Now maybe I'm wrong on this but "reduces magnitude by the number indicated...every time it is hit by the weapon." to me says that if you hit a horde with a frag missile, which has Blast(8) and devastating (1), means to me that if you hit a horde of lightly armoured weak foes (ones that you couldn't help but damage) that you would get 8 hits, each one of which does 2 points of magnitude to the horde, for a total of 16 mag damage.

That by itself I don't have issue with but with the addition of the atomizer gun in Rites of Battle **** just gets ridiculous, with blast (5) and devastating (4), that means 25 mag is pretty well guaranteed, not including if you are a devastator.

So am I reading this wrong or is that weapon just sickly efficient as killing the **** out of people?

I would only use the devastating once.
Or in other words I'd make a difference between "every time it is hit" and "once for each hit"

So for the Blast (8), Devastating (1) that would mean 9 hits + specialty bonus if applicable.
But that's only my way ot reading it.

I agree with Umbranus for blast weapon. Despite doing 8 damage from Blast, it is still only hitting the hoarde once. However, for a weapon that could fire more than once, I would probably award the Devatating bonus to each shot that hit.

I would take it to read it as "for every successful attack". I was wondering it myself, but it just seems massively overpowered otherwise. The Battlecannon would be doing roughly 50 Horde damage a turn otherwise... which is frankly a bit absurd. It would also make the missile launcher the obvious weapon to take.

I agree it sounds a little overpowered but "every time it hits" is every time it hits and blast weapons produce hits equal to their blast, so really until I get an official ruling that says otherwise I feel obliged to run it that way.

Something feels wrong about doing that much mag damage without adding talents or specialty ammo to it. A gun straight out of the box shouldn't do quite that much IMHO. I'd personally rule it as addative, so the atomizer would go 9 hits and (probaby 9 damage). The missle launcher would do 9 hits (and again probably 9 damage).

RAW versus RAI may be debateable, but something feels better about adding them rather than multiplying them.

The sensible reading would add it on top of damage, rather than to each shot.

If you've got a player trying to tell you otherwise, tell him he only gets the extra Devastating damage with the weapon in melee, as it says 'every time it hits', so the PC needs to actually hit the monsters with it physically...

Just pointing this out.

Storm of Iron would not double the damage as it is not a flamer weapon or semi/full auto.

Unrelenting Devastation would only add 1d5 points of Mag damage to a horde as the atomizer is a blast weapon.

TempestSatori said:

It says "every TIME it hits", rather than "for every hit" like most things that double the number of hits. I would take "every time" to mean "for every attack", as all hits of an attack occur at the same time.

Every time it hits seems like per hit to me, especially when they word it "once per attack" when they mean for to only get whatever relevant bonus once.

It has been clarified recently:

"The second scenario is the correct one. As a weapon with the Blast Quality inflicts a number of hits to a horde equal to its Blast value and a Weapon with the Devastating Quality reduces the Magnitude of a horde on a "per hit" basis, they do stack. Therefore a Blast (5) weapon which also has Devastating (2) would reduce the Magnitude of a horde by 15 points (5 for the Blast rating, and an additional 10 for Devastating)

Thank you for your question and happy gaming!
--
Tim Flanders
Associate RPG Producer
Fantasy Flight Games"

Alex

So that **** Cannon is just like I thought.....sickly efficient at killing huge amounts of people very quickly.

Seemingly so, although you should check the living errata as the Frag missile was reduced in effectiveness with a smaller blast figure.

It seems likely that the calculations for for devastating were taken more into account with those rules.

TempestSatori said:

Well, it IS a Battle Cannon. Even in Table Top, I once wiped my brother's entire terminator squad, and 9 out of 11 of his accompanying Sisters of Battle squad in a single shot on turn one with a Defiler. If I recall correctly, he insta-surrendered.

By the description, the Atomizer Cannon should be one of the most horrific weapons for destroying huge swaths of enemies. If you could out perform it with a storm bolter it wouldn't really hold up. I think for the few weapons that have the quality it works quite well.

I agree I just wanted to make sure I was running it right, which I was, so its cool.

I assume this is "per hit that does Magnitude damage," not "per hit"?

I am going to run it that way.

Alex