I was going to post this in the Rules Questions, but it seemed esoteric enough for me to put it in the general thread.

Silencers (which reduce Awareness tests to notice gunfire by 20% and halve the distance to do so) are not available for any Las weaponry. The description for Las weaponry in the core rulebook states that pulling the trigger on a las weapon produces a "distinctive cracking sound, like the crack of a whip.'

How does everyone else handle firing las in terms of drawing attention to the firefight? It would seem to me that they would make far less actual noise than firing a solid projectile or bolt weapon, given the technology involved. But the rules don't state anywhere (that I can find) that las weapons operate like SP weapons with the Silencer upgrade.

I have an assassin in the group that I GM for who tends to use Long Las at range and a compact las pistol for close-up fighting and I'm trying to determine just how much noise she actually makes when firing these weapons. The book specifically states that the Long Las is a favored weapon for snipers, which would lead me to believe that my theory on its reduced volume is correct, but I wanted to query for other opinions. Thanks.

You'll find my take on las weapons here ( Lasweapon2 file) http://www.darkreign40k.com/downloads/dark-reign-supplements/index.php

Basically, las weapons cannot be silenced.

Thanks for the link, Luddite, as well as the thoughtful and well-written document. Your reasoning on the issue of las volume makes sense and I think I'll be incorporating accordingly into my campaign. I'm not sure I agree with your decision to retool the Long Las to use the heavy laspack, but overall I think the document is quite sensible and sound.

The way I see it, the las beam vaporizes the air it passes through, creating a vacuum. The noise comes from air filling that vacuum, resulting in the distinctive crack - this also makes it impossible to silence.

With solid projectiles you can use a suppressor/silencer and subsonic bullets to reduce sound.

But all this talk is HERESY! A good citizen has no need to know how and why the machine spirit works, he just needs to thank the Emperor that it does! =)

as long as he Long Las can be tooled to not emit a visible beam, I imagine it would make a good sniper weapon - if the noise is coming from the beam's interaction with the air then the noise will be generated from the entire length of the line of fire, making it hard to pinpoint the location of the shot by sound (you'll know a shot has been fired, but the sound will be coming from thin air, rather than from the muzzle of a weapon)

I guess im different. In my games a las weapon makes as much noise as a silenced SP weapon. Hardly any basically. The reason for this is two fold.

Firstly, from a game mechanics perspective, most las weapons are worse than their SP equivelents, so I wanted a bit more of a mix of weapon choices for the PCs, especially snipers.

Secondly, as far as I can tell, lasers today are more or less silent. I am not convinced they would have a large amount of noise. Maybe a lascannon might, but im not sure a smaller weapon would.

I have read your document Luddite, the reasoning is sound enough, its just I wanted to create a bit more utility in my games.

Crimsonsphinx said:

Nothing wrong with that mate.

I'm sure i could cobble together enough pseudo-science to explain why las guns are silent too.

Ultimately its down to how you want to interpret things.

I put utility into my interpretation by giving lasguns 'variable settings', making them a far more versatile tool than a simple SP weapon.

I just go with Abnettverse for the noise, a crack or snap hiss noise.

Or you could go with the good ol standby, PEW PEW PEW

Bryce963 said:

Well, the core DH book says the same. I wasn't really ever trying to determine what a las discharge sounded like. My original question, I guess, was just trying to determine how -loud- that sound is, for the purposes of awareness checks to determine that a 'gunfight' is going on...say...a block away. Is that hissing, cracking noise as loud as a shotgun blast? Or is it more on par with a silenced stub revolver in terms of volume? Or is it more like a bazooka?

There's a Kill Team in Purge the Unclean with silenced Lasguns. I would imagine there is some means of dampeneing, displacing, and otherwise distorting in order to disorientaint or confuse your targets, as well as masking or altering the beam somehow to decrease its visablity. Although its all of course up to how you see things and want the weapons to work in you games.

Is this the Kill Team that shows up in the first mission if the acolytes let slip the location that they're working out of?

They make their appearence on p. 40, their stats are at the top of p. 49 listed amoung their kit is Lasguns with Silencers. Don't want to post any spoilers, for those players who may not have gone through these adventures yet.

Wu Ming said:

Yep, their gear loadout certainly lists 'lasguns with silencers.' Very peculiar, since silencers aren't a valid weapon ugrade for lasguns. *sigh* Its not that I'm not capable, as the GM, of making the call based on my own judgment. I just like things to be consistant and balanced within the spectrum of the rules. Normally, I'd be inclined to say that if the NPCs can have them, so can my players. But in this instance, I'll agree with Luddite that silencing Las weaponry really makes NO sense. I could buy that a standard las discharge normally makes the same amount of noise as a silenced SP weapon...but the idea of actually attaching a silencer to a lasgun? Meh. Doesn't jive with me.

It need not be an attachment. It could have to do with some alteration of the harmonics of teh lens or varying the energy out put or firing as a 'pulse' as oposed to a concetrated beam. Realy it is it should be enitirely up to you. One thing to note though regarding the silenced weapons from PtU I can check but I'm pretty sure the author said it was intentionally and not a 'mistake' I'm not disputing whther it is 'allowable' be the rules, but remember hotshot was listed as an 'upgrade' instead of a clip or alternate ammo, and now we can 'mono' staves, clubs, hammer ect. Sometimes the rules eithier as descriptive text next to numbers and figures, or the numbers, charts and figures themselves are in error or not necessarily representitive of what you can, should or are able to achive or do, eithier in 'your' 40K or the typical stock varity of 40K.

Clegane said:

Not even in a setting where stummers (devices which silence everything in their vicinity) exist?

Just because a lasgun can't accept a conventional silencer... doesn't mean they can't be silenced.

Clegane said:

Actually it makes perfect sense.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vczEfzGQc

In reality, the beams lasers emit are effectively silent and invisible . My personal prefernce would therefore be for similar effects in 40k as that makes most sense. I can see why colour filters might be added to aid targeting, etc...

HOWEVER , its clear from all the fluff to date, that lasguns in 40k DO make a cracking noise so i came up with a rationale as to what that might be. That is that the sound does not come from the lasgun (that i still see as essentially silent} but it comes from the passage of the beam through the air causing sound in the same way that a lightning bolt does. As this is the case, the rationale therefore means that whatever (superfluous) 'silencer' you put on the gun makes no difference as the noise is generated along the whole path of the beam like a lightning bolt.

This would make echolocation of the shooter very difficult since the sound would come from along the beam, and not the shooter's location.

As for the OP query:

Hearing the noise of a lasgun would be Very Easy within 500m.

Identifying where the shot came from would be Very Difficult.

FYI: The mercenaries in the first Purge the Unclean adventure have silenced lasguns.

-Cynr

Cynr said:

Yeah, except that that's the only mention of such things anywhere in any of the published work. The core rules specifically state what weapons are eligable for silencers and las weapons are not on the list. Nor, for what its worth, have I ever seen 'las silencers' in any 40K fiction or gaming material. They don't exist in 40K, they don't exist in Necromunda, they aren't referenced in any of the fiction that I've read, and the DH core rules prohibit them. Frankly, I have no idea why the developers of PtU included them in the mercenary profiles on P49, but that is the only place I can find them referenced anywhere. If the general consensus was that las weapons were inherently quiet, I was willing to buy that. But everyone (including the core rules) seems to agree that firing them results in a loud -cracking- noise, so in my game I'll be ruling that they are not naturally quiet and, as per the core rules and every source I can find (except for the single profile in PtU) they cannot be purchased with the 'silencer' upgrade.

Wu Ming said:

I think TS Luikart worked on PtU, maybe he can explain why he added the siliencers and what form he saw them taking. ALso while I recall alwasy reading about the sound of Las fire being DISTINCT I cannot ever recall it being refrenced as particularly LOUD that it seems has always been the purview of Bolters and other Daka-Daka type weapons (one of teh reasons Orks love those weapons so much we have been told time and agin) Thus if Las weapons were at the least AS NOISY as SP weapons then wouldn't hold that they would also be used and loved by the Green Tides, who love all other noisy and no less 'Imperial' weapons like the Bolter. I'd wager at the least a Las weapon is less noisy than is a standard SP weapon of comparitive size. But that its report is unmistakable. Where unlike conviential or even fictional SP weapons that can be mistakken for otehr things like bcar backfires, fire crackers ect. a Las gun has a very unique sound which anyone who has heard one before can never mistake.

However you can and should do what is best for games, and the decission to not allow silenced Las weaponry seems a fair and good one, for all the reasons you've stated. One note though regarding the asertion of the 'infalibity' of the Core for such things. We know there can be 'silineced' (Stalker) versions of Bolt Weapons by far the penultimate of noisy weapons in the 40K setting, despite the fact that according to the COre you cannot purchase a 'silencer' for them. My take, the 'silencer' bought as an upgrade is a Plentiful rather inexspensive item, disallowing that particualr item, for otehr types of weaponry doesn't necessarly imply those non listed types of weaponry cannot be effectivly silenced only that the conventional SP silencer (which is Plentifal and rather cheap) cannot be used with them.

Perhaps silencers for Bolt weaponry (which do exsist) as well as for silencers (which at least on Scintilla for a particualr group of Mercs) do also exsit are nithier cheap nor plentiful, which isn't to say that they cannot be utilised but as you've aserted that they shouldn't be represented by the standard upgrade as listed in the Core.

Clegane said:

I am thinking along Wu Ming's line of thought. The Core Rulebook lists a Silencer on page 142 and basically describes a conventional silencer; this description only says what weapons it applies to (and the relevant cost and availability). This does not mean there can not be a "Wave Harmonic Dampener" (aka las silencer or whatever other name that is not simply "silencer" as described on page 142) that covers las weapons. Besides all the long las gun pics and miniatures have a enlarged cylindrical piece at the end which is larger than the barrel... would be easy to see a "silencer" (since a flash suppressor for a las gun would be... err... just wrong.)

As for canon: Bolt weapons are not listed under silencer but 40k has the Stalker version, so we know they can be silenced. Then again, GW rewrites canon all the time and this is a new game system. Lasguns with silencers are now part of canon thanks to PtU.

The bottomline is that it is ultimately up to the GM. My thought would be: Weapons Upgrade - "Fancy Las Silencer Name" - +0.5kg - 40 Thrones - Average or Scarce - Any Pistol (las) or Basic weapon (las).

-Cynr

I recall a bit in the Inquisitor rulebook that said that SP weapons were preferred by some gunmen because they were louder and had a more obvious muzzle flash- logically, then, a las weapon has a quieter discharge than a SP weapon of ~equivalent type.

I agree with the position that the sound would not emanate from the weapon itself, but from the 'DEW-line' (although I would note that I prefer to use the term CREW rather than DEW to refer to lasers, as both plasma and melta guns are arguably DEWs, whereas lasers, in whatever part of the EM spectrum, are definitely Coherent Radiation Emission Weapons), making the sound, and hence the shooter, hard to pinpoint. As to what they sound like- my favourite definition/description so far is: hold up a mobile phone/microphone and record the sound of a relatively close lightning strike. Now play it back, at maybe 2/3rds maximum volume on said phone. That is what las weapons sound like in my game, although the larger, more powerful weapons are louder.

As to their silencing- I can imagine it being possible if the weapon's pulse duration was increased, with a gradual buildup and dying down, rather than the femtosecond pulse posited on the DR forums (and, iirc, in Luddite's rather excellent document. I may not agree with all of it, but generally that is mere quibbling over details, and certainly doesn't stop me from recognising its' quality); unfortunately, that method does come with a few drawbacks- you have to keep the weapon on target for longer, giving a greater chance for the shot to be 'spent', thanks to small chance movements in the relative positions of weapon and target. I don't believe that anyone would have the reflexes to dodge the shot when it starts to build, but it would be an argument to use a frequency outside the standard visual spectrum

Wu Ming said:

That's not actually a contradiction. "Silent" bolters fire specialised "silent" ammunition, rather than the weapons being silenced themselves. Stalker shells remove the prefire propellant charge, replace the rocket motor with a high-pressure gas jet, and replace the warhead with a liquid metal core. They're not as deadly (it's all kinetic force that does the damage, rather than an explosion), but they're much, much quieter...

I am well aware of that. However, my point is that 'silenced' versions of weapons needn't necessarily incorperate the oft imagined tin at the end of a barel. That while in DH you cannot purchase the Silencer upgrade for a Bolter we do know tehre are aproximate kits and load outs (in this Stalker Bolt Shells) which allow for such specialisation. Thus absence of a weapon from the list on what can recive the Plentiful 'Silencer' upgrade from those offered in the Core Book does NOT in fact equate to an absence from such equivalents in the 40,000 Setting. A premise which still holds true. However you are corrent in the asertion that there is in fact no contradiction, which if I said or implied that there was then I most certainly mispoke, becasue that was not at all my intention.

Also while defined primarly by the shells Brother-Sergeant Torias Telion is listed as having a 'Stalker Pattern Boltgun' as opossed to simply a Bolter with Stalker Shells which may just mean that character always get specially named equipment even when they are esentially the same thing as other items, or might alternatly imply that Bolters are made with the intentioin of being 'Silenced' or used for stealth, scouting and covert operations. My only point was though that lack of the udgrade doesn't mean lack of teh ability, and as you stated as regards stummers perhaps other more scarce and exspensive alternitives might exsit for use with Las weaponry.