Ah zog it!

By Calgor Grim, in Deathwatch House Rules

There seems a distinct lack of colourful ork content. Orks made for a dementedly stupidly funny race and I'm looking to use a number of them shortly for the simple reason of: "because I feel like it". I'm therefore brainstorming a few of their more madder ideas to put them into a DW setting, particularly looking back to the old 4th ed books when the Empire was more about books which were fun, amusing and had nice bits before they became all... ** REDACTED** .

I therefore decided to give it a go at making that wonderful weapon of immense confusion, possible hilarity and general high levels of boom also known as the Ork "Shokk Attack Gun", as I can't find any anywhere else. For those not familiar on this thing, lexicanum link provided. I'm after some feedback and serious balancing on this thing...it was a very weird weapon on table top that used warp based jiggery pokery to tellyport ork snotlings at enemies, sometimes even into enemies to attack them and wielded by a Big Mek which had varying results. One of these on a table could in the same game do a lot of damage and kill a player when they laugh at the misfortunes. Statline below from ye olde codex.

Tabletop Stats (4th ed)

Range: 60"

Damage: 2D6 AP2

Large Blast

Basically you'd target a figure, roll the two dice for strength and if you got a double, consult the chart of where things got really amusing.

Double 1 - Boom. The gun explodes "leaving a crackling orb of unreality in its place" . Doesn't fire, remove the firing model and anything within D6"

Double 2 - Opponent chooses shooters target (friend or foe)

Double 3 - Miss the intended target and instead shoot at unit nearest that target (friend or foe)

Double 4 - Snotling gets fired out in a spray of blood and bone. Slightly reduced damage and blast.

Double 5 - The firer is somehow launched by his own gun. Doesn't fire, counts as being thrown into assault.

5 and 6 - Field collapses, hit central target with S10

Double 6 - Creates a mini warp breach, everything in blast radius removed outright.

So given the above it's a question of how to generate this in the Deathwatch setting. I was toying with roughly the below:

200m range, Heavy Weapon

Some number of D10+some other number, Pen 12 (AP 2 says bye bye terminator armour)

Single Shot

No Reload or Clip Size and it's based on the number of snotlings with him

Blast (5), Devastating (3), Unreliable*

*Usual rules, in Ork hands their own weapons don't count as unreliable. Love Ork logic!

It's then whether I map 1 through 10 on a D10 to those results and leave some spare, whether I go 2D10, 3D10 et cetera...I never liked doing damage dice. Any initial ideas?

Edited by Calgor Grim

Waaaagghh!

Yuz've forgot da all important rule "Da Pinerkle ov Orky Nowats"! Shook Attakk guns are so absurdly complex that each can only be used by the Mekzpert that created it!

Also, given that the damage is caused by the device's delivery of a swarm of warp crazed snotlings, I would suggest that both damage and blast scale according to the number sent through on any given firing.

*Mekzpert - term for an extremely"talented" Mek that has yet to develop sufficient stature to be considered a BigMek !

Only War "Enemies of the Imperium" has stats for shokk attack gun - Heavy; 200m; S/–/–; 3d10 X; Blast [3], Inaccurate, Overheats - strange, but without any additional rules.

Thanks. That probably explains why Calor Grim didn't follow up on his OP. Also explains why I didn't know ( don't have any OW material!) Although to be true to the original fluff it should have Warp Weapon quality, as the more damaging anti vehicle effects were caused by the snotlings materialising inside the target...

While Warp Weapons trait exist in OW, I can't remember even single application, just like they put it into the Corebook and completely forgot about it :-)