[impromptu Quote]Interesting volley fire rules. Apart from anything else it could speed combat up quite a bit. I'll need to give some thought to questions of balance (and I'm not 100% convinced that this should be usable to make a group able to take down a space marine if individually they wouldn't be able to even scratch him).[/impromptu Quote]

Thing is, taking down tough targets like Space Marines is what those rules are intended for, and the fact that it allows for a group to bring down a target that they individually would be incapable of harming means that they work as intended... Massed firepower for greater effect than the firers would be able to achieve individually. It works round the issue of a weapon being improperly potent if it could take down a given hard target solo, while still allowing groups to stand some chance of doing that if working together (bearing in mind that 7 guardsmen with lasguns - a full squad minus the special weapon operator and the heavy weapon team - is only actually dealing 1d10+7 E, Pen 0 with those rules... it's enough of a chance ot make a difference, but it's hardly world-shattering). It's also primarily intended for NPCs, rather than player characters (who will generally be armed individually and thus not exactly appropriate candidates for rules of this nature).

Actually, looking at the detailed mathematics of the volley fire rules, they only really provide a benefit if under normal rules you have very little chance of damaging the target(s) at all. And even in those circumstances, the volley fire isn't having a devastating effect assuming the target has a reasonable number of wounds. So yeah, seems like a good plan.

I'd quite like a similar set of rules that worked for targets that didn't have mega-toughness and armour, just to make massed combat a little quicker. Who is this Luikhart fellow? Can I get him to sort it out for me?

Cardinalsin said:

TS Luikart? He was one of the designers for Dark Heresy, wrote most of the psychic powers rules amongst other things. He posts on these forums occasionally.

Personally, however, there's an easier way. Volley Fire is useful for those "can't kill it alone" situations. Massed fire in other situations, though...

Look at the assistance rules in the rulebook. Every person assisting a task grants the person making the test a one-step improvement to the test's difficulty and a bonus Degree of Success on a passed test. So, why not apply that to combat?

Combined Fire: When firing a ranged weapon on semi-auto or full-auto, a character may combine his efforts with up to three other similarly-armed allies. One character is chosen to make the attack roll, while the others assist. Each assisting character, as normal, makes the test one-step easier than normal, and grants an additional degree of success on successful rolls. Assisting characters expend the normal amount of ammunition as if they were actually firing - they contribute their fire to their ally's efforts.

Example: The mercenary, Amadeus Vol brings his Autogun to bear, nodding for his three squadmates to do likewise. Vol has a BS of 43, the target is at Short Range, he is firing on full-auto and has three allies assisting his efforts, all combining to grant a total bonus of +60 (the maximum allowed). Rolling a 58, he gets 4 degrees of success naturally, before adding the additional 3 from his allies. He and they have collectively hit 8 times...

Now, it's less effective overall than each firing individually, but it's a useful way of grouping NPCs together for the purpose of attacks. When they use Overwatch or Suppressive Fire, where their numbers help offset the penalties to hit and grant lots of bonus hits, things get particularly nasty.

Excellent idea N0-1, I'll be using those in the future.

hey can anybody repost that stuff about volly fire cause page 5 is all sorts of messed up for me and idk why.

Sure thing:

Wu ming migrated this from the old forums. I'd use the quote tag but...

T.S. Luikart: Early in the development of Dark Heresy, we actually did have some Red Shirt / Mook rules for NPCs. They were scrapped along the way, but unfortunately a few of their vestiges remain to haunt us, the worst being the "Righteous Fury" bit. There was a time, oh a couple of years ago, when not giving the Minor NPCs the ability to achieve a Righteous Fury made perfect sense - mainly because they worked in a slightly different fashion.

Having finally gotten a look at an "official" representative of the Adeptus Astartes, I know quite a few of you concluded "Oh my god, he can't even be scratched by basic weapons!" or words to that effect. "Context is King" the old phrase goes and I have found that to be a truism in RPGs.

So here, long promised, finally arrived - are some of the rules that I've been using for awhile for Dark Heresy. Hopefully, you GMs will find them useful and Players with an eye towards commanding troops will also like them.

Note that these rules carry with them a set of two assumptions: A) All Heavy & Special Weapons are always subject to Righteous Fury – whether this is due to the fact that any NPC kick ass enough to wield one causes it or the weapon itself is irrelevant.* B) NPCs otherwise cannot achieve Righteous Fury unless they are Major Villains / Antagonists.

Volley Fire

Volley Fire is a Full Round Action that allows a squad of individuals armed with Semi-Auto or Automatic weapons to unleash a hail of fire capable of shredding those foolish enough to not take cover. A round of Volley Fire can only be unleashed by a Squad of 5 or more, less and they must revert to the standard attack rules.

First determine whether the bulk of a Volley Firing Squad is using Automatic or Semi-Auto weapons; it is okay to "mix and match" with the proviso that you get a bonus to Ballistic Skill based on the majority of the weapons being used. Note that any individual armed with a weapon in a completely different class than the rest should always be rolled separately, e.g. a Squad armed with lasguns accompanied by a Ad-Mech gun servitor with a Plasma Cannon - even though the servitor is accompanying the Squad, he..erm "it" rolls its attack separately.

Average the Ballistic Skill Scores of the Squad to get the Squad's "base" Ballistic Skill. The Squad gets the standard +20% if mostly using Automatic weapons and +10% if using Semi-Auto. Volley Fire cannot be "aimed" per se, but other bonuses and penalties may apply at GMs discretion.

Each Degree of Success on that attack roll allows a Squad using Automatic weapons to hit 1 target. With Semi-auto weapons it takes 2 Degrees of Success to hit a target. Any given target can only be hit once per round of combat by any given Volley Fire - "extra" successes are wasted on the surrounding terrain, potentially guilty bystanders, local statuary, etc.

The damage of a Volley Fire round is equal to the base damage of the main weapons being used +2 to damage for a Squad of 5. An additional +1 damage is added for each additional squad member until twice the weapons normal base damage (counting a weapons d10s as having rolled a 10) has been reached.

For example, a Standard Lasgun does 1d10+3 – its maximum damage potential is thus 26 (13x2). This breaks down as follows:

Squad of 5 Volley Fire with a Basic Lasgun = 1d10+5
Squad of 6 = 1d10+6
Squad of 7= 1d10+7 and so forth all the way up to
Squad of 16 = 1d10+16 – since this is capable of achieving a 26, you’ve reached the maximum damage potential for that weapon. Larger squads would be irrelevant.

The various Special Qualities still apply to Volley Fire if enough (more than 50%) of the weapons in a Volley have that Special Quality. The same applies to Penetration values (though you could average across the board if you really feel like it).

Larger groups of combat troops generally tend to break up into different groups and pick different targets to maximize their effectiveness, e.g. If you attack your PCs with 17 cultists armed in the main with autoguns, if they are combat trained, they are more likely to break into 2 Squads of 6 and a Squad of 5 in order to open up in multiple directions. If not combat trained, all of them may just open up at what they can see.

Hmm..

Sorry T.S. old boy but i don't agree with these rules.

If i fire a pistol at a tank, the bullet will bounce off. If i fire 1000 pistols at a tank, 1000 bullets will bounce off. Volume of fire doesn't increase damage, it increases the chance of a hit.

I'd have thought additional shooters would be better expressed as using the base BS of the best shot, and adding say +5% per extra shooter. This more accurately reflects the key aspect of volley fire (greater chance of hitting) and using the DH mechanics also increases the DoS...

Just a thought...

Luddite said:

Couldn't have said it better myself...a bullet is a bullet no matter how many of them you fire.

Realism is a lousy argument in a system where you can take a bolter shot to the head and walk away smiling. It helps balance out characters that become invulnerable to normal weapons.

Graspar said:

So the answer to pulling an "unrealistic" system back in line is more "unrealism"?

If a new rule rule or mechanic is to be introduced to help "balance" out a perceived weak-point in the RAW, a point which is seen as week as it results in "unrealistic" invulnerabilities in certain NPC's and possibly, in some rare cases, PC's, why dose the new rule have to be just as unrealistic? Wouldn't a rule that is seen as more "realistic" be a better choice?

1000 bullets still bounce off a tank with the volley fire rules above, as the max damage is only double the base max damage of the weapon, which a good RF roll would just have readily achieved, by having 16 attacks count as 1. Honestly, I think those rules are horrible, for a different reason: you're much more likely to survive 10 people focus firing on full-auto at you than if half took full-auto shots against you individually, which is stupid. I'd just say that a squad can focus fire on a target for a bonus on their BS checks.

Luddite said:

Okay... first, inside the game itself, it describes Space Marines as giant, 8 foot tall, 3-400 pound walking gods who could crush your chest with one hand. If this is how you take the canon fluff (which seems to be the going idea, at least in most of the novels I've read), then it makes sense that space marines use bigger, better weapons than everyone else.

Okay, las weapons- reliability, they have a 5% chance to threaten a jam, and a 10% chance of confirming the jam. That means that they will jam 10 times less often than anything else, or about .5% of the time. I saw one lasgun jam in my game, once, and everyone, even the enemies, kind of stopped and went "huh?" for a moment. Ammo capacity is what, 60 rounds? Pretty good all things considered. Availability, well, isn't a las pistol like 50 thrones and common? Pretty easy to pick up. Even a lasgun is only 75 thrones. Not a big deal.

As for heavy bolters, you're only looking at the damage code. With tearing, *each* die of damage is rolled twice, with the higher of the two in each pair being taken, making minimum damage unlikely. Also, you have 4(!) out of 10 odds of threatening Emperor's Wrath (I just call it a crit) with each HIT in a heavy bolter. Also, each time you *do* crit with a heavy bolter, you get 4 chances out of 10 again (!) of having the damage explode. On top of that, whenever you fire, since the gun only fires full auto, you get a +20BS, PLUS extra hits from degrees of success. More than one or two extra hits pretty much promises statistically that you're going to crit on damage and roll up unbelievable amounts of damage.

I'll even roll a few tests. I'll assume any threatened crits are confirmed just to make the dice rolling easy on me. For ease of math, we'll say that my BS is 50 (start at 30 and purchase 4 advances), and full auto gives me a +20. We will not be at short or point blank range. I will shoot a full clip, or 6 full round bursts:

#1- To hit: 65. Damage: (7,3) & (4,8)= 15 points of damage.

#2- To Hit: 44. 2 degrees of success. Hit 1- (7,8) & (1,4)=12 points of damage. Hit 2- (8,9) & (7,5)= 16 damage. Hit 3- (10,3) & (6,4) & (10,9) & (8,9)=35 damage. Total for attack #2 = 63 points of damage, with 5 points of penetration per attack.

#3- Miss

#4- To Hit: 11. 5 (almost 6) degrees of damage. Hit 1- (1,4) & (10,5) & (8,2)= 22 Damage. Hit 2- (1,4) & (2,1)= 6 Damage. Hit 3- (8,8) & (6,9)= 17 points of damage. Hit 4- (8,3) & (7,8)= 16 Damage. Hit 5- (8,8) & (10,1) & (6,8)= 26 Damage. Hit 6- (9,4) & (5,6)= 15 damage. Total for Attack #4= 102 points of damage

#5- To hit: 27 (4 degrees of success). Hit 1- (9,9) & (4,2)= 13 Damage. Hit 2- (10,8) & (6,9) & (9,9)= 28 damage. Hit 3- (10,10) & (1,4) & (5,8)= 22 damage. Hit 4- (10,6) & (10,2) & (8,8) & (2,7)= 35 Damage. Hit 5- (10,4) & (8,3) & (3,4)= 22 Damage. Total for Attack #5= 120 Points of Damage

#6- To Hit. 97/Jam

Total damage over 6 rounds: 300 points of damage. Each "hit" has armor penetration 5. Take the rapid reloader talent and it's only a full round action to reload that much death & destruction and you're ready to go again.

And that was straight rolls for 6 rounds. On average, if I was doing an extra 50 points of damage instead of the the miss/jam, which is reasonable, it would have been 400 points of damage. Then again, if I have the money to fully field a working heavy bolter, you better bet I've purchased sacred machine oil to give that puppy the reliable trait for that first clip. In that case, I could be dealing a LOT more damage in turn #6. I am looking at the weapons here, and nothing in the armory of the core book does anything close to this amount of damage consistantly. Note that only carapace and power armor would have actually subtracted damage from these rolls (not counting toughness). With toughness 3 and armor 4, only 1 hit would fail to do any damage, and you're still looking at only 34 points of damage being absorbed. The damage output isn't quite as disgusting against things like space marines, but I still think that a few of those rolls could kill a space marine in one turn. Especially turn 5. God help you if you're at short range, because 4 turns would have an extra 4 hits, and that averages around 50 extra points of damage.

And that's the human version of the heavy bolter.

Meltas are heavier weapons, which is only natural, they ARE heavy weapons. Plasma isn't too shabby either except for recharge and overheat, which lower the average Damage Per Turn (DPT) considerably, but packs more of a whollop against armored targets.

No, I think the numbers bear me out, even if my sample is rather small. Bolters, especially heavy bolters, are fine.

PS. For 50 thrones you can throw a red dot laser sight onto your heavy bolter, and pretty much load the damage up even higher. So if you're within 60 meters (half a football field), and have the red dot sight, you get a +40 to your attack roll. At that point, if you shoot at something for 6 rounds with a heavy bolter, and it's still living 6 rounds later, it can't be killed with guns. Or it's a tank.

@Flatline: Nope, Red-dot works only on Single Fire, for a bonus on AF you need a Targeter (IH, page 179).

In my eyes the Bolt weapons work very well since they got Tearing through the errata.

The only way 'normal' weapons can, halfway, compete with them is when they have Lathe body-blowers, but then the Boltweapons still have the upper hand in range.

Aureus said:

Aureus said:

It's also WAY too much math. Granted, mooks are generally going to be all the same type, which makes averaging easier, but good god that was too long of a page.

I prefer the "assistance" version far, far better. It maintains reality. A tank is going to shrug off that massed fire, as it ends up being a crapload of individual hits, which armor will basically negate. I might require a routine or ordinary BS test for each of the assistants to contribute (think of it as "getting into the right area") to make it a little less brutal on the PCs though. I can make 4 or 5 quick BS rolls, take 3 that pass, and give a +30 to hit and 3 extra degrees of success *if* the main guy hits.

I'd probably make the rules like this:

Concentrate Fire!-

Each mook assisting makes a BS test to assist the main shooter. This is an ordinary (+10) for single action weapons, a routine (+20) for semi-auto, and an easy test (+30) for full auto to get the shot "in the right area". Each assistant who succeeds adds +10 to the main attack and a degree of success. All weapons must have the same armor penetration to be part of the concentrated fire (this will prevent you from dishing out las pistols to mooks and shooting your melta as part of their concentrated fire and getting the benefits of 12 meltagun rounds at a tank for example. The damage will round out eventually, but the penetration is the important part to me)

Example: 5 mooks are shooting at the guardsman. 4 will assist. Each are using semi-auto weapons. The 4 who assist test a Routine BS test to determine if they contribute to the attack. 3 succeed. The main attacker receives +30 to his attack, in addition to his other modifiers, and +3 degrees of success if his attack is successful.

How does that sound? Makes life a little easier for larger scale combat, without promising an automatic hit essentially for every mook who contributes. Should range be taken into account with the mook assistance test though? I say no, the point is to keep things quick. They're also mooks damnit, they aren't supposed to be a big threat. The only exception I'd make is at point blank range. I'd give an extra +10 there. If you're stupid enough to stand 3 meters away from 10 mooks with automatic weapons, you deserve to be turned into a greasy spot on the ground.

Note that you could turn this around. Grab a squad of IG and help take down that bastard xenos with concentrated fire.

segara82 said:

You're aboslutely right. I re-read that like six times because I swore it was SA only, but missed it. It's late. Still, with tearing, the guns become obscene. I think I demonstrated that decently.

TheFlatline said:

I generally agree with your opinion but I think you made a big mistake in your example. The errata also changed the Tearing quality. It states:

Tearing: ... These weapons roll one extra die for damage, and the lowest result is discarded.

Thus your heavy bolter may only roll (3-1) dice for damage, not (2-1)+(2-1).

TheFlatline said:

I've used the rules that TS Luikart posted. They're far from complicated to use in practice, once the method is understood - the overwhelming majority of the calculation can (and really should) be done in advance, when working out what to throw at your group. Beyond that, when using a group of 10 BS35 npcs, averaging is a nonexistant matter - they all have the same BS, so you just use that score, no maths required.

Some rules just take a lot more page space to explain than their implementation in-game might suggest.

As for realism... damage is abstract anyway. Given that human physiology and its interaction with weaponry is such a complex matter, damage in an RPG will always be abstracted. Amongst other things, the nature of the wounds score represents as much luck and grit and perseverance and stamina in keeping away from those lethal shots as it does actual body mass and capacity to withstand trauma. Given that, is it really so impossible to consider that concentrated fire might be comparatively more lethal than the fire of an individual? All it's doing at the end of the day is stripping wounds and inflicting criticals more quickly...

I can see where they are trying to go with the volley fire rules but i can see why they cut it from the rules. Still I can see a use for it and knowledge of it is going to be usefull.

As for the 'thousand bullets against a tank' analogy, this rule is going to take out a tank. But modern body armour can stop a .357 magnum round but not a thousand .357, even if the all hit armoured areas, and I can't back it up but i suspect you'd be talking at most dozens rather thans thousands to get through. You can't kill a bear with a 9mm but it would take far less than a thousand hits to kill one. I could go on.

Face Eater said:

These were never part of the main rules. These were the personal musings of one of the writers - a whole different kettle of fish.

Where exactly is this posted in the Errata I have not been able to find it

Where is what in the erratta?

Erratta v3.0: Page 8

All Bolt Weapons have the Tearing quality

Thanks, good to know, even without tearing Bolt weapons are crazy

No kidding. My group recently swapped a lot of their old guns over to bolt pistols (Maulers and Sacristans) and one bolt rifle, and the changes were remarkable. The cleric used to take a shot or two with his revolver as he closed to melee with his chainsword, usually doing little more than softening them up so he could get a spectacular critical with the sword, but now it's all "BLAM *head explodes* BLAM *leg blown off at the hip*" while the Scum whips out twin Sacristans and leaves a fine red mist behind. Of course the Psyker just got comfortable with her new "Soul Killer" power, which is poping cultists like over-ripe fruit. Rank 5 changed a lot for my peeps.

Heres a house rule of mine to help counteract the Unnatural Stats uberness when it comes to shrugging off melta/plasma blasts:

If the Pen of a weapon is greater (not equal but greater) than the targets base Toughness bonus (before unnatural) then the unnatual toughness rule is ignored. Such weapons should be considered "unnaturally devastating".