Go on ahead and add your own questions. This thread is looking for official responses, not theories, thanks. We can discuss amongst ourselves in other threads.

1) How many ammo clips are the battle-brothers armed with at the start of the mission?

2) Is there a limit to the number of uses of the Medicae skill?

I am not Ross but I was physically present for the ruling clarification on #2: once per set of combat wounds. In other words you may perform the First Aid use of the skill on a character once after each separate encounter where the character takes damage. It is also worth noting that in Deathwatch runnings at Malleus Imperator this weekend we gave the Apothecary a Narthecium which supplies him a +20 bonus to his Medicae Skill Test.

As for #1 we were given 3 clips for reload. I don't believe this was anything official for the overall game though. This was Sam running Deathwatch on the free rpg day.

in the game I will be running, i will give the players 3 clips per weapon plus one for each degree of success on Common Lore War roll. Basically to understand that if the ship goes down their ammo is going to be substantially limited tactically.

Apparently you missed my comments about theories... anyways, here's some more questions:

3) What does armor penetration do? If I had to guess, I would say that it reduces armor reduction, on a one-for-one point basis...

4) How much damage is required to remove one point of Magnitude? In the case of the Rebel Horde, their Toughness Bonus is 3, and they have no armor. So I would assume 4 points or greater with one attack for one point of Magnitude. But Pg.16 of Final Sanction says, "... an attack that, after accounting for armor and Toughness Bonus, causes 15 points of damage reduces the Horde Magnitude by 1."

J-Tech said:

3 - Your correct. 1 point of armour penetration reduces the effective amour of the target by one for that attack, to a minimum of 0

4 - Correct again. As long as you deal at least one damage you take out one point of magnitude. But you only deal one point of magnitude, even if you get enough righteous fury to deal 100+ damage from the one hit.

5) The profiles for the enemy weapons include a curious letter assignment after the damage for their weapons. For instance, Final Sanction Pg.28, Crude Melee Weapons (1d10+3 R, Pen 0), Stub Rifle (1d10+3 I, Pen 0), etc. What is the letter for?

Damage Types, I=impact, R=rending, E=energy, X=explosive.

Also relates to critical hit charts in DH and RT.

No official response yet about starting ammo for Final Sanction...

There was a semi-official response: The games gm-ed by Ross and Sam had the players start with three clips each.

Then why won't he answer this simple question for everyone?

J-Tech said:

Because he almost never responds on these boards...

Hey my last name is Ross so I will answer,

For Final Sanction the starting ammo was 60 Heavy Bolter Rounds, 56 Bolter rounds, 28 Kraken rounds. As for any other general game they will explain the buying rules in the rulebook.

Yes, armor pen reduces damage reduction from armor.

One hit, one magnitude reduction. Any attack that does 15 damage so every 15 damage done reduces it by one further. Potentially if you got enough richeous fury's then you could knock off a horde in one go.

One hit, one magnitude reduction. Any attack that does 15 damage so every 15 damage done reduces it by one further. Potentially if you got enough richeous fury's then you could knock off a horde in one go.

Umm.... that 15 damage stuff seemed more like an example to me. Whether you inflict 1 or 15 or 324 points of damage, the magnitude goes down by 1.

Cifer said:

Correct, they were saying that as an example.

However, multiple hits from blast weapons and multi-hit weapon attacks can reduce the magnitude for each hit, as long as they deal damage. Remember also, that for each 2 degrees of success for melee attacks counts as another hit, power fields also add another hit.

Heavy bolters also double the damage done, I believe. Unless I interpreted the rules wrong.

If we use the carry weight from Dark Heresy for a character with SB+TB of 18 (1350kg) and assume an Astartes bolter weighs 50-60 kilos and a loaded bolter mag about 20kg* a Marine could easily carry 60 odd magazines without encumbering himself.

*If a bolter shell weighs about the same as a 1/3 kilo 20mm round, and a Lathi 20mm mag holding 10 rounds weighs 6.7kg

Heavy bolters also double the damage done, I believe. Unless I interpreted the rules wrong.

Either the heavy bolter or the marine using them.

If we use the carry weight from Dark Heresy for a character with SB+TB of 18 (1350kg) and assume an Astartes bolter weighs 50-60 kilos and a loaded bolter mag about 20kg* a Marine could easily carry 60 odd magazines without encumbering himself.

At which point we definitely run into bulk issues.

I think for a Space Marine, unless you expect to be carrying around solid gold or lead, bulk will always be an issue before weight.

The matter of bulk was a common issue with one of my players in D&D. The party would kill a group of bandits, and they'd find only the longswords on the bodies valuable enough to take. My Rogue would always say, I take all ten of the longswords then. And I'd be like... ok, how do you intend to store them? To which his answer would be... oh I throw them in my satchel. Ok... you're throwing 10 longswords in a hemp bag... and you don't see any problems with this? Oh, I checked the weight, and I won't even be encumbered. Facepalm.

Just because your character COULD carry 90 clips... what are you going to do? Stack them on a crate, wrap it in shrink wrap, and haul it wherever you go?

J-Tech said:

The SPACE MARINE WAY !!!

.... duct tape.

Couple of things I noticed today on the Rebel General

His power sword is 1d10+7 pen 5... is that with or without strength bonus (looks like without to me, but hey, never know) it's also R instead of E. It also doesn't have the power field trait like it should, or balanced.

His plasma pistol is 2d10+8 pen 6... I ... why is the plasma pistol impact damage instead of E? No Overheat or recharge listed, is this intentional?

Powerfield, Recharge and Overheat are probably missing because they'd be rules-overkill for a one-shot. For the rest, I have no idea.

BrotherHostower said:

Eh... A "normal" RT power sword does 1d10+5 pen 5, and a plasma pistol does 1D10+6 pen 6. Since the plasma pistol is so buffed I would say that the power sword should be buffed to make things a bit more challenging for the marines. Don't forget that due to toughness bonus and armour you would be effectively rolling at 1d10-4 damage per hit otherwise (adding the bonus brings it up to 1D10 damage).

Maybe the Plasma Pistol is being fired on full power (hence the extra d10 damage) with Mighty Shot (hence the +8 rather than +6 damage) but they didn't want to complicate the rules of a free adventure to explain it? Or maybe we're getting new goodies in Deathwatch with either new patterns or just revamped rules?

Though the first suggestion does make some sense while keeping with already presented weapon stats.