Okay, I happen to have access to large parts of the GWs Grey Knight codex which will be released in April. Now having read through it there are few interesting lore implications, some of which match FFGs stuff, some of which dont:

Temple Assassins

Did you really, really think the Grey Knights are the most powerfull beings Imperium has? Think again. The Temple Assassins are it. Really. The new statline puts the Temple Assassins well above any Space Marine ever existed. Hell, they can kinck Grey Knight Grand Master into curb and not get tired. And no, we are not talking about "minor scaling" things, we are talking about WS/BS8 against WS/BS 6 and I7 against I5 when the other statline is same. and this doesn't even take into account what Assassin special rules and wargear does...

Now for fluff perspective this puts TAs where they should be. You need to kill someone? Anyone? Even Horus? Yes, these are the guys who actually have a working chance of success. For the Marine fanboys, well, it just means your favorites are no longer the "Biggest, Baddest Boys Around"...

Oh, the book does include Death Cult assassins. They are just normal human with power weapons, a dodge save and little better WS and S. They are not even at normal space marine levels. Compared to TAs they are just babies with plastic forks.

Daemontech

Yes. Radical Inquisitors use Daemonweapons... But so do the less radical Grey Knights. As they are (seemingly) completely immune to chaos and corruption they can do so with very little risk. Inquisitors have the choice of fielding daemonhosts in their retinue. Pretty much in line with FFG fluff for Inquisitors part, might offend some old-school GK fans.

Xenotech

Now its official. Imperium uses Xenotech in HUGE amounts. And when I say huge, I mean it. The wargear section for both Inquisitors and Grey Knights is literally filled with stuff thats taken from Xenos and not all of it come from Jokaero. Rad grenades, Psychotropes, Null Rods, graviton guns, digital weapons, xenopoisons, even the Grey Knights new Nemesis "super dreadnought"... you name it, they USE it. And no, its not "implicated to be xenotech". Many of these items are directly told to be xenotech. Inquisitors can also field Jokaero techs in their retinue to pimp their weapons.

I think this is completely in line with FFG and earlier GW fluff, but once again might offend marine fanboys.

Needlers

This is interesting. GK codex has needler pistols available for Inquisitors, but these things are far from FFGs baby-toy needlers... And this isn't just a "minor scaling issue" again. Its a whole different beast. Needlepistols kill stuff. Seriously kill stuff. They fire hypertoxic monofilaments and are capable of piercing a Terminator armor and wounding even the biggest and toughest creatures (poisoned 2+, for those who know what it means in TT).

Bolters

Nothing new here. Boltguns and Stormbolters for Marines and humans are still same in statline and described to be same beasts. Normal humans still carry both boltguns and stormbolters without power armor to assist in wielding the weapojns. However, there is very little information outside a single sentence ("signature weapon of Astartes, also used by Inquisitor henchmen") so the FFGs version of Astartes using real boltguns and norrmal humans using baby-guns is still plausible. Hiowever, what IS new is one more new bolt type. Grey Knights have anti-psychic bolts which do nasty things to daemons and such. Supposedly these can not be used from normal boltgun.

That last point is hardly new. 40K is a D6 based system. There aren't enough results on the dice to show the difference between Marine-level Bolters and human-level Bolters.

BYE

you'd be surprised how easy it can be to kill a person with a plastic knife.

though, you'd need russ's own luck to even scratch a marine with one

rayze said:

Agreed. Hell, I killed a homeless guy last week with a plastic spoon .

H.B.M.C. said:

More importantly it's a game designed to sell LOTS AND LOTS of miniatures. GW once gave stats for 'movie marines' who could live up to the fluff, their bolters were S6, Assualt 4, rending (basically assault cannons) . But the article as a whole was written as a joke.

I would never look to the table top game for guidance on weapons stats, ranges and similar things. It's its own animal and has to make compromises for commerical and pragmatic reasons.

Temple (Well, Vindicare) Assassins even in DH aren't really that off from Deathwatch marines, and by Rank 8 - the sort of bad asses that would have been sent against Horus in Nemesis? Well, I'd argue that they may actually be better aside from the armor thing. Main thing needed would be a bit more 'advancement' possible for stats to reach the WS/BS heights.

And did you see the statline of the Eversor in (I forget which book). People calculated that thing could toast the Lord of Change posted in the same place.

Kid Kyoto said:

Live up to ridiculous expectations of crazy fanboys, hence the joke.

Dulahan said:

Ascension

H.B.M.C. said:

Not true, a mere increase in weapon Strength or AP would suffice to vary the weapons up some. Even an alternate ability, like reroll fail to wound rolls or causing pinning.

Peacekeeper_b said:

But 40k is not the sort of game that worries about the details between different makes of weapons. They lump autoguns and lasguns into one bucket, so an AK-47, and M-16, an Lee-Enfield rifle (pre-WWI) and a 41st millenium laser weapon are all the same thing.

While the fluff and more detailed games might point to differences between an IG bolter, an SoB bolter and a marine bolter the simple fact is a tabletop game with 100 or more figures per side is not going to reflect that level of granularity.

Could they? Sure. And sometimes with special units like Stearn guard they have gone into different ammo types and the like, but for the most part GW has not.

If I ran GW I would make marines the T5, S5, W3 monsters they should be and give them the S6 bolters and then you'd only need 10 marines to take on 200 guardsmen.

Of course if i ran GW it would problably be out of business in a month because no one would need to buy marines any more.

Kid Kyoto said:

That said, if you would convert DH bolt weapons to the TT they are actually closer to lasguns than TT bolters, at least if you take the Marine guns as the basis for such calculations.

The Tabletop never bothered about differences because its books specifically said there are none. At least regarding ammunition and damage.

Lynata said:

The wargame also doesn't distinguish between the physical strength of Orks and humans (when the background tells us that Orks are stronger), and since 3rd edition has grouped 99.9% of the human race into Strength and Toughness 3... so clearly there's room to manoeuvre within the extremely vague and abstract value. Scaling to or from the wargame to the RPGs has more than a few issues, many of them brought about because of the necessary room for character growth in the RPG (and consequent need to push "superhuman" values above the capabilities of unaugmented humans)

The big point, that nobody else has brought up, is that it's absurd for any character archetype to possess an standard-issue weapon that does less damage than that character throwing a rock (Improvised weapon, 1d10-3+SB... for an average starting Deathwatch character, that's 1d10+7). Now, a bolter as it appears in DH and RT deals exactly the same damage (type and Pen excluded) as a SB3 human with a Chainsword... exactly as they did in 1st and 2nd edition 40k and in Necromunda (the lasgun and sword line up in a similar fashion). Note that this isn't a particularly low value for a non-special personal sidearm - 1d10+5 Tearing averages about 12 damage, one point below the lasgun's maximum. The problem there is that an SB10 Astartes (including armour) can't really be seen using a weapon that would do more damage if he threw it - an issue that became apparent in one form in Inquisitor - so the Bolter the Space Marine is using needs to be proportionate to his might.

So... either you ramp up damage values for the Bolter in general (that is, for everyone) to accomodate this, or you make a distinction that contradicts a few lines of background here and there to keep weapon damage in line with its intended wielder. The former was actually tried during playtest... bolters became insanely good for about a month, rendering almost every other weapon in the game obsolete.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Definitively. Sorry if that came across wrong. I just thought it odd that the average damage of a DH bolter would put it closer towards the lasgun-category in the TT than the boltgun, if you orientate the scale on DW. And the TT stats should give a rough estimate on where a weapon sits in terms of efficiency.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Huh, this is something I did not notice yet. Kudos. And it would be a good explanation. Granted, we're forgetting about penetration here, but still, that applies only when there actually is armour ...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Alternatively they could have changed the way Unnatural Traits work, given how this is yet another aspect of the game where flat multipliers just make things look weird.

Or, if that would be "too radical", include a line that DH and DW take place on two entirely different "scales of narration" and cannot be compared with each other. No fluff violation, no nerdrage, and easier progression from one game into the other (simply adjust the stats - the enemies scale accordingly between the books as well, anyways).

Sounds a lot like they nicked a few ideas back out of the Inquisitor skirmish game from way back when, mind you, writers of DH. RT and DW had their way with it too!

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Tell me, who would be able to throw a baseball faster, and with more force. The pitcher of your local elementary school sports team, or... well, some really famous pro ball player (I'm Canadian, I know hockey).

Now, someone with literally superhuman strength could be able to throw that ball hard enough to crush your ribcage. Space Marines can kill people just with punches, afterall.

But yeah, I'd still expect a Bolter to do more damage than that.

Lynata said:

That, I feel, is an unsatisfactory solution - whether or not they're a core part of a given 40kRP game, the Astartes still exist in the universe... and at any point, having them in this bizarre situation of having guns weaker than their fists simply doesn't work, IMO.

It's not like it's the first time that background has developed due to some external necessity - afterall, the Horus Heresy only really exists in the setting because GW couldn't afford to make a second set of plastic titans for the Adeptus Titanicus boxed set, and piles of old background regarding vehicles (such as the abundance of Rhinos, or the Harlequins' use of stolen Land Raiders) existed due to the limited number of vehicle kits available, and changed as more and more were released.

A few things about how TT scales:

TT actually does distinguish between Ork and Human strenght, but not in the way you would expect. Strenght stat is used in TT only to resolve close-combat. it has no other use. So when scaling RPG strenght with TT strenght this has to be taken into account. Human baseline in close-combat is S3, A1, I3. Ork baseline is S3, A2, I2. Marine baseline is S4, A1, I4. So, in the end Ork are almost two times as dangerous in close combat than mere humans as long as their opponents are not huge, hulking monsters with high T. Marines still trump Orks and Humans in every situation due to higher I, higher S and higher T and power armor save.

Second thing where Orks physical strenght is show in TT is S scaling. Humans never get above S3. Even the biggest, baddest human heroes have S3. The only difference to this rule is Death Cult assassin (S4) and Temple Assassins. But TAs are monsters already. Orks get above S3 pretty fast. their basic troops have S3, but all bigger orks (nobz, mekboyz, all bosses) get S4 pretty fast.

The thing is that TT is scaled purely for the TT gaming. Thus you can give Orks double number of attacks to make up for the S3 and it works. In RPG environment you can't give Orks same strenght as humans and double attacks without someone noting that, in RPG environment, Orks lifting same than humans but being twice as fast is a hugely against fluff.

This is why I say TAs in new codex are truly monstrous, well beyond space marines. We are talking about WS8, BS8, S/T4, I7, A4. In very simple terms if we leave ouit Monstrous Creatures (like C'Tans, Greater Daemons, Avatars) I can find only three (3) characters that have a realistic chance of surviving against TA in close-combat: Marneus Calgar of Ultramarines, Darnath Lysander of Imperial Fists and Lelith Herispex. Of these Marneus and Darnath only probably survive because they are **** tough and can instant kill the TA with one strike due to their powerfists/hammers. Lelith has a fighting chance because she can dodge bullets and is of these three the only one who actually attacks faster than TAs do.

Kid Kyoto said:

Never really about it this way. But ofcourse it's obvious. This might be wildly offtopic, maybe not even something suitable for this forum, but can we discern a trend in the W40K rules which leads to players needing to buy more and more models?

They may do more damage with improvised weapon, but wouldn't it count as primitive?

The Laughing God said:

You can't make a space wolf army that is just 5 guys in terminator army and a dreadnought anymore?

As to the bolter vs rock debate, a space marine can only throw one rock per round, it has no penetration and has those pesky primitive drawbacks.

A bolter (with tearing) averages more damage, has a higher penetration, and most importantly can fire full auto .

I prefer my game to run closer to TT. I understand not everyone does. My Imperial Munitorium Manual states that anyone without bionic augmentation shouldn't fire a boltgun on anything beyond single shot mode. I'm tempted to house-rule that normal guys have to treat a boltgun as a heavy weapon (IE, brace) on semi or full-auto. But I think 1d10+5 Pen 4 is plenty good damage.

Heavy Storm Bolter ftw!

N0-1_H3r3 said:

You have a point there, especially given that we'll soon have Grey Knights and Chaos Marines alongside normal people - which leads my gaze back towards Unnaturals and other options that would make the weapon buff unnecessary. Though I noticed that this is a situation that "normal" Acolytes may get into as well, it's just a bit less likely and takes way more time. Rolling high on start stats + advances + PA can get a character to SB7-8, or SB 8-9 in Ascension...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Quite true - but it gets strange when this part of background only exists in the RPG and is absent everywhere else. I'd rather hope that the mechanics necessitating such things would get fixed in a 2nd edition of the RPG.

Perhaps the Strength modifier needs to be capped. Similar to how you can only add a maximum of +60 to any Tests the character does. Not perfect, but would at least only cause that thrown rock to be "just" as dangerous as a lasgun shot, only Primitive.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

But the Adeptus Titanicus box was already set in the Horus Heresy from the beginning...

That's one rumor that doesn't sound very likely. Not to mention that there would have been lots of other ways around the issue, should it really have existed (similar to how GW doesn't produce lots of those cool old Imperial Armies anymore - some of those were really cool).

Letrii said:

Yep - but Primitive only affects non-primitive armour, which could lead to the strange case that throwing a rock at a civilian is more effective than shooting him with a bolt weapon. Shouldn't happen very often, of course, but the fact that Penetration is completely negated as soon as somebody doesn't wear armour may raise a brow or two. Maybe it would have been an idea to let "leftover" Pen spill over to TB?

All very circumstantial, of course. I don't really see characters starting to throw rocks at their enemies, even if it would be better as per the RAW. Still it's a weird thing.

Lynata said:

It was developed for that boxed set - the inclusion of two sets of Imperial Titan plastics was necessary because they couldn't afford to make a second, distinct set of plastic titans, so they created a civil war to justify the contents of the boxed set

And even then, it wasn't in the form we'd recognise - the first proper narrative and the inclusion of Chaos to the Warhammer 40,000 setting as a whole - came the same year in The Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness.

Bear in mind, this was 1988... the Warhammer 40,000 universe had only really existed for a year or so (the Rogue Trader rulebook having been released in 1987), so there was next to nothing written about 40k in general.

Ahh, now I understand - I thought you meant that the company just didn't have (or was unwilling to commit) the resources to keep producing what they already had at some point in time.

Well, then I'd still think there is a major difference between just adding to an empty slate or retconning what was valid for decades. In this case it would make sense, of course.