Heavy Lasgun

"He had taken the bipod off a heavy lasgun, and cinched the weapon over his right shoulder on a long strap so that he could shoot it from the hip. The chest-pumping pop of each discharge threw a javelin of light out through the smoke and snow. Gnesh casually aimed at the administration wing. His shots punched a series of deep holes along the facing wall until they found the entrance and wrought catastrophic damage on the three Imperials. Then he aimed a couple more shots into the architrave, and collapsed the entrance onto their smouldering bodies."

-Blood Pact by Dan Abnett

Heavy lasguns are relatively rare weapons in the Imperial armoury. They fulfill many of the same function as a heavy stubber: suppressive fire, squad support and defending fixed positions. Yet they have never been as well loved as either the heavy stubber or the lasgun they are scaled up from. While more powerful than a standard lasgun, they lack its reliability and ease of maintenance. While being lighter and more easily reloaded than a heavy stubber, they lack its range and rate of fire.

In appearance, the weapon resembles an oversized standard lasgun, with a long, fluted and heat-vaned barrel designed to cool the weapon when in use. It typically mounts a bipod.

Heavy lasguns can fire either power cells from a standard lasgun, or (more commonly) are powered by specially adapted backpack containing 250 shots. When standard powerpacks are used, the weapon tends to overheat, as the backpack acts in part as a cooling system. The backpack is far harder to charge than a standard powerpack, rendering the whole weapon system disproportionately burdensome on Imperial armourers in the eyes of many quartermasters. Nor is it popular with line troops, as the stream of las-light is highly visible, making operators clear targets for enemy soldiers.

For this reason, the Heavy Lasgun is often relegated to "second tier" military forces like local militia or PDF, mothballed in storage worlds like Vraks or Guchella, or retired to rear echelon worlds in large crusades like Balhaut or Melladis. It is also often found in the hands of criminals, who value the intimidation value of such a large, noisy and visible weapon.

Name: Heavy Lasgun

Class: Heavy

Range: 100

RoF: -/-/8

Dam: 1d10+4E

Pen: 1

Clip: 50 (if using standard lasgun powercells (reduced from 60 to reflect the greater drain of the heavy lasgun)) or 250 if using the backpack

Rld: Full (lasgun powerpack) or 2Full (backpack)

Special: The weapon counts as having the "Overheats" special rule if using lasgun powerpacks

Wt: 15kg (gun) 20kg (backpack)

Cost: 750

Availability: Rare

I like it. RoF might be a little high, but I like it.

Intresting, I quite like Abnett´s "heavy autoguns" (not sure if it was in Honour Guard or Sabbat Martyr), kinda remind me of real light machineguns as heavy stubbers are obviously heavy ones. And Heavy Lasgun is realy more Guard-ish

Rules seem to be reasonable, but I think Scarce availibility is enough, something quite rudamentary as SAW altough not general Munitorium-approved/distributed wouldn´t be as rare as plasmapistol for example.

Jephkay said:

RoF is lower than a stub gun and an autogun (10), but higher than a submachinegun (autopistol - 6.) I think Abnett's description suggests a full-auto weapon, but I wanted a lower rate of fire than a solid projectile weapon. I think RoF 8 feels about right to me, for a heavy weapon.

TorogTarkdacil said:

Yes, he's used heavy autoguns a few times. Mind you, according to the Forge World books, the "standard" Agripinaa type III pattern autogun (which is identical in appearance to the autogun on page 132 of the DH core book) fires a "long 8.25 calibre round." That's a hell of a big bullet, suggesting that the standard autogun is a pretty heavy weapon already!

I'd stick with my "rare" rating for the Heavy Lasgun across the Imperium as a whole, simply because Blood Pact is the first time I've ever seen this weapon mentioned. It may be that it's like the Malcador heavy tank: an older weapon system no longer in common use because the Munitorum have decreed that there are better weapons available for the price. This is not to say it would count as "Rare" everywhere: like the Malcador tank, maybe some IG regiments use it commonly, or there are certain planets where they are stockpiled.