Cynical Cat said:

The changes for weapons and equipment and rules presented in Purge the Unclean and Inquisitor's Handbook are also in effect for DH and RT as I've clearly shown. Why would the game designers feel compelled to stay with early design work when they've already overridden it? Deathwatch level stats will work just fine and not be overpowered as long as PCs gain access to high powered gear/chaos gifts/sorcery as well. No one doubts that the CSMs will be the kings of personal combat but there are scary, scary weapons in both DH and RT that are useable by unaugmented humans and that's without touching the daemon weapons or guns loaded with daemon bullets.

Cynical Cat said:

Come again? The 2d10 have not been errata'ed, as far as I'm aware. What is it that you've shown?

Cynical Cat said:

Because there was nothing that was actually overridden for DH/RT and these early designs work just fine where they are. DW however seems to take place on a different narrative scale, which is why it doesn't work as well in unison with the other games (or rather the characters thereof). Its weapons (whose different stats do not make sense in-universe) are scaled for a completely different kind of opponents, who are in turn scaled to be a challenge to a team of Veteran Marines using devastating Squad Mode mechanics. I'm sure you see what I'm getting at.

Of course it is just as well possible that Black Crusade will "buff" characters to superhuman levels via Chaos Gifts as you have mentioned (and as I've already theorized as an alternative earlier), but given that this will eliminate the opportunity to play normal ("tainted") characters I do hope that this is not the case. Extensive modifications to the body are something for later ranks in the game - just like in WHFRP's "Tome of Corruption" where you did not start out as a tentacled arch-heretic but had to work your way up. Plus, I'd like to think that Black Crusade will be more "down to earth" again, anyways.

The Corruption Rules in DH and everything else are different than those in Purge the Unclean.

The Splinter weapon rules in Into the Storm are different.

Hellguns designs post IH are different.

So yes they have changed things a number of things since that time. So have bolter weapons and for good reason. 2d10 isn't high powered enough to be very effective against even Purge the Unclean level Marine, who are almost as tough as the ones in DW. They don't have to formally errata Purge the Unclean, which was written before DH was finished. If they want bolters to be reasonably effective against Marine level enemies (as the setting and game balance require) then Space Marine bolters have to be better than 2d10.

If Traitor Marines are viable characters, and everything indicates they are, then they are likely to be the leading personal combat class. Other classes have to be powerful enough to participate in some meaningful way in combat just as in RT the Arch-Militant is the best at personal scale shooting other classes aren't worthless in fights that will challenge the Arch-Militant.

Cynical Cat said:

I know things have changed between DH publications, I just would not be sure as to whether changes between the different lines of the RPG would or should carry over into the other. Or are you implying the Angelus from IH now does 2d10+5 damage?

Cynical Cat said:

There I do agree, but this is a general problem with both bolt weapons (whose raw damage seems a tad too similar to lasguns) as well as the application of flat multipliers (that make for overpowered Marines whose bodies rival the armour they wear in terms of protection). Lasguns are just as ineffective as non-Astartes boltguns against Marines, which clearly shouldn't be the case according to the fluff. Actually, the fluff before this RPG did not even know a difference between Marine and non-Marine boltguns - which kinda makes sense, given that they always fired the same caliber of ammunition and only ever differed in size/weight/durability/reliability.

From what I've read, the Horde rules in DW are supposed to deal with this issue, and make (to go back to the earlier example) both lasguns as well as non-Astartes bolters viable and threatening weapons against even player Marines again when used by groups of NPCs - but given that people won't play only CSMs in Black Crusade, this "workaround" will not be applicable here. In my opinion, it would be best for the entire franchise if FFG would just redesign the entire idea of Unnatural Stats (I've already heard two excellent ideas for alternatives on this forum) and make everything fit together without having to apply some patchwork extra rules to something to render it a worthy opponent. Black Crusade, with its aim to bring Chaos Marines and "normal" cultists together in a single group, could well be the first step on this bumpy but promising road.

It's a question of preferences, too, of course - as I already mentioned earlier, I would consider it somewhat lame if the entire party would be forced to start as Chaos Champions with half a dozen mutations already instead of working their way up the food chain similar to, say, DH.

I actually couldn't give a fig about chaos space marines, I'm much more interested in the low end of the power scale, lowly cultists and petty mutants struggling to survive. I guess I'm hoping the power level range isn't Ascension to Over 9000.

Hi,

Ditto. My feeling is if FFG set the power level of BC to start lower you can still create more experienced characters if you wish to play a higher power game. Its much much harder to create weaker characters than the rulebook supports, in fact might as well roll up some hive mutants/adepts from DH and start there.

I hope the relative level is roughly equivalent to RT, a middle ground set up. Seems unlikely with CSMs but I can hope...

I dont want to start an arguement here but it appears FFG create more problems with the mechanics on higher power games (Psionics, Bolters, Unnaturals etc). I realise the focus on each game is different but Ascension/Deathwatch both seemed to create alot of debate on the forums about broken mechanics. Our DH game had a great story arc but when the PCs ascended the balance of tension on those vital dice rolls started to disappear due to the extreme success rate of high level characters. Admittedly this opinion is probably biased by my own tastes and no offense is intended to gamers who enjoy high power games.

Maybe Millandson or others could check their NDAs and a clue or two over non CSM options...? (joking)

Either way BC looks like a refreshing change of approach.

The Corruption rules changed between finishing Purge the Unclean and the final version of Dark Heresy, so yes the rules have changed within the same game line. Hellguns in Ascension have significant differences to those in Inquisitor Handbook. Back when the IH and Purge the Unclean were written they weren't writing a game where Space Marines shot each other up with bolt guns. If the Angelus was written now I would expect it to do 2d10+5 damage. I don't disagree with you on the issue of the problems created by Unnatural Characteristics and the damage system. That's undoubtedly the reason that Space Marine bolt guns were jumped up to 2d10+5 damage because they realized 2d10 wasn't enough. The Marine in Purge the Unclean could have sucked down a huge number of 2d10 damage rounds before falling.

The fluff before the RPG definitely did know the difference between Space Marine and non Space Marine bolt guns. The Eisenhorn books, for example, feature them and their are references in the 3rd edition 40K game books.

The senior cultists in the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books are quite formidable. While not physically the equal of a Traitor Marine they possessed sorcery, resources, skills, and training (not to mention the ability to actually hide among the ordinary population) that made them dangerous enemies. Such figures, skilled and ambitious cultists who are reaching towards the upper tiers of power, would make excellent characters.

If the Angelus was written now I would expect it to do 2d10+5 damage.

I wouldn't. The Angelus still has an important limitation: It's fired by a mortal and has to make all kinds of compromises for that in order to not break his arm.

No.12 said:

Two things.

When most people scream about things being Broken, they are generally saying "This isn't what I wanted it to be."

Ascension level games shouldn't be about the dice rolling. At that level you are movers and shakers on a galactic scale. If you succeed you do great things, if you fail planets should burn. I think a lot of people, players and GM's alike, have a difficult time with the transition to that kind of play.

Back to the topic.

My hope is that they cover the gamut from low level cultists all the way through playable demon princes and chosen of chaos. This would be an enormous task to pull off, but I think it's doable.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Ditto. It certainly won't be an easy task but a consolidated tier of different power levels would be excellent.

Hi,

@ItsUncertainWho:

Yes i agree, claims of brokenness may well be caused by some disappointment in a game. I do understand the focus on ascended plots, but at some level dice rolling should be involved alongside character decisions to determine success/failure? As I mentioned, I'm not trying to suggest high power games are worse, just that its possibly harder to get the balance right.

And I wholeheartedly agree, a range of power levels from BC would be fantastic. This was actually my first thought on reading this announcement.

Cynical Cat said:

What exactly -is- the difference, then? The Munitorum Manual from 2008 makes it clear that there is only one kind of boltgun, used by both normal people and Marines. The book merely points out that, due to the immense recoil, the full auto setting should never be used by anyone but a Space Marine or at least someone with an extremely stocky build. In the 40k TT rules, "normal" bolters also do just as much damage as Marine ones - and whilst the TT isn't really capable of comparisons due to its limited scale, the "mortal" bolters from DH would transition to lasgun damage in the tabletop. And did not Eisenhorn get a bolt pistol from a Space Marine?

Cifer said:

What compromise, exactly? The gun fires the exact same ammunition - a miniature missile that has its own rocket motor. How could it logically be any weaker than the same bullet fired from an Astartes bolter?

Back to topic: Given that this is an entirely new line for the RPG I think we will receive several books - perhaps Black Crusade will have its own "Ascension" expansion, but start out on the lower end on the scale similar to DH/RT?

Those are really good points...

Lynata said:

To clarify, by exact same ammunition you mean same caliber. Ammunition of the same caliber for different weapons does not mean they are the same. I thought this had been clarified before.

By your logic a .50 AE round for a pistol is the exact same as a .50 BMG round for a heavy machine gun and a .50 flint lock round.

They are all .50 caliber but vastly different in performance. All of them can slide down the same barrel, but none of them can be fired from the same weapon.

ItsUncertainWho said:

No. By exact same ammunition I mean the exact same rounds. The entry for the Angelus states it uses Astartes rounds that get "lost" on their way to distribution - the gun is simply meant as a delivery system to make use of this kind of ammunition by whoever manages to acquire such bolts.

Actually, the book also merely talks about "Astartes caliber" - and given that both Astartes bolters as well as any other bolt weapon (sans the heavy ones) use cal .75 shells, your theory about different shell length kinda lacks substance. Not to mention that we already know precisely how an Astartes round looks like and it can't really get any shorter than that, so the comparison with this is a bit off.
Actually, you just need to look at the magazines to see that they're far too similar to allow any significant differences. Back before this RPG line launched, the one and only difference between Astartes and other bolters was that Marine guns were heavily armoured to better withstand battlefield stress. In my opinion, this change was both unnecessary and gamebreaking, and I'd be happy to see it reverted in Black Crusade.

I think we already discussed this in another thread and we came to the conclusion that the one and only reason for why Astartes bolters are oh-so-superior is simply because there must be some kind of arcane law that, for some weird reason, must forbid everyone to have their bolt shells contain a charge as efficient as that of the Space Marines. Which is a little ridiculous, but it's the one and only explanation for the situation we have now:

Fact 1: Both Astartes bolt rounds as well as normal bolt rounds have the same caliber
Fact 2: Astartes bolt rounds are actually pretty short (look at the pictures in your DW book) and would easily fit into any other "mortal" bolt weapon
Fact 3: Astartes rounds are perfectly capable of being fired by a normal weapon held by a normal human
Conclusion?

Sorry for derailing the thread, but this is one of my big criticisms towards a game which I otherwise love very much.

Cifer said:

No, but a first-level Adept (or Guardsman for that matter) in a party consisting of first-level Deathwatch Marines has a pretty bleak life expectancy...

To clairify- I'm wondering if Chaos Space Marines and "mere mortal" characters will start out at the same XP level, with the CSM's gear/enhancements taken into account. If so, what level would that be? I doubt you could go lower than 5000 XP, representing a fresh-from-Fabius Bile's-laboratory rookie CSM, as opposed to a veteran like the Deathwatch Space Marines...

Lynata said:

Source for any of this? There's absolutely none that I've ever seen that Astartes bolt weapons are the same as that of ordinary humans. .75 calibre is thrown around as a common bolt gun calibre but I've never seen a source that says that mere mortals and Astartes use the same rounds or the same calibres. I would certainly be issuing my eight foot tall power armour wearing post human demigods a different calibre of bolt gun than that designed to be used by mere mortals in flak armour.

The "there's a hundred different pattern" handwave pretty much covers the different published damage on Astartes bolt guns the same way it covers the early underpowered plasma guns and the higher powered ones in latter books and the changes between hellguns in early books and later ones.

@Lynata

What compromise, exactly? The gun fires the exact same ammunition - a miniature missile that has its own rocket motor. How could it logically be any weaker than the same bullet fired from an Astartes bolter?

Shall I fire up the techno-babble generator or would you like to?

As for your facts, they all seem rather incongruent with what's been written in the RPG books - that it takes a special weapon to fire "Astartes caliber" bolts without tearing the mortal's arm off.

@Topic

No, but a first-level Adept (or Guardsman for that matter) in a party consisting of first-level Deathwatch Marines has a pretty bleak life expectancy...

Which is why that adept has 300 XP and the DW Marines 8000. Presumably, an adeptoid class starting at the same level as the Marine would have some other areas of expertise.

Cynical Cat said:

Apart from the hundred or so times that normal humans have been using Space Marine boltguns in various novels and comics we have the Munitorum Manual with the following quote:

"The boltgun is most commonly recognised as the standard weapon of the Adeptus Astartes and, though it is not unknown for certain high-ranking officers to bear such advanced and powerful weaponry, it is incredibly rare. Bolters are more effective weapons than the standard pattern lasguns and are able to punch through most forms of armour with little or no effort. They are, however, much more complex and are generally only ever carried by stocky individuals of great strength, given that they are incredibly heavy and generate enormous recoil when they fire what is essentially a miniature missile. [...]
A bolter can fire a single shot, a four-round burst or fully automatic fire, though without bionic augmentation it is not recommended that anyone other than one of the Space Marines fires on anything other than the single shot setting."

Of course, In addition to this we also have the Ultramarines doing bolter drills with unaugmented recruits to determine their worthiness of being able to be inducted into the Chapter in the first place (see Codex Space Marines, 2nd/3rd Ed). Or at least one pattern of boltgun (the Mars-Beta) having been issued to both the Astartes as well as the Sororitas. Which kinda wouldn't make sense if one of them was unable to wield it.

Tl;dr: The big difference is that boltguns were rarely carried by people because all of them originally required their user to be rather strong. In this RPG they seem to have been "powered down" so that anyone - even a lanky SB2 Scribe - can use one, essentially creating two classes of bolt weapons where in all the 20 years of fluff before there was only one. And not even that, but it's not your strength or your toughness that determines what class you're able to wield (an idea that was touched upon with the Sacristan bolt pistol and its SB4 requirement); no, you have to own a title ("Astartes"). Are you a power armoured hulk with SB7? You're outta luck, that Marine Scout over there with his SB6 can use heavier guns than you.

Cifer said:

Go ahead, I'm curious to see what you can make up, considering that you're about to try making two 100% identical bolt rounds act differently.

Cifer said:

So what exactly is keeping the Inquisition or other Imperial organizations from building more of them?

Lynata said:

If your going to push the MM this hard do I get to start quoting how wrong Ork, Eldar, and Tau stats are by quoting the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer?

And nothing in that quote says that a bolter for an Astartes and a mortal are the same.

Lynata said:

When has any fluff said that all bolt rounds are 100% identical? Where has anything in 40K ever been that specific?

We have established that Caliber means nothing other than diameter of a projectile.

Lynata said:

It's illegal for anyone other than an Astartes to posses Astartes bolt rounds.

ItsUncertainWho said:

You're missing the point. When an in-universe source says that a strong human can perfectly use a boltgun of "Marine level" - which has happened numerous times in the fluff, mind you - why should that be propaganda? No point in lying here, is there?

ItsUncertainWho said:

Of course not - given that's not really necessary when you never had two different classes to begin with. The notion of any boltgun requiring strong users and the mentioning of Space Marines should be enough of a hint, though. The wording clearly treats Space Marines and strong/augmented people as one and the same in terms of bolt weapon capability.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Read the Inquisitor's Handbook. The Angelus is clearly stated as using the exact same ammunition as a Space Marine bolter.
And who said anything about "all"? I was discussing the weird notion of the Angelus supposedly making less damage than a Marine boltgun when it uses the same rounds. Because neither the Angelus nor its user have the Astartes title .

ItsUncertainWho said:

The idea of any other bolt round simply not being as good as Astartes ammo is a nice (if somewhat illogical) player theory made up to justify this flawed concept, yes. And one I have already mentioned, if you'd scroll back to my other posts. Of course it isn't exactly compatible with all those exceptions mentioned somewhere in the fluff, but this RPG has changed way more than the way bolters work, so ... *shrugs*

I notice you did not comment on any of the other points I raised, so apparently we seem to agree on at least some level of this discussion, though.

Lynata said:

I just didn't think trying to argue that a 8-12 year old boys wouldn't be able to handle a 22 pound, nearly 4 foot long boltgun designed for use with power armor, was worth mentioning.

I think I already made a comment in another thread about pattern variation.

Bolt guns are all heavy things that kind of weed out weaker users naturally.

Lynata said:

We beat the Angelus into the ground in a different thread. It is a BIG sniper weapon that can only hold 3 rounds. It's weight, logically, must come from insane amounts of recoil dampening.

You said "all" or 100% of bolt rounds are identical.

As to the Astartes "title" being required, machine spirits are real and they know who is using them. The Angelus doesn't have an Astartes machine spirit.

Another alternative explanation is that Deathwatch represents an update/retcon in perceptions of the lethality of an Astartes bolter. If you look at pg.86 of 'Purge the Unclean', Brother-Sergeant Agamorr's bolt pistol deals 2d10+2, which subtracting his "Mighty Shot" talent. Puts him exactly in line with the Angelus. To me the more elegant solution is simple to upgrade the Angelus' damage to the new standard. Unless you would interpret that as the Brother-Sergeant running around with some sort of inferior halfbreed bolter.

(Also notable is that his armor statistics are out of line with those in DW)

All in all I would give precedence to the more recent rules and say Astartes Bolt ammo does 2d10+5 regardless of the weapon it is fired from. Given that it is rocket propelled ammo, the weapon won't make as much difference as in a normal ballistic weapon, which I assume is the cause for damage similarities between bolt pistols and full on bolters.

When we take into account that this is an officially sanctioned, ordered by GW, prop replica from the Ultramarines movie, built to their specs, and is a Bolt Pistol that is nearly 2 feet long....

I question the idea of any mortal using an Astartes weapon, especially a full boltgun.