After our initial 2 sessions, and mixed with what I saw during the playtest. I am currently going with the following changes for my games:

Hellfire Rounds (page 159)
Reduce requisition cost to 15. Remove Righteous Fury on a 9 or 10 and additional effect against Hordes.

Kraken Rounds (page 159)
Increase requisition cost to 15.

Metal Storm Rounds (page 159)
Unusable with the Heavy Bolter.

Stalker Rounds (page 159)
Increase requisition cost to 12.

Aim (page 237)
Not usable with Full Auto or Semi-Auto Burst.

Full Auto Burst (page 239)
Remove +20 Ballistic Skill Test bonus.

Righteous Fury (page 245)
When rolling Damage after a successful attack, if any die rolled results in a natural 10, there is a chance the Emperor’s favour is with the attacker (This also includes a result of 10 when rolling 1d5 for Damage.) This calls for a second attack roll that is identical, all modifiers included, to the original attack. If that second attack hits you can roll an additional die and add the result to the Damage total. Should the result of this die also be a 10 you may immediately roll a third die and add that to the Damage total as well. This process continues until you roll a number other than 10. (aka: Dark Heresy system)

Stray Shots (page 248)
When shooting into a melee combat with a Semi-Auto Burst or Full Auto Burst you must allocate multiple hits to different targets engaged in the melee.

The reasoning is as follows:

Hellfire: Far too good. I had to decide between adding a renown requirement, or reducing its effectiveness. I chose to reduce it so earlier ranked players can take them.

Kraken: With the change to Hellfire I didn't want people to just fall-back on Kraken. Plus at 5req they were under-costed IMHO. Brought it up to what I consider average cost.

Metal Storm: With the massive threads on using this with the H. Bolter and Devastation, lets just...not.

Stalker: I want all the ammo to feel more unique so I feel none should be a mere 5 requisition.

Aim: Aiming a burst never sat right with me really.

Full Auto: Its not perfect but should curb a bit of the OP that is bolter full-auto spam. Plus I wanted the benefit to be hitting more things, not hitting something more accurate (that is what aiming is for).

RF: The current RF is just totally broken in my eyes. We tried a different method of doing an immediate 1d5-1 critical but didn't like the massive levels of fatigue and overall it felt a bit "blah" compared to more damage. So we agreed as a group to just use the Dark Heresy/WFRP method again.

Stray Shots: full-auto into melee was quickly becoming an issue. I wanted to keep the effectiveness at killing hordes and whatnot at range, but wanted it harder to just shoot 10 heavy bolter shots into melee with no negatives.

I don't like the Full Auto change, tbh. My fix has always been to swap the to-hit bonuses for semi and full, and both get an extra hit per DoS. This makes Semi the more accurate option.

15 is too high for Kraken. 10 would be ok, I think. I've not seen the range increase really be a significant factor (if you're sending enemies at your marines that are 100s of m away, things aren't going to go well for your baddies), and the small Pen increase is simply a nice boost, rather than overpowered. I do agree that Hellfires are too good (Conversely, they suck for Heavy Bolters), however if their only effect is ignoring natural armor, they should be cheaper than Krakens which also increase range and give a more general AP reduction. So, on second thought, I'd go 10-12 for Hellfire, 15 for Kraken.

Metal storm with Unrelenting is only an increase of 1d5 hits vs normal rounds. I don't see the issue. You don't add an additional hit per hit AND an additional 1d5 due to Blast. Full burst of Metal storm would be 10 x 2 + 1 + 1d5 vs 10 x 2 + 1. They are very crap vs single targets (See Tyranid warriors or CSM. That -4 dmg/hit makes a difference).

RF: Yep. Only sensible option.

Shooting into melee: Makes sense, however, there is a -20 for shooting into melee already. How do you apply that to shooting into melee between a marine and a horde?

After talking it over with one of my players and whatnot I think I'm going to leave the +20 for full auto for now. Might be a bit too overboard. My issue with allowing semi-auto to gain a hit per degree is that makes bolt pistols actually better than bolters for semi-auto (semi is 3 vs 2). I'd like to avoid having my players quick-draw a bolt pistol everytime they want to do a semi-auto.

I re-read the ruling/consensus on Metal Storm and you are right, its not very hard, so no need to change it. Thanks!

The shooting into melee rule is an optional one in the rulebook, so the -20 for shooting into melee still stands. However, with leaving the +20 for full-auto (they will cancel each other out) I think it will be fine.

12 vs 15 for req on ammo isn't a big deal to me. I'd personally rather just see them at 15 or 25 depending instead of all over the place. I think I'm fine for now with 15. Good input though.

So this leaves me with:

Hellfire Rounds (page 159)
Reduce requisition cost to 15. Remove Righteous Fury on a 9 or 10 and additional effect against Hordes.

Kraken Rounds (page 159)
Increase requisition cost to 15.

Stalker Rounds (page 159)
Increase requisition cost to 12.

Aim (page 237)
Not usable with Full Auto or Semi-Auto Burst.

Righteous Fury (page 245)
When rolling Damage after a successful attack, if any die rolled results in a natural 10, there is a chance the Emperor’s favour is with the attacker (This also includes a result of 10 when rolling 1d5 for Damage.) This calls for a second attack roll that is identical, all modifiers included, to the original attack. If that second attack hits you can roll an additional die and add the result to the Damage total. Should the result of this die also be a 10 you may immediately roll a third die and add that to the Damage total as well. This process continues until you roll a number other than 10. (aka: Dark Heresy system)

Stray Shots (page 248)
When shooting into a melee combat with a Semi-Auto Burst or Full Auto Burst you must allocate multiple hits to different targets engaged in the melee.

kenshin138 said:

Do you allow automatic fire of pistols in close combat? We house ruled that one away.

Alex

ak-73 said:

You actually don't have to house rule it; its not allowed via the rulebook.

Full Auto Burst
Type: Full Action
Subtype: Attack, Ranged

Semi-Auto Burst
Type: Full Action
Subtype: Attack, Ranged

Engaged in Melee
If an attacking character is adjacent to his target, both the
character and his target are considered to be engaged in
melee. Characters that are engaged in melee can only make
attack actions with the melee subtype.

So since both Burst attacks do not have the melee subtype, its not a valid choice when Engaged in Melee.

The Pistol group description in the Armoury chapter also specifies only Standard Attack in melee.

@kenshin,

Your original post mentioned shooting into melee with no penalties, hence bringing up the -20.

I guess the semi-auto thing is a simple anomaly due to bolt pistols and full bolters doing the same damage. But, if you're holding a bolter, why would you choose to shoot semi-auto instead of full auto? The magazine is an even multiple of the Full auto fire rate. If it's for RP, quick drawing a pistol to get one extra shot makes little sense.

You didn't comment on shooting into melee with a horde.

i have/will be incorporating some of those changes also. kraken rounds are just TOO good combined with the uberbolter rules in DW compared to other weapons. the extra 50% range means that the vast majority of combats are going to be within half range for the bonus to BS. the standard bolter with kraken rounds (costing a total of 5 req or free for a tact marine) does only 2 or so less points of damage on average vs an armored target than a plasma gun but has the options of full auto, 50% greater range, and a max damage of 6 more for 15 req less and two less renown requirements. here are the changes i'll be/have been using:

Bolt Weapons: 1d10 damage base instead of 2d10

Kraken Rounds: 15 req

Two Handed Chainsword: melee(chain), 1d10+6, pen5, tearing, unwieldy, requires two hands (a player wants to use his seth model as his character with a similar loadout)

Medical Servo Skull: 5 req, allows a one time use of medicae: first aid at 65% and int bonus of 5... basically a small infant servo skull loaded with medical supplies and cogitator specific for healing marines. my party doesn't have a medic so they need some chance of healing!

Dodge: optional version of dodge in which DoS on dodge decrease DoS on attack roll, can use them against all incoming attacks instead of 1/round... player must choose which type they're using when they choose to dodge and lasts until next turn

Radomo said:

Ah yes, I did forget that didn't I. For lack of a better option (since the optional rule doesn't take this into account) is allow a "one hit per magnitude" rule. So the players count each point of Magnitude as one potential "target" for a hit. This means that unless the horde is REALLLLLLY small, they will always be able to shoot into an engaged Horde without issue. I have no problem with this, even if its a bit abstract.