N0-1_H3r3 said:

Didn't have my book...

The ranges are the important thing. Tau can control a battle field at range.

I believe that the Rhino has 24 AP listed in Into the Storm. A Leman Russ tank would probably have an AP in the mid to upper 30's, 36-38 estimated.

ItsUncertainWho said:

One word: smoke. Lots of it.

Alex

Plenty of optical enhancement options bypass smoke.

ItsUncertainWho said:

The Astartes Blind Grenade sound pretty sophisticated though. Other than that, don't let them choose the terrain.

Alex

Atheosis said:

It's called space. They only have a limited space to put everything in, they also want to make a profit. The Core is to get your appetite wet and wanting more, so they have a handbook come out which is filled with things they wanted to include in the CORE but couldn't do to budget, space, or time. This is especially true in the 40k books, since there is such a large fluff basis and the fact that they needed to include the basic system so that each book is a stand alone and doesn't require another book for rules for instance. If you're creating a Shadowrun system that adapts 40k, I'm sure you can create custom chapters, there's already a few out there. Or you can wait, in till the Inquisitor's Handbook/Into the Storm for DW comes sometime early next year.

Relax, enjoy the CORE and look at how others are doing custom chapters, it's not that hard. Only thing that's hard would be the Solo/Squad Abilities and Psychic Powers.

Manyfist said:

My 2 cents: The Shadowrun system is one of the worst RPG systems with one of the coolest environments/worlds ever concieved. They have a lot of good ideas, but you end up with things way more imbalanced than bolters and tau cannons.

And to second Manyfist's point- this is the starting book. You get 6 chapters and 6 classes. What do you get in Shadowrun's base book - 5 base races and 6 or so classes? Hmmm, seems to be similar in scope, at least initially. And from what I can tell the chapters don't seem all that complicated to create- a couple of bonuses to stats, a skill list that makes sense (sorry Space Wolves...Carouse, really?), then an ability that fits the basic scale of the other chapter's abilities - some kind of a small bonus that's sustained or a higher bonus that lasts 1x per session/combat/mission.

ak-73 said:

Hi Alex

I think people (by which I mean game designers) have got too caught up with not being able to hurt Space Marines with an average bolter hit.

The problem being is that these are PC's here and average is not some thing they go for. When I'm stating important bad guys I've got a habit of put the stats on paper and then adding about 20% because players will find ways of uping the ante.

In the 'fluff' there are constant mentions of improving armour during and after the heresy, developing better ammunition (including the risky vengence rounds) and plenty of other examples that lead me to believe that the Space Marines in power armour are (yes, like the table TT) fairly difficult to put down even with bolters.

Obviously for a RPG this isn't easy but will make it more interesting if the answer to every threat isn't just shoot it with a bolter.

I know the fluff is inconsistant on this, especialy stories which throughout history have had a problem depicting someone, who is not a major character, getting shot and not dying. It's easy to imagine with all the bonuses that marines have flying about that the characters in the novels would be toting much of it and that makes a big difference.

And looking at the characters they are easily going to make up for it. For a start they can auto-fire those bolters so more hits = more chances to score high damage and 3 dice a piece with which to get RF which is going to blow the averages out of water.

Plus as a starting character a tac marine can have plus 2 damage and be loaded with Kraken shells. Which atm makes CSM's hilariously easy to put down. Combined thats 2d10 - 1 tearing wounds per hit. Let alone the bonuses as they go up levels (there are at least 2 other skills i can remember that add 2 damage against CSMs).

So if it was nerfed what you would be looking at is that characters without heavy weapon, weren't bolter specialists, didn't have a more powerful melee weapon and weren't psykers would have more some trouble putting a CSM down with a bolter.

Sorry, turned into a bit of rant and I deffiantely wasn't aiming it at you.

Polaria said:

Referencing the Superiority of the Pulse Rifle. It's range is 50% greater than the bolter range. It is a technological marvel when you think about it's superior range. I can destroy things from a LOT farther away giving it greater destructive capability. This doesn't just have to apply to physical damage only.

Addressing the comments that imply bolters should kill SM's with one shot (an inference on my part since no one came out and actually said those words.) I don't think that happens, really. Even in the TT game, SM's make their armor saves 2 out of 3 times when hit with a bolter round. This doesn't mean they weren't hit or that the shot bounced off their armour. It just means they weren't wounded badly enough to be taken out of the fight yet. Theoretically, a space marine could have been wounded several times during a TT game battle but the wounds were insufficient to bring them down. You can equate the failed armour roll of a space marine as a righteous fury hit that took the marine down in one shot, but no where does it say a bolter shell should be able to bring a marine down in one hit.

LeBlanc13 said:

On a similar note, a "kill" in the wargame doesn't necessarily represent a death either - merely that a warrior has been rendered incapable of fighting.

Remember when comparing the Astartes Boltgun to the Tau Pluse Rifle that size is also a factor in the technology. Any Astartes Bolt weapon counts as one size class larger when a normal character (human, tau fire warrior, etc.) uses it. This does not hold true for Tau weapons. So the Pulse Rife of the Tau is doing damage slightly less than an Astartes Bolt gun and doing it in a package that is small enough for a normal human to use without a size problem. The Astartes bolt weapons do 1d10 more damage and +1 Penetration over their human-sized versions from DH/RT. If you scaled up a Pulse Rifle to Astartes size it logically figures that you'd end up with a weapon doing 3d10+2 with 5 Penetration. I'd call it a more technologically advanced weapon.

Well it's good to see people are thinking along the same lines as me. My concerns were that the bolter was easily too much of an all-round great weapon and the other weapons are going to be neglected. I was happy that some people were even tweaking weapon stats to suit themselves - after all, if you think that your plasma gun will leave a bigger hole in your side of the galaxy, then so be it!

One thing that did frighten me though, was that there was talk of people adding insane amounts of damage to weapons, like 3d10 or more! This irks me a litttle, and I began to think, "How would I change the weapons to make it more enjoyable?".

Well, now, I have to say that I have changed my mind. Furthermore, now that I have actually played the game I understand how these weapons come into their own. Remember that you equip your weapons based on the mission intel, and you are supposed to make the deployment phase and armouring phase of your mission a big deal! You shouldn't just assume that "i use X weapon because X is mine" all the time.

Suddenly, now that you are equipping for a mission your multimelta seems a lot more powerful! If its a standard mission, then the bolter will do. I would ask you "why are you even thinking about taking a multimelta? What would the Captain of the Watch think about using such a sacred weapon so flippently?".

Indeed, you are taking out your multimelta because in your mission briefing you were told that you needed to bust open some bunkers, or spaceship hulls, or that you might be encountering some heavy armour in this sector. These are the reasons that you would want to take the weapon, and trust me, when you have something with 14 or more armour points (perhaps... a tank? Or a fortification?) you will suddenly think that your multimelta with Pen 13 is your best friend.

My point is, everyone seems to be trying to take these specialist weapons for standard missions, and when they apply the specialist weapon to a mundane situation they get upset when it doesnt perform as well as a weapon designed for mundane tasks (bolter!), These weapons are situational, deployed only on a mission-by-mission basis, and your GM should enhance the Forgemaster or the Captain of the Watch's dissaproval when you continually take unneccessary weapons from the armoury (well thats what our GM does! I think its a good idea.).

often when i said "multimelta", i meant to say "meltagun".

Charmander said:

Right on the first statement. WAY WAY WAY wrong on the second.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Which edition of SR are we talking about?

Alex

I have been going over the 4 core books (WFRP 2E, DH, RT and DW) re-reading and comparing all the rules. And it seems to begin at WFRP 2E(henceforth W2E) andjust get out of hand from there.

And its not just bolters, its the entire damage system.

Ulric's Fury (Righteous Fury in W2E) worked just fine in that game as 99% of all weapons did 1d10+modifier damage, not 2d10, not 3d10. With the exception of weapons with the Impact quality, which functions the same as Tearing.

This got a little out of hand in DH as many weapons did 2+ d10 damage, increasing the odds of Righteous Fury, but still only 1d10 was added to the damage roll on a successful RF.

But in RT the RF rules, and damage in general, went out of whack. First, the extra damage on RF was the FULL DAMAGE CODE a second, you could replace a rolled die of damage's result with the number of successes you received on the attack.

This rule is carried over into DW. So you take your marine, with Bolter Mastery, shooting at a ork. Orks are hulking, so +10 to hit, +10 for bolter mastery and +10 for short range (for example) and +20 for full auto for a total of +50, added to say a BS of 50. Now if joe Marine rolls a 20 to hit, which counts as 8 degrees of success, he then rolls 3 dice for damage. The lowest of the three dice is thrown out, the next lowest (if lower then a 8) is replaced with a 8, and the other die is used as full value. So if he rolle a 3, a 5 and a 9, the 3 is discarded, the 5 becomes a 8 and the 9 is kept as is for 17 damage. +5 for the weapon, +2 for bolter mastery, for 24 damage.

But in addition to the degrees of success replacing damage, it also counts for the number of hits scored with full auto. So the question is kind of vague as to whether or not the degrees of success for damage is applied to the additional hits (unless I missed that reference), or on RF damage rolls or if tearing carries over on RF damages.

So the problem, in the end, isnt really with bolters, its with the designers coming up with too many rules to cover damage, and not enough of gelling them together.

As was referred to beforehand, the TT is a perfect example here. A Bolter in TT has a 50/50 chance of wounding a Space Marine and the space marine has about a 66% chance of having his armour absorb the shot. In the RPG the stats work in reverse, meaning you have to get through armour first, then you face the Marine'sToughness. In the end it equates to about 17% of bolter shots hurting a marine. Not incapacitating or killing them or removing them from the game/combat, as would be done in TT. So lets make that about a 20% or 25% chance of wounding a marine. With average TB of 8 and average AP of 8, the marine has 16 points of soak. if we count 16 as say 80% of the max damage for a bolter then the remain 20% would be 17-20. Or 2D10 damage. But since a marine has 20 some wounds, we want a bit more injury then only 1-4 points of damage 20% of the time. So we add in PEN of 5, Tearing and righteous fury rules.

Suddenly the marine is hurt like 50% of the time from a hit by a bolter, but usually only for a few scratches (1-4 or so wounds). And if the hit is in the torso they get 2 more points of armour and if they are a big one (TB 10) tehy have way less to worry about.

Remove degrees of success as a damage replacement option, reduce Righteous Fury back to 1D10 bonus (as in DH) and maybe have multiple damage dice weapon have to have only one die available for RF (such as if you are rolling 2D10 for damage, one blue and one red, only the red die is the RF die) the weapons will come much more into line.

ak-73 said:

Every edition of Shadowrun, is, IMHO subpar on rules and setting. Its a personal preference, I like my cyber punk elf and ork free.

Polaria said:

I gave a +5 damage bonus to every weapon in DH. It was the only possible way for my players to take the game seriously after an unarmored NPC had been hit to the head twice in a row for no damage.

Kyorou said:

That seems excessive. Unless the unarmored NPC had a crap load of Toughness, a bolter still does 1D10+5 tearing damage. So either your PCs were using other weapons and rolling 1s on damage, or the NPC has a decent Toughness, in which case shrugging off a couple of shots to the head is appropriate for the NPC.

I think a more appropriate response would be to reduce TB on head shots. Or do away with TB soak entirely and just add TB to Starting Wounds. That way you can take more damage, but you will take damage more often.

Or you could always just use GMs fiat or the minor foes rule in Creatures Anathema.

Kyorou said:

Simple explanation: grazing hits.

@Peacekeeper_b: There's no accounting for taste. I like the setting a lot but then again I like straight cyberpunk a lot too. The system is only nice for a change but has so many flaws in the long run that I devised my own d100-based system, drawing a lot from Harnmaster.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Agree.

Agree.

Possibly agree (havent seen recent SR).

Harnmaster, interesting.

Peacekeeper_b said:

I stopped after 2nd edition, I am not into SR timelines. My SR games are more like a weekly series where at the end of the show everything is like at the beginning. Well, not necessary on the local scale but on the global scale. And *if* I introduce changes at the global scale, it will be my own.

Alex

Peacekeeper_b said:

Was the "roll full damage again for RF" a rule in Rogue Trader? I thought it was new to Deathwatch. And where does it say you can replace a damage dice result with the number of DoS on the attack roll? And what is Bolter Mastery? I can only find Bolter Drill, and that doesn't give a +10 to BS.

borithan said:

Yes, it was a rule in RT.

On page 245 under "Step Four: Attacker Determines Damage"

"The number of Degrees of Success is the minimum amount of Damage that attack will inflict on a single dice. If the attack inflicts more than one dice of Damage, the player may apply the DoS from the attack roll as the minimum result of one dice of his choice."

Luckily it seems like this is once per attack, not once per hit.

Bolter Mastery (Page 85, Tactical Marine Special Ability)

"The tactical marine gains a +10 bonus to all BS tests and +2 damage when firing a Bolt weapon. This ability only functions in Solo Mode."

Tidomann said:

Its also in DW.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Interesting post and, as elsewhere, I'm certainly going to agree that something smells rotten in the State of Denmark with regards to damage and "soak." It's one of the reasons that I like the idea of removing TB as "soak" and, as you suggest, putting it on Wounds.

As to Shadowrun ? Horrible system, but the setting has a special place in my heart as "sci-fantasy" setting done reasonably well, though many are uncomfortable with the degree of metaplot going on. On the other hand, I have an equally soft place in my heart for many other cyberpunk settings. Of course, that says a lot there: setting. System doesn't bother me until it gets in the way, and SR often got in the way. YMMV, of course.

Moving swiftly on, though.

Kage