In TT, a bolter or a space marine's close combat attacks (unarmed, combat knife, chainsword, power weapon, force weapon, frag grenade, whatever) has a 5/6 chance to do nothing, and a 1/6 chance per hit of inflicting a glancing hit. A krak grenade has a 1/2 chance to do nothing, 1/6 chance to glance, and a 1/3 chance to penetrate. A power fist has a 1/6 chance to do nothing, a 1/6 chance to glance, and a 2/3 chance to penetrate. A melta bomb has a 1/36 chance to glance, and a 35/36 chance to penetrate. A Space Marine has 1 Attack, +1 if he charges, +1 for two weapons. (Only only attack if it's a grenade.)

A glancing hit has the same effects as Righteous Fury in the RPG, but can wreck an immobilized, weaponless vehicle. A penetrating hit has a 2/3 chance of doing the same as a glancing, a 1/6 chance of wrecking it, a 1/6 chance of explodes.

Still calculating how that translates...

Also note that when it comes to true tanks which presumably pack a little more armour, Power Fists will remain efficient for quite a while longer than the heavy bolter.

Also, a heavy bolter in TT has three shots. Each shot: Shooting rear armour, 2/3 chance to do nothing, 1/6 to glance, 1/6 to penetrate. Front or side, 5/6 nothing, 1/6 glance.

Just wondering aloud here, has anyone gone through the numbers on how dual wielding handflamers in melee would work out? It's a classic model image that's stuck with me since old TT play and I'm considering it as a requisition use for my assault marine.

Lucky_Strike said:

Well you will need the Two-weapon Weilder Balistic talent to fire both as a full action (pistols = hand flamers, could be fired in melee).

Cleanse and Purify and Mighty Shot would help make it better.

Not really much to work out. Largest benefit would be that you wouldn't have to buy any BS characteristic since you never roll it for using them, except maybe to confirm RF.

A heavy flamer does more damage and only takes a half action to fire. You would have more opportunies at 30m range to not have enemies dodge the AoE also as they need to move their AB out of the area, if they can't then they just get hit.

Also is the variant of chainsword (or other melee weapon) and use your off-hand for the hand flamer.

I believe the more interesting question would be how it interferes with hordes.

Cifer said:

Not quite the best. Max would then be 40 Magnitude damage for your Assault Marine and not possible until Rank 8. From rank 2-7(for Lightning attack), you're limited to 18 (assuming your GM lets you use your off hand weapon on a Charge). And you have to be a Storm warden (Thunder Charge shouldn't be limited to them, imo).

Wrathful Descent is not per hit (it's after 'a successful attack' not 'every' per your later comment on it being possibly 1d10 per hit.

Now let's look at our Devastator. A Heavy Bolter firing normal rounds with Unrelenting devastation and Storm of Iron would give 10 hits + 1 for explosive x 4 = 44. Swap in Metal storm rounds and you're at 21 (10 shots x blast(2) = 20 + 1 for X dmg) + 1d5 x 2 = 52. That's at Rank 4.

Cifer said:

Dual wielding hand flamers would be 6+2d5 Magnitude damage. A heavy flamer would be 8+1d5. They average about the same damage, with the pistols having a higher max. Of course, the heavy flamer is not usable in melee.

OK, I'm a noob, so I'm going to sound like a noob, but at least I'm a noob who's read every single 40K novel (some chapbooks excluded) except Watson's Space Marine.

Isn't the advantage of a melee character the fact that, for the most part, you can't SHOOT him in melee? In some of the novels, they point out that the Marine is trained to move up and engage the enemy, because this is where their advantages (Strength, Toughness, armor) come into play and can most easily be leveraged against an opponent.

I haven't been able to run/play any combats yet, but all someone has to do to turn off that Heavy Bolter/Plasma Cannon/Boltgun with awesome ammo is get up and engage them in combat, right? The rule is that you can't use weapons other than Pistols in close combat, correct? Once the horde engages you, your awesome weapon is not coming into play, or is there some way around that?

I know that you can disengage from combat, but that's a Full Round action, so you don't get to shoot, and the enemy just has to be able to move up and engage you again to prevent you from shooting, correct?

I'm not arguing that anyone is wrong about Ranged > Melee. I'm just asking if, within the rules, there's some way around the whole "Melee stops Shooting" rule (other than pistols, of course).

Also, as a GM of many games, if you do think that the Ranged guys are making the Melee guys look bad, start tracking ammo clips more closely. A chainsword doesn't run out of ammo, but a bolter does. While the game assumes unlimited clips of regular ammo, there's no rule that you can't change that, right? When a few of the marines start hearing "click, click, click" instead of "Dakka, dakka, dakka", they might look for a convenient chainsword.

With the exception that marines often are up against more than one heavy weapons team, you're completely right.

@Radomo

Not quite the best. Max would then be 40 Magnitude damage for your Assault Marine and not possible until Rank 8. From rank 2-7(for Lightning attack), you're limited to 18 (assuming your GM lets you use your off hand weapon on a Charge). And you have to be a Storm warden (Thunder Charge shouldn't be limited to them, imo).

IIRC, there were a few ways to get a little higher, like taking the right power armour.

Cifer said:

Yes, but that can be applied to ranged as well (or psychic for that matter), so it's a wash.

If you really wanted to get sick, take the Metal Storm Heavy bolter and give it to a DA Devastator using Sustained Suppression, getting 2 bursts in a round.

Yes, but that can be applied to ranged as well (or psychic for that matter), so it's a wash.

The effectiveness varies, though - Death Is Joy adds a point of magnitude damage to every attack, which Devastators get only one of (barring Sustained Suppression) while Assault Marines can get somewhere around 7.

Guess I'll have to find that thread again where it was first discussed.

Radomo said:

From another thread where I posted this (since I worked it out), this is average, not maximum:

Well near beginning of assault marine you can have rank 1, respected renown:

Wrathful Descent, Thunder Charge, Death is Joy on the armor, Berserk Charge, power weapon

Thunder charge gives 1d5+1 unarmed attacks

Power weapon gives +1 hit for each successfull weapon skill test (probably = +1 damage to magnitude for each hit)

Death is Joy gives +1 magnitude damage for each sucessful attack

Wrathful descent gives +1d10 magnitude damage to a horde for a sucessful melee attack

So if you have 1d5 + 2 attacks, (1d10 + 2 magnitude damage for each sucessful attack + extra for each 2 degrees of sucess rolling) X sucessful attacks

3-7 attacks (about 70 - 80% sucess due to beserk charge) = average of 5 attacks X 75% sucess = 3.75 attacks with 1 - 4 hits per attack = 3.75 X 2.5 = 9.375 hits over 3.75 hits

3.75 hits X (1d10 + 2) = 3.75 X 7.5 = 28.125

total = 9.375 + 28.125 = 37.5 magnitude damage average

Max level with prenatural speed, lightning attack, blademaster, and whirlwind of death gives 7.5 attacks x about 80% (plus blademaster turning 1 attack to sucess 80% of the time) = 6.8 sucessfull attacks

6.8 attacks with 1-5 hits per attack = average 6.8 X 3 = 20.4 hits (I'm assuming that with the pen of the power weapon and unnatural strength you will always do at least 1 point of damage with each hit, against unnatural tough and high armour opponents this isn't true)

6.8 X (1d10 +2) = 6.8 X 7.5 = 51 magnitude damage

total = (20.4 + 51) X 2 from whirlwind of death = 140.8 magnitude damage average

Accuracy of the above may not be absolutely correct, it is meant as an approximation. Mostly if you are comparing the devastator and assault marines damage to hordes, you should give them both the horde damage abilities. If there are any other broken ways to increase this, or if wrathful descent only applies to per round of melee rather than each melee attack which I read it as then let me know.

Radomo said:

If you are hitting hordes and don't have Cleanse and Purify, then you are gimping the damage. With Cleanse and purify:

Dual weilding hand flamers = 6 + 4d5 hits (average 18 hits) (not magnitude damage, still possibly need damage rolls to do at least 1 damage, get Mighty Shot to assure more damage)

Heavy flamer = 8 + 2d5 (average 14 hits)

Dual weilding basic flamers = 10 + 4d5 hits (average 22 hits)

There is distinction in hits vs magnitude damage if the minimum damage of the weapon isn't enough to assure at least 1 damage to the target.

Also the targets can possibly dodge the "hit" after they fail the agility test to get hit (mostly talking non-horde here).

Suijin said:

I'm pretty sure you don't Wrathfully Descend after each and every attack. It's supposed to represent you crashing down into the midst of the horde. The wording of the ability is after 'a successful attack on a Charge.' No where is there an 'every' in the ability description.

I'm pretty sure you don't Wrathfully Descend after each and every attack. It's supposed to represent you crashing down into the midst of the horde. The wording of the ability is after 'a successful attack on a Charge.' No where is there an 'every' in the ability description.

I'd say the wording is at least ambiguous. Imagine if the rule left out "on a Charge" - would you say this ability only ever triggers once during a marine's life?

Luckily enough, we'll probably soon know more as I've posted the question to Ross.

Well the thunder charge is crashing into the foes and "charge" is in its name. Also the single attack afterwards is the charge attack, so I could see it applying to all of them.

I agree it is ambiguous. There is not a good delineation between a round of melee attacks and a single attack in the rules. They do differentiate between hits and an attack well though. A multiple attacks action like lightning strike does give 3 attacks, and if you can do it as part of a charge action (prenatural speed), then it should apply I would think.

Manyfist said:

Actually, you are forgetting the Power Armor's bonus of +2 as well. So it should be 2d10 + 17.

So, I've played a fair ammount of Dark Heresy but no Deathwatch yet. A friend of mine rolled up a Blood Angels Assault Marine, and, in skimming through the rules, says that you would have to be an idiot not to dump your standard chainsword for a second bolt pistol. I'm all about Iconography over Effectiveness, so this is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Can I make a reasonable argument to a hard-core number-cruncher that he should stick to tradition and keep the chainsword?

Adeptus-B said:

He can't Parry with a Bolt Pistol. That's about it.

For horde combat, the chainsword gives one Mag dmg per 2 DoS. The bolt pistol would give at most 3 (forgot one for X damage) hits when fired on semi auto. Plus you can't make use of Swift/Lightning attack with a bolt pistol.

Radomo said:

Plus an extra hit for each damage die that comes up righteous fury. With more dice rolled, that means more chances for Righteous Fury.

Tell the Blood Angel to buy Flesh Render (Render or tearer or something like that.) Gives an extra Tearing dice with melee weapons, so he'd be rolling 3 and keeping one for the chainsword. That's 3 dice for the sword instead of 2 for the pistol for that Righteous Fury damage.

Plus an extra hit for each damage die that comes up righteous fury. With more dice rolled, that means more chances for Righteous Fury.

Where is that from?

Adeptus-B said:

You know Cifer, I'm not sure.

I don't have my book at work here at the moment so all I have available is the Final Sanction hordes rules basics where that isn't mentioned at all.

It's entirely possible that's a house rule we run with in our group. I'll have to check with my book later and/or Major Shultz to see where we got that.