I have a question about the damage ranges for the bolter class weapons, The damage ranges confuse me slightly.

In RT the bolters are 1d10 base, no Tearing, in DH bolters are 1d10 base w/ Tearing.

In Dw, bolters are 2d10 base w/Tearing.

Is the Tearing extra D10 already included in the weapons damage profile?

Basically, Do bolters roll 2d10 drop the lowest, or 3d10 drop the lowest?

The Astartes bolters seem a little too good for what they are if the tearing bonus d10 isnt included in the profile already, This makes the basic bolters much more appealing than any of the "better" weapons, ie: bolt pistol vs plasma pistol.

And the Astartes entry in the rulebook says that Astartes weapons are made specially for space marines, but does not say that only the bolters are better quality than the other astartes weapons.

So you can see my confusion, Are bolters really that much better than the other special weapons (yes I know im not factoring everything the others have but its a start) or am I simply reading the entry wrong?

Thank you.

Rakear said:

3D10, the lowest. They need to be that good or otherwise it will be hard to kill a marine who has Unnatural Toughness (x2) and True Grit.

Alex

Minor correction: all bolters have the Tearing quality in DH, RT, and DW. Yes, bolters are very good weapons, and Astartes bolters (which are more than twice as big as their human-scale counterparts) are the best of the lot.

Comparing basic weapons to pistol weapons is not perhaps the best comparison. Bolt guns are extremely formidable, but other weapons are useful too for their particular properties. A boltgun can't bore through armour as easily as a plasma gun on maximal can, for instance, and a flamer can hit more targets at once. Just pick the right tool for the job.

Also, it's not only about stats; there is a prestige associated with rare weapons that is important to the 40K setting. If you are carrying a plasma or inferno pistol, it marks you as a singular badass, even if your "common" boltgun is more useful in most cases.

Direach said:

Or could fire kraken shells, making up for the most of the difference in penetration and still letting you auto fire and fire every round and not have chance to explode (although you can get even better ammo if you want your bolter to have a chance to explode) or metal storm rounds / flame rounds. All of these options without giving up the flexibility.

Direach said:

They are prestigous and make you badass because they are supposed to be good stats. If it was just the prestige you might as well put in on a frikin banner pole.

I don't want to start another loooong thread about this but I do feel they dropped the ball on this one. Yes in the novels space marines shoot other space marines dead with bolters all but like wise humans who are shot with lasguns or autoguns allways anyway (unless they are major characters who are usually badly wounded). For this one particular instance the designers have gone against the grain that was established with other weapons in the game (established by BI not FFG, although they never fixed it if they thought it was wrong). I can't help notice that they felt that weapons could finally do what they considered realistic damage when only Space Marines could use them.

So in short plasma and melta guns need more damage, probably an extra D10, if they are to get a look in with bolters as is. Other weapons might need some adjustment as well.

DH Bolters has been errata'd to have the same stats as in Rogue Trader. I've got the book's first printing too. (I don't actually know if they corrected this in future printings.)

I do feel that they went a little overboard with the Astartes Bolter. In my game I will give it the following stats: 1d10+6 Pen 5 Tearing. A little nicer to reflect the fine marine craftmanship, but not overpoweringly good. This still has a 75% chance of damaging a space marine, 50% if you hit the chest. That's with regular ammo, I'm sure you can do better if you load out ammo expecting chaos marines.

I know most of the fans will disagree, but that's how I'm going to run them.

It seems to me that people fuss about the plasma and melta weapons without really looking at what they can do. Plasma weapons automatically confirm Righteous Fury on any damage die roll of 10, and add +2 Pen, +1d10 damage, and +10m range when fired on Maximal. Melta weapons do an additional d10 damage at short range (which is what they're designed for). These considerations make plasma and melta weapons quite destructive, with the inferno pistol being the most damaging pistol by a wide margin.

Also, these are specialized weapons, not general weapons like boltguns. The bolter is intended to be the go-to choice for Astartes; it has been their signature weapon for over 10,000 years. It's meant to be a superb death-dealer, and it is. In some situations, however, alternatives might be more useful to have on hand.

Direach said:

I disagree. Damage-wise the plasmagun must be closer to the lascannon than the bolter. And it isn't, even with maximal setting.

Alex

Direach said:

Whoa, wait, what?!

Where are those rules for Melta and Plasma? Those would change things dramatically in my game... or are those Astartes weapons only?

I don't know about RT or DH, but they're in the DW section headers for Plasma Weapons and Melta Weapons. Frankly, I think you could adopt those rules for the other games as well and it would work out fine.

in my games< thats DH, RT, DW bolters have the stats listed in the deathwatch core book> for me there are no human sized bolters, there are just "BOLTERS"

not for everyone i know but its my game and all my players are fine with it. as long as we are having fun then who cares

steamdriven said:

Makes sense to me. Although I am sure that there are more cheap replicas of Astartes Bolters to be found than the real deal.

Alex

steamdriven said:

Kage

Yes, Astartes bolters are roll 3D10 and the lowest. Yes, they are supposed to be better than 'standard' bolters. Yes, this annoys some people, especially as it causes issues re: why use anything else.

Seeing how this is a GW approved Prop Replica of an Astartes Bolt Pistol, I think it becomes clear why there are Astartes grade bolters and human grade bolters.

Direach said:

Yes the legendary Inferno pistol does more damage than any other pistol, at 5m or less.

Oh and plasma gun automatically confirms rightous fury, which Deathwatch do anyway on all Xeno's and can use ammo that RF's on a 9 or 10. Maximal fire giving it 2d10+10 or some such, litterally 5 more damage and 2 more pen (than stardard issue Kraken shells) for half the fire rate on half of the turns.

This is going to be most evident when the vehicle rules are published and it turns out that most vechicles can be shot up by a standard astartes bolter (or at least Heavy bolter) because they had to make it weak enough for the rubbish damage that PG and Melta's put out.

ItsUncertainWho said:

You'll also notice that that isn't the .75 calibre or even 1 inch calibre that bolt guns are supposed to be, you'll also notice that the guy holding it doesn't have the 36 biceps that a Catachan guardsmen would have if he had been scaled up too.

Also:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30305501@N06/4244625616/in/photostream/

Of a rather conservative recreation of heavy bolter. Now why does the SM bolt pistol do more damage than that again?

Thanks Lt E Watt's, that's some great work.

Alrighty lets take a look at average damage and see if we can figure out if Bolters actually do more damage than there big cousins. Sounds like a fun thought experiment. So first, some ground rules. I'm going to ignore RF damage and how it effects average damage for the most part because that starts to over complicate things, and honestly when firing in their ideal conditions they all have about the same chance to RF anyways (maximal plasma adds a D10, bolters roll 3 pick the best and the melta can roll 3). So they may bump the average up by a fraction or so here or their the very random element of them would muddy the waters of a straight up comparison too much for it to be truly useful. So here is a standard bolter loaded with normal rounds:

Bolter: 19 damage, pen 5

So not too shabby overall, it will pulp most squishy targets but will start losing out against armour. Now here is the plasma gun in both normal and maximal modes:

Plasma: 14.5 damage, pen 8

Maximal Plasma: 20, pen 10

So as you can see, in normal form it is doing less overall damage than the bolter but in maximal it shoots passed it when dealing with harder targets. Even the addition of kraken rounds wont totally make up the damage lead (two points of pen and a point of damage). And this is with plain old ammo (since the plasma doesn't have special) so worrying about running out isn't a huge deal like it could be with specialty rounds (like kraken). And of course if marines go for rounds like vengeance or hellfire then they are spending more on those rounds than the plasma gun is worth (unless they are a tactical but that is working as intended in my mind since tacticals should be using the basic bolter for the most part).

Now for the melta gun at close and long range:

Melta (short): 25 damage, pen 13

Melta (long): 19, pen 13

So again, outside of its prime time use it is comparable to a bolter, but in its zone it is a bloody terror to behold.

Finally I'll just address the flamer thing. Now the bolter's premier anti-horde round is the metal storm shell. Using these shells a bolter can achieve between 0-9 magnitude damage against a horde (2 per shell hit plus 1 for explosive with a possibility, however small, of missing). Now the flamer does between 0-10 magnitude damage with the possibility on 1 extra magnitude every turn if the target catches on fire. The comparative cost of these weapons? The metal storm rounds are 15 req, and the flamer is... 15 req.

So, again, the specialist weapon edges out the bolter in its area of expertise for a comparable cost.

Now that brings me to my final point. When looking at this it is obvious that the bolter is still a powerful weapon that can do a lot of jobs well. But the specialty tools will still do them better, often for the price of a clip of bolter specialty ammo. So in the hands of a focused tactical marine who gets bonuses out to wazoo with his favourite toy it remains a competitive option compared to specialist tools (mostly because of the damage boost and the free specialty clip) but when looking at guys like the apothecary, librarian and tech-marine (and even a canny assault marine or devastator) who aren't tied to the tactical flexibility of the bolter it becomes a lot more cost effective to take a specialist weapon (and often save of requisition because you aren't buying a bunch of specialty bolter ammo) and get good with it since the game isn't pushing your preferences like it does with the tactical.

So while it is nice to be prepared for all eventualities it is also very costly and only the tactical marine is actually great at that because of cost breaks and weapon bonuses. The rest of the team can afford to take specialist equipment to do their job better thus freeing up their requisition to better do the job rather than spending it all on specialty shells trying to hedge their bets on what they'll see.

The assault marine should be taking a flamer or meltagun as his primary non-CC weapon because he can get into their sweet spots and do more damage than he could wielding a bolter or bolt pistol. The techmarine can take a plasma gun or even a plasma cannon (and weapon-tech) and deal terrifying amounts of damage to single targets for a round every combat encounter. The apothecary can grab whatever specialty tool the mission requires and contribute more than just healing to the mission while leaving a lot of requisition for utility gear. And with the librarian he can either eschew his weapons, or, just pick what is best suited to the mission.

Basically, yes, the bolter is a great all-rounder but it can't measure up to specialist tools in their element unless you are in a specialty that really takes it to its limits (tactical marine). The rest of the specialties are better off not wasting a bunch of req on a lot of specialty ammo and just picking up a specialized tool that can do its job without having to get a bunch of suplementary ammunition for it.

Personally I'm fine with the stats as they are because they are rigged in such a way as to keep the focused tactical marine viable from start to finish because other non-bolter choices aren't overwhelmingly better than it while making specialty weapons great in their element. If the non-bolters get boosted too much then the combat specialized tactical gets left behind when his focus on getting the most out of bolt weapons becomes useless. So they should have the weapons be mostly comparable in average situations with more specialized weapons pulling ahead when used in their area of expertise. This gives every weapon a use no matter your renown or requisition level.

And honestly if the bolter weren't powerful I would truly wonder if people realized just how strong a .75 caliber automatic, armour-piercing grenade launcher should really be.

Ronin_eX said:

How do you justify Tearing giving a bolter an average of 19 on 2d10+5? That seems too high.

In any case, while you have shown that the specialist weapons are slightly better in their particular specialties, you neglected a few things. Firing on Maximal, the plasma gun fires every other turn, and still has the problem of Overheats. The range of a meltagun is miniscule. And it's still out damaged by the heavy bolter on anything but the heaviest of targets where it can use all it's Pen (assuming something with 13 or more armor, the melta does an average of 32-37. The heavy bolter does 27 up to 10 times giving many more RF chances, and could load Kraken rounds for 2 further pen).

But the real issue that prevents taking the specialist weapons in place of a bolter is that they are too niche. Yes, the flamer can do possibly one more Mag dmg than a bolter with metal storm. But, the bolter has had probably several turns to fire before the flamer even gets a shot off. A maximal plasma does a bit more than a bolter shell, but it only fires ever other turn and it fires a max of 2 rounds per turn. It also costs as much as 4 mags of Kraken rounds or nearly a melta bomb.

The bolter does 'close enough' damage to all of these, while maintaining a massive flexibility advantage. That's why both plasma and melta need to add a d10 to their base damage. Flamers need to set Hordes on fire to do ongoing Mag damage and possibly have a slight range boost. And ignoring RF is ignoring one of the strengths of the bolt weapons, as they will have many more chances per shot to achieve RF due to firing on Full Auto.

Ronin_eX said:

That's right and please also keep the rof in mind and then go and compare with the strength/ap progression in the tabletop.

From Bolter over Heavy Bolter and Assault Cannon to plasmagun, meltagun and then lascannon.

And now compare the progression from Bolter damage to lascannon damage in DW. (or compare with krak missiles)

Also, unlike the TT the melta/plasma guns do significantly less damage than their heavier cousins. In addition to having shorter range and no blast radius.

I can see no good reason for nerfing plasma- and meltaguns this way. And therefore they both get an additional D10 damage in my games.

Alex

What I have noticed is the Astartes marine bolter (pistol, rifle, heavy) with 2D10+1D10 to represent Tearing is just putting out massive amounts of damage in conjunction with Righteous Fury, there is just very little which stands up to it, even other marines. Tearing + Righteous Fury seems to be a consistently coming off somewhere on average around 30-40% of the time, to the point if you're doing a burst or full auto attack, it'll happen at least once and do anywhere between the high 20's and low 40's in damage.

Just looking at a Rhino with its AV of 24, there's a good chance of seriously disabling one simply with a bit of sustained fire from boltguns... and thats an infantry fighting vehicle designed to withstand battlefield hand-held weapons fire.

I dunno, mechanically it just doesn't seem to be holding together very well in practice.

Radomo said:

Errr, probability?

Average result on a d10 is 5.5, ergo for 2d10 that is 11. The additional dice (that whole Tearing thing) improves the average result by one-half the average of a single dice, or 2.75, which means that you're dealing with a result of 3 (rounded). 11+3 = 14. Add on the +5 and that gets you to 19.

Kage

MKX said:

In TT bolters also have the chance to hit Rhino

Also modern machine-gun could penetrate armour of present-day infantry fighting vehicle

Kage

Kage2020 said:

So, the third die magically averages 8.25? Now, it's been quite a while since I took prob and stats, so i may just be completely wrong, but 3d10 are 3 independent events, right? You're equally likely to get 6, 5 and 3 as 6, 5, 8. I don't think you can just state as fact that dropping the lowest increases the other die roll by 50%.

I mean, if you have a formula or link for your assertion, please show me and I'll stand corrected.

Here's my numbers.

The number of possibilities for 2d10 is, unsurprisingly, 100. The total of all possible rolls of 2d10 is 5.5*2*10^2 = 1100.

The number of ways for one of the die to be the smallest is (11-x)^2 - (10-x)^2 for all x between 1 and 10.

x1 =19

x2 = 17

x3 = 15

x4 = 13

x5 = 11

x6 = 9

x7 = 7

x8 = 5

x9 = 3

x10 = 1

Finding the sum value for those rolls, we take multiple the total by the relevant x value and subtract from all possibilities. The sum of the dropped dice is 385, leaving 615 as our average 'kept' sum. Dividing by the total number of possibilities, gives us an average of 6.15.

Thus, 2d10 Tearing would average 12.3 or 12, rather than 14.

As far as probability goes I'm not one to talk at all, but it's my experience on the table that tearing means the average damage I'm seeing per hit from my player armed with a HB is probably right around 20. It drops to say 8, or ridiculously high with RF to the 40s and 50s, but most of the time I see right around 20.

But regardless of the proability, even if the base damage profile gives a slight edge to specialty weapons you have to factor in everything. Especially autofire. Even with half the penetration the ability to hit multiple times is super potent, and this isn't just on squishy targets.

Here is an example- ignoring fury for the time being. Say you're fighting a marine with a body armor rating of 10 (standard PA). The plasma fires on maximal and does straight 20 damage to the guy, -8 for toughness, for a total of 12 damage. Hurts, but he's still kicking.

The HB hits a marine say 4 times (we'll say this accounts for him dodging a DoSs or two), -5 from each shot for what remains on his armor, -8 for toughness, meaning each shot only does 6 damage. Seems like the plasma wins. But he hits 4 times. Now he's done 24 damage to the marine, probably killing him, or at least sending him near critical wounds.

If you adjust the bolter numbers to what Radomo suggests (so a damage of 17 rather than 19 per sot), you're still doing 4 damage a shot, still doing 16 damage overall. While not ridiculously more than the plasma (the marine is still standing in both cases), it's still more for a gun that cost way less, and the plasma still can't fire the next turn while the bolter armed marine can open up again.

RE the rhino, I agree the HB should be able to damage the 'light' APC, the fact that standard bolt rifles can penetrate and blow it up bothers me a bit tho. Modern APCs can crack under real machine guns, but the A in the APC is designed to provide solid protection versus small arms - I think the US stryker is designed to provide total protection to sustained 7.62mm fire. I know marines are supposed to be essentially carrying HMGs around with them (.75 calibre isn't anything to sneeze at), but the Rhino is their transport , why are they driving around in something their standard rifles can blast apart?

DW Space Marine said:

In TT bolters also have the chance to hit Rhino

Also modern machine-gun could penetrate armour of present-day infantry fighting vehicle

Heavy machineguns of 12.7 or 14mm will worry an APC/IFV with a lot of sustained fire, Joe Infantry with his 5.56 or 7.62mm handheld rifle or SAW has nothing. Just that the Rhino is a marine APC, designed to deal with stuff, like enemy marines shooting it up with handheld rifles (bolters) and it should be rightly worried about coming under attack from heavy weapons fire. Wouldn't have an issue with jeeps, trucks, light aircraft and so on, yeah for sure, but a Marine APC? Little bit silly.

Tabletop is pretty good for what it is but from a Roleplaying view I'm not sure if it really contributes much beyond face value, likewise if we had the equivalent, your Roleplay Marine character would have 10wounds, stats of about 40 across the board and die a lot to cheap ork mobs and assholes with lasguns