My solution is to go back to Rogue Trader stats and make "Astartes" a property that adds +1 Damage, +1 Pen, and +10m range to non-pistols.

This makes a standard bolter 1d10+6, pen 5, tearing.

One thing to remember is tearing makes your mean roll an 8, so 50% or more of hits will do 14 damage pen 5. 75% of hits roll at least 6, so 12 damage pen 5. This is enough for a damaging hit against the average space marine.

So yes, at an average of 2.45 penetrating damage per hit it may take 5-7 rounds to disable a chaos space marine. I don't actually think that is wrong, it actually favors the players and their additional talents and hopefully superior tactics. Under the current stats you average ~5 more damage per hit meaning 4 hits will disable a space marine. While this may sound fine to some people, I, as a player, would rather not be downed by a single lucky hit from a chaos space marine.

Of course, any marine vs marine fight is likely to include kraken rounds, which at 5 req points I would bring with any tac marine most of the time. This ups the average damage per hit to 5.16 using my modified statistics. So 6 shots can take down a marine. Under the current stats a marine can be disabled in 3 hits, which a chaos marine on full auto can do that fairly regularly.

All of the above numbers ignore righteous fury, which a marine can trigger 19% of the time using my stats, and 27% of the time using the normal stats.

To be honest, other than the weapon damages, I'm very happy with Deathwatch. I'm looking forward to future expansions and many years of 40k rpg gaming.

deinol said:

With these bolter threads and "FFG this" and "FFG that", I was starting to think I was the only one that felt that way

Kage2020 said:

I think everyone's mileage was equally crap with the Shadowrun system...but oh what a setting...Rifts is another setting I fell in love with but can't tolerate due to the simple pain of the system...

Devastator one shotting tyranid warriors is always a great guffaw. He hit a tyranid warrior with a bolt pistol twice. Managed to roll 5 righteous furies (and I was playing with the house rules that it simply explodes into a single d10, not the entire damage roll). That was pretty epic. He then managed to do the same thing with his heavy bolter. He didn't have to add his damage after the 4th bolt hit. @_@ +10 for short range, +20 for enormous size, +20 for full auto, -10 for sight, -20 for being in melee. BS of 70, rolling a 15. **** you devestator!

This is not to say, when I had two assault marines face down 3 tyranid warriors, that the battle was intense. They were getting chewed up. They managed to wear one down, and beging on the next. The last kept firing the Brain Leech Worm variant of the Devourer (2d10 damage compared to 1d10). Rolling with the Blood angel chapter squad ability (RF on 9 or 10), and the Black Templar Squad ability (Continue rolling standard attacks up to your max agility bonus) they proceeded to righteous fury the crap out of them.

Marines- took wounds, split from the apothecary. Cohesion was spent, and fate was spent on gaining some wounds before taking critical damage. Fairly successful combat I'd say.

I've come to the conclusion that the best way to use enemies in deathwatch is to think of them as specialists. Each type of enemy has something there good at tyranids are good at cc while taue at range for exmaple. And certain things their horrible at. And it seems to me the way this game is build is that the players have to know how to combat their foe for example against tyranids never get in close. While tau if you tried to do the samething you would get destroyed. Personally my gm was kept running tyranids on a wide open field so it was fairly easy for us. I'm interested if in a urban setting it would have been so easy. I'm attempting to convince him to try the tau and see if we don't get different results.

Charmander said:

Another system that I have changed. I have created a different damage system - actually a penetration system where you wear down the armour and when it's low enough, then shots can penetrate. Penetrating shots are not instant auto-kill for chars within as not every MDC point gets translated into 100 SDC damage, taking into account for grazing hits, etc. Ah, it gets so much more dramatic when the PCs are bleeding beneath their armour while combat is in progress.

Part of why I think I am probably going to keep the WFRP 1E system of critical damage points not adding up (except in the torso maybe)... lots of critically wounded marines who keep on fighting.

Alex

Peacekeeper_b said:

The guy had TB 3 and they shot him with a laspistol. So absolutely no damage if you roll 1 or 2 (meaning 20% of the time). Of course, if they had a bolter, they probably would have hurt the guy (who knows, they may eventually have killed him, given some tries) but my group played L5R 1st ed. before turning to DH and they're used to kill things with one attack. By comparison, the DH system feels like everybody is using nerf guns.

@ak-73 : I consider misses to sometimes be grazing shots. In my book, "hit" means "hit", not "hit where it doesn't count".

Kyorou said:

In that case you'll have to re-design some things then, agreed. The 40K Roleyplay system assumes that Toughness allows you to get wounded without it having an effect in game terms ("It's only a scratch").

Alex

ak-73 said:

I do feel that, but I understand that it's a conscious decision on the designers part, to make it a little heroic (if not at all survivable) for a starting DH character. The damage range means that that can happen and normal attack is really quite unlikely to kill someone out right but a few attacks really mount up. It's why automatic weapons in this system were so deadly. Life ws pretty deadly for the starting acolyte anyway. The Min damage = DoS is very nice for single shot weapons, as it means that 10% chance of no damage (20% for a las pistol) only applies if you only just hit.

Upping the damage is more realistic but harsher on bother parties, if you players like that then that's fine. I'd go with +3 (average TB). I'm wholey against messing with Toughness soaks as it's makes big nasties very much weaker (more wounds is just more autofire to get through). I just like to reward people for using the right weapon for the job.

But this is why Astartes Bolters stand out, it's first time that weapons are doing anywhere near realistic damage (and we all can't help but notice that they are only available to the Astartes so the PC's don't need to worry about it). It's not like in Guard and Inquistior novels people get shot with stub pistols and las guns and go about their buisness as normal. If that's the direction they wanted to go then fine but don't pretend that the 2 previous games guns had the correct stats when they are supposed to be compatible systems.

Face Eater said:

...semi-compatible systems, I'd say.

Alex

deinol said:

Looking to your post and was asking myself are we playing the same game?

With a 12 dmg Pen 5 (max without RF 16 dmg Pen 5) hit you will do something like 0 dmg against most of the NPC elite and master (or 3 point of dmg max)... An average SM has 8 to 10rmor point and 8 to 10 T bonus so something like 16 to 20 pt of damage and Pen negate. Big Tyranids and Demons go same or better soaking ability. With that stat you could emptyed your clip against an opement and deal no damage at all.

An average RF roll would be 22 dmg and Pen 5 which makes 9 point of damage so you need to trigger RF 3 times to deal with an opement like chaos SM, and almost 10 for a real nasty NPC. With 20% chance triggering RF you will do it a little less than once per round with bolter and maybe if lucky 2 times with a heavy bolter.

If astartes Bolter got this stats why not just go for unarmed combat with 1d10+S bonus so for an average SM 16 to 18 dmg point and 26 to 28 dmg with RF.

My question is: how your player survive missions?

For your last statement I agree with you i'm also happy with DW.

Thebigjul said:

In a sense, we aren't playing the same game. And that's ok. I'm good with a chaos demon being a frightening opponent the entire squad must work together to defeat. Maybe it'll make the tac marine pull out the standard issue krak grenade to get through that armor.

You still want to use the bolter instead of a fist because A) a fist doesn't have penetration, and B) Tearing means you are almost always doing the high range of your damage.

It also makes things like ammo selection more important. Felling ammo under the standard rules doesn't really seem worth the risk at the level of damage that bolters currently do. Under my rules, it becomes a very tempting choice against chaos marines. Or packing a meltagun as backup (which the marine can quick draw as a free action) becomes very tempting for the hard to kill targets.

The problem with bolters is that right now there is little reason to use anything else. Except maybe upgrading to a storm bolter, but that's just bolter x2.

I will admit, I haven't had a chance to run Deathwatch yet. But I've seen basic imperial guard use skill and tactics to take out a bunch of tough orcs with lasguns, grenades, and one flamer on the team. I'm confident my players will be able to handle things, and I will plan missions with an appropriate scale to match their capabilities.

deinol said:

Today I have been making some random attacks for myself using the stats of my group's Devastator, using his Heavy Bolter. Against the Demon Prince his average has been 46.4 points of damage with about 5 shots hitting on average (full-auto, massive target, short range). After that I did some calculation and reached the result that to the damage dealt to more acceptable levels I had to use ROF 6 and damage 2D10+8.

Alex

ak-73 said:

You do realize that critical damage adds up right?

If you take 2 critical damge on round 1 and 3 critical damage on round 2, then on round 2 you get the critical effect of #5 on the chart. This is as the rules state on pages 250 & 251 of DW.

Unless you were talking 1 shot kills, but you can RF those too.

Suijin said:

I was pointed out in the meantime. Played too much WFRP 1E, I guess.

Alex

ak-73 said:

I would say just enough WFRP. It is an excellent game.

deinol said:

Only while your party isn't ripped apart by a bunch of lousy mutant cats. In that case it's Death Near The Reik. Grrrr!

Alex

It's certainly an interesting debate chaps.

I'm not of the opinion that RPer's are simply naysayers and inveterate moaners for the sake of it. Nor am i of the opinion that BI/FFG purposely release poorly designed, unplaytested, rules.

However, somehow, there just seems to be something 'wrong' with bolters, and indeed weapons and damage in general. I get the impression that the basic design doesn't have a benchmark, nor a design ethos that means these things make logical sense or present appropriate damage progression that satisfyingly models the 'fluff' or gives a 'level-up' in-game development.

Let's look at some basics on the benchmarking front.

Average human

TB 3

10 Wounds

Typical critical hit kill level = 7

This means they can 'soak' without any serious effect a single 13 damage hit.

They are killed outright with a 20 damage hit.

This assumes of course that 'wounds' actually represent damage, and not the more notional idea of 'capacity to avoid serious damage'.

They are WOUNDS after all...and there are few if any rules that allow you to avoid the TB+W 'soak' total.

Ok, so...fluff tells us that a laspistol...no, lets use an auto pistol as its more familiar to us today. Lets assume that (like a 9mm pistol today) a single shot from an autopistol is capable of killing a person outright on a proper hit. I'm ignoring the RF mechanic in this basic assessment.

To model that reality, an autopistol needs to be able to do 20 points of damage fairly consistently, in order to present a decent benchmark.

Therefore the benchmark damage for a killing wweapon is 'will do 20 damage 50% of the time'.

Which is...4d10? Lets assume 4d10.

OK...crudely...

4d10 = (5+5+5+5=20) = On average will kill an unarmed human outright 50% of the time

3d10 = (5+5+5=15) = On average will kill an unarmed human outright 0% of the time, but will critical

2d10 = (5+5=10) = On average will kill an unarmed human outright 0% of the time and won't even critical

So an autopistol damage (or indeed most other similar weapons - other pistols, carbines, even basic weapons perhaps?), to conform to any semblance of 'logic' upon which to build and effective functioning damage system must do 4d10 damage.

This is the baseline.

Weapons can then be differentiated by a modifier to this basic 4d10 to increase or lower the % chance of an outright kill against the benchmark. They can be mitigated against by armour.

This then gives you some way of assessing and moderating how much damage a boltgun should do. How much more likely is it to kill the average human outright?

Am i suggesting making an autopistol do 4d10 damage? Of course not. the pointis, that if BI/FFG actually did naything like this in their design meetings/process, i'm struggling to see the evidence of it in the final product. Weapon stats appear to me to be random.

In DH, the Heavy bolter could actually do LESS damage than a basic bolter. Insane. No, not insane, sloppy, poor design.

Moving on, i think its certainly a reasonable conclusion to make that the weapon stats have been subject to 'power creep' from DH to RT to DW, and the bolter is certainly a good example of this.

This nonsense about DH bolters being 'civilian patterns' i'm afraid seemed obvious to me to be a hasty response to the chorus of hate-speak from the fan forums moaning about how rubbish boltguns were compared to autoguns, wooden spoons, small thrown rocks etc. And, well, as THE ICON WEAPON of the 40k IP, they were 'rubbish' really.

Bolters SHOULD have been the weapon everyone aspired to own...but who'd give up their trusty autogun for one in DH? Very few people i'd suggest.

Now we see the 'vision' of an 'Astartes pattern' boltgun and it too seems to have illicited a fair bit of negative comment.

To be honest, FFG are in a bit of a bind with it really, since i think most people kind of know there's something not quite right about them but can't see why.

Poor inherent design, lack of benchmarking and logical mechinics i would say.

Then again, this all may be 'just as planned'.

Personally i redesigned the weapon scaling wholescale for my games, as i just wasn't satisfied with how things were done. I also generalised the stats so there's just 'bolt pistol' rather than the dozens of different types of bolt pistols that are basically the same etc. (as per the out of control chromebook nightmare of the Inquisitors Handbook).

If the RAW works for you though, fair enough. :¬D

Now then.

This of course approaches the rule mechanics from a largely 'simulationist' perspective.

The DH/RT/DW damage system presumably isn't designed like that. The real injuries appear to be sustained by critical hits. Therefore presumably 'wounds' are misnamed and actually represent some capacity to avoid damage? Except that Wounds need to be healed by first aid or other medical care, so they are actually injuries after all.

Injuries that have no significant effect on the character.

As ever with these RPGs though, i guess we'll soldier on. At least its not Rolemaster! :¬D

Well even in real life with a 9mm hand gun, people can take 4 or 5 hits and still live. They don't really have "stopping" power, but this isn't really even equivalent to killing as it's mostly them going into shock and passing out. Even a larger caliber gun while having the stopping power won't typically kill when hitting a person in a random location.

So the whole bit about needing 4d10 to kill a regular human isn't justified. If you figured it out more like 4 hits then it might be closer, or 2 hits for a large caliber gun.

Autopistol is 1d10+2, so average damage is 7.5, and over 4 hits would do 4.5 X 4 damage = 18 damage. With 10 wounds this puts them at 8 critical damage, justified kill. Even with 3 hits they are 3 or 4 criticals on average, and may be unconscious. A single max damage hit of 12 damage, would not give a regular human criticals though, which is probably just a case of simplification of the system. Ideally you should probably do criticals if the damge is so much more than your toughness or something. That way you can have wounds left, but still be taking criticals.

Hand Cannons or shotguns only do 1d10+4 damage, are not going to "kill" that much quicker. Although a max damage one can get slightly into criticals. 2 hits on average would put the average human at 3 criticals damage.

So that part isn't so badly out of balance.

I am considering adding in TB (or TB X 2) to the wounds total. Then when hit you only reduce damage by armor. Also you take criticals equal to this value - TB. So for the above examples autopistol max damage = 12 on an unarmored human = -12 wounds, so 2 into criticals and 12 - 3 = 9 critical hit. So apply a 2 and 9 critical hit on the human. For the hand cannon, and average hit would be 9.5 damage, so 0-1 wounds left, and a 6-7 critcal hit, which would ruin their day, they might live, but out of the combat.

Now while that might reflect reality more, it would probably suck to play a character in. One hit could end you much easier, although the True Grit talent would become a very good talent to have. Also Space Marines would be a very tough nut to crack still with unnatural toughness and True Grit.

Hmm...i think you missed the point of my arguements and contentions, which were about the lack of benchmarking causing people to have issues with the way weapons work in relation to the damage system, but never mind. Maybe i wasn't clear enough.

Suijin said:

And in real life people are killed with a single 9mm shot. A damage system should be designed to incorporate both, unless of course it pays no heed to 'realistic' simulation in its design ethos.

Suijin said:

Yes it was. As i said in my post i was in no way suggesting that weapons be given 4d10. I was simply using that as an exaple of trying to benchmark weapon damage, founded in logical simulation of what might happen, against the typical capacity to resist damage.

Suijin said:

Yes, that's how the system works at the moment. So without RF its IMPOSSIBLE for a single shot from an autopistol to kill an average unarmed human. Many people look at that mechanic, think 'hang on a minute', and hence we get the endless '<weapon here> is rubbish' threads.

It stems i think from poor basic design. Weapon damage doesn't appear to be scaled against the capacity of humans to absorb it.

Suijin said:

There are many ways that the system could have been designed to incorporate proper damage-to-wound scaling and still make combat 'survivable'. But that boat has well and truely sailed. Three times.

So people are now faced with three options.

1. Play the RAW and accept the wierd foibles and 'unfluffy' behaviours of most iconic 40k weapons (for me meltaguns are a particular joke)
2. Rewrite the rules to suit your personal tastes
3. Moan about it on the forums

I'd imagine most of us do all three! Such is life... :¬D

Just as a parting thought on damage, why do different weapons do different damage?

A sword lopping your arm off will kill you.

A 3-inch knife stab to the heart will kill you

A single 9mm bullet will kill you

A 50cal bullet will kill you

A nuclear bomb will kill you

Falling out of a tree will kill you

So WHY would an RPG rule system say they all do different damage?

Just a thought...hehe...

Your argument misses a few key points, imo.

Yes, a single bullet can kill, but a PC is not 'average.' The average human would have a T bonus of 2 and 7-8 wounds, maybe less. And the average shot doesn't need to kill, only the extreme, thus 4d10 is much too high.

The 'sometimes it takes 3-4 bullets, sometimes 1' is modeled by the die roll. And, since there is no permanent damage modeled except for Critical damage, I think you can safely call 'wounds' a more abstract 'capacity to avoid damage' ability. The fact that First Aid can heal them is a game-ism, not a reflection of reality. Do you really think you can bash a guy on the head 3-4 times before he gets an impact that 'causes the target to see stars?' It's a game trope, not a magical force field that has to be chipped away at before the player takes damage.

I cannot argue that the 40k RPGs benefit from well designed mechanics, because they don't. But I think arguing that they need to be more realistic is also not relevant to a RPG containing space aliens and genetically modified super soldiers. The problem is that the damage system is ok when everyone is rolling 1d10+3-5, but begins to look more broken and ridiculous as you add dice. Plasma and melta are also poorly designed.

As for your list of 'killing' strikes, not every fall from a tree will kill you (see parachutists that bounce from 5000 ft). Not every knife stab will kill you. Not every bullet will kill you. Just because one can, does not mean 1 should. When you realize that getting slashed by a sword for 8 wounds is not a literal chest wound, it becomes easier to justify (if you don't get a 'laceration' until Crit 1, you are unlikely to be drawing blood before then).

Well... a single 9mm bullet is not likely to kill you straight away. One in the brain and the heart yeah, but anywhere else if it does kill you it will be rather more slowly, due to bleeding and such.

And 40k RPG wounds are not necessarily the amount of damage you can take. Critical damage is when you start to take serious damage. Wounds, like in many other systems, just represent minor injury, brusing, grazes, non life threatening cuts and the like. This is entirely unrealistic (and was never meant to be) as yes, even if a 9mm pistol round is unlikely to kill you straight away, even the most "minor" gunshot wound is likely to seriously impede you (ie count as a critical wound in the 40k rpg system, even if "just" a very minor one like a 1 or 2).

Now I agree there should be some sort of benchmark that weapons are worked out from. Lasguns etc are clearly based on the principle that on average people they do about 1d10 damage (the +3 is more there to overcome the base toughness bonus, not really a reflection of the damage itself... much). Against not so tough people (TB 2) they do an extra damage they do an extra one and on particularly beefy or pain resistant people they do one less (TB 4. TB 5+ being really unusual for human beings and usually representing monstrositites like the Astartes). Now, those weapons that fall in this kind of area are all roughly Strength 3 in the TT game, which gives a 50% chance of wounding. So, in my mind weapons that are S4 in the TT game should be about as powerful against things that are toughness 4 in the TT as those that are S3 in the TT against things with a TB around 3.

Now there is a slight problem in that Toughness in the TT game as much represents wounds in 40k RPG as it does TB (as both Space Marines and normal humans have 1 wound, so the wound difference is not taken into account there), but for simplicity's sake that means a S4 (in the TT game) weapon should do roughly 1d10+6 to 10 to have the same effect on T4 opponents as lasguns have on what are T3 opponents in the TT game (as T4 seems to convert roughly to TB 6-10). Now in my opinion, bolters becoming (across the board, ie both normal and SM bolters) 2d10 Tearing seems to match that ok. Maybe Space Marine bolters would get a couple more points damage or Pen.

If you do that it also makes it not too dififult to work out other weapons to (as long as there are stats for a creature in the 40k rpg with corresponding toughness in the TT game as the strength of the weapon you are wanting to convert... if that makes any sense). There would probably remain some odder weapons that would need more careful examination, but most could fall under this rule.

Again it scaleing that is the issue.

The core mechanics work faily well (see WFRP 2E and even 1E). But the basic mechanics are based on the following givens.

1) No attack did more then 1D10 of damage (save weapons with the Impact trait, whcih did 2D10, choose best roll)

2) AP was maxed at 5. Period. End of story. There was no AP 6 or 7 or 10.

3) There is no Unnatural Trait rule, the closest is Daemonic Aura which simply adds +2TB.

4) Righteous Fury (Ulric's Fury) added only 1D10 additional damage.

5) Critical wounds did not add up. They were recalculated every time you were injured after reaching 0 wounds.

4 of these 5 givens were replaced in Dark Heresy. The 5th one replaced in RT and DW. Given the current state of the games (roughly 15 books currently out) the easiest of these givens to reinstate or modify would be number 4.

5 could easily be adjusted to allowing the damaged individual to sustain up to TB in critical damage before dying, with a max set at 10 (or maybe even higher). Sure you lose all the cool effects from crits, but hey, you win sme you lose some.

I dont like the notion of wounds being some mystical damage calculator that represents dodging and avoid real wounds, but more as a measurement of strain, bruising, scratches, minor wounds and minor bleeding. And I think once you reach 0 wounds, regardless, you should be a +1 level of fatigue.

But its a lot of work to rewrite the entire system, and much easier to just say "Bolters do 2D10+2 PEN 5 damage."

Peacekeeper_b said:

Indeed. If you don't like it, you can rewrite the system or you can use another one. Either way it's all good.

Incidentally, depending on how you massage the statistics, in the US about 20-50% of GSW's are fatal, obviously scaling for the muzzle velocity/energy of the weapon in question (or small caliber to large caliber). Also somewhat obviously, this depends on where the target is hit... So, yeah. Just throwing it out there.

It's interesting to note that comments elsewhere suggest viewing the Wounds as "hero factor" for scratches and bruised ego.

Kage

First, I think 'realism' or sumulationist RPGs may have their place, but the 40k world isn't really one of them. Gun shot wounds, as pointed out by Kage's stats (and you can do your own research if you're doubtful) have a myriad of factors that contribute to the lethality of them- muzzle velocity, round type, hit location, clothing worn, wind speed, etc. Creating a system to simulate things accurately to a degree where most players would be satisfied would be hard to do (especially this crowd). That is factored in well before the whole concept that players are supposed to be special, and thus not die every time a hobo looks crossly at them.

After that, as Peacekeeper says, and I agree, the problem gets to be with scale. Things get harder and harder to handle the bigger and more powerful they get. Start small and things all make sense. Expand that to huge epic scales and people start scratching their heads.

Even in this whole argument, I don't personally have a problem with bolter's doing 2d10+X Pen Y, the problem I have (and from what I can tell may other people have) with it stems from A) it being so radically different from other books, making it less compatible B) the other weapons in the game not scaling properly with it (thus the +1d10 people like Alex and co have suggested adding to flamers and meltas to help rectify this), and C) the seemingly arbitrary "If you're not an astarte you're minus a bunch when trying to fire these weapons even though we had clear rules that said marine weapons are one size category bigger and that would've been enough or alternaley a size or strength requirement to use them" rules. (EDIT flamer == plasma, sorry)

And then back to the OP, Polaria- I think your point was answered pretty well elsewhere on this thread (I've lost it now), in that the pulse rifle, and some others, can be explained in that the marine bolt weapons are HUGE in comparison, meaning the relatively close damage profile for a weapon half the size and usable by us meer mortals would be a scientific advance. I tend to think that's a pretty satisfactory answer- it at least made me feel better when I figured I could arm a horde or the like with them. That said, switching a couple bonuses around and adding d10s seems to be the order of the day, and with just a couple of tweaks the system really does seem to feel better to me. Weapon add-ons notwithstanding. Though I really am eager to see if FFG would consider eratting any of this based on the many bolter threads...even if those who complain on forums are typically vocal minority...