How do people handle different caliber bullets in game?

The price lists show three different size of power pack for las weapons but only one price for bullets. In my last game I handwaved this away as there being one standard caliber bullet for all guns in the Imperium, based on a single STC basic design with manstoppers, dum-dums, etc being slight modifications made for the same size. This quickly got silly and broken.

Alternately I don't want to get bogged down in there being a seperate calibre SP round for each gun, although the delicious irony of having PC's expensive guns rendered useless when they find they've been shipped the wrong ammunition is tempting.

I was thinking of instituting three standard calibers of SP round, standard throughout the Imperium for ease of use and resupply whereever possible, essentially bullet sizes of pistol, basic and heavy (and shells for shotguns). The idea being that most guns in a class of SP weapon fire the same type of ammunition with occasional exceptions to explain heavier weapons in a particular class (for example having Hand Cannons fire basic ammunition to explain the extra damage and penetration).

I was also thinking of distinguishing the ammunition sizes by cost, making Heavy caliber rounds more expensive to encourage players to be slightly more subtle and perhaps use the more economic firearms unless they really need to.

Thoughts?

this is a great idea.

thanks for putting it out there

Edith The Hutt said:

Generally speaking, I've treated all normal SP ammo (for everything up to and including the Heavy Stubber, but excluding shotguns, as they're catered for separately) as being the same negligable cost (1 throne for a score of bullets), but the ammunition itself as non-interchangeable, so you can't use the bullets from your autogun in anything but another autogun or other weapon ruled as using the same calibre.

If I were to go into more detail, I'd differentiate by damage and pen value as much as weapon size, so all pistols that deal 1d10+3 I, Pen 0 use the same ammunition, for example. Then again, I'd also do similar with las-weapons - there've been a few notes in previous Imperial Guard codices and the Imperial Armour books from Forgeworld which make mention 'megathules', which appear to be a standard measurement of lasgun discharge (which would be equivalent to a solid projectile weapon's calibre), with the standard Kantrael-pattern Lasgun being a 19 megathule weapon, while Hellguns are 28 megathule weapons, so I'd differentiate clip size, damage and pen by the weapon's rating, giving a variety of options rather than the standard 'lasgun' entry we have at the moment.

Still, that's quite time-consuming to implement properly. As a quick-and-easy alteration, your idea seems great.

There are certainly differencies in the SP Ammo for the different guns. If you look closley at the description, you will find a autopistol described as using caseless ammo while another (i think the Volg Ripper) uses standard stub revolver bullets.

The damage and penetration values are a good guide to determine different ammunition calibers.

It seems to me, the charge packs for the lasguns are much more standardsized, much like batteries nowadays.

@N0-1_H3r3

A Hellgun uses different charge packs than the standard las guns, i remember a note in the description.

I will certanly encourage my players to make notes which bullets they have for which weapon, and how many spare mags they have. It is of no use to have a lot of bullets but no spare mags. Reloading will take much much longer if you have not some.

Regards

Wolflord

Wolflord said:

As per the DH rules for Hellguns (in The Inquisitor's Handbook), they are capable of using standard lasgun charge packs, but they use up the charge more quickly (10-12 lasgun shots to a single hellgun shot, depending on the pattern), and thus tend to be more commonly used with larger charge packs loaded into backpacks.

That doesn't change anything, though - the blasts of a Hellgun are more potent than those of a Mars Pattern Lasgun; from the perspective of the background mentioned in the 4th edition Codex: Imperial Guard, Codex: Eye of Terror and Imperial Armour volumes III, IV, V and VI, this potency of discharge is measured in megathules (standard lasguns are 18 or 19 megathules, hellguns are around 28). The size of powerpack used is largely irrelevant in this case - what differs is the amount of charge drawn from the pack with each shot, which in the case of more demanding weapons such as hellguns, results in a larger, backpack mounted power source rather than the smaller ones used in conventional lasguns.

I generally lean towards ammo being specific to a gun type (auto rifles, stub revolvers, etc), but not each specific variant. So a Hand Cannon, Hecuter and Fate Bringer will all use the same ammo, as they're all types of the basic Hand Cannon; but you couldnt use their shots in a Hunting Rifle or Stub Revolver.

In my games, I try to keep it simple.

Prizes stay the same, but not all ammo is interchangeable. I assume ammonition to be interchangeable if

a) the "base damage" and penertration is the same (i.e.1d10+3; PN:0)
b) the "base weapon type" is the same (pistole; standard)

This does not work for the "heavy" department, but it keeps pistole ammonition intechangeable, as well as "rifle ammo".

One gun, one ammo. That's how I've done it so far as that's what I'm used to in other games.

However, this is not a problem. When ppl buy the gun they buy the right kind of ammo, and unless they're using special guns I assume the correct ammo is as plentiful as the weapon itself.

I also assume that anyone with weapon training also knows which caliber to use.

Whenever an SP weapon is introduced I roll a d10 and assume that all weapons within the same type (pistol/hand cannon/autogun/hunting rifle/heavy stubber/shotgun) that rolled the same number can share ammunition. Essentially, I assume that there are 10 common calibers for each weapon 'group', and each particular weapon model will be using one of those calibres unless noted (a custom build, an exotic weapon).

It does mean I have to keep track of what model uses what calibre ammunition (to make sure I don't suddenly have the Hax-Orthlack Armsman-10 chambered for type2/pistol and type4/pistol) but that isn't too much of a problem. For added fun, I do roll to see what ammunition calibres are available in each particular area (I roll twice for each ammo group, any other ammo format is one step less available), primarily to make things more interesting for my players- they can end up needing to find new guns on each world, or buy vast quantities of ammunition before going someone new.