Cheers. Somehow I missed this..

As far as I can see the limit on BS skill is 70. Start at 50 and +20 from 'Expert' Char Advance.

With +60 this limits the DoS to 12. e.g. A roll of 01-10 against 130

Now some folks say add all the bonuses, then factor the minuses, then if it is over the allowed +60, bring it in line. Others only allow the use of up to +60 bonus, then factor in the minuses.

I'm not sure which one is correct ruleswise, so I go with the first example.

E

Read the Example on page 244.

Alex

I am more interested in bringing the weapon into line with what the space marines would actually use. It's a weapon that is basically designed to turn heavy infantry into goo. Couple that fact with the tactical expertise of a super soldier and you get a weapon with a huge rate of fire that is used in controlled bursts to decimate hard targets and clumps of heavy infantry.

@BORUTA666: I like the rending rule but I don't really like the idea of bogging down the game in too many mechanics. If it takes two or three minutes just to resolve one attack would probably bother players after a while.

or to ease pain of too much counting:

on short range give AC storm,

and that every bullet that hits rise Pen and damage by +2 each.

Still... AC should be like overwhelming storm of bullets that only most Famed deathwatch brethren could use and only in most revered tactical dreadnought armour. not like: it sux, im taking stormbolter with full load of krakens and ammobackpack...

In Table top.

Heavy Bolter Strenght 5 Armour Piercing 4, Heavy 3 (RoF 3 shots per turn.)

Armour piercing (hereafter AP, determines the 1D6 save it negates, in this case a 4+) Not bad. Kill three storm troopers per turn, no sweat.

Assault Cannon, strength 6, Ap 4, Heavy 4, Rending.

It's 20% more powerful, it's 33% faster firing and it has Rending.... Which means it works like a GAU-8. It can blow through the FRONT armour on the heaviest battle tank in the game, with the same effectiveness as a Lascannon. (Rending, any roll of a "Six" to wound makes the weapon AP 2, so it ignores 2+ armour saves, IE terminator armour, and does a bonus D3 to penetrate vehicles.)

Vehicle armour 10-14, to penetrate it, Weapon Strength + D6. If rending possible +D3. So...

Assault Cannon, devastatingly powerful anti-infantry weapon that you can shred a battle tank with. Oh, and it's man portable.

To simulate rending.

Stands unchanged aside from.

Hail of Boiling Lead - Such is the devastating effect of the hail of high velocity shells that the weapon inflicts righteous fury on a roll of a 9 or 10, and causes an additional point of damage to hord magnitude provided atleast one casualty (fatality) is inflicted.

JinxZero said:

For suggestions how to simulate rending see

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

The gist is: since DoS is already used for hit determination, you best use a different mechanic for rending effects. My suggestion was that you use (similar to Psy Phenomena) a roll of doubles.

Alex

also mind that in WH40k battle AC damage isnt per bullet, its per storm of lead targeted at enemy.

boruta666 said:

Same goes for all bolt weapons.

Alex

ak-73 said:

As far as I can recall the bolter is very much a weapon that is designed to fire rocket propelled explosive shells. As each shell is a very large caliber ammo is an issue and Space Marines have to place their shots to achieve the highest effect. With that reasoning in mind I would have to disagree with your statement, not to mention that the assault cannon does not even use bolt rounds....

Hadriel said:

Space Marines place their shots at full-auto though. And they are quite good at that. Not to mention that a turn in 40k is of undefined duration. A lot of rockets might fired-off in that time.

Alex

ak-73 said:

While I agree that that you can fire multiple bolts in a 6 second interval I don not think it would be on the same scale as Assault cannon with 6 or 8 barrels that could potentially fire 35 rounds in one second.....

Hadriel said:

I was only pointing out that a bolter attack in 40K does not represent one rocket nor even generally a very small amount of rockets (3-5). It's likely a few more.

Alex

We haven't had a chance to use Assault Cannons just yet, but looking at the average results, Storm Bolters certainly seem rather powerful - this is the case with all the Astartes bolters, though. I've nerfed them somewhat (not much), which makes them a little less useful in every situation. I'd have to say that the way FFG decided to make bolters popular is a bit off.

Calculations!

Storm Bolter does about 19 points on average hit. If we assume a Marine firing at a Hive Tyrant has BS of 50 and +60 worth of modifiers, he'll hit with eight shots. With default ammo, a Hive Tyrant isn't bothered much as none of the shots do any damage (on average), even with Bolt Mastery. With Hellfire rounds, things look a bit better (4 or 6 points through per hit). That'll finish off the beast in three to four turns, assuming it doesn't dodge or do anything else interesting.

Assault Cannon has an average damage of 26. With the same modifiers, seven rounds will hit (not exactly the devastating hail of lead the manufacturer promised). With default ammunition (AC apparently doesn't have anything else), we're looking at a whopping 1 point of damage per shot. Still, something is getting through... But not a lot.

Given that there would probably be more than one Marine trying to kill the Hive Tyrant, it wouldn't last very long.

I'd go with Felling quality, and increasing the RoF to 15 or 20. Or giving the weapon the Storm quality and keeping the RoF down, to make the weapon capable of more accurate autofire.

Sandepande said:

I have a different idea right now: add +1 to Pen for each shot of the burst that hits. That is a simple yet effective mechanic for emulating the rending special rule from 40K. I'd call the Weapon Quality 'Rending' in DW too.

Alex

ak-73 said:

IMHO the assault cannon needs the storm quality, even before the Storm quality existed in RT I was going use those rules for the assault cannon. I'm fine with it being storm witha RoF of 10, it already kind of implies that it uses ammo very quickly.

A more direct representation of the TT rending special rules would be for it to RF on a 9 or 10 and to add 2d10 damage for a RF, or even use the RAW RF rules entirely.

I think we are all a bit talking past each other because we're coming from different ends. Okay, let's make this a bit more systematic:

I am trying to stat the AC in context of my topic about making the DW firearms resemble more their stats in 40K. In that context the HB has ROF 6 or 7 and does 2D10+8 damage. In that context DW Penetration is approx 2x(7-AP) of 40K and DW ROF is approx 2x(40K ROF) (Rapid Fire could be considered a 40K ROF of 1.5). So the AC should have about Pen 10 and about ROF 8. And let's note that very high ROF more often than not doesn't do much for the firer except waste ammo.

So I would suggest this stat line then for the 40k-Emulation Assault Cannon:

Assault Cannon (40k Tabletop pattern, not novels pattern)
Class Mounted Range 150m RoF -/-/20 Dmg 3D10+6 Pen 6 Clip 400 Rld 3Full Special Rending* Wt 80 Req 30 Renown Famed

Rending (new Weapon Quality): Treat the weapon as having the qualities Tearing, Devastating(1), Felling(1). Also the weapon gains +1 Penetration per shot of a burst hitting.

Explanation: Rending in 40K has both an Armour Piercing as well as a Taking-down-even-the-toughest-critter aspect. The latter gets emulated through Felling(1). The AP aspect gets emulated through the +1 Pen per hit. Devastating because 40K doesn't have a DW hordes equivalent and it fits. Tearing because the weapon comes with that RAW. Please also note the ROF. It's so high to emphasize that no matter how good you roll plenty of shots will be misses (collateral damages anyone?) Also I am tempted to give the weapon overheats but I don't want to add yet another quality.

I would appreciate any comments about that set-up in the given context.

Now with that out of the way, what is your aim in stating the AC, Face Eater? Fitting the novels or descriptions of the weapon in the 40K rulebooks? Or just hitting the right balance in comparison to the other weapons? Without a mission statement, it is hard to say if you're statline does the AC justice, I'm afraid.

Alex

ak-73 said:

That would cerainly emulate the weapon adequately, players will complain about getting ten shots out of such an expensive weapon though.

I like this, the massive ammo expenditure as well. Really makes for a cinematic blasting of the enemies, and also kind of goes along with the hordes rule of the magnitude not actually reflecting the actual size of the horde. The ROF does not actually mean all the bullets will hit, but it does mean that because the number is so high, you get the effects desired by the weapon in the first place.

E

my gaming group went with very similiar upgrade to AC like Brother Ak-73, with few differences. In our gaming group Terminator Armours are very rarely used thou, team decide to arm with them only when enviroment is supposed to be very tight and deadly, spacehulks, ancient tombs and such. That limit use of AC to minimum.

I also must say that my teams are very experienced with combat rolls so it goes very fast for us even with "to much special rules", for GM that have problem with combat speed i suggest to cut all special rules u dont like.

Assault Cannon: Range: 100 RoF: -/-/10+d10 Dam:2d10+6i Pen:6 With too many Special rules

Range penalties are twice as normal, (long-20, extreme-40) burst spread on longer distances taking effect.

RoF: Random number of shots fired, we experiment with different values for most full auto weapons. It can slow game to an crawl if u dont have quick way to count ammo.

Damage: for every 2 DoS we add 1Dam and 1Pen. (almost same thing as Brother Alex method, almost)

We were considering something similar to Storm on short range, 2 hits per Dos.

yep that's absolutely too much Special rules.

EDIT:

PS: our HB is -/-/6, and all our Bolt weapons are S/3/- thats important in big view.

boruta666 said:

I chose to only increase Pen because ROF acts as a damage multiplier already. Which means that with a good roll of... say... 8 hits, you probably don't need another damage bonus (especially with Pen likely negating all APs)... the 8 hits will hurt enough and be the equivalent of rolling 6 in the TT and causing an automatic wound.

Alex

our grp just added "Storm" and it works out fantastic. Puff, the magic dragon!

How about raising the full auto bonus to 40 with the AC as well as adding Storm?