Does anyone else feel that the Astartes Heavy Bolter is a bit too powerful? With 2d10+10 Pen 6 Tearing and capable of scoring a maximum of 10 hits, that is a lot of damage potential. Now, this isn't so bad against "normal" targets like hordes or Chaos Space Marines, but when you start getting the big things like Daemon Princes, Tau Crisis Suits, it gets a bit silly. I'm having a hard time seeing why a devastator would ever want to give up his Heavy Bolter, which is standard issue and available to him every mission for free , for any other weapon.

Sure the Lascannon or Plasma Cannon (on Maximal) can do more damage, but they're only a single shot, so easily dodged by many enemies. Meanwhile, with a decent BS in the 40s or low 50s, between the various bonuses to BS a Dev will get, he's likely to score quite a few hits with the Heavy Bolter, which enemies will have a harder time dodging since they can only dodge one hit for each DoS. This ensures at least some damage will be done, and that 2d10+10 Pen 6 Tearing per hit is pretty hefty for "Some" damage. Plus if you get a lot of hits and the enemy fails their dodge roll (or one of your allies already forced it to take a dodge) you're tearing it apart with a ton of nasty hits. And this is ignoring specialty bolt ammo, which can get pretty crazy and again begs the question of why a Dev would want to pay 30-35 req for a Lascannon, Multi-Metla or Plasma Cannon when he could instead get a suspensor, motion predictor, and/or multiple magazines for Kraken rounds or whatever other specialty ammo for the Heavy Bolter.

If vehicles were a threat in the game, things might be a bit different, as even the lowly rhino with it's 25 front/side armor and 25 structure points is moderately resistant to H.Bolter fire. However against the enemies we're given in the book, I really don't see much a point in taking anything but the H.Bolter.

Maybe I'm not seeing something, or maybe we do need enemy armour to make the Devastator's weapon choice a bit more difficult.

I think you got it right. I noticed the same when someone here inquired about the Assault Cannon. The AC should own the Heavy Bolter on any given day. And it doesn't, really.

Alex

I agree with the idea that the Astartes Heavy Bolter gives the Assault Cannon a run for it's money.

As a GM, I'm leaning toward adding the "Storm" special rule to the Assault Cannon, meaning that the wielder with enough successes could achieve a RoF of 20. I feel that would represent the sheer volume of firepower an Assault Cannon can bring.

Now I've only looked up the Daemon Prince, but there... well, I don't know. If there wasn't Tearing and Righteous Fury to mess up statistics, you'd deal 3 points of damage per hit. Nurgle Princes would be even hardier. And of course, it's not too likely you'll get those hits for too long before one or two dozen followers of the Prince charge you and you're in melee.

cliffetters said:

Personally, to properly represent the utter devastation that Assault Cannons have long been capable of, I'd be inclined to give it Storm, Devastating (1), Felling (1) and Overheats (the old risk of Assault Cannons catastrophically jamming is a detail I feel to be appropriate here), allowing them to tear apart pretty much any living creature in its path. I might increase the Requisition for one, though.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

One word: Seconded.

Alex

Unfortunately, several of the weapon stats seem to have been ill-conceived, or possibly just duplicated.

1) As mentioned, the heavy bolter is about as good as the assault cannon.

2) The Tau missile pod is inferior in every way to the plasma rifle (higher dmge, pen, and tearing?!)

3) The Tyranid barbed strangler and stranglethorn cannon have the same statline.

Etc.

It's frustrating, because there are so many cool toys and tricks, but it looks like FFG's infamous proofreaders have struck again.... *sigh*

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I like the way you think, sir, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter...

Though I think you could probably keep the requisition right where it is since to arm a marine with an assault cannon means spending 130 requisition (100 for the Terminator armor and 30 for the weapon).

Additionally, the marine has to have a reknown level of "Famed". I have a feeling that if a mission is so tough that you're going to be able to afford 130 req AND the Forgelords and armorers know your name, getting a suit of Tactical Dreadnought Armor AND an assault cannon wouldn't be that hard.

cliffetters said:

I think the Assault Cannon's cost can be included as part of the 100 Terminator armor 'buy-out' (60 for the armor, minimum 40 to arm it). However, I think the cheapest combo you could get w/ an assault cannon is 105 (armor[60]+ac[30]+combiweapon[15).

N0-1_H3r3 said:

This is kind of munchkining, but is it possible to requisition 2 assault cannons (given that terminator armour can use heavy weapons one handed), and then use two weapon wielder to fire both (as per the 6th bullet under two-weapon fighting, note that no designation is given for class of weapon) on full auto simultaneously?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Storm and Devastating yes but I'm not sure about giving it Felling, that makes it a bit to much of a monster. Remember that the individual shells for an assault cannon aren't that big. Its the rate of fire which makes it deadly.

Wargamer said:

Felling(1) because in the tt the weapon has rending.

Alex

ddunkelmeister said:

I know that the rules state that the 100 points of requisition includes weapons, but I would read that as including a Storm Bolter and Power Fist. If any of my players want other weapons (Heavy Flamer, Cyclone Missle Launcher, Assault Cannon, and/or Power Sword) they're gonna have to pay for it.

Would giving the assault cannon the blast(1) trait be a bad idea?

By doing this every shot becomes an area effect hail of fire. Either every thing in the blast gets hit with every round, like a flamer, or you divide up rounds between those in the affected area.

ItsUncertainWho said:

I think giving it Storm and Devastating (1) represents that better.

I agree with all of this (both the Assault cannon is underpowered and the Heavy bolter is overpowered). To the point that the answer to almost every situation is going to be 'I fire my Heavy Bolter at it'. Especially when you take into account the special ammo.

I also noticed that some one had put up the house rules for a Predator based on the vehicle rules in into the storm, which included a mighty frontal armour of 30. Now if this is at all like the Apocrypha rules then a AHB is going to go through that, as some one else said you can easily take out a Deamon prince (yes on average, with standard ammo, you'll only do 3 damage but we know from DH that with auto fire and it's all about rolling lots of dice and letting it buck the average, RF isn't fare off with those hits).

The same can be said for Bolters. It seems to me that they were so keen to make bolters so attractive throughout the game that most players aren't actually going to need to stop using them just keeping specialist ammo and better sights. That's fine for the whole, Space Marines love bolters but rapid fireing bolters at any enemy that comes is going to the get tired quickly.

I know that the rules state that the 100 points of requisition includes weapons, but I would read that as including a Storm Bolter and Power Fist. If any of my players want other weapons (Heavy Flamer, Cyclone Missle Launcher, Assault Cannon, and/or Power Sword) they're gonna have to pay for it.

Er... huh? Are you stating that as a houserule? Because there's nothing in the rules saying a terminator should have exactly those two or automatically gets them or anything else to that effect.

Face Eater said:

Currently the Heavy Bolter is 2d10+10 X Pen 6. My Predator stats have 30 frontal armor and 25 Structural Integrity.

So assuming the Heavy bolter somehow did max damage (two 10s, failed Righteous fury confirm) it'll do 30 damage, Pen 6. Meaning it does 6 SI damage to the Predator in a single hit. At first that seems a bit much. However thats the maximum possible roll. However this is the maximum damage it can do, 6. So it'll take 5 maximum damage hits to put the Predator into criticals, and with Reinforced Hull, it'll take 8 maximum damage Heavy Bolt shell hits to destroy the Predator. That isn't too bad, because again, thats Maximum damage hits. If anything, perhaps I should increase the Predator's SI to 30 (my Leman Russ has 30 as well, but tougher armor). I should also increase the Predator's Armor to 32, to be in line with other Armor 13 facings I've done, I made it a bit lower because it was the first one I did, and then justified not changing it by deciding the Predator is ultimately more of an up-armored and up-gunned APC than a "true" tank, but thats not really correct.

Throw in specialty ammo, and things get a bit more powerful.

Though at the same time, given a Predator is Enourmous, giving a +20 to hit, a Devastator with a H.Bolter is rolling at least +40 against it, meaning he'll get several hits probably, and with 2d10 with tearing, thats a big chance for righteous fury (which instead of doing bonus damage, rolls 1d5 on the vehicle critical chart).

As a bit of a test of the heavy bolter against my vehicle rules, I rolled up ten Heavy Bolter hits using Invisible Castle.

3d10 → [8,9,5] = (22) Becomes [8+9]+10 = 27
3d10 → [3,5,2] = (10) Becomes [3+5]+10 = 18
3d10 → [9,8,7] = (24) Becomes [9+8]+10 = 27
3d10 → [7,4,7] = (18) Becomes [7+7]+10 = 24
3d10 → [9,8,6] = (23) Becomes [9+8]+10 = 27
3d10 → [8,6,3] = (17) Becomes [8+6]+10 = 24
3d10 → [6,1,10] = (17) Becomes [6+10]+10 = 26 (Plus Righteous Fury mini-crit)
3d10 → [7,2,6] = (15) Becomes [7+6]+10 = 23
3d10 → [9,9,2] = (20) Becomes [9+9]+10 = 28
3d10 → [8,1,9] = (18) Becomes [8+9]+10 = 27

My newly revised Predator has 32 Frontal Armor and 28 Structural Integrity. H.Bolter is AP6 so... 32-6 = 26 AP

27 - 26 = 1 SI damage

18 - 26 = No damage

27 -26 = 1 damage

24 - 26 = No damage

27 - 26 = 1 damage

24 - 26 = No damage

26 - 26 = No damage

23 - 26 = No Damage

28 - 26 = 2 damage

27 - 26 = 1 damage

1d5 Critical Roll = 4, Weapon Destroyed.

So our Devastator Battle Brother has succeeded in doing 6 SI damage, and has disabled one of the Predator tank's weapons, determined by a random roll.

Not bad really. It'll take 4+ rounds of shooting like that to even get the Tank into criticals, which, while cumulative, are halved on the damage.

Not bad, but this is against the front armour of a tank, and therefore should not need to worry about weapons designed for anti-personnel use.

If I use astartes bolt weapons, I'll drop the damage of them by 3. Not got the book (soon, I hope), but a 'gut feel' seems this makes them good at what they are designed to do, the special ammo choice quite important and the other weapons have a point.

And what do You think abou stripping Bolter-type weapons of Tearing special rule? That would lower RF occurance and make Battle Brothers use Special Ammo more wisely but wouldn't hinder bolters too much in any other way.

Its worth noting that in the TT Heavy Bolters used to be fairly powerful before all this AP 1, AP2 nonsense turned up and replaced Armour Save modifiers

God I miss 2nd ed...

Little Dave said:

And if you are balancing it (in the DW book it's 2D10+10) against a tank, even a light then I pressume it's going to go through a Chimera's front armor relatively easily, and that's supposed to have pretty solid front armour. And that's only with normal ammo.

Lets be honest, the Armoury section is by far the very worst DW has to offer. It lacks consistency, many weapons just don't compare to earlier games of DH/RT, to fluff, to BL-fluff or the table-top.

Basically I think the guy(s) who wrote the Armoury part were fondling their bolters instead of paying attention to actual consistency and game-mechanics. If they had concentrated a bit on what they were writing they would have realized how utterly devastating the combination of high rate of fire, tearing, RF and several dice of damage are. But I guess they were just a wee bit too exited about their bolters to notice or care.

Personally I think the bolters a quite fine, but everything else is just sadly underpowered.

Polaria said:

I'm of the opinion that in DH and RT weapons were purposefully underpowered, they chance of outright hilling some-one was remote and even devastating weapons were reigned to make them survivable, in a game system that was pretty dangerous as it is.

It's as if they decided that, of all weapons Marine Bolters are the only ones that NEED to actually be deadly on every shot, to other marines at that.