Right, first off, I'm really not sure where this topic should go, since I have a number of different questions ranging from rules questions, gamesmastering ideas and even possibly house rules. Thus I'm putting it here where everyone can toss in their two bits.

So my group has cottoned onto auto-pistols and exactly how deadly they are in combination with the right talents. Wielding two autopistols and with the talents: ambidextrous, two-weapon-wielder(bs) and gunslinger, a player can mow down multiple enemies per action, even when they're in melee and without touching friendlies.

With a BS around 50, shots from point blank range (+30%) on full auto(+30) are giving him a target that is over 100% to hit. Firing into melee he actually almost CAN'T hit a friendly. Now add to that that he can split shots between multiple targets IN MELEE it's getting a tad ridiculous. Pistols also do about the same damage as bigger weapons, so other than range, there really is little incentive for any player to use anything OTHER than an Auto-Pistol.

First off, am I missing something here? Is this all possible within the rules, or have we missed something that evens things out more?

Basically, if it IS true, then the situation really needs a fix, so how are other GMs handling it? Do you have entire parties of twin-autopistol wielding gunslinger PCs opposed by hordes of hive scum with autopistols?

Plastic Rat said:

Minor note first: full-auto is +20, not +30.

The biggest drawback, really, is the low damage autopistols do - 1d10+2 is below average, and while their lack of Pen value is often overridden by the use of manstopper ammunition, this isn't always made available, and it is significantly more expensive.

Against unarmoured scum, the lower damage and non-existent Pen makes little difference... but consider facing mercenaries with guard flak armour (TB3 + 4AP)... suddenly, the damage drops significantly, and manstopper rounds are needed to approach the damage done if that target was unarmoured. A tougher opponent, such as an Ork (2 armour, 8 toughness bonus), will laugh at autopistol fire. Even a little armour makes a difference.

It doesn't even need to be armour or toughness bonus, either - cover adds a significant amount of protection all by itself, and is quite able to defeat such light weaponry. Taking cover in a firefight is a smart thing to do, and few common weapons can easily overcome the protection afforded by a brick wall or a pile of metal crates. The other consideration is reloading - an autopistol is empty after three full-auto bursts, meaning if that a character plans to spray bullets around, he needs to carry numerous reloads and take the time to swap magazines.

High-power weapons with good penetration - like bolters - become increasingly useful when facing tough, well-armoured or entrenched enemies, while autopistols become less effective against such targets. Similarly, an autopistol offers no effective means of retaliation against enemies armed with long-ranged precision weapons, like hunting rifles, long-las, needle rifles, or rapid-firing heavy weaponry like heavy stubbers and heavy bolters, particularly if those weapons are operated by characters in decent cover.

And never forget, what your players can do, so can the bad guys.

Give them a taste of their own medicine...

Then add a grenade or two as soon as players start to use cover

And the important bit of what you said "With the Right Talents".

Not all characters will have access to all those talents, and when they do get them they can be at wildly different levels. Assassins get the best spread of killing talents and 2 weapon stackables. because frankly that is what they do.

Guardsmen get most of them at later levels, but they make good crowd control with Basic and Heavy weapons.

Adepts dont get much in the way of comat talets, as it should be, with the exception of additional weapon talents.

Arbites, like the Guardsmen get good combat talents, but again they get more focus for melee from what i recall (after all, supression shield and shock maul = iconic look for them, along with shotgun and maul)

Psykers get a couple of useful talents later on, but very dependant on whether they take alternate career ranks, and also on what ultimate career path they follow.

Scum get good weapon talents, a nice spread over a good few levels unless you go gunslinger and pwn people from the get go..

Techpriests can very quickly become combat monsters from about rank 4 onwards, especially with the right augmetics... (the cogboy in our party is the secondary melee tank, with an implanted power shortsword, medicae mechandrite, spare sword and the ambidextrous & 2 weapon wielder talents...)

Clerics get a vague spread of talents at later levels, again dependant on path taken, though i think they get 2 weapon (melee) quite early

But ultimately mooks should die fast, they're canon fodder. just throw in one or two slightly tougher people with ragtag flak armour and a slightly better weapon, or even a psyker who looks like very one else with a pistol so no one (unless the party has a psyker) can figure out who's doing all the wibblyness...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

In the errata it says full auto is +30 and an additional hit for each degree of success. Previously it was +20 for FA and an extra hit for each TWO degrees of success.

On topic: Thanks, this is something to think of, the ability of higher level nasties to negate damage with armor and Toughness Bonus is going to really hurt rapid attacking low damage weapons that lack penetration values. I guess as things progress the gunslinger will be cleaning up the basic mooks but fairly useless against the bigger nasties.

Also... there are many situations where they might not have their weapons, in which case he's also useless.

I don't really want to do the 'dose of their own medicine' thing as that just leads to everyone one-upping things and it quickly gets out of hand. I think all things considered I'm fairly happy with him obliterating the basic cannon fodder if that's his role.

Plastic Rat said:

The errata doesn't change the bonus to hit - it is, and has always been, +20 - all that changed is full-auto granting +1 hit per degree of success (which isn't so much a change as a correction - it changed to 1 hit/degree of success during the playtest, but then an older version of the rule managed to end up in the version sent to the printers originally). It's +20 to hit, additional hit per degree of success in Rogue Trader as well, and I'm pretty certain that it's like that in Deathwatch too.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

How in the Emperor's rotting butt cheek did we end up believing it was changed to +30?! I was so sure of it I went into the errata to find the page number to show you and yeah, the only change I find is it's an extra shot for each degree of success! I could have sworn I read a change somewhere where it was +30. My players have always just said +30... In fact I think it may be one of them who started it... Somebody is going to be flayed for this.

Thank you for taking the time to point this out.

Plastic Rat said:

Completely agree with this: it just makes everybody get into the crazy arms race and suggests that not only did the characters figure something out, but the GM is pissed about it.

I don't have much to add though I would point out that being really good at something and really deadly means your enemies will focus on the biggest threat first (and that I feel is only sound tactics, not one-upsmanship). Also, remember the -20% to the attack for firing into melee which nullifies the +20$ from full auto.

Oh, one little point about the rules that you MAY want to be aware of when that player is shooting away with their two pistols: (From RT Core book p. 239, under the rules for full auto): "Extra hits can either be allocated to the original target or any other targets within 2 meters provided none of the new targets would have been harder to hit than the original target."

So, if your player is firing at someone at point-plank range and wants to spread their bullets to someone else, they can only aim at other targets in point-blank range as the other targets are harder to hit than their original target. This (and other) differences in the modifiers to hit can easily help you limit at least some of the damage.

Hi Guys

Not to hi-jack the thread but i have some similar questions:

Sorry guys but have to ask i my group there is a metallican gunslinger. with the combination of the following: Ambidextrous, Two Weapon Wielder and Gunfighter can he fire two pistols at full-auto in one turn or does he another talent? this is causing some confusion and debate.

Secondly can you charge and shoot a pistol in melee with the same action as part of your charge move? or can you only move into melee and shoot.?

Sorry for the interrupt but thanks for any help.

Get the Dark Heresy errata v3.0, it really does clear up a lot of the rules of using pistols, especially 2 of them

"Secondly can you charge and shoot a pistol in melee with the same action as part of your charge move? or can you only move into melee and shoot.?"

With a combination of talents

Otherwise RAW, you can half move into melee and make a half-attack action, if you want to Shoot, move, melee-shoot, you will need the Hip Shot talent

Targetlock said:

Even with no talents, a character can shoot two pistols on full-auto as a full round action but the penalties are harsh. The errata document goes through each of the Talent combinations and does a pretty good job of describing what happens. With the listed talents they can fire two pistols on full-auto without penalty.

The attack at the end of a charge is a half action melee attack. Therefore, using the definition that a shot from a pistol os a ranged attack you cannot charge into melee and shoot someone with a pistol. Practically you don't want to be in melee with a pistol (unless your opponent has a basic or heavy weapon) in order to get the bonuses from targeting and range. Moving into melee and shooting (or vice versa) is perfectly acceptable but only a single shot can be fired unless you have the Hip Shooting talent (which implies that this can use any fire mode based on previous usage of the wording 'single attack').

As someone who's now played all the way through Dark Heresy with a gunslinger assassin in the group, here are my experiences.

At lower levels, gunslingers with full auto are pretty deadly even with the lowly autogun. The enemies rarely have tough armor and low-ish toughness. At higher levels, full-auto weapons generally aren't a big problem, for the reasons Plastic Rat said. The enemies are just too big and burly for the Las/SP full-auto weapons.

As for point blank: yes, full auto is lethal as hell at point blank range. However, if there's one thing any individual with even a hint of intelligence will try to avoid, it's standing right next to someone with an autogun or the like. You just Don't Do It[tm], since you WILL be mowed down. We learned this the hard way a couple of times ourselves...

At higher levels, higher penetration and more damage is generally the way to go. That doesn't mean the dual wielding gunslinger isn't lethal. Two bolters on semi-auto, or dual shot vs those really high toughness guys, still does a lot of damage. Note that heavy damage options for ranged weapons (apart from heavy weapons) aren't capable of full auto fire.

Thanks for clearing that one up

Well remember, if the enemy attacks them first with a melee weapon, they are locked in melee and can no longer get point blank bonus on full auto. And since its a full round action, they can't move into point blank without leaving themselves open to an attack first. Also, auto pistols have piss poor penetration (unless these guys are shooting money with manstopper rounds), so a reasonably tough/armoured opponent can just shake it off. But yes, it can be fairly versitile, but it requires alot of talents, and a focus on short range combat. Just throw in some guy with a heavy stubber about 75m away, and the group is way out in the open with no cover.

There's a number of other issues (as well as range) with standard auto fire pistol route. For one, remember that you can't call shots with auto-fire, so against people in largely in cover it's down to luck, also when shooting into melee I always use the optional rules about allocating hits, which it very unfavourable. When people are restricted to single shots into melee the autopistol becomes drops off greatly.

If I recall correctly, if one fires two weapons on full-auto at once, they may only do so as a supressing fire action. This significantly weakens the damage output of the weapon.

To clarify, I meant the expected damage per round. Obviously the bullets hurt just as much, but you clearly hit less with -20 (and missing the +20 of regular full auto).

I think the ballistic dual-wield talents are really more useful for stronger weapons that don't fail at single fire, like bolt pistols, or twin-linked shotguns with extra grip.

Salindurthas said:

Hmm, I'm looking through version 3 of the errata and I can't find anything on the subject.

Although I still could be wrong. When I read the rulebook again (p197) I see that perhaps by "you may only lay down one area of supressive fire", it didn't mean 'the only action is lay down one area', but 'you can't supress two areas'.

Salindurthas said:

You're right, it actually isn't covered in the Errata, my apologies.

You have to browse through the core book to glean whether it's possible...and in the best DH style, the wording is far from clear. On page 190 under the heading Full Auto Burst:
"If you have a pistol in either hand you may fire them both (see Two-Weapon Fighting on page 197)"

On page 197 the relevant passage is:
"When firing a ranged weapon with each hand, you may fire each weapon on a different mode, for example, one on full automatic and one on semi-automatic"

Taken together, this implies that you can full-auto with two ranged weapons. Of course, it's not clear at all.

From a balance standpoint, not allowing this makes melee weapons overpowered when compared to ranged weapons (it can be argued they already are).

Side rant: the DH books are really goddamn hopeless when it comes to wording the rules in an unambiguous way.