carrotcolossus said:

Falling damage is at the top left of page 261--roll 1d10+1 for every meter fallen. Armor does not help, damage is considered Impact, and you use Table 8-3 to determine which part of the body hit first and took the damage. At the GM's discretion, the damage can be adjusted based on what surface you fall onto, gravity, etc.

The new errata just went up. A lot of stuff for RoB and some tweaks to the main book as well. Weapons have been reworked, and the Devastator has been nerfed so much (both the specialty and weaponry) that I doubt I'll ever see one in my game, assuming I use these new rules.

You're looking at it backwards Brand.

Nerf? No! It's a rebalancing, and a much-needed one at that. Astartes Weapons were tremendously powerful and needed to be fixed.
Never see a Dev again? No. In stead you'll start to see Dev's with weapons other than the all-too-ubiquitous Heavy Bolter. Some actual variety. Not the "I can kill anything short of a Land Raider" Heavy Bolter.

These changes are for the better.

BYE

With a lower damage and ROF I think you'll see fewer tactistators (tactical marines w/heavy bolters) as well. Since the massive damage output of this variant doesn't outweigh the limitations of using the weapon (full-auto, no dev abilities, etc.) as much as it used to. I think you'll see Tactical marine players bringing more plasma and melta now (as it should be if you ask me). It also gives the devestator a more obvious role to play in a game. Since Godwyn bolters can't full-auto many of the special abilities, such as suppresion fire, requires the specialist (or at least a character with a heavy bolter).

In regards to the post above, I am amazed that almost all weapons with full-auto fire had this option removed, except for the "real" Heavy class weapons.

I still haven't made up my mind whether I like this or not - but I also think it could add a better tactical layer, as they will be needed for pinning operations.

I also look forward to someone doing the math on all these wapons to see how they stack up

Okay, just scanning over the new values, in-depth analysis follows later in a seperate thread. Allow me to point out just one small thing: the Godwyn-Bolter and the Combi/Storm Bolter have different ROF values. Maybe a quick fix of such issues is possible? Unless it is intended?

Other than that I'd like to say once more to FFG. The quick picking up on input by the community is part of why I like this company a lot . And rewriting the whole weapon stats within 9 months after release takes some guts (as it implies failure on the original design). Nonetheless I prefer a company who quickly fixes mistakes than a company which pretends to have a perfect product when it obviously does not.

And I'd like to add again though that a shout-out to us "beta testers" here on FFG Forums in the errata would have been nice.

More later.

Alex

I cannot stress enough how much better the revised weapons make Deathwatch overall.

H.B.M.C. said:

Some of the changes are good, yes. But here's the rub. The ONLY thing a Devastator can do is shoot things at range. That's it. If anything gets close, he's dead. Apothecaries can heal. Assault Marines are ultra-mobile and destroy things in close. With the new rules, they're the best Horde-killers, too. Librarians have psychic powers. Techmarines get the extra tech and can repair/hack security. Tacticals make great leaders. Every specialty (apart from the Devastator) gets at least a few nifty abilities to fight in melee. With the new rules, ranged attacks are now weaker than melee--they generally have lower damage scores and no bonuses from Strength. That would be one thing, but then they nerfed (yes, nerfed) the Devastator's ability to kill Hordes; the Assault Marine's Wrathful Descent is twice as effective as Unrelenting Devastation.

The point is, EVERYONE can carry a ranged weapon and blow stuff up. Only the Devastator gets no melee abilities (other than curl up and cry until someone saves you, aka Stalwart Defense). That's why there's no real reason to use one under these rules.

Brand said:

Untrue. He only can't handle melee-oriented enemies, especially of the elite and master tier. But when those charge other marines also have problems.

Brand said:

So who kills vehicles in your kill-team? Who kills the super-tough master-tier enemies? Chaos Terminators? Monstrous Creatures? Even as a sniper the Dev is probably more effective because he gets the relevant talents earlier.

One amendment I will probably house rule is that the Tac's Bolter Mastery does not extend to heavy weapons.

Alex

PS Also I am quite happy now that my Crimson Fists Dev took Immovable Warrior and not UD months ago.

Brand said:

I'd also like to point out that the +1d5 doubles with Storm of Iron.

Alex

I assume the errata to weapon special traits still applies to the new tables. For example, the new errata says that melta guns double penetration at short range, so this would still happen. Specifically (and the reason I ask) I note that the new errata has thunder hammers doubling strength bonus, but the new table does not reflect this.

ak-73 said:

As a GM I am very happy with these changes. I would say that the Heavy Bolter and Devestator got some much needed balance. I might be inclined to call it a nerf, but it was very necessary. When a Devestator with Heavy Bolter can kill anything in one round of firing there isn't much flavor to the game or really any reason for anybody else to show up.

ak-73 said:

Any melee opponent will try to close with the party. The Dev is the worst close-quarters combatant, easily. I don't see how anyone can argue the point--the other marines can fight up-close, but the Dev can only handle weaker opponents.

ak-73 said:

Who kills the vehicles, baddies, etc.? Everyone. If it's a mission where the team knows they're going up against vehicles, anyone can grab a Multi-melta for the trip and blast away. Librarians use psychic powers to blast bosses and groups of minions alike. Heck, the techmarine once started a small avalanche with his servo-arm that stranded an enemy column and left them easy pickings.

My whole point is that everyone can pull off these things, but the only real deficiency now is the Dev's focus on ranged combat and lack of other abilities (especially melee). It's not so much the changes to the weapons, which is something that was needed (though I'll have to wait to see how the changes affect the game, considering Hordes still have insanely powerful, unavoidable attacks compared to the team). What irks me the most is that the Dev also got nerfed to the point of uselessness against Hordes; he's little better than any other specialty, which seems silly considering you'd think the guy with the big gun would be perfect for wiping out tons of weaker foes. And I can see why you're happy; Immovable Warrior is easily the better choice now.

ak-73 said:

The book seems to indicate that, and I run it that way, but using the order of operations that is suggested by the company (last I heard, anyway) the +1d5 would be tacked on at the end. And even if you run SoI as doubling the total amount, the assault marine's Whirlwind of Death (picked up a few ranks later) would double the +1d10 magnitude reduction from Whirlwind of Death; that's still twice the bonus. The Dev would receive roughly the same bonus as Assault for 4 ranks. Again, the Assault Marine is now the best Horde killer.

Brand said:

And why didn't the Dev shoot the **** out of whatever could cause the avalanche? "MAH HAVAY BOWLTAIR ARE OWNLAY GEWD FAOR TEH SHOOTINGZ!?!?!" ?

Brand said:

I do follow you here, nerfing UD wasn't the single most clever move here when the HB's RoF has been diminished, calming down a bit on the "I can destroy one Horde/turn" thing.

Brand said:

Let's not get carried away : 2*1d5 is better than 1d10. Strictly. Don't belive me? Do the maths. I know I'm arguing for the sake of argument here, but still

Then, the AM really chews on Hordes when he charges them, yeah. And then, when he's stuck in melee with it, he struggles to have as much fun. And what you never mentionned here, the AM is in Melee with Hords. Meaning he takes hits. Meaning he may die quite soon. But that's his job. He charges, he tries lowering the Horde's deadliness without dying himself, and then he hopes his buddies will help him finish the job. The Dev does damage. All the time. If he doesn't, that means he's engaged in melee. That means the rest of the team failed to help him which mean they suck OR he got engaged in melee because he sucks.

Then again, Devs get Swit Attack (yeah, at Rank 8, I know), don't they? Techies don't. Stop whining. Get over it, brace your Heavy Bolter and get ready to sent massive hell on the enemies of Man, as always, Bro'.

PS : House Rules + Elite Advances FTW.

I think you are looking at this from a different angle than I am. You are unhappy that the Devestator is no longer the "Horde killing monster" of the party, although with Metal Storm rounds he's still going to wipe out a Horde a turn. I am happy because the Devestator is no longer the "Has to kill Hordes because nobody else can and oh by the way taking anything but the Heavy Bolter is mechanically inferior" and is now the "Heavy Weapons Specialist with multiple options and can tailor himself to various roles based on the mission guy". Which is to say, in line with the fluff.

As an additional aside, making UD a straight +1d5 eliminates a host of mathematical headaches that I had as a GM.

Stormast said:

Because he was busy blasting another group about a block away, along with the Assault Marine making bombing runs with frag grenades. The Librarian and Techmarine split off to intercept the reinforcements.

Stormast said:

I'm aware that it's SLIGHTLY better, but you'll notice that I said they were "roughly the same." And it's only for a few ranks. Personally, I'd rather they reduced it to a flat 1d10, the same as the Assault Marine's bonus. I'll probably run it that way.

Stormast said:

Except the Assault Marine doesn't have to get into melee until he wants to. He can soften up a Horde with grenades or bolter fire. Then he can charge in and tear it up. The Dev has to keep distance or he'll be chomped in short order since his ability to cause damage in melee is minimal, at best.

Stormast said:

I haven't seen anyone happy with the Techmarine's write-up, as is. That's a different beast. Even with the lack of a class-available ability for more attacks with the servo-arm, the Techmarine can strut around with a Multi-melta and smash close opponents with the servo-arm. I went with the option of allowing the sacrifice of a Reaction for a second attack, but I'd like to see the errata address the issue.

Oh, and I don't need to brace. I have Bulging Biceps, so ha. Er, my group does, anyway.

Stormast said:

Amen to that.

Balodek said:

Actually, you'll only see Hordes being taken out in one round (by one opponent) if they're fairly small, roughly the 20-30 magnitude range. At best, a starting Dev with Heavy Bolter and Metal Storm rounds who lands all six shots will do 13 + 1d5 (6 shots + 6 damage from MS rounds + 1 from exploside damage + 1d5 from UD). That's still very good, but that's a perfect shot. The damage will increase a bit (even more if you use SoI as doubling the entire magnitude damage and not the base). One-shotting a Horde of more than magnitude 60 will take some doing, which seems reasonable. The downside to this is that the Horde-killing ability of everyone else went down, too; just not as much as the Dev's ability. What really hurts is the weakening of the frag grenade, since that's what a lot of the other specialties use for Horde damage.

Actually, the Dev as-is is really more of a sniper if you look at the Talents available. IW and UD specify heavy weapons, but the majority of Talents are best if used with a single-shot type weapon since they help with called shots, shooting at extreme ranges, firing and moving, etc. If the Dev was to be a real heavy weapons specialist, there would be more heavy-weapons-specific abilities they could tap. The specialty is really just a catch-all for "guys that like to shoot."

Brand said:

I generally run Hordes of that size for flexibility. Don't forget that getting down below 50% is a willpower -10 test. The majority of Talents are best with single shot weapons, but you'll note that most of the Heavy Weapons are single shot. The Heavy Bolter is still very good, just not as overwhelmingly good as it was. Taking it down to ROF 6 hurts, but since all of the other bolters lost Full-Auto the Heavy Bolter is still king when it comes to sending massive amounts of specialty ammo downrange. I guess I'm not seeing a big problem with the Frag Grenade, 2d10+2 X Blast (4) is still doing 5 Magnitude damage to a Horde if it gets past Toughness and Armor, which against your average Horde troops it should still be able to do.

Balodek said:

I know about the WP tests, which is why I picked the number I did. With the HB, and some friendly interpretations of the SoI rules, the Dev maxes out at around 40 magnitude damage a round with a perfect roll. An average would probably be around 30ish, which is why I said anything over 60 will be hard to one-shot, even for high-XP characters. The wrinkle, of course, comes from melee with the crazy interactions of Talents, multiple attacks, and lots of possible hits. I'll have to recalculate that some time, but at the moment I'm guessing a Storm Warden Assault Marine will be the new Horde-killer.

And I agree about the heavy weapons and being single-shot, but it just emphasizes the heavy bolter went from probably the best weapon in the game to something the Dev will want to ditch ASAP. Just from eyeballing the new weapon chart, the Astartes Plasma Cannon seems like the best combination of range, damage, penetration, and Horde-killing capabilities, though I am curious how deadly the Astartes Lascannon will be with the new Proven trait.

The frag grenade caught my eye because, while not a huge downgrade (and the extra +2 damage is nice), it's a further push towards melee over range. I noticed other specialties than the Dev and Assault Marine would reserve the frag for Hordes since it did about the same they could hope to accomplish with melee and was safer (obviously). Now, depending on weapon choice/specialty, melee will be a faster way to damage a Horde because of multiple attacks, extra hits from Degrees of Success (especially with the Horde size modifier), Power Field weapons, and other Talents/effects like Thunder Charge (which is why I expect Storm Warden Assault Marines to be the new top Horde-killer).

FIrst, while the unrelenting devestation power being reworked is part of the core errata, the retooling of the weapon stats is listed as optional.

Second, while implementing all of the changes will require some rework of he individual Kill Teams and some balancing of encounters on the GMs part, this doesn't break devestators, it just makes the heavy bolter not the greatest weapon since sliced bread, and many on here were already playing with nerfed heavy bolters anyhow.

Remember the heavy bolter is a starting weapons and the other weapons should be something they want to get their hands on. In the RAW, there is little to no motivation for a dev to carry anything BUT a heavy bolter as he could spend the 20 req on that weapon on specialty ammunition and kill half the enemies. Now because of the 'nerf' you've injected more tactical choices into the mix, which I quite like, and maybe devs will take new weapons they wouldn't have in the previous stat line, and maybe now they'll use other attack types such as supressing fire.

RE: Lascannon: Proven makes the weapon not subject to bad luck, that's all. It means that you can't, by accident or bad luck, shoot someone with a lascannon and do 15 damage. The average damage won't be broken from that, it's just a way of ensuring the minimum damage isn't garbage (kind of like how boltguns max damage went down, but their min damage went up)

RE: Frags: Tacticals and the like aren't going to have multiple attacks until later, so the frag into the horde is still a safer place to stand, even if it's slightly reduced mag damage. Frag = 4 mag damage now, melee for most might be 4 mag damage, or it could be 0, or 1.

@Alex: I agree, this change took some big brass ones, even if they hide it behind a 'in case you want to roll less dice' shield. I greedily await your mathmatical analysis of the new numbers

Side question to the rest of you, does the new description of psychic powers read to everyone the way it does to me? Meaning that is a psy power is NOT an attack and it does NOT target a person/creature/thing you could then use a psychic power and make an attack in the same turn? Seems to be an about face on prior errata and kind of makes sense, though I wonder about defensive powers combined with attack actions and how that'll work...

One thing that i'm really curious about after reading the new.. I mean alternative weapon stats, is what route ffg will take in the future. will new supplements carry on witht he old statsm or those presented in the latest errata.

I'm heavily leaning towards these new stats, but it will be too much of a hassle to use these if ffg plans to go the old route, stat-wise for weapons.

I hope someone from ffg reads this and could shed some light on this.

At least now the assault cannon is indeed king when compared to the heavy bolter.

I'm kinda liking the retooling of the stats (although I do think its sad full auto got removed from so much, because its much easier to calculate over semi auto). Some things still need to be toned down though (here's lookin at you Astartes Auto Shotgun).

So, peoples thoughts on how this would work with DW characters alongside DH/RT characters? Less disparity in damage?

Also, did they rework weights? I don't recall bolters being so hefty.

Also, hell yeah meltaguns, now they're as mean as they should be.

Charmander said:

Charmander said:

I'd still like to hear just what the Devastator is supposed to be the best at now (apart from being a sniper who never approaches the enemy). Every specialty excels at something (some more than one). The insanely costly stat advances (which the poor Techmarine shares), reduced killing power, and lack of melee ability makes it a pretty poor choice considering every other character can haul around heavy weapons to smash vehicles and big baddies. If the other specialties weren't automatically trained to use heavy weapons, I'd see no problem with parity between the specialties. That would break canon, of course, and it wouldn't fit. The benefits of the class are far outweighed by the drawbacks, in my opinion.

Charmander said:

I agree that there needs to be inviting factors with all of the weapons so that each is a viable option. I'd rather see the weaker weapons improved to suit their various roles than just greatly weakening the HB.

Charmander said:

It shouldn't be broken, but I expect its deadliness to be raised slightly with the new rolled 3 minimum on dice. Shooting a partner with a lascannon is something to be avoided, almost as much as getting shot with one.

Charmander said:

Oh, no doubt that it's safer. I'm just saying that, for dealing damage to the Horde, melee will quickly be the better option. Assuming a base WS of 50 and an average roll of 50, you're looking at roughly 2-3 hits on a size 30 Horde (+30 to hit plus any other modifiers like bonuses from Hatred). Throw in multiple attacks (whenever the character gets them), Power Field weapons once a little Renown is gained, and any other Talents or an increased WS score and you'll see the damage quickly outstrip the frag grenade. I said it wasn't a huge change, just that it's a further push towards getting into melee to really hurt a Horde.

Charmander said:

That's exactly how it reads to me, so that'll be a change I'll have to make to how things have been. I've been treating it as Psychic Powers or Attack Actions, not both in the same round.

KommissarK said:

The Auto Shotgun is a beast. Not having RoB yet, this is the first I've seen of it. To quote Aliens, everyone should pack one of those "for close encounters."

Damage between DH/DW should be a lot closer if you use the new weapon damage, definitely.

The weights seem to be the same, at least for the bolters. I haven't checked the others. Them's some big guns, alright.

Brand said:

He's still better at using his Lascannon to ultra-kill the Big Baddie. He doesn't exterminate a Hive Tyrant with one full-auto round of HB, which is cool as far as I'm concerned, but I think the thing is now those Tau commanders will see that Called Shot + no malus from distance + (etc) CAN be deadly when it's a big 5d10 shot.

Though I'll admit the Dev goes from number 1 to much deeper in the "highly broken list".