To me, stories about Space Marines are stories about duty, faith, and – ultimately – sacrifice. It’s these types of stories which I always enjoyed most when reading about marines, whether in Black Library fiction or in codex vignettes. As such, the idea to include rules for Heroic Sacrifices was one of my favourites from Deathwatch.
These rules can make the all-important difference in the life-or-death battle at a mission’s climax. They also make it so that in the aftermath of the sacrifice the player is less worse off than if his character had died without a sacrifice, but he is still worse off than if the character had lived. In that regard, the rules do not so much encourage sacrifice as make it go down somewhat better if things cannot be helped.
Houseruling this to make sacrifices more attractive has to go beyond simply upping the established longterm gains from Heroic Sacrifice (i.e. additional XP for the following character). This would run the risk of making each and every character just a sacrifical engine for improving the next, the “actual” character. Just keeping the rewards of sacrifice at a lower level, though, leaves us where we already are – at a less painful loss, but a loss nevertheless.
For my own Deathwatch games, I am thus looking at coupling two different mechanics for Heroic Sacrifice: A boon, which will benefit the player and reward his willingness to sacrifice his character, and a bane, to still keep the sacrifice something to think about twice – beyond a simple loss in total XP.
After losing his character due to performing a Heroic Sacrifice, a player may choose whether the sacrifice was selfless (a sacrifice out of Duty), selfish (a sacrifice for personal Glory), or occupied a middle ground (a sacrifice in the name of Honour).
Honour
Such a sacrifice follows the normal rules given in Deathwatch, it offers neither Boon nor Bane.
Glory
Boon: Bathing in the glory of his precursor’s death, the battle brother to take his place burns with an inner zeal unmatched even amongst the ranks of the Deathwatch. When using his Chapter Solo Mode Ability the new character counts as 1 rank higher than he actually is for the purpose of determining applicable improvements.
Bane: The death of the battle brother leaves a palpatable hole in his former squad. From now on, the squad suffers a permanent reduction of -1 to its Cohesion.
Duty
Boon: The truly noble sacrifice of the battle brother leaves a deep impression with the other members of his squad. The squad as a whole gains an additional Demeanor, characterised by remembering/honouring the dead brother’s sacrifice. This Demeanor may be triggered by only one member of the squad per game session.
Bane: The new brother keenly feels he treads in the shadow of a giant, while at times elating, this shadow also weighs down on his soul. The new character starts play with 1d10 Insanity Points.
NB: In a more radical implementation of this idea, the Honour option could be dropped and the new character would always be built with exactly the same amount of total XP as the previous one (or any other predetermined amount). Glory or Duty, with their XP-independent effects, would be the only choices after performing a Heroic Sacrifice with no middle of the road option to save the brother(s) from Bane (and Boon).
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