Wait, the extra hit for explosive weapons is per shot?

Meaning a Devastator with a heavy bolter can fire 10 shots full-autp, bolts are explosive which is +1 hit per shot, meaning 20 hits maximum, but Unrelenting Devastation gives an extra point of magnitude, meaning a Devastator can do 40 magnitude if all their shots land?

That seems a bit much! Even for space marines!

Meaning a Devastator with a heavy bolter can fire 10 shots full-autp, bolts are explosive which is +1 hit per shot, meaning 20 hits maximum, but Unrelenting Devastation gives an extra point of magnitude, meaning a Devastator can do 40 magnitude if all their shots land?

Firstly, that would be 30 points of magnitude since every hit gets a +1 magnitude boost from Unrelenting Devastation, just like every hit gains a +1 boost from Explosive damage. They don't seem to somehow multiply.
Secondly, that's a potential 30 points, reached only if the Marine gets 9 DoS. Even with Full Auto, close range and a +20 horde bonus, that still takes an 07 or less for the Final Sanction Devastator.

steamdriven said:

The same as in DH/RT, from what I can tell.

A). What's it do?
B). Why'd they leave it off the character sheet?

A). It adds to the Unnatural Toughness (x2) Trait, in that Toughness is what is used to resist radiation (such as UV).

B) Because it's additional ability is down to the GM, and the organs on the character sheet are only the rules that always apply. At the GM's discretion, the Melanchromic Organ can make the SM resistant to exposure to radiation through a modifier, or totally ignore some levels of radiation.

@Cifer: In addition to that, it also 1) depends on the toughness/armour of the Horde, and 2) assumes that he doesn't mess up any of the many damage rolls (20, in that case, I believe) by rolling lots of 1s he'll have to make in order to reduce the Horde's Magnitude.

@Cifer: In addition to that, it also 1) depends on the toughness/armour of the Horde, and 2) assumes that he doesn't mess up any of the many damage rolls (20, in that case, I believe) by rolling lots of 1s he'll have to make in order to reduce the Horde's Magnitude.

I'd have to admit I'd be a little scared to come up against an horde strength enemy where 2D10+10 Pen6 Tearing have much of a chance to mess up.

Well, fair point, though it applies a lot more when you aren't swinging a Heavy Bolter around

Cifer said:

I suppose the question is, SHOULD it be possible? Can 1 heavy bolter in a single burst of fire (5 seconds) kill dozens upon dozens of enemy?

I'm not sure it actually could, no matter the accuracy of the shooter. 5 seconds of time won't put out that many rounds. I suppose if the horde was jammed into a barrel with no space between them the explosives from one shot could hit multiple enemies, but only the guard are that stupid.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Well, there is always the possibility of a round going through several enemies before exploding. After all, these things are able to penetrate a Chimera's plating. Then again, a modern-day machinegun would fire something like 80 rounds in 5 seconds. It is possible that the bolter's rof is lower but it is still supposed to be an automatic weapon capable of covering fire.

Hellebore said:

I'd say; why not? Imagine a horde of unarmed or lightly armed enemies being mauled by a hail of 40mm armour-piercing, explosive mini-rockets. I can easily imagine a Bolt flying through the first enemy, leaving a watermelon-shaped hole in his chest, then hitting a second enemy and exploding, showering the surrounding enemies with shrapnel from both the bolt itself, as well as bone and armour fragments from the victim, as well as possible secondary explosions from grenades and ammo on the victim.

And to kill dozens and dozens of enemies, he's have to have a percentile score of 100 and still roll below 10.

Remember that the horde system is not a shooting simulation, merely a machination for heroic descriptive and fast-paced gameplay.

Kage2020 said:

I agree that FFG have used old fan tropes to evolve their game mechanics...in a good way. If an idea's good, it's good irrespective of where it came from. 40K is the work of many hands, and GW has an iron grip on the IP, so if a fan comes up with a good idea, it'll get snapped up and incorporated. Which is a good thing.

With regard to the heroic lineage thing...yes, an interesting point. I too always wondered why the Marines are carrying around their progenoids rather than having them harvested as soon as they mature.

Here's a thought: what if the progenoid glands produce a complex interplay between the Marine's own genetics and the genetics of the Primarch? The longer the glands remain in the Marine, the more "Primarch like" the Marine becomes, and the more potent the progenoid becomes. Older (and therefore likely tougher) marines come to physically resemble the Primarch more and more as they age, and to adopt many of their mannerisms and attitudes. This need not be a result of "psychic handwavery" (as with the Blood Angels inexplicable ability to see visions of Sanguinius' death) but "scientific handwavery." Namely, that the unbelievably complex genetic manipulation of the original Primarch programme is designed to replicate the attributes of the original super-beings in their followers. The Apothecaries know this, and don't want to run the risk of prematurely diluting the potential of their marines by removing the progenoids early.

As for the "lesser" or "diluted" marine idea, this is also interesting, a bit like the "successive generation" idea from Vampire the Masquerade. Personally, I don't hold that the marines of the 40th millenia are necessarily any less potent than the marines of the 30th. However, as with all genetic codes, they are undoubtedly more prone to variation and mutation over time, especially given the hostile (and often radioactive) environments in which they operate. This could lead to a degrading of the various implants, I suppose, given the complexity of the genetic system... But equally, it might lead to new attributes through genetic drift.

I have a theory that the Emperor gave the Primarchs such widely differing abilities and attributes because he wanted to see which ones worked. The Primarchs and their Marines seemed to have been designed as a package: A Legion of Super Warriors and a ready made general. Some were better at this than others. The Emperor was clearly dissatisfied with the "Lorgar" model, for example, and may even have destroyed the two "redacted" chapters completely. His plan probably was then to create future Legions with new Primarchs based upon the more successful examples in the "first generation." This plan was halted by the Horus Heresy.

It's kind of the roleplay attributes of all this that interest me. If characters are to some extent inheriting personality traits from Primarchs, then it would be fun to see how players interpret this. And of course, just because you might have a tendency to inherit traits from a Primarch, it may not necessarily mean that these override your own. You could still end up with quiet, sober Space Wolves or loud and boastful Dark Angels. This interplay and variation is theoretially extremely characterful with potentially endless permutations...

so does that mean a grenade would do 10 or 6 damage to a horde? ie. does it count as one hit doing 5 damage, or 5 hits?

also i explained away the massive damage done by the heavy bolter as multiple penetration, shrapnel, and bits of your victims flying apart and killing their mates. 'joe got hit in the eye by a bit of fred's ribcage'

also i explained away the massive damage done by the heavy bolter as multiple penetration, shrapnel, and bits of your victims flying apart and killing their mates. 'joe got hit in the eye by a bit of fred's ribcage'

Not to forget that Magnitude loss can also represent loss of unit cohesion. Jimmy, being only in the militia to impress women at bars, might not take his buddies Joe and Fred dieing in a hail of bolter fire too well...

Lightbringer said:

I thought they are removed once matured, and then they start to regrow?

Hellebore said:

Well, that's partially dependent upon how you define the physical size of hordes - when I ran Final Sanction, I used magnitude 30 hordes to represent 15-man mobs (given that they only counted as size Enormous - that is, about as large as a small tank - it doesn't seem right to me that a point of magnitude could represent several creatures), meaning that a Heavy Bolter with Unrelenting Devastation (without the Explosive Damage bonus; I knew about it, but couldn't mention it at the time) could gun down a large number of men in a single turn... but the number remains comparable to the number of kills it might cause if firing at individual targets.

Thanks to everyone contributing to this thread, it has been great to lurk around and get more information about the rules. My group is going to be running the Final Sanction adventure this weekend and we are all really looking forward to it!

Does a space marine need to brace heavy weapons like heavy bolters before firing them? And if so, half or full action? (I don't have my heresy book anymore unfortunately).

Also, what's the average height of a space marine?

No, they do not need to brace, they start out with Bulging Biceps.
Their height, 2.00 to 2.20 meters

Does the rulebook state anything about what kind of xeno artifacts the Deathwatch is interested in? Only military gear? Dish-washing machines? Shoe-cleaning bots?

And any new information on how long exactly the power armour can withstand adverse conditions like vacuum?

Alex

Santiago said:

So we are back to Space Marines being American Football and Basketball player size?

Sorry, but I find the idea of 6'6" / 2m tall short Space Marines unimpressive. But this is coming form someone who is 6'5".

Didn't mean to derail. Back to the original topic.

Lightbringer said:

As you say, the source is irrelevant and very hard to appropriately cite when found on the Internet. It's the same reason that I still purchase other systems, including the official 40k RPG line, despite the fact that I'm likely never going to use the system itself. The good bits, I keep, the bits that don't gel get tossed out of the boat, as it were.

Lightbringer said:

While a bit twee, the "heroic lineage" thing does kind of elegantly handle this. I would still be tempted to make it a "power up" from the base power level of the campaign (i.e. additional experience) rather than generating a Marine of the same rank, but I guess in a level-based system there might be more of a push to equate everything. (Depending on your group, of course.)

Lightbringer said:

It works as well as any other explanation. My own interpretation of Marines doesn't have them "maturing" fully until they're around 144 years anyway, so it's workable and interesting. I guess it would be a case of the extent to which it was possible. After all, what we certainly don't need is yet another way of buffing Marines even more than they are, especially given how many of the arguments about Marines go (especially when, say, you try and suggest that they're not the AWESOMEZZZ(zzzzzzz)).

Lightbringer said:

For me it's a way of negotiating the nerdrange about the whole "immortal or not immortal" question, which is one of the reasons that I currently have Marines living to around 700-900 years (which even includes a "retirement" period ). I can point at the idea of geneseed degradation and go, "Oh, so sorry. They used to be immortal but now they're slightly less awesome. Still great, but they can actually be threatened by things like the elite of other races." (And one of the reasons that one of the bits of the official lines that I've dumped is the current representation of the Eldar. I believe the "l337"-speakers would say something along the line of, "They suxxor." )

As you say, though, "geneseed degradation" could also lead to mutation/development of new abilities. I just like, for once, the Golden Ageism applied to the "Golden Children" of the 40k setting. Get a little bit of tarnish on their teenage fanboi fantasy.

Lightbringer said:

Certainly would give a very "Last Chancers" spin on the Horus Heresy and explain why the Emperor "let" it happen.

Lightbringer said:

The reason that I'm hesitant is just for the penultimate sentence in the above. I consider Merrett's video appearance and "Marines are humans and can have personalities, and anything else is just plain wrong" (read: stupid) to be one of the greater travesties in recent PR history.

On the other hand, if you're willing to explore interpretations and how to "appropriately" model the psychology of a Marine, how it might be altered by your interpretations etc.? I think that I would certainly be up there. Even while I might not entirely agree with where it ends up, I'm sure that there would be some good fodder in there for mutual benefit. Not sure that the FFG forums are the right venue, though, given... Well, you know.

Kage

ItsUncertainWho said:

Have you ever stood next to a guy whos 2.20+ and weights 200+ kg made of raw muscle, I have and I'm in the "rugby player size group" I felt small. The guy was a french riot cop a friend of mine was dating, he had hands like dinner plates and had to be careful when he picked up things since he had a tendency to break **** that wasn't reinforced, saw him disable a steel series gaming mouse by accident cus it looked like metal so he wasn't being careful he had specially designed helmets, boots and so on cus his size didn't come in factory sizes, trust me 2.20 - 2.30 is MORE than impressive enough he could be scary as ****. Now add another 50 kg of muscle to him yaiks scary.

The wonderful thing is that the whole size/muscle thing is entirely subjective, which is kinda the point. What would be horrific (for me, anyway) is if people took the extreme of human physical variation and then scaled it up from there. That hits the "Lame Gong" in my mind, so kudos FFG for avoiding that in a reasonable fashion.

Kage

I think that the potential for a Heavy Bolter to do up to 30 magnitude damage (or 40 depending on how you are calculating it) is a bit much. Reading over the Final Sanction rules I guestimated that a each level of magnitude in the rebel mobs probably amounted to around 20 people each. That would mean that a Single Devastator Marine with a Heavy Bolter could kill or incapacitate 600 people (or 800) with a 5-second burst of fire. Even if you consider 40mm explosive shells into a crowd of unarmored people I think that is a bit much.

Of course the exact number that constitutes a single magnitude of a mob is never clearly defined and its probably better kept abstract. But the biggest horde that I recall seeing is about magnitude 50. Killing off such a huge number so quickly seems a little too good to be true.

Remember that he is not necessarily killing all that magnitude. Loss of magnitude also represents some portions fleeing, becoming pinned, injuries, or general loss of fighting ability. If you just saw 20 guys get mowed down in front of you, you might pause and rethink things. Or 2 of the guys he killed were LTs or other officer types and it disrupts the ability of the rest to act decisively.

Edsel62 said:

I rolled a D3 for the kill count which I thought was already a lot. The Devastator in my group ended up with 200+ confirmed kills just fighting two battles vs rebel hordes so far. He expended plenty of ammo too. Heh. :-)

Alex

Meph said:

That can't happrn according to the function of bolter rounds. They detonate when local density increases due to target penetration which means they'll explode in the first target they hit, not fail to detonate and travel through multiple bodies. Not that I think heavy bolters could, Indiana Jones with a Luger notwithstanding.

I also can't see many GMs treating the reduction as troops fleeing because it plays against the heroic imagery the game is trying to conjure. Arnie didn't make the enemy run away in Commando he gunned those unamerican suckers DOWN!. I can't imagine many GMs telling their devestator that they killed 4 enemy and the rest ran away.

As for the size of a horde, well I don't like the idea of them being scores strong, but that's certainly how it's been painted. Which requires the marines to kill unfeasible numbers of the enemy.

I suppose it explains how the marines in brothers of the snake managed it with limited ammo and taking no casualties...

Hellebore