I would have to say that according to fluff, not the wargame rules, space marine bolters should be more powerful than sister bolters. It's frequently mentioned in the fluff that space marine bolters are much larger and powerful than those wielded by "lesser" humans

a space marine in space marine power amor is physically much stronger than a sister in sister power armor, it makes sense that space marine bolters are more powerful, but twice as powerful? probably not

BrotherWill said:

First was a .44, not .50AE. Second and third ones clearly couldn't have hit a barn door.

The only time you should use a handgun with one hand is when you throw it at someone if you've got a terminal stoppage.

Siranui said:

BrotherWill said:

Do you only have DW or DW-level non-astartes in your games, or do you have DH level folks running about?

There is also the fact that the third video the shooter is firing properly by bracing with his other hand. You seem to have missed that bit.

As to the second video if the guy even hit the target I would be amazed.

Hell; I can barely operate the safety of those things with one hand!

ItsUncertainWho said:

Go to 3:09. I'll be waiting for your apology.

BrotherWill said:

Really dude, this is what you're going to argue? Besides the one shot at the end, which you can't even tell what it hits, he is firing braced.

Aside from saying you have an excessively expensive hobby (hah, like the rest of us have any room to talk) and shoot one handed there isn't a lot of evidence that you do or would have any kind of accuracy while doing it. Argue as you will but I'm not sure you're going to get anywhere with this one, even if you're right.

This is a good reason to have a high STR if you want to use a Bolter.

Sorry but this entire disscusion has no basis. i have watched this long enough while bitting my keyborad when i read some of your posts...

First of all: Why are u all comparing a boltpistol with a "spg" Gun like a Deagle???

The function concept is ENTIRELY diffent! If there would be a similar weapon in existence it would it would be some kind of small diameter granade launcher. Bolter use a smalll!!!! charge to accelarate the bolt out of the barrel with a realtive low speedjust after that the rocket charge in the bolt brings it up to final speed. that is a low recoil which in no way rips on the gun like a deagela similar weapon( btw the people in the vids are ALL a bunch of horrible shooters). 2nd3rd Edition Equipment books loudly anounce that bolt weapons have allmost no recoil thanks to it´s special way of working.

The only thing in existence that comes to al bolter weapon in real life is an AA -12 with fin-stabilized fragmentation roundsbigger weapons like the MK-19.

Second: Are u all just looking for the weapon with the biggest Caliber???

If you are looking for comparision in terms of firepower stop callin´ .50 action express the top of the mountain. their are a lot of shells with smaller caliber, bigger propelling chargebetter aerodynamic chararistics like .460 S&W Magnum4.6x30mm or .500 Maximum.

Third:Stop bringin up the table top comparison where every bolter has S4!

It´s just for reasons of simplicity. Since the Sisters of Battle codeximperial guard Codex´s from 2nd edition it was always mentioned that Astartes Bolter are of bigger Caliber. which means a bigger warhead in the bolt, which means more damage. why cant so many not understand that the stat system of the TT is to simply to convert it an compare it to the stats of a rpg, even one so simple as DW.

Vendettar said:

I have the 2nd Ed Sisters of Battle Codex, and I can't find that quote- can you reprint it here?

Obviously, the WH40KRP line shouldn't be a 1:1 recreation on the TableTop game, given the increased level of detail. Some "wiggle room" is to be expected, but any fan of the TT game (which is the majority of the fans of the 40K universe as a whole) will expect the same general proportions to be maintained. "Increased level of detail" can't justify making a weapon that is Strength 4 in the TT game (like a Space Marine bolter) more powerful than a Strength 5 weapon (like an Imperial Guard Heavy Bolter).

Adeptus-B said:

I couldn't find anything like that in the 2E Imperial Guard Codex either.

The 2E SoB Codex sadly doesn't go into a lot of detail regarding the weapons (unlike the 5E one which does, in fact, say that their guns are equal) - and the only reference to Marines I found in the 2E 'dex was that they respect the Sisters' battle prowess and skill-at-arms.

In general I have never seen anything outside this one RPG that made a distinction between different "castes" of bolt weapons - only that a bolter's user should never use one on full-auto unless he is either a Space Marine or otherwise augmented...

I apologize. You are right. It´s not ion the SoB Codex. I had no time to go through my entire Wh40k library but i will find it.

Lynata said:

I agree, before the RPG I had never come across the distinction either, but it did make perfect sense to me.

A scene in the book Xenos illustrates my problem nicely: Esienhorn is having tea with a DW marine; it is noted how small the cup is in the hands of the SM and how carefully he handles it. Then he gives Esienhorn a bolt pistol as a gift – my thought was surely the pistol would be far too big for a human (even an inquisitor) to possibly use properly. I also had trouble visualising having Gaunt (of Gaunt’s Ghosts fame) having twin bolt pistols in shoulder holsters.

So when the two "castes" of bolters turned up in DH I was very pleased: problem solved!

As to why have we never seen this in the TT – I would guess that, as others have already stated (more succinctly), the 1d6 scale of the TT would not allow enough differentiation for it, and there was simply no need for it; the focus for the RPG and the TT are not the same (focused individual battles as against large skirmish forces).

Of course what "caste" of bolter the SoBs should get is a whole other argument (and one my personal jury is still out on...)

DW

Traveller61 said:

Modern firearm manufacturers often offer two or three different grip sizes to accommodate a buyer.

Eisenhorn's pistol was a special case, anyways, housing its magazine in the grip. Not that this is much of an issue - it likely just means that (unlike what seems to be standard) the rounds won't be stacked in a "zigzagging" way but in a single row, limiting magazine capacity to ~6 shots. Maybe a similar construction is used for that Gaunt's Ghost character? It would certainly make the gun a good deal less bulky, depending on how resilient it is supposed to be.

In the end, it's not like caliber 75 pistols have to be that huge. We did use them in our real world some time ago, too. It all comes down to what other fancy gadgets you want to put into the weapon and how thick its casing is supposed to be. A bit like Marine power armour, really.

Traveller61 said:

Sure, the TT game is very simplified, and a more detailed RPG should reflect the increased level of detail- it is entirely possible that a SM boltgun is more like Strenght 4-and-a-half, rounded down to 4 for simplicity. I can accept that degree of "wiggle room" (even if/when it is not explicitly stated in the fluff), as long as the same general proportions are maintained. My complaint is changing power levels relative to each other. A Guardsman should be more powerful than a Gretchin; a Dire Avenger should be more powerful than a Guardsman; a Space Marine should be more powerful than a Dire Avenger; a Daemon Prince should be more powerful than a Space Marine; and so on. If the RPG signifigantly violantes long-established scales of power, then it is hard for me to think of it as anything other than flat-out wrong.

-And you will notice that the people who defend the DW stats by saying that larger weapons are always more powerful than smaller ones never say that an Astartes boltpistol should be less powerful than a much larger Astartes boltgun, or that an Astartes boltgun should be less powerful than a much larger Imperial Guard Heavy Bolter- why is that...?

Lynata said:

This is the reason I only use part of the 'mans reach exceeds his grasp' rule in my games, even if the size chart doesn't help in these matters. But then again I don't run a crossover game so it's not that big a deal.

Lynata said:

Ever notice that this type of stuff just happens in the books, and seems to just fit the needs of the fiction? Isn't the act of a DW SM gifting him the bolter the important part in the story, not the canon nature or non-canon nature of a human firing a bolt pistol that used to belong to a SM? Who cares if he should be able to shoot it or not if it makes for a good story?

Lynata said:

There are other examples of rifles and muskets firing .69 caliber balls as well, but they don't even come close to the size/dimensions/power of modern day equivalents. I'd expect a .75 cal weapon with rocket propelled ammo to be bigger than a modern day .50 cal pistol, especially in 40k where bigger is for some reason better.

Adeptus-B said:

But if a novel had it written in it, or something else outside of FFG, would it have made it better? Wrong is kind of a funny term in 40k, especially when it comes in the form of a GW approved product. Retcon, maybe, unique to the RPG for various reasons, probably. But wrong, not sure I agree.

Adeptus-B said:

Because it's inconvenient and why bring up something that hurts your own argumet?

There are lot's of 'plausable' reasons for some of the discrepancy as well that we can go over again, but it really comes down to game stats no matter which way you slice it, and you just have to decide which set of game stats you prefer for your game.

Charmander said:

Absolutely, I agree. Yet isn't it understandable that such things also generate debate amongst roleplayers in particular, given that they want to work within the confines of the setting and thus have a high interest in how things work? Details such as those can easily become a precedent. Aside from that I think that an author needs to have an implicit uinderstanding of the world his piece of literature is set in, anyways. Simply because the story should feel part of it and not raise eyebrows because something "doesn't seem right".

This is in no way meant as a negative review of the Eisenhorn stories, mind you. In my opinion it's perfectly explainable.

Charmander said:

Why, though? This is a mindset that I still don't understand:

Have you ever asked yourself what the main advantage of bolt weapons is? Because in my opinion, this is it. The bolts themselves are providing part of the acceleration required to propel them towards sufficient speed, thereby minimizing the amount of kinetic energy that has to be created the moment the gun is fired - which in turn results in less recoil, which results in people actually being able to use this gun.

If the bolts were not rocket-propelled, a boltgun would have to work like a miniature artillery cannon to achieve the same effect. Needless to say, it would become quite difficult to handle then.

That said, we've already seen official cross-sections of bolt weapons and it'd be fairly easy to make them smaller if you'd just remove stuff like the additional armour plating, auto-repair functionality, user identification matrix, built-in laser sights and ancillary targeter interface.
Not that you'd actually have to make them that much smaller, mind you...

It is quite similar to how the Sisters' Angel-pattern power armour is able to achieve the same degree of armoured protection as the Astartes armour whilst sporting a much smaller profile: it has been stripped down to its most essential components, lacking much of what was considered useful but not truly necessary. I don't see why the same approach seems to be utterly unthinkable when it comes to bolt weapons.

And we already have bolt pistols as a perfect example of "small" bolters, firing the same ammunition for the same effect. What do you think is the difference in components between pistol and boltgun?

But I feel this is approaching the kind of discussion again I intended to avoid. I only wanted to stick my head out of the hole for a moment because it was claimed that this discrepancy would actually be backed up by the codices (which clearly said the opposite).

Lynata said:

I'm just trying to say that authors often change and modify things to fit the particular bit of fiction they're making, which I think was essentially what happened with FFG- though I can't say with certainty as I'm not one of their authors. And this is aside from the fact that some people (IMO wrongly) trash Abnett's work from not fitting canon enough in general.

Lynata said:

The difference between a modern day 9mm and a modern day .50 cal is something like 5-10" (depending on barrel). It stands to reason that the difference between a .50 and a .75 would be similar in the 'future.'

Then we bring in the gyrojet theory; it's hard for their image for Spees Mehreens to use sleek and elegant weapons, they tend to follow the bigger is better theory of 40k/the Empire.

I'm not arguing that your thoughs and interpretations don't make sense, my argument is that in 40k your ideas of logic and sense aren't precisely welcome theories (heresy!), and in the RPG setting, you have to take a lot more into account thatn logic.

Lynata said:

Right, and when applying 'modern' firearms science you'd see a profile that would be more different than simply reduced range (or it would neccesitate firing different ammo). Again I'm not saying your argument is wrong here.

In game terms it's definitely a bigger leap of logic, and you can even see this same issue in weapons such as the laspistol or autogun, or plasma pistols or melta weapons. You're looking at a zero to one damage difference- the only thing the game does to really show the difference is range and ammo capacity. But in game terms...that kind of works.

Lynata said:

Fair enough, and for what it's worth I agree with you- outside of the RPG boltguns are pretty much boltguns. As Adeptus has said before, no one has yet to produce a piece of actual evidence outside of the RPG.

I can't believe a muzzle loaded weapon is being cited as some kind of justification for bolt pistols. That's just bizarre and of no actual relevance.

Eisenhorn's pistol makes me cry a little inside. Even with a single stack magazine, I couldn't actually get my hands around a grip that was an inch wide. The books do some horrible things to the 40k universe, but I can let it ride, as the narrative is pretty good.

Charmander said:

Because they use the same size warhead and the damage is not velocity related.

Why should a 0.75 self-propelled munition firing weapon be larger than a 0.50 conventional one? Well, aside from the mechanism needing to be 50% larger to start with; one of them fires a round that is a lump of lead, and one fires one that has a built in rocket motor and an explosive warhead. Internal space aside, that lack of density requires a longer projectile for stability. A larger projectile equates to a larger weapon, because the mechanism that moves those rounds inside the weapon needs to be larger. Kinda common sense.

The 'it has *less* recoil than a conventional weapon' analysis is flawed, if you consider that the benefit of using rockets is that they have less recoil, allowing you to then step up the size of the warhead. This cancels out that 'advantage', because you then increase the recoil again. We use things like recoilless rifles and rocket launchers to kill tanks because it's the only way that we can fire warheads that size from man-portable weapons without breaking bones. Yes: If we made a bolt pistol that managed to have the same stopping power as a .50AE it would have less recoil. But you've just invented a totally pointless and ridiculously over-complicated weapon, with over-priced ammunition. Just buy a .50AE and have a simpler, cheaper more reliable weapon. The point of using a gyrojet is to fire ammunition too large to be fired conventionally.

Let's face it: The Angel pattern armour is slimmer because then the kids that buy the minis can see their boobies and feminine figures. But sure: We can pretty it up and say it's down to less crucial systems being removed.

*sighs*

Siranui said:

Siranui said:

Siranui said:

Siranui said:

(*: And before you claim this to be groxshit, this was the official explanation from GW)

Siranui said:

The conclusion remains that a bolt weapon with 0.75 caliber self-propelled rounds has less recoil than a weapon of the same caliber which would have to rely on the kinetic energy of the actual shot (which, in case of bolt weapons, is only the first of two stages). How much recoil? Hard to say - but given how 20 years of Wh40k treat the topic it does seem bearable by strong people, so perhaps a comparison to a cal 45-50 pistol isn't too far off. Unless FFG's interpretation is actually part of a retcon, of course.

Siranui said:

Siranui said:

Charmander: Thanks for your sensible input. I do agree that 40k is definitively about more than just logic - but then why do people try to use it to justify this change of the status quo? Until now I've never even seen a reason to question the supposed logic behind bolt weapons in the setting, but now that this disparity gets introduced I find myself not only missing the codex-claimed equality, I also don't find anything wrong with it in terms of "realism".

I suppose we can only agree to disagree - as much as I dislike such "solutions" and as much as I have difficulties with refraining to post once I got stuck in an argument and feel a need to defend my PoV (see above). The clever thing to do would be to just lean back and wait a few months until GW clarifies the aforementioned equality once again, but I am only human.

Lynata said:

Don't write such long rebuttals if it tires you. After all: You're not going to change my mind on the matter, just as I'm not going to change yours.

Mmm... pointless patronising. Nice. I can do it too, see.

Science Fantasy, not science fiction. The entire point of science fiction is that it attempts to be vaguely 'realistic'. 40k is not and never has been science fiction.

Yes: Usable by super-human-Astartes-in-power-armour, or the equivalent. And once again: Calibre != warhead size, as you yourself have pointed out.

Except for Astartes ones, which are designed even larger, with larger warheads, to take advantage of the Astartes' ability to handle a more punishing recoil.

In my book.

Your mileage varies.

EDIT: Jesus, quite the quotation Assplosion, my apoogies, now I can't fix any of it

EDIT: OMFG this quotation system is horrible, deleting this post.

Siranui said:

I wondered how long it would take before someone realized this topic was the new "Female Space Marines": one side commited to canon, the other focused on what seems "cool", and neither budging an inch...