Hi. I have a question about the rules regarding automatic fire weapons. I am a new GM and a few of my players have weapons that allow semi or full automatic fire. When it hits and the opponent manages to dodge the attack, do they successfully dodge one hit or all of them? Also, they accumulate all the damage (like righteous fury) of all the hits and easily overpowering any creatures I fling at them. Do you believe that they managed to kill a couple of bounty hunters before they even had a chance to respond & they're only level 1 or 2? I believe that the damage should not be accumulative.

Any help in this area is appreciated?

Thanks.

Andy

The number of successes on a dodge takes away from the number of shots that hit the target.

On semi-auto every 2 successes adds to the number of hits. Max = RoF

Full-auto every success adds. Max = RoF

Each hit causes damage separately, resisted by armor and toughness.

Mahali said:

Just to clarify: Every degree of success gives one additional hit for full auto. Also, every degree of success on dodge allows you to dodge an additional hit. A hit with 0 degrees of success (by less than 10) is still a single hit, and the same for dodge.

Yeah, Full Auto Weapons can do some very nice damage if you roll well. Then again, Autoguns are just as cheap for enemies as they are for the Acolytes. Second adventure we had a character open a door blindly into a room of people preparing for us, they all had Overwatch active and ripped him to shreds. A burned Fate Point and us dragging him along to cover later, we eventually whittled them away but the point had been made.

The only saving grace is each hit has Armor and Toughness subtracted separately.

(This is unlike an "extra hit" granted by Righteous Fury, which is rolled into the first initial hit for the purposes of Armor and Toughness reduction.)

At Last Forgot said:

And situations like that are why my Guardsman always leads with a grenade, at least a smoke bomb. Or he does now anyway, after encountering exactly that situation.

Full Auto weapons are nice at lower levels of play, helps to give them ways to overcome low BS rating and lack of other boosters, but they will be replaced over time with High Pen weapons, which are more effective in the long term

Yeah talsine, that experience pretty much taught us our lesson too. Another option is peering around the door and using it as cover but of course the cover provided by a wooden door evaporates rather quickly under an onslaught... metal is another story.

Also, what weapons you use tends to depend on the enemies your facing. I find that at fairly high levels, depending on how much money the GM throws your way, the Assault Cannon is pretty much the deadliest thing around. 3d10+5 Tearing damage at Pen 4? Talk about a recipe for Righteous Fury. A few hits of that and almost anything is blown away. The only issue is of course weight and difficulty of use, but a very strong/tough character (or failing that, one with Power Armor) can swing it around without too many problems. Melta Weapons don't even really edge it out when you're dealing with a very strongly armored opponent... 2d10+4 Pen 12, average 14 damage on a target in Power Armor before toughness. Versus the Assault Cannon's 3d10+5 Tearing at Pen 4, which averages something like 16 on the same target PER HIT (I didn't feel like working out the actual probable average so if you feel like correcting me go ahead) and also has a commensurately larger chance of activating Righteous Fury. Like I said, damage machine, lots of difficulty whilst carrying it around though. Only way meltagun beats it out per hit if the enemy literally has 12 (or more) armor.

Assault Cannons are vehicle and/or terminator armor mounted weapons. I don't care if my PC could, technically, pick it up, there is no way they could use it without the recoil maiming them. Melta's are portable, Assault Cannons are very not portable. Damage isn't eveything, though tearing damage is very nice.

Some GMs may rule that Assault Cannons are simply too large and heavy to be wielded by one person, or too unwieldy. It's a pretty reasonable ruling in my mind. But consider that Terminator armor allows a Space Marine to swing it around one handed. A very exceptional human in Power Armor could, depending on rulings, wield it in two.

A two man firing system is also possible. A "heavy weapons team" toting that kind of firepower would not seem amiss IMO, just very well equipped.

Again depends on rulings. I think mid to high level perhaps the best all-rounder is a solid Hellgun, or a well crafted Autogun with some good specialist ammunition.

My rank 9 Acolytes still use automatics as a general rule: Vanaheim shotgun, autogun/pistol with manstopper, FA Hellguns.. As long as it penetrates FA rocks.

Nomad sniper rifle and Tranters help out in the penetration department, of course with bolt pistols as well - but if they could get those guns in FA mode they would use them.

Friend of the Dork said:

The new shotgun rounds from Ascension give knew life to those weapons, but Autoguns just don't keep up with everyone else once plasma/melta/hellguns hit the table. Still usefull for suppressing, but i think Heavy Stubbers fit that roll much better. I also find that my players use a lot more smoke and frag grenades as they move higher than they did before, but that is likely just because they have the money to spend on one shot items now than they did before.

Friend of the Dork said:

Sounds like you have a lot of people who will be wanting storm bolters.

Bilateralrope said:

Heh yeah maybe. So far though they are going for their signature weapons. Sanctified Lathe blade, holy cleaver (demonchoppa) best quality Tranters.. etc.

Does anyone think the +20 on BS with full auto is a bit much? I've just started a DH game and the first time we used auto fire, the poor Guardsman with his lasgun wondered why he should bother with it when the Scum with the autogun has a better chance to hit on full auto. Has anyone adjusted the rules and come up with a system that makes using single shot weapons competitive with automatic ones?

I've been running it since the game was released, and it's worked pretty fine for me.

Only thing I could suggest is, possibly, making semi-auto +20 to hit, but still only 1 extra hit per 2DoS, and make full-auto +10 to hit, and still 1 extra hit per 1DoS. That way, you trade off a little bit of the bonus for the possibility of more hits.

MILLANDSON said:

I can see that as a viable variant. After all, that's why so many modern assault-type wreapons are designed to fire single, 3-round burst, and "spray and pray." Single shots down range allow for the most accuracy. The 3-round burst is generally the optimal combination of accuracy and lethality. Full auto is great for area denial or against massed infantry.

-=Brother Praetus=-

I'm new to the forums, so I took some time to scan the other areas. This is obviously a highly discussed topic.

I think swapping the BS bonus between full and burst is a good idea, also I think I'll allow lasguns to be full auto as well, that way they compare favourably with slug throwers, and given their higher ammo capacity and reliability, it means they are actually slightly better than some SP weaps, special ammo aside. Thanks for the feedback.

In our Imperial Guard round, I was quite satisfied with my unmodified lasgun. While other players favored the autogun and its full auto mode, they happened to switch back to single shots after the first two salvoes pretty quickly since they were in danger of running out of ammo - while my character happily used semi-auto mode the entire game.

The autogun is superior to the lasgun exactly as long as you don't have to worry about ammunition. If you have limited supplies, the lasgun wins hands-down - and that's before you get to catachan reloading...

MILLANDSON said:

Well, what we do is quite similar to your suggestion.

Full-auto always gives +20 to hit, but you only get 1 extra hit per 2DoS when firing on a single target and 1 extra hit per DoS when firing on a group (you have to distribute hits evenly throughout the group though (you can only allocate a second hit to the same target if you 'buy' it by 2DoS)).

Semi-auto always gives +10 to hit, but you get 1 extra hit per DoS when firing on a single target and 1 extra hit per 2DoS when firing on a group.

This way semi-auto gets more viable (or viable at all) for precise fire against single targets. Full-auto is interesting if you have huge negative modifiers and want to have a chance to hit at all, if firing at groups of low-class opponents and if wanting to maximize the amount of hits while having huge positive modifiers.

Automatic weapons are fantastic, and using autofire is effective - your throwing a wall of bullets at someone, its quite unsurprising your going to score more hits. Single shot weapons tend to get balanced out because they will do more damage per individual hit, therefore more is going around soak (while with autofire every single hit is soaked individually, and if NPCs/players are smart and using cover, this can mean that not a whole lot of damage is being done).

However as people have stated, when ammo is not a problem than autofire becomes the best course of action, its heavy on ammunition drain but its effective. If players cant freely get access to huge amounts of ammunition and your restricting their weight or ammunition carrying capacity, thats going to quickly result in them having no ammunition left. In comparison with Lasguns, as another said, their ammunition is far more easy to refill, and your less likely to have it jam on you when you need it.

But if a player *really* wants to have a high damage single shot, just hook them up with a longlas or hunting rifle instead - accurate is amazing.