Some missions can have low ammunition as a descriptor. Also low ammunition is on the random complications table in the GM section.

I would assume they mean virtually unlimited normal ammo, but reloads are required. I would assume each weapon could be reloaded at least three (3) times.

Examples:

A) A bolter and nine (9) magazines would be standard (three are loaded at a time).

B) A bolt pistol with thee (3) magazines for all but an Assault Marine would have twelve (12) magazines, perhaps twenty-four (24) magazines. Remember bolt pistol clips hold half the bolts compared to a bolter clip.

C) A heavy bolter would have the backpack with 250 rounds and three (3) 60-round clips.

Radomo said:

The backpack capacity is about as pointless as stating that each Marine has 3 frag and 3 krak grenades when those too are supposed to be unlimited.

I'm not sure what RAW says only the Devastator has ammo issues - AFAICT no one is supposed to have ammo issues when using standard ammunition.

However, I don't go with the RAW on that at all, and I require accounting of all ammunition in my games.

Again, if you're going all cinematic, fine, go balls out. But really? Really?

Okay, so I get that you shouldn't typically run into ammo issues, and in some cases you won't need to keep a close eye on in as you won't neccesarily be shooting at everything in the universe. A good, reasonable supply of between 6 and 9 clips for rifles and 3-6 for your backup (pistol for most, but if I were an assualt marine I'd have 6-9 pistol clips as it's my primary), and a backpack for your heavy. But I'm not going to give my SMs unlimited missles, or unlimited grenades, that's just silly.

And I don't think the RAW actually states this clearly. Sufficient Supply is pretty open for interpretation. Why do things like list ammo weight? And I still say reloading becomes silly at that point- if the Devestator has half a brain, every time combat ends he'll reload, giving him 25 full shots and the next group that comes by. And if somehow a single fight goes on for more than 25 friggin rounds (which would take all night and then some) If he runs out of bullets, then he can just start chucking his unlimited supply of frag grenades and get 5 hits on the horde with it. And then why not take it to the extreme- why not tie 10 grenades to a rope and throw them all in at once? You can't tell me that some, if not most, players wouldn't start to be tempted to take advantage of the unlimited rule.

And Logistic Failure, the complication that can reduce ammo, suggests going down to 2 clips. From 6/9 to 2 seems like a logistic failure. From a googleplex to 2 seems extreme.

/rant

Charmander said:

I agree with **** near everything you said except that I think most Assault Marines will cough up the Requisition to get a bolter just as most other Marines are likely to get a chainsword. Both items are so **** cheap that it's just a great investment to take them.

HappyDaze said:

I'd agree here- gives the assault marine the ability to play at a distance when your c.o. tells you to hang back with the squad and engage at distance, and gives the other marines the ability to have something better than their knife (which I still think is pretty sweet for a knife ) when they fight people up close and personal. So long as they can reasonably fit all the kit on themselves I'm good with it

A lot can be said for the 10req it costs to get a dipole-maglock chainsword for those 'uh-oh' moments.

bmaynard said:

Word up. The above is a PSA for savine your bacon.

Here's an idea for how to maybe work "sufficient ammunition," work it off of the missions Requisition points.

• Every 10 points is one magazine for primary non-heavy weapon.
• Every 20 points is one magazine for a pistol class weapon (cumulative with the above for Assault and Devastator).
• Every 40 points is an additional non-backpack ammunition source for a heavy weapon.

Working off of 50 Req as an example we would see the following with their "standard kit" -

• Apothecary, Librarian, and Tech-Marine - 5 spare magazines for bolter, 2 spare for bolt pistol.
• Assault Marine - 7 spare magazines for bolt pistol.
• Devastator - 1 spare drum for heavy bolter, 7 spare magazines for bolt pistol.
• Tactical Marine - 5 spare magazines for bolter, 2 spare for bolt pistol, plus the one magazine of special ammunition.

Just an idea.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Howdy!

As always amen to Brother Maynard....Dipole Maglock with a balanced or defensive melee weapon is every "body's" friend.

Relentless devastation is amazing.....

Don't overlook missile launchers.

Brother Praetus said:

It's not a bad way to figure out what the clerk would issue as standard. To me, my personal issue isn't how much they can get issued as they're gearing up, it's how much they can reasonably carry on their person, and where they keep anything extra. Want two backpacks for your HB, sure thing, where are you sticking the second backpack? Leaving it in the dropship, sounds good, you can use the ship as a base of operations of sorts.

You could always borrow your parties Tac Marines backpack as a place to carry a second backpack ammo supply for the Dev. Then a third party could remove the empty, remove the full, replace the full, reconnect the full, Dev is ready to go.

Estimate a minimum of 6 full rounds for the Dev and the loader and one round for the Tac carrying the spare to preform this, with rapid reload not applying.

I plan on houseruling some means by which players can spend requisition on pods, so that they can in new gear during a mission, and then having some mini encounter/check to see how the turns out.

Personally, I find the notion of a non heavy weapons person carrying an ammo backpack to be kinda weird (it seems that without the heavy weapon in hand, they'd be kinda top heavy).

The thing that confuses me is the backpack only holding 250 rounds. It doesn't make much sense in that an automatic weapon in a squad has at least 200 round drum fed belts. additional drums of 200 rounds are cross loaded throughout the squad.

IE Army SAW gunner carries the weapon with one drum on plus at least 3 additional drums on his person. The rest of the squad each carries one drum of ammo for the SAW gunner. Meaning a 5 man squad using basic army thinking is carrying 1400 additional rounds for the automatic weapon in addition to a space barrel. With fire control a SAW gunner (Squad Automatic Weapon) would be capable of completing most if not all missions assigned to it without the worry of running out of ammunition.

Extend that thinking to Space marines and in total the squad would quite easily be capable of carrying that much ammunition. With that much ammunition counting each round as its fired would be pointless. so the Dev marine has 140 rounds of combat worth of fire. for all intents and purposes the supply is so large that for ease of gameplay it should just be considered unlimited.

Back to the original topic of the "down side" of a devastator:

First, unless someone's found some tricksy combo, you can't use that Heavy Weapon in close combat. If you don't kill it before it gets on you, you've got both hands filled with an improvised weapon. That seems to be the real downside to me.

Combine that with creative use of stealth, cover, movement, and staggered mobs (hey, it's not one big horde, it's three small hordes, which one do you want to shoot at?), and the Devastator is functioning pretty much as he is supposed to. He's wiping stuff out at range, and he's depending on his Kill Team to shore him up in close combat.

If you run a game where he can always get off plenty of shots, then OF COURSE he's going to seem very powerful. Not only should there be some close combat, but you might actually want to have some stealth missions (and no heavy weapons are stealthy) and some missions that actually require something else other than shooting people at range, like negotiation, investigation, recon, or diplomacy.

If every mission starts off with a battle map and a defensible position, I'd take a whole team of Tactical/Devastator Marines any day. If the mission is just shooting stuff up, then why wouldn't the Devastator be really good.

maniacmcgoo said:

SAWs are designed to be the suppressing fire weapon of a unit because the other soldiers aren't firing full auto anymore, and nothing makes people duck like the sound of a full auto weapon. The SAW was created based off of the standard squad's battle rifle and uses the same ammo as the rest of the squad for multiple reasons, which in the case of the M16 is a 5.56mm cartridge, or the equivalent to the much maligned .22 rifle round.

.22 calibre bullets take up much less space and weight than .75 calibre (standard boltgun) rockets. The Heavy Bolter is "Fluffed" at having at firing a 1.00 calibre round, which is different from the bolter (though the rules are open to interpretation if you could swap rounds from a bolter and a hb, fluff says you could not...though fluff also indicates you're not going to jam with a HB because its electrically operated, not gas, so dud cartriges would be removed without incident but that's totally out of line with everything that's been established in all of their games so far ). I'd look at the HB as more of the guy toting around the .50 cal or a minigun than a guy with the SAW- he can't move and fire (though he doesn't have to brace), he's not part of the rapid assault force in the squad. His purpose is to do damage to light armored vehicles and rake enemy formations with death, in addition to suppresion. While space marines are hulking and 7ish feet tall and don't usually need to worry about weight, you still have volume to consider- they don't exactly wear web gear and have ample pockets, so all that ammo has to sit somewhere.

And then back to the OT, the down side of the devestator is what everyone else has mentioned so far- get them in close combat or ambush them or have them constantly on the move and suddenly their limitations will become apparent. Also, if you're going on more political missions, the devestator will also often be without their favorite companion. I doubt people would be willing to really sit back and have a debate or negotiation with a devestator hanging about with a heavy weapon unless it's to sign a treaty and intimidation is your goal.

Brother-Sergeant Cloten said:

Howdy!

Not a tricky combo....Dipole Maglock with a Sword or shield with (all Marines) Quick Draw....free parry and now you are armed with a melee weapon.

A good team has a recon plan and does not stumble around the battlefield blind. Devastators deliver amazing amounts of firepower, but they have to be in squad mode to wreck hordes with relentless devastation. If the players are smart and have a plan the Devastators will make a lot of dead and broken hordes.

PS. If you are going to be upclose and personal with short engagement ranges give the Heavy Flamer(or a hand flamer for close combat) a try. "It smells like victory!"

Rawrz said:

Any situation that would limit his range. Caves, ships, cluttered buildings. This kind of location puts the Assault guy up front. How about the "Aliens" scenario?

"What are those?"

"The cooling system for the main reactor core..."

"So What?"

"So one bad shot, and critical melt down... adios muchahos"

MILLANDSON said:

I believe the point of this is you don't have to pay for standard ammo, not that they have an infinite supply on a mission. True it is poorly written and could be interpretted as you say. In my games a standard load out is 6 clips.

Darq said:

That's a good general guideline, but I really tailor my "standard load out" based on what the mission will probably be. If the mission is 6 hours of rescue, they aren't getting a ton of clips. If it is six months behind enemy lines, they'll get a LOT more clips. The other thing I do that helps is treat bolter rounds as exchangeable between pistols and boltguns (not Heavy Bolters, which do more damage). That way, while they may get clips for the boltguns, they can share out rounds as needed for bolt pistols if necessary. I think this is accurate to the background, but I'm not 100% on it.

I think that really, the GM should feel free to use the ammo rules as part of the game. If one of the complications for the mission is low supplies, then the team may need to conserve ammo. If the storyline is better suited to them being loaded for bear, then don't worry about the number of clips. A marine can carry a crapload of supplies, anyway.

Rawrz said:

One Word MELEE. Maybe while fighting a horde of Eldar he gets jumped by a Harliquen-And my Harliquens get a reaction to every attack made against them which I think is a fair repersentation having played the video games and a bit of the table top.

I thought that it should be interpreted like in Rogue Trader, if you "buy" ammunition(standard, Frag, Krak grenades etc standard stuff you know) you have an endless supply to take from in your ship. This does of course not mean that you have an endless supply while on a planet exploring, i think it is up to the GM to determine how many clips a character can justifyably carry.

Much in the same way in deathwatch, when you have access to "standard" muntions you have an unlimited supply at you watch station/ship/bunker/whatever, not in your batman-cetrified-utility-belt!

Charmander said:

While its true that the bolt round is significantly larger and heavier then 5.56, Space Marines in power armor are also significantly bigger and stronger then modern day soldiers.

I don't think its unrealistic to expect other members of the kill team to carry some spare ammo for the Devastator, even on "standard" missions where the squad are not expected to be seeing extremely heavy combat/be away from resupply for extended time periods. I don't think a full backpack would be viable, but I could definitely see the other marines carrying 1 or 2 clips for the HB, in addition to their own loadouts. That would still give the Devastator a nice "emergency" pad of spare ammo, and be tactically intelligent.

As a former paratrooper, I have to say that ammo awareness was a definite priority for us. With that said, I think I would be tempted to take the cinematic route and not worry too much about the ammo if I was to run a DW campaign. But despite the temptation, I would never take that route for the simple reason that it encourages players to never think smart. With an unlimited resource, there is never a reason not to use maximum firepower and I don't find that to be realistic or desirable. Unless a scenario calls for limited ammo reserves, I don't think I would ever harass my players too much about their ammo...but they don't need to know that. I would prefer the choice of single shot, semi-auto and full-auto to actually have meaning, rather then just full-auto being the default choice.

On-topic: I don't see the power of the Devastator as being a problem. His killing potential is best realized when working as a part of the team. If you ever feel the guy with the HB is hogging all the glory, make sure your NPCs are using things like flanking attacks or melee assaults. That way you play up the teamwork aspect, and even when the Dev gets to chop down hordes of enemies, its due to a team effort.

Another common but often overlooked counter measure to heavy weapons is off-board artillery. A heavy weapon becomes much less effective when you force him to move from his most advantageous position, and is forced away from his line of fire (outright killing the Dev wouldn't be a lot of fun obviously). A Dev dodging mortar fire is a hell of a lot less dangerous. The same effect can be achieved by a few grenade launchers in the hands of enemies closer by.

Additionally, the use of smoke grenades or smoke shells from artillery is also often overlooked...but it has major value and is incredibly cheap and easy to obtain or create, and it really screws up lines of fire as well.