p. 159 DW states that 'backpack supplies hold 100 rnds for Plasma, Melta and Las weapons, 250 rnds for SP or Bolt weapons and 75 shots for Flame weapons."

Furthermore, it states that "backpack ammo/power supplies are automatically issued with any heavy weapon."

Now, I think the ammo capacity for the SP and Bolt weapons is fine, no problems there.

My problem is applying that to Plasma Cannons, Lascannons and Multi-meltas. I think that's just too much ammo.

My proposed house rule is that backpack ammo supplies provide the listed ammo capacity for SP and Bolt weapons only; for wall other heavy weapons, they simply double the heavy weapons listed clip size. Furthermore, backpack ammo supplies can be used only with heavy weapons. The Soundstrike missile launcher may not benefit from a backpack ammo supply, as it already incorporates an expanded ammo capacity thanks to similar functionality incorporated into its design.

For example:

Plasma cannon would have 32 shots, Lascannon would have 12, a Heavy flamer would have 20, etc.

The thing is, once you get into an actual mission, you simply don't need that much ammo anyway. Halfway through Extraction, my players had used only 3 missiles and 40 heavy bolter rounds. I also like the idea of forcing my players to think tactically as to how they'll use their heavy weapon resources; I don't want them to just blast away willy-nilly with a lascannon because the RAW say that it comes with 100 shots.

Yet bolters have unlimited ammo.

How is it more 'tactical' when the Devastator has to decide if it's 'worth it' to fire his weapon this round vs the Tac marine blazing away on Full Auto every round.

Radomo said:

I don't know where you're getting this, but in my game, ammo isn't infinite. My players get the general guideline of 3 reloads per weapon, so, no the tactical marine cannot in fact blaze away without a care for his dwindling ammo supply.

Page 138 and 158 both say that all weapons get 'sufficient' standard ammunition for the mission, thus they do not need to be tracked. Your game can of course modify that, but you should probably say so in your post.

However, 4 total clips for a weapon is unrealistically low for a combat team going into the field, in my opinion. Most modern militaries send soldiers out with around half a dozen spare magazines.

That said, double the standard clip size is really low for most heavy weapons, forcing your Devastator to spend most of his time plinking away with a bolt pistol.

lots of tears about ammo. if it's a problem, stick more hordes in for the pcs to blaze away at, reducing ammo.

SMs are the elite of the elite. They will take excessive ammo, after all why not, it would be silly to take on tanks with a pea shooter.

Another way to think of it is that you don't send a 100 million dollar plane into the air with 1 missile and hope it doesn't miss.

FatPob said:

You also don't send it up with 100+ missiles and expect it to be able to take off.

Sufficient ammo. Yes, it does say that. However, when you consider the arithmetic, 'sufficient ammo' is about 3 reloads. Consider that the Deathwatch bolter comes with a fire selector, which means it has a triple stack clip. That's 3 magazines in the gun, and under my rules - house rules, I guess- 3 reloads stored about the space marine's armor. That's 168 rounds. If you full-auto with the bolter (s/2/4), that's 42 rounds of firing.

I mean no disrespect, but, to those of you that object my views on limiting ammo, have you actually played the game? I stress that I do not mean disrespect, but please consider the realities of how many combat rounds you expect to get into a single mission. My goal is to impose 'reasonable limits' on encumbrance, in order to balance the game for those of my players who are not devastators.

Lanceus Maximus said:

I agree with you on needing limits for ammo carried, but one thing seems funny to me:

If you have a bolter without a fire selector, you are suggesting that the SM can only carry one magazine in the weapon and two freely carried magazines. With a fire selector, he can now handle three in the weapon (OK, that's just what it does) and six freely carried magazines. What has the fire selector done to triple the carrying capacity for magazines that are not attached to the weapon?

Lanceus Maximus said:

There is another thread on the standard ammo for bolters as well, and the interpretation of 'sufficient supply' is pretty wide open. To partially repeat my prior posts, I prefer a bit of realism (in 40k, that's a good one) and so interpret sufficient to mean an ample supply, but if you're going behind the lines or on an extended hike you'd best come up with a way to stash extra supplies. I say 6-9 clips for the primary weapon on a standard mission should be more than enough, and still lives within the realm of the not absurd.

As for fire selected clips, you still have to store them on your person, so maybe all you have 3 reloads each carrying 3 clips (different rant on realism of fire selectors), but you still end up with 6-9 clips of 24. Extra ammo? Just tell me where you're sticking it, and I can tell you what your Agility penalty will be for your giant backpack.

Now on the other hand, if you're trying to keep action fast paced and cinematic, don't worry about the ammo. Worry about epic hordes and valiant efforts of the marines to overcome the foul xenos.

I've run into this as well with my players in some of our early deathwatch games.

in the end I went back to an old copy of index astartes (#2 to be exact) and found a page that listed a marine's standard combat load

using that and a little logic/ comparisons I came up with the following:

1) Fire selector modification: 2 magazines simultaneously loaded maximum ( different argument, only listed because it has bearing on the current one)

2) Grenades: 10 maximum, combination up to the player, the "non-excessive" requisition limits for the purposes of that cursed little RAW footnote in the book is 4

3) 6 bolter magazines on person, 2 in the gun (unless fire selector absent, then )

4) bolt pistol cannot accept a fire selector, max spare clips 2.

modifications for other wargear:

1) backpack ammo supply reduces spare bolter clips to 2, grenades to 6

2) jump pack removes bolter magazine capacity and replaces it with bolt pistol cap, grenades also reduced to 6.

I have found that these limits keep the realism factor there (your character doesn't look like a walking arsenal, but a professional and competent soldier) and yet even on extended duration missions my players did not have too many worries about exhausing their ammunition supply.

for those that want to know:

Devastator maximum full auto rounds: 25 HB, 28 bolter (53 total)

tac marine full auto rounds: 56

a multi-session mission (or very low req mission for the circumstances) is the only thing that might start to cause strain on the players, but keeps the absurdity out of a setting it doesn't belong in

Bluephoenix said:

Just an idle thought, shouldn't assault marines have more grenades than tac marines and not less?

Lanceus Maximus said:

if you're basing it off of the heavy bolter, i think you'd have to up that again. the "clip" IIRC for the heavy bolter is 60 rounds and the backpack is 250 so roughly a x4 advantage without reloading. if you want to be fair and use those guidelines, you'd have to quadruple and not double the capacity of the other heavy weapons.

Bluephoenix said:

Perhaps I am too new to 40K, but since when is Space Marines unloading hot righteousness into the foes of mankind on full auto for hours on end not awesome? I mean really. In today's world, a soldier might be laid low by a stray shot from an AK that hit their truck at the wrong angle. If that same soldier existed in 40K he would be a nameless grunt in the imperial guard. There is no modern corollary for the Space Marine. Honestly, I find attempts to impress this sort of realism on Space Marines to be patently absurd.

Xenoviel said:

To each their own, I totally get the movie marines tone of the game and people that enjoy that style of play- it can be fun in the right setting and circumstances. But to me it's about suspending disbelief; No, there is no modern equivalent of a Space Marine. But I can somehow accept that in the far flung dark future mankind figured out a way to genetically enhance men and put them in super resiliant armor and give them miniature rockets for weapons, but I can't accept that they've found a way to create a pouch that spawns such rockets out of nothing (though Mass Effect dealt with this in an actually convincing way that fit within their setting). What's wrong with desiring realism, or logical explanations in a fantastical setting? Why is not taking 'it's magic' or 'it's über' as an answer absurd?

And even if I wanted the cinematic style where it only makes sense to force ammo situations on characters at particular times, as a player it would seem too contrived for the GM to ever announce to me 'you realize you just run out of ammo!' cue dramatic music! BOM BOM BOMMMMMMM! Or honestly to go from unlimited ammo to "OH SNAP, I rolled logistics failure on the random missino chart; your pod door opened during descent and the 1,000,000 bolt shells you were carrying flew out the window. You now only have two clips" just seems *so* incredibly forced to me.

And no, I have NO idea why this pushes my buttons like FSMs do to HBMC...apologies to the board for ranting but I can't seem to stop...

As to the OP, I do agree with the concept of high ammo in principal, long as it makes some logical sense. If a guy toting a HB has too many hits (it's only 25), throw some more hordes his way if you're trying to get him to use up his ammo. Too many las cannon shots, throw in some smaller vehicles for him to chew up (also remember a lascannon sucks versus hordes, so if you have a lascannon, again, throw the hordes at them and they can only do 1 magnitude damage a round (or 2 with unrelenting devestation). As the GM, you do have the power to pretty much crush your players into dust, so no matter how much ammo they have (unless it's unlimited ) you have the power to soak it all up. Good soldiers know that their intel may be flawed, and they may not know what's coming around the corner and thus they should be a little conservative anyhow. If they go willy nilly on you, surprise them with a couple of unexpected encounters that chews through what little ammo they've left in their pockets and scares them a little.

Lucky_Strike said:

my reading of the index astartes was that nromally the 4 or so grenades not on the belt are stored close to or hanging off of the backpack power unit, and since assault marines have the jump pack taking up the space normally reserved for this it preculdes having the 4 grenades.

I'm still refining the ammo cap stuff and might likely swap the mags/grenades cap limits for assault marines, but for the moment I've been focusing more on the devastator/tac and the techmarine

the main reason for ammo limitations in the first place is both to promote good gear selection by the team to complete objectives, and also to keep them thinking how best to tactically approach a situation instead of the omni-present solution being "I auto-fire my bolter". the other effect this seems to have is promoting more use of the squad-mode system to do epic stuff as a team rather than just a collection of marines all being epic individually.

I rather like the thought that the Kill-Team will have to bash away with combat knives and chanswords at the end of the mission, if the mission is suitably long that is. I don't really think it's possible for the group to run out of ammo on a mission like "Extraction", even if tacticals only get around ten clips each.

1. Grenades: Ten (10) maximum.

2. Bolter: Six (6) Bolter magazine reloads, and three (3) Bolter magazines loaded.

3. Bolter-Pistol: Three (3) Bolter-Pistol magazine reloads, and one (1) Bolter-Pistol magazine loaded.

4. Backpack Ammo Supply reduces maximums to three (3) Bolter magazine reloads, and six (6) grenades maximum.

5. Jump Pack reduces maximum to either. . .
5A) three (3) Bolter magazine reloads, and six (6) grenades maximum.
5B) six (6) Bolter-Pistol magazine reloads, and six (6) grenades maximum.
5 Note 1) Assault Marines who duel-wield Bolter-Pistols tend to upgrade them to include Fire Selectors in order to increase ammo supply.

6) Techmarines, for 30-reqisition, can carry an armored ammo-crate via Servo-Arm containing either . . .
6A) thirty-six (36) Bolter magazine reloads, and twelve (12) Bolter-Pistol magazine reloads.
6B) eighteen (18) Frag Grenades, and eighteen (18) Krack Grenades.

I am just guessing. I figure a crate of ammo per a half-kill-team, six (6) marines, seems about right. So each full-kill-team, twelve (12) marines, may bring along two crates of bolt ammo and two crates of grenades. I figure they normally put this stuff in a Rhino, but having a Techmarine Servo-Arm carrying a crate seems fitting.

Lanceus Maximus said:

Look at what soldiers take into battle with them today. All of my Ranger and Marine friend will refuse to go on a deployment with less than 10 mags. US Navy SEALS take an obscene amount of ammo on their missions.

We all know Space Marines are ridiculous and have unlimited resources. It is YOUR JOB as the GM to take that into consideration when planning your adventures. I am not saying that putting ammo limits is a bad thing. Think of it put the kill team on a world full of orks and tell them that it is a recon mission and they will be picked up in one month. If you go by your hard line on the 168 round ammo limits on this typical mission I think one of your players will shoot you in real life.

Apples to oranges, I say!

There is no single number of clips for "sufficient ammo". If there had been, I think FFG would have simply said "x clips of ammo".

Lanceus's number (168 rounds) is definitely a reasonable number for a mission like "Extraction", where the team starts on the ground, and has 5 hours to complete a fundamentally non-combat mission. They could potentially complete this mission using recon and stealth, and fire not a single round of ammo. I think that his number is clearly a reasonable one for "sufficient ammo" in this case.

If the mission involves a month on the ground in hostile territory, then that mission is clearly different from a 5 hour one. Trying to apply the same number to it simply doesn't make any sense. In such a case, entire crates of supplies could be dropped off with the marines, a situation that would make no sense in a mission like Extraction. In the case of an open-ended mission like "Investigate Genestealer Cult activity", the Marines might not even be given a lot of extra (standard) Ammo because it could be assumed that the urban Hive that they are investigating will have a manufacturing capacity and Imperial munitions dumps, and they can simply reload from that supply chain between individual combat sorties, even though all of those sorties occur under the broad umbrella of "the mission".

I can't tell how many posters are arguing that there should be one single number that represents "sufficient ammo" in all cases, and how many posters are arguing about what the "sufficient ammo" is in a particular mission, especially since many people aren't discussing any specific pregenerated mission for others to reference.

If you aren't discussing a particular pregenerated mission, I don't see how any of us could possibly have any insight into what "sufficient ammo" should be on the mission you are talking about, since we don't know what the mission is (is it 5 hours, 5 days, or 5 weeks?).

If you are talking about what the magic number should be for "sufficient ammo" in all missions, you are already doing it wrong.

This isn't directed at any particular poster (I started the reply that way, then actually went back and reread the posts again). However, the argument does seem to consist of two entirely separate discussions running around each other, occasionally strafing one another.

aresfiftytwo said:

Back when I was a grunt we generally carried 7 30rd mags for training. One in the weapon and six in pouches. However, on real world deployments that got upped to, in my unit anyways, to 19(at a minimum). One in the weapon and 18 in pouches. Then of course we had our rucks which weighed at least 50lbs, not including things like claymores, mortar rounds, radios, ammo for the hogs and the like. Then on top of that is the armor. If modern day infantrymen carry loads like that, think how much a bio-engeneered soldier in strength enhancing armor could carry.

Ignoring the realism factor of how much ammo a marine can actually carry...

Is the game supposed to be played without tracking standard ammo?

While the tactical concerns of limited ammunition is very attractive to me as a GM I'm concerned that it could heavily scew the balance for the players in favour of the assault speciality if for example the devastator can only carry a total of 25 bursts of ammunition for his heavy bolter...

Has anyone had a chance to actually see this in play?

I'm in the camp that likes the idea of the space marines having to worry about ammo (up to a certain point). As others have said, it should only really be an issue in an extended mission (ideally one that is running longer than it was supposed to; gasp! a Complication!)

That being said, I think it all boils down to one of my favorite moments in 40K:

In the Horus Heresy novel Let the Galaxy Burn , there's a point where the various marine battle groups are giving status reports on their progress in an ongoing campaign (pacifying a planet). The World Eater captain's report? "Unexpectedly high amounts of resistance, and his men have resorted to killing them with their bare hands. "

Now that's the absurd, over-the-top 40K that I have come to love.

ddunkelmeister said:

I agree with you. This post does come down to simple opinion. For some missions where they will be in hostal area longer then give them more ammo. Sufficiant should be based on intel and supply. If the mission is fast in fast out, you want to be as fast as you can. Travel light and avoid conflict.

I want to run games where the players fight epic battles, make difficult decisions, and be creative as to how to accomplish the mission.

JeffJ2112

BTW- I chuckled at your 19 mags comment, I remember so many guys like you. (as a Medic and Therapist, I didn't carry half that.)

Bazleebub said:

That's what the argument is all about

The rules are written in such a way that you could interpret them as being 'you do not need to track standard ammunition' in which case you have to figure out what to do regarding the backpack ammo supply that specifically states that it carries only 250 rounds. The other intepretation is that you can req as much as you can carry given the expected difficulty of the mission, but that you still have to track how much ammunition you are spending.

I don't think either method would provide a significant advantage to an assault marine. Having "only" 25 bursts with the HB can still do massive amounts of damage against your enemies, if anything unlimited ammo would stilt things towards the devestator specialty. I've only really played Final Sanction and Oblivion's Edge, and giving them "limited" ammo didn't stilt the game in any particular direction. It did make the party think about how they'd handle encounters, and when to let the devestator off his leash, which I personally enjoyed (they seemed to like it as well, planning is one of their favorite parts). I put limited in quotes because they still got a boat load of ammo, I just made them track their expenditure.

From what I can tell and read from the posts, it's all about flavor. People like me who favor limiting ammunition to some degree (you only get x clips on this mission) think that it 'feels better' and provides an additional layer of tactical planning and realism. I'll be building my adventures around that method and adjusting enemy counts, xp, etc. to reflect the 'limited' ammo. To others, they feel that the high drama and heroism of the marines should be the focus, and keeping track of ammo is just one more thing to slow down the progression of the game, and build their encounters and adventures accordingly.

I do not mean to resurrect an older thread, but having just registered, I thought I'd put my 2 cents in.

In this type of game, I've always found that it is not so much how much ammunition you carry overall, as it is how often you have to reload, and how long that takes. I do not know if it mentions how long reloading an ammo backpack takes, as I don't have a copy of the book handy, but logic would dictate that it'd be a lot longer than reloading the weapon itself. Sure, you may not have to reload very often, but 3 or 4 rounds is a long time when there's a lictor stalking you.