Well, what about this?

1/2 Aim is a Max of +1d10 Bonus damage

Full Aim is a Max of +2d10 Bonus damage

Each 1d10 per 2 DoS as normal, and you need to make a called shot as well.

It seems to be the best mix of reducing the nonstop sniper of death problem, while letting skilled players get the bonus as normal. Afterall, a normal guardsman could pull off a good shot at times, but a trained guard marksman can do it reliably

Edit: Something one of my GMs suggested for making full auto more realistic is a +0 to hit, otherwise, leave as is.

I wouldn't be adverse to limiting accurate damage to called shots but it can be justified with a normal shot. The sniper's target is moving about (if only hand gestures and the like) and the sniper's favourite weak point might be not be visible. But look! A ***** in the target's leg armour! Take the shot!

Well, called shots is noticing the ***** basically and focusing on it, not just randomly shooting for a kink. First off, it prevents bad shots easily from racking up +40 in bonuses each turn and potshots (+10 from 1/2 aim, +10 from accurate, +10 from close range probably and +10 from red dot). By limiting it you keep people from abusing it, while still giving them a chance for good damage, but any decent dedicated sniper gets at least dead eye shot and other sniping talents, so this doesn't affect them as much, while still keeping the lucky sniper shot and not underpowering it.

Truth be told, I dislike Deadeye Shot and its second tier talent so much that I've actually dis-allowed them.

They are talents that completely remove the tactical aspect of choosing where you want to strike, at the cost of accuracy. Anytime talents remove those kinds of choices I dislike them. I prefer abilities, skills and talents that either broaden combat options or enhance existing options. Making a sniper's default hit area the head strikes me as the wrong approach.

I would prefer the ability to perhaps give a small bonus to damage when using Called Shot, or perhaps even better, to allow the sniper to reduce his opponent's dodge/defensive roll. That strikes me as a better option.

Well, I see it is training, an average person can't hit a specific limb well, but a crack shot can. They have training, are used to it, experienced, etc.

I was a designated marksman for my squad. Granted, we were sappers so I didn't get a different weapon load-out but I can still say I was one of the best shots in the company.

I can assure you that no amount of training can ever guarantee a hit on any body part. There's a reason the military trains you to aim center mass, going for the sure hit rather then trying trick shots. The ability to reliably and accurately get a headshot is a myth in practical terms. Its doable at close ranges, but even then an odd movement, twitch or distraction by even an unaware enemy can cause you to miss or graze rather then hit and incapacitate.

However, reality should never get in the way of good game mechanics. But that's again where I dislike Deadeye/Sharpshooter, as it eliminates player choice, especially in the DH rules where a lot of talents and the Called Shot rules aren't completely clear. At least in RT it specifies that Called Shot is a Full Action, which DH does not, even in the Errata. This at least is a bit more balanced since in the RT rules to Call Shot a player has to remain stationary, as well as forego the use of Semi- and Full-Auto bursts, as well as certain weapon talents.

In DH, most GMs are probably likely to just automatically assume that Deadeye/Sharpshooter allows the player to choose where he hits even with talents like Dual Shot, as well as whenever the player moves. That sort of default replacement just doesn't sit right with me.

Its a minor point to be sure, but since neither my experience with reality nor my sense of game balance and choice versus consequence agree with these talents I had to make the change. I don't think it made any great impact on my gaming group, even on the assassins/guardsmen.

Having read through the thread I still don't think accurate weapons need to be weakened, not in the sense of game-balance, realism or narrative appeal. The sniper in my gorup still complains of being weak nothing anyone here has said will be suffficient to change that, he certainly doesn't need to be further crippled.

By game balance I mean is an option balanced against equivalent strategies one could use (of which spray-and-pray is the most relevant in this case) and against enemies. I believe accurate is, if anything it is underpowered.

One would expect full-auto to be better against hordes of mooks and sniping against single elite 'bosses', overall this is true but the bosses have to be VERY powerful for accurate to win out. One of the first posters showed that 8.5 of combined TB and AP is needed for accuracy to be better. What if the FA gunman was able to choose a better weapon? Say an Armageddon auto-gun? The tipping point then becomes 11.25 or 8.25 if not applying manstoppers. This means that full-auto is even better against some boss type enemies such as daemonettes, unbound daemon hosts and nobles in power armour. If they both have mighty shot then it jumps to 13.25 or 11.25 meaning even charnel daemons, the skae-thing and just about everything else in the books suffer more from a full-auto burst.

The FA burst also comes with far more chances of righteous fury and is far harder to dodge plus they can hit even more times. I can't be bothered running the numbers for a vanahiem but scatter would make it even worse against targets with low armour.

Let's see if the damage is balanced against enemies, the skae-thing for example. An assassin with mighty shot using a hunting rifle against the skae thing would do an average of 11.5 damage meaning at least four turns would be necessary to even bring it to critical damage, assuming he hits with 4 DoS every turn AND the skae-thing doesn't regenerate AND the skae thing fails to dodge every attack even with it's 50 Ag. Considering the skae-thing can sprint 60m a turn and likely engage the pc in combat before then, I feel this is balanced. The sniper can also take a bloodletter to critical in a couple of turns, faster than a FA burst if we ignore RF and potential for additional hits, which I don't have a problem with if they've managed to engage the bloodthirster at the end of a long field. Not so good if you're ambushed in the churches and catacombs acolytes always seem to be hanging around in.

Realism seems pretty obvious. Say a gunman hits an average man doing average damage, 3d10+3-TB-AP (if he gets four degrees of success. That's an average of 17 damage past TB which would take the civilian down to -6 on the crit tables with results such as breaking arms or legs or fracturing the skull and tearing the scalp, honestly I'd expect more lethality but definitely don't think you should reduce the damage to increase realism.

Narrative appeal, well the cold, professional sniper and his one-hit kill is a trope that many people really like. If you reduce the damage done any further his epic shot likely won't even bruise an NPC civilian off the street let alone someone with armour or toughness. Likewise PCs won't feel at all threatened by snipers because they'll be able to just walk slowly towards them ignoring the shots which will hardly get through their armour and toughness.

Furthermore I like my pcs to set up clever ambushes and sniping is an example of this where all the investigation work can culminate is working out a targets routine, finding a good spot and taking him out with one badass shot thus throwing heretics into disarray or whatever. I think that's cool but it is pretty much impossible if sniping gets ANY weaker than it already is. This still doesn't let them one-shot the cool bosses either. If they sniped the skae-thing or it turned out the cult-leader was a daemon host (just for example) then one shot wouldn't go anywhere near killing him.

Anyway, those are my two cents

I see where you're all coming from with plasma and other weapons being weak but it's not just accurate they're weak against and I think if accurate is weakened anymore people would be able to take multiple shots to the head without flinching, hardly the realism you seem to be after.

After almost sniping out the Churgeon in one round of combat last night, I think I may change the Accurate to require a Full-turn called shot before it can do 3d10 worth of damage. A hunting rifle really shouldn't be able to do that kind of damage, however I could see an Exitus rifle doing it, but that's also in the hands of a Vindicare assassin...

Daedalius said:

I made the very same experience. The door went open and the groups Assassin at an initiative of about 16 used Quick Draw to pull out his Hunting Rifle, used Aim for a half action and Single Shot for another half action. The Churgeon was hit by something in the upper twenties and would have been dead without anyone so far having drawn a weapon. I gave the Churgeon the Touched by Fate trait as an "emergency GM intervention" , so that the climax was not over in less than a single round. So, he could at least flee a few meters and throw his servants into combat before dying by another Accurate shot...

It is simply the possibility to fire such a shot in every round (combined with Quick Draw and high Initiative (and later with Mighty/Crack Shot and Man-stopper rounds)) that makes it broken in my view (Aim - Single Shot --- Aim - Single Shot --- Aim - Single Shot --- and so on). A full action to aim or a Called Shot by Rogue Trade rules as a prequesite for the extra damage is fine in my opinion.

Luthor Harkon said:

Would it really have made a difference if instead the Guardsman had won Initiative, pulled out his Autogun and let go on full auto (Half-Action Aim + Accurate = +20% / Full-Auto = +20%)? The same D100 roll that fell could produce 1 hit with 3D10+3 or at least 5 (could be more if lower result) hits with each 1D10+3?

Noctus said:

It's part of the gamer psychology (at least all the gamers I've ever played with): a single massive damage hit grabs far more attention than multiple lower-damage hits that deal as much or more total damage, simply because the damage comes in one large chunk. I believe it's because the general practice is to roll damage for hits individually (regardless of game system) so we look at damage as a function of the hit rather than the round/action (unless you're comfortable working with DPS/DPR calculations, in which case you might see both).

Honestly, Accurate's advantage over Autofire is that the enemy's TB and armor apply to every hit (every d10) on Auto, while Accurate is bonus damage so the TB and armor only applies once. However, on the flip side, a single Dodge roll negates all the Accurate damage, and the +3 damage (d10+3) for the autogun applies to each hit.

Bladehate said:

If that's the case just make deadeye shot the same as the similar melee talent.
The char gets to decide if he uses the numer he rolled for hit location or turns them around.

I have a feeling the hunting rifle/accurate damage, while it works very well in the first few missions, the automatic weapons that are available will outpace it even with the aim + 3d10 on the best shots. I'll have to see how it does on a custom game, where I think one of my friends will be throwing stuff quite a bit nastier than the churgeon at us.

Noctus said:

Absolutely.

The Guardsman would have an Initiative of around 8, so at least the Churgeons familiar could have acted and locked him in close combat (what it actually did for a few rounds in my game). The Guardsman neither has the BS of the Assassin nor Mighty/Crack Shot and thus would hit on average with about three bullets each doing 1D10+3 damage. Each hit would do about 8.5 damage on average against the Churgeon's TB of 4 and AP 4 (if I remeber his values right), so that 0.5 wounds get through per bullet hitting (1.5 wounds altogether in this case). Not very impressive and far from what the Assassin could have done (or has done in my game) if you ask me...

Luthor Harkon said:

This would be a discussion of "Assassin vs. Guardsman", whereas the Class in my above example is completly irrelevant. The topic of this thread is about Accurate Damage, and not what differently specced characters with different classes would have done in a situation. Your Guradsman has 20% less Ballistic Skill and lost initiative. Thats quiet a different situation. If you want to compare weapons dont chage the perimeters in which you compare.

Here, i´ll correct it for you-->

"Would it really have made a difference if he had used an Autogun, instead of a Hunting Rifle, and let go on full auto (Half-Action Aim + Accurate = +20% / Full-Auto = +20%)? The exactly same D100 roll that fell could produce 1 hit with 3D10+3 or at least 5 (could be more if lower result) hits with each 1D10+3?"

P.S. (general annotation)

To calculate the expected damage from a shot you cant simply use the averade dice number and be done. For example if you only go by averages someone with a soak of 9 would be "immune" to a weapon with D10+3. With the averages calculation method you used you´d come to the conclusion that even after 100 hits you´d mathematically expect he´d be unharmed.

As the probability of just completly bouncing off in this case is so high the variance gets much important here and you have to calculate the probability for each roll individually. For example here the calculation for a D10+3 vs. 8er soak.

Rolled 1 = 0 dmg / rolled 2 = 0 damage / ... / rolled 9 = 4 dmg / rolled 10 = 5 dgm. --> For 10 hits in which each number on the D10 is rolled once he takes a total of 15 damage, which leads to the true expectation value of 1.5 points of damage per hit.

So 5 hits with 1.5 each makes 7.5 the expected wounds taken from the salvo. But the shooter had Mighty Shot, which raises the expected damage of each shot to 2.8 when its included and thus 14 wounds taken as expectation value. Compard to the roughly ~13,5 from a sniper-shot.

--> So even with the lowest tier weapons the Full Auto spray beats the sniper shot by a tiny bitsy. In effect its equivalent in terms of killing power. Yet. But there things that will swing the scale in favor of Fullauto Spray more and more.

• The spray has a 50% chance of triggering a Fury and the sniper shot only has 30%, which i didnt include in the calculation for the sake of simplicity.
• An even better ballistic skill roll will not profit the sniper any further, but the fullauto sprayer can still get more hits in.
• One succesfull dodge negates the whole sniper shot, but only takes degrees off from the Fullauto Spray.
• Better ammunition and better weapons will each profit the Fullauto Spray roughly 5 times as much than the sniper shot.

For one easy to happen example imagine that the shooter had procured 1 simple clip of manstopper rounds for special occasions and loaded it. The results then go from "14 vs. ~13.5" to a crass "27.5 vs. ~16.5" in favor of the Fullauto Spray. (Target the afromentioned 4 toughnes / 4 armor guy)

Just have to post again to say that after having run the numbers i am really surprised and awestruck how really, really big the difference really gets once you move ahead from the most basic of beginner equipment. I wouldnt have thought that Fullauto beats Sniping so drastically.

Without Might Shot and Manstoppers sniping is ahead. With one or the other both styles are roughly at level. But once the shooter has Mighty Shot and better ammunition the difference gets crass. (So at level 3 for an Assassin, where he can take Might Shot and can realistically expect to have earned enough money to have bought one or two clips of Manstoppers for special occasions.) And thats even before using better weapons that the most basic run-of-the mill Hunting Rifle and Autogun (as better weapon stats profit the Fullauto Sprayer much much more that the Sniper).

Outch.

Well I already consider the difference between SA and FA to be too great in this system (considering that much more powerful weapons are frequently SA only and rarely seem to be worth it).

But in this context consider that instead of the those FA upgrades you mentioned (although the ammo cost to change to a manstoppers in a hunting rifle is 10* less per combat round) you invested in a scope, suddenly although with as many degrees of success the FA will be doing more damage in most situations the sniper will have +10 or even +20 (considering the difference in range). FA scopes aren't avialable until much later.

Also consider that there is a number of battle conditions that render FA much less effective, cover massively effects the amount of damage done on full auto and targets in melee reduce the full auto combatant to single shots while, with a called shot, the sniper is basically unaffected.

Barring optional/houserules, firing FA into a melee is just fine, beyond the -20 for firing into melee canceling out the +20 for full auto. Cover can be an issue, yes, but if the bad guy is shooting at you, he's going to have, at a minimum, his head and arm (or arms in the case of a basic weapon) exposed. Which, in turn, means a 30% chance of actually hitting an exposed body part with a spray, and only needing 3 hits (2DoS) to hit an exposed arm with a body hit (40% chance), and the next hit walks to the head which is also uncovered. Without a base BS to work with you can't really calculate the real odds, but that's still pretty good. And, if he's not shooting at you, then that gives you a round for tactical movement to negate his cover, or shoot his buddies who ARE shooting at you.

FA is king in this game, and anything that brings SS or SA anywhere close to balance with it can only be a good thing.