A bit out of the loop here, since I just discovered the errata...

But am I correct in reading that the p.359 errate concerning Explosive Damage (X) versus Horde is a nerf?

We used to play it that weapon with the (X) damage value would deal '2 hits' per successful hit... this made weapon like the Heavy Bolter devastating... as if you roll 6 degress of success (say rolling 29 when you need 90), you essentially did 14 damage of magnitude to the Horde (Most Horde don't have the Toughness/Armor to not take a least 1 point of damage from a HB) - or 21 if he has Unrelenting Devastation.

But from what I understand now, you get +1 per 'attack'... well, Full Auto is just 1 attack. So in the following example, getting 6 degree of success means 7+1... so 'only' 8 hits - or 16 if he has Unrelenating Devastation.

I do hope I'm right, as I didn't like the idea of the heavy bolter being so deadly against Horde (or even just a normal bolter... it quite often ended up doing more magnitude damage than even area weapon) and it goes totally silly when you used Metal Storm Rounds... This will mean the Devastator might actually consider grabbing a missile launcher or something.

Tarkand said:

The +1 is what has been intended all along. Page 359 doesn't say you get +1 hit per hit inflicted. You just get +1 hit. But note that when you use Metal Storm, that additional hit does 2 points of mag damage.

Also there seems to be a general consensus here that the errata on Unrelenting Devastation is intended to clarify the use of automatic fire heavy weapons with UD. If you take it as written, it would nerf Frag Missiles significantly using Unrelenting Devastation: you would not get the mag damage for blast radius and only +1d5 for UD when it should be both.

Alex

It seemed to me after reading the Errata on UD that metal storm rounds added 1d5 mag dmg after calculating your hits is this wrong? I think i read it in the example.

Also if this is true how does players without UD calculate their mag dmg when using Metal Storm?

"When a weapon is both a Heavy weapon and has the Blast quality , it receives the
extra 1d5 points of damage to a Horde’s Magnitude from Blast quality, and
does 1 extra point of Magnitude damage per hit, but does not generate the
additional hits that weapon with Blast quality usually does to Hordes (see
page 359)."

1. That would mean a frag missile does not generate any mag damage due to Blast radius. That cannot have been the intention. It must be aimed at automatic weapons with a blast radius.

2. In general first count effective hits inflicted and derive from that intermediate step the mag damage:
Metal Storm without UD? Generates +1 hit due to Explosive damage. 2 mag damage per hit caused (Blast(2)).
Metal Storm with UD? Generates +1 hit due to Explosive damage. 2 mag damage per hit caused (because of UD). +1d5 mag damage because of UD with a heavy Blast weapon.

Alex

I still think UD change was not needed, as the wording is clear in the book that if a weapon has blast, you just add 1d5 at the end (and do that instead of +1 damage per hit, which results in the same effect as the errata change when it comes to metal storm, but totally nerfs frag missiles). Now they have it all screwed up in the errata.

@OP

Yeah, as ak-73 said, you were just applying the initial rule incorrectly, its just +1 mag damage whenever an attack (not a hit) is made with an X weapon. And yes, metal strom is scary vs. hordes, as it should be for its req cost