Am I missing something, or is this Talent pretty much useless? It costs at least 1000xp and requires a rather specific weapon group to be selected. Presumably you'd take a weapon group that you use a lot. for that you never take more than a -30 to hit penalty.

Well, thanks.

Just how often is that going to crop up? Obviously pretty much never against a horde, thanks to the +30 or more bonus to hit decent sized ones. If you want to shoot into melee or make a called shot, there are penalties, but other Talents negate those. And high-quality items, personal wargear bonuses, Pattern bonuses, auto-fire bonuses, targeting systems and even double-team always tend to eclipse any penalties the GM cares to dish out.

Essentially all this makes the Talent a REALLY bad choice in pretty much every situation. Doubly so given its extortionate cost.

Anyone got any better suggestions for what this Talent could do? I'm pondering an increase of maximum bonuses from +60 to +80.

in my group we have done it a bit different

AWS reduces penalties to maximum -30 before u add all bonuses. As example u have sum of -50 penalties and +60 bonuses, normaly u would have +10 bonus remaining, in our case it will be +30.

without little house rule love this talent is not worth 1k exp, 400exp or less fine i could start to think about it.

also if u want Astartes Weapon Mastery (+10WS/BS) u need AWS (we dont use SGW-M to hit bonus, only craft bonus)

Err... there is no Asartes Weapon Mastery talent. ???

It's hard to even rack up -30 of penalties as a skilled combatant, though. Range, called shot and shooting into melee penalties are all negated by much cheaper talents. Darkness is moot for marines, who are also never un-braced. pain-killers negate fatigue modifiers, which literally leaves us possible penalties on the table for weather and shooting tiny targets. Even given your modifier, I still wouldn't touch the skill for 1000xp, let alone 1500.

The talent is not the best out there , however it is ok, i used it in my group exactly in the same way, maximum -30 on penalties irrespective of the actual number, then start adding all the positive modifiers. Nothing indicates, it should be used in a different manner, it is nice for impossible shots over long distances and so on...

At one point, I was trying to come up with a meaningful house rule to make firing dual basic weapons less appealing. The idea was to increase the penalty imposed when dual firing anything larger than a pistol. This talent however, would have greatly mitigated a good bit of that penalty. Of course, this is just a house rule (that I just didn't go with anyway), so whatever.

Certainly though, this talent still helps when dual wielding bolters, in a storm of blood, against tiny targets at extreme range.

Siranui said:

in our games there is.

boruta666 said:

You're overlooking the potential uses:

- flipped coin shooting shenanigans (and other fancy weapon trickery)
- ricochet shots with a SP weapon that doesn't fire explosive ammo and the like.
- accurate shooting while blinded
- but most importantly: shooting blindly around a cover; no more sticking the head out

Alas, DW doesn't allow for spectacular firing of weapons while running (albeit at a hefty penalty). If it did, this talent would be more useful.

Alex

I'm still not seeing any of that being worth 1,500xp, though.

And any decent shooter is ignoring range penalties, KommisarK.

Ricochet shots would require taking the talent for 'SP pistol' or whatever. That's even less tempting than taking it for Bolter. Shooting blindly round cover... meh...ok. But that just ignores the full concealment modifier anyway and doesn't really help when you're already probably sitting on nice healthy +20 auto bonus, +20 wargear/quality, +10 targeting, +30 horde bonus.

Without adding additional mastery talents, is there anyone who'd buy this skill for 1500xp, even with the '-30 and work up' version?

Another possible use for it. A running enemy with the Hard Target talent will normally be at -40 to hit, before other modifiers. Still a bit iffy for the cost, it must be said.

I'd be inclined to rule it as at worst a -30 modifier on any shot that is physically possible. Shooting at drop-pods full of chaos space marines screaming down to their targets? -30.

ak-73 said:

sadly in our games AWM its only flat +10 to BS or WS. But after your post brother ak-73 i was inspired, i will create elite prestige space marine class... something in line of Astartes Blind Zen Bolter Marksman Grandmaster .

boruta666 said:

Yeah, you can shoot any enemy around cover. Full camouflage in my mind assumes having at least a rough idea where the enemy is. But with this talent you only have to know he is there - whether he is right behind the corner or behind the window on the 3rd floor of the 4th building to the right of the street - you can hit him without even knowing.

"Sniper fire from somewhere to the left? Oh, what the hell. I just close my eyes and fire back on full-auto. This talent is just great, GM."

Alex

Back when the IH just came out the Targeter had a similar problem. It also was very expensive and did the exact same thing. The only difference is that the Targeter was a piece of equipement and AWS is a talent

It was errata'd to giving a flat +10 bonus. I think the same thing could be done with AWS.

I guess if you are not typically adding negatives in your game, then me as a player would not take it. Things like dense fog, extreme winds/weather, cameolione effect, ect all cause negatives and I use them, so I have seen some take it. I think you are right about the cost of it though, perhaps I will see about reducing it to say 500-800ish.

SomVone said:

Which would be good, except for that 'maximum of +60 bonus' rule. And it's really easy to reach (and indeed overshoot) that bonus.

eg: Short range, full auto, motion predictor versus decent sized horde = +70

or: Hatred, double team, master-work chainsword, hunter of aliens, master wargear = +60

Hence the idea of letting the talent raise that bonus to a cap of +80. It's a far more likely situation to occur than reducing penalties to -30, which is good considering both the cost of the talent and the narrow restriction on weapon type.

Siranui said:

Raising the Cap might not be a bad Idea, could play test it a bit to see how it works out. I think alot of the abilities once you are a decent rank like 4+ cause you to almost never miss, even in the worst enviroment using a rusty weapon, just to keep things interesting I have to constantly throw my players into extreme situations at rank 5 and 6.

My biggest complaint is not only the high xp cost but the very specific weapon choice. Maybe, just maybe, I would decide to give up 1500xp for it if it was for all Astartes Weaponry.

Unless things change with it, I doubt I will see any player in my area take it, unless they plan of Munchkin'ing every chance they can.