I was playing DH2e and I decided to reward one of my players with a Best Quality las-pistol.

Only, I read the new craftsmanship rules and I realized it doesn't make a **** difference whether or not a laspistol is Best (woah man, a weapon that already re-rolls a Jam result can't jam at all now! Break out the confetti!). And a Good quality las-pistol is literally completely pointless.

So, I figured it neededtio be tweaked. Either I ignore the new rules or just use Dark Heresy 1E rules, or just come up with my own. Seriously what was so bad about adding +1 base damage to the weapon?

So I figured a buff was in order.

Good Quality: Weapon becomes reliable, +1 Damage.

Best Quality: Weapon cannot jam, +2 Damage, +1 Penetration.

Does this sound fair?

In DH1, it was the same. Close combat weapons got real bonuses.

Look at this, I took those rules a while ago in DH1 house rules, I found them cool and lazily adapted them to DH2. I don't know how balanced they are, but hey, that's it.

https://obscurae.obsidianportal.com/wikis/best-quality-firearms

I just realised that I didn't put on the source on my page, shame on me. I'll correct this.

I like that concept. Honestly I also thought of having Dawn of War style unique weapons and armors. Like a Best Quality Psyker's Force Sword that gives the weilder Strong minded (or Mental Fortress if they already have strong minded). Maybe even give the weapon a long backstory, and a long ass name like "Allaister's Blade of the Unbroken Mind".

I mean, obviously such unique weapons are exactly that -- unique and extremely rare. But it makes for a great bauble for the players to covet.

The idea isn't from me, I just adapted it a bit for DH2, but I liked it. I didn't try to do something like this for melee weapon, since +10 to touch and +1 damage seems already a lot for me! But I wouldn't be against it, I just didn't took time to think about it.

Hi there,

I share your thought abouts "good Quality/best Quality" RAW, but I would not try to Exchange it with any tempering regarding the damage code of the weapon. While I am currently still brewing up my own house rules for such, I was more thinking along the lines of changing the weapon traits or (in case of BEST Quality weapons) coming up with certain minor Special rules alltogether.

In regard to weapons traits, "proven (x)" comes to my mind first. It is tweaking a essential Quality of the weapon (the damage Output) without changing the Maximum damage. The later could, in turn, lead to mis-balancing, especially with las weapons that greatly benefit from the new power settings. "Vengeful" might be a good one, too,

Another possibility I was thinking of was going down the same lane as the "unnatural (Attribute) (x)" rates: have the weapon grant one (or more) additional degrees of success IF the character using it hits at all. This out-classes the old "get +10 on the attack role" things for me, as it should remain true that a fool with a tool is still a fool .

I would not simply turn that into fix rules, so, but would (as a GM) just make myself a list of what I would POSSIBLY offer as an added Feature/trait to a good/best Quality weapon, leaving me the Option to deny this or that later on.

It is very interesting indeed. I don't personnaly mind to modify damage/pen of already existing weapons, but I also like your ideas, which I will think about and maybe implement them in the page I have shown above.

While a good quality Laspistol IS pointless, a Best quality can overload without worry. Even if it becomes unreliable due to variable settings, it won't lose the "can't jam" quality provided by Best Craftsmanship.

As a house rule, I would apply Proven to anything that picks up multiple instances of reliable.

As the others have stated, I effectively used DH1e craftmanship rules. But, honestly, I hardly ever worry about it, because I like to create gear and I try to make sure my players are always taking notice of rare and relic items not so much paying much attention to the petty weapons of minions.

Like Lorky said, give weapons character and pull them out of their molds.