I am keeping this seperate from the general errata discussion.

New errata, complete weapon overhaul. My take on it? Obviously I am quite pleased. The new weapon damages follow my thoughts to an astonishing degree (and no I don't mind that one bit, I don't ask to be credited, etc. or anything like that either, I'm just happy to see the game evolve and improve), the new less-dice approach doesn't hide that very well. Where I suggest giving the Fleshborer +1d10 damage and they give it +6 instead... pretty much the same. Of course they didn't follow all my suggestions but the new weapon stats are actually closer to my house rules than to the original RAW.

Because of the similarity it probably doesn't make too much sense to get into the numbers crunch (and vehicles would now have to be factored in too; also I have not taken a closer look at RoB weapons yet), see my original thread foe details. The weapons are much more balanced against each other and plasma and melta will now see much more use. Even the Heavy Flamer with its horde damaging capabilities will see good use in combination with Cleanse and Purify.

Now bearing in midn that I am overall very pleased I'll state my first impressions on what I think might not work so well (won't get very long probably):

1. The Tac is a real challenger to the Devastator now in ranged combat. Personally, I would restrict Bolter Mastery to Pistol and Basic Bolt Weapons. That will make the Dev the king of the Heavy Bolter again.

2. One major concern (thanks to Boruta for pointing it out) with my approach was the Storm Bolter becoming the best weapon (with cheaper specialty ammo than the HB too) if you nerf ROF and Damage of the HB. It's concern here too. My suggested remedy was adding to Storm Quality: "When used against hordes Storm Quality does not double the number of hits inflicted but only gives the attacker a second chance to wound." [Edit: the Storm Bolter is of course only Semi-Auto now, so this item here is invalid, my mistake. However, the lack of full-auto fire causes its own problems, namely contributing to a less-than-epic feeling. And mechanically you can't lay suppressive fire with bolters. That ain't right. Maybe a a special rule can fix that. It's not like semi-auto fire with huge and highly explosive rounds wouldn't suppress anyone.]

3. This is just a matter of personal preference and not of objective criticism: with Astartes weapons I don't like rolling only 1d10. Even if I get + 1 trillion damage, it feels weak. I'd rather roll 2d10+3 or 4 than 1d10+9. I can see why they did that too (it will help with integration of Astartes and mortal weapons). I still have the house rule that you can re-roll all 10s with RF... it just gives players that extra thrill to theoretically be able to get astronomical damage with a rare, spectacular roll of dice.

4. Bolt weapons are now fairly weak. They are struggling to do damage against Chaos Marines. Yes, Power Armour is supposed to stop them. But it contributes to the overall impression (see below).

5. Missile Launcher is among the biggest losers. It got nerfed and plasma and melta got better. It's not far off, maybe a bit too weak now. Maybe not, needs extensive play-testing. The closer the stats are to a balanced set, the more extensive play-testing/analysis needs to be for further improvement.

6. They actually followed my thoughts on xenos weapons and gave them a substantial overall boost. However, for those who remember, I was undecided about this boost... the problem is that it makes those xenos really lethal. You really don't want to meet a platoon of Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles now. You really, really don't want to.

Which leads me to my only actual concern with the new weapon rules: in total it goes against the design philosophy of Deathwatch. The basic concept of DW was that the Space Marines are über-warriors like in the novels. They make the difference. There is only a million of them spread over the galaxy but without them the Imperium would fall.

But with that errata Devs are nerfed (rightfully so), Bolt weapons struggle to hurt tough opponents, you get to roll only 1d10 for Bolt weapons, xenos suddenly become extra lethal.

It's overall all very sound and will make for a better playing experience but... it causes a bit the loss of the epic hero feeling when combined together. Where the original rules were favoring the Marines too much, especially as you reached Rank 4+... this will make Marines struggle.

This isn't necessarily bad, as a GM it is wise to be very conservative for the ingenuity of players will find ways to max out their fighting capabilites. The good thing about the new rules is that it will challenge the players.

Now you need Mighty Shot. You need Storm of Iron against those Fire Warriors (and you'll probably spend fate to take 10 for Init too). You need everything to maximize your damage output. Hitting the enemy is still no problem and you probably won't need much gear that improves your BS. What is desperately needed is any talent or gear that will make you hit the enemy harder as hitting itself is usually not the problem. And reduced ROF means less DoS needed to max out.

One method of addressing that is changing the rules of cover. Instead of providing Cover AP, they could reduce the size of the target and if the shots miss, they may be assumed to have missed altogether. I use that rule for hordes.

In summary: very pleased, main concern is that the new weapon stats might have swung a bit too much in the other direction but that needs extensive play-testing because the new rules are much closer to a balanced set of rules.

So overall: LOL.

Alex

The revised stats are, as mentioned, exactly what the game needed. Overall its much more fun with the revised weapon stats.

One other thing to remember is Deathwatch marines will almost always have special ammo. That makes a HUGE difference when balancing weapon damages. Most of my players tend to take at least one clip of Kraken rounds "just in case".

For Rank 1 marines it balances out pretty well (using average damages and whatnot). A single Deathwatch marine is a fair fight for a single Chaos Marine when you take into account special ammo and Fate Points. Remember, Chaos Marines are supposed to be tougher than "thinbloods" and I personally like the dynamic. Tyranid Warriors are about the same as well, though can be more dangerous if they get some good hand-to-hand in.

Things balance out a bit more once you add some Ranks, better Gear, etc. It also encourages your Kill Team to think more about squad balance.

As the game is supposed to be a "role playing" game, not a different type of wahammer 40K, I am happy for these changes. I don't consider them nerfs (as some of my fellow gamers do) as that is more of a 40k mindset (in my opinion). Seems to me the devs saw the increasingly prevalent and boring game play of everyone with heavy bolters and full-auto firing everything to death as breaking the feal of the roleplaying game. I certainly feel that way. This game includes all sorts of special abilities, weapons, and actions but the only one getting any use was full-auto. While I do firmly believe space marine equipement should be more powerful than normal Imperial issue, the level it was at was a little too much.

Applause to the devs, thank you. I can't wait to see if these changes brings more roleplaying into our gaiming tables.

I really like the new stats. Astartes Bolters are still slightly more powerful than I would like, but close enough that I can't really complain.

I especially like the change to Melta weapons. Double penetration at short range is exactly what they needed to feel right.

Besides, the new weapon lists are optional, so if you like rolling lots of dice, you can still use the old stats.

I'm definitely not a fan of the new weapon stats, overall. Going this far with weakening the PCs and doing the opposite for the opponents is not really my view of how I like DW. It feels more like a game of D&D, where the party is always the underdogs--constantly outnumbered and outgunned. I prefer my SMs to feel like the biggest toughs on the block because that's what they were trained and equipped to be; still killable, certainly, but seriously not someone most people would mess with. If the party was all equipped with Heavy Bolters that fired a thousand rounds a turn, did 100d10 + 1,000 X damage, and magically reloaded instantly every turn...I can still adjust for that. I can make encounters harder, make baddies tougher, throw out more Tyranid Hordes (or bigger Hordes). Scaling DOWN isn't what I want from a game like DW.

I expect I'll try to do my own list of weapons and find a compromise between the two sets. Some of the new stuff is very good (melta weapons, for instance) but there's a lot of stuff that fit better with the first rules. like the ability to full-auto.

ak-73 said:

You know one of my players said this to me- he just like to roll a lot of dice, it doesn't really matter why, but for whatever reason it feels more powerful to have a fistful of dice rather than one plus a giant modifier.

ak-73 said:

Though on the surface I agree here, while they're indirectly squishier (as in the bad guys stay alive for a few more turns and thus get off more shots at the PCs), they're still miles beyond what a standard trooper is. You're still looking at an 'average' marine being at 13k experience meaning the whole company/chapter stands out whereas if you had that same sized force of guard one or two guys would be that cool. Chaos cultists and PDF rogues are still crap, it's just that tyranids (supposed to be super scary) and the tau (supposed to require cleverness to get within range) at this point that got a reverse bump really. I do agree, however, this is harder to convey because it definitely takes some of the "I AM AWESOMEZ" out of playing the Marine, and I do wonder how many players will frown and feel their characters are lesser now.

I reject the notion that Bolters are now ' fairly weak '. What they are is balanced, because previously they were ' unfairly powerful '. I've lost count of the amount of threads I've seen here where a hapless GM has lamented over what he could possibly put before his players that would pose any sort of challenge to them, and it all comes down to the Astartes Bolt Weapons and their 2D10 damage (and the 10 shots a Heavy Bolter puts out). They were far too powerful, and capable of cutting anything down in a single turn. Hordes were meaningless if the team had a Heavy Bolter, and given how cheap and easy Heavy Bolters were to obtain there was virtually no reason to take anything else. Now Dev's might start bringing other Heavy Weapons. Wouldn't that be nice.

So not weaker; but better!
So not nerfed; but balanced!

It's just a shame that there are so many mistakes in the new tables. They're the more troubling aspect of all this.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

Well, Bolters are fairly weak now compared to compared to other stuff like Plasma, Missile launchers, Meltas, etc. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, it's... I don't know. Perhaps it's because of the 1d10. It makes sense to use it for convergence reason and if I was in charge I'd probably decided the same given circumstances.

Nid warriors are now really hard to kill with Bolt Weapons. It's not unrealistic, it has much more of the tabletop feel now than Movie Marines. I mean they took essentially my damage/pen values (at least an analogon) and decreased ROF of the Bolter and Bolt Pistol. Plus they are now only Semi-Auto. I think that's a bit too hard a nerf. I see where it is coming from though: HB ROF needed to be decreased to 6 or 7. And that necessitates that you nerf the Bolter and in particular Storm Bolter or the SB gets too good incomparison to the HB.

With the new rules, the non-bolt weapons are king and Bolt weapons are more like... well, the Storm Bolter and HB are still good. The normal Boltgun... will get replaced by players ASAP. Even though there is specialty ammo. If that's what you want... it's a bit a petty though, the normal bolter is just so iconic.

I think I'll keep the old ROF values, use the new stats otherwise. Maybe switch the DoS rule for Semi and Full auto around instead.

Just as with re-rolling all 10s on RF, I think keeping the full auto makes for a more epic experience.

Alex

You know what's strange? For a very long time I was completely opposed to the idea of changing Astartes Bolters and making them ' weaker '. I tried to explain away and rationalise the deficiencies in Plasma Weapons - it's high power that's meant to be better, low power is meant to be weak! - and the lack of 'oomph' that Meltaguns have - it's not regular 40K, they have the room to show how much more powerful a Multi-Melta is over a regular Melta! - and the very thought of taking away that second D10 was, quite frankly, heresy! I liked the fact that Bolters had this heroic feel to them, like the signature and ritual weapon of the Space Marines was a cut above the rest and could rip through anything without trouble. I even expressed that opinion here on a number of occasions.

But I was wrong.

Cold hard reality set in and after numerous games of Deathwatch my group came to the realisation that the game was no longer fun. I could put anything in front of them and within a turn the Heavy Bolter would have killed it. The Heavy Bolter was killing multiple Chaos Marines a turn. Mag 40, 50 and 60 Hordes were vanishing after a single round of Heavy Bolter fire. It was cutting through Hive Tyrants and Nurgle Daemon Princes like they weren't even there. We even started referring to the character not as ' The Tactical Marine ' or ' The Devastator ', but simply as ' The Heavy Bolter ', as it was that weapon that defined both the character and every session we played. One session ended with us all really annoyed at one another but we couldn't work out why until the next day when we said " Ah! It's because we stopped having fun! ".

It is at this time when I started to see what other GM's and players had been saying here for a long time, and my opinion was turned around. It may have felt great for the basic Bolter to be such an excellent weapon, but the overall quality and fun of the game suffered because of it. These changes make the other weapons desirable, make the Combi-Bolter into a worthwhile weapon (why would you ever take a Combi-Plasma when the Bolter portion was so much better than the Plasma portion?), and allow the Devastator to finally take other weapons because the one weapon he gets for free can no longer handle every single target type short of a Land Raider. There are mistakes in the new rules (the Combi-Bolter's RoF has to be an error, Sniper Rifles still suck, and Storm Bolters/Autoguns/Autopistols without Full-Auto modes is just wrong), but generally speaking this change is one that improves the entire game as a whole and in a lot of ways can breathe new life into the game. Now GM's can actually threaten their players with Master-level Adversaries because The Heavy Bolter won't be there to save them in one round of shooting. Now the Plasma/Melta/Flamer trio is necessary , rather than just a curious distraction This is a good thing.

And I think the specialist ammunition will keep the Bolter relevant. In fact, I'm certain of it. During our last session, despite these changes, we all still used our Bolters for pretty much everything (when I wasn't using my Chainsword that is!). We spent most of our Req on specialist ammunition. All of us got use out of our Bolters, especially our sniper, who used the Stalker-Pattern Bolter really well (and there's now a point to it now as Bolters don't have Full-Auto modes).

BYE

ak-73 said:

I think I really like the changes, though I will have a hard time explaining to my bolter-using group, that this is what was intended, and not just a huge nerf-bat.

But as someone said earlier, there is often a better feel to rolling more dice as a player. So I think we might cut bolter dmg down by about 5, and add the extra dice back again, but that depends on what my players want. But we did already have our own bolter dmg reduced to +3 instead of +5, so that part is not so bad, and out devastator is joining us next week for the first time, so he will not have known the Golden HB Days anyways

All we need is just the re-aligning of Bolter vs Combi-bolter, and a rule for Full-auto with some weapons, mainly for supporting fire reasons. So until that happens, I think I'll just houserule that Bolters can do pinning fire, at twice SA ammo cost or something.

And I am sooo happy about the melta-weapon change!!

H.B.M.C. said:

Don't get me wrong, I have been one of the biggest advocate of those changes before the errata to the point where Charmander was teasing me over me raising the OPness of the Heavy Bolter repeatedly. Barrage Plasma Gun is suddenly unbelievably good. Mindblowingly good truly. The RoB weapons were a bit a fix because melta and plasma wasn't good enough in the Core. Prepare for the players blowing away their enemies with RoB weapons, particularly plasma and melta. And the Astartes Assault Shotgun of course.

As I said I think the new stats are a huge, courageous step forward. I am just offering my feedback on what from my personal, subjective pov could be further tweaked. Perhaps for a future 40K RP 2E. Also I am sure, btw, that these new values will form the basis for a 2E as they are quite obviously geared towards integration of product lines. And it's quite probable that we see a version of those new stats in BC. It's hard to imagine that they'll can them straight away again.

Alex

ak-73 said:

I'm not really buying that the Tac is now rivalling the Dev, due to the disparity in BS increases. Although... why shouldn't they be closely comparable? The Tac is -as we know- not an all-rounder. They're a shooter with leadership skills. The Dev is a shooter with tech and survivability talents. I really don't see why the Tac should be made to be worse at ranged combat seeing as (barring *one* melee talent in his entire advancement scheme) it's his schtick, too. The heavy weapons guys shouldn't be better shots than the line infantry... it's just that the heavy weapons guys carry heavy weapons. The tac deserves to be good at shooting. Otherwise: Why play one, when you can be better at shooting AND get a heavy weapon, by playing a Dev? The Tac still needs to retain strong combat options to be a viable class.

Given that the HB has had it's crown knocked off, I don't see it a problem to give Bolter Drill to all bolt weapons. It means that the 'classic' marine HB is still a tempting option. If the PC spends XP on it, I don't see it as a problem. after all, that extra shot isn't going to make a vast difference to the HB.

The HB's reduced rate of fire is enough to make devs pout, but the reality is that those extra 4 shots miss most of the time anyway. For trading away the chance of some extra overkill against elites or a bit more horde damage the Dev is nearly doubling his ammunition supply, which is fantastic. The unrelenting devestation change hurts but we all know that it was too powerful as is, especially when compared to other class abilities.

I have to say that I'm not crazy on other weapons getting a boost AND bolters getting hit with a stick. Bolters are supposedly the weapon of the Astartes because bolters are kick-ass. Now...they're really not so much. I'm glad that now metas and plasma are a more viable choice, but it might have gone too far the other way, with bolters now becoming something that is soon moved away from. Time and testing will judge, I guess.

Bigger guns for Tau? Cool. About time. Tau guns are supposed to be good.

The loss of 'full auto' for most weapons is clearly aimed at decreasing the number of additional hits. If you view it as 'full auto, but with a less ridiculous rate of fire than assault canons' it sits better and makes more sense.

I kind of like that the combi-weapon bolter has a 'better' bolter on it. It makes it a much more viable option, whereas otherwise anyone would just take a storm bolter instead. It represents a combi-bolter not being a line infantry weapon, but instead being something special, made for an important figure. It's cool, even if it's a typo.

I'm slightly concerned about some of the RoB weapons. They were clearly fixes for the poor plasma and melta weapons in the main rules. Now they might be a bit OP. It doesn't look too bad, and they certainly cost a lot of Req, but time will tell.

What I like most about the changes is that they open up options. A game where you just go through and are confronted with a series of no-brain choices doesn't really *have* many choices (aside from 'do I want to gimp my character'). Now -at least as far as ranged weapons is concerned- there are a lot more choices for a marine. And characters might be tempted to -instead of just taking a signature storm bolter or HB- mix weapon choices and take different stuff along each time, a lot more often.

Siranui said:

Bolter Mastery, not Bolter Drill.

Siranui said:

It's more a result of nerfing the Bolter and Storm Bolter sufficiently after decreasing damage and ROF for the HB. The nerf of the HB was the fundamental design decision and the rest were mostly cascading ripples through the system.

Alex

Doh!

Meh... Bolter drill is good an' all... on paper... but how often do you see a Tac in solo mode? To me, it's a poor ability because of that limitation.

I'm praying for a wider choice in class abilities in the future.

Siranui said:

Tacs with Bolter Mastery are quite frequently in that mode, especially if they also have Mighty Shot (Rank 2) and have requested a HB with specialty ammo.

Restrict Bolter Mastery and the HB is again the territory of the Dev. Keep it as it is and the Tac is better with the HB than the Dev. Immovable only gives +10 BS and not the all important +2 damage. Per hit.

Alex

Sounds reasonable, but not something that I'd personally worry about until I see a tac marine actually use the ability!

I'd just like to say the new rules have probably made Thunder Hammers too powerful.

2d10+5 Pen 9 in addition to the increased multiplier to SB and Concussive, as well as requiring only a single hand, makes them far and away the best melee weapon in the game. All for a bargain 30 req so it fits under Sig Wargear (Master) or you can get an MC one for Sig Wargear (Hero), since it's better than a Relic Blade really. You can pair it with a Storm Shield and have both offensive and defensive domination.

Making Thunder Hammers require 2hands unless you're in Termie Armour would kinda make sense, and give Assault Marines a real reason to select Terminator Armour, which ruins their mobility and makes them plod casually toward their opponents. I've generally only seen the TH/SS combo on Assault Terminators so it might figure well into fluff.

I don't know if this matters that much, but both shotguns seemed to have gained a pen equal to a bolter.

Doc Kill said:

I like the bump in Pen that shotguns received. The Assault Shotgun may be a little too good now, but with 0 Pen the shotgun often wouldn't even scratch an enemy who wasn't very weak and/or close to the shooter. I haven't picked up RoB yet, so I can't compare the two versions of the Assault Shotgun, but it seems fitting to me that a shotgun would have at least some penetration ability.

Howdy folks,

I've had a chance to digest the information in the errata and done a bit of analysis. The following is mean damage capability per round with each of the weapons firing on its most destructive fire mode, comparing RAW to the Errata.

Firer has BS 50 and some sort of +10 to hit (be it ability, targeter, motion predictor or whatever), target has TB 8 and Armour 8 (Chaos Space Marine), range is 30m:

Mean Damage
Weapon RAW Errata % Change
Bolt Pistol 20.44 7.81 -62%
Bolter 34.07 10.04 -71%
Stalker 10.22 5.02 -51%
Combi 34.07 11.16 -67%
Heavy Bolter 78.11 37.36 -52%
Storm Bolter 68.14 22.32 -67%

Plasma Cannon 10.65 11.35 7%
Plasma Gun 9.95 14.15 42%
Plasma Pistol 8.55 11.35 33%

Melta Pistol 6.11 8.11 33%
Melta Gun 7.33 12.75 74%
Multi-Melta 19.76 14.15 -28%

Flamer 0.73 1.87 155%
Hand Flamer 0.61 0.56 -9%
Heavy Flamer 5.75 5.68 -1%

Assault Cannon 102.80 87.11 -15%
Astartes Shotgun 0.00 4.35
Autogun 0.00 0.00
Autopistol 0.00 0.00

Lascannon 26.69 22.56 -15%
Lasgun 0.00 0.00
Laspistol 0.00 0.00

Same firer, but now fighting a Tyranid Warrior (TB 10, Armour 8) at point blank range (3m):

Mean Damage
Weapon RAW Errata % Change
Bolt Pistol 26.20 7.16 -73%
Bolter 43.04 10.02 -77%
Stalker 12.16 4.65 -62%
Combi 43.04 12.17 -72%
Heavy Bolter 130.54 47.75 -63%
Storm Bolter 86.09 24.34 -72%

Plasma Cannon 14.54 15.64 8%
Plasma Gun 10.22 16.22 59%
Plasma Pistol 8.22 12.22 49%

Melta Pistol 17.90 15.64 -13%
Melta Gun 17.90 17.84 0%
Multi-Melta 28.85 20.04 -31%

Flamer 0.00 1.22
Hand Flamer 0.00 0.00
Heavy Flamer 6.84 6.72 -2%

Assault Cannon 177.17 147.54 -17%
Astartes Shotgun 0.00 6.88
Autogun 0.00 0.00
Autopistol 0.00 0.00

Lascannon 39.74 33.25 -16%
Lasgun 0.00 0.00
Laspistol 0.00 0.00

I'm all for making some of the other weapons have bolter parity, but not by cutting the performance of bolters in this way. It seems pretty extreme and whilst I realise the damage potential of bolters was pitched too high relative to everything else the solution proposed seems almost as bad in the other direction!

I should note that I haven't taken into account Proven (3) on the Lascannon and the flamers are a bit off as I've treated them as having a normal to-hit roll rather than the agility based dodge/area effect.

The problems with the Thunder Hammer do not extend from the damage it causes (if that was the case, the Breaching Augur would have been the most desired weapon in the game - and I note that's lost 2 of it's D10's, thankfully...). The problem with the Thunder Hammer is actually a problem with the way the Concussive rule works.

Consider the following...

This is the first part of the rule: The weapon causes a barrage of sound and force upon impact. When you strike an opponent with a Concussive weapon, he must make a Toughness Test at a Difficulty of –10 per degree of success by which the attack succeeded or be Stunned for 1 Round.

I've bolded the important part. So say you're a Black Templar or Blood Angel Assault Marine with a Weapon Skill of 60 and Berserk Charge (not hard to get). You charge a Hive Tyrant (+20 for Charging, +20 for Size: Massive). So I'm hitting on 100 (and therefore cannot actually miss). Let's take a middle of the road figure and say you roll a 50. That's 5 DOS. So now the Hive Tyrant must take a Punishing (-50) Toughness Test. As the Hive Tyrant has a Toughness Value of 53, the GM must roll a 3 or under on a D100 or be Stunned.

There is no counter to this aside from Dodging/Parrying. This might as well be automatic.

In subsequent rounds, given the Hive Tyrant is now stunned, there's a further +20 to hit thrown on top. So the Charge Bonus is gone, replaced by a +20. So now the Assault Marine is getting +20 (Stunned Target) and +20 (Size: Massive) against his WS. Each turn an average roll will give a Tyrant a 3% chance of not being stunned next round. The Thunder Hammer could be doing 0 damage a turn and it wouldn't matter, because the Hive Tyrant cannot do anything and is effectively negated.

But it gets worse: Additionally, any target taking damage greater than his Strength Bonus from a Concussive weapon is automatically knocked down.

Given that the average Marine has Strength 40, the Thunder Hammer will be doing 2D10+19 Damage (SB4x3 = 12, +5 for TH, +2 for Power Armour), the average of that is around 30. Even very tough creatures usually only have TB's of 15-18. The Hive Tyrant will bring that down to 15, so not enough to knock it down, but if the player rolls 4 more damage than the average , then the Hive Tyrant will be knocked down automatically, again, with no counter outside of standard Reactions.

So now the Hive Tyrant is knocked down on any roll above average damage, and has a 3% chance of doing anything in the following turn.

The Thunder Hammer is not the problem. The Concussive rule is. If Concussive had a value (like so many other rules have), it would be better. So Concussive (1) could mean a -10 to your Toughness, Concussive (3) would be -30, and so on. That would be a good change and that would fix a lot of problems.

BYE

Shaun said:

I'd really like to know why the solution is always to nerf down something is too good. Why not rise the dmg of plasma, melta and so forth instead of nerfing down bolters ?