from france

this topics is to regroup all the litlle questions and critics we can have rather that making one topic per equipement or weapons.

so i will began by two about weapon.

the first is the hercuter 9/5 shi.. gives it back it pen 2 because a full reload of man stopper wounds for this weapons will dry bled the funds of the accolytes. and is supose to be the prince among pistol just under a bolter. so if bolt are kings hercuter prince the other commoner and the mercy killer the beggar the hercuter need to have is pen 2.

second point in the adventure edge of darkness one of the logicains agent has a autocarbine. i don't find the equivalent in the books. is it a custom made weapons or some misprint? and it is quite good.

a little hello to graver and reducer

The penentration is not so important anymore since the errata changed manstoppers. They no longer add 3 penetration but rather bring the weapon up to a maximum of 3 in penetration. Meaning a hecuter with 2 penetration will only gain one with manstoppers.

The autocarbine should be a autogun.

Or an autogun with the compact upgrade.

from france

for the hercuter i don't mind the lost of the + 3 from the manstopper which now are pen 3. no what i want is the return of the hercuter as is once was because the cost of manstoper is quite expensive. okay an hercuter reload with it will a impressive pen 3 with a good choice of rate of fire but i prefer my old hercuter with his pen 2. i don't understand why they lowered it.

if you think of weapons and equipement that you want to critics please do so.

the 8 spider said:

Well I would probably have a bunch of guns and weapons to critizise. Out of the top of my head, the worst are the primitive blackpowder weapons, muskets and flintlock pistols.

Primitive quality makes them useless against modern armor and not any better against medieval armor either.. historically these weapons made plate armor obsolete but in game it makes alot more sense to use melee weapons or even bows (especially composite bows and longbows from IH as they are insane - composite bows with their Accurate quality makes them more dangerous than modern pistols!)

Their realistic reload times makes them almost useless after the first shot, so why not make that shot more powerful? More damage and more useful against medieval armors is better.

Inaccurate and unreliable qualities are very fitting but makes them even worse as weapons (especially as bows are reliable), so another good reason to make that shot count if it actually hits anything. My fix:

1. Remove primitve quality from al firearms - makes them actually good vs primitive armor and ok vs modern.

2. +1 damage for muskets. Being hit with a musketball is just as dangerous as being hit by a 9mm bullet (think stub automatic), if not more.

3. Give muskets and black powder pistols Tearing quality. As said, musketballs are very dangerous to the human body, causing great tissue damage and often being deadly even if not hitting vital organs. They however lose the Tearing quality if they hit non-primitive armor such as Flak armor.

Friend of the Dork said:

Ah, but historically, a bow & arrow is infinately more effective than a musket at short, medium, and long ranges. Arrowheads can defeat plate armour easily. Arrows reload immensely faster than blackpowder weapons. A skilled archer *is* more accurate than a non-rifled blackpowder long rifle. Look at the battle of Agincourt for an example of how dangerous longbows are.

Firearms made armor, melee weapons, and especially bows obsolete because of one thing. Training time. It takes 10-20 years to train a master archer. At a minimum it would take up to a year to train a proficient archer. A rifleman, however, can learn to fire his gun proficiently in a matter of weeks.

Also, remember how black powder weapons were used. They were inaccurate at anything past 50 yards maximum usually, and thus the solution would be to fire volleys. 50-100 men standing in a row firing at their targets some distance away. Use suppressive fire rules to simulate volleys. Have three to five "waves" of soldiers staggering their fire, one volley per turn, and suddenly the prissy musket becomes a lethal hail of bullets. However, I might cut down musket loading time to maybe 4 full rounds. A proficient musket user could fire 3 rounds a minute that were reasonably well aimed. That is 20 seconds between bullets, and in game terms, reflects 3 full rounds of loading, or 15 seconds, followed by 5 seconds of aiming/firing. 4 rounds to load seems reasonable for someone who uses the musket casually (reflecting 25 seconds per shot, or around 2.5 shots a minute). If you take the reloader talent, you cut this down to 10 seconds per load, and 5 seconds to fire, or 4 round a minute. This seems historically reasonable and actually rather accurate of really good blackpowder users.

Finally, I might see through to giving an extra point to damage from musketry and other blackpowder firearms. They used awfully large bullets. It wasn't uncommon to see .50 calibur musket balls in rifles, and even in flintlock pistols! However, where you really feel the lethality of blackpowder weapons on primitive worlds is *after* you get shot. Remember, on a primitive world you have primitive medicine and without antibiotics, infection was not just a posibility, it was a liklihood.

So. Rules-wise, to reflect the impact that blackpowder weapons had on old-world warfare, I'd keep the primitive qualifier. Black powder weapon shot is significantly slower, and deforms easier, than modern bullets. However, I'd give basic (blackpowder) talent an elite advance to a peasant for, say, 50 or 100 experience with a 6 week training period. I'd give archery to a standard peasant at maybe 250 experience, with a year of training at least several times a week.

TheFlatline said:

I don't argue that bows are potentially alot more accurate and have longer range than muskets, that's why I don't mind keeping the musket inacurate or some bows accurate. However the game does in no way represent that you can train with a musket for a day and fire and reload it fairly well, nowhere in the rules is this taken account for, so there need to be other balancing factors so that these weapons will be used at all.

As for reload time, remember that the rapid reload talent cuts down the time to 2 rounds, which is basicallly the best a veteran well-trained Redcoat could perform in battle.

But the penetration of bows are often excaggerated, it's simply not easy to penetrate advanced full plate even with bodkin arrows and a strong lonbowman. Most casualties done at Agincourt was actually from daggers and maces as the english archers disposed of french knights stuck in mud and dehorsed from the hail of missiles. In any case these bows already have a penetration value so they are already good vs armor... something the current musket is not.

You could of course give the musket penetration, but I feel allowing it work as non-primitive is good enough and easy. The heaviest armor still works fairly well against them, as does flak armor which stops them as easily as they stop stub automatic bullets.

+1 damage alone makes them only as good as modern pistols vs unarmored targets... which is why I added tearing as well. Most casualties died after the battle, but remember they were disabled and unable to fight long before that.

I gave the PCs the primtiive weapon talent for 50 xp as they went to a primitive world on a mission.

Primitive quality makes them useless against modern armor and not any better against medieval armor either.. historically these weapons made plate armor obsolete but in game it makes alot more sense to use melee weapons or even bows (especially composite bows and longbows from IH as they are insane - composite bows with their Accurate quality makes them more dangerous than modern pistols!)

Nah, plate armour was made obsolete quite some time after the inception of firearms - a few troops still wore it in WW1. It was a classic arms race, with the protection always striving to hold up with the next generation of firearms.

Friend of the Dork said:

This is such a common misconception it makes me wonder. The first gunpowder weapons were not effective against plate armour. Almost no missile weapon could penetrate plate armour of the late middle-ages (e.g. the gothic armour of Teutonic Knights). Even Long Bows and Crossbows were not able to penetrate it (except from a very short range). This is one of the major reasons why these knights mostly did not used shields anymore at that time and took up hand-and-a-half-swords. The reasons why plate armour became 'obsolete' was mostly due to economical and social reasons as it was very expensive and the feudal structure began to break apart in europe. One 'military' reason is though, that highly skilled and disciplined footmen (like Landsknechte (instead of mere peasants)) armed with halberds, pikes and Bihändern could make a mess with a knightly charge if they stood fast in the initial assault.

Luthor Harkon said:

It's a simplification rather than misconception. I know there existed plate armor able to withstand musket balls, but these were alot heavier and expensive than the high medieval plate armors (13th/14th century). As Cifer said it was an arms race where heavier armor became necessary as arquebuses were replaced by the heavier musket, and as muskets became lighter and cheaper to produce in mass quantities larger armies became ecconomically feasable. Alot of other factors played in the decline of armor save for some specialiced troops such as Cuirassiers, and changes in society, manpower and tactics change warfare alot. Gunpowder weapons, however was not inconsequential and were able to penetrate most armors at short range.

Game wise compare good quality full plate armor (IH) versus my musket... that's still 7 points of armor, halved to 4. 4 is as good as Guard Flak so who is to say it is ineffectual? Such armors however are almost impervious to swords etc., which they also were historically (great weapons needed).

But anyway my house rules are mostly for balance reason rather than complete historical accuracy or ballistic realism.

Friend of the Dork said:

I do not want to be a nit-picker or start an argument where there is none, but... There simply were (about) no plate armour in the high middle-ages. It evolved in the very late 14th century (ie. late middle ages). The mail armour of the high middle ages (maybe its that what you mean) on the other hand most probably was inadequate to give protection against most gunpowder weapons (or crossbows for that matter). Actually the (very expensive) plate armour was used by some battlefield commanders even into the 18th century just to protect them from 'sniping' musketeers. Gunpowder was surely not inconsequential in the decline of plate armour, but neither did it made them obsolete nor was this a 'direct' gunpowder-was-overproportional-effective-versus-plate-armour-reason. It was simply not better in penetrating plate armour at short range than a long bow or crossbow (all of which were rather good in penetrating mail armour of the high middle ages).

Anyway, as you said, all this is for balance reasons within your game and not for historical nit-picking accuracy. In thhis sense, have fun!

Luthor Harkon said:

Yeah look like we mostly agree.. when I'm talking about the plate armor in high middle ages I'm referring to the extra protection plates used on legs etc. with a full mail armor in the mid 1200s and the plate armor in the early 1300. The changes were gradual both in how much plate was worn and how much better steel was made.

As it is I think muskets were probably one of the poorest represented weapon in the game. There are others of course, especially in the IH, but I don't care to discuss them as I don't think it worth it to warrant any change.

According to the current eratta the Hecuter has no penetration...

from france

for the hercuter i know this precisely what i want to be change. for the bow and crosbow question the first time full plate and long bow were confronted to each other the long bow ween. see teh bale of azincourt and crecy. for the cross bow it also could pierce a plate amor . in fact it was so powerful that the church for a time banish its use beteween christians. in the begining black powder weapons weren't that good that s right. but they improved and in the begining weren't use against knight, canon we're used agaisnt them see battle between swiss and the bourguignons. the other black powder weapons were more dangerous too less armored figther. the arms race was winned by offensive weapons because full plate were too cumbersome.

so if a primitive weapons has a better quality than a primitive armor i suppose that is primitive quality shouldn't apply like a bunderbluss against a bone armor.

another point of wory the great weapons aren't really differenciates rom each other i use the one descrip in warhammer fantaisy and adding the primitive quality

The Laughing God said:

Why? Simply because there is no such weapon published in the core Dark Heresy rules? I think it makes perfect sense that there would be smaller, shorter barreled automatics for use in close-quarter fighting. Just because it does not adhere to the standards presented elsewhere in the RAW does not mean that it should be discarded as being an inaccuracy within the rules.

Graspar said:

Except that, as published, the Autocarbine does not conform in anyway to a weapon with the compact "upgrade." The damage is not lessened , nor are either the weapon's range or magazine capacities reduced as they would be for a compact weapon. Yes, it does have a reduced range, but it drops from the 90m range to 60m.

A good real life example would be the H&K G36 Assault Rifle (references here and here ) which has 7 or so known variations on the basic design. Each of these more or less have the same performance charactersitics. However, the shorter barrel lengths of the C and K versions mean a reduction in things like muzzle velocity and effective ranges.

Yes, I know I am reference the "really real world" here. Still, even in the grim darkness of the far future, ballistics physics are gonna be fairly constant.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Friend of the Dork said:

Your choice man... but I'll be frank. The tearing quality is extremely overpowered. If you look at casualty statistics of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, which is just about the pinnacle of blackpowder weaponry (Civil War era was a little better, but not much), something like 5% of all casualties came from wounds received during action. That's with ships shooting 32 pound cannonballs that will kill in a hit, and turn gundecks into maelstroms of foot long oak splinters.You're giving blackpowder weapons far, far too much credit. If you're going to do that, you need to give any large calibur modern gun tearing as well, starting with the hunting rifle.

A little reading even goes straight against your idea for tearing. It says that, barring a strike on bone, a musket ball can pass clean through a man resulting in a small, compact, neat hole. The exact opposite of tearing.

As I said, wounds suffered from muskets and flintlocks were lethal not because of a huge bullet (which travelled particularly slowly, 300 meters per second with high quality powder. Compair this to a 9mm, at 460 and 600 meters depending on the load), but because it would smash a bone or pull cloth into the wound and the wound would subsequently fester and turn gangrenous. Medicine, or rather the lack thereof, is the real lethality borne from such combats.

As for penetration, there actually was a recent show on where they calculated the odds of a pirate and a full-suited knight fighting. The pirate won, mainly due to unconventional tactics, but they found out that largely, blackpowder weapons were not nearly as effective at penetrating plate armor as everyone thought. The blunderbus did a little, but not enough to be significant. The pistol was nearly ineffective.

Finally, part of the decline in armor was the lightening of swords, and the heavy european broadsword passing out of favor, with the rapier becoming more popular. Generally, a lightly-armored swordsman could knock down a knight in full plate, and then use the rapier to thrust between the plates of armor and thus into the vitals of a knight, something that a broadsword couldn't do as well. Other posters also mentioned correctly the economic and cultural differences that phased out full plate.

TheFlatline said:

Overpowered? What would you chose, a musket with my rules or an autgun? Even stub revolvers are more effective. Yeah you can do alot of damage (and remember the Tearing quality would only apply to those with primitive or no armor), but the reload times and other poor qualities of the musket balances it out. The extra die mostly equals +1 damage, although this is best in the hands of PCs or important NPCs because of the better Fury chance.

Despite my changes my players still chose to use bows and melee weapons rather than these weapons.

BTW I don't read too much into the word "Tearing", after all Boltguns doesen't fit the description of the Tearing quality, but they should still have it as the rounds explode instead.

But each to his own. Adding Tearing to any SP or even Las weapon might be overpowered (Iron Talon being nerfed), but to a weapon that is otherwise so bad, isn't a problem unless the PCs al start wearing flintlock pistols just because they might just get a chance to fire it at some unarmored target.

To Brother Preatus: Feel free to make an Autocarbine, there is even precedence for it with the Las Carbine. As long as it isn't better than the Autogun you should be fine. The size difference would mostly be for Aestethic reasons anyway since encumbrance and bulk isn't really important in this game. You can run around inside a house with an Autogun just as easily with these rules so chosing an Autocarbine would mostly be for fluff.

the 8 spider said:

No, no, no. This is what I mean with misconception. First of all the long bow was mostly effective because of its high rate of fire and due to the possibility of firing salvoes. But the arrows (made of low-quality soft iron to hinder their re-use by the enemy) were far more dangerous for the horses than for the knights themselves. This combined with bad weather, bad discipline and bad terrain was deadly. The banishment of the crossbow by the pope is often mentioned, but some say it is a mythos or at least a translation error. The long bow was also proscribed at some time in France during the middle ages it is said. Still, both weapons were quite prevalent in europe. Anyway, the 'true' gothic plate armour appeared decades after the Battle of Crecy and was not extensively used by the French of that period. Most plate armour was not even as cumbersome as most assume, but exhausting to fight in after a while. I have seen people doing somersaults in them.

Brother Praetus said:

Absolutely. I use the Autocarbine rather often for some mook NPCs. If there is a Las Carbine, there can be an Autocarbine. I described it as as an M4 or a H&K G36K . A compact Autogun would be a H&K G36C in my opinion. Still, the damage of an Autocarbine is indeed lessened to 1D10+2 (1D10+3 in case of the Autogun).

TheFlatline said:

It was more the other way around. The decline of armour lead to the evolving of more gracile weapons like the rapier. Even then, the rapier was not strictly a weapon of war but actually more a civilian weapon used by the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The rapier did not evolve to counter heavy armour (war-hammers, maces and bastard swords did that rather well though).

I agree with everything you've written Luthor.

But I'd also like to point out that warhammers, heavier swords etc. was not the only type of armor-piercing weapons developed to counter heavier armors, stabbing swords were also designed for this purpose although they were nothing like Rapiers which as you said was a civilian weapon designed to use for unarmored civilians.

People use this kind of stuff not by choice but because of necessity, PC's will use it to fit in if they're undercover. Sure they might have a backup stub or needle pistol somewhere but they'll stick out like dogs balls on a world where everyone is running around with bows and muskets and thats not always something they want to do.

As for plate armour, especially plate proof-tested against blackpowder weapons its important to put it in the perspective that it really wasn't at all common equipment. For a man to have a trained war horse + full plate and weapons like that is the equivalent in terms of monetary value of having a large loan on something like a luxury car and only ever worn by the very wealthy.

Everyone else just got shot and didn't like it much

May as well throw this in to the topic.

My main gripe is the weight of weaponry which is just far too heavy for what it is, I don't think the writers understood just how **** enormous a weapon, even just a common rifle weighing around 6-10kg really is. Sure you can pick it up and swing it around alright for a few minutes, but I can guarentee after about a 10km hard march any soldier carrying it + ammo and all their personal kit is going to be dangerously fatigued to the point of being a casualty. Or they can carry that weapon, less ammo and no kit and probably be all right physically but next to useless for any kind of protracted warfare longer than a few hours. I house rule weapon weights as being in pounds rather than kg's, (even though the metric system is my friend!) as being a far easier to live with.

Wow people have been watching way too much "movie" history.

Bows were NOT effective against full plate armor. The French knights at Agincourt were primarily wearing MAIL armor with select metal pieces, which is rather useless against any kind of piercing weapon, Arrow, Bolt, spear, etc.. The other factors were the weather, mud and heavy horses turning the field into a quagmire. Once you shot the big horses out the knight was running in quiksand wearing metal armor while a bunch of peasents with spears were able to run around and gank them. Bows are effective ONLY en masse on the battlefield. If you take a person with no training in bow or musket, they will shoot with about the same accuracy or possibly worse with a bow. The famed accuracy of a bow comes purely from hollywood and a few highly trained modern people.

Against popular belief it was not because of the piercing quality of black powder weapons that heavy armor fell out of use. It was the expense of making and keeping armor over the relative ease of cannon and musket production. And also the move of armies away from feudal obligation to standing military was a huge factor in in the loss of armor. Armor was supplied by the soldier not the state. When nobles stopped becoming soldier in favor of idustrial persuits, so too went the knight. Now we are left with a bunch of peasent armies that need to be outfitted by the state and trained. They are not going to issue expensive armor so they give them all cheap and easy muskets with fabric uniforms. If you look back at the commanders, who were often nobles, they usually continued to wear their armor into battle even into WW1. After a while even the nobility jumped off the military bandwagon and generals would come up through the ranks, that is when nearly all armor stopped being worn as seen in the American Civil War. The simple fact is that money, not protection, was the factor that killed armor.

Flatline, you have pretty much everything backwards. Swords became lighter because of the reduction of heavy armor. And the single shot stopping power of a musket ball is much much higher than a 9mm. Most people shot with a musket ball, even if it goes straight through possibly an arm or some such will have massive trauma and blood loss from the weight of impact from a single shot. A person taking the same wound from a 9mm will probably not be knocked off their feet and possibly if sufficiently hyped on adreanaline or drugs, not even know they were hit. The benefit of 9mm vs. say .44 is the high rate of fire and reduced user training and hand strain.

MKX said:

Actually, weapon weights in this game is fairly realistic. Autogun? 3.5 kg. That's about the same as an M16. Hunting rifle? 5kg, which is about the weight of most rifles such as kar98k, G3, .30-08 hunting rifles etc. Lasguns seems to be similar. The heavy stubber is very heavy, but then again fitting for Heavy machineguns such as the M2HB .50 cal. I've been toying with the idea of introducing medium and light machineguns but I've had a hard time getting balanced stats for them. If you nerf the heavy stubber too much you can as well just use an Autogun with bipod. Hmmm...

Light Stubber: Class heavy, range 100, ROF S/3/10, dam 1d10+3I, Pen 0, clip 30 (or 100 belt), rld full/2 full (belt), weight 8kg (10 with belt) price 200.

The question is, would anyone want to use this weapon?

The only unrealistic weights are for the unrealistic weaopons: boltguns, chain weapons etc. But then again these are meant for use by Space Marines and are sci-fi weapons so eh... who cares. If the acolytes don't have the combined SB+TB to carry it all without penalty, tough luck.

from france

okay i should i ve been more precise i din't talk about common knight but about great lords and i didn't talk about "true" gothic full plate. but this lords were weairing chain mail and full plate (sorry my english is not good enough to find the corect name) by that i mean chest leg arms helmet.

and yes the mud , stupidy, mass voley play their part but two experience in the 90 has proven that a arrowws shot from a cross bow coul pierce a weak point of a plate armor either by sheer luck or precise shot. the other experience prove that at short distance a crossbows could pierce any point of a full plate.

for the weight of modern weapons yes i find somme very too heavy. especially the stubber.

from france

first experience " long bows" not crossbows sorry