One of my players asked me this last time, when he (while running around with a laspistol) was blown away with an autopistol for the xth time. And admittantly I didn't really have a good answer...
The context of this question is Acolyte Ranks 1-5, the weapons of choice for those ranks are either SP or Las (yes not entirely true but talking in general here). In this case, given the choice why would one ever bother to learn to use a lasweapon over a SP. What on earth is the advantage of a lasweapon over a solid projectile weapon?

Ok I can name a few:
- recharge the pack instead of buying new bullets (but bullets are cheap...)
- overcharge pack... yes well, put that vs e.g. dumdum ammo and you lost that round as well.
- a laspistol is reliable and an autopistol jams on >91 when using 'burst' option. Ok.. but again just carry two of them.
- laspistols are lighter then autopistols. Ok but carrying two autopistols vs two lasguns differs 2kg. Might be an issue in real life, but not in an rpg game.
- flavour... no argument there.

In the end though you will have to fight with them and in this case, as far as I can see, one would ALWAYS go for a weapons with a 'burst' option, giving a +10 or +20 AND doing multiple damage AND can be used to pin targets.
Yes there ARE some lasweapons with a semi burst option in the DH book, 2 to be exact, the lascarbine (2) and lasgun (3), versus 10 SP weapons with semi and burst, where e.g. the autogun next to the semi (3) burst, also has full autoburst, of no less then 10 rounds. Granted your clip is empty in 3 rounds, but so is the bloodsystem of your target. An autogun will give a +20 BS, lets take a more advanced BS of 50% = 70% chance to hit, means on average you will hit someone 9 times with an autogun with a potential of hitting 24! times vs a lasgun with an average of 3 times with a potential of 9, doing exactly the same damage per hit.

So what am I missing, what's the big advantage of a lasweapon over an SP?

EDIT (summary of replies)

There have been a lot of replies and to keep some overview here *my* summary of it (with an emphasis on *my*, cause some changes have been made in the process):

The answer to my question: 'no you're not missing anything'. Some house rules have been proposed:

In all I think the 'charm' of the SP are the SA and FA, this is their area. You *can* have Las with SA and FA but they're just a lot more expensive and rightly so because of the immense power drain you have to do with every shot. So I would argue that Las shouldn't get any (extra) bursts. This leaves either:

1. balancing SP
2. improving damage of Las.

1. I believe there has been one suggestion to balance SP, which sounds attractive:

Remove the +20 BS on FA but increasing SA by +1 hit/DoS

2. There have been a LOT suggestions to improve Las or the use of it:

* Add pen, e.g. 1 on pistols, 2 on basic and 3 on heavy (or double these numbers)
* Add damage, e.g. dito pen.
* Half T (rounded up) vs E (and X)
* Allow modifications (depending on quality of weapon): common +1 dam, 2 charges; good +2 dam, 4 charges; best +3 dam 8 charges
* extreme range = long range
* shift the range penalties by 1 step in favor of Las (because of its ease of use and high accuracy)
* allow free (half) aim action after first shot (because EVERY las shot is effectively a tracer round so you can adjust your weapon)

There have also been given quite some reasons why Las (circumstance wise) is better then SP:

* there are circumstances that Ammo IS an issue
* charge packs can recharge (SP obvisouly not)--> Net 1 hour; In Bright Sunlight 8 hours; Overcast 12 hours.
* untraceable
* highly accurate
* easy to use/learn to use
* shooting with las into (so not from within) water is not a problem (although your angle might be slightly off due to the refractive index of air-water), with an SP it is. (The latter is confirmed by Mythbusters)
* its less pollutant (which really matters if you live in a Hive)

Stuff I certainly disagree with (mainly because I majored in physics):
Las is silent: No it isn't. High energy discharges make a LOT of noise (unless in Vacuum of course) (in case your doubting-->think of lightning)
SP doesn't work in Vacuum: Yes they do, they do not need (extra) Oxygen for combustion, its sealed within the compound (else it wouldn't be an explosive).

The weapons in DH (and indeed the entire combat system) is not designed to be a case of different competitive choices. It is built to be fluffy and consistent with the 40k world. Lasweapons are an excellent choice if you equip an entire army, because they are reliable and save a lot on your logistics compared to autoguns. For an Acolyte, who generally does shorter more intense fights and has only one or two guns to take care of, the SP-weapons are generally the better choice.

Mellon said:

your answer mainly fits the 'flavour' category I already mentioned.

As for longer and bigger fights (say 50 vs 50). 50 lasguns vs 50 autoguns... true logistically maybe harder, but the statistical result will be the the autoguns win this match. And that for only 30% extra costs on material (I think that manpower costs will outweigh the material costs). So again nope. But that's not the point.

Don't get me wrong, I *do* get the flavour part, under certain circumstances there will only be a knife or a longbow to fight with. And sometimes you'll encounter a Plasma or even a near mythical bolter which heavily outclasses the standard issues. My point is: acolytes start out with either a Las or SP. Starting out with Las will give you a seriously disadvantage from the start. Why?!? I would get it if Las e.g. has a couple of points in penetration, making it a choice of style. Unless I'm missing something, which is what my question boils down to!

Easy, you're not the only one thinking Lasguns are underpowered in this game. There are tons of house rules out there boosting Las weaponry somewhat.

One of the main problem is really the lack of full auto, or rather that full auto lasguns (a type of Hellgun) are so rare and costly you might as well try for Bolt Weapons, which will mostly outperform them anyway.

If the acolytes can get hold of D'Laku Hellguns or similar improved Las weapons from IH early on, that might make the difference. But as I said higher availability and price means that the normal Autogun and Autopistol still wins. And of course IH introduces alot of new SP weapons that generally outperforms the ones in the main book anyway.

So you can either tell your players to chose Las only for flavour reasons (like the Guardsman who still belives in his trusty Lasgun and refuses to buy SP training), accept the fact that they will always chose SP and use Las only for NPCs, change the way autofire, semi-auto and single shot works, or improve Las weapons somewhat.

In my game I allow Semi-Auto to hit per DoS rather than every 2 DoS, which makes Lasguns quite ok compared to Autoguns, at least when BS skill is low. That combined with overcharge packs (basically +1 damage at no higher cost) makes them quite alright, and they still have the same amount or more ammunition, as well as no need to buy more ammo. If you still think that's not ok, a general +1 Penetration to all Las weapons could help without overpowering them too much (but it would make most non-FA SP weapons alot more lackluster.). Even with such a small boost the humble laspistol will outperform both the stub revolver and stub automatic, at least with overcharge packs.

Do what you like but beware - it's easy to tip the scale the other way and if you compare with Autofire then almost all other weapons seems alot weaker.

The fairly common swaparoo with FA and SA modes and DoS needed might be enough to balance them fairly well, as getting the 18 DoS to hit with 10 bullets from autofire is practically impossible - and even getting the 5 DoS just to hit with 3 bullets is hard enough. I haven't done it myself as there is hardly any point in shooting anything but Semi-Auto, unless you just want to hit with a single shot. But again, it depends on your play style. Me, I don't mind the gunslinger that shoots down tons of weak enemies with autofire.

Good luck, and "Flashlights! For everyone!"

As for longer and bigger fights (say 50 vs 50). 50 lasguns vs 50 autoguns... true logistically maybe harder, but the statistical result will be the the autoguns win this match. And that for only 30% extra costs on material (I think that manpower costs will outweigh the material costs). So again nope. But that's not the point.

Mellon wasn't talking about 50 vs 50, but 5 million vs 5 million - the scale the Imperial Guard regularly fights at. What do you think a modern army would give for having their standard infantry weapons being rechargeable at a standard power outlet, completely eliminating its ammo from supply chain issues? And should you be away from a power outlet, just recharge from sunlight and heat. A platoon cut off can scavenge for a lot of things, but ammo usually isn't among them. Also consider that a jam usually consumes the entire clip in the weapon and you'll see how ammo conservation is rather enhanced by Reliable weapons.

As for a personal example, we had an Imperial Guard round a while ago and were often given a choice between lasguns and SP weapons. It was rather funny to see how everyone else always went for the flashy (or rather: not flashy) SP weapons, gave off a few Full Auto bursts in the first combat they were in and then went back to Single Shot for the rest of the mission because they were nearly out of ammo while my trusty Lasgun thoomed out 3-shot semi-auto bursts the entire time, quite often taking out enemies who were busy with reloading or unjamming their oh-so-deadly weapons.

Once ammo conservation is no longer a consideration, SP wins hands down of course - but then again, why aren't you carrying a bolter?

>why would you ever use a lasweapon?

A question which I have been asking for a long time. Given the typical life expectancy of your average Guardsman in combat, why would logistics be an issue? Dead men need no ammo. It's even worse when you consider the most common Xeno threat to be TB8 True Grit Orks.
Lasguns are just terrible, and to make you feel even worse, FFG keeps introducing new ammo and weapon upgrades for SP weapons in every new book. Bolt weapons got Tearing. Plasma got Maximal mode. ITS introduced new ammo and upgrades for even Plasma and Melta weapons.

I created the following house rules were created to emphasise that Las weapons are precise and have flexible power systems that a user can vary to his requirements. I like the idea that a Sollexi Magos Militant can modify on the fly the output of his energy weapons in range, damage, penetration, adding other traits like accurate, tearing, volatile, shocking while taking drawbacks in recharge, unreliable, overheat and other characteristics but I hadn't come up with any playable house rules for this yet.

"Lasburn!" Weapon Quality : applies to all Basic and Pistol class Las weapons
Las weapons are especially accurate and dangerous in skilled hands. When taking Called Shots, add 1 to the damage for every degree of success on the WS test.

" Overcharge Power Mode "
Basic and Pistol class Lasweapon (other than Hellguns, Hotshot charged Lasguns or Poor quality craftsmanship) can use variable power settings

+1 Damage and Pen: uses 2 charges (Common craftsmanship)
+2 Damage and Pen: uses 4 charges (Good craftsmanship or better)
+3 Damage and Pen: uses 8 charges (Best craftsmanship only)

A best quality lasgun with S/3/- can blow 24 charges in one round for d10+6E Pen3. Las weapons of such quality and potency would certainly be worthy of the consideration of esteemed Rogue Traders and IG Officers as personal sidearms.

Alternatively, if you want something even simpler, just give Lasweapons the Maximal Mode that Plasma weapons get.

>why would you ever use a lasweapon?

A question which I have been asking for a long time. Given the typical life expectancy of your average Guardsman in combat, why would logistics be an issue? Dead men need no ammo. It's even worse when you consider the most common Xeno threat to be TB8 True Grit Orks.

The most common Xeno threat, yes. The most common threat in general would likely be rebellious human worlds.

Cifer said:

Uhm because one Bolt shell costs the same as 300 rounds of regular ammo? Which is incidentally enough for most missions even when using 10-round bursts.

Of course once spending 300 gelt on a mission just for ammo is no issue at all, bolters for everyone! But that is unlikely before very high ranks.

@Guest: AH the WS test just proves how inferior the lasguns are!

Nah, seriously I think the suggestions are ok (except the maximal setting stuff). The Best quality lasguns seems a bit like Hot-Shot packs with more than one shot, not bad.

Lasburn becomes good with the Crack Shot talent, but not nearly as good as FA. In fact I use a very similar rule with ALL weapons, except called shots are not needed and the max damage is 3.

Cifer said:

>why aren't you carrying a bolter?

Discretion. A bolter is a prestige weapon. It definitely attracts attention, which covert operatives may not want. SP and Las wounds on corpses are common, bolter wounds are not.

>The most common Xeno threat, yes. The most common threat in general would likely be rebellious human worlds.

True but Orks are one of the most common races in the Galaxy. Odds of Orks coming up as enemies are not insignificant.

Friend of the Dork said:

tbh, the lasburn! was rule created to settle a debate about how a laser should be more accurate than "Accurate" Hunting Rifles. The overcharge was from a certain BL book where a guardsman manages to kill a Chaos Marine with a lasgun on full charge .

We've never play tested the maximal thingy.

I have solved this, and many other balance problems, by simple changing the way FA and SA work.

Full auto loses it´s +20 to BS and Semi auto gains an extra hit every DoS.

This makes semi auto fire much more practical in every situation which isn´t point blank (where full auto should be superior). The effect has been vastly more interesting combats where the acolytes does something else than simply spray and pray.

My Guardsman player uses his Long Las with Ammo-Selector loaded with two hot-shots and an overcharge pack to good effect...

To put it brief: besides fluff & stuff, there is no reason for a Rank 1 - 5 pc to go and fetch a standard las weapon other then the Long Las. He or she will fair better with SP weapon in all but the most special of circumstances.

My reason for totting a Las weapon:

• I expect to spend a long-long time away from any source of ammonition (more shots)
• I expect to fight in vacuum (no air to ignite the corpid in the bullet)
• I expect to fight some strange creatures made with the GM toolkit (which might be harmed by Las since it is energy)
• I expect to shoot into water from outside of it (where a las beam might carry further then a bullet). VERY often
• I expect a shortage on bullets (perhaps on a world lacking material resources but still rich on energy)

Luthor Harkon said:

Perhaps this is going to be another notch against the humble las-weapon, but doesn't the fire selector only apply to bolt and SP pistols/basics?

I think a lasgun translates about right. In tabletop they are one of the worst weapons in the game. They mostly exist for guardsman as a cheap to mass produce, practically ammo-less weapon.

Why would a DH character ever learn to use one? A long las is definitely still a good choice for a sniper. Having one as backup is good for when you run out of autogun ammo. A lascannon is still an excellent weapon against tough single targets. A number of careers stat with the basic las skill, so its not like they spent a lot of xp on it.

from france

because in some situation discretion is wanted:

- against creature that hear but not see

- if you don't want to have a lot of blood loss for what ever reason

- because if you want it fluff appart from ig veteran and ganger las and not sp where the norm

- because you can be track by a bullet by other "cops" and las does not lead to link

because if you are concern with pollution it pollute less.

..........

Storhamster said:

How many games have you GM'ed with this house rule? How good would you say your players are at min-max'ing? How has it changed the dynamics of the fight... what do they do differently now? Do the PCs try to rush towards the enemies to benefit from Point Blank (and use Full Auto) or do they now prefer to stand back, try to gain cover, and use Semi auto?

wow, thats a lot of very interesting replies in a very short time! So first of, thnx for the interesting suggestions. Beside the other reasons to use a las weapons (e.g. near water, vacuum, sound, energy, little ammo etc) the following also struck me as the most elegant way in terms of houserules to give the las more potency (or better said, the SP less):

And I have the same questions as Corwyn:

Corwyn said:

Currently my Psyker prefers his Las pistol over his SP. He generally never has to reload in combat due to the high clip capacity. Not having rapid reload this helps keep him from spending the actions to reload and instead allows him to take aim actions when he is not doing other things to people with his mind.

The players play an inquisitorial kill team, as such our games are quite combat heavy. So for we have had 5 sessions, each at 3-4 hours, in the campaign. Since the games are combat heavy the players try to be as effective ass possible, I actually encourage min-maxing since any self respecting acolyte would want to be as effective as possible in their role.

Since we changed the rules for FA and SA I have observed the following:

The players stay in cover as much as possible
The players only run for point blank if they are really close to the enemy (below 10 metres)
They make much more use of grenades, suppressive fire and other combat actions

As an effect of the above battles have become much more enjoyable both for me as GM (since the mooks must use different tactics as well) and the players seem to enjoy themselves. They are constantly trying to find new ways to combine actions for maximal effect. They also team up alot, example:

"Private Junk! Suppressive fire on those boxes, I´ll flank left and grenade them!"

Two things:

One, lasweapons can be charged from sunlight. It takes longer- I can't find any hard-and-fast rules on how long, so I rule that recharging from a terminal takes an hour, by bright sunlight takes 8 hours, and by overcast/indoor lighting takes 12 hours. Very handy if you are stuck on a Feral world for an extended period with no place to buy new bullets...

Two, on a ship/ space station, a lasgun's lack of armour penetration can be a good thing. My players just completed a mini-scenario where they had to track down a Hullghast on a space station. Again, I couldn't find any official rules for hull breaches, so I ruled that missed shots have a flat 1% per point of AP chance of causing a hull breach.

Those are both very setting-specific advantages, but at least it's something...

Simplest answer is make combat more realistic. Enemies in near full cover at 100m+ ranges who you may not even ID until after a bit of shooitng and deliberate attempts to identify rather than just shoot at where the firing seems to be coming from. Plenty of suppression to prevent aiming. I generally house rule that heavy automatic weapons immediately cause pinning tests, as does any sort of hit.

Then throw in that a 30 round magazine weight of 1kg each. Sure, you can carry 300 rounds of ammo...for 10kg of weight. Which isn't an issue for the guardsman or the arbite, but starts to add up pretty quick on some of the less STR oriented folks. especially if they want more than flak armor on.

Also, any sort of extended operation beyond "a few encounters." Fighting your way into a cult hideout should easily burn through 300 rounds of ammo on ten shot burst.

Final kicker on strategic logistics: lets say your fighting the xenos horde on some half assed feudal world, or are invading, or have simply been cut off from the major maufactories on the defence. Every single bullet would need to be brought in by warp capable spaceship. Under heavy fighting, the assumption is you need to have 200% of an ammo supply on hand per man (so you can emergency refill him) and another 100% will be consumed every two weeks in routine happenings (not big fights). Which means a three month stint with a major fight every month requires 3300 rounds per man, for a total weight of 330 kg. or you can move 12kg worth of charge packs per man into theater, and effctively have him supplied forever.

Assuming the guard deploys only 300,000 men, thats just about 110,000 tons of ammunition for rifles alone every 3 months. Compared to 6 las packs per man forever, with a grand weight of about 4,000 tons. Which means you now have of extra room for more expendables like artillery shells, tank parts, heavy weapon ammo, more men to replace losses etc...and it also means if resupply convoy beta gets caught in a warp storm and is two months late, you can still shoot.

I also imagine its much easier to train. No ballistics, no wind, no worrying about anything other than "point at target, pull trigger, laser goes where sights are" as oppossed to SP weapons which inherently require you train soldiers to accomodate for the range, with a different point of aim for every range. try shooting a weapon zeroed for 300m at 150. You'll overhsoot the target everytime till you signifcantly lower your aim point. But you'll hit the 50m target with the natural aim point because the bullet hasn't started to rise that far yet. And at three hundred you'll still need to hold a little high. That takes weeks to months of training and practice depending on the skill your looking for. A las weapon can be figured out in days because its staright line, LOS, every time..

Storhamster said:

And just so that there's no confusion, I see nothing wrong with min-maxing (I don't believe that it comes at the expense of role-playing). I'm actually glad to hear that this house rule seems to do well in an environment with min-max'ers... they're typically the first to find any game mechanic balance issues that need to be fixed.

Removing the +20 from full auto is an interesting option, one worth considering.

Additionally, modern military weapons with a high rate of fire (like a machine gun) use tracer rounds to improve accuracy, since a bullet is invisible. Perhaps a 'free' Aim action after the first shot, as you dial in your target.

Or finally, you can stick your players on feudal world, inside a space hulk, or in an situation where they loss access to ammo (or just introduce a ammunition shortage, the diamaticaly increases the price), and give those las weapons a chance to shine.

Rules as they are in the book makes lasguns pretty useless. So, our GM fixed it.

We use a house rule where toughness damage reduction is halfed (rounded up) against energy weapons (and explosive weapons). The average human as toughness 3 so against lasguns they only get reduced to a 2 toughness bonus, but things like my guardsman with 71 toughness gets reduced to a 4 toughness bonus. So the tougher the target the better an energy weapons becomes. This also brings plasma weapons closer to tabletop standards, where they excel at killing monstrous creatures. Power weapons also become pretty epic. We've been doing this for about 2 years of play now and have not found it unbalancing. It helps the slower firing energy weapons keep up with the full auto SP ones. It also makes bolt weapons worth the cost against some targets, but wont' change much against "normal" targets.

The PCs in our group uses a large variety of weapons of different types. The lower BS characters tend to go for SP weapons where hey can spray and pray at close range and suppress things (like my guardsman), and the higher BS characters go for energy weapons where they aim and make shots count from longer range. So, we don't get a lot of full auto sniping going on, since higher level characters can do called shots easier.