I just started a new campaign last night and one of the players was a little disgruntled about the penetration value of the hellguns. In short he felt it was too high. As the DM I am operating from some sort of balance perspective where I am assuming since it hasn't been errata'd that the rule is balanced for play. During the showdown on the bridge of the Emperor's Bounty I did inform the players that stray rounds from the hellguns would penetrate the already cracked glass in the bridge's vista and cause the chamber to decompressurize resulting in their deaths. They were not wearing voidsuits.

Here are my thoughts on Hellguns, I think they are balanced due in part to the reload time and their sheer weight and bulkiness. These are not subtle weapons. And if you really want to spend two rounds reloading them in the middle of a fire fight than so be it. Most of my bad guys tend to come in two types, one the heavily armored ones and two the completely unarmored ones. As a result the high penetration is really only useful about half the time. I did at one point tell the players to stop calling out their penetration values with their damage rolls because they were irrelevant & I got tired of hearing them. And of course what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Someday my NPC will have a hellgun, and then I'd like to have a high penetration value too.

My question posed to you GMs that have played this game is: Have you or any of your players have felt like there was a balance issue regarding the hellgun's penetration value?

If a Hellgun was the worst thing I had to worry about, I'd be pretty happy. The penetration might be high but the damage isn't anything to write home about. You should be more concerned about "Tearing" quality weapons for their potential to Righteous Fury a target for 100 damage.

Really, a Hellgun isn't that bad. 2 reload rounds is nothing compared to a Plasma Gun's 5. The weight pack is a bit of a drawback, but I don't picture it as being as bulky as an ammo pack for a Heavy Bolter or a Machine Gun, since Stormtroopers are still highly mobile with them. Yeah, they're not "subtle", but once the weapons are pulled out, subtlety is not part of the Rogue Trader game. If you think they're being abused, subject them to upkeep tests. Hellguns are very rare, and very delicate.

Did you call out the Hellgun specifically for this? Because if a Hellgun can penetrate it, I can think of a lot more weapons in a Rogue Trader's armory that will. As for the whole calling out the penetration thing, just tell them " Thanks, I have the books and your character sheets, I know your weapon penetration." They shouldn't be volunteering info like that unless you ask them to do the math for you. On the other hand, you might have inadvertently encouraged them to declare their weapon penetration with the warning about the glass on the bridge. I know I would let you know if my weapon had low penetration.

Alternately, you could check Deathwatch's armory and see if they have revised stats on the Hellgun you could use, or Dark Heresy.

Keep in mind that's a reload of 2Full IF you have a replacement backpack. Hellguns are intended for fighting high-armour targets like tanks. The pen is fine. Gotta say, that's one of the few times I've heard of a player complaining that their own weapon is too powerful.

Breaching the Hull: Using explosives or any weapons with a Pen of 4 or more, the PCs can blow out the bridge’s vista panels and plunge the chamber into hard vacuum. This will force Orden to retreat (as above) lest he be dragged into the void. Any PC not wearing a void suit will immediately suffer 2d10 Damage, not reduced for armour, and begin to suffocate (see Running out of Air)

What blows my mind is that your characters don't have any sealed armour. I have more trouble convincing mine that power armour is not suitable attire for a formal dinner...

Errant said:

They're not exactly anti-tank weapons, but I agree, they are for a specific purpose. As someone above said, they have penetration, but their damage isn't extreme. I think they're fine for the task of killing heavily armored enemy infantry. They're not really much more effective than a standard las against most targets (also as someone already said).

Errant said:

Only if it as cool as the suite shown on page 301 of the core book

But as to hellguns they should be fine. They are in the plasma, bolter tier, and they should probably be compared to those.

Yes they should have sealed armor either as a custom mod (see the inquisitors handbook for rules) or in some other fashion... air go whoosh!! is bad thing.

Golgenna Grenadier said:

Hellguns are only used for killing Space marines. Not in their vehicles cause Hellguns can only destroy something like a ramshackle Ork truck with alot of luck.

Besides Hellguns are pretty badass with their AP; but Plasguns and Meters are far worse.

To the OP, Cracked Bridgescreen. Well i guess the cue is cracked, anything is legal at that point, depending upon the crackedness (not really a word, but ok). But if there was only a minor crack, i would hardly care, since hellguns arent really such huge damagedealers compared to say a good quality Plasgun or a Stormbolter (both buyable at start).

Voronesh said:

Why would Stormtroopers be issued weapons to kill Space Marines on a regular basis.

Fortinbras said:

Cadians expecting to engage Chaos Space Marines would be one example of this.

Fortinbras said:

Always remember any fluff in 40k is ultimately subject to 40k gaming rules, so in theory if for some obscure reason hellguns had to be brought down a few notches again, they would return to uselessland.

I too was surprised at high pen of the hellguns. Way higher then the DW version. Of course they need it, to compete a bit with Boltguns. But I got over the high pen because I realized that in RT, essentially no one is wearing armor since the penetration of the weapons carried is so high. Even the baddies can easily be made nasty to just give them AP rounds.

I think FFG has a close working relationship with GW, I've noticed this several times.

For Example:
- The Splinter Rifles in Into the Storm are Toxix, new Codex was released and Splinter Weapons are Toxic
- Rites of Battle has the Storm Raven in it, at the same time the model was released (does RoB have artwork of the Storm Raven?)

Santiago said:

That is just so, hence why Hellguns have such a high Pen, because the new tabletop rules for Hellguns have a high armour penetration stat too.

I like the explanation about Space Marines.

Ascension notes that the Calixis stormtroopers tend to use the Cadian Pattern Hellgun due to its extensive field testing and at Cadia, they have had plenty of call for weapons to put down chaos marines.

As I use info from all three systems, I tent to use the hellguns as listed in the RT book as some rarer tech, as they have the range of the old pen 4 hellguns and the pen of the shorter range Cadian pattern in Ascension.

Well there is a lot of guns out there, with different quality parts, Most will have a bonus to one aspect while another aspect will be lacking. Others are presented as a "Hay, this is all there is on this planet and yours just got sent to the melting vats, so, what's it gonna be?" They don't list a LasLock expecting players to jump on them. Or Ork tech, most people wouldn't use them, unless like myself you were tossed into an Ork battlefield with no weapons or armor and had to wrestle a **** Greenskin to death and use his equipment afterwords.. Its various things for Fluff, Aesthetics, and a little personilazation of characters. I know that Las weapons are not the best out there, but in an upcumming RT game im gonna play a Senichal with a Mk. IV Command Las Pistol. I could get an Archeotec Las Pistol, but I want the feel of the player being someone long lived and not into fancy items, they just attract unwanted attention.

Hellguns are very good for killing average toughness NPC mooks in decent armour or in the habit of hiding behind cover. On the few characters I've had with a hell pistol or hellgun they're basically complete junk against anything with high toughness and lots of wounds, like big scary animals and daemons with barely any or no armour. To the point I'll avoid carrying one if I can help it... they really just don't seem to put them down at all.

What they would be good for is having men at arms using horde rules from DW, not a lot of logistics to keep them running, very minimal skill requirements to use and they'll go through most enemies. The availability of Rare probably means you can get a fair bundle of them.

we found lasguns to wimpy in general and Hellguns in particular. we applied a +1 damage +2 pen to all las weapons, and enhanced their rarity by one step. Hellguns are not mook guns, although pherhaps in response to the extreme toughness of the average opponent, they seem to crop up with alarming regularity in rogue trader (100 mercenary guards armed with them in edge of abyss for instance). oh and we also apply pen to TB, becuase it makes no sense that ap rounds don't do more damage to dense/tough targets regardless or whether is flak or just dense bone structure.

Sister Callidia said:

Problem is, hellguns don't compete well with boltguns:

On targets with enough armour, 1 point of damage is the same as one point of penetration. So I'll add the pen and damage values together:

- Hellguns get 1d10+11, Boltguns get 1d10+9 with tearing.

- 1d10 averages to 5.5, 1d10 tearing averages to 7.15. So the hellgun has an average of 16.5, the boltgun has 16.15. If you add in RF, the numbers are probable close enough to give both similar per-hit values.

So, against a hellpistol is going to be very similar in damage to a bolt pistol, with the hellpistol having more ammo capacity, at the cost of a backpack power supply. But that comparison doesn't hold for hellgun vs boltgun because the boltgun has a higher ROF. Then there are the storm bolters ...

ROF being less is a major failing of las weapons in general. I've been thinking of upping it in the next DH or RT game I run (probably a FA rate of twice the SA rate).

oh and we also apply pen to TB, becuase it makes no sense that ap rounds don't do more damage to dense/tough targets regardless or whether is flak or just dense bone structure.

Damaging the bones isn't what kills something, instead you kill them by damaging the flesh either by making a large hole for the blood to leave through or by destroying a vital organ. A bullet designed for penetrating solid armour is going to have a problem here, since it penetrates by concentrating all of its force into a tiny point to get through the armour. Against flesh, that will leave a small hole as the bullet overpenetrates and leaves the target.

To damage flesh you want a bullet that imparts as much of its kinetic energy into the target as possible. Ideally you want a bullet that will stay inside, since that means all of the KE has transferred.

Then there are impacts which can cause serious injuries to an armoured target without damaging the armour, because the impact transferred through to the flesh.

So don't think of toughness as a target being hard to damage (thick bone would be natural armour). Think of it representing the targets ability to ignore the pain of smaller injuries. From the low TB creatures that die to a slight tap, to high TB creatures like Orks who can survive having their head chopped off and sewn onto another body.

trentmorten said:

trentmorten said:

So a hellgun which is normally 1d10+4 pen 7 becomes 1d10+5 pen 9, and the pen counts against toughness? With pen counting against toughness that's huge. If we take the example of firing at an ork.

We'll assume the roll of a 5 for ease of math.

Armor 2 toughness bonus 8

hellgun average roll (5+5) = 10 the penetration (9 with your rules) eliminates his armor and all but one toughness doing 9 damage.

A plasma rifle (5+7) = 11 the penetration (6) eliminates the armor and half the toughness for an average damage of 8.

Assuming a 7 on the damage check for a bolter because of tearing.

A bolter (7+5) = 12 penetration (4) takes out armor and 2 points of toughness, the remaining 6 count, leaving average damage 6

So you've made the hellgun a better plasma rifle... Just something I would check into.

(Edit: I do acknowledge that against the enemy without the combination of 9 toughness and armor total the penetration would be wasted and the other weapons would take back a little ground, but not much. An ork, an average human in guard flak even manages 7.)

Was just checking in on my post. This is obviously a much more active forum than I anticipated. Thanks everyone for all the feedback.

MILLANDSON said:

Wait- what new tabletop rules? I don't think there has been a new Imperial Guard Codex since the Eye of Terror Campaign, back at the start of 4th edition- did I miss one?

They're onto the 5th edition Codex now, where the Hellgun (aka Hot-Shot Lasgun) has AP3, which burns straight through power armour (as do the RPG Hellguns, more or less).

MILLANDSON said:

And then they fail utterly to do more than scratch the Space Marine inside.

HappyDaze said:

As I said, just like the RPG Hellguns

They're still useful for anything that isn't Toughness 4 in Power Armour though!

hmm, maybe should have made something else clear as well. the lasgun damage upgrade was part of a general up gunning of many of the weapons that were felt by my group to be to low. The group is large, with usually around eight players although we have had ten for a while. Generally it was felt that toughness bonuses, particularly for beasties with unnatural toughness, can make characters tote around very rare and deadly weapons simply to have a chance to deal some damage! The Rak'gol are the best example of this, but its orks can pretty much ignore lasgun fire, are immune to pinning (when there is enough of them, and when are orks ever in short supply?) and actually have more effective weapons (in terms of dealing damage, check out a best quality heavy shoota with a couple of customizations (still a basic weapon)). While people might not think "i want a shoota" orks have never been brilliant in a firefight. Meanwhile, close combat weapons can get serious gibbage in terms of strength increases courtesy of implants, so overall the weapons that can do damage (particuarly in the fluff, as the table top is not designed for realism) were felt to be under powered.

Boltguns got an extra d10, as did plasma guns, meltaguns and lascannons got an extra 2d10. of course, this means that while my PC's are capable of doing more damage, so are their opponents, which leads to unprecedented sights like PC's surrendering when faced with a stormtrooper squad from the inquisition. This approach may not suit everyone, but it was appreciated by my group. I suppose part of the problem may have arisen from the high level of the group, as well as a love of large scale conflicts (ironically, I can run them through a large space battle in less time than a small one because they are more focussed)