When my previous group and I got a hold of the Dark Heresy rulebook (practically the day it came out), we were all pretty satisfied with the rules, with the exception of one. We noticed that the rules state you are not allowed to repeat the same half action twice in one round.

A round was described as being a 5 second time period. This, in effect, meant a revolver or shotgun could fire one shot in five seconds. Not only that, after firing that shot, you had a half action leftover which could not be used to just pull the trigger again, often forcing a character into doing... nothing. Having just moved over from the Mechwarrior RPG, this seemed odd (in the Mechwarrior RPG, it was quite easy to empty a 30-round magazine on a target in one round).

So we just decided to say screw it and modified the rule to say that non-movement half actions could be repeated. Then we noticed that semi-auto fire was a Full Action. I don't know about you, but my 'stub automatic' fires a bit faster if I ask it to, so we switched semi-auto fire to a half-action as well, allowing for a single player turn to have action sequences such as two single shots, two melee attacks, and two semi-auto bursts.

It seemed to have the following effects.

•PCs and NPCs became more able to hit and kill targets during their turn with firearms and melee attacks
•PCs and NPCs burn through ammo faster, making ammo-conservation a larger issue and reloading in combat happens more often
•Basic firearms (lasguns, lascarbines, laspistols, etc...) become far more effective, as even a weak enemy with a lasgun or lastpistol was capable of firing six lasgun shots in a single round
•Everybody goes down quicker and easier, as the volume of fire going back and forth is much higher
•Full auto weapons seemed to stay at their current power level, but they were still effective

In other words, it seemed to change the balance of play quite a bit. Firearms capable of semi-auto became very useful. Firearms capable of only single shots also became powerful, as now you were able to dump two rounds downrange in a round. To make up for this, more enemies had to be thrown at the PCs, but this increased the volume of fire by a lot, which made it possible for a gunfight to go downhill very quickly with a few bad rounds. It also seemed to take some of the wind out of the sails of melee characters and enemies, but I'm not actually sure if I think that is good or bad considering how powerful it was before. We usually made up for this by adding more melee enemies. All said and done, the fights became extremely tense sequences where every move counted and consequences (and bad luck) piled up quickly. I did notice that some weapons are extremely powerful with multiple shots in a round, such as plasma and melta weapons.

Are there any other unforseen consequences I'm not seeing here?

Psi powers become a major issue that I am surprised that you haven't run into.

Your group must also be very generous with the money, equipment, and ammo availability since you are going through that much more.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Hmm... In what way? I remember we had psykers in the group, and they didn't seem to mind. If I wasn't at work I'd reference a rulebook... it seems to me like half-action psy-powers would become more powerful, but the increased rate of use would cause a higher chance of perils.

ItsUncertainWho said:

No, we weren't. The rule just gave characters the room to hang themselves. I specifically remember numerous characters running completely out of ammo, forcing them to pick up discarded weapons or go melee.

cobrausn said:

Hey, this is an absolutely great idea in its simplicity and, at the same time, logic! I definitely will propose these changes to my crew. However, I would even propose to use the movement action twice as well.

Some thoughts, though. Looking deeper into your proposed approach, it is obvious that you basically introduce the Action Points-based system, where 1 AP = 1 Half Action. While I like this AP-based system (much more than an overly abstract approach of FFG's), it leads me to think that all individuals in the game will only have two APs, irrespective of their abilities . For example, a primitive world drunken peasant would shoot in his turn as many times as a trained assassin. Do you see the discrepancy here?

On the other hand it is possible to fix even this as well (e.g. affording one half-action per every two Agility bonuses, or otherwise), this will imply a much deeper modification of DH mechanics, which I definitely would want to avoid.

Your thoughts?

egalor said:

Actually, using the movement action twice just seems to result in doing the same thing as running, so there really is no problem with just repeating even movement actions.

Though we did also notice that an untrained peasant could fire the same number of bullets as an assassin, we felt this was acceptable. Firing two bullets in five seconds is easily done by pretty much anybody, and a weapon firing on full-auto will shoot as many bullets as it can, the person holding the trigger being irrelevant (as far as rate of fire goes). As far as semi-auto bursts go, it seems like the rate of fire is more limited by the gun than the person firing it, though a trained person will hit more. We felt this was pretty easily accomodated for by the way semi-auto fire hits, as follows:

The untrained (-20) peasant fires a semi-auto burst (+10) with a BS of, say, 20. This puts him at an overall -10, meaning he could only hit with a single bullet unless he got into pointblank range (at close range he would still need a 20 or less to hit, so getting two MoS is impossible). The trained assassin on the other hand starts at a 40 (or higher), gains a +10 for the burst, and so his base chance is a 50. Getting to short or pointblank range brings this even higher, and there is a pretty good chance two or three rounds will land. Stack talents on top of this and the peasant is barely a threat, although there is that slight chance, which is how I feel it should be. Automatic weapons are a whole different ball game - they make everybody somewhat effective.

While I think an AP system would be interesting, I don't know if DH is set up for it. It would work well in a slightly different system though.

Alright, it seems fine. We'll discuss it and give it a try. Maybe I'll post the feedback on how it would have gone then.

Thanks for the tip!

By doing this you nullify the swift attack talent for melee, as it allows you to make 2 melee attacks as a full action, the point of the slow one one melee attack and one single shot while moving make far more sense if you have ever been paintballing or live action as hitting something when moving 2-3 metres (agi 20-39) as a move action if actually pretty difficult, and unless you very very skilled firing ACCURATELY a semi automatic weapon twice on single fire with recoil in 5 seconds would put you some where in the top few percent of all weapon users.

My thoughts on the matter, and as a player and a ref i think my group will stick to the stuff in the books.

On the surface this does seem like a reasonable option. And I don't think its going to have any major effects, either way.

Valdek does bring up a good point but I don't think the comparison concerning pistol recoil is completely applicable, especially when you apply it to basic weapons. As a former service member with combat experience I have to say that an assault rifle is perfectly able to sustain multiple semi-auto/3-round burst fire within a 5 second period with reasonable accuracy. That said, even the pistol recoil can vary wildly by weapon, position, circumstance and bracing...its wildly different firing from a standing, cross braced position shooting at a target that does not return fire and then firing your pistol as you dive for cover in the heat of combat.

I guess the point is that when you apply a system to real life you will always run into problems concerning where to draw the line. So the real question is if the DH system can get "close enough" to reality while still maintaining balance. Currently I think it does a reasonable job in this, but of course it is ALWAYS possible to find fault with a system when you look close enough. But the internal game balance is still very important.

And this is where I would say Valdek has a very reasonable point. The game system is already balanced around the current system. And part of the reason why FA is so powerful is in part because there are no multi-attack options for ranged as there is for melee users. From a balance point of view implementing a Swift Attack/Lightning Attack for ranged would probably be a better option. The real question would be to consider whether to allow the use of Semi-Auto Burst with this firing (FA is of course not possible).

If you allow semi-auto, I would think that to balance this out, it would be necessary to at the least remove the +10% to hit from Semi-Auto when used with a multi-attack talent, and possibly give a further -10% penalty. Possibly the -10% penalty should only be applied to characters dualwielding SMGs or machine pistols. That way semi-auto would primarily be an option for characters when they have strong situational modifier bonuses and just want the option of additional hits.

I might just implement the aforementioned ranged multi-attack talents that someone posted elsewhere and test it out how that works in my game.

This way any character is still able to pick up an autogun and spray and pray with some lethality, but true professionals will have more options and increased killing power. I think that's both balanced and somewhat realistic.

Valdek said:

You are correct about swift attack - as it had been a while since it came up, I had forgotten about it. I remember we had two choices and left it up to the group - we either made melee attack a full action, meaning charging was the only way to move and melee and swift attack / lightning attack were still useful, or we allowed swift attack to make 3 melee attacks as a half-action, and lightning attack 4, making melee a quick and deadly affair for those who were trained in it.

If I remember correctly, I think we just made a melee attack a full action. It still seemed to work out, as our melee focused character was still very powerful due to the melee-centered mechanics of DH - he often ended up with more kills than our ranged characters, despite the rules change.

And you are correct, firing a semi-auto weapon six times in 5 seconds accurately would make you very good. The low starting BS values and the ability to 'dodge' gunfire seemed to make it still work (see the example I worked out in an earlier post). I spent some time in the Navy as an MP, so I've done a bit of shooting, and I know how difficult it can be. I believe even with the rules change, the way the system is set up reflects it well.

All in all, I liked the way it made PCs (myself included) feel very on-edge during a combat session, even when just facing gangers with laspistols. Before any encounter, it got to the point where we were saying 'Hang on to your Fate points...', and though the encounters got really difficult, the feeling of pulling it off with no casualties was pretty good.

Thanks for your input.

Bladehate said:

Thanks for the input. As you mention, recoil can vary wildly by circumstance, and I think the vagaries of the dice roll accomodate for that pretty well. I'm not really trying to emulate 'real life' here, I just noticed early on that ranged fire was not really always up to snuff when it came to taking out badguys. For us, it was just a matter of putting some more emphasis on ranged firepower, as that felt more like 40k to us - you go into melee when you have the advantage, not by default.

As you have said, FA is extremely powerful without some kind of ranged multi-attack, and me and you both know that controlled bursts are (on the whole) a lot better option than FA for any kind of trained operator.

As far as ranged multi-attack talents, that is an option we considered. We ended up not going with it because it seemed rate of fire was a firearm limited factor, not a user limited factor. The accuracy of those shots are user limited - and we think the ranged attack mechanic accomodates for this pretty well.

Thanks again for the input. Gives me a few things to think about.

Hmm. I just noticed there is a 'House Rules' sub-forum. Should have probably posted this there. If any moderators catch this, please move the post.

In thinking about what has been pointed out, I think I am going to change the way we've been doing things. I'm planning on introducing two new attack options - Semi-Auto Burst, and Full-Auto Burst.

Semi-Auto Burst behaves exactly as semi-auto fire, but does not gain the 10% bonus on the attack roll. In addition, Semi-Auto Burst is a Half-Action. In the hands of a trained operator, this is a very efficient means of firing.

Full-Auto Burst behaves exactly as full-auto fire, but does not gain the 20% bonus on the attack roll. In addition, Full-Auto Burst is a Half-Action. It's good for wasting ammo for most people, but deadly in the hands of an operator.

The following half-actions may be used twice in a single round: Ranged Attack, Semi-Auto Burst, and Full-Auto Burst.

I believe by instead of expanding all half-actions to be 'repeatable' and just naming these three half-actions, it will have the desired effect on the way combat plays out without a lot of the nasty side effects that have been pointed out. Also, limiting these to exactly twice in one round prevents characters who somehow gain an extra action (if I recall correctly, some psyker powers can do this) from repeating it a third time, firing weapons faster than they mechanically are capable of.

The reason I introduced a full-auto half action is because some weapons have a full-auto rate of fire that is less than twice the semi-auto rate of fire. Also, I like the idea of people wasting ammo with pray and spray to little effect.

Thanks for the input guys. Will try out the new rules and see how it goes. It is very possible that the Full-Auto Burst option will not be hanging around for long when Scummers with Autoguns decimate the party.

Well, I have also really noticed the huge discrepancy between ranged attacks. In RAW, its pretty much FA or single shot. Obviously if you're serious about killing something you go all out, and if you're hurting for ammo semi-auto isn't really all that attractive for the killing power it offers. It hasn't been so obvious that my ranged PCs have complained...yet. Even so, the gap is there and it is noticeable.

There is a couple of reasons why I favor just adding the talents, rather then mucking around with new firing rules and/or basic combat mechanics like the half/full action system.

The main reason is that it gives more options to the PCs. This is never a bad thing. The difference when looked at overall is not that great, but it is a combat boost that players can invest in. It also means that the difference between a melee and ranged combat specialist can be broadened slightly from what it currently is.

However, the real advantage in my mind is that this combat boost is NOT purchased at the expense of making fire arms useless for the average or unskilled mook NPC. Full Auto is still something that most characters will be very cautious about.

Thirdly, this functions reasonably well with the system as is. What you are essentially trying to do is establish mechanics for weaponry and trying to base your results around that. This works so long as you restrict yourself to the basic weaponry used by the Imperium, and most likely your characters. For PCs its not too critical of an issue until you start approaching Ascension or Rogue Trader/Deathwatch power levels.

This is where all kinds of heavy weaponry, exotic weaponry, archaeotech and xenos weapon break an easily modelled baseline focusing on weapons that are very close to modern day equivalents. When using some of these weaponry it does become easier to just put it into the more abstract action based system to explain character actions. You can obviously restrict or invent or whatever with such weaponry when it occurs, but one thing I have as a baseline is that if you House Rule something, the result should be faster, easier and at least in the same ballpark in terms of game power. If that is not the case, it generally doesn't seem like the House Rule is worth the end result.

Not that your suggested house rules are game breaking or problematic. It just doesn't seem as easy and straight forward a solution to what we perceive to be the problem: Lack of ranged options.

One suggestion for your two new rates of fire: instead of just removing the bonus from the "fire" version of the attack, give each a negative. Asa it stands, the only reason to use single shot is conservation of ammo. Other then that, you stand just as much chance of hitting your target with one carefully placed shot as you do while spraying and praying... only while spraying, you have a chance of hitting your target with a lot more then one bullet and it's more difficult for them to dodge effectively making it easier to hit your target (as opposed to just paying you hit ;-) )

To keep it simple, I'd simply suggest a -10 on Semi-Auto Burst and a -20 on Full-Auto. That would give a bit more reason to chose single shot unless you manage to stack some serious bonuses in your favor.

Rogue Trader implemented something similar where you could move up to half your AB and fire a semi or full auto burst with the above listed penalties so it has precedent in the rules already ;-)

Bladehate said:

Well, this is one of the reasons why we switched the extra hit for every two degrees of success for SA and the extra hit for every single degree of success for FA around when firing on single targets, while keeping the orginal bonus to hit (i.e. +10 and +20). Thus if someone with BS 40 fires SA, he would get a hit on a 50, a 40, a 30 and so on (if RoF allows), and if someone with BS 40 fires FA, he would get a hit on a 60, a 40 and a 20. This way it is easier to hit at all with FA (and due to the higher RoF of FA potentially even to hit more often with high enough other modifications (e.g. Point-Blank etc.)), but normally you get more hits (up to the RoF of SA) with SA.

We play this way for almost a year now and it seems rather balanced. Against huge targets, groups and at point-blank where you easily could get +60 to hit it is still very good to use FA (due to the many degrees of success expectable and the high RoF to back it up), as well as for the option to use the highly important supressing fire. Against single targets the tactically best option is - despite needing a Full Action - often SA though (as is in real life as far as I know), as you can almost expect a certain amount (mostly 1-3) of hits. Single Shots are still viable if you want to do use another Half Action as well as for Accurate Basic Weapons and of course for weapons restricted to this RoF.

I did something almost similar. Rather then switching though, I just houseruled that SA's extra hits followed the same rules as FA...IE 1 extra hit for every degree of success but I kept the hit bonus the same. That little change alone meant that unless the situation warranted it, my players also preferred SA to FA. And most of the SA weapons out there do only allow for 2-3 hits at most, which was generally satisfactory. Generally getting 1 hit per round fired seemed to satisfy my gun-bunnies quite nicely.

This is also one concern I have with these new talents we are play testing now. Killing SA's niche isn't something that appeals to me. On the other hand, as I said earlier...the niche is still there for the untrained, which is rather cool. The major boost by these talents will most likely be gained by dual wield, non auto-pistol users...which doesn't strike me as balance breaking.

The more I really look at these things and consider the math, the more I can understand why the talents were never included in the rules. Its not that easy to clearly view them as a boost to character damage, and can be problematic when interacting with special weapons such as flamers. In the end I can see the logic that lead BI to drop them.

cobrausn said:

I would also regard the "Full-Auto" setting to be controlled bursts. As said a fully automatic weapon could probably empty its entire magazine in 5 seconds or less, yet fully automatic weapons only fire 10 shots (or less) a turn. Seems more like 1 seconds firing (if they just hold down the trigger) or 2 or three short controlled bursts at the target. This is clearly not the firer holding their finger down on the trigger for the 5 seconds of the turn. Semi-Auto fire is a single burst or (as its name suggests) semi-automatic shots.

Doesn't repeating a half action attack reduce the effectiveness of accurate weapons compared to others, as the accurate weapon still needs the half action for its bonus damage, meaning it still only can fire once a round ?

borithan said:

Have a look at in game weapon ranges. Then look at the ranges of equivalent real life weapons and notice that they are larger. Compared to reality, the DH rules do favour melee.

Also consider that a large number of fights in DH break out at near knife-fight distances quite often. A clear majority of DH adventures take place in built up areas with a heavy human presence. Hell, quite a few fights break out at literally face-to-face distances, at least for my acolyte group =).

It doesn't make snipers or long-range weaponry useless, but it does mean that getting in close with the enemy is a fairly common occurrence.

And yes, standing toe to toe with an enemy and pounding them with an eviscerator or great weapon tends to hurt a LOT. But that power comes with a price. I think the two melee oriented characters in the group have been forced to burn twice as many fate points compared to the tech-priest and pistol assassin in my group.

Bladehate said:

We also kept the bonuses to hit and just switched the DoS needed for exra hits (except against groups).

Bladehate said:

I can sign this. Both my groups Assassin and Guardsman initially planned on building a "sniper". The first with Hunting Rifle and hoping for a Nomad and the latter with his Long Las. They still want to go "sniper", but the de facto situation is , that the Assassin mostly runs around with Dual Wield Fate Bringers and the Guardsman with Swift Attack Chainsword nowadays. Most if not all fire-fights occur within the range of 3 - 30 meters in our game and the two very seldomly get the chance to really "snipe". And I can also sign what Bladehate said about the burning of Fate Points.

Bilateralrope said:

I will accept that most fire fights in Dark Heresy start at close ranges though, which means that melee is not useless as it might otherwise be (but then with what Dark Heresy is and the setting your playing in it makes sense that most fights happen at close distances). Even then full-auto fire at these distances is a fairly hideous prospect to face, something a melee character can only hope to match when they start getting multiple attacks and the like (while the lowliest mook can use an auto-pistol). Now there are other advantages that melee give you that you lack with ranged (early characters will be more survivable, as not everyone starts off with dodge and it is easy to get a balanced weapon, you can tie people up much more than ranged combat does) but I don't think I can agree that DH is melee-focussed or favours melee that much.

Bilateralrope said:

Yes, but under the current errata, accurate weapons get an extra d10 of damage per 2 MoS, meaning they still maintain their power, and you don't burn through ammo.

Bladehate said:

In our campaign the experience was about even - everyone seemed to be burning the same amount of fate points, except me, who kept getting stupidly lucky with all my dice rolls. (What's that you say? We're all tumbling out of the Valkyrie because it was shot down by a Chaos Hellblade? Well, did an emergency grav-chute happen to fly out with me? (Rolls Dice : Yes) Well, can I get to it and activate it before I hit the ground? (Rolls Dice : Yes) Sweet. It's good to be an Elysian. Sorry rest of party, looks like you all lose fate. =P)

Truthfully, I don't mind putting the hurt on melee characters. If you've ever played the 40k TT game, you will typically see that if a group gets a chance to fire before being engaged in melee, some significant casualties occur (vagaries of dice rolls notwithstanding, the math works out well for averages). That's why melee units tend to rely on abilities such as infiltrate and equipment such as jetpacks in order to close the gap quickly. In other cases, they rely on significant numbers of enemies (orks, tyranids), to ensure at least a few units get through the hail of fire. That's usually all it takes - a melee focused character on the TT can quickly wreck an entire unit that is not.

I like to see the same thing play out in the RPG. If the cleric decides to charge towards a line of ready lasguns, he deserves to lose a fate point. It's not like he is a space marine in power armor, he's just human. If he plots his movement tactically, ducks into cover, requests suppressing fire from the guardsman and arbiter, gets it and rushes in and starts tearing up the enemies, it makes for a much more satisfying conclusion that reinforces what I know about guns and their effects on people - they work.

Basically, I like effective ranged weaponry. I also like that because the fights often take place at close range, melee can play a big part. I'm hoping the new ranged attack options I introduce will bridge the gap.