ZillaPrime said:

James Bond does occasionally have to fight Hordes- dozens of identically-uniformed guards down in the hidden lair of the main villain (at least he did back in the pre-Daniel Craig era- Sean Connery rules!). More to the point, so do Inquisitors Eisnhorn and Ravenor.

I'm still spit-balling ideas to make Horde rules survivable for non-Ascended/power armoured Acolytes (which I think should be the baseline for any discussion of DH ; if your players are Ascention-level minmaxed tanks, I think you should have to scale up your challenges, rather than expecting the vast majority of GMs try to awkwardly scale down theirs in order to avoid inevitable TPKs). So, with that in mind, what about keeping the extra attacks and damage the same as DW , but for Hordes with Ranged attacks, dividing the damage evenly amongst all available targets?

If we want to simulate a horde being able to score a lucky hit, then how about doing a d100 test on the horde's magnitude? Succes increases pen/damage for each DoS, or maybe simply ignore armour, for just one attack.

Scaling down the damage of hordes for DH sorta defeats the purpose of the rules in the first place. If a guardsman with a lasgun can seriously threaten an Acolyte on his own, then why use rules that allows 60 of them to focus fire on the poor acolyte? If he comes into such a situation on his own accord you can:

A: Tell your player to burn a FP, as there is no way he will survive 60+ lasgun shots.

B: Intsead of rolling 60 shots, roll until the PC dies. (takes longer time but still probably not more than 10-15 rolls)

C:Don't roll anything, let him escape narrowly and heavy damaged or introduce some Deus Ex Machina to save him. This is if you are a wussy GM

Or you can break everyone's suspension of disbelief by playing the professional soldiers as less dangerous than a few oversized sewer rats. And really, 60 soldiers getting only say 4 non-dodgeable shots and just normal damage? Puny.

Sure I speak for a group of near-Ascension acolytes, but then again there is no need for Horde rules if your PCs can't stand up to a horde. *

*note that weak hordes with primitive weapons, such as puny zombies or natural critters might be an ok channel for low-rank acolytes, in which case normal horde rules with low magnitude (20 or less) will suffice.

The "problem" with Horde rules as we found it is that they have no bonus to hit - a 25 BS PDF undertrained PDF trooper has little chance of hitting a running target, and the chances to hit does not increase much by making a Magnitude 60 horde out of them. Sure, it's 6 extra ranged attacks, but so little chance they might easily be all misses. And if you add Hard Target or long range on to that it becomes less than 0% chance to hit - which turns it into a Bond scene where the mooks spray around him and you know they can't hit (this is even worse in an RGP since players may know this excplictily instead of just expecting it and fooling themselves into believing he could be hit.

Option: By trading away a ranged attack a Horde can get half magnitude to a single attack roll as a half action (max +60). So a Magnitude 60 horde could get +30 to hit by losing 1 of their 4 attacks.. even fairly experienced shooters could still reasonably miss, and all other modifiers applies.

This doesen't work in melee unfortunately (only a single attack!), but I consider reapplying the target outnumbered 3/1 bonus (+20) there to give melee Hordes a slightly better chance of hitting.

I used the horde roules couple of games ago and took them exactly as they are in Deathwatch. There were 2 players fighting (3rank, Guardsmen with 2 pistols and a cleric with a flamer) against the horde of magnitude 30 mutants. Here there were no problems, before mutants get to players half of them was dead due to flamer so they basically scattred. Then the same players fought against rebel guardsmen (some 30 again) and they barely survived. Few comments on my side:

1. Hordes are ok if players have any blast/flame weapons. Otherwise - no chance. The accolytes are not SM and they are simply to weak to fight against the horde

2. Horde in melee is just half problem. Single attack even done on 3d10+sth is usually not deadly. PC can stand 2 sometimes 3 hits like that

3. Shooting horde is pain in the ass on the other hand. magnitude/10 attacks is a lot and if PCs don't have any flamers or granades they are as well dead.

In conclusion hordes are ok, what I'd do to make them more DH fitted is making the exttra damge from magnitude 1d5 for each 10 points of magnitude not 1d10

P.S. Hi everyone xD