I should have said …

Suppressing fire and Overwatch are the only reasons to take a full auto weapon with the switched DoS. But you will never hit anything, just pin. Both Overwatch and Suppressing fire impose a -20 BS penalty when used and combined with the one hit for two successes leads to an almost impossible chance to hit. Firing in FA will only ever be able to hit 1-2 times a round for most players while expending twice the ammo of a SA burst which with the same roll will hit with almost all rounds.

You will need to hit by at least 40 points under your BS to hit 3 times with a FA using your switched DoS.

You are going to relegate your guardsman, most likely to wield a FA weapon of any note, to go sit over in the corner and waste ammo while the people who can hit go take care of everything. Even better just get the Adept in your party, most likely to have a low BS, a Heavy Stubber. Sit him in the corner of the room doing nothing but suppressing fire. Doesn’t matter if he has any chance of hitting at all or the skill to use the weapon, everyone else can sit back and take everyone out with SA bursts while they are pinned.

Basically I think it is a very bad idea and makes FA weapons a poor choice at best .

The purpose of Suppressive Fire isn't to hit anything. You don't need to. Anyone within the area you're spraying with lead/las based death has to take that Hard Willpower test or become Pinned, unable to move more than handful of meters per round and limited to snapping off inaccurate shots. Then you buddies flank them/charge them/blow them apart with grenades. Hitting someone with the Suppressive Fire action is just a nice bonus.

While I'm not so keen on nerfing Full Auto I do feel that Semi Auto needs a bit of love, if only because that's what las-weaponry is usually restricted to. Maybe have both modes of fire grant an extra hit per DoS?

Granting limited experience with SA so far (as player and GM) but it has been very effective so I'm a little leary of fiddling with it (I think the OP is looking at his "problem" from the wrong direction. He has 3 players with effective weapon/trait combinations and 2 players using about the most ineffective nonprimitive ranged weapons in the game and is penalizing the effective player instead of telling the people using las pistols to buy a better weapon? [if I understand correctly]).

jonathan_sicari said:

Well, the mentioned Assassin player is what comes nearest to an 'exploiter' in our group. The Tech-Priest player and the Psyker player are the greatest fluff-nuts and do not see their respective characters as combatants in the strictest sense. Regarding the 'mundane' Laspistols, even if they acquire a Fury or a Mark IV Laspistol, it wouldn't change the problem (Plasma and Inferno Pistoly are not the kind of weapons I give to my players) that the Assassin is doing more than thrice as much damage in a round.

Yes it would! Get a fury and you get to do up to 5x1d10+2 per round.

Regarding the 'mundane' Laspistols, even if they acquire a Fury or a Mark IV Laspistol, it wouldn't change the problem (Plasma and Inferno Pistoly are not the kind of weapons I give to my players) that the Assassin is doing more than thrice as much damage in a round.

Got to concur with Jonathan a little here - laspistols are the least spectacular weaponry of the game. On the other hand side, they're also the ones you can take nearly everywhere with noone raising a fuss while full-blown rifles may sometimes look a little suspicious, depending where you go.

The comparison to sniper rifles is still wrong. The extra damage for accurate doesn't even work with pistols..

True but semiauto pistols (say a humble stub automatic with 2 clips of dum-dum and 2 clips of manstopper) with a silencer can go almost anywhere a laspistol can and give them the multiple hits option that is so much more effective in my experience (not stopped by a single grade of success on a dodge, more chance for righteous fury, not getting hosed by one bad damage roll). Thats main book equipment, not even getting into the IH equipment.

True, but on the other hand they have range, clip size and reliability second to no pistol.

Also true.

Rereading my posts I think I should summarise my position.

1) I do not dispute the original poster's right to run his game as he sees fit.

2) That said, I believe it has been adequately shown that the answer to his original question"Accurate rule broken?" is a resounding "NO!"

3) If, as stated in the original post, he is worried about his 2 noncombatant players lack of combat efficiency due to their reliance on laspistols, my take would be to suggest that they supplement thier weaponry with something like a stub automatic or autopistol (pistol (sp) can't be prohibitively expensive for the characters to buy if they don't have it already and the base weapon is not that hard to aquire). Carrying a Laspistol for range/ammo capacity/reliability and a stub automatic or autopistol for multiple hit capability/ammunition versatility will allow them to remain one trick ponies in combat while enhancing thier contributions.

4) Does accurate not apply to pistols due to there being no accurate pistols or does the wording of the erratta only apply to rifles (I ask because my access to the erratta and IH is restricted right now due to location while writing this post)?

The errata states that the new accurate rule applies only to basic weapons.

Thank you for the quick response.

Why not go with adding in the extra dice/die granted (as normal) then discarding the lowest dice/die (The number of dice/die discarded is equal to the number gained)? That way the maximum damage doesn't increase, just the likely hood of causing maximum damage. This will make it simaliar to Tearing, but with the potensal to be better.

Personally, i feel that there is only so much damage a single shot can do, For a truely righteous shot, you need Righteous Fury, The method, increases the chances of Rightroue Fury but also limits the damage from what the current Accurate does at the same time.

It's true that there should only be so much damage you can do with a single shot. But combat is an abstraction, players have wounds and toughness bonus way in excess of realism.

The question is, should snipers be a viable option?

Graver said:

It appears I've been misreading it all this time. So, Accurate always conveys a +10 bonus to hit when used with the Aim action, but Basic weapons also gain the potential to inflict extra damage depending on degrees of success?

I believe that is correct. I will check the erratta when I get home from work.

Copied from the Errata

The description of the Accurate quality on page 128
should include the addition “When fi ring a single shot from
a single Basic Weapon with the Accurate quality benefi ting
from the Aim action, the attack gains an extra d10 of
damage for every two degrees of success to a maximum of
two extra d10.”

Graspar said:

What do you mean by "only do so much damage with a single shot" though? I mean, an astartes-grade bolt shell through your eye (remember, the Angelus is accurate and basic) is going to mess you up pretty bad, regardless of how big, tough, and armored you are. If you're talking about things like a sniper+RF roll doing enough damage to drop a small starship... then yeah, sure, that's crazy, but it's also somewhere in the ballpark of a billion-to-one chance of even seeing that roll, a roll to which I'd just say "no, you can't roll to kill the starship" before the attack roll were ever made anyway. With enough luck I could stab a weight-lifter with a toothpick and kill him, a bigger weapon just makes that kill a lot more likely.

And yes, snipers should be a viable option, I'd be curious to know your reasoning for thinking otherwise, assuming you aren't just playing Devil's advocate.

And yes, snipers should be a viable option, I'd be curious to know your reasoning for thinking otherwise, assuming you aren't just playing Devil's advocate.

I agree that Snipers should be a viable option for a character, if a somewhat boring one in terms of combat options (But there are bigger culprits of this anyway).

What do you mean by "only do so much damage with a single shot" though? I mean, an astartes-grade bolt shell through your eye (remember, the Angelus is accurate and basic) is going to mess you up pretty bad, regardless of how big, tough, and armoured you are. If you're talking about things like a sniper+RF roll doing enough damage to drop a small starship... then yeah, sure, that's crazy, but it's also somewhere in the ballpark of a billion-to-one chance of even seeing that roll, a roll to which I'd just say "no, you can't roll to kill the starship" before the attack roll were ever made anyway. With enough luck I could stab a weight-lifter with a toothpick and kill him, a bigger weapon just makes that kill a lot more likely.

An Astartes Bolt pistol does 2d10+2 damage, the average damage of which if identical to that of the Hunting Rifle's maximum damage, if the Rifle fails to get Righteous Fury. That's without factoring in the Tearing quality of the pistol. There are some shots that just should not happen without the aid of Righteous Fury, the accurate rules allow those shots to happen, further more, assuming a half competent sniper they will be happening with over half the shot the Sniper makes, being that with what would of been a simple pass, becomes due to the bonus from Accurate and Aiming a success of two degrees, which means the average damage of that Hunting Rifle shot will exceed the maximum damage of the basic shot. Which is why i was suggesting in giving the weapon extra "tearing dice" for the 2/ degrees of success, this increases the chance of getting maximum damage, without getting extra damage (Aid from the Emperor withstanding of cause).

However, i also get the flipside. without the extra damage dice from Accurate, you can't even one-shot an un-armoured citizen without the aid of the Emperor. But that is not the Accurate weapons fault, since most weapons can't.

Well, in general I think the "extreme lethality" of the system is overhyped, it's hard to go from healthy to dead in one action without being in way over your head to begin with. Regardless, let's look at the situations you're talking about:

Long-Las Sniper: 1d10+4 (overcharge pack), Pen: 1 +2d10 for a solid hit

Astartes Bolt Pistol: 2d10+2 (I thought it was 3 or 4, but I don't really recall), Pen: 5, tearing

Let's assume a Storm Trooper with 16 wounds, toughness bonus of 3, and armor of 6.

Both are rolling 3 dice, so have the same chance of RF. The sniper, having made a much more difficult shot, is netting 3d10-4 (avg 13 damage before RF), while the bolt pistol is standing at 2d10(+T)-2 (I think this is actually somewhere near 12 or 13, though the math on tearing is confusing). Either way, that Storm Trooper is not going down without an above average damage roll or RF kicking in. Compare to an Autogun on Full-Auto with manstoppers, which would probably just paste the guy on a good hit.

So against a well-armored target a single shot from an Astartes Bolt pistol is roughly as lethal as one from an Imperial Guard sniper. While against a soft target (no armor) the sniper edges the bolt pistol out. To me this sounds about right..

What do you mean by "only do so much damage with a single shot" though? I mean, an astartes-grade bolt shell through your eye (remember, the Angelus is accurate and basic) is going to mess you up pretty bad, regardless of how big, tough, and armored you are. If you're talking about things like a sniper+RF roll doing enough damage to drop a small starship... then yeah, sure, that's crazy, but it's also somewhere in the ballpark of a billion-to-one chance of even seeing that roll, a roll to which I'd just say "no, you can't roll to kill the starship" before the attack roll were ever made anyway. With enough luck I could stab a weight-lifter with a toothpick and kill him, a bigger weapon just makes that kill a lot more likely.

And yes, snipers should be a viable option, I'd be curious to know your reasoning for thinking otherwise, assuming you aren't just playing Devil's advocate.

I wasn't playing devils advocate, but you read it all wrong. I like the accurate rules and my message was a response to Shockwave.

Also, the tearing math is not complicated at all, it averages out to about 7.25 damage with about twice the chance of RF.

I think we will have to agree to disagree here. I have no issue with the fact that the average amount of damage goes up, i just don't like the fact that a Sniper with a Long-las can make his weapon hit as hard as a single hit from a Multi-laser with a bit too much frequency.

The accurate rule is in no way broken, and I don't think I've seen in all 5 pages of this any discussion of dodge being factored in as why it's not broken. One shot from a sniper rifle, if not taken from an unseen vantage/surprise attack is easily avoidable, no matter how hard it would have hit because there are no dodge modifiers to such a weapon. Sure, IF I land a hit with it, I can do 3d10 damage, but the bolt pistol, or autogun are far more likely to actually connect and DO damage. Why? because it only requires 1 degree of success to dodge a single shot, it requires 2 or more to get out of the way of more than that. The assassin would probably do more damage with an autorifle than a sniper rifle (at the same top end 84 ballistic skill, if he were to roll say, a 10, he would hit 8 times, for about 8d10 plus bonuses minus armor and the like, versus a simple 3d10. On an average agility of 30 with dodge, he will avoid the 3d10 1/3 of the time, pardon the fuzzy math, while even if the enemy were to roll a 01% he'd still take 5d10 damage).

The sniper CANT make his longlas hit as often and as hard as a multilaser, because it is far far easier to avoid the sniper's shot, and heaven help said sniper against a melee monster who happens to have step aside.

and finally, the Astartes Bolt Pistol damage is actually only 2d10, not 2d10+2, the Deathwatch marine in question has might shot.

BrotherHostower said:

Nah, the dodge card is there, I saw it while skimming the first 5 pages. It's still a good argument, but not perfect as a dodge can fail, even for good ones like Theodosia. Here's my tips:

If you think the accurate quality unbalanced, feel free to nerf it by requiring a full action aim. It makes sense you need to take time to aim to get that sniper shot bonus, and afaik the rule was indended to give snipers a chance to shine and not to have it replace normal short-range combat.

If you'd rather not change the rules, give Theo a fate point. That way he can reroll a failed dodge, or if need be burn a faith point, fall down behind a market booth, and be dragged away by his minions before the PCs can get at him (in which case they will not allow him to survive).

In my game Theo actually started the combat by getting a rigtheous fury with his autopistol against the party assassin It was the scum that saved the day by managing to knock off the suitcase handle with a melee weapon

Shockwave said:

How fortunate that it doesn't compare to the multi laser in damage then. If you hit with a hunting rifle and do 3d10+3 pen 3 damage you've got at least four degrees of success, the same attack roll on a multi laser hits for five times that damage.

You are of course free to dislike the accurate rules and change them as you see fit, but that the rule compares to a multi las is demonstrably untrue.