No, they're a standard special weapon choice too. Several imperial infantry units can take one. Terminators have them as standard, and some of the most elite ones use them like a pistol.

As for vehicle-mounted ones, that's usually on a rail around the hatch, the same place you'd find a small machine gun on modern tanks. If the tank is using storm bolters as it's main weapon, you're looking at a bank of several.

Anyway, the new rules do make a lot more sense. Hitting with every bullet on full-auto didn't feel right.

St. Jimmy said:

Also, both Witch Hunter and Daemon Hunter Inquisitors may use Storm Bolters even if they aren't wearing power armour or other strength enhancing gear in the table top battle game and they are just humans most of the time and not even as strong as astartes are.

Storm Bolter one handed!

He'll hit you with his Storm Bolter then his sword!

More one handed Storm Bolter goodness , and he's not even worried about those grenades that were thrown at his feet, hard!

If you feel that the storm bolter needs to be better balanced, why not take the storm quality off of it and simply give it the Twin Linked quality? For that matter, why do we have a "storm" quality and a "twin linked" quality, both of which function completely different, when a storm bolter is a pair of twin-linked bolters? Why do twin-linked bolters function completely different from twin-linked autoguns?

Finally, why overly worry about weapon balance?

Edit: corrected links

Graver said:

The way I see it, the twin-linked quality is designed for single-shot weapons, like Lascannons (Twin-linked Lascannons being a fairly common weapon system for many vehicles in the Imperium) - it improves chances to hit, and gives a chance of getting two hits.

The Storm quality covers both high rate-of-fire weapons (things not easily covered by the normal full-auto rules, because beyond full-auto 10, you're just wasting bullets), and twin-linking of rapid-fire weaponry (bolters, heavy bolters, autocannons, etc) - it ramps up the hail of gunfire being produced by the weapon.

Only in one situation would I give a weapon both - and that's where a rapid-firing weapon that's already gained Storm (for whatever reason) is doubled up again, like the AA Autocannons on the Hydra (which would be a consequently terrifying weapon - assuming a fairly average BS35 gunner, the tank's motion tracker targeting system (+10 on full-auto), Twin-Linked quality (+20 to hit), and full-auto rate of fire (+20 to hit) combine to mean that even a roll of 50 gets 3 degrees of success, resulting in 10 hits (1 for hitting, 3 more for 3 DoS on Full-Auto, +1 hit for 2+ DoS with Twin-Linking, all doubled because of Storm), each dealing 4d10+5 damage, Pen 4 to any unlucky aircraft that happens to be within the considerable range of those guns...

Graver said:

Because in the table top wargame, storm bolters and twin-linked bolters are two very different things. One is mounted on loyalist space marine rhinos and the other is only mounted on traitor marine rhinos.

Knightmare said:

I find this very appropriate since Storm Bolters weigh 40lbs and must have quite the kick.

Leopold Cygnus said:

I don't. Mainly because the canon disagree with it.

Though I would agree that you can't use a stormbolter as a pistol (like Space Marine terminators do) unless you are inhumanly strong. But as a basic weapon I see no problem with it. Plenty of "normal" humans do it in the canon fluff anyway...

Not to mention Sisters of Battle, Imperial Guard characters as wargear, and half a dozen other people in the tabletop game.

So yea, it really, REALLY, isn't a heavy weapon at all. Just a big basic weapon.

Okok ... im used to 2nd Edition 40K ... things changed a bit since then

Knightmare said:

Hehe, yeah they have... Except for the tyranid genestealers. They still **** Space Marine Terminators in close combat pretty easily... **** genestealers. (although I play Necrons and not Space Marines, but those bastard tyranids are friggin impossible to beat with Necrons)

To get back to the original idea of "balancing" a storm-bolter, I don't think that is really necessary.

Not to say that storm-bolters don't do a hellish amount of damage, especially given how likely they are to get a righteous fury. Rather, they are no more hellishly powerful than a number of other weapons players can avail themselve of. For example in my group one character dual-wields an inferno pistol and a best quality plasma pistol (with gunslinger so no penalties), another has a MP lascannon, and another has a heavy flamer, and another prefers to stick to grenades (krak, xeno fillament, and geode).

Given that loadout the storm-bolter typically falls in the midrange of damage dealing. Indead the storm bolter is more easily countered by refractor fields (lascannon blows through, flamer and grenades ignore), heavy armour (even carapace has a noticable effect) and unnatural toughness (given the relatively low damage per hit).

Lastly, melee combat is big in 40k (orcs, gene-stealers, autoflagulents...), which can make it hard to use the storm bolter to full effect. This is especially the case in my group as we have a house rule that when firing into melee if you miss by 20 or more you hit another person in the melee, and when firing (full or semi) auto each shot that misses counts as being 10 higher. Example. Fire a bolter full-auto into melee and get a basic success, the first shot hits the enemy, the next two hit nothing and the last hits our friend.

Well it is heavy in the sense that it weighs a lot, but it's obviously not 'HEAVY' in the sense of the rules. 9kgs is a lot to carry and aim in one hand.

Personally I think that weapon type should be reliant on weight more than it is. If you are strong enough you should be able to wield any weapon as a pistol so long as it has a pistol grip of course.

Something as simple as "if the weapon's weigh is equal to or less than your SB you may treat it as a pistol. up to 2x SB = basic and greater than that =heavy."

I don't really get the storm and twin linked rules as is currently. From a background perspective a storm bolter is a refined twin linked bolter. It has internal mechanisms to balance out multiple shots leaving barrels etc. But this isn't that much different from a twinlinked weapon, just more stable.

So I would make them the same except that a twin-linked weapon gains the Inaccurate quality. This means that a storm bolter is a more accurate twin linked weapon. If I point two lasers joined together so their barrels are 5cm apart at a target and fire then there is a good chance both will hit.

I just think the storm rule is more appropriate for twinlinked weapons in general. After all, in 40k the weapons that are most often twin-linked are the fully automatic ones - twinlinked assault cannons, heavy bolters, heavy stubbers, shuriken cannons, big shootas. The number of single shot lascannon equivalent twin linked weapons is quite small. Thus one would assume that twin linked rules would benefit full auto weapons far more than they do.

Hellebore