": an Engineer with flamer and demo charges/melta bomb will be a "bunker buster" while with a grenade launcher he will be the "demo man". 

Flail-Bot:

Yes, the goal of these alternative specializations is to clean up the current ones. They are pretty cool on their own, but we think that they are also somewhat messy (especially the Operator). 

I'll keep my reply civil after how dereailed our debate in the other thread got.

Whilst i can understand why you might think the existing specialisations are 'messy' they are that way because of how the 40k canon has established the Imperial Guard - they are almost infinite in their number and so don't have jack-of-all-trades rambo warriors like the Adeptus Astartes have. Instead they have countless trillions of basic infantry supported by billions of specialists. Officers lead but aren't the best at fighting, heavy weapons are manned by the burliest guardsmen, those with a knack for hitting targets get specialist weapons, those with an aptitude with vehicles become operators just like those with an aptitude with biology become medics. The imperial guard then supplement these line troopers with specialists - commisars to keep the troops morale in check and make sure imperial propaganda is stuck to, techpriests to maintain the myriad fighting vehicles and pieces of technology the guard use, psykers to use their warp fuelled powers against imperial enemies, demi-humans who are tolerated only because of their military application are pressed into service as monstrous assault troops or superb scouts and snipers etc etc.

What you seem to be proposing with these powerful archetypes really doesn't suit the power level and gameplay style of Only War as much as it would the high power commando units that are the Deathwatch playstyle. Each of your proposed classes has two to three times the amount of gear that a starting character should have.

Finally you make mention of the missing specializations but they are already in the game. Weapon specialists can excell at being scouts and everyones comrades are the riflemen of your squad - you don't play the rank and file you play the talented individuals within the unit.

I dunno about the power level… We had the NPC Guardsman profile as our starting point, and that guy is pretty buffed up compared even to these new specializations. I mean, 3 simple Characterisitc Advances (5 up 2 down), 7+2 known Skills and 3-4 Talents aren't exactly the "lowly cannon fodder" category. So to say. 

Also it feels like people miss the fact that 3/4 of the listed gear is or/or, so you take either one or the other, and not all of them :D. 

AtoMaki said:

My objection to the ENGINEER equipment list was motivated by the fact that they get cool "tools" and cool weapons too (grenade launcer, flamer…). As I stated in my previous post, in the official specialization list they give more equipment/tools to the guys that have less or worse weapons.

Same happens with RECON: they get über cool equipment and a long-las (if they want to), which is a über cool weapon also, at least that's how I see it.

whoseyes said:

Hmmm… I see. So what if I split up the equipment selection of these two Support style? Example:

RECON

Specialist Equipment: One of the following:

- Auspex/scanner, lascarbine or autogun or bow, 2 stun grenades or blind grenades

- Long-las or sniper rifle with silencer, knife

Assault, Support and Recon? Has some-one been playing Battlefield 3? <shudder>

I can imagine that an field Engineer is something that is missing but a replacement for the Operator? He can't drive a tank for sh!t and having an IG games without the option of vehicle crew is just wrong.

And what's the difference between a Rifleman who can kind of use other basic weapons and a Weapon specialist who's taken a rifle as a main weapon?   

Finally I realy think it's a fluff mistake to allow each person to decide whether to take an auto-gun, lasgun etc, It might be a bit more annoying to have to decide it for everyone at regiment design but not even the most wasteful, bloated, inefficient modern army (US) would have a half of a squad with one calibre and the other half with another let alone in the IG and changing that between bullets and charge packs, where that's basically religious dogma now. 

Face Eater said:

I agree with you that the weapons should be standardized. And I think it should be lasguns. There's a lot of fluff about how glorious and perfect the lasgun is and VERY few regiments don't use it. Lasguns are Reliable. Equipping a squad with a gun that shoots ACTUAL BULLETS as well as not being Reliable, seems like a massive logistics no-no.

But, I did want to point out that the modern US fireteam has 2-3 different weapons. They're not all unified, even if the army does have a standard rifle.

Well, you always have the option to choose the lasgun… The autogun option is just there for the players who want an autogun Regiment without the "spend equipment points to get it" option. So if you don't like it, then you can go "Laser Squad!" with your buddies, and go all lasguns. It makes like, zero difference. 

The Pilot class is currently missing. The Engineer is the succesor of the Operator only as the "tech savvy" guardsman. The Pilot is a project for the future, as the class is rather messed up for the current game mechanics. 

AtoMaki said:

I'd like to hear your reasoning behind why you feel the Operator is messed up? I've found them to be one of the more versatile and balanced of the classes available - they have some tech aptitude but its not so overwhelmingly good that everyone else can ignore tech and leave it up to the Operator, they can pilot literally anything with a simple talent purchase and their comrade ability makes a vehicle they are in significantly better than one crewed by anyone else (comrade puts out fire and fires secondary weapons - yes please!).

Kasatka said:

So far we have 2 parties with Operators and guess what… in both cases we were an infantry regiment. And surprise, the Operator was close to the "uber-character" in both Squads. Only seconded by the Storm Trooper (doh). To the point where he was waaaay more useful outside of any vehicle than inside. His aptitudes are simply off the chart for piloting stuff, and his complete lack of durability will give him some hard time (he is dead meat in an open-topped vehicle, and the first whatevergrenade/vehicle critical damage will konck him out for good in closed vehicles). On the other side, he is excellent for stealth, tech, healing and if you can have him a Perception aptitude, then for scouting too. He is simply an "overkill" for a pilot. A Weapon Specialist (or Storm Trooper) can do this piloting stuff much-much better. But he is an awesome tech specialist, medic and infiltrator. What is kinda' sad since you can't use your good Medicae/Tech-Use/Stealth skill through the hull of a Hellhound….

For example, in a Squad where you have 4 guys and 1 Sentinel, you should have 1 Storm Trooper/Weapon Specailist in the Sentinel, and 1 Operator on foot. The ST/WS has much better synergy with the Sentinel, while the Operator will be much more useful on the ground, supporting the other characters. And that's kinda' sad if you ask me. 

AtoMaki said:

They're not missing. They're just not classed as specialisations (with an s, because 40k uses British English). The generic rifleman is covered in part by the weapon specialist, and in part by the comrades that most characters get. The scout is covered by the Recon and Light Infantry regiment types - the Imperial Guard fields formations of scouts, deployed in whatever concentrations are necessary at the time, rather than giving the job to individual men (because when you're running a warzone containing (at a conservative estimate) millions of men, individual soldiers are essentially beneath your notice.

When you're playing a first-person shooter with a couple of dozen people on each side, individual people as scout, recon, support, etc makes great practical sense (I'm a fan of the Battlefield series as well), but that isn't the context of Only War.

To other matters brought up in subsequent posts:

The Lasgun is one weapon in the sense that "assault rifle" is one weapon - there are many thousands of different patterns and makes of Lasgun used across the Imperium. The Only War Core Rulebook only covers a miniscule sample of this, but it's safe to assume that a given regiment probably uses a pattern of Lasgun local to the world of their founding - the Kantrael-pattern is common to Cadian regiments, while the Necromundans use a pattern produced on their homeworld, the Krieg tend to be issued with the higher-powered but slow-firing Lucius-pattern, while the bullpup Accatran-pattern is commonly-associated with Elysian regiments.

I flat-out disagree with Imperial Assassin as a Support Specialist in Only War. If there's a Temple Assassin operating on the same world as Imperial Guard forces, then those Guardsmen won't even know about it, let alone work with one directly. Imperial Assassins are specialised living weapons, the most combative of them (in essence, anything but Venenum and Vanus, though it depends on context for the others) able to out-fight Space Marines, their operations concealed behind a veil of secrecy, and their deployment controlled by the direct command of the High Lords of Terra. They're hardly the kind of thing you'd find fighting alongside a squad of Imperial Guardsmen.

Would an agent of the Officio Sabatorum be an acceptable addition to the group, as a sneaky sort that isn't a sniper?

…I miss Demolitions as a skill.