[RPG] W40K: Arbitrator not very successful

You've made two key changes:

1. Allowing multiple combat half-actions per round
2. allowing movement to be replaced by a non-movement half-action

The primary factors I see are:

• increase in Psyker offensive capability (Most of their offense is more powerful than their allowed weapons; it gets worse under RT or DW, due to a different psychic system)
• decreased access to defenses¹
• decreased emphasis on movement²
• increased emphasis on non-action defense (IE, cover)³
• breaks the equipment bonuses
• decreases incentives to use burst and full-auto autofire modes
• cybernetics and talents with extra half-actions become devalued⁴
• initiative becomes more important⁵
• Ganging up becomes less essential⁶

¹: Since one gets very few defenses per turn, this change of yours makes them less valuable, by allowing them to be overwhelmed faster.

²: The current system makes movement a valuable and essentially irreplaceable part of the round; take it or not, it's lost if unused or unusable. It's not terribly realistic, but is very cinematic. And DH, RT, and DW are all intended to be very cinematic in tone.

³: At present, especially for melee, active defenses (dodge and parry) are quite valuable; cover is less so, but not enough to render it useless. When one allows replaceing movement with a second attack, cover suddenly becomes MUCH more attractive, as it's an assured penalty to be hit, instead of a roll by the defender... but it also reduces drama.

⁴: At present, the only way to get a second attack is expensive talents and/or cyberware with inexpensive talents. If a character can just hole up in cover and double shoot, these talents are far less valuable, making the Assassin and Guardsman's additional combat actions less useful.

⁵: Further, by allowing the etra attacks, you can run a target out of actions sooner, as well, so initiative becomes more important to prevent having actions drained in defenses.

⁶: Ganging up is the great equalizer in RT and DH combats; it's how one overwhelms defenses. Given that every character can defend once for free, and once by aborting, if you can attack twice, you've just eaten both defenses this round, meaning you only need one attack from a buddy to get through. The norm is that you need two buddies to negate the defenses, or one buddy with a multiple attack talent.

It sounds like you made these changes with rank 1-2 characters... it's going to be more profoundly off-norm or higher rank characters, as normal slow growth of actions is made to feel even slower by providing far less of a bonus over not having them.

I think that a house rule is possibly the best answer, barring some detail in the RAW that is being missed.

Simple Rule: as the distance thrown doubles, double the scatter. If a 30m throw is a 5m scatter, a 60m throw results in a 10m scatter. Thus for Space Marines hit they have to get it right or throw a larger grenade with a greater blast radius.

Complex Rule: Mathematically determine the cone of scatter as distance extends. Account for hallways or other constrained spaces, e.g., a 40m hallway 3m wide with target at 30m. Account for roll in the scatter (What is the shape of the grenade? Has the user modified it to not roll, spikes or other roll retarder?). Account for overpressure in confined spaces.

I'm not prepared to write the house rule because I'm not sure how crunchy your game is or how crunchy your players like rules.

I might find a common sense middle ground, accounting for confined spaces in scatter and rolling grenades, but drop the math and overpressure damage and just reduce damage by 1/2 on a miss where scatter was called for, at least in confined spaces. In exterior spaces I might reduce damage to 1/4, if it made common sense.

A 1000m throw, while Space Marine's power armor is quite powerful, is something as a GM I may laugh it, but still say,"Yes, but ... you need to strap some kind of booster to it or "over clock" your power armor in some heretofore unknown method at a cost of possible rotator cuff damage to armor or body or both" :) But sure, you can throw it a 1000m. Roll at an -50% to hit and roll X for armor damage and Y for physical damage. If there was some "indirect fire rule" I might invoke that (certainly in the case of a grenade with a booster rocket, but why is the PC considering such an action anyway? Just get a mortar from the chest... Oh wait, different movie).

<evil-gm-laugh>Bwahhahahahahah.</evil-gm-laugh>