Hi All,

I have this question for everyone, how many magazines are issued to the Deathwatch characters? I know the Desistator gets the backpack ammo bin, but can he carry extra ammo for the heavy bolter?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if I am just not seeing it listed somewhere in the book.

A space marine carries into battle the amount of normal ammunition he believes he needs. Simple answer: there any listed. It varies alot by mission, so therefore this is used by a lot of GMs to say they can bring as much as they want into battle.

This topic has come up a few times, and there really is no definative answer that I would say is a solve all. In the beginning, I just made my guys count their reloads, as that was enough while in combat for me. But now that we're getting up there, I too want to limit them. The Dev's in the group know that when the backpack is out, they're out. There's no illusion to that. But I too wouldn't mind making them sweat it out a little bit.

I've been trying to work out a system where I as a DM keep a percentage of the Ammo the normal guys have. I take a counter and keep it from the group, usually a D10. If I thnk they've shot alot in a combat, I may lower it by one or two. When it reaches around 3, I announce that they're starting to run low. When it's at 1, I tell them exactly how many they have left.

We treat ammo as near infinite. I don't see any reason the Devastator couldn't take some normal ammo cans with if he wanted. I would definitely allow my Devastators to take extra ammo for free if they asked for it. If you feel they want too much make it cost 1 Req or something.

If going on a long mission without resupply then I would consider tracking ammo to make sure they don't run out, but in most missions where the team is only in combat a few times I wouldn't concern myself with it.

Fluff says 3 on the hip 1 in the clip, with more flair though. and honestly, 120 rounds is good. those bolters do have single and semiautomatic settings too, ya know.

Tanlis said:

It's in the eratta- unlimited for 'normal' bullets, or if you like to limit players like I do, the 'rule of three' (though 3 clips could be argued to be 9 in DW given your fire selector, which has to be some sort of drum magazine like a SAW or I still have no idea how that would work)

The ideas presented here aren't bad either, really it's up to you and if you want ammunition to be a concern at any given time.

Officially: Unlimited reloads unless the GM rules otherwise. The Devastator has one backpack load (200 rounds) but then can reload with normal magazines (60 rounds).

Guidance given if wanting to have limits: Above mentioned rule of 3 (which was the suggestion for Rogue Trader). In my mind this will be fine for single session combat intensive mission (if we are presuming several hordes, which burn through ammo really quickly), a medium intensity 3 or 4 session mission, or any length of non-combat focussed mission. However, for any longer than that 3 is not enough (it was for Rogue Trader when you are usually doing compartively short expeditions between resupplies back on ship). We are doing a rather sustained (4 sessions and counting) Ork mission and I have used roughly a magazine per battle (of which there have been 3 so far).

They also recommend that if you want to make people feel short of ammo maybe limit it to 2 magazines.

Personally I would never load more than one magazine of the same type of ammo into a fire selector. It just feels... wrong to just use it prevent from having to reload, rather than just to use different types of ammunition.

With the Deathwatch Fire selector i always took it to be 3 (individual) clips loaded (some illustrations of deathwatch show bolters with what looks like 2 additional magazines inserted horizontally into the breach/main body area - labelled 'I' and 'II' so i presume the main mag would be labelled 'III'). Thus with the 3 on the hip that would be 6 clips carried in total rather than the 9 that Charmander suggested. This would fit nicely with the interoperability of the ammo types via the fire selector.

Just my 2 cents (pennies lol).

sgtgrarm said:

When I look at those illustrations I just cannot fathom how those button looking objects on the side of the gun are additional magazines; it's confusing because a) how on earth would you load the bolt shells into the chamber in a system like that, and b) how do the little boxes fit bolt shells when the standard clip is twice as big?

Personally I tend to stick with 6 mags per mission for the main guns; I got that from running Final Sanction. 6 seems to be about where an 'average' combat mission sits with my group, where they end the mission with a mag or two in reserve. With this the team doesn't seem to feel high pressure to conserve ammo, but they're encouraged to make some non charge-in-on-full-auto-again choices. For extended deployments or heavy resistance the watch commander adjusts accordingly.

Thanks All, I will take all of your answers accordingly. I know when I was active USMC, we had 2 mag pouches with 3 mags each. This did not stop us from carrying more than this (usually double this), however, I was assigned the M60 GPMG, and I carried two extra belts for the weapon. (I guess that makes me the Devistator of the unit, heh).

I always assumed the shot selector to be an external attachment: Basically a ammunition box/cassette with internal divisions and a feed selection mechanism. The idea of randomly sticking three magazines into a weapon from various angles just hits the 'wrong' buzzer on too many counts.

[i realise that the artwork and minis doesn't seem to portray it that way. This is my mileage and it may vary!)

As it is a military game, I opted to add a little more book-keeping in return for adding another tactical edge to the game. It's not hard to mark down 10 rounds fired, but what you get in return is players that have to think a little before they start spraying. This also gives players more choice and thought when it comes to arming. A small detail, perhaps, but we just started Final Sanction, and the added ammo consideration made the whole arming part more fun for everyone, and actually made my players feel more like Marines.

I go with 1 (of each, if Fire Selector) in the gun, and 3 spare. If the players want to requisition more, that's up to them. Specifically, for Final Sanction, one of the locations is an Imperial stores, and with finite ammo, that location suddenly becomes another tactical consideration for the Kill-Team. Infinite ammo just puts that location (and the PDF folks trying to defend it) at the bottom of the priority list. Which is fine, of course, if that's what you want.

Personally I am very picky about ammo. I know the fluff says 3+1 magazines (hate it when they are called clips) with, I think its 24 rounds per mag. I keep track of how many rounds I fire each time and I reload when time is needed. The rest of my team don't even look at the ammo or what they have. They just auto fire every time, all the time. Plus our GM said we don't have to worry about grenades as long as they are the standard frags or kraks. The plus side to this is that I always get a little more XP because of my efforts to actually RP this stuff out.

honKYkat73 said:

But the ammo debate, IMHO, isn't about RPing something out, it's about what theme and mechanic you're going for in your game. I'm betting your RPing of stuff consists of more than ammo counting if you're getting bonus experience.

And you should relax about the whole clip versus magazine debate, it's an extremely common use of the word. But it's the pot and kettle here, I get mad about double negatives and words like irregardless

Or 'mis-spoke'.

Nah: Actually, that one *is* worth killing over.

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I'm pretty sure the fire selectors in deathwatch are exactly the same as the sternguard's big boxes of bolts attached to the guns.

As for ammo, in my game it's abstract, I don't want the players to be to busy trying to keep track of numbers of play the game.

In our game we can carry 7 mags total. We keep track of our ammo for normal and special, its not that bad really, just jot it down after shooting.

At the moment we are just learning the game, so we're going with the infinite option. We may change that in the future though, as we require people to keep track of their ammo anyway, just in case you have to change the clip duing a fire fight.

borithan said:

when you say "reload with normal magazines" do you mean regular bolter mags? I only ask because in the book it states the heavy bolter is a larger round...

Normal Heavy Bolter magazines (which are 60 rounds each). I meant normal in contrast to the backpack, not in terms of "normal" bolters vs "heavy" bolters.

Anyone with a heavy weapon gets the ammo pack and three reloads of it's normal 'clip' size. All other weapons get three reloads as well; not counting the 'clips' in the shot selector. So, if you have a basic weapon with a shot selector you actually have six full 'clips'. Whenever the marines stop off at any Imperial facility they get a full reload. That's how we've run it in game, normally.

White Trick said:

That's exactly the system I run as well, and it works pretty well except on very long infiltration or insurgence missions