I just started GM'ing for the first time ever with Dark Heresy, since of our RP group I know the most about 40k settings enough to get the setting just right. After a very slow start where most of the PCs were rolling 80s and failing consistently we got to the end of our campaign and they were getting the hang of the system and how best to use it to murder anything. By the end they were rank 3s and thru the grace of the Inquisitor one Scum was able to get a combat shotgun and the guardsmen got a heavy stubber. Let's just say anything coming at them was shredded. The stubber did have the 40 round drum mag so was only good for 4 turns before needing a reload, and the guardsmen would brace and all that to use it, but most encounters are happening in close range areas so normally most are withing "Short" or "Point Blank" range. Same for the shot gun, which gets extra shots for being scattered. I guess it can all be chalked up to good rolling and can't help it, but I was wondering what other people have thought about this.

Should I just not let them have those really nice weapons at a low level? But even if we continue and they make rank 6, they'd have stuff like that, or even a Boltgun maybe for the Guardsmen, so it'd be even crazier. The other part to this is a lot of stock monsters come with 8-14 wounds, and anything with Auto or Scatter will consistently put out damage to drop those in one turn. Should I be upping the number of monsters per encounter or just upping Wounds to compensate? Like we did the Edge of Darkness campaign and the final battle with the Churgeon boss and her scalpel familiar was laughably easy, so I just plot armored the familiar so it could at least get a couple attacks in before dropping to the hail of bullets at point blank. The group as a whole did sit down after the credits rolled and the players agreed it seemd a bit OP, so I'm not the only one, and they'd be willing to have a session before the next game to agree on some balance rules, like reduce the guns that full-auto from 1d10+4 to like 1d10+2 (or 1d5+4), but retain the normal stat line if they fire single shot. A justification basically being you're pelting the target with innaccurate bullets, so they might just be hitting arms and legs winging you.

Any suggestions or tips? Thanks!

Huh, sounds a bit weird, though the heavy stubber for ranged combat and shotgun for close encounters is an excellent combo. However, have your enemies actually gotten into melee with the player characters? Considering that the attacked player character would not be able to use that weapon in close combat and the other has a good chance of triggering friendly fire if he shoots into the melee it sounds as if this would be the one balancing factor.

If your enemies die before getting into melee range, either let them appear closer to the players (swoop in from above or move in from the flank) or add 1-2 more. Additional opponents do not even have to be truly dangerous - a couple crazed cultists as distraction might suffice.

One of the simplest and most common fixes I've seen in terms of auto-fire is to simply switch the rules for semi-auto and full-auto. That way you're getting a +20 on semi and +10 on full. The thinking is that a gun on full auto would be much harder to control while firing, even if it requires bracing.

jareddm said:

I thought the reason for Auto Fire gaining +20 was more of a "at least some of these bullets are going to hit" type of thing (aka spray 'n pray) - that said, of course it could go either way, and the +20 does make way more sense for guns that fire 10 rounds on autofire than for those who just fire 4. Awkward.

I tend to force my players to purchase their own weapons and equipment (including ammunition). This makes peoople think twice (or three times) before opening up with a heavy bolter and spending 160 thrones of the groups cash in one go.

A couple of things you may know, but think are worth mentioning- each hit from autofire counts as a separate hit- toughness and armor are subtracted from each roll separately. You're only getting bonus hits for each full degree of success. So if you have a modified BS 60 on full auto and you roll a 41-50 that's one additional hit. 31-40 is two additional hits. For semi-auto it's for every two full degrees of success. I only mention it as several members of my own group made the mistake unintentionally, and added the damage together or added an additional hit by wonky math.

As for autofire in general, it is a massive game changer in all the systems. It acts like a damage multiplier. The tricks I've tried is increasing the number of grunts to soak up some of the additional ammo, or increasing the armor/toughness of the bad guys a smidgen so they can last longer than half a second. Another trick is to increase the distance of the encounters so the players aren't consistently getting a +10 or +30 for range. Lastly, as others have said, do the opposite of increased range and have them come out from the walls, cubbies, or shadows to engage the players in hand to hand.

The best equalizer: smart enemies.

If they know the PCs are coming and have found out the kind of firepower they are packing, they should be ready to return such power or get the heck out of dodge.

If they get caught in a fight with the PCs and they don't have the kind of artillery to match theirs, then they should duck behind cover! Perhaps they should do such anyway! They should force the PCs to come to them on their terms. If there's a door near by, they should get the hell through it and around the corner. If the PCs really want to plug them, they'll have to go through the door as well and get around the corner which will be, at the very least, a half move leaving only the option for a single shot. If the enemy played their cards right, they moved far enough away that the PC can't move into PB range and attack them in a single turn, the best the PC can do is shoot at them from close range and only then a single shot. Once that shot is off and it's the enemies turn, they can charge them and eliminate the threat of the heavy weapons (except as a make-shift club that is) or shotgun by being in melee with the wielder.

Fire Bombs! The poor-mans grenade, and by the RAW, damned viscous too. If the PCs are totting around a Heavy Stubber, those they meat should have one eventually too or at the very least some auto guns. Don't shoot to kill, shoot to Pin! Once the Pcs are pined behind their cover of choice, the enemy can begin lobbing firebombs over the cover at their leisure.

When I ran EoD, the Scalpel Familiar was viscous! It never gave the PCs a chance to get a good shot off at it. In the twisting halls of the hive, nothing was ever further then 18m away from the pcs before their was an obstruction, a turn, etc. The Familiar used this to it's advantage and hid in the dark around corners, on top of pipes in the ceiling, behind crates and furniture, etc. Even though it didn't have the skill, it's a basic skill and utilizing the terrain, it had a 78% (Conceal: 1/2 agl [18]+Small Size[10]+It's Freaking Dark[20]+Obstructed From Sight [30]= Conceal 78%) vs the PCs awareness' which were in the 30's except for the scum who had a +20 (negating the dark factor) because of his photo-visor. The Familiar would hide, wait for the PC's to get close enough to charge (not hard) and charge the closest one. This kept the PCs from using full auto on it for fear of shredding the one getting attacked, and after one round of swift attack, it would turn and run (taking the free attack as with a soak of 8 and the PCs lacking any decent melee weapons it didn't have much to fear) out of sight up to 36m away and repeat the ambush. It played cat and mouse with them like this for three rounds before being reinforced with the remainder of the Chirurgeons snatchers while, unknown the PCs, the Chirurgeon used the distraction her familiar was making to quietly escape and set the lab to blow. Not one of their finest hours.

Finally, one house rule I did make which may or may not help you regard's full auto weapons shooting into melee. The fact that, by the RAW it is a flat all or nothing 20% chance of hitting a friendly when doing so no matter how much lead you sling in their direction never sat well with me. After all, if you're blazing away at a guy your friend is wrestling with, chances are your not going to just hit one or the other, you're going to shred them both. So my change was:

• No penalty for shooting into melee.
• If a damage dice comes up as either number of the To Hit roll, that round (and rolled damage) is applied to a friendly in the melee fight and not the intended target.

There's still a 20% chance of hitting the target you don't want to hit, but now it's 20% for every round fired, not for the whole shebang.

An example:

Bob uses a Heavy Stubber to fire at a Cultist who is attacking Steve. He has a BS of 30 and fires at Close Range on Full Auto for a 60 total to hit. He rolls a 20, a success with 4 DoS. 5 Rounds hit!

Bob rolls the damage for the five rounds that hit scoring a 4, 0, 5, 2, and 9. Three hit the cultist, but two (2 and 0 because the To Hit roll was 20) hit Steve as well. Steve has 12 wounds, a TB of 3 and an all over AP or 3. The rounds that hit cut right through his armour (pen 3 vs AP3) and ends up inflicting 3 wounds (2 rolled dmg+4hvy stubber = 6, 6dmg-3TB = 3) reducing Steve to 9 Wounds Total. The GM, being me however, is a bastard and has Bob check for RF -Bob dose and succeeds, the Emperor dose not love Steve apparently. Bob rolls a 6 and adds it to the 10 that hit Steve inflicting a further 17 damage on poor Steve knocking him down to a critical 8. Hopefully that round hit Steve in the Chest else he'll be missing some body-parts or possibly his life. On the plus side, however, Steve is safe from the cultists at least. It would probably behoove Steve to be a bit more honest in his prayers and pious in his life least the Emperor unleash more furry upon him... or find smarter friends to watch his back.

Graver said:

Thanks for the tips guys. It's true that forcing melee helped a bit, and also the smarter enemies. The one point in EoD that hurt them the most was that they snuck in the building but the guardsman was drunk so he RP'd that he made enough noise and Snatchers attacked. They open up with stubber and shotty and splatter them, but my next set of enemies in the chem lab come down to attack. Two gangers engange in melee on the first floor and two Logician agents with auto guns stayed on the second floor and rained down fire. They cut up the guardsman in retaliation, but liberal use of Medicae brought him back up (I posted a thread in the Rules subforum for help dealing with that next time). But then yeah, the Churgeon fell quick and the familiar only had open terrain in the operating theater so he got busted up. I released some Snatchers with virus vials on their chest so they were forced to take called shots on their heads lest the spread the chemicals, which was nice.

Annnnyway, another good idea sprung from everyone's posting is limiting the amount of ammo they can carry in one trip. Now in the EoD example, even one drum in the stubber and one extra porbably would have been enough to make it to the end, but in general, it's probably a good idea. In general I might plan to send more minion types out to soak up a couple rounds of shooting, so then the real enemies come and engage in melee. Of course I'm not looking to actually kill my PCs, just not make it a walk in the park, especially when they aren't rank 8 or some sort of Space Marine, haha. Speaking of, from taking stock enemies from the books, is there any general way to scale up stats on these things to match high rank PCs? Or is there a certain set of pre-made enemies I should be looking at making the face in the future?

I still think they can get the bonus "to hit" for the spraying, but when then 8 bullets hit for massive damage, it just seems the guns aren't spraying anymore. That's why I'm a fan of the tons of inaccurate shots just winging the PCs instead. Also true is that I need a few more artillery type enemies to either answer in kind or bring out the grenades like Graver explained. That and take advantage of some ambush type monsters. We're taking a break so I have some time til the next game and I was thinking of running the rule book's Illumination campaign, so keep the ideas comin' so I can plan ahead for future combats.

Graver said:

You mean enforcing weight limits or not letting them bring ammo they have bought even if they can carry it?

Letrii said:

I've let the weight restriction go in general and I guess I could go back into enforcing that, or just set a set number which is somewhat realistic, like only one back up magazine for a heavy weapon be it regular ammo or manstoppers or something they've bought, but maybe two magazines for an auto gun or pistol, so they have to really think about conserving with single shots or spraying and relying on melee after that.

As long as you enforce weight limits, you should let them take whatever they want with them if they have bought it. Assuming of course they are using some sort of storage and not just carrying ammo in pockets or strapped to clothes.

Well, that sounds much better now! Glad to hear your players had a challenging but fun fight.

And yeah, I agree with Letrii - weight limits should suffice, though you could always intervene when it gets too ridiculous in terms of physical probability ... such as asking a player where he's gonna store them when he writes down 20 mags for his rifle. If he has a bag for them he's all set, though you might rule longer reload times in such cases. Ahh ... lots of options - as a GM, you're going to have to come up with a lot of ad-hoc ideas for that kind of stuff, but that can be fun as well. Good luck to you and your group!

Oh, and as for making enemy NPCs tougher ... it's easiest with humanoid enemies, I guess, because then you can give them all kinds of equipment that make them more of a challenge. It should always fit to the respective group, though - a bunch of hive gangers or cheap cultists aren't going to wear power armour, for example.

Graver said:

Optional rule on page 196 says if you use autofire you have to allocate at least one of your hits against your opponent. In DW they modified this slighly by saying they have to be distributed through all the oppoenents in the melee. I take it a slight step further in both settings and go past the 'one' of your hits, and say if using autofire on melee folks you just have to evenly distribute the hits through the swarm of bodies. Save for the sniper, none of my players shoot into melee combat anymore.

As for weight limits, I found this to be quite an equalizer- even as a guardsman, early on it's difficult to carry a heavy weapon, good armor, and ammo.

If by rank 3 the Guardsman has Heavy SP proficiency then I don't see a problem with him being issued a Heavy Stubber and some ammo. And the combat shotgun, well not really a Scum type weapon but ok... I think he would be better served with an Autogun+manstopper rounds in any case (as autofire trumps SA, even SA with Scatter). Also note than Scatter only applies at Point blank range by RAW, not short range wich is the most common one. Thus autofire is generally better than shotguns.

As said, you do know enemies gets soak against each bullet? I can understand the HS is devestating, but that needs a round to brace and somewhere to brace it on, is heavy, and cannot be concealed in any fashion. How exactly did the group do the investigation part carring a heavy stubber around the district in the "Chirgeon" adventure? Even the Combat Shotgun is far from discreet. Also, does the Guardsman carry around a bipod (needs to be prone) tripod (heavy as hell and needs to be crouched/kneeling), or are there just alot of convenient bracing spots (sanbags, well-shaped rubble, windowsills)?

In my game I even increased the HS damage by 1 (making it close to a bolt weapon but less penetration), but it has mostly been seen on stationary emplacements. And even though Brace is half action, you need a Full action to actually fire the HS. So until the Guardsman can get Bulging Biceps HS is really a bad weapons choise for him except in a few occasions.

Graver I would love your house rule if not for the fact that you remove the "skill" part of not hitting your friends and make it totally random. A man with 60 BS, firing full auto (+20) at PBR (+30) has only 4% chance of hitting his friend, 90% chance of hitting enemies, and 6% chance of jamming.

I've always used the optional rule that "FA in melee=FF, at least one bullet possibly more. I reduce the chance for Semi Auto though, not automatic hits there.

Friend of the Dork said:

Ops, forgot to mention one point (problem with house rules, use them long enough and you forget which parts are part of the HR and what is RAW):

• Making a called shot eliminates the chance of friendly fire.
• Called shots can only be made on single shot only (I can't remember if that's RAW or something that came about when a player begged me to get up and hit them by stating that they were going to make a called shot to that guy's head with a FA spray from their heavy bolter).

The called shots, a nice well placed single shot is where the skill came in. They defaulted to a -20% (the same chance of the FF) so it seemed like a perfect fit.

Of course, with Charmander's revelation of a much simpler solution (or DW's solution, what-ever, he voiced it so he gets credit from me for at least doing that!) of equally dispersing all hits over all combatants in the targeted melee is much simpler. I'll probably just go with that in the future, less work and even more friendly fire -I do love me some friendly fire! It's just so gosh darn neighborly!

As weight limits go, they really are one of the major balancing factors. To be honest, a lot of small little things that you might overlook in this system are integral to the over-all balance of it. Remove, change, or not enforce one thing, and it changes a lot of other things. Though you definitely don't have to be draconian with your enforcement. I scarcely did, only asking the players to calculate the weight if what they were telling me they were carrying seemed a bit off.

"Oh ya, I have the Enforcer Carapace on, and I'm taking both auto guns, four re-lodes for each, my bolt pistol and four reloads, my chain sword, the auto gun and three reloads, the rope, oh and the glow globe and all the usual kit, oh, and I have my shotgun to with twelve rounds for it."

"Okay... waitaminut. What's your SB and TB?"

"2 and 2"

"yah, okay, I think you might want to check the weight on all that but I'm pretty sure your going to be huffing and puffing it real bad in an hour or two hauling all that around... and what the hell do you expect to happen anyway?"

I also made it a habit of asking them not only how they were dressed but what weapons they had with them at any given time and how they were strapped. This was as much to avoid infinite ammo-belts of holding as well as to fix an image of the character in my mind so I knew how NPCs would react to them. I'll never forget the night when my groups scum told me:

"Well, I've got my two auto-pistols slung at my hips, my bolt pistol in the small of my back, my chain"

"Waitaminut, what!? Where is your bolt pistol again?

"...in the small of my back, in a MOB holster under my coat."

"Your pistol that weighs as much as an autogun?"

"...er... ya..."

"The one pictured on page 133, that's in the small of your back, tucked into your pants?"

"Oh..." and I see light dawning across his face though, truth be told, I felt I had somehow done the game a grave disservice if he hadn't understood what monsters boters were by that point. All my descriptions of monstrous hand-held rocket cannons, all the images that flashed by on the DVD I made to run during the session, all my coloured descriptions of the heavy beast howling and bucking every time it was fired and he still wanted to tuck it into the small of his back.

At least for the next ten or so minutes, he thought real hard about his character and his load out, drawing imaginary guns from under his arms, hips, thighs, etc before settling on a much more realistic place for his bolt pistol. , I have learned that asking your players to do that once in a while is a real good exercise in character visualization.

How big are various bolter classes generally accepted to be?

Letrii said:

Big? Possibly really big going by the art which is all we really have to go by.

What ever their size, I think it's a safe bet that a pistol that weighs almost twice what a .50 cal Desert Eagle dose is going to be a big gun, and that's just the damned pistol.

I am a really stringent and stingy GM, but Heavy Stubber and Combat Shotgun at rank 3 sounds fine to me. As others already mentioned, changing rules for FA and SA can help and did for us. We keep the bonus, but for FA you only get an extra hit for every two degrees of success when firing on a single target and for SA you get an extra hit for every degree of success when firing on a single target. Otherwise it never makes sense to use SA (except for saving ammo) which is arguably the best option to fire a gun in reality. Furthermore, when shooting FA into melee, you have to allocate hits evenly on all involved combatants (even friends) before allocating further hits to one target.

Still, I think it is often fitting to human (or human-like) opponents in one round when firing fully automatic rifles, machine guns and automatic shotguns. (There must be a reason why these kinds of weapons are the mostly used tools of death for four millennia.) All theses computer games (ego-shooters, MMOs) and RPGs like D&D with their huge hit point reservoirs seem to influence our perception of how these things in reality work. One bullet to an un-armoured person is often enough to take him out of the fight (and maybe even life). The DH setting fits this deadliness rather well in my opinion…

Luthor Harkon said:

Setting maybe, but not mechanics. If you could reliably take down or kill a human with a stub revolver in this game, you would not need fully automatic weapons. They would still be useful, but mostly for shooting multiple targets or supressive fire. You know, like in RL. However A normal person with 10-12 wounds, 2-3 TB and no armor will simply not be killed in one shot from a pistol doing 1d10+3 damage, unless Fury is used (which is only for PCs and major NPCs really).

I'm not saying that guns should have realistic chances to kill, if they did you will have acolytes burning fate points EVERY fight and everyone without extreme armor or unnatural TB be glass cannons against the PCs. I would like a critical hit system independent of divinely inspired and semi-mystical damage boosts, but to simplify it I have simply given single shot weapons extra damage based on DoS. A far cry from extra HITS, but it does help somewhat.

Personally I prefer Shooters where one good hit at centre mass is a kill Although even there volume of fire generally beats single shots, at least at short range. At longer ranger where accuracy matters alot a good old bolt-action K98k Mauser can sometimes outperform the snappy semi-auto Garand rifle user. I guess in DH terms the former has "Accurate" quality.

Hmm what if all pistols such as the stub revolver and laspistol had the same? Would it be overpowered? Just wondering...

Now if Semi auto fire also got 1 hit per DoS, would Accurate damage from pistols be overpowered? Of course assuming you would not get both the Accurate bonus AND extra hits of course!

Yeah, I was reducing each shot fired by TB and armor when applicable. Thankfully the shotties are 0 Pen but I think I'll just have to run a tighter ship. I might have let scatter work at short range a time or two so I'll have to make sure next time. Also a problem I had was while using a D&D map (the kind you can draw out your rooms and such on and wipe off) each square was simplified to 1 meter, which led to the problem that most things were close in or in range to be charged. I guess each square is technically supposed to be 1.5 meters, which the simplest change to visualize is point blank range goes from 3 squares down to 2 and a charge distance of 9 goes from 9 spaces away down to only 5 spaces. This would help with scale since the Scum likes to bolt around a lot to get into range and ranges of 18 and 24 runs pretty much get you half way across the whole battle mat. The only sticky part is now you have .5 movements and ranges which the game doesn't account for.

I think at the start of our next session I'd do an equipment check and see about enforcing the weight limits and also the visuals of the weapons. For the Guardsman, we got creative and gave the HS a forward pistol grip so he didn't have to fully brace, but it still wasn't fully accurcate (think Rambo firing his M-60 from the hip). Normally if you brace you get no penalties and then a +20 for full auto (and then any other factors). We worked it so he didn't brace but he was firing at a -20, so when firing at full auto it was at a +0 (and then any other factors). Or he could still brace it on things for the +20 if needed. We'll also need to go over the Errata before starting again to make sure they're playing all legal like since some stuff changed. One I'm confused about is the change to Mono only applying to any primitive CC weapon but then in the next breath they go on to explain that Mono can be applied to any melee weapon... Wha? I ask because one PC is an Arbitrator with a Shock Maul who added Mono to it since the original book said "any CC Weapon" but the Errata is kinda flip-flopping now.

Sorry, it's easy to go on tangents here. I've also opted for the more simple ruling of shooting into melee only hits the enemy, since you're already taking a -20 to the accuracy. Should I maybe balance it with Graver's idea that single shots are still at a -20 (but you can aim or call shot and all that to focus on the enemy) or fire SA/FA and remove the -20 (since you're increasing your chances to hit the target) but introduce friendly fire as the drawback?

CC means close combat?

I would say mono can only be applied to weapons that do rending damage. Mono makes the blade supersharp, and weapons like shock maul don't have blades or else they would sword, axe, or some such.

Letrii said:

That's what I thought as well, from the original book, but the Errata states: "There should be an additional special note that reads:
“The Mono upgrade may be applied to any melee weapon, but when applied to close-combat weapons that do not use an edge (e.g., hammers, mauls, etc.) it is defined differently. GMs are encouraged to come up with interesting definitions for non-edged weapons. For example, a hammer with the Mono upgrade
is defined as having a pneumo-shock enhancement. The in-game effects remain the same."

Oh and yeah, CC is just short for close combat since I felt I was getting long winded and I wanted to start shortening words, lol.

Aren't melee weapons by definition CC weapons?