Rakiel said:

Dev says:

a) Pistols may only fire single shots in melee or in case of two-weapon wielding: one single shot each (aka no SA/FA in melee)

b) Pistols may only take standard attack actions, no full-attack actions in melee.

He already contradicts himself there, since two-weapon wielding is a full action, but whatever. He specifically disallows all full-round actions which are tied to pistols in melee, which pretty much means: Melee weapons are the only weapons in melee combat, which can take full-round actions. Granted there are not that many full-round talents tied to pistols, but this gives melee weapons too much of an advantage imo, since ranged weapons are already restricted and de facto penalized in melee: By either not firing at all or recieving a -30% to hit compared to point-blank range, which automatically already directly leads to fewer hits both in single shot and in SA and FA. Also, what should the pistolero do with the other half action he has at hand (especially since the dev practically just implied that dual-weapon-wielding in melee is a half-action)? Scratch his/her ass?

Also this looks rather odd to me, since it also implies, that beeing in melee combat disturbs the target so much, that it can't concentrate on anything specifically, except for melee-weapon fighting. Conversely, what about a melee-attacker and a melee-defender? Can the defender concentrate enough to take any full-round actions while trying to evade/parry the attackers weapon? What about aiming? What about full-round psionics?

For the record: Is there actually a way to get two quotes into a single posting? Would be cool if somebody shares his knowledge (I hate WYSIWYG-editors, seriously).

Inquisitor sapiens potensque said:

Also, in reality a rifle does just as much damage as a pistol within pistol-ranges, given they use a similar bullet. A 9mm pistol straight in the face: Good chance for KIA. A 7.62mm rifle-round to the face: Good chance for KIA. Pistols are not as bad as they initially seem in on paper. They're just more circumstantial and penalized by the way we do general warfare in reality, which makes rifles far more usefull due to their superior range (which is accurately transported into the game). Rifles usually dominate pistols and melee weapons at longer ranges (usually 25m and more), pistols, compact -rifles and machine-pistols usually dominate rifles in close-quarter combat (usually below 25m) and melee weapons absolutely dominate rifles once the melee-user is in melee range (usually stabbing range). Pistols can be used okish in melee, but are bad as a direct defense in melee (try to parry a knife-stab with a pistol...), but can be still absolutely devastating once the pistol-wielder gets a single shot or a semi or full-auto burst off into the general direction of the target. Dark Heresy reflects this generally quite good imo. You don't bring a knife to a ranged fight and you generally do not bring a ranged weapon to a knife-fight.

On another note: No serious pistol-user is going to use a pistol with just a single-hand, unless he absolutely has to (I suppose you never recieved an according training or at least had a pistol in your hand?). Aikimbo-action or one-hand-sideways are rule of cool and not really workable in reality, unless you just want to spray out ammo, without hitting anything particular but maybe innocent walls or less innocent bystanders. (With the noteable difference of first aiming both at the same target and shooting or aiming-shooting A-aiming-shooting-B-aiming-shooting A-..., which is both accuratly displayed by taking a full-round action instead of a half-round.)

Also it would be more helpfull, if you'd contribute to the theme instead of trying to derail it.

I don't think the intent of not being able to fire FA or SA in combat was done in an attempt to reflect what can and can't be done in real life. Dark Heresy is not some sort of Real Life Simulator. Characters can survive being shot in the head. That is not very accurate to real life.

If the OP is legitimate and it did come from Ross, then the decisions made were done for the sake of game balance not accurate real life simulation.

Eh. I concede that it doesn't apparently make such a massive difference late game or in very high power games, I've been apparently spending too much time playing low level/low power games and completely forgot that power fists even exist in core DH, let alone how ungodly potent they are. No-one tends to use them pre-Ascension/RT in groups I've been in due to the whole price tag attached versus the much cheaper Eviscerator, and since they are also one handed .. Ye gods.

However, I don't agree on every aspect. Moritat are flavorful batshit crazy death cultists who therefore happen to be fantastic in melee - gunslingers are relatively flavorful crazy asshats who happen to be fantastic with pistols. I do agree that gunslingers definitely do give a larger focus towards making you an extremely effective shooting machine versus moritat just giving tearing and some early talents/skills (tearing is fairly nice though), but similarly one could build a rather nice melee killing machine via gunslinger - you get a lot of early reaction talents and the first rank of careers tend to matter very little. You only get a penalty to use other Basic weapons, but not any to use melee weapons. Suddenly you can have a rank 1 character with Lightning Reflexes and what not. But I suppose this is just me rambling on - I view gunslingers as part of the optimum pistol build and moritat as part of the optimum melee build. If we agree that late game something like bursting in melee isn't nearly as big deal when people are running around with power fists and eviscerators, than it is still way too extremely potent in the early ranks. I suppose this would be where I take the biggest offense to it throwing aside any semblance of balance, and this hardly requires one have Gunslinger to make use of it, nor would I call it a nerfing pistols in melee.

But apart from the metallican gunslinger alternate rank you're not going to have all the required talents to do gun fu properly until late game.

And yeah, Moritat can be decent melee characters, in fact they can be godlike in melee. But other characters can do equally well in meleee once you've gone up in rank some, and do it with a powersword or something more awesome than the primitive weapons.

Eviscerators are extremely good as are power fists - I wouldn't really listing omnissiah axe as part of it because it is a tech priest only un-purchaseable item. Its also 2d5+5 I believe, so while nice, is not nearly as good as the 2d10+5 one handed stats you listed. Its something to keep in mind, but something far less likely for a person to be carrying around; let alone carrying two. Power Swords are well known and Great Weapons are nice, but they are "only" 2d10 Pen 4 and you cannot quick draw them. They are not really all that comparable to, say, an Eviscerator. They are wonderful weapons in their own right, but I maintain that Eviscerators stand well out... As do apparently Power Fists, and Power Blades are great, but the "power" weapons move up into an extremely different price category.

The 2d10+5 stats are from my digital copy of inquisitors handbook. Sneaky errata perhaps. No matter, there are plenty of other melee weapons that hold their own. Even the standard power blade will, coupled with sufficient strenght, make a mockery of any sort of full auto pistol shenanigans. The adding of SB to damage does something very important, it goes towards removing TB soak, which coupled with good armour is going to make many shots of the high RoF pistols bounce.

There are some nice pistols though - the BoM Inferno pistol does 5d10+2 Pen 20 when fired with Dual Shot. Hand Flamers do the always wonderful Fire effect, Webbers have Snare - but I do digress these are supplementary. When we deal with straight damage they don't tend to have such an amazing stat line as, say, the previously mentioned Power Fists 2d10 Pen 8 +2x SB, but I still do find Bolt Pistols to be an effective work horse, or the mentioned melta pistols, and what not. The standard inferno pistol at the horrible 10m range can still shoot up to 40m, which can be talented to not take a penalty, and fires a 2d10+4E shot with Pen 12. Respectable still.

Sure, but the guns you mentioned all have one thing in common . Single shot only. Except of course the bolt pistol, which does ok damage compared to many of the melee weapons with the awesome RoF of 2. Not exactly going to be getting those twelve hits of the hecuter with that one. And it's still outdamaged by equivalent tier melee weapons used with lightning attack.

I disagree entirely. I spoke specifically of a Best quality mono sword, for good reason. Best Quality Mono-Sword gives it a stat-line of 1d10+1 Pen 2 with +10WS to attack for 190 thrones. Going up a tier to the common quality chainsword is 275 thrones for 1d10+2 Pen 2 with tearing and no bonus to WS. Previously mentioned Moritat would make the best quality mono-sword tearing as well, so you lose out on exactly 1 damage for a +10WS that can negate the penalty of dual wielding them. That sounds like a pretty freaking great deal to me. Hecutors are 175 thrones and average availability, so that means its still 15 thrones cheaper than the compared mono sword - and since its a reliable weapon you can easily get a poor quality of it and simply lose the reliability and make it standard jamming chance for a wonderful price of 88 thrones. So you can get two hecutors for the price of a single BQ mono-sword, with change to spare, and a far better availability (poor quality hecutor is common, BQ mono is scarce). Carnodons I prefer to Hecutors are 200 thrones - so 10 more thrones than a BQ mono sword and same availability, but you can easily get them PQ and gain Unreliable trait for a 4% higher chance to jam (and maybe its personally I just roll lucky, but I tend to never have a jamming issue so I have no problem making them PQ), making them than Average availability and 100 thrones each.. So you can get 2 again for the price of a single BQ mono sword + 10 thrones.

Yes, melee weapons cost more, but they don't require ammo. The bolter has a 16 thrones per shot price tag attached to it. Pretty big deal. And even the hecuter with it's comparably low cost of ~1 throne per bullet would cost 12 thrones per combat round to use. It soon adds up.

I guess than I am speaking of low level games, or games where people aren't running around with two power fists and every talent and what not. Unloading with full auto in melee is extremely powerful when people can start with strong automatic pistols (or powerful semi-auto pistols) and do terrible terrible things to melee encounters. I don't really view it as trying to make pistols "****" in melee or what not, I just view it as taking away the spirit of the game/rules... And it doesn't take a gunslinger to do that. Gunslingers can do it better than anyone else, sure, but any class can pickup a pistol and do that.

Yeah, any class can do that. With severe penalties to hit which are going to make you hit less of those shots. Unless you've got the right talents, which require one to move up in rank, elite advances or the metallican gunslinger. At which point the melee characters will have access to some of their nice stuff. And no, it doesn't make pistols "****" in melee, there are more viable options anyway (and if you are absolutely hell bent on multiple hits, hack shotguns to the rescue). But I think it's a poor call to ban autofire in melee, it's not like it actually does anything but force the gunslingers to buy one or two "melee guns" that do more damage per hit or have scatter.

Let me tell you a small anecdote from my last session as GM. I sprung an ambush by Ork Kommandos on the acolytes. Our resident gun bunny opened up with dual shot and did horrible, horrible damage to the poor ork. The next time he fired with the same pistols he unloaded autofire, did two points of damage with probably eight or nine hits. The redemptionist with eviscerator killed one ork per round before he fired up his jetpack in the forest, rolled a 90+ on his pilot jump pack and almost died crashing into a tree. We all laughed heartily, as is customary in such situations.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but I'm going to reiterate my main point once again. Number of hits are not as important as damage per hit.

For the record: Is there actually a way to get two quotes into a single posting? Would be cool if somebody shares his knowledge (I hate WYSIWYG-editors, seriously).

Yeah, no. I've tried just opening up two windows with quote and copy-pasting the code. No dice. All you get for mucking about with formatting and such on this forum is headache and entire pages broken. I've given up, as you can see by my italics.

Seriously, what's wrong with BB-code?

If the OP is legitimate and it did come from Ross, then the decisions made were done for the sake of game balance not accurate real life simulation.

Sure, but that they made this ruling for game balance doesn't actually mean there was a balance problem to begin with.

Rangdango said:

People survive getting shot in the head all the time. It's called "grazing."

Rangdango said:

Tsk. Feel free to ask FFG if the posted answers are made up by me, if you don't believe me.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Tsk. Feel free to ask FFG if the posted answers are made up by me, if you don't believe me.

I don't think he actually wanted to question your legitimacy, but instead tried to point out that this ruling isn't the best choice.

P.P.S. And now any formating went up the wazoo... *sighs*

I give up with trying to fix the formating. What I wanted to say is:

ak-73: Tsk feel free to ask FFG if the posted answers are made up by my, if you don't believe me

I don't think he actually wanted to question your legitimacy, but instead tried to point out, that this ruling isn't he best choice.

Told you. Italics is where it's at.

Graspar said:

I didn't even try to change anything about the formatting. I just typed in my text and hit publish and et voila, I had two quotes. One of the original post, one empty and than my text

When i tried to fix it, it only became worse

Given the usability of generic 'off the peg' forum software i think there's been an exceptional amount of work and tech-wizardry gone into making THIS forum so unutterably, mind-meltingly, incomprehensively UNusable.

Its simply astonishingly bad, incapable of achieving the most basic of forum functions such as quoting.

You've got to admire the genius of the fail....

Luddite said:

FFG quite obviously couldn't afford incense for the machine spirit. Or perhaps we're in the den of the dark mechanicus...

Inquisitor sapiens potensque said:

Interestingly, not only is it true that "people can survive headshots", but if we imagine an average human (10 wounds TB3) and a standard gun (say, d10+3 like a stub revolver), it is not possible for an unarmoured average human to die from a headshot (unless you use the optional sudden death rule).

EDIT: I of course mean from a single headshot from full wounds.

So of course the game is not realistic. However, the fact that you don't want to get hit at all makes the in-game decision making close enough to real.

Madner Kami said:

They do have some serious advantages in DH:

1. Concealability. You can conceal pistols on you, but you cannot conceal basic weapons except maybe in a large suspicious bag or the classical instrument case.

2. Weight. While this is hardly important, pistols weigh alot less which makes them more useful to keep on you all the time compared to basic weapons.

3. Easily used one-handed. Note I don't use Extra Grip per RAW in my game. While possible, it is still much easier to shoot a rifle etc. with two hands than one hand. In fact I think the upgrade both unrealistic and unbalanced in that it lessens the value of pistols.

Dual-wielding basic weapons is already pretty silly in this game, and that twin-autoshotguns w/melee attachment (which the best auto-shotty has) is pretty good already by RAW. At short range you get nice high-damage FA, at PBR you get an insane amount of hits, and in melee you still have melee weapons without needing quickdraw or wasting an action.

In my game the scum is happy dual-wielding PISTOLS and can easily headshot enemies at 120 meters AT NO PENALTY. I'd say pistols can be pretty **** good. Still even the scum realizes that in a stand up combat situation basic weapons and heavier are always better than pistols, and he uses a Shuriken Catapult in those cases.

But really I dislike rules that disallows action just because the actions are deemed difficult. Yes, it's difficult to shoot rifles and shotguns when someone can hit you with a club, but it's hardly impossible. I¨'m pretty sure if I stuck a shotgun into your stomach and told you to move, you would not just laugh and say "haha you're in melee now, stupid!" Sure maybe you could move and knock the shotgun away, but not necessarily before getting shot on the gut.

The only case it would be impossible if is the length of the end of the weapon reaches beyond the distance between the attacker and defender. Which is pretty much a grapply situation since swords cannot be used properly at that distance, only knives and short blades.

I also concede that pistols, being shorter, would generally be easier to fire in melee, thus if one allows basic weapons in melee it should be at a hefty penalty once the clubs start swinging.

Salindurthas said:

My reference to surviving head shots was just to make the point that DH is a game and has elements that are not realistic. So those that say it is "unrealistic" to not be able to FA or SA in melee, I say it is unrealistic to survive head shots (not impossible but VERY unlikely).

Alex: I do not think you made up the answers in the OP, and I don't doubt that they came from the source. However, if I were to tell the other players in my game that FA and SA are not allowed in melee and directed them to this thread to prove my point your post wouldn't hold enough clout to sway them.

I'm solidly in the camp that FA and SA don't belong in melee. DH is a game, and in this game I think it is quite fitting that in while melee, melee weapons are far and above the uncontested best choice of weapon for that situation. In my opinion that means pistols needed nerfing in melee.

But apart from the metallican gunslinger alternate rank you're not going to have all the required talents to do gun fu properly until late game.

And yeah, Moritat can be decent melee characters, in fact they can be godlike in melee. But other characters can do equally well in meleee once you've gone up in rank some, and do it with a powersword or something more awesome than the primitive weapons.

Gun fu is great, but I just mean burst in general. Full auto in melee, whether or not you have two weapons. If you have two weapons, great - I am sadly not at home so I cannot see how early classes can pick up Two Weapon Wielding; but I do know many classes start with Ambidextrous. Being just short Gunslinger leaves you at a only -10 penalty, which really isn't that bad - its the standard two weapon wielding melee penalty. Sure they can pickup Gunslinger advance and do some crazy stunts, but they don't need to have it to just do a full auto burst in melee.. Which with some of the lower end high RoF pistols can be quite painful.

Moritat can do it with a power sword as well, I've never seen anyone ever say they *cant* make use of them and to say so would be a massive limiter on them. The only thing I would put up in the air is whether or not they would be allowed to make use of Tearing with power weapons - I would say no, but I have seen several games where they were allowed. I agree they are not the stand alone "Oh my god the best / ultimate, they are forever the best!" any more than the Gunslingers are. Go up in rank enough and Assassins and Scum will be likely to pick up the talents they are getting from Gunslinger already, and without the penalty for using basic weapons. However we've already established melee weapons can do some terrible things in the late game, so I am still speaking more of the low ranks/low power games, where Moritat and Gunslinger give their characters a quick and early edge over the others in their respective fields.

The 2d10+5 stats are from my digital copy of inquisitors handbook. Sneaky errata perhaps. No matter, there are plenty of other melee weapons that hold their own. Even the standard power blade will, coupled with sufficient strenght, make a mockery of any sort of full auto pistol shenanigans. The adding of SB to damage does something very important, it goes towards removing TB soak, which coupled with good armour is going to make many shots of the high RoF pistols bounce.

Weird. I double checked my own copy the other day and it did say 2d5+5; double checked errata as well and there was no mention of it. Though I did notice something interesting - the Mark (IV?) Command Pistol has Accurate and a range of something around 70m. I would have to double check errata on that, but bloody hell there's a long distance pistol finally. So that's definitely something a range challenged character could look at. I lack books currently as stated twice already, but I remember them being relatively cheap.. And they are Las weapons so you have the rechargeable aspect as well to work for you.

Anyways - once again, referring to lower level games where people are not going to be running around with power blades/swords and amazing armor. If your going to have a huge bounce problem due to TB/Armor people can use a different more high powered pistol, or dual shot, or whatever. Or they can use a better weapon, or anything else required.

Yes, melee weapons cost more, but they don't require ammo. The bolter has a 16 thrones per shot price tag attached to it. Pretty big deal. And even the hecuter with it's comparably low cost of ~1 throne per bullet would cost 12 thrones per combat round to use. It soon adds up.

When we are speaking of the Hecutor I am definitely pulling a "wait, what?" moment here. Hecutors are just heavy auto pistols. They use standard bullets, unless you are speaking of manstoppers for EVERY shot. Its 1 throne per 20 bullets - at 15 thrones cheaper for a common quality one that means your getting 300 bullets for two Hecutors. If you go poor quality and remove the Reliable trait, its only 88 thrones each. So you save 102 thrones per Hecutor versus the BQ Mono sword - or 2040 shots. Sure you get no real PEN unless you use Manstoppers but you can always get a Carnodon, which is Pen 2 and *still* uses normal bullets. Using the two PQ carnodons vs two BQ mono swords you can get 184 thrones worth of bullets.. Or 3680 shots. That's a pretty nice deal for a PEN 2 weapon. And that is just the difference between buying the mono-swords and the pistols, ignoring what extra thrones you would have.

Yeah, any class can do that. With severe penalties to hit which are going to make you hit less of those shots. Unless you've got the right talents, which require one to move up in rank, elite advances or the metallican gunslinger. At which point the melee characters will have access to some of their nice stuff. And no, it doesn't make pistols "****" in melee, there are more viable options anyway (and if you are absolutely hell bent on multiple hits, hack shotguns to the rescue). But I think it's a poor call to ban autofire in melee, it's not like it actually does anything but force the gunslingers to buy one or two "melee guns" that do more damage per hit or have scatter.

Not if they just use a single high RoF pistol. Having two pistols can double your damage, but its not required for it to be effective.

Let me tell you a small anecdote from my last session as GM. I sprung an ambush by Ork Kommandos on the acolytes. Our resident gun bunny opened up with dual shot and did horrible, horrible damage to the poor ork. The next time he fired with the same pistols he unloaded autofire, did two points of damage with probably eight or nine hits. The redemptionist with eviscerator killed one ork per round before he fired up his jetpack in the forest, rolled a 90+ on his pilot jump pack and almost died crashing into a tree. We all laughed heartily, as is customary in such situations.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but I'm going to reiterate my main point once again. Number of hits are not as important as damage per hit.

Okay? That's a great anecdote if we are assuming acolytes are running around fully armed/armored at all times, and are constantly against high TB/armor targets. Your games might be so, my games are not. When we start bringing in GM created situations its exceptionally hard to use them as a de facto argument because I could just as easily say I've played/run games where the acolytes go against a cult den or a bunch of gangers.. Who, you know, are relatively normal people trying to plug you with holes. They don't have a massive TB and they aren't wearing huge amounts of armor. Autofire isn't amazing versus a high soak target, this is well known - that's why there are things like Dual-Shot to effectively bypass TB. However, that does not mean that every target is a huge soak target - or that every part of its body is armored. If your just doing chipping damage, yes, probably not going to be amazing. If you can actually hit them solidly, autofiring is going to work a lot better than just shooting a single shell or two.

I am fine to agree to disagree at this point - I concede that at high levels its not nearly as big of an issue because melee abilities and weapons have amazing scaling. I would contend against the "gunslingers become ****" at high ranks argument, but I am talking by my experiences and games.. And the DH games I am in tend to be low power, with the high power games reserved for RT or RT/DH cross overs. Semi/full auto in melee can be really bloody powerful, and I dislike how easily it can edge melee weapons at that point. Its not an opinion unique to me, and your opinion obviously isn't unique to you.

Rangdango said:

I'm solidly in the camp that FA and SA don't belong in melee. DH is a game, and in this game I think it is quite fitting that in while melee, melee weapons are far and above the uncontested best choice of weapon for that situation. In my opinion that means pistols needed nerfing in melee.

Melee weapons alreay are the top weapons for melee combat. They completely disrupt basic weapons and have a number of talents and traits, which enhance their usability in melee over pistols, which either only have Dual Shot or Single Shot (or Dual Single Shot for TWW) or SA/FA. As was already completely correctly pointed out, numbers of hits are not as important as damage per hit, especially versus everything that wears at least flak-armor or has a higher TB and that's one of the more important traits of melee weapons.

Sometimes you have to see the numbers to actually get it, so let's see. Let's just assume for a moment, that every hit is successfull and the melee toon has a strength of 20 (which is not particularly hard to get) and both have a BS of 40 or WS of 40...

Assuming a single-wield melee with lightning attack and a simple monosword (Costs: 15 + 40=55 Thrones, Weight: 3kg):

Single Hit: 1d10+2 Pen 2 => 3-12 damage on any target with an armor of less or equal to 3

Full Attack: 3d10+2 Pen 2 => 9-36 damage on any target with ana rmor of less or equal to 3 (3 rolls on WS)

Assuming a single-wield standard autopistol (Costs: 75 + 1/20 shots = 75.9 Thrones, Weight: 2.5kg + 0.25kg per clip):

Single Hit: 1d10+2 => 3-12 damage versus any target with 0 armor (Costs: 0.05 Thrones per shot) (60% chance to succeed)

Full Auto: 6d10+2 => 18-72 damage per volley versus any target with 0 armor (Costs: 0.3 Thrones)

Such a score, however, needs at least 5 degrees of success. In melee that means, you'd need to roll a 1 versus an unmodified BS of 51, assuming for one moment, that the pistol-toon has a total BS of 20 Base + 20 Rolled on creation + 20 FA-bonus, he'd need to roll a 9 versus his 60 BS to get 6 hits - Assuming that, it is quite likely, that the melee toon doesn't just have a strength of 2, but that's besides the point - We'll assume for future reference, that the toon has a BS of 60.

Full Auto with just 2 degrees of success aka 3 hits: 3d10+2 = 9-36 damage versus any target with 0 armor (Costs: 0.3 Thrones)

Now let's assume the target has a simple and, really easy to get, Light Flak Coat + Flak Helmet (2 AP):

Single hit of monosword: 3-12 damage

Full Attack with monosword: 9-36 damage

Single Hit with autopistol: 1-10 damage

Full Auto, 3 hits: 3-30 damage

Full Auto, 6 hits: 6-60 damage

Same target with Guard Flak Armor (4 AP):

Single Hit, Monosword: 1-10 damage

Full Attack: 3-30 damage

Single Hit, Autopistol: 0-8 damage (20% chance to deal 0 damage per hit!)

Full Auto, 3 hits: 0-24

Full Auto, 6 hits: 0-48 damage

Now let's get the target a fairly standard 20 Toughness (still Guard Flak):

Single Hit, Mono: 0-8 damage (20% chance to deal 0 damage per hit)

Full Attack, Mono: 0-24 damage

Single Hit, Autopistol: 0-6 damage (40% chance to deal 0 damage per hit!)

Full Auto, 3 hits: 0-18 damage

Full Auto, 6 hits: 0-36 damage

Great, ain't it? Now let's get some heavier equipment. You say Manstopper and Hecutor (Costs 175 + 12.5 per clip Thrones)? I say Chain (275 Thrones)!

Single Hit, Chain: 1d10+4 Pen 2 => 4-14 damage, Tearing

Full Attack: 12-42 damage, Tearing

Single Hit, Hecutor: 1d10+3 Pen 3 => 4-13 damage

Full Auto, 3 hits: 12-39 damage

Full Auto, 6 hits: 24-78 damage

Now versus Guard Flak Armor and 20 Toughness:

Single Hit, Chain: 0-10 damage, Tearing (1% chance for 0 damage per hit!)

Full Attack: 0-30 damage, Tearing

Single hit, Hecutor: 1-10 damage

Full Auto, 3 hits: 3-30 damage

Full Auto, 6 hits: 6-60 damage

Yeah, I can see you cheering there, because the Hecutor actually does manage to outdamage the chain there slightly, but you forgot the next step:

I say Powerswords and Light Carapace! versus... um... Hecutor and Manstoppers yeay o/ yeay

Powersword: 1d10+7 Pen 6 => 8-17

Hecutor: 1d10+3 Pen 3 => 4-13

Shall we go on? Ok, let's get the 20 Toughness and 5 AP to work

Powersword, single hit: 6-15 damage

Full Attack: 18-45 damage

Hecutor, single shot: 0-9 damage (10% chance for 0 damage per hit)

Full Auto, 3 hits: 0-27

Full Auto, 6 hits: 0-54

Want me to throw a bolter pistol in? But then, I'll give the melee toon a Power Fist or an Eviscerator or just a power longsword and after that, I'll add power armor, for the joys. Melee weapons are already the crown of melee combat and the pinacle of pistol wielding is achieved with bolt pistols and hecutors. There's nothing beyond that could even remotely compare, which is why every pistolero has to dual-wield sooner or later, to even have a chance of dealing damage (Dual Shot or 2xFull Auto). It's silly to forbid SA/FA in melee, especially when also taking into consideration, that the pistolero also will not be able to dual shot in melee (Remember? Only standard actions...), making Plasma pistols and Meltas the only viable choice for them and even than beeing far outdamaged... Oh and we didn't even mention lasers...

I agree though, that SA/FA in early character-career is a rather harsh thing for the enemy (especially if unarmored), however removing SA/FA from melee, as well as limiting them to standard pistol actions (bye-bye Dual Shot) is going to hurt late-game gunslingers severly. If you want more eariy balance without unbalancing late-game, you need to find a different way.

Has your character ever been on the receiving end of that "Full Auto, 6 hits: 0-36 damage" ? After having to close in with the enemy and already being peppered with bullets? Fail the dodge and your character is in big trouble. DH has plenty of flaws, and I don't think there is a quick fix for them. Also when I say that FA and SA in melee is too powerful I am taking into account what those guns can also do out of melee, which the chainswords and powerswords can not do.

Pistoleros also have access to abilities that allow them to move (likely away) and shoot.

We can both argue until we are blue in the face and neither of us will concede.

To those that say not being able to FA and SA is unrealistic I would say DH is not a game of strict realism, and to those that say SA and FA in melee is not overpowered I would just say I disagree.

Gun fu is great, but I just mean burst in general. Full auto in melee, whether or not you have two weapons. If you have two weapons, great - I am sadly not at home so I cannot see how early classes can pick up Two Weapon Wielding; but I do know many classes start with Ambidextrous. Being just short Gunslinger leaves you at a only -10 penalty, which really isn't that bad - its the standard two weapon wielding melee penalty. Sure they can pickup Gunslinger advance and do some crazy stunts, but they don't need to have it to just do a full auto burst in melee.. Which with some of the lower end high RoF pistols can be quite painful.

Ok, so it's a viable tactic even with one pistol. But then we're no longer talking the outrageous potential of twelve hits per round. And while melee weapons dont get any equivalent of gunslinger, they get a +10 to WS tests at best quality which works out to the same thing. Also, you don't need to use two weapons in melee to get more hits. In fact, I'd advise against it if going for optimal combat efficiency. Get something big and lightning attack. Sure, it's one less hit but more reliable and with the WTFPWN-damage a good melee weapon can do (I'm not even talking power weapons, mono greatweapon works wonders at low levels) it's more than adequate to end most foes in one round, unless you're a low level character facing high level challenges. But then again, what character does well there?

Moritat can do it with a power sword as well, I've never seen anyone ever say they *cant* make use of them and to say so would be a massive limiter on them. The only thing I would put up in the air is whether or not they would be allowed to make use of Tearing with power weapons - I would say no, but I have seen several games where they were allowed. I agree they are not the stand alone "Oh my god the best / ultimate, they are forever the best!" any more than the Gunslingers are. Go up in rank enough and Assassins and Scum will be likely to pick up the talents they are getting from Gunslinger already, and without the penalty for using basic weapons. However we've already established melee weapons can do some terrible things in the late game, so I am still speaking more of the low ranks/low power games, where Moritat and Gunslinger give their characters a quick and early edge over the others in their respective fields.

Yes, but as I've pointed out that's not a problem with the game mechanics in question but rather the making of rank one alternate careers that get lvl5+ combat talents.

If there was the alternate rank "Alpha psyker" that gave rank one psykers three ascended psychic powers, would that be a problem with the ascended powers or the alternate rank?

Weird. I double checked my own copy the other day and it did say 2d5+5; double checked errata as well and there was no mention of it.

Weird indeed. But I'm pretty sure the 2d10 stats are the correct ones. Those are the ones that were given in RT core rules as well. No matter, its' like I said a consistent pattern that melee weapons do more damage than ranged ones. Especially when factoring in SB.

Though I did notice something interesting - the Mark (IV?) Command Pistol has Accurate and a range of something around 70m. I would have to double check errata on that, but bloody hell there's a long distance pistol finally. So that's definitely something a range challenged character could look at. I lack books currently as stated twice already, but I remember them being relatively cheap.. And they are Las weapons so you have the rechargeable aspect as well to work for you.

Nice gun to be sure. I hadn't noticed that.

Anyways - once again, referring to lower level games where people are not going to be running around with power blades/swords and amazing armor. If your going to have a huge bounce problem due to TB/Armor people can use a different more high powered pistol, or dual shot, or whatever. Or they can use a better weapon, or anything else required.

Better weapon, then we're moving up in tiers. Dual shot or whatever, then we're no longer talking autofire.

When we are speaking of the Hecutor I am definitely pulling a "wait, what?" moment here. Hecutors are just heavy auto pistols. They use standard bullets, unless you are speaking of manstoppers for EVERY shot. Its 1 throne per 20 bullets - at 15 thrones cheaper for a common quality one that means your getting 300 bullets for two Hecutors. If you go poor quality and remove the Reliable trait, its only 88 thrones each. So you save 102 thrones per Hecutor versus the BQ Mono sword - or 2040 shots. Sure you get no real PEN unless you use Manstoppers but you can always get a Carnodon, which is Pen 2 and *still* uses normal bullets. Using the two PQ carnodons vs two BQ mono swords you can get 184 thrones worth of bullets.. Or 3680 shots. That's a pretty nice deal for a PEN 2 weapon. And that is just the difference between buying the mono-swords and the pistols, ignoring what extra thrones you would have.

If we're not talking manstoppers it does less damage and falls behind melee even more in that regard. And once again, using the carnodon means less RoF and only semi auto. Suddenly the ranged character is somewhat closer to damage per hit but falls behind in number of hits.

Not if they just use a single high RoF pistol. Having two pistols can double your damage, but its not required for it to be effective.

They're still not going to get near the melee characters efficiency in melee, which was the problem, right?

Every way to "solve" that "problem" (or rather, create that problem) runs into another one. Use a pistol with higher RoF? Even lower damage per hit. Use one pistol instead of two? Half the number of hits and all of it avoidable with a single dodge test. Round and round we go, moving the patch between too many holes.

Okay? That's a great anecdote if we are assuming acolytes are running around fully armed/armored at all times, and are constantly against high TB/armor targets. Your games might be so, my games are not. When we start bringing in GM created situations its exceptionally hard to use them as a de facto argument because I could just as easily say I've played/run games where the acolytes go against a cult den or a bunch of gangers.. Who, you know, are relatively normal people trying to plug you with holes. They don't have a massive TB and they aren't wearing huge amounts of armor. Autofire isn't amazing versus a high soak target, this is well known - that's why there are things like Dual-Shot to effectively bypass TB. However, that does not mean that every target is a huge soak target - or that every part of its body is armored. If your just doing chipping damage, yes, probably not going to be amazing. If you can actually hit them solidly, autofiring is going to work a lot better than just shooting a single shell or two.

That's not what I was saying, I was merely telling an amusing anecdote with some relation to my argument. Of course there are other situations where the opposite would be true, but when fighting redshirts it doesn't matter much what you do. They die rather easily, they're redshirts.

In ranged combat autofire will demolish hordes of low level enemies, it's what autofire is for. But once in melee you're not going to get more than your melee opponent(s) to fire at anyway. So it's one mook per round for the gunsligner and one mook per round for the moritat. I don't see the problem with a combat twink of any flavour sending mooks to him upon the throne with expedience, that there's no speed beyond "like a hot knife through butter" doesn't really bother me. And once you're up against bigger fish the melee guy dominates melee once again,

I am fine to agree to disagree at this point - I concede that at high levels its not nearly as big of an issue because melee abilities and weapons have amazing scaling. I would contend against the "gunslingers become ****" at high ranks argument, but I am talking by my experiences and games.. And the DH games I am in tend to be low power, with the high power games reserved for RT or RT/DH cross overs. Semi/full auto in melee can be really bloody powerful, and I dislike how easily it can edge melee weapons at that point. Its not an opinion unique to me, and your opinion obviously isn't unique to you.

Sure, we can agree to disagree if you wish. I for one am still having fun with this discussion.

The thing is, I don't think ranged weapons (apart from the aforementionded metallican gunslinger) really edge melee weapons out in melee (they're supposed to in ranged combat, right?) at any level. Oh sure, it's exceedingly easy to build yourself an ok ranged combat twink with nothing but lost and lots of dakka and melee combat doesn't have that possibility. But for a truly great combat character you need high damage per hit, and that's where melee shines.

Has your character ever been on the receiving end of that "Full Auto, 6 hits: 0-36 damage" ? After having to close in with the enemy and already being peppered with bullets? Fail the dodge and your character is in big trouble. DH has plenty of flaws, and I don't think there is a quick fix for them. Also when I say that FA and SA in melee is too powerful I am taking into account what those guns can also do out of melee, which the chainswords and powerswords can not do.

The character I've been playing most with has, he shrugged them of and continued onward. The melee assassin he encoutered last on the other hand caused me to run for the safety of my group while spending fate points to recover wounds and taking thrown power swords to the back. That one melee guy caused my poor tech priest more worry than anything in the last year and a half of playing.

On the other character, of course not. That one is of the "there is no spoon" archetype and dodges like crazy. But once again, I'd be more fearful of a melee guy. Feint would be the end of that story.

Bottom line, every character that isn't a redshirt is going to need some strategy for dealing with damage. The main lines are going to be not getting hit (dodge, parry or staying away from combat) or just tanking the hits (wounds, armour and TB).

Not getting hit is dominated by melee. With three four or five possible attacks that all need a separate test to avoid it's just not happening. And even without all those fancy talents for hitting many times in melee a simple feint takes every chance of avoiding damage away. Not being there works out exactly the same for all forms of combat.

Tanking the hits is dominated by melee due to the higher raw damage output to bypass soak, the exception being the sh*tload of wounds strategy.

Or I guess you could make a glass cannon who just kills everything in sight before anyone gets a shot of. Not sure how that would work out or even how such a character would work. Probably a psyker. My gut feeling is that there's no difference between melee and ranged against something like that.

Pistoleros also have access to abilities that allow them to move (likely away) and shoot.

A single shot, two if dual wielding, and still slower than a charging or running melee character.

We can both argue until we are blue in the face and neither of us will concede.

To those that say not being able to FA and SA is unrealistic I would say DH is not a game of strict realism, and to those that say SA and FA in melee is not overpowered I would just say I disagree.

Sure we can. That's rather more probable if the argument is "If you think X I disagree".

Madner Kami said:

Swift/Lightning Attacks with Pistols. With Pistols in both hands. Shooting.

Alex

That means that single shot pistols are suddenly MORE effective in close combat than at range. Also, four attacks with inferno pistols would be more broken than a puny full auto hecuter.

Rangdango said:

a) Target dodges successfully and each additional success means one less bullet hits

b) Any remaining bullets will have a 40% chance to not deal any damage.

c) Hip shooting doesn't allow full auto or Dual Shot, but merely a single attack aka a single action aka a single shot (two with two-weapon fighting), whereas you just move at full movement rate.

d) The Pistolero needs a Talent, 40 Agility and 40 Ballistic Skill to do this and only moves AB*2 metres

e) The melee toon just does a simple charge action, not needing any talent or requirement except for a melee-weapon, enabling the melee-toon to move AB*3 metres, recieving WS+10 and binding the pistolero into melee. If the melee toon was smart, he was in cover before.

f) Once bound in melee, there are only few ways of getting out. Either the attacker is dead, the defender is dead, the attacker decides to leave or the defender disengages and either can't shoot (Disengage) or only gets a a single shot off (Tumbling Evasion via Acrobatics-test, but if failed you're doomed). This is a huge tactical bonus for melee weapons.

As said, I am not argueing, that SA/FA in melee can be really strong and maybe too strong on earlier levels, however that is a problem of SA/FA beeing very strong in general, maybe even beeing too strong. You are not going to fix this by restricting pistols in melee to single shots at all. You just achieve to make pistols totally underpowered in melee, by leaving them at a meager single shot and just look up into the listing, what that means for any fight against a target with an average or harder armor. They basically become useless, except maybe melters and plasma (lol).

ak-73 said:

You can't use Swift or Lightning Attack with pistols. They are restricted to melee weapons. And if you wanted to suggest allowing it instead, than Gaspar already pointed the huge problem out.

There is a player in my group who just walks out of combat to shoot his shotgun. 1/2 action move 1/2 action shoot. He takes the freestrike which more often than not misses and then even if it doesn't he parries or dodges (fleeing: leaving combat without disengaging is on page 192 if anyone is interested).

With a simple pistol you could walk out of combat, take 1 free strike, do 1 shot back. Next round "melee toon" has to re-engage you taking up 1/2 action and gets to make one 1/2 action attack back. So once engaged in melee the "melee toon" only gets 1 more attack than you per round. Not a huge advantage considering the pistol could start firing at him from 70m or so away, and then it gets the point blank advantage each time the pistol wielder walks out of combat.

Pistols are extremely versatile, especially if they have FA. They have access to suppressive fire etc. If you can FA while in melee what prevents you from doing a suppressive fire action and sending your melee opponent running for cover? Melee weapons do not have this sort of versatility, therefore, I believe that when they do engage they should dominate, and I don't feel that they do.

Could you make a successful party if it did not include any melee weapon users? Yes quite easily.

Could you make a successful party if it did not include pistols at all? Perhaps but surey with more difficulty.

Can a pistol be snuck into a place? Yes. Can an eviscerator? Not likely. So in that situation the melee character gets a knife, brass knuckles or some other 1d5 sort of weapon.

Do pistols need to have FA and SA in combat to remain a rock solid piece of equipment? No. Why should a pistol be so awesome? I guess some of you think it should be, Me? I do not.

If your group is doing it and having fun, then by all means continue.

Rangdango said:

Your player is either very lucky or very dumb. Walking out of melee gives the opponent a free attack .That it usually misses has more to do with the enemies' poor WS or your own luck, in any case a significant risk. Also, since a shotgun is an improvised weapon in melee it cannot parry (Unwieldy), so your shotguneer is limited to Dodge, which of course is just as unlikely to succeed as the opponent's free attack, if not more (barring scum with +20% dodge and 60 agility of course...). And the kicker is that if the attack connects the character is still stuck in melee, and wastes his turn (well he can do a melee attack), in addition to taking the damage.

That's why my own shotgun wielding psyker used to carry hack shotguns, much less risk that walking out on his enemies.

There is a player in my group who just walks out of combat to shoot his shotgun. 1/2 action move 1/2 action shoot. He takes the freestrike which more often than not misses and then even if it doesn't he parries or dodges (fleeing: leaving combat without disengaging is on page 192 if anyone is interested).

With a simple pistol you could walk out of combat, take 1 free strike, do 1 shot back. Next round "melee toon" has to re-engage you taking up 1/2 action and gets to make one 1/2 action attack back. So once engaged in melee the "melee toon" only gets 1 more attack than you per round. Not a huge advantage considering the pistol could start firing at him from 70m or so away, and then it gets the point blank advantage each time the pistol wielder walks out of combat.

So you're saying that a situation where the opponent gets twice as many attacks, probably only one of which can be dodged and does more damage per attack is a good idea to get yourself into. I'm sorry but this is simply not true. With a shotgun it works slightly better due to scatter but it's still a bad situation.

And that 70m away of getting shot at is rather situational. There needs to be no ranged backup for the melee guy, there needs to actually be those 70m line of sight (and come on, a sword guy berserk charging across 100m of open field against pistols and such deserves what he gets), and even if that 70m line of sight exists there still needs to be inadequate cover to tactical advance your way to the enemy.

It's just as easy to engineer a situation where melee characters have a decisive advantage. Cramped corridor with lots of turns and twists. Bam, you're in melee the exact round where the enemies has line of sight and will slaughter anything without equivalent melee capability or a severe advantage in equipment/combat skills/number of buddies present.

And about needing to re-engage. Not really. A whip would let him swift attack from a distance, get a gun in the second hand and supress your foe (don't have to pass your BS test for supression to occur, perfectly viable for melee characters) to avoid FA/SA retaliation on PB and the next round you charge. If he's stupid enough to try the same stuff again he deserves what he gets.

Pistols are extremely versatile, especially if they have FA. They have access to suppressive fire etc. If you can FA while in melee what prevents you from doing a suppressive fire action and sending your melee opponent running for cover? Melee weapons do not have this sort of versatility, therefore, I believe that when they do engage they should dominate, and I don't feel that they do.

Melee weapons don't have versatility in melee or in general? Because that melee doesn't have versatility in melee is just plain wrong, there are tonnes of neat things you can do besides the raw damage per round lightning attack. Out of melee, it's sort of supposed to be the case that melee weapons arent as good. But still, there are thrown weapons that have range and melee capability, the melee equivalent of pistols if you will.

On the second read it seems your point was that melee doesn't have the general versatility. That's completely true, If you're not within striking distance melee doesn't do much. But the disagreement isn't about wether melee weapons should dominate melee combat, everyone seems to think so. The disagreement is rather if it does with SA/FA being allowed in melee combat, I think it doesn't and the math seems to back me up on that one.

As for supressive fire, I agree it's not suitable for melee and would personally disallow it even while allowing standard autofire. But supressive fire is an interesting point. It's usability is not limited to high BS character with lots (any really) of ranged talents. Get a FA pistol or basic weapon and remove your opponent from anything but half action single shots at -20 from cover if you're having trouble with some ranged specialist. Or the key move, have one of your allies do that while you calmly move in for the melee kill like a... well, melee guy.

Could you make a successful party if it did not include any melee weapon users? Yes quite easily.

Could you make a successful party if it did not include pistols at all? Perhaps but surey with more difficulty.

You can do any sort of successful party the GM lets you get away with. If I were plotting mischief I'd use stealthy melee guys ambushing or in some other underhanded way tieing the first party up in melee and the second party... For the other group I just don't see the problem, get a melee weapon, a basic weapon and you're good to go in every situation.

The key thing about pistols is that they are the bards of DH weapons. Jack of all trades, master of none. A basic weapon and a sword does everything a pistol does better. Nerfing pistols until they are completely dominated by melee weapons in melee, instead of just at somewhat of a disadvantage would make them master of none, jack of sh*t .

If you have the sort of GM who wouldn't mix things up or even *gasp* adapt the opponents tactics based on what they observe you doing then go for it. If on the other hand you're not playing easy mode and sort of need to be ready for everything, get a party with mixed roles in combat and investigation.

That way, when you have different roles to fill you can work together to create a situation where the enemy is in a bad spot instead of the other way around. Like, the heavy stubber guardsman laying down supressive fire, the sniper or whatever ranged damage dealer you've got softens them up and the melee guy/s flank them to take out such things as entrenched heavy weapon positions or just tieing up dangerous ranged combatants in melee, where their nice stormbolter that WTFBBQPWN everyone on a full auto salvo becomes a nice looking paperweight.

Can a pistol be snuck into a place? Yes. Can an eviscerator? Not likely. So in that situation the melee character gets a knife, brass knuckles or some other 1d5 sort of weapon.

Or a serpentine, which would probably get past checkpoints the pistol wouldn't. So in that situation the ranged character gets his fists and the melee character has a power rapier.

Or the power blade. Or the lightsaber-eque energy blade. Or the staff (It's for walking, promise), Or any improvised weapon (1d10-2). Or a garotte.Or an apostatic matrix. Or a Dreathari Pain Gauntlet. Or a neuro gauntlet. Or a concealed weapon bionic with just about any one handed melee weapon you can imagine, with the added bonus of getting BQ bonuses from a GQ price and none of the drawbacks the concealed weapon bionic has for ranged weapons.

And those are just the ones in DH, using equipment from RT, which isn't that uncommon, there are numerous concealable melee weapons, most notably a memoryform sword that looks like a belt when not in use.

So saying the melee guy get's 1d5 while ranged gets a nice pistol is a bit of an oversimplification. A semi competent pat down later and it's fists vs. any number of high powered melee weapons. As for the "Oi, you there on the street walking around with guns in our peaceful grimdark society, stop it", wear a robe or something.

Do pistols need to have FA and SA in combat to remain a rock solid piece of equipment? No. Why should a pistol be so awesome? I guess some of you think it should be, Me? I do not.

If your group is doing it and having fun, then by all means continue.

Personally I think melee is slightly too good in this game. Melee starts out OK and just builds and builds at an alarming rate. It doens't dominate the game at any point, but it sure makes a decent try for it when facing high soak or high avoidance opponents.