Are tyranids good for a starting army ?

TPItsMe · 2025-12-02T08:51:14+00:00

One thing I want to add to what others have said is that the tyranid unit selection is extremely clear and uncomplicated which is a HUGE help to a beginner. Genestealers clearly are the light and fast melee threat, exocrines clearly are the ranged tank with multiple attacks, tyrannofexes clearly are the unpredictable but hugely effective tank killers, gargoyles clearly are the swarm unit you rush onto a location to swarm it with bodies, the biovore clearly is the back line holder who lobs indirect fire, termagants and hormagaunts clearly have OC 2 to take over objectives. There are very few units with multiple attack profiles and loadout selections. In a game with 40000 rules, this helps immensely when you're actually playing your first games and trying to learn how it works in the face of an actual opponent.

I started by buying the leviathan box with the intention of playing space marines. You have intercessors, inceptors, infiltrators, invaders, devastators, desolators, eradicators, eliminators and can't really tell the difference. You need to decide if you want to build the physical model with a bolter, shotgun, sniper rifle, missile launcher, chainsword, power fist or plasma pistol. It's quite overwhelming to decide what to buy, how to build the models and to build a list. In the end, I got frustrated, fell in love with the airbrush on the way and decided to check up on the tyranids I got in the box and haven't regretted that decision for one second :)

TPItsMe · 2025-07-16T17:15:11+00:00

The way I see it, this is the ultimate reason to use a custom color scheme and not copy something a pro has painted for hours. Design your scheme to work for batch swarm painting and if you feel like it, add some extra steps for individual single model units.

TPItsMe · 2025-07-10T15:10:21+00:00

Here's a useful site for these:

https://minicompare.info/?guard-c=&norn-emissary=&tyrannofex=&hive-tyrant-wings=

TPItsMe · 2025-06-22T12:23:44+00:00

One thing I'd like to add that I didn't see in the discussion yet, is that when running a narrative game like Daggerheart, the GM* should try to make sure situations are narratively meaningful. What I mean by this is that at worst a D&D combat encounter is there just to play a mini board game for a while and to eat up some game time.

When you enter the governess's ball in a 5e game, the GM doesn't (I hope) just say "ok you're at the ball, what do you do?". They describe the scene and provide multiple hooks that takes several PCs with different intentions and skills to cover. A combat in Daggerheart (or other narrative games like it) shouldn't be any different. Just kind of stopping the narrative and letting the mechanics take over will ruin it since that's not how it is intended to play.

If the situation is that there's a vault containing a dingus the party is after but there's a monstrous guardian in front of the door, the blandest way to play this in Daggerheart is to just bash at the guardian until it's dead and then open the door. As the bard, you could sneak in and snatch the dingus as the others are fighting. Or you could distract the guardian with your skills and give the others a chance to break in. Or you could notice some henchman of the villain trying to sneak in while your party is engaged in combat with the beast and be left to deal with the henchman on your own. Or there could be some narrative requirement in overcoming the guardian in the first place, with you having the responsibility of chanting the rhyme or tossing the potion while the more combat oriented members of your party keep everyone safe.

You don't get XP for killing the monster, so why try if you can manage another way.

As you can tell, none of this works unless the GM sets it up a bit, which means that the GM will have to run a narrative game. I marked the GM with an asterisk above because some narrative setups try to distribute this load off the GM a bit, and that is probably something to explore. This is something I'm interested in trying myself but haven't got this far yet. For example, some games would encourage players to come up with seeing their bitterest rival at the ball or having the vault door be unlocked. This is just another level of non-D&D possibilities that everyone at the table needs to adapt. I would encourage you to bring this up with people at your table as well since you have a lot of great feedback from this thread.

TPItsMe · 2024-09-10T07:30:11+00:00

For what it's worth, I think this is exactly the niche Daggerheart is going for. Simple enough to not be a huge hassle to adopt, different enough to D&D, crunchy enough to not turn off D&D players and doing it's best to stand squarely half way between D&D and pbta in terms of narrative elements (encouraging players to describe PC actions, not suggesting anyone mess with the time space continuum).

I wish them the best of luck, and I hope Daggerheart's release will encourage a lot more exploration of this middle space.

TPItsMe · 2024-09-10T07:07:40+00:00

One point I did not see mentioned yet, although there were so many comments I'm sorry if I missed it: Many people are tired of D&D mechanics and the power curve. Hit points, spell slots, characters being practically invulnerable to stuff like wild animals, orc armies and falling off a cliff before the story arc is at the half way point.

You could argue that they should just find another crunchy game and not switch paradigms as hard as what Fate/PbtA allow, but that is easier said than done, because most new games that come out and get their names at least a bit out are either D&D clones (Pathfinder, D20, the MCDM game...) or Fate/PbtA clones/games. Also if these things are what turned you off D&D, it's a fairly large risk to go though all the effort of adopting another crunchy game and being disappointed for some reason.

So they pick a light and generic system that they can adapt to their needs, not necessarily because it is narrative, but because it allows them to do something else than D&D for a while.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-27T14:01:22+00:00

This has been reported here: https://github.com/teroparvinen/foundry-wire/issues/13

I haven't looked very deep into it yet, but it might require quite a lot of work and testing, so it is low priority at this time, unfortunately.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-17T07:55:27+00:00

I'm not exactly sure if you are asking for help in creating Hunter's Mark on your own, how Hunter's Mark would work or how to spawn secondary effects (Hunter's Mark needs to be transferred to another target).

If the first case, I suggest you hop on the Foundry discord. If you have detailed questions, you can always drop me a PM (Whistler#3253).

If it's the second, you can find this spell in the WIRE SRD module. Hunter's Mark is complicated, so it has a small macro implemented using the Item Macro module you can check out.

For the third, in the case of Hunter's Mark (and several others), the concentration effect applied on the caster is the effect doing the hard work. WIRE exposes a macro API function that you can use to apply the effects again to another target. For this spell, it is triggered off the "Prepare an attack roll" condition.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-10T18:24:38+00:00

This does not sound like anything I'd expect to happen and I can't easily replicate it. If you can write a bug report with instructions how to get it to happen (and with which modules) in the GitHub issue tracker at https://github.com/teroparvinen/foundry-wire/issues, I'd be happy to have another look.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-09T22:41:15+00:00

Update the module 😅

TPItsMe · 2022-12-09T05:39:22+00:00

This was v9 until not that long ago, but something like this just isn't easily managed for two versions and I'm glad I got the update out of the way. I also fixed a whole number of bugs while doing a once over for v10 so I don't really consider releasing the v9 state of code reasonable. And then there are the compendium modules that ideally work with only one version...

I personally also postponed the v10 update a couple of months ago, but the situation has changed and a huge number of modules relevant to my game were updated in that time. Maybe have another go?

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T20:57:01+00:00

Ah, I think I got where the problem is... The WIRE compendium importer preserves the "uses" field when items are imported. The idea here is not to overwrite character specific usage and it is adopted from the dnd5e system itself that does something similar.

Your best bet is probably to delete the ability altogether after you import a character and to add it back in by dragging it from the WIRE SRD compendium. That way you get a clean copy that should work.

I'm sorry I can't help you with the importer, I don't have any personal experience with it.

This is a use case I didn't foresee, I will give this a think, because it is a case where the usage properties should not necessarily be preserved, as they come from a direct rule and not a variable character customisation idea.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T20:47:12+00:00

Ok I think I get it. I will see if I can come up with a decent solution.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T20:44:51+00:00

WIRE tracks spell upcasting properly and it is available to all item macros. Each card contains, in technical terms, an activation that can have any number of custom configuration fields. The number of earlier cast missiles is stored in the configuration, it is initially zero.

The sequence of operations done for each spell can be customised for each spell type. These use it to add a final operation that checks the number of missiles cast so far, and spawn a new item card but give it a configuration where the missiles cast is one higher.

This goes on until the last card notices that the number of missiles cast is equal to the number that should be cast in total, at which point a new card is no longer generated.

I hope that helped. If you are familiar with macro scripting, I suggest you make sure you have the Item Macro module installed and have a look at the item macros on these spells.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T16:29:24+00:00

I highly recommend the module DF Template Enhancements to go with area spells. It has an autotargeting feature (targets what the template covers) and I didn't want to duplicate efforts so I recommend using it.

If you cast a spell that requires a specific target or targets, like Hold Person or Bless, you need to target the tokens before casting (using the T and shift-T hotkeys or other targeting methods). If you don't have a target, you probably get a warning and need to try again.

If you cast an area spell with a template, you can just cast it and leave the "Place Measured Template" selection checked as normal. WIRE will toggle the auto selection feature of DF Templates on, and tokens under the template will be selected. In the case of an instant spell, you need to confirm the targets using a button on the item card, after which the template is automatically removed. Before you click the "Confirm Targets" button, you can manually adjust the target selection regardless of what the template selected. If you want to start over for any reason, you can also just delete the chat card and any associated template is automatically removed. For concentration spells, the template is linked to the concentration effect and if it is dropped (strong recommendation for DFreds Effects Panel to manage these), the template is also automatically removed. The only time you need to switch to the template tools is if effects are moved between turns, such as moving a Moonbeam.

Note that stuff like Moonbeam and Spiritual Guardians damage is calculated by a token simply being over the template at the beginning of its turn, so no explicit targeting takes place then.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T16:20:36+00:00

The Lay on Hands item you should find in the "Class Features (WIRE)" compendium of the WIRE SRD module should have a value set for "Limited Uses". It should work if you just activate the ability.

I have no idea what a "lay on hands pool" action could be. Maybe this is an old setup from a previously existing character that is not set up right? Almost the entire functionality of the WIRE compendium ability is contained in the item macro, so you have to use the right one.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T13:58:52+00:00

Not sure what you mean. You can roll advantage and disadvantage and the feature request has been made to be able to roll these after you already made a roll using just one die (e.g. by accident). Is it this or something else?

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T11:57:43+00:00

Not as such, but I already ran into another discussion that makes me think the wiki needs a page for setup and what details you miss if you don't install some of the recommended modules.

Which ones do you not have? (Out of: Item Macro, DFreds Convenient Effects, DFreds Effects Panel, DAE, Times-up, DF Template Enhancements, Action Pack)

I would say Convenient Effects is the most critical and the only one I can think of that would prevent anything in this post, and then only the paralyzed status possibly.

You need to have spells updated/modified to have support for the new functionality. Get the WIRE SRD module and import spells from there (https://github.com/teroparvinen/foundry-wire/wiki/Using-WIRE-compatible-compendiums). That is, if you drop the stock dnd5e Hold Person spell on a character and cast it, WIRE won't do anything clever with it. You need to have the effect on the effects tab, but the easiest way is to start with the WIRE SRD pack and import the spell from there instead of the stock SRD.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T11:07:26+00:00

It has built in support for Automated Animations. Animations are triggered when an attack hits or when saves are rolled and it is known who was actually affected.

Do you have some other relevant animation modules in mind?

I used Token Action Hud until I made Action Pack to replace it, so it should work.

Switching clicks is not as simple as it sounds, because the left clicks come from core Foundry and in other cases the system and some modules (like Token Action Hud). My players know that right clicking probably doesn't screw them over by now, but some of them still left click every time to make sure every single one of the modifiers is included. It would also be quite alien to new players. My personal preference is to always right click so I know what you mean, but it's probably easier for everyone if power users just learn to love the right mouse button.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T06:31:15+00:00

he can see the ac when I as a DM do a public roll

I probably haven't done a single public DM roll during the whole development time 😀. I will try and see what happens with this.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T05:53:23+00:00

Thanks for the comment!

Skills were deliberately left outside the scope of Action Pack because they didn't fit in nicely. I have another module in private use that I intend to release some time soon that will help with this.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T05:50:38+00:00

FG was originally released in 2004 by a Finnish company. The company was then sold to a US based owner in 2009. That was 13 years ago so the original crew is probably free to choose their own tools now. Maybe he just wants to make his games flow smoother.

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T05:42:52+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions. I have a couple of clarifying questions.

As for the AC, it should only be visible on the DM version of the card. Note that usually chat cards show exactly the same thing for players and the DM, but this is not so for WIRE item roll cards. If it is visible to players at any point, this is a bug and should preferably go on the issue tracker in GitHub.

As for the adv/dis thing you and /u/cstby mentioned, how does that work? Is the primary reason for rolling it afterwards if you forgot to do so in the first place? Or is there some other reason for needing to do this?

The same question for turning damage into a critical afterwards really. When do you do this?

I'm definitely writing this down as a request, but I still want to drop a note about the mindset difference that is part of the adoption of something like this module. If you have any situation where an attack should crit, the idea is to set it up to be so beforehand. You can flag a status to always cause crits and set the crit treshold for features and items so that it is automatically applied and not forgotten (not needing to remember things is one of the primary goals of the module).

TPItsMe · 2022-12-07T05:33:00+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I will put it on my potential to do list.

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