Greetings everyone,

I'm gonna do my first session of Dark Heresy in about a week (as GM) and I'm already afraid about some rules.

One of my players have a "plan" which doesn't seem to break any rules, but when I check what he is about to do he's going to be a nightmare.

He wants to take two Burst-pistol. Each of them is able to do a full burst. He can have both full bursting in a round.

My main concern is about pistol and close combat. Rules state than one can fight in close combat with a pistol. I can imagine someone with a sword and a pistol. But it's hard to imagine someone involved in close combat wielding... two pistols.

Anyway the problem is about rules and power of two full burst > Who would be foolish enough to engage someone in combat that can potentially reap you apart with two full burst? Imagine I go with a sword, hitting you with 1D10+SB, and you reply with two full-burst. There is no match, I'm deadmeat.

Is that normal? Why then people don't all "close-combat with two pistols" ?

(Note: I know, Close combat is not Point-Blank therefore he doesn't get the +30, but still it seems to me far better that a single sword hit)

Thank you very much for any guidance,

Kath

Is that normal?

Yes.

Why doesn't everyone do it?

Possibly flavor. Also, it's not as mechanically advantageous as it may appear at first glance for a number of reasons:

-If this is your first session, then the only way I know of that your character is not going to be taking penalties for Two-Weapon Weilding is if he's a Metallican Gunslinger. If he is, well then, more power to him. If not, then that's penalties right there that offset the bonus for Auto-fire.

-Characters that voluntarily close into close quarters with a melee weapon generally have melee combat talents, which enhance the effectiveness of their sword or whatever. I can't think of any talents that specifically facilitate fighting with pistols in melee, so they have an edge there.

-Auto-fire eats through ammo very quickly. Even with rapid reload, he's going to have to be taking a full action (or 2, without) every three or so rounds. The swordsman, on the otherhand, is going to keep swinging.

There's more reasons, but there's a few. It's actually not a course I'd recommend, especially for a starting PC. (Unless the character has completely atrocious WS, in which case, it's a good choice.)

NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that in spite of this, my Metallican PC regularly makes use of a shotgun pistol in melee, to devastating effect.

Yup,

It is is "development plan". Because he is a psyker he won't get it before rank 4 (3000xp)

Note that I'm already afraid by this minor psychic power that allows all attacks until the end of next turn to be considered as Point Blank.

It means he is going to double burst (and single burst at until rank 4) at +30 ennemies which are extrem range from him. Gloups :'(

But okay... this is normal. Close combat is a dangerous zone then... even if your enemy doesn't have close combat weapons

Pistols kind of are close combat weapons.

However the main reason everyone doesn't do this is because they can't. As you pointed out, he won't be able to do this until he is Rank 4 at least. He needs Ambidextrous and Two-Weapon Fighting to pull it off effectively. It's still a nasty close-combat combo and a good way to become reasonably good in melee without investing in a lot of WS and melee talents. However, you can't really improve it after this point and is quite unpredictable - you might get a lot of hits, but you might not.

A melee combat specialist, on the other hand, can become very, very scary. Multiple attacks and rerolling a miss mean that they will probably hit. There are some very nasty close combat weapons that you can probably pick up by Rank 4. The combination of SB + extra damage from the weapon means than they often do more damage per hit than a pistol. For example a pistol that does 1d10 + 3 damage with a pen of 3 (manstoppers) might get up to 6 hits (though that's very unlikely), but if you are fighting someone with a TB of 5 and armour 5 you'll be deducting 7 damage from each hit. That leaves you with an average of 1.5 damage per hit. A melee specialist with a SB of 4 armed with a chainsword will be doing 1d10 + 6 damage, pen 2, Tearing. That's (if my maths don't fail me) 5.5 damage per hit... and he doesn't run out of ammo.

Like the others said he won't pull off many hits without talents like Ambidextrous, TWW (Ballistic) and Gunslinger. Without these he's at -40/-20 (or -20/+0 with the full auto bonus included) and no further bonuses for range. Even with BS 40 he's lucky if he hits and very likely not getting any advantage from bursts (extra hits). In my experience (and math supports it) it's better to fire bursts with one hand (at +20) as long as you didn't get BS advances and talents.

Bursts require full actions (no move) so you better get something in return. Without the bonuses you don't. It's more effective to use single (melee) attacks, aim (with Accurate weapons) or shotgun (pistol)s.

I won't get into using Unnatural Aim because it's every other round for the +30. So he uses it. And next round he cannot move because he wants to full auto. That doesn't sound particularly overpowered. He leaves himself open to a plethora of tactics to counter it. Or he might be dead the next round after setting up for the burst. Not to mention the phenomena and corruption resulting from the overabundant use of psychic powers.

Later in the game when he has accrued the talents melee characters will be getting multiple attacks with higher damage (with the SB translating into damage to wounds whereas pistol damage is mostly absorbed by TB and armor). Or they'll run or charge with Hard Target (-40/-20 to BS). They'll reroll missed attacks. And so on. In fact he'd be better advised to go force weapons at higher level.

So don't panic. He'll not be any more effective than everyone else.

Ah, as the person above said, remember that you can't use a psychic power and attack with a weapon in the same round. You'd have to cast the Unnatural Aim power and then wait until your next turn to actually fire.

MILLANDSON said:

And even if you could, you couldn't Unnatural Aim (a Half Action) and auto-fire or make multiple attacks (both Full Actions) in the same turn anyway.

Yeah that too. Though that bursts require a full action is enough. Since they allow no move you usually fire full auto when the situation allows it (no move required to get into line of sight). You shouldn't waste the opportunity to prepare with a power. And you definitely shouldn't move into line of sight to fire a burst next turn after preparing with a power. That just calls for your enemies to unleash their full action attacks first (bursts, multiple melee attacks or special moves like Stun, Disarm or Knockdown) or move into full cover.

As i play this kind of gunslinger, I must say that yes, this is normal and possible.

It IS very flavor oriented though. Jericus does it cause of the flavor I wish him to have (and his 60 Ag )

And I wouldn't worry about having 30 plus enemies at close range. He should be the one to worry, seeing as there isn't a SINGLE pistol that can hit that many targets in a round (And it makes me happy to say that).

Also, there is the problem of mass penalties he'd be taking with out the appropriate skills, Burst + PB or not.

Then again, I'm probably just repeating people who have posted, so I'm going back to lurk now.

Using two fully automatic pistols in close-combat (or any kind of combat, really) is a terrorist tactic. Its flashy, it packs punch, its intimidating (hell, downright scary) but it lacks redundancy and can turn downright dangerous in seconds.

Okay, so you can fire two autopistols on full-auto. Good for you. You are probably a regular terror inside confined spaces of a room... for about 3 game rounds. After that, you are all out of ammo on both guns and reloading them requires you to first put one of them down on a table or floor to free one hand for loading, then picking it up, dropping the other one and reload.... Which leaves you without any loaded weapons at all for 2 rounds, with the added risk of reloading your second gun with a fully loaded one on the floor besides you where anyone diving into melee with you can pick it up to hose *you*.

In so many words: I'd allow this if it suits the character but I'd make sure the player realizes the tactic requires a do-or-die mentality and can backfire.

Last night's session the group's assassin launched a surprise attack on a cultist encampment, pulling out two Hecutor autopistols and blazing away. First round the pistol in his right hand jammed. Second round the pistol in his left hand jammed...

Swords don't jam

Lets face it, anyone who's gunslinging is going to be using a fire selector on both weapons (for the same cost as a mono sword). There's the chance of jamming both weapons but that very slim and outweighed by the fact that they are already specced for firing at range where your sword weilder is going to running through a hail of bullets to get into combat.

If it's required there's a case for house ruling that fireautomatic pistols in close combat counts as a a full attack and sacrifces the users reaction.

Face Eater said:

Firing a semi-auto/full-auto burst in close combat already counts as a full action though The only added bit there is the reaction being sacrificed, which could well work.

Face Eater said:

Which is an advantage some of the time, at others the close combat guy will get to you in one round. IME the pistol wielder is inferior in CC than a sword expert, especially against tougher opponents, where the higher damage-per-hit of the sword wielder wins out. By the time you have the feats to wield two pistols effectively, tougher opponents are the norm.

This whole thread should just be called:

"Munchkinism: Yes, even Dark Heresy is not immune."

Sanjay said:

No, I really don't think it should.

What is so horrifying about the concept that, even up-close-and-personal (ESPECIALLY up close and personal!), someone with significant training letting loose an ungodly hail of bullets will be as capable, if not more so, than someone swinging a chunk of metal around? Why do players making character who want to be good at something have to be munchkins for making their characters actually excel doing that thing?

Metallican Gunslingers sling guns like nobody's business. That's what they're supposed to do. I'd be annoyed if they weren't, wouldn't you?

Unusualsuspect said:

I guess I am more of a role playing purist. I think every advance one takes for their character should be some how fit the nature of the character you are playing. The posts here seem to all be delving into the mechanics of the game to "max" out combat statistics. That, to me, is not role playing; it's munchkinism.

"During character creation, munchkins engage in vicious min-maxing, leading to exceptionally unrealistic or unusual characters who make no sense except in terms of raw power.

Munchkins are often accused of roll-playing, a pun on 'role' that notes how munchkins are often more concerned with the numbers and die rolls than with the roles that they play."

from the undisputed repository of knowledge, Wikipedia

I see.

I'm not going to argue that talents and skills shouldn't reflect the character's personality and traits. I am going to argue that "kicks ass with a gun in each hand" is a trait (a pretty **** cliche one - see Equilibrium) that one should be able to represent mechanically. John Preston shouldn't be represented by a guy with 25 Ballistic Skill and lacking the Ambidexterity talent... but that's not what you're arguing, is it?

Roles are what we want our character to be. For a roleplayer to be playing his role right, the mechanics need to reflect the role wanted. Someone who roleplays as the most badass guy with a blade but represents that with inferior talents and characteristics to the point where, in any given situation, another character would be more effective with a sword... well, that means you're not playing the right role. That said, there's nothing wrong with playing a guy who THINKS he's the most badass with a blade, but actually isn't.

What is it to min/max, really? Its a character who has tried to minimize his weaknesses and maximize his strengths. Think about that for a second... what character would NOT want to reduce his vulnerabilities or take advantage of what he does best?

All that said? I still see your point, and mostly agree with it. I just find your labeling of any discussion on optimal skills and talents for a given purpose as nothing more than "munchkining" to be unfair. The mechanics are there to represent our characters, and there's nothing about building a powerful character that necessitates the character be roleplayed any worse, nor the opposite.

As always, there is more than one way to neutralize a target other than with more damage.

1. Disarm - a skilled melee combatant (read: one with a decently high Weapon Skill) will have a reasonably good chance of depriving the target of at least one of its guns. Why? Chances are, the guy toting dual pistols probably doesn't have anywhere near as decent a Weapon Skill as the melee combatant, and as the Disarm action is an opposed Weapon Skill check . . . well, you do the math. Heck, the GM may even give a penalty to the player with the dual pistols, since pistols don't exactly make good parrying weapons.

2. Grapple - a skilled melee combatant may also try grappling the target. Since the melee combatant probably has both a high Weapon Skill and Strength, chances are good that the pistol user will end up grappled and stay grappled, and thus, both pistols negated. Then it's just a matter of beating the fool to death. What's more, friends of the melee combatant can help and they'll even have a +20 bonus to hit the target with a melee weapon.

Really, be creative. Throw dust into their eyes; knee-kick the weenie in the groin; entangle the bastard with a net; sweep his feet out from under him; use a surprise attack; use a shock weapon (it may even cook off all the ammo the fool is carrying). If you ask me, the person wading into melee combat with a pair of pistols is a fool, and a damned fool at that. They're negating the one big advantage that they have, and that is the ability to strike at range and be relatively immune to all the stuff I listed above.

-Kirov

P.S. This discussion reminds me of how a Shadowrun GM I know managed to neutralize an entire party of shadowrunners without so much as breaking a sweat. I always felt sorry for the guy, since the group he had to deal with were all rules lawyers and munchkins to the hardcore extreme. We're talking about some absolutely absurd combat monsters here (like "Trogdor" the troll street samurai with an essence of 0.001 and who can take an assault cannon round to the gut and laugh as it bounces off). Anyway, in this one session, the party draws the attention of Ares Corp. security. The party gets ready for a heavy-duty firefight. What does security do? They lob a single canister of Neuro-Stun VII at the group. Within seconds, the entire party is knocked out as apparently they didn't think the opposition would use something other than bullets to take them out. All security then had to do was simply confiscate all the toys and toss the silly fools into high security jail cells. What was particularly funny about all this was how the players were going on and on about how uber their characters were, and then their reaction of abject horror as their characters keeled over like chumps.

As an addendum, what's truly sad was that the players didn't learn, 'cause the GM used this tactic against them again with their next batch of characters.

Unusualsuspect said:

Touche. I applaud you.

This is a tricky concept to explain, and I think you've done it particularly well. Nicely done.

Unusualsuspect:

As Crow said, you made your stand well. I am inclined to agree, to some extent, with what you say. Perhaps I was being a bit unfair.

My apologies if I offended anyone.

But to those of you who are reading these posts looking for an angle on how to just be better than everyone else by bending rules and finding loopholes:

The Inquistion will eventually find you and expose you for the heretics that you are!

And then burn you. Because they do that.

Sanjay said:

Shooting two full auto pistols in melee is hardly 'bending rules and finding loopholes'. Its more 'using rules that are explicitly stated in the rulebook'. Oh, that cheecky rascal. how dare he.

Furthermore the impact of the double autopistol isn't that great. Yes Metallican gunslingers doing it at rank 1 are powerfull but you'll find that as ranks go up it becomes mostly a non-issue. By rank 4 I don't expect it would be an unbalancing factor at all. And especially at rank 5-6 when power weapons and lightning attack come into play, you'll see pistol melee becoming fairly poor in comparison. Any pistoleer running into melee with a power fist equipped melee-baddy is asking for a spanking. Ballistic based character builds do well at ranged, pistol melee is just a fallback so that theyre not 'completely' useless when they accidentally find themselves in melee. This is much like how a melee character might carry around an autopistol just because full-auto fire increases his chance to do some damage with his BS of 28 by boosting it to 48. He wont get the extra hits a purpose built ranged character will have, but at least he wont be completely useless.

Its also important to note that, in general, its not necessarily bad that one character is a better fighter than the others, it all depends on overall party dynamic. If character Bob is a better martial character than some other character this is fine as long as that character has his own place to shine (investigative skills, face, tech use, ...) A party in Dark Heresy is supposed to cover all the bases, not just be '4 dudes with guns and swords'. Surely it would be bad for the player of the martial characters if the adept and the tech priest were as good as him at what he does while also contributing their own unique skills to the party ontop of that.

sloth said:

Sloth,

In my last post, I was not specifically referring to shooting two full auto pistols. In fact, I have no problem with that. My contention with respect to this thread WAS only that it seemed as though people were looking for a way to combine rules to produce a combat situation where the resulting character was unrealistically powerful.

Unusualsuspect made a good argument that this thread was more about how one can produce, by way of game rules and mechanics, the type of character that one is roleplaying:

"For a roleplayer to be playing his role right, the mechanics need to reflect the role wanted. Someone who roleplays as the most badass guy with a blade but represents that with inferior talents and characteristics to the point where, in any given situation, another character would be more effective with a sword... well, that means you're not playing the right role."

With my last post, I was merely referring to MISGUIDED use of rules discrepancies, contradictions, etc.

When "cheeky" (correct spelling) players use the rulebook as a way to create a player that is unrealistically unbalanced compared to other characters in their party for the simple reason that they are glory hounds and only want to kill everything and be better than everyone else, THAT is what I am referring to in my last post.

I'm sure you would agree with that.

Sanjay said:

Actually, I'm pretty sure this thread is about dual wielding pistols in melee. If you'll check the OP that's all that's really being asked about. The rest is pretty much derailment. If you want to leave the original posters example behind and just spout tautologies that basically amount to saying "doing bad things is ... ehr ... bad!!" then that's fine with me. I was trying to respond within the original intent of the threat.

Also, nagging about spelling on the interweb? Really?