Hello everyone, I have a question in mind or sort of a statement, can the situation described below actually be right?

I have a player in my kill team that is playing a devastator marine, he has chosen the squad mode ability "unrelenting devastation" , then he also has the "death is joy" background on his armor, and finally have the "storm of iron" talent.

Let’s just say for the fun of it that my player rolls the highest possible, the enemy is a horde with a M=50 (which gives him +30 size mod) laser sight (+10 mod) target is at close range (+10 mod) full auto burst (+20 mod) he then ends up at somewhere around 110 in BS and rolls a 01, which is 11 degrees. Thus 11 hits, then we add and 1 more damage to the magnitude for every hit this equals 22 and then +1 extra for death is joy this (23) and finally we double it because of the "storm of iron" talent. Ending at a magnitude damage of 46 if the 11 original hits take 15 or more damage each (which they probably will). And this is without any sort of explosive or blast quality. Can this really be right?!?!

Please right what you think or/and know

Let's see. As I've interpreted it: ( 10x2 (10 hits and unrelenting) + 1 (DiJ) + 1 (bolter) ) x2 (SoI) = 22 x 2 = 44 magnitude damage.

witness said:

witness said:

1) Unrelenting Devastation will add +1 Magnitude per hit as long as this is not a weapon with the Blast Quality. So each "hit" will add +1 Magnitude of damage.

2) The Death is Joy background says "...increase the damage to a Horde's Magnitude by 1 with any successful attack." Note that that is per "attack" and not per "hit" so I'd say that it only adds 1 Magnitude of damage to the attack no matter how many "hits" that attack scores.

3) Storm of Iron I have not had much experience with. Haven't read much and no one in my game has that talent. Based on how other things work I would suppose that it will add +1 Magnitude of Damage to a Horde for each 1 Magnitude the base attack does.

4) The highest possible modifier to hit is +60 Total. So in your example with +70 in modifiers it should be capped at +60. This is in the rules on page 244.

5) The Heavy Bolter has a rate of fire of //10 so you cannot get more than 10 hits with an attack, even if you roll more degrees of success than that.

So if you hit with all 10 shots you will do 10 Magnitude base damage (providing each hit overcomes the targets Armor and Toughness). Next this amount is doubled by the Storm of Iron Talent (we're up to 20 Magnitude). The Unrelenting Devastation adds +1 Magnitude per hit (now we are up to 30 Magnitude). The weapon has the Explosive Quality that adds +1 Magnitude (we're up to 31 now). Death is Joy also adds +1 Magnitude (that makes 32 Magnitude).

So the way I would run it this Devastator has the potential to do 32 Magnitude damage with the best possible to hit roll.

Storm of Iron reads it doubles the damage, as per order of operations which believe it or not is actually used when calculating things in deathwatch (IE the Space Marines stat for strength is doubled first then armor bonuses are added). The case would be the same here.

As the previous poster has accurately pointed out 10 hits is the max, and the max damage is indeed 32 for a heavy bolter wielding devastator.

Actually there is a talen that adds +1 to the RoF for ALL Bolt weapons.

And personally I would think that the doubling would come before any +1's for other talents otherwise you are right, it get's rediculous on an already rediculous weapon.

I would point out that a Laser Sight is useless on a heavy bolter, as the Laser Sight only grants a bonus on single shots, and a heavy bolter can't fire single shots (unless lobbing Hellfire rounds). A motion predictor is what you'd want on a horde-killing heavy bolter.

And Lasersight can only be put on Basic and pistol weapons anyway.

Anonymus said:

A marine with "Death From Afar" armor history would treat a heavy bolter as basic, and could then use one, in theory.

Warhawk X said:

They can treat the heavy bolter as a basic weapon. That does not change the weapons type to basic. No red dot on a heavy bolter.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Right. Get a targeter instead.

Alex

ak-73 said:

get deathwatch supensor, half action full auto

leperkhaun said:

Yes, but the Targeter does give you the Red-Dot Laser Sight bonus (and more) if you are firing hellfire rounds from your Heavy Bolter.

Alex

I don't know why there is all this commotion about sights....he should be fraggin' amazing shooting anyways. The Devistator that is in the game I run is shooting, without bonuses, at 88. When he goes after a horde he's only looking at Jams and DoS at that point as he is OVER 100...

How is he shooting at 88 without bonuses?

2D10+30 for stat is maxed at 50. +10 for potential armor history/chapter bonuses is 60.

Where is the other 28 coming from?

On a completely separate note... Does the blast quality of metal storm ammo multiply with storm of iron? Storm of iron specifically "doubles the magnitude damage", and a blast hit specifically makes the base mag damage of the attack = blast size (its not 1 + (blast size - 1)).

KommissarK said:

I'd say it does. Storm of Iron means you calculate damage as usual and then double it at the end; that's how I read it. In the case of metal storm, it's the ability to place the shots where they hurt the most.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Yeah how it reads it works like that but Ross has said a couple times before and if you look at other things in the game the multiplier happens first, then additives as per order of operations. In this case though the text does read as though it multiplies last.

I'd say it multiplies first because strength bonus multiplies first then additives are added in, and Ross was pretty clear that is the uniform system of how the math is supposed to work in this particular system.

Warhawk X said:

As KommissarK pointed out: metal storm doesn't add to damage, it substitutes the base damage.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Indeed, I suppose that is correct. Do you have any experience in game with this particular talent being too good or too much damage?

Warhawk X said:

In Final Sanction, the Devastator with the Heavy Bolter was cutting down Hordes fairly quickly. He overshadowed the other players but not to the point of them feeling completely worthless. The players accepted that he'd do well against hordes.

The problem isn't this talent, I think. The problem is the ROF of the Heavy Bolter. Unfortunately cutting that down requires messing with the Storm Bolter for proper balance and then it gets ugly.

Anyway, the only problem is inner group balance as hordes can be scaled easily to be an appropriate challenge (like reenforcements, etc.) And some hordes need to be cut down quickly. A charging horde of hormagaunts that has mag 20 left can do 4D10+5 Pen 3 to everyone in close combat. Twice . With such an enemy, it's to either shoot them down quickly enough or die a messy death, instant karma burn.

Alex

Direach said:

Ha so true I never say LOL on the internet because I think its overused but this time I really did LAUGH OUT LOUD at having a laser sight on a heavy bolter. I am a combat veteran and can only imagine the amount of @#$! I would get if I put a laser on a SAW or 240b, just do a Z pattern rinse and repeat.

I had a player roll almost 500 damage in my last session...

The Russian said:

If it was with RF you might want to consider going to the just add 1d10 rule most GMs I know have done. I think some people misinterperate the ROF rules for Full Auto, its 1 hit per degree of success not 10 instant hits if he succeeds with a heavy bolter. So if BS is 60 and he rolls 50 thats just 1 hit, 40 2 hits, 30 3 hits, 20 4 hits, 10 5 hits.

Nimon said:

I did.

Nimon said:

Just to make things clear here (you probably know this):
So if BS is 60 and he rolls 50 thats just 1 extra hit, 40 2 hits, 30 3 hits, 20 4 hits, 10 5 hits.

In total you get 2 hits if you roll 1 DoF, 3 for 2 DoFs and so on.

Unless I've missed something, the possible max amount of damage for full-auto vs hordes is even higher. You have to roll damage for each of the hits to assure that they get over the armour+T of the horde (not bloody likely that the damage will be lower though), each damage roll is 2d10 Tearing (so 3d10 rolled) that you can get Righteous fury on. If you do 5 hits, you will get 1.5 RFs on average. With the RAW each RF will then allow another attack roll to be made that can add an additional hit. And since also these attacks can be RFs the final conclusion is that there is no upper limit to the damage done on hordes (which is true for all damage rolls in DH/RT/DW).