A player of mine managed to get the connections and funding to buy a normal quality storm bolter. Being an arch-millitant, he specialised in bolters bringing the total bonus damage to +7, and concidering the BS bonuses a RT character can get during his career, I don't think its inconcieveable for him to be able to deal more than 100 damage if he gets lucky (storm bolter full auto 4 x 2 shots.) Usually cover might protect characters from various types of weaponry, but with this much damage, its unlikely that theres much in the universe that can shield you from something like that.

I've concidered making some sort of chart to see how much damage the surroundings take if damage exceeds the target's wounds to help tune down his use of the weapon. That way he would think twice of using it indoors (snapping support columns, causing cave-ins) let alone using it on a ship.

Has anyone done anything simmilur?

First, he should be specialized in Basic Weapons, not Bolt since it's by Class (Basic, Flame, Heavy, Melee, Pistol, and Thrown).

Second, against creatures with Unnatural Toughness, a Storm Bolter still has a hard time chewing through the enemy. It also seems like more and more creatures are getting Unnatural Toughness all the time.

However, since you have a character with a top-of-the-line gun, allow him to enjoy it. He's the Archmilitant, let him habe a few more kills than the average - that's his job.

Cheddah said:

Remember that whatever he's shooting at will benefit from armour points and toughness bonus from each hit. 100 damage might sound nasty, but if you divide that by 4 (i.e the maximum number of shots/hits that a storm bolter can inflict, not 8) that means it's 25 damage per hit. There are creatures out there who'se Toughness bonus can relly go through the roof (some have a TB of 20 or higher!) which would soak up the majority of damage. Then there's people equiped with refractor fields or a rosarius that has a potential of soaking up serious damage. etc.

And do note that inflicting 100 damage on a single burst entails that he rolls extremely good rolls. While the tearing quality might tip the odds in his favor, it is in no way a guarantee of rolling 9's or 10's for each shot.

I cant really see where the problem is, the Stormbolter is a solid starter weapon nothing fancy or over the top. Wait till your players get their first heavy weapon with a Suspensor and Motion Predictor. Or when the get the superiority of Powered Melee with the right talents. Erm what i wanted to say on a powerscale 1 to 10 the Stormbolter would be a solid 4.

I mean its fun to work your way up the foodchain and you cannot keep your players always on a short leash, at some point you will have to work with storytelling reasons to limit the firepower ( if desired). And like the others stated, when you the big fish on your players like a demon or an Hive Tyrant or similar the Stormbolter barely qualifies as backup weapon.

but if you divide that by 4 (i.e the maximum number of shots/hits that a storm bolter can inflict, not 8)

That's not a universally accepted reading of the Storm rules.

HappyDaze said:

I remember someone posting that FFG said that the way Storm weapons work is by working out the number of attacks that hit, and then doubling them. So yeah, the maximum number of attacks that can hit is 8. Of course, even with d10+7 Tearing damage (average 14.15 damage), you've still only got a Pen of 4, so even carapace armor will reduce the damage you're doing, on top of the Toughness Bonus damage reduction.

Up to 4 before Storm and then double it is how I read it too.

HappyDaze said:

Yeah, there's some confusion about that, I know.

But I've chosen to interptate it as being a maximum of 4 hits, and the difference between a normal bolter and a storm bolter is the fact that the storm bolter, while having the same RoF, is able to spit out the bolts in a more rapid succession than a bolter, hence why you need a lot less degrees of success to actually hit with all the bolts from a storm bolter than a normal bolter. (for a real world analogy, think of it as the difference between a metal storm pistol and a regular sub-machine gun. The metal storm fire off the bullets in such rapid succession so they have all left the barrel way before the effects of recoil actually affect the shooter, in contrast to a sub-machine gun where a full auto burst will more often than not create a steep muzzle climb that will affect accuracy severely)

Another reason for this is the correlation between rate of fire and ammunition expedinture. According to the rules, a full auto burst will spend the same amount of ammunition as listed on the highest of the RoF-numbers listed, and the maximum RoF-number listed for the storm bolter is 4, not 8. Making the "eight hits" interpretation rather illogical since the weapon according to the rules only expend four bolts and not eight, and from what I can see the "Storm"-quality of the gun doesn't mention anything about any extra ammunition being spent in case one were to achieve extreme DoS. In fact, it actually says that it still only fire up to it's normal firing rate, and the normal firing rate for a full auto burst of a storm bolter is 4.

Anyway, that's my case for why I believe the storm bolter to only achieve a maximum of four hits instead of eight. If eight hits were the maximum, then the rules shoudl've been written differently.

That being said, I'd take my interpretation of a storm bolter over a normal bolter any day of the week. Being able to nail those four bolts at the target by a mere 2 degrees of success is REALLY wicked.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Thing is, the storm bolter has clip of 60. The only weapons* which equal or exceed that are heavy, laser or alien (though the shuriken catapult would get off less full-auto bursts because of a larger burst size). A basic weapon that gets 15 full-auto bursts from the one clip seems a bit out of place.

The 8 shot interpretation makes the weapon seem like it fits better, while also making it much riskier to shoot into melee (I play with this rule for shooting into melee: If their BS after all modifers is x, we look at the number of hits scored there and what would be scored if it was x+20 [target not in melee]. The difference in the number of hits is taken by others in the melee).

*I'm only looking at the RT book here but, from memory, that trend continues.

Bilateralrope said:

Well, you could argue that storm bolters are usually either used by the Adeptus Astartes wearing terminator armour, or is a pintle mounted weapon on certain tanks, that the reason for the unusually large clip is because of the fact that it is expected to be fired quite often, and having to reload it constantly wouldn't be very efficien (also, fidgeting around with small clips would be hard for someone in terminator armour where the other hand is usually dominated by an oversized powerfist).

But such an argument would just be guess work, so until an errata comes ou im gonna stick with the "under powered" version (not that it is very under powered but you know what I mean) rather than the higher-powered one.

I predict that either the clip size will be changed or the phrasing for the Storm quality will be, but there's no telling at the moment. And you have to agree that I do make a better case at the moment since im sticking to what the rules say rather than assuming things just because the weapon has an unusual clip size.

In any case, hopefully we'll see an errata about it that can settle it for all of us.

I'm just curious. Is this balance concern based off of actual ingame obsevations or purely theoretical?

Varnias Tybalt said:

Fair enough. All I'm sure of at the moment is that the storm quality is badly written.

I was fairly certain that doubling the ammo consumption was noted in the same thread that stated to double the hits. It's not that hard to understand.

Atheosis said:

In game. And I chose to interpret the max shot as 8 because a weapon's special rules are generally not included in it's stats unless specifically mentioned in it's description. Thus a S/2/4 weapon with Storm would be -/-/8 on full auto.

Cheddah said:

Even so, decent armour, a good toughness bonus and solid cover are all still beneficial.

Assuming a Stormtrooper equivalent (TB4, 6AP to all locations) ducking behind sandbags (8 AP, as per page 246), an average hit from a specialised Stormbolter (either Mighty Shot or the Arch-Militant's special rule) goes from 14, to 10 (sandbags - hit is resolved against cover, then against the target, so apply pen and damage to cover and anything left hits the guy behind), and then to 4 (TB4, 2 remaining AP from armour). Assuming averages, The second hit will deal 5 (cover value reduced by one for being penetrated), the third will deal 6, the fourth 7, and the fifth and subsequent dealing 8 (the cover is gone by that point).

Per hit, the effect of cover is beneficial. A heavy burst of fire will whittle down lighter cover fairly swiftly, but change that cover up to Rockcrete, Stone or thick iron (pretty standard cover in a ruined cityscape), and that reduces the effect of the hits down by a further 4 (negating the first hit, 1 from the second, and a cumulative +1 on each subsequent hit), and taking cover behind Armaplas, heavy bulkheads or plasteel will negate every hit without issue.

Finding the right cover is a challenge when dealing with powerful weapons. Against enemies armed with lasguns or autoguns, sandbags will do well... bolt weapons require something more solid to hide behind.

HappyDaze said:

I agree, but that just makes cover more effective. Each individual hit has to deal with the cover AP, which means it's degrading a full burst eight times over (assuming the earlier bolts don't vaporize the cover, of course). As a weapon, it seems less alarming to me than, say, a melta-gun, which does more damage in a single lump. I've got a starting PC in my group with 8 AP and a 6 TB - I know he'd much rather take a storm bolter burst than a single melta shot, and so would the average orc.

@N0-1_H3r3

Cover, while useful, is not quite as potent as depicted since shots wander. With multiple hits going to different locations, few applications of cover will stand up to a Storm weapon, assuming that you need arms and head out of cover to fire back (at least the fourth hit goes against one of those (p 239)).

HappyDaze said:

The reason I say that the rule is badly written is because the double ammo consumption isn't mentioned in the book.

Cifer said:

Which assumes you're fighting back from cover, rather than hiding from the maniac wielding a storm bolter.

Cifer said:

So what is your concern? Are you simply wanting a way to completely nullify the damage of a storm bolter? They are designed to do a lot of damage after all. I really don't get it. Even if you are doubling overall hits, a character has to roll really well to do the kind of damage you're concerned about. If they do roll that well good for them. A storm bolter in skilled hands should be deadly after all.

Bilateralrope said:

Agreed on that one. I've had similar issues throughout the book where I'll look at a phrase and wonder if the comma was either misplaced or left out completely.

But on the subject of the thread I'd say let them have their day. Your the GM so if you need to fudge something for cinematic value then go for it. I have a player right now that I know for a fact lies on his rolls to hit. He doesn't kill everything he hits because while he lies on his rolls, I fudge his target's wounds.

@N0-1_H3r3

Which assumes you're fighting back from cover, rather than hiding from the maniac wielding a storm bolter.

Well... yeah. If you're not fighting back, you'll generally end up dead all the same since your cover crumbles around you as you described. If you're in total cover, the maniac has the additional problem of the -30 "can't see target" penalty anyway.

@Atheosis

So what is your concern?

Noting that cover isn't quite as reliable as N0-1 made it out to be if you're intending to fight from it, obviously.

There's a thread about Storm Bolters under the Rules section. I emailed FFG and the official word about Storm is ROF before applying Storm. So, yes, it's potentially 8 hits. The point of the Storm Bolter is to throw more shots, rather than be more accurate. It was also told to me, that although it isn't explicitly stated in the rules, storm bolters also use double the amount of ammo. Thus, you are expending 2 ammo in single shot, 4 ammo in semi, and 8 in full auto.

dvang said:

Got this from Sam Stewart today:

The storm bolter gets two hits per success. So on Semi-auto it puts out
four shots (semi-auto 2 = 4 hits) if you get the initial success and at
least two additional degrees of success. (Semi-auto needing 2 successes
for subsequent hits). On full auto, if you get four successes, you'll
get 8 hits.

Ammo use should take this into account.

So, I guess you're right, and I was wrong here. Still I think we can all agree that the current RAW regarding storm bolters are a bit confusing. But it's nice to finally have some clarity of the issue.

I've made Stormbolters Heavy weapons to balance them ... there is a reason why they are either Vehicle mounted or carried by terminators.