Hey all,
Edits in bold
I am working on retooling some of the rules that don't really fit into my vision of the 40k universe. As this is just based on my personal opinion and as a means to rebalance the game more to my taste you can take it with a grain of salt.
The biggest issues that I’ve been struggling to balance have been the weapons. There are many topics regarding this so I don't think I need to go into too much detail. I will, however, explain my changes in each instance so that it does not seem completely arbitrary. Some of the changes are mechanics fixes and some are what I consider to be common sense changes (my opinion of course ).
The first change is a fairly dramatic one as it relates to the bolter. It is clear to me that a weapon that is put in the players hand at the very beginning of the game should not outperform high cost specialized weapons in most cases. Some people may argue that on a shot per shot basis the plasma gun outperforms the bolter and they would be right some of the time. If, however, you take into account specialized rounds like the kraken variant and full auto that difference becomes quite absurd.
The bolter changes are as follows:
Bolter (Godwyn): Range 100M Damage 1D10+8 Penetration 4 Type (X) Special attribute Tearing
While this is an obviously significant decrease in potential damage output it does immediately make other weapons more viable. As for the fairly limited affect the weapon has against hard targets like a Space Marine, I feel this is true to the cannon as it has been stated that the Astartes power armour was designed to be able to take a bolter round at 20 feet. That said, with just 5 requisition the bolter can still do a decent job of putting even a Space Marine down. All bolter weapon types are similarly reduced in damage with the Heavy bolter having range 150M 1D10+12 penetration 5.
I have added the felling quality to all plasma weapons as it makes them even more effective against high value targets and makes allot of sense when you think about a ball of condensed hydrogen molecules that are superheated to over 6000 degrees Celsius hitting a man’s flesh. I may add this property to melta weapons as well but I haven't done the math for it. The significantly reduced range and limited rate of fire seem like significant enough penalties in and of themselves anyway.
I have also house ruled the felling property eliminates toughness when there is no unnatural trait.
I am going to go with critical rules that I read on the forum somewhere but I can't honestly remember who first stated them so I apologize for that. The rule is as follows: Upon rolling a righteous fury, instead of rolling damage again, the player roles 1D5 on the relevant critical table and reduces that number by the unnatural toughness of the enemy. The number cannot be reduced to less than 1. This is also affected by the felling special quality which makes critical with the felling property more effective on crit roles if less certain of getting them due to the lack of tearing.
The RAW wrist and shoulder mounting seems to be a cut and paste job from the DH rule book because it specifies that it is only effective with pistol type weapons. This makes the upgrade extremely situational in its use not to mention the fact that there are numerous representations that counter that in the cannon. With that in mind I will allow basic weapon types to use the attachment unless it seems ridiculous.
A new talent for melee specialists that replicates the effects of the gunslinger talent is in order. I don't see any reason why the melee classes should be penalized when the ranged classes are not. Something like Blademaster or
Maybe Kensai
?
DoS for Melee: degrees of success on melee attacks IN ADDITION TO the initial attack confirmation may be used to replace a low roll on one D10 roll for that attacks damage calculation. See example below
Librarian psychic abilities are restricted far too much in with regards to chapters, I feel as though the player should be able to choose the chapter he/she wishes to role play without being pigeon holed into playing a character mechanically a certain way. As an attempt to homogenize the class into something more flexible for role-playing purposes I will make most psychic abilities fall under the general abilities list and restrict only the most iconic chapter abilities like blood boil. I may simply make the chapter psychic abilities available to all librarians with an increased cost so that librarians of the chapter that the ability comes from will still benefit from cheaper experience costs.
A librarian may only take abilities from another chapter list up to rank 3
.More librarian changes to follow
Artificer armour found in the DW core rulebook does not, in my opinion, fit the fluff of the setting. I believe that artificer armour is tremendously effective because it is manufactured with the specific needs of the space marine in mind. Each of the classes that pay for the exalted artificer armour should get what they pay for. A good example of an advantage that I refer to would be a psychic hood built into the helmet of the Armour of master quality. Another example would be advanced targeting optics that would act as preysense and a motion predictor for a Devastator or perhaps a wolf helm that allowed the space wolfs advanced senses to work without hindrance
I have decided to alter the lightning claw and power fist to better represent the specialized nature of each weapon.
Lightning Claw: melee 2D10+3 Pen 8 Type E Special: Tearing, special
Power fist: 2D10* Pen 12 Type E Special: unbalanced, -2 initiative.
The power fist is designed to be devastating to armour so I increased the penetration of the weapon to properly illustrate the difference between it and its other melee counterparts. I also altered the balance because I believe that the unwieldy trait was a holdover from DH and added a penalty to initiative because the weapon is powerful but slow.
With the application of the DoS melee rule this weapon is clearly the best choice for destroying truely heavy targets.
No doubt there will be more house rules to come in the future as I have not looked at all the heavy weapons.....