I was doing some preparation for running Final Sanction and Oblivions End when I started to think about what kind of weapons the Deathwatch marines can pick up from fallen PDF and/or get from Imperial Stores... and thats where the problems started: It seems that DW system is not designed to scale with DH/RT in any way...

A little example:

Astartes Bolter (DW) dmg2d10+5/pen5

Storm Bolter (RT) dmg1d10+5/pen4

Angelus Bolter (DH) dmg2d10/pen5

Plasma Gun (DH) dmg1d10+6/pen6

Plasma Gun (RT) dmg1d10+7/pen6

Melta Gun (DH) dmg2d10+4/pen12

Melta Gun (RT) dmg2d10+8/pen13

What is even worse than the fact that none of the systems have same weapons (melta, plasma) with same stats is that Angelus Bolter and Rogue Trader Storm Bolter are specifically described as firing Astartes calibre bolts... Storm Bolter (version RT) is even said to be the same weapon Astartes use. Now, when you look at marine stats (TB8 /Armor 8), I agree Astartes boltgun needs to do at least 2d10/pen5, probably 2d10+5/pen5 to have the penetration and effect it is supposed to (its supposed to be able to kill a marine), but then marine "heavy weapons" like the Storm Bolter, Plasmaguns and Meltas start to look like toys... They need a significant boost in damage, at least doubling their current effect. The problem is, however, that then they turn out to be hellishly powerfull in DH/RT environment...

So I don't know. Maybe I just need to throw all DH/RT material out of window when running DW and scale everything different just for DW. For band-aid I'll go and implement Philip Sibberings idea for Astartes ammunition stores and give each DW marine 8+1 magazines for their bolters. At least then they should not need to pick up some other stuff too quickly.

Polaria said >>>

It seems that DW system is not designed to scale with DH/RT in any way...

Kind of funny to see it said right out there.

(My personal favourites are the RT Plasma Gun and the DH/RT Melta gun, both of which do as much damage to a Marine in armour as they do to a Marine out of armour, which strikes me as odd but there we go. Even then it's going to take ~2 solid hits by these weapons to kill a Marine...)

Polaria said >>>

They need a significant boost in damage, at least doubling their current effect. The problem is, however, that then they turn out to be hellishly powerfull in DH/RT environment...

What's wrong with being "hellishly powerful" in DH/RT? If the weapon is so powerful, then let it be powerful . You don't need to nerf the weapon just to make it acceptable in a given game. If it is too powerful for the game? Just don't allow it or accept that you're going to be dealing with "insta-kill" when someone gets shot with it. These are, after all, military grade weapons. They're not going to be selling reduced powered rocket-propelled grenades to civilians after all, unless you count airsoft versions (if they exist).

If a Marine is going to be immune to other weapons? Then let them be immune to those weapons. You don't need to buff the damage or have bullets mystically join together and increase their kinetic energy to threaten the Marine. Let them laugh in the face of a horde of knife-wielding goons as they wade in and b***h-slap the heck out of them rather than get all combo-Transformer (e.g. Devastator) on them and given them and give them a BFS that would inspire green-envy even Cloud from the Final Fantasy franchise.

Or, at least, that's how it strikes me. As it stands, what kind of damage is an orbital lance going to do to make it "balanced?" 5d10 Pen 2,000,000?

Polaria said >>>

For band-aid I'll go and implement Philip Sibberings idea for Astartes ammunition stores and give each DW marine 8+1 magazines for their bolters. At least then they should not need to pick up some other stuff too quickly.

Well, Phil and Lara Croft, that is. (Not saying that it is a bad solution, BTW. And completely amusingly, from memory that would be a very similar solution, and number of reloads, that I had when I statted up AAPA in GURPS Crunch , I mean Vehicles .)

Kage

Yeah it does seem a bit unequal and not truly compatible. But I dont think it as severe as it looks. For me, the fact that they do different damages can mean several things. Primarily, in these examples, I think its the weapon itself and not the round that matters. True the Astartes and Angelus use the same calibreof bullet and what not, but the gun itself may be very mechanically different. The weapon may give better trajectory or velocity. It may fire more rapidly or accurately. The size, mechinics, material and craftingof the weapon may give the round different effects when fired. While a bolt round is typically a micro-missile using the bolt gun only as a launching source, the crafting of the weapon may give the round more capacity to fulfil it overall needs.

2D10+5/5 PEN/Tearing is quite scary as your soak of 16 becomes 11. On average it will result in 5 or less damage. But with tearing, the odds go to about 10 points per hit against a space marine. With Bolter Mastery they can have +2 to damage. So while on the average the damage will be 9-10 per hit, with a S/2/4 RoF and righteous fury, a brother marine can go down in one volley.

Its the same problem as with the lasgun in dark heresy.

Polaria said:

@Peacekeeper_b: I think his issue is more with the older rules.

Weapons in the DH and RT was always something I didn't think they worked out quite right, mostly because I was thinking of the implication they would have if marines were brought into the games. If you really want to add to the mess throw in the stats for the specialized versions of those weapons from some of the other books. I tend to think hellishly powerful weapons are appropriate for the Astartes so I tend to say its more appropriate to tweak up the older weapon rules to be closer in-line with the newer ones rather than going the other way around.

For example, I think all bolter type weapons should simply have a "2d10" damage based on the fact they're using the same shells and the damage bonus and penetration are used to represent efficiency of the individual design. The 2d10, bonus, and penetration could be modified to represent different bolter shells for different variances.

Thus the Storm Bolter should be:

Storm Bolter (RT) dmg2d10+5/pen4

The pen4 shows how the design is less efficient at delivering kinetic energy... while the 2d10+5 represents its the same basic explosive shell making contact.

Something like the Angelius bolter is basically fine and can simply be regarded as an adequate bolter design thats general inefficiencies prevent it from fully taking advantage of the bolt shells self-guiding mechanisms.

It much like how there are a variety of M16 derived weapons today, but they all have different performance characteristics. Even though they all use the same ammunition those different variants will not be equal. Take the M4 carbine and M16 rifle for example, both mechanically the same with largley interchangable parts, using the same bullets... if they had rule for DH/RT/DW they might look like this:

M16 dmg2d6+3/pen3

M4 dmg2d6+1/pen2

These numbers are just made up for my example, but in this case barrel length and aspects other than the projectile itself effect performance. Carbines historically have major performance off at range, but also lower muzzle velocity becaus of less distance to build pressure.

Now when it comes to the Meltagun and Plasmagun I never thought these stats fit. Rather than relying on their stat profiles I always thought they instead needed to rely more on special rules that modify the way one or both do damage. The plasma gun I think as more conventional, giving it a stat line for damage and pen of the meltagun seems more appropriate, while the meltagun which is suppose to be a focused microwave should "ignore" armor rather than "penetrate" it to a larger degree. Where it does damage if you're not wearing armor and even more if you are... imagine wearing that piece of foil you stuck in a microwave. I imagine it would have dmg2d10+Xd10 where X is some threshold based on the penetration value and the armor being worn.

As for the time being I'll do following adjustments:

Astartes Bolter (DW) dmg2d10+5/pen5, tearing (no adjustment)

Storm Bolter (RT) dmg2d10+5/pen5 , tearing (same round, same design = same damage)

Angelus Bolter (DH) dmg2d10/pen5, tearing (no adjustment, same round, different design)

Plasma Gun (DH) dmg2d10+7/pen8 (adjusted to 2d10+/pen8)

Plasma Gun (RT) dmg2d10+7/pen8 (adjusted to 2d10+/pen8)

Melta Gun (DH) dmg2d10+8/pen13 , melta (adjusted to 2d10+, given "melta")

Melta Gun (RT) dmg2d10+8/pen13 , melta (adjusted to 2d10+, given "melta")

Melta -Special Rule: Meltaguns heat up the target material to the point of it being instantly vaporized. When hitting living flesh it will vaporize huge parts of the body and cause resulting steam-explosion and shock to what is left. Thus penetration of melta weapons is not applied only against armor of the target, but the total armor and toughness bonus of the target, thus possibly reducing targets toughness bonus for damage resolution.

Yup, with thiese adjustments Plasma and Melta will completely demolish anyone who is not Astartes (and will mess up even Astartes pretty bad), but then again if a DH character expects to take a meltahit and not lose at least a limb he will be thinking wrong to start with

BTW: Just realized how utterly devastating 2d10+x with Tearing is... You are effectively throwing four (4) dice and any 10 can potentially activate Emperors Wrath. Thats **** killy.

Polaria said:

The rule on tearing in final Sanctions says "one extra dice" so I'd say you 'only' throw three dices, ignoring the smallest result.

Kyorou said:

True. Same as in DH/RT. But that's still ... "utterly devastating" and "**** killy."

Did some comparisons on the weapon stats using unarmored normal human (TB3/AP0), Stormtrooper (TB4/AP6) and Marine (TB8/AP8) as baseline targets

Average damages - Rules as Written:
Astartes Bolter: 15.7 (human), 13.7 (stormtrooper), 7.7 (marine)
Storm Bolter: 10.0 (human), 7.0 (stormtrooper), 1.0 (marine)
Angelus Bolter: 10.7 (human), 8.7 (stormtrooper), 2.7 (marine)
Plasma Gun (RT): 9.7 (human), 8.7 (stormtrooper), 2.7 (marine)
Melta Gun (RT): 10.7 (human), 9.7 (stormtrooper), 5.7 (marine)

Average damages – My Adjustments:
Astartes Bolter: 15.7 (human), 13.7 (stormtrooper), 7.7 (marine)
Storm Bolter: 15.7 (human), 13.7 (stormtrooper), 7.7 (marine)
Angelus Bolter: 10.7 (human), 8.7 (stormtrooper), 2.7 (marine)
Plasma Gun (RT): 15.5 (human), 14.5 (stormtrooper), 10.5 (marine)
Melta Gun (RT): 19.5 (human), 19.5 (stormtrooper), 16.5 (marine)

Emperors Wrath is calculated into these with WS 45 and everything is rounded to one digit. I'm kind of happy how bolters go, Astartes bolter is considerably more dangerous than Angelus, but Angelus still packs enough punch to potentially kill a Marine with few lucky shots. Plasmagun is better than Bolter (as it should be), but I'm not sure about Melta.... is the it too much of "equalizer"? If I drop the melta rule from it the damage against Stormtrooper drops by 4 points and against Marine by 5 points, making it still slightly deadlier than Plasma. What do you think?

I think that looks better.

What do I think?

Well, if I'm a DH/RT character, I think I'm running away ... just as fast and as far as I can.

If I'm a SM, you bet I'm looking for cover. Or at least a weapon with longer range than that Melta!

OUCH!!!

But yes, I agree with you and aka_mythos. That does seem more appropriate.

EDIT: Actually, in reference to the Melta rule, I like it. To my mind, NO one should expect to walk away unscathed from a Melta hit, JMO.

Sister Cat said:

Seconded. That thing is supposed to cut through armored vehicles, after all.

I was doing some preparation for running Final Sanction and Oblivions End when I started to think about what kind of weapons the Deathwatch marines can pick up from fallen PDF and/or get from Imperial Stores...

IMO, that would be... clubs. Also some clubs that look a little gunshaped and some clubs that probably explode in a plasma burst when you hit someone with them. But a marine in Power Armour would IMO have severe difficulties in using standard human weapons. I believe the scenario gave a -20 to manipulate anything not designed for Astartes use.

Kyorou said:

For the RT Storm Bolter, that's deffinately a mistake, that's the stats for say a SoB Storm Bolter but not an Astartes one and there'll be official stated ones in the DW in the players guide if not the main rules it'self.

I get the feeling that when they originally wrote DH they put in Plasma Guns and Melta Guns as weapons they fully intended characters to shoot other characters with all the time and made the stats accordingly survivable.

I don't know weather DH weapons stats are going to writen based on the same logic (but based on SM's surviving) or appropriately overkilly / anti-tank either way they'll be replacing the stats in RT and DH for me. Anyone who can afford acheotech ultra death weapons is going to have acheotech ultra death weapons and it's not going to be based on grip size.

For me more importantly than the magic plasma guns (that I was upgunning anyway) is the more standard weapons, an SM bolter now does +5 damage compared to a heavy bolter, a heavy bolter thats intended to be used by a team of men or attached to tank, why does the ammo for that have to be lighter than what a single Space Marine carries all the time?

@Polaria

What is even worse than the fact that none of the systems have same weapons (melta, plasma) with same stats is that Angelus Bolter and Rogue Trader Storm Bolter are specifically described as firing Astartes calibre bolts... Storm Bolter (version RT) is even said to be the same weapon Astartes use.

Since it seemed rather funny to me that FFG would suddenly break from their "standard marine bolters have bone-breaking recoil for norms" line, I reread the Stormbolter entry. It merely states that storm bolters in general are mostly used by the Astartes, not that this specific pattern is a marine calibre bolter. And when one thinks about it, that's pretty logical - the Angelus sacrificed any full auto capability in order to compensate recoil, but others managed to create a friggin' marine storm bolter that can be used by norms as a basic weapon?

Polaria said:

Based on the Plasma Pistol in FS, a Plasma Gun in Deathwatch must have dmg 2d10+9, Pen 6.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Good find. It makes sense and reinforces my suspicion that all weapon damages will geta full retcon overhaul when DW rulebook comes out. Not that its a bad thing, 'cause most of them didn't make much sense.

Polaria said:

Indeed. As it is in DH, hit someone with TB 4 and no armor with a laspistol in and you have a 20% chance of not even wounding him...

Kyorou said:

And it must be an overhaul and not just an "oh, the have specialized weapons". Example: being on fire doing 1d10 damage which is nothing for a SM, rendering flamers useless unless you increase fire damage in general.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Quite. In fact, 1d10 is almost nothing for a normal human unless they are completely unarmored.

While we're on the subject of overhauls ... how about Needle weapons? In order for the Toxic quality to apply, they have to inflict at least 1 wound. Good luck with that if they have any armor at all.

Being on fire can be quite deadly though even to an armored human as armor does not count fro protection when you are on fire. You also take a level of fatigue eahc roudn you are on fire. Its important to note that the even the Space Marine with a toughness bonus ofo 8 will still take a level of fatigue each round he's on fire despite taking little to no damage. He will also have to pass a Willpower test to act at all. There are still plenty of drawbacks to being on fire.

andrewm9 said:

Still it makes the flamer far from being as deadly as a bolter so tweakage will be necessary.

Alex

I think we can pretty much agree that FFG didn't really take heavier armor into account much when they designed DH since the weapons only really damage stuff that have only TB bonus. When the time came for RT, they suddenly realized "oh yeah, people actually wear carapace" and had to buff some of the damages and penetration values. Now in DW they've finally come up with situation where high TB and heavy armor meet and unless there is overhaul the weapons ain't going to make much sense.

<whispers> All of which was identified within the first few weeks of the public release of Dark Heresy , perhaps even earlier.

I'm going to see how the fans "fix" this for their own interpretations, which is one of the reasons that I personally find the thread interesting.

Kage

I don't think it's just a case of higher TB and Armour, I think, when DH was writen they specifically made it so weapons weren't likely to be deadly in one hit. Combined with the greater defences in DW it also seems that they deffinately want it kill normal people and even hurt SM's badly.

So there's kind of a double jump in weapon damages.