I thought I'd take an automatic shotgun from RoB onto my next mission. Perhaps sub-par when compared to the bolter, but more lead for the Eldar to try to get out of the way of.

Oh dear. There is a monster amongst us.

Firstly, I'm not sure that it deserves the 'reliable' title. Pump action shotguns are reliable. Fully-automatic combat shotguns are the very essence of unreliability. But that's a real world concern... onto the mad, mad mechanics...

I assume that the Scatter rules are grossly wrong and misprinted. Shotgun pellets seem to expand rapidly from the barrel at point blank range, and then the spread contracts again somewhere before short range, as by RAW they only deliver additional strikes at PB range. WTF?

I assume that this is a misprint and that the Scatter effect kicks in at Short range rather than Point Blank (because otherwise shotgun spread would be about 20 yards wide, whereas a shotgun blast from 2 yards away has barely spread beyond twice the bore's diameter!).

I'll also assume that the extra hits aren't confined only to PB range, but also to Short and Long range? Is that correct? It seems logical. Although obviously they suck at penetration at long range, which is fair enough.

Next up, the disaster of multiple hits.

Each DoS giving an additional hit, and each 2 DoS giving an additional hit... logically for each and every one of the 5 shots fired. So to save time at the table, I sat down and started working it all out in advance. Here's what we get:

DOS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Strikes 1 2 4 6 9 11 14 16 19 21 25 30

That's right: A maths-induced headache. It all gets a bit out of hand if you get a great roll. Granted 12 DoS isn't likely to happen, but with good modifiers and a lucky dice roll, it can. And at that point, the assault cannon is 1/3 as effective as the autoshotgun at gunning down masses of squishies.

Is this (roughly) right? It's combining autofire rules with the scatter rules.

Granted, the shotgun is a poor choice against armoured foes, but this swathe of destruction makes automatic shotguns far more deadly in the hands of a decent marine than the humble Godwyn.

Alternatively, do we simply only give 'scatter' to the first shot? That results in:

DOS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Strikes 1 2 4 5 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10

Which is much more sensible, but hardly intuitive, as only the first shot is working as a shotgun. You might as well just load up one shot in 5 as shot and the rest as slugs.

Looking at the errata today, I notice that the auto shotgun has gained an extra point of damage over its conventional version. A typo? Which is correct?

I also notice the bolter nerf and decrease in RoF for the HB. Which only further highlights the utter grimness of the automatic shotgun further.

Am I doing it right, and if not, how are the mechanics supposed to work? Besides issues of balance, there's the fact that I don't want to roll for damage 30 frikkin' times. Has anyone got a decent solution?

I'm tempted just to throw the scatter rules out the window and come up with a better mechanic. Simply giving the autoSG the Storm quality instead of Scatter when fired automatically simplifies things, and keeps it more in line with the new, slower-firing bolt guns, for instance.

Another solution would be to handle the autoSG's autofire abstractly, using the normal shotgun stat-line when firing single shots, disallowing semi-auto, and giving abstracted full auto stats. Perhaps by increasing the base damage at the cost of the scatter quality or similar?

How about removing the scatter quality when firing full auto and instead giving it the tearing quality?

Ideas?

Remember that any solution needs to mesh with the exotic ammunition types.

The rules for scatter specifically state that it is applied only to the first shot (or rather, applied only once per attack, not per "hit"). So no exponentially deadly blasts. Still, yes, they are quite scary.

Fortunately, most weapons with scatter have a terrible pen rating, so at the end of the day, it all balances out. They work wonders against lightly armoured hordes though. But as soon as something big comes out, its nigh useless, as it is near impossible for a weapon to actually damage a target without multiple RFs. At least those are more likely due to the increased number of hits.

EDIT: Also, you mention mixing ammo (scatter first, slugs for rest). Mixing is not allowed in the game system, partly for things like this. As a GM, if a player did this, I would just say the majority of the ammunition is the only effect that applies.

yeah no exponentially deadly blasts.

also your counting of DOS is slightly wrong, you can have a straight success which has no degrees of success if that makes sense? and thats still a hit so it should be

dos -> hits

0 -> 1

1 -> 2

2 -> 4

3 -> 5

4 -> 7

5-6 -> 8

7-8 -> 9

9-10 -> 10

also the reason that multiple hits only apply at point blank range is that although as the shrapnel travels further from the barrel is spreads out the amount of shrapnel in the burst remains the same. so a target "hit" at 20 meters away is assumed to only be hit by a small proportion of the shrapnel. most of the shrapnel in a shot is wasted. however at point blank range you can hit a target with the whole burst of shrapnel. this target is hit by much more shrapnel than if the target were standing 20m away so the way the game accounts for that is to count it as extra hits. one could argue that the scatter rule would be better if it simply did more damage at point blank range, however then shotguns become less good at cleaving through hordes. and it is quite nice that an automatic shotgun can carve up hordes of unarmoured humans.

also remember that in order to use the scatter effect you have to be at point blank range and not in combat with the horde (a shotgun is a basic weapon so you cant shoot it in combat) this means you are only really gonna get one scatter burst in a fight before the horde attacks you in close combat and you have to change to a pistol or close combat weapon

Where are you getting the the specific rules for Scatter, as that's not what is stated, as far as I can see on p144? No specifics are mentioned. I don't have RoB on me at present, so I may just need to read the weapon specifics in there.

Obviously, #00 shot isn't much use against armoured foes, but the potential for RF when a ridiculous number of strikes hit would have more than exceeded the bolter's capability. A strike with 5 DoS with the 'first shot is the only one with scatter' rule results in 7x 1d10+10 Pen 0, compared to the Bolter's 3x 1d10+9 Pen 4, tearing. Which still rivals the newly-nerfed bolter, but is at least on the right planet!

I've had a look through the special ammunition rules and I can't see anything about not mixing ammunition types. It's not something that I'd allow in the case of a shotgun due to the complications of the scatter rules, but I personally don't take issue with people doing in general terms. Certainly; I'd *expect* Marines with rocket launchers to mix their load.

It would be a very blaggy to mix 1:6 Hellfire in a heavy bolter so that the first round of a burst (the one most likely to hit) is always Hellfire, because it relies on the metagame knowledge that every short burst is six shots, and the player knowing that despite the fog of war, his character always fires precisely six shots to a burst.

On the other hand, given that mixing in ammunition types is something that is routinely done in reality and common sense in some applications, I wouldn't have issue with the idea if the metagaming was sidestepped (by randomising if the Hellfire hit with a d6 perhaps), or if was done in a weapon where the marine could easily keep track of matters (such as a semi-automatic bolt pistol).

ok. first ive only just spotted the errata, and I agree, the new astartes shotgun compared with the new bolter at short range is unbelievable really. although to be fair the erratad weapons dont say these are new weapons they just say they are alternatives for "rolling fewer dice" not that I believe that for one second

second. "if fired at a foe within point blank range every two degrees of success indicates another hit" doesn't say for every hit. you make an attack roll, work out how many degrees of success you have then work out how many hits that is. you cant score scatter hits on other shots in the burst because extra hits are not scored per shot but per DoS and thus per attack roll.

third. if you fire 10 shots and only hit once, that does not indicate that that hit was definitely the first shot in the burst. I could maybe see the idea of randomising if you split a clip of special ammo between two clips so that you get the bonus on a random basis, but this is definitely covered by individual gms taste rather than anything else.

finally hellfire round in a heavy bolter a single shot, so that specific example is invalid but I can see where you are coming from

Narkasis Broon said:

Maths was guestimate-style, I'm afraid.

That logic doesn't make any sense, though.

Point blank range is 2m. Shotgun pellets do not leave the barrel at a 45 degree angle, and the idea that it is possible to hit 5 people or even 5 separate locations on the same person with a blast at that range is bizarre, at best. If the choke could be made that open, then frankly we should be in the realm of flamer rules and laying down templates, because it'd be physically impossible to hit someone 10 yards away! And yet we have a weapon that can put someone down 60m away, and which does not receive any kind of 'to hit' bonus to represent this vast cloud of lead that has been expelled.

According to the rules a single shotgun shot can hit 5 targets at 2m away, but at 3m can only hurt one person. That might be ok to your mind, but it doesn't sit well with me. It's simply not how shotguns work. Not even sawn-off ones. Sure: If we've got some kind of magic magnetic choke, and a barrel less than 2 inches long, but then why no to-hit bonus at longer range, or possibility of hitting multiple targets at those ranges?

The rules make some kind of sense if the Scatter rules come into play at short range and longer (We're talking movie shotguns here, so we'll let by the fact that it's possible to somehow hit 5 targets at 3m...) and if you DON'T get the scatter effect at point blank (but instead maybe roll damage as per a slug, if we want to be technical about it), but as written they are totally illogical.

Plus, if you're firing at something less than 2m away, then youre pretty much in melee, and can't even fire a shotgun in order to use the Scatter rules.

It is stated in the Full Auto section, not under the Scatter quality.

And with the ammo mixing, its stated in a section other than the exotic ammo sections. I think its somewhere under the general description of weapons when describing the ammo capacity of a weapon, or it might be detailed in the combat chapter. Either way, it is indeed disallowed in the RAW of Deathwatch. Feel free to change this, but the options for metagaming go through the roof.

Your example of mixing hellfire ammo with a heavy bolter being one (although yes, you did describe that as metagaming anyway, but this is a terrible thing to allow at all). As using Hellfire rounds also turns the heavy bolter's RoF to S/-/-, it is highly inappropriate to allow a player to fire that on full auto.

In general, its safest to just not apply any knowledge of the real world to an RPG setting, it can lead to table flipping.

Narkasis Broon said:

It's still not exactly cast-iron. Obviously, I wouldn't WANT to even be doing 30 hits, but the 'alternative' reading would be that you make your autofire calculations, and then check for DoS that each shot has hit by. It's arguably as valid, and makes more 'real world' sense, but is an appalling problem as a balance issue.

Hellfire was a bad example. Let's say...anything else *except* hellfire

As a swift sanity check and mental excercise, I note that the 'autofire multiple hits' table thingy shows examples of bursts being spread as far as leg-to-arm. So our shotgun can -at 2m- hit someone in the arm and leg, or even leg and head. Being remotely sensible and only considering human targets rather than 20' tall ones, and targets not engaged in yoga, that means at least a 50cm shot spread with FFG's magic shotgun in less than 2m. Let's call it 1m range. That's assuming that we don't even try to BS the GM that we should be allowed to spread those shots across more than one person. Soooo..... at 60m range, our shot will be in a cloud some 30m wide!

Man: Clay pigeon shooting is a bit easy if you only need to fire within about 10m of the target, isn't it?

Edit: A 22.5 degree arc is also wider than a flamer, which hits *everything*.

Changing the Scatter trait to short range (and beyond) makes sense in several ways, not least of all the game-enhancing ability to actually be able to use the trait at a reasonable range, rather than in melee. As written the Scatter trait makes no sense at all.

You are thinking way too hard about this. The game is an abstraction.

Although I'm fairly sure scatter does indeed work up to short range, or at least, I did not notice if it changed in Deathwatch.

KommissarK said:

You mean for more than two seconds?

I can see your point of arbitrary cut off seems a bit strange, and the fact that there are no rules for it spreading out.

It definitely cant hit 5 different targets in one shot because unlike full auto there are no rules for you splitting hits between different targets ie if you fire at one guy you hit that one guy with 5 times more shrapnel than you would hit him with if he were further away.

should it tone down more slowly rather than having an arbitrary cut off? perhaps, maybe you could house rule that you get an extra hit for every degree of success divided by the distance the target is away in meters. thus at one meter away 4DoS is 5 hits but at 4 meters away 4 DoS is only 2 hits

should it have a blast? or an arc like a flamer? perhaps. its a way you could go with it. I think that the assumption is that although the shrapnel spreads out it doesnt do so uniformly. if you have done normal distributions in maths I would expect it to look something like that. that would mean that in order to get struck by sufficient shrapnel for it to count as a hit I think you would have to stand right next to the target.

but you can go any of these ways with it. I just think it will make it more complicated rather than less personally.

as for your comment about head to arm I am not so sure, ok leg to head is a little wierd but if you think about someone aiming a rifle at you, they could be sighting down the scope, holding a rifle in both hands. you could hit both arms their head and the top of their chest with only a 10cm or so spread

To be fair, changing the words 'Point Blank' to 'Short and Long' resolves the issue with the Scatter trait in every way. It's simple, easy, and makes sense within and outside the context of the game. Job done, rules fixed.

I was just taking the mick when it came to spread. If you fire a shotgun at someone 2m away, the shot doesn't even have time to spread, is all still in one clump, and you get a single ragged wound about an inch wide called a 'rat hole' (because the edges of it are rough and look like a rat has chewed it). The chances of you hitting someone in more than one limb or appendage at that range are precisely nil. A good way of translating this in the game is to disallow the Scatter trait at PB range, but to instead use shotgun slug damage.

Shotgun spread depends on choke, but the choke on the ones I'm used to give about a 1m spread at 40m. Bearing in mind that for killing people, you need #00 buckshot shot or better, and that a 12 gauge only holds 8ish of those pellets, you can see how preposterous a wide spread is. I can live with shotguns hitting multiple locations at 3m or more because we're in the realm of Hollywood shotguns, but as regards that much spread at point blank range; anyone who pauses to think about it can see how whack it is.

Just for my amusement: Even assuming that our marines are indeed gods amongst men and are hip-firing 4-gauge duck guns (firing 1/4lb of shot at a time!), that gives (*pause for counting fingers*) 32 #00 buckshot pellets. Now, with some kind of horribly open choke sawn off shotgun, if we went for a 15 degree overall spread, that's give us a 10m radius shot pattern at 60m. a =pi x r^2 = 314 square meters, and 32 pellets. So that's one bit of buckshot per 10 square metres! Silly, eh?

ok I think the thing is that its not really about them hitting multiple locations though. I agree with you that it is silly that you can hit someone in the head and the leg with one shotgun shot. but ignoring hit locations and taking your 8 pellet buckshot example. if you are at short enough range that you are hit by all 8 pellets you will surely take more damage overall than if you are further away and only 2-3 pellets hit you.

its just that in this game the way they simulate that extra damage is by allowing you to inflict multiple hits, and thus you inflict damage 2 or more times =greater damage overall

if you want to just do slug damage instead then ask your gm, your argument seems pretty reasonable for a more realistic shotgun. although as you stated above the reliable rapid fire shotgun is hardly realistic

Psyx said:

We round-robin GMing duties, but the 'change PB to short and long' houserule seemed to meet a unanimous 'well, duh!' agreement.

Does anyone even use 'point blank' range? That's pretty much in melee, or at least a fraction of a second from it, and I don't think we use it. I guess if someone wandered up to someone else's melee and shot into it, it would have an application.

It suffers from the standard Video Game approach to shotguns, in which they are apparently only useful at ranges of less than a few meters.

It's bull from a reality perspective but fills a niche in the game so it works out. I could see extending it to short and maybe even long range as a decent house-rule, doesn't seem too prone to shattering balance.

I use Scatter as extending up to Short range because:

A. The ranges for Scatter weapons tend to be pretty low.

B. I almost never see people getting off Point Blank shots; by that time, they're in melee. The few times it's happened has been when someone used Acrobatics to disengage then fired a shotgun.

Psyx said:

I don't understand where the problem is, the DH errata details the intended use of rules:

"The Actions section starting on page 190 should include a
special note concerning combining semi-auto and full-auto fire
with the Scatter quality, which reads “When firing a semi- or fullauto
burst at point blank range with a weapon that has the Scatter
quality, the extra hits for rate of fire and scatter are worked out
separately and both applied. For example, Horatius Kane fires
his combat shotgun at Heretic X. Kane is at point-blank range
and fires a semi-automatic burst. Kane rolls 01 with his modified
Ballistic Skill of 70 (30 BS, +30 for point-blank range, +10 for
fi ring semi-auto) and hits by an amazing six degrees of success. He
gets one hit at 70, one hit for semi-automatic at 50, and a third hit
for semi-auto at 30 (he does not get a fourth hit at 10, because the
combat shotgun’s rate of fire is 3). He would get additional hits for
scatter at 50, 30 and 10, for a total of 6 hits on Heretic X, most
likely shredding the cultist to bits in the Emperor’s name.”

If you are changing the rules to cause multiple hits, you'd have to decrease the damage of the shotgun at long and extreme ranges to fairly ineffective. The multiple hits at point blank is to upscale the potential damage inflicting. It is by far worse to get a shotgun load point blank where all the pellets will tear a huge hole. At long range the pellets will spread, you'll likely only get hit by some of the pellets and they'll cause multiple minor wounds rather one giant gaping hole in your body.

So for multiple hits with shotguns at PB range you simply use one hit location for all for realism. That's it.

Alex

Psyx said:

That actually doesn't make sense within the context of the game, mainly because you're forgetting that there is a range category between Short (up to half the listed range of the weapon) and Long (between 2 and 3 times the weapon's listed range).

The scatter quality isn't meant to provide any potential to hit multiple targets (this is where the autofire and scatter rules get mixed up - you can split autofire hits between targets, but scatter has no such allowance - all the additional hits from scatter hit the same target - and combining the two creates endless headaches) but rather the increased mass of shot that can hit a single target at extremely close range..

Psyx said:

"That logic doesn't make any sense, though.

Point blank range is 2m. Shotgun pellets do not leave the barrel at a 45 degree angle, and the idea that it is possible to hit 5 people or even 5 separate locations on the same person with a blast at that range is bizarre, at best. If the choke could be made that open, then frankly we should be in the realm of flamer rules and laying down templates, because it'd be physically impossible to hit someone 10 yards away! And yet we have a weapon that can put someone down 60m away, and which does not receive any kind of 'to hit' bonus to represent this vast cloud of lead that has been expelled."

1) this is abstracted for the sake of the game. I could see an argument could be made for shotguns at longer ranges to have some to hit bonus, but so far they don't, and I don't expect there to be one.

2) we are talking cinematic shotguns here. The same kind that send people flying through shop windows when they are shot at short range (old table top rules for them actually had an effect where they could knock people down and back... and they were the only weapon in the game with this rule). Applying realism to these weapons.... doesn't really work.

"According to the rules a single shotgun shot can hit 5 targets at 2m away," Eh, how? Maybe with full auto, but you can't choose to spread the extra hits from scatter across multiple targets (aside from possibly with full-auto shotguns).

"Does anyone even use 'point blank' range?"All the time... Well, less so with Deathwatch (either we avoid close combat like the plague, or we charge straight in), but Dark Heresy has seen many a person decapitated by point-blank shotgun shots to the head.

borithan said:

Confirmed. My Scum and his Meathammer have made the same experience.

Alex

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Short *to* long. A typo, but I'd hope one whose intended meaning was obvious.

The increased mass of shot? That hasn't spread? Is that increased mass somehow greater than the mass of a shotgun slug? That doesn't make any sense. It makes far more to use slug damage at PB and the scatter trait at longer ranges.

I'm not even a huge fan of PB in DH. It sees some use, but I only give the bonus if the target is not really aware of the shot (a la Han Solo's bit of under-the-table gunnery). Foes that close are generally in melee, which means no shotguns. Or they're aware of the shot, and a movement on their behalf requires greater movement of the barrel than if they were at a longer range, so there's no bonus. But then: In DH I don't allow firearms to be actively dodged, and a +20 bonus in the mix would make things very messy.

I notice there's a jump in PEN, too. Typo, we think? Or is buckshot far better at blowing through armour than -say- an autogun? I can live with Pen 4, so long as I start doubling target armour at medium, rather than long range, thus keeping the shotgun as a close quarter weapon.

@Borithan: Yes; Hellfire was a bad ammunition type to pluck off the top of my head, considering its special (and rather bizarre) rules. The error was noted and corrected several posts ago.

There is no point sticking to patiently stupid abstractions and discarding reality when there's a solution that's equally easy to use and breaks the suspension of disbelief less. Yes: It's an abstraction. So would be multiple hits on seperate locations at short range. It's even using the same abstracted rule; just applied in a manner which makes sense to any player who has ever handled a firearm.

Psyx said:

The DW system is more cineastic than simulationist in nature. If you want a more realistic experience, there'll be a number of things, you'll need to correct. Semi-/Full-Auto rules for examoke. Carrying capacity. ROF needs to be much higher. Etc etc.

Alex

@Psyx

While yes, indeed, "dodging" gunfire is totally preposterous, you really shouldn't disallow it to characters/npcs. Its one of the core aspects of defense in the system. It really doesn't have anything to do with knowledge of the shot, but rather is a general danger sense that occurs during combat. To remove it greatly changes the flow of the game. Also, removing the PB bonus is rather petty, as the reason you give for its removal is the dodge mechanic. Note that the dodge difficulty is independent of the range at which the shot is fired from.

And really, if you have no problem removing dodge from ranged attacks, then why even bother asking about scatter as a rule question? Just make up whatever you want. Just be sure to inform the players, and write out how exactly it works. There is nothing wrong with this, just accept that you are changing the rules to fit how you want the game to "feel."

Your problem seems to come from trying to apply "common sense" to a world of madness and superstition. This is 38000 years in the future, things can be radically different as you know them now. Its not healthy to try and debate technology, physics, firearm design, or some form of pseudoscience in a fictional setting.

I believe the 4 pen is a typo on shotguns, and will treat it as such (at least, when loading shot and not slugs). Generally scatter, as has been stated before, is to represent the type of damage that can occur when someone is unlucky enough to be hit by all of the smaller aspects of the shot (which only occurs at point blank range), and then, how weak each individual shot is at long range (as seen with the AP effect). If anything, scatter should keep the point blank hits, keep the long range AP issue, and gain a +5 to BS tests per range category from PB (representing the ease to actually hit when the shot spreads in such a manner). I do not recommend trying to change this to allow for hitting multiple targets, that is too complicated to keep the speed of the game going. You may think its easy, but such things can easily turn into larger problems. And generally, a faster game is more enjoyable than a slower, more "accurate" game. Just keep the abstraction reasonable, enjoyable, and fast.