Well, I'd expect a 20mm conventional autocannon to butcher the front armour of an M113, so I don't have a problem with a 25mm HEAP-firing automatic weapon butchering the front armour of a futuristic battlefield taxi, really. If I did perceive a problem I would rather solve it by upping foes than nerfing players, as the second is horribly demotivating.

Lascannon probably needs more PEN, though. It should be the tank-killer of choice.

I agree with Siranui- if it's taking an 'average' of 2 turns of full auto fire to take out the Rhino I'm not that upset. If they do it versus preadatrs or LR I'll feel a little worse.

I also agree with the Lascannon, though if you up the Pen on the cannon much, do you need to up the melta pen as well, or give it something to do super good against armor given it's weak range and reputation for penetrating everything?

I sometimes wish 40k used a 'class' based system for damage and pen, though every system I've used that utilizes that type of gameplay mechanic has not been very playable...

ak-73 said:

Siranui said:

Creating comparisons to modern day equivalents isn't always helpful though: if everything was roughly equal to its modern day equivalent, you might as well play in a current day setting. Also its disputable what the equivalent for the HB would be if the Rhino was a M113.

The actual question is what is battlefield capability of the Rhino (versus the HB) in 40K . In the latest edition the HB cannot do anything but a glancing hit, if it's lucky.

All of this goes to once again underscore the overwhelming usefulness of the HB because it can do outshine or keep up with all other heavies except against very heavy armour. (And btw, the HB does the same to the Predator's side armour. Again, in the current TT the HB is no significant threat to a Predator except from the rear on a good shot.)

@HMBC: I know that it's over-powered. I was wondering if any lessons could be drawn from having vehicle stats now. I had callibrated the bolter vs the enemies from the core rulebook; the question is now how it fits with armoured warfare.

Alex

I was thinking about two things to do with HB 1shotting massive bad guys and two things occured to me,

1. If all bolters are over powered relative to similar weapons that arent bolters and all bolters need to be powerful enough to harm chaos space marines and all bolters have tearing why not just remove tearing? it preserves max damage and min damage, but decreases the likelyhood of righteous fury and the average damage. This will significantly decrease the average damage of the heavy bolter (from 25.1 per shot to 22.1 per shot) as well as bring the bolters, storm bolters etc in line with plasma and melta weapons. I know it seems a bit extreme removing tearing, but I think it does work in terms of balance. Also it has the added bonus that Hellfire rounds grant the tearing quality, and that actually makes sense if not all bolters have tearing

2. do masters actually have enough wounds? I know they have loads of wounds and admitedly my knowledge of modern era tabletop numbers of wounds is 0. but if I use the last number of wounds I remember, A chaos space marine (TT wounds 1, RPG wounds 29) If you are using critical tables (which I always do for elites, I want my players to savour every traitor marine they down) you have to inflict something like 45 wounds to kill the chaos marine, anything less than that wont do because they cant be stunned (for more than a round) or knocked out or blood lossed. by comparison a Daemon Prince (TT wounds 4, RPG wounds 80) you can kill with 88 wounds which is less than double the marine, admitedly this is a pretty extreme example because I could equally cite a chaos cultist (TT wounds 1, RPG wounds 10) but given that the game does seem to have been designed for marine to marine combat as evidenced by the ridiculousness of bolters. It makes me think a Daemon Prince should have possibly as much as twice as many wounds

ak-73 said:

Perhaps you up the Armor on the vehicles a smidge, then up the pen on anti-vehicle weapons (so las, metla, krack, and potentially plasma) at roughly the same rate, as you suggest.

With an increase in pen you don't increase the lethality versus soldiers (for the most part those weapons ignore armor anyhow) but you would up the bar for vehicles, making small arms much less likely to punch through. You will essentially create weapon classes/tiers this way. Even if you upped it to ridiculous amounts, I'm not sure that it would have that much of a negative, save for the marines that didn't take any anti-armor gear will have a much harder time of improvising a way out of their situation. I don't have RoB yet (out of stock), so I can't do the math myself, but from my gut, and looking at other modifications that have been made, an increase of maybe 3 or 4 seems like it could be all that's needed to do the trick.

The only thing you might bump up against, as Narkasis calls out, is a few of the elites/masters becoming underpowered. But right now the HB is more effective against them anyhow given the autofire damage multiplier effect, so giving a multi-melta more damage against a Hive Tyrant might not really be all that bad and might even fit the feel of TT and the fluff a bit better.

We approached this the other way, The "Reinforced Hull" upgrade was present on pretty much all of the tough vehicles that it feels wrong to maul with the anti personnel weapons so we currently operate that vehicles with this upgrade IGNORE the PEN value of all weapons that are not specifically anti tank.

It's largely up to the GM what is anti tank but our basic list is Anything with "Krak" in the title, Melta weapons and Lascannons, and CC weapons such as the powerfist/thunder hammer etc. Other weapons are on a case by case basis but it's usually fairly obvious what should work and what shouldn't

Tellarond said:

You know, this may not be the most mathmatically sound way of handling things but it's one of the cleanest and easest, in the end probably one I'll adopt rather than futzing more with the damage/toughness/armor any further than I already have

But Plasma should be effective against a Rhino, especially on maximum. Especially since its already mostly useless anyway as is .

Alex

How does the Rhino fare using your upped Plasma stats though? If I were running the 'what weapons can inflict damage on a light vehicle' Plasma would be there. No doubt the plasma in the RAW sucks, especially against vehicles, and autofire rules the day unfortunately. If it sucks with the HR'd stats, then bump up the AP of the Plasma, Melta, Krak, and Lascannon by about the same amount.

Charmander said:

Plasmagun: HR 2d10+9 Pen 8, on maximal (every 2nd round) 3d10+9 Pen 10. Against Rhino Front Armour? 3d10-12 damage coming through. Not account for RF that 4.5 damage points per shot. Slightly above the HB, except you have a ROF of 2. Every other round due to maximum setting. Without max setting you do no damage.

Plasma Cannon: If you HR +1d10 dam, we have on max 4d10+11 Pen 12. Againt Rhino Front Armour that is 4d10-8, on average 14 (not accounting for RF). Every other round only. In other words: totally worthless compared to the HB which does 4 per hit every round and gets +20 to hit due to Full Auto while the blast radius doesn't help you hit a vehicle at all according to RAW.

Plasma is totally worthless in DW and that is . Part of the problem with Plasma is this one too: so you add +1d10 to all Plasma and it still sucks as we can see above. What do you do with the advanced Tau Pulse tech then? Give it also +1d10? That would make Fire Warriors extremely deadly to Astartes. I think we can agree that Plasma needs a boost but that will in turn require adaptation of melta and Tau weapons. In fact if you adjust Tau Pulse rifles you have to look at the other Tau weapons. It all ripples through the entire system.

If we assume a HR of +1d10 to all damage of plasma and melta, then I think Plasma should be given a boost of +5 Pen (not sure if general or only on max or distributed across both). That way both Plasmagun and Plasma Cannon do up to 19 damage points on average (not accounting for RF) every other round. That can kill a Rhino.

In turn you need to give melta +5 Pen then too it seems (need to calculate that through). The good news is that it all hardly affects any infantry or monstrous creatures.

Alex

Whilst plasma might need work, that does not necessitate an overhaul of the pulse weapons on most Tau stuff, considering that Tau have their own class of plasma weaponry which is not their rank and file pulse guns,

Plasma really needs some work imo, your standard issue bolter is just better in every way. Special ammo, higher rof, cheaper, less dangerous to use, and has a lot of talents to make it better.

In a way I kind of like it though, I hate the way storm bolters and heavy bolters look. The bolter is so excellent I can use my stock pattern bolter throughout my characters entire career and still be extremely effective.

I was thinking all plasma weapons should be like deathroar relic, it's 2d10+13 Pen 10 Felling 1, volatile

The plasma gun can only shoot two shots in a round, so it doesnt seem overpowered to me. Alot of baddies have a great chance to dodge two shots.

It would be a good elite killer and decent against vehicles on maximal. Against hordes it wouldnt be good and still has a low rate of fire.

Plasma really needs some love I think.

I wouldn't worry too much about tau weapons myself, as many of their weapons are 'hordified' and PCs won't be using them anyhow.

As for your upgraded plasma pen (the +5), how does it then fare against soemthing more powerful, such as a land raider or preadator? I ask simply because every time we change scale we seem to find a new problem

Though again, from a non-math concept, simply ruling that things such as boltguns, lasguns, etc just can't hurt vehicles, you by default increase the capability of the other weapons to damage vehicles (even if it takes longer than you might see on table top - we already have that with trying to kill marines with things like lasguns). Given that the HB is the biggest offender here, primarily due to autofire, if you just either eliminate it's capacity to penetrate vehicle armor, or just eliminate it's base pen or half it's pen (so allow kraken to do something super low like 2 or 5), you fix part of the issue without retooling all of the weapon stats across the board.

I still like, in general, raising the damage of the plasma as you had done before because the RAW stats seem way underpowered in comparison to other weapon systems. And +5 pen, because it's armor damage increases only, doesn't seem too dangerous.

Plasma grenades and missiles continue to burn after their initial detonation. What if the burst of plasma from direct fire plasma weapons also burns for an added turn?

If a plasma pistol were doing 1d10+8 Dmg, Pen 8 when it hits and again on the following turn, it would be much more potent. If it fires on maximal, it's really quite nasty with the after-effect damage.

Point-by.point:

- My concern with Tau is only because of game world consistency (pulse weapons are a form of advanced plasam weaponry, even if at lower output) and rough consistency with the TT (compare imperial Plasma and Tau Pulse)
- Land Raider/Predator: The Land Raider cannot be hurt by Plasma in 40K I believe (S7 vs 14). I have no calculated it through yet but if I may be frank: when I first saw the Armour Values of vehicles a gut feeling told me that the values of the light vehicles might be too low and of heavy armour too high. But it was just a feeling and nothing concrete. I might be wrong there.
- A bit of a change of position from you about the HB and Rhino there? Anyway, do not forget that Boltguns can cause glancing hits against Land Speeders or Rhino/Predator/etc. rear armour in the TT. So I am not entirely convinced by that approach. The Boltgun and the Heavy Boltgun should hold the capacity to do some damage. The HB's ROF needs to be limited, I suggest to 6. And if you look at my above calculations and figure in the proposed damage reduction of 2 to 3 points for Bolt weapons the numbers don't look all that bad.

- Yeah the good news is that further Pen increases almost only affect vehicles anyway. It's just that you'll need to revise Pen of Lascannon, Melta, Krak, etc. to keep it all properly embedded.

- It's a thought. But it's of course easier to play if one abstracts the whole burning thing into one damage roll. I'd pick up that mechanic only if other attempts to make plasma a competitor fail.

Alex

I agree with game world consistency to a degree, I guess I just don't mind as much when the GM is the only one dealing with the damage and I'm behind a game screen. You're right though if you're trying to make a consistent, comprehensive set of house rules you have to look at all weapons.

As for the change of position on Rhinos, to a certain degree (not a fan of one shotting vehicles without specifically anti-vehicle weapons like lascannons) yes but overall I've never though of the Rhino as much of a 'real' amored vehicle for some reason - maybe because I'm used the being the guard and I either shoot with anti vehicle or not, not really much in between, and anti vehicle rounds blow them up pretty well.

If you're not one of the people who thinks that the Heavy Bolter is a little too dominant and you feel no need to change it, then this isn't something you'd be interested in.

But I've considered keeping the HB stats as-is, except change the damage to 3d10. This drops the average damage from 21 to 16 or thereabouts, while preserving the maximum damage.

My other idea was to use the DH stats for HBs and boltguns, but decided I'd rather change as little as possible. Plus, I wouldn't want my iconic weapon nerfed like that, as a player.

Removing Tearing from Bolt weapons - and possibly adding it to Plasma weapons - might rebalance things nicely.

You know, the real problem here is not with the Heavy Bolter itself but with the mechanics of Full Auto fire. Realistically, its not easier to hit on full auto, its harder. You get some hits from sheer volume of fire. Instead of a bonus to hit, you should receive a penalty to hit and rely on the volume of fire to get some hits. So I propose a -20 to BS when firing full auto rather than a +20. This should result in less hits against standard targets ( a more realistic number anyways) and more against larger targets (makes sense, they are bigger). This should also kind of push Devastators to use the HB more in the Suppressive Fire role, which I think should be a more common use of it. I base this on my personal experience in the military firing just about every weapon you can imagine (amazed how much that is over 14 years).

All this being said, I think this method will help with people complaining about the Stormbolter as well. All in all it should get more realistic and not overpowering results. It may need tweaking though (maybe it should be -30 or perhaps based off the amount of rounds fired?).

Thoughts?

BrotherWill said:

I think you're absolutely right. I have considered swappingthe bonuses for semi/auto fire, but that doesn;t really do the trick. There should also be some sort of incentive for using burst fire, which is horribly neglected in my games. It seems like semi-auto would increase your chances of hitting at least once due to a tight shot group (sort of like the 3-round mode on an M16), while full-auto would be a 'spray and pray' mode for suppression or firing blind.

BrotherWill said:

But isn't this exactly what the Full Auto rules do? It's true that you get +20 to the attack which could equate to 2 additional hits, but a Heavy Bolter's full auto attack consumes 10 rounds of ammunition...

Let's take an average starter level Devastator with a BS of, say, 45. Now you test for Full Auto and roll a 50 (~average on a d100). Thanks to the +20 you get a success with a single additional degree - out of 10 shots fired only 2 hit, but 8 miss. Sounds realistic enough to me. Now, there are certain circumstances where your BS bonus could be pushed to such heights that you truly hit with all 10 rounds, but this would be either **** lucky or include targets that are hard to miss, which is indeed a case where such weapons should shine.

Imho, where Auto Fire gets a bit wonky is not the +20 bonus in general but that the amount of potentially "wasted ammo" depends on the weapon, because the same attack done by a boltgun would result in only 2 wasted shots. That said, you could argue that boltgun AF is actually just a four-round burst, whilst a heavy bolter really pours it all out. It's one and the same mechanic trying to display both controlled bursts as well as "spray'n'pray", where a heavy weapon's greater damage potential gets balanced by ammo waste. When you think about it, it's quite an ingenious solution.

If the weapon stats themselves wouldn't be out of whack.

Lynata said:

You’re often:

1. At short range.
2. Firing at a horde (+20-+40 To Hit).
3. Your average Dev player pumps EXP into their BS stat to make themselves BS65-70.

Suddenly you’ve gone from a 45 or less to hit to a 110 to hit, and rolling a 50 nets you enough hits to decimate everything.

As I keep saying, the problems with the Heavy Bolter (and all Astartes Bolters) are:

1. 2D10 damage as opposed to 1D10.
2. High Rate of Fire.

Remove Full Auto from Bolters/Combi-Bolters, remove a Damage dice from ALL bolters, reduce the shots the Heavy Bolter spits out (to around 6-ish) and you have balanced weapons that won’t ruin the game and stop it from being fun. I hope Black Crusade has a better way of representing Marine-level Bolters and a better method for firing more than one shot a turn.

BYE

Regardless of the realism of the autofire rules, their mechanic as represented in the game is a real killer, as it allows you to take even minor bonuses to damage (like the +2 from mighty shot) and multiply it out across the board. It was an issue in DH, and it remains an issue in DW- well, 'issue' is a loaded term. It certainly fits thematically with the system if you look at it like an action movie, but it certainly slants the power curve.

HBMC hits it on the head when he spells out the stats- chances are the Marine is hitting someone 4 or 5 times and is loaded with special ammo or using a few talents, and the enemy at the end of the line is turned into paste. As noted previously in the thread this results in a weapon that does more damage to individuals, hordes, and vehicles than anything else in the game.

Though my opinion of the solution is different, I don't see the need for the same level of nerf he does, though I agree that without a reduction in power level of some kind leads to a bit of boredom. As a GM, I figure part of the theme and pull of DW is the feeling of immense power- the game mechanics do that well enough, and so the GM then needs to work (very hard at times) at creating compelling and challenging encounters. The HB need not be the end all be all, and melee combatants, surprise attacks, psy powers and machine curses, sabotage, ammo shortages, diplomatic missions, stealth missions, etc. can all work towards equalizing the field.

And FWIW, I seriously doubt that BC will nerf all marine level weapons and change a core shooting mechanic that's been around since DH, you need a new edition for that.

what about something that makes hitting a few times easy on full auto but hitting with every shot harder? for example this is a bit extreme but you need an additional number of degrees of success equal to the number of hits that have already hit.

so a straight success is 1 hit

1 degree is 2 hits

3 degrees is 3 hits

6 degrees is 4 hits

10 degrees is 5 hits

not much point continuing past this. but I agree, tactical and devastator marines have no problem getting 5-6 degrees of success. this would make it hard but not impossible to hit with a full auto burst from a bolter and make it impossible to hit with a full auto burst with a HB.

Thats the main problem I have with the full auto system, because of how good space marines are and how often they are fighting massive bad guys it's quite possible to fire a full auto burst and hit with every round and I just don't feel thats what full auto bursts are all about. the +20 isnt there because it makes it easier to hit, its their because you fire so many that you are guaranteed to miss a few.

[edit] like I said the above solution is extreme, it almost makes it pointless having a heavy bolter tbh. but something like that with scaling hits might be better