Its actually quite easy to see why bolt weapons were too good. Compare the weapon stats in Rogue Trader to the ones in Deathwatch (I know because I did this). Not counting bolt weapons, all the others seem to be roughly 2 damage and 2 penetration higher (give or take). You could almost consider this an "Astartes Trait". Now, using that same analysis, look at the bolt weapons and realize that they are just insanely higher, including a full extra die of damage. This alone points out that the stats are in no way balanced.

As far as "nerfing vs buffing". The issue is that bolt weapons were simply over-buffed to being with. You couldn't raise the damage of all the other weapons without REALLY messing up everything. I prefer my fights to last longer than a turn personally.

As H.M.B.C. said, the weapon stats work, and work quite well. I've been using them in my own campaign.

Shaun said:

I assume the Stalker stats don't account for aiming with the Accurate trait in your analyses - why not? That is, afterall, the singular, defining difference between the Stalker and the conventional Bolter.

That aside, yes the decline in potency is big... but the question, as others have rightly pointed out, isn't "is the reduction too much?", but rather "were they too good to begin with?"

The Heavy Bolter listed there under RAW is dealing sufficient damage in a round of shooting to slay a Tyranid Warrior three times over... the Stormbolter can pretty much kill a Tyranid Warrior twice RAW, while the Bolter can handily cut a Warrior down in a single turn of shooting. That's a bit much, particularly given that Elite enemies are meant to be roughly comparable to a single Astartes - it should be challenging for a 5-man Kill-Team to face a brood of Tyranid Warriors, and that fight should probably last more than ten seconds of intense violence (2 rounds of combat, and that's being generous to the Tyranids).

Lucius Valerius said:

H.B.M.C. said:

Then again, why not RISE the dmg dealt by other weapons ? The only very dangerous part (from the npc's PoW) was that rolling 3 dices for dmg with a bolter you had more chances of RF but otherwise is was hard enough to kill elites, let alone masters grade enemies, in a firefight. Maybe me and my group spend way too many RP on utilities and gadgets instead of buy a butload of special ammo clips (expecially with the cost increase after the first errata). But now, with the new stats even CSM doesn't look that scary anymore...

H.B.M.C. said:

Okay, this is starting to bug me. In terms of bolters, this IS a nerf. It's the very definition of nerf.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nerf

I get that people have different opinions on the new stats, which is fine. In the end, we'll all use whatever works for us. Just stop saying this isn't a nerf when that's exactly what it is. Then we can get back to arguing about whether the KT is now balanced or nothing but Tyranid bait.

Lucius Valerius said:

Personal experience and the statistics worked up earlier in this thread both indicate that a single round of Bolter fire will, on average, fell a Tyranid Warrior. A Heavy Bolter will tear up three in the same amount of time.

That doesn't strike you as particularly odd? It doesn't seem inappropriate that large, moderately powerful synapse creatures go down after a single burst of fire? Five Tyranid Warriors, against five Tactical Marines... that fight will last approximately a round. Five seconds...

Same with Chaos Marines. Yeah, they deal less damage now... but so do the Astartes fighting them, which means that both sides last longer, and the one who fights smarter will be the one that wins, rather than the one that rolls higher for Initiative and gets off a good burst of Full-Auto fire first.

As stated these rules are alternate optional rules...

Santiago said:

True, but as the most significant addition to the new errata, it's fodder for debate and gives us something to argue about. Nothing wrong with that, in my book.

I think what it boils down to now is that the other weapons aren't shiny toys that make a nice option instead of bolters (which is how I'd prefer them to be). Now, they're really necessary if the KT wants to survive. Look at the Hive Tyrant (or, heaven forbid, the Dagon Overlord). Bolters won't even scratch it without rolling a Righteous Fury, and the odds of that has been significantly reduced thanks to the reduction in rolled dice and shots. For a fight against a Hive Tyrant or other significantly tough foe, the KT really has to rely on requisitioned weapons and melee attacks, which are a great way to shorten one's lifespan.

There's still the specialty ammo. We were finding Hellfire rounds to be freaking obscene vs Tyranids. They out right ignore natural armour and Righteous fury on a 9-10. That can still scratch a Hive Tyrant alright, especially when loaded into the new Heavy Bolter. It just doesn't make them disappear in an explosion of focused shooting like it used to.

Chaos Marines were another issue. They are armed with the same guns, and unless you're a techmarine TB 8 ARM 8 is generally going to be your statline as well for the first few levels at least. The RAW example shows the bolter doing 34 points of damage from one good burst. That's a pretty fast way to burn through fate points.

The only thing in these rules that I get concerned about is that the xenos weapons also seem to have been improved. I'm not sure how out of line they were.

Brand said:

That's the point. Many of us gamers have been lobbying for sth like that for months. If you fight a Dragon, don't bring out your +1 Shortswords. We have had enough of the stories of the HT in Extraction getting one-shotted. That's like not right.

Bolters are a bit too bad now with nerfing damage/pen & ROF. Give the Bolt Pistol 3 shots per round and the Bolter 4. You wanna see the bolts flying before your inner eye and not go dud-dud dud-dud. Alos RoB weapons are OP now and will be "Astartes weapons of the spring 2011". GMs beware.

Otherwise, I'd say a pretty solid update, much more playable.

Analysis of how Core Rulebook weapons fare against vehicles will follow.

Alex

Core Rulebook Ranged Astartes Weapons vs. RoB Astartes vehicles

vs. the Rhino Front Armour:

Works actually pretty well. Plasma might be a bit too weak. Also Krak Missiles: too weak.

vs. the Land Raider:

Wow. Just wow. The Land Raider is nearly invincible. You can shoot at it with a Multi-Melta point blank, roll maximum damage and will not care. You manage that a second time and it still won't care. And then it will start shooting at you with Lascannons. Good luck. Oh your Lascannons do some damage do it too but not too spectacular. Everything else don't bother. Assault Cannons? No way. Righteous Fury won't help you increase the penetrating damage either.

vs the Land Speeder:

Works actually quite well. S5+ weapons from 40K kill it a bit too easily but otherwise, it's not bad. I'd also have to include S4 weapons like the Bolter because of stuff like Mighty Shot and Bolter Mastery.

The Assault Cannon has given me food for thought and I matched it against Predator front armour. Abymsal showing. You cannot damage a Predator from the front with the AC. Plasma at least has a theoretical chance on max.

Overall

I think the original design has been underestimating what impact the difference in AV makes. As a rule of thumb I would push all AV values by 25% towards the AV 30 mark, decreasing AV stat variance. (Yes, I am a former math student.) How does it work? Adjusted AV = ((Vehicle AV - 30) x 0.75) + 30

Example values:

Rhino Front: stays 31
Rhino Rear: 22
Land Raider All-Around: 45
Land Speeder: 21

This can then applied to all vehicles, including non-Astartes. It won't be perfect still but a slight improvement, making light vehicles slightly more viable but not by much, making the LR a bit more vulnerable but still pretty much very difficult to kill anyway.

Oh and Krak Missiles are a bit too weak, maybe Plasma too. Maybe. Assault Cannon might need a special weapon quality to substitute for 40K Rending.

Alex

I just realized, Plasma Gun 438 is now complete garbage.

Sorry for posting on DW forum, but recently one of players showed me new errata, and we tested new weapons stats just for fun.

Holy Adeptus Astartes Bolter, weapon given to them by emperor himsealf: d10+9X pen 4.
Holy Adeptus Astartes.... whoooa... Fist: d10+10I pen 0. (with Sb 8 + 2 armour) can go to d10+17I pen 0 (Sb 14 +3 armour)
Holy Adeptus Ceremonial Knife... hehe... d10+10R pen 2. (with Sb 8 + 2 armour) can go to d10+21R pen 2 (Sb 14 +3 armour +2crushingblow +2quality bonus)
HOLY S**T Thundering Hammer of Munchkin Joy: 2d10+19E pen9 Concussive. (with Sb(*3) 12 + 2 armour) can go to munchkin 2d10+28E pen 9 Concussive.

so... to unarmoured guardsman or other such trash troops fist is more dangerous than shoot from space marines signature holy weapon, bolt round that explode inside u. I will not even mention certain blood rage PMS angel assault combo of doom with Thundering Munchkin Joy Hammer(or two).

boruta666 said:

And that right here is the reason why the new bolter stats are a joke. Thank you.

Lucius Valerius said:

But that is nothing totally new. Bolter damage has decreased by only 2.5 or so. For those of you who know Fist of the North Star, I don't have to explain why I'd rather be hit by a bolt round exploding inside of me rather than get a full-strength punch by an Astartes.

Alex

THE THUNDER HAMMER.

Apparently better than a Relic Blade.

Lucius Valerius said:

Shaun said:

Interesting stuff, nice to see soemone put some some math hammer in rather than jumping to assumptions.

But stat's are tricksey creatures. Sure it seems impossibly bad the way you've picked out the reduction in the damage but if we compare the difference in the damages between weapons now...

The plasma gun does 70% more damage than a bolter. Considering that a plasma gun is very good against space marines and you paid requisition for it. The same amount of requisition would have got you a Storm Bolter which does **** close to the same damage. Obviously the PG is better against the bigger - tougher NPC's but it's also much worse against hordes. Plus of course there are other factors, like bolter is still going to throwing more dice at the enemy regardless and the RF is still a big factor. It goes to show just how much damage they did previously. So yeah it seemed to be a big change, and I'm not convinced that it's all roses now, but it's still a big step in the right direction.

I've allways thought it strange that people compared weapons that you bought with in game currency to the basic starting weapons.

ak-73 said:

If the KT knows what it's getting into and can get the appropriate ammo, bolters are just fine. But sometimes the GM likes to be able to spring surprises on the players, and even crazier things can happen by accident (like the Librarian bringing a Demon Prince down on the group's heads). In those situations, it would be nice if the KT could still fight instead of being forced to pull a Monty Python and shout "Run away!" as they flee for their lives...or dive into melee, since melee is as deadly as the really high-end ranged weapons.

And bolter damage has decreased by a lot more than 2.5 or so. That may be true per shot, but the reduction in RoF, the fact that semi-auto fire makes it harder to hit multiple times, and the overall decrease in dice rolled (fewer RF chances) adds up to a lot more deadliness lost.

The bolter is fine against weaker opponents, and a well-prepared and equipped KT can still use it against tough creatures with the right ammo, but it's no longer the great weapon that you can rely on regardless of the situation. To me, the bolter should be the automatic fallback weapon, the great all-rounder; it's the iconic weapon of the SMs, after all. The other types, like meltas, should have their own roles where they clearly outshine bolters but don't make them obsolete.

Brand said:

Yeah, that's what I am saying, that they have nerfed bolters too hard. But that the a normal punch of an Astartes does more damage than a single bolt round - you could have that under the original rules already.

Brand said:

Entirely agreed. Which is what my thread starting post pretty much amounts to.

For the sake of reference I'll post by original House Rules which have clearly taken substantial influence on the new weapon stats. Feel free to mix as you like. Personally, I'll probably use most of the now official optional stats and... probably use my stats for the Bolt Weapons. One needs the special rule for Storm Quality though that it doesn't double the number of hits against hordes only the # of chances to wound - under the rational that the two Bolts spit out at the same time impact so close together that they count as a single hit.

Here is the original thread, it'll make everyone understand the changes better:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Alex

All I can say is that Im actually really looking forward to running fully fledged DW games again instead of the utter bull that was the basic rules. So thank you to whoever was concerned with making these changes... and please dont let the people who made the original ones + playtested them in the first place, near them again.

For those of you who don't think bolters needed to be scaled back: The first boss I threw at my kill team (80 wounds, 8 armor, 12 toughness) was annihilated by the devastator in a single combat turn.

N0-1_H3r3 - I did include the accurate damage for the Stalker, however I did get it the wrong way round... rather than a 10% chance of normal damage, 10% of +1d10 and X% of +2d10 I had the first and last switched, however I've fixed that now.

Having looked at my analysis again and tweaked it slightly here are the % chance (including to-hit) of my BS50 marine killing the following opponents in one round of fire with the weapons in the core rulebook under RAW and Errata:

Chaos Space Marine

Weapon RAW Errata
Bolt Pistol 0.57% 0.00%
Bolter 30.71% 0.00%
Stalker 0.01% 0.00%
Combi 30.71% 0.00%
Heavy Bolter 89.65% 50.51%
Storm Bolter 88.71% 13.77%

Plasma Cannon 0.00% 0.00%
Plasma Gun 0.00% 0.00%
Plasma Pistol 0.00% 0.00%

Melta Pistol 0.01% 0.09%
Melta Gun 0.01% 0.22%
Multi-Melta 3.19% 0.47%

Flamer 0.00% 0.00%
Hand Flamer 0.00% 0.00%
Heavy Flamer 0.00% 0.00%

Assault Cannon 89.91% 89.94%
Astartes Shotgun 0.00% 0.00%
Autogun 0.00% 0.00%
Autopistol 0.00% 0.00%

Lascannon 19.34% 7.04%
Lasgun 0.00% 0.00%
Laspistol 0.00% 0.00%

Tyranid Warrior

Bolt Pistol 0.03% 0.00%
Bolter 13.14% 0.00%
Stalker 0.00% 0.00%
Combi 13.14% 0.00%
Heavy Bolter 97.78% 24.06%
Storm Bolter 95.17% 4.42%

Plasma Cannon 0.00% 0.00%
Plasma Gun 0.00% 0.00%
Plasma Pistol 0.00% 0.00%

Melta Pistol 0.00% 0.00%
Melta Gun 0.00% 0.00%
Multi-Melta 0.11% 0.00%

Flamer 0.00% 0.00%
Hand Flamer 0.00% 0.00%
Heavy Flamer 0.00% 0.00%

Assault Cannon 99.46% 99.45%
Astartes Shotgun 0.00% 0.00%
Autogun 0.00% 0.00%
Autopistol 0.00% 0.00%

Lascannon 3.14% 0.40%
Lasgun 0.00% 0.00%
Laspistol 0.00% 0.00%

I understand that having the Devastator one shot everything in sight isn't great fun for everyone (the RF fix took care of that for DPs and HTs) but in my opinion most elite level opponents shouldn't be walking away from heavy weapons hits. Furthermore I think that the holy bolter should have a chance of taking out a Traitor Marine in one burst, if that happens one in three times I don't think it is too bad... what's worse is that it becomes literally impossible. Consider as well that intelligent enemies can use cover and the likes... let's put our Traitor Marine behind some sandbags (AP8 cover)

Chaos Space Marine (Cover)

Weapon RAW Errata
Bolt Pistol 0.01% 0.00%
Bolter 2.53% 0.00%
Stalker 0.00% 0.00%
Combi 2.53% 0.00%
Heavy Bolter 65.58% 1.55%
Storm Bolter 46.59% 0.10%

Plasma Cannon 0.00% 0.00%
Plasma Gun 0.00% 0.00%
Plasma Pistol 0.00% 0.00%

Melta Pistol 0.00% 0.01%
Melta Gun 0.00% 0.01%
Multi-Melta 0.97% 0.04%

Flamer 0.00% 0.00%
Hand Flamer 0.00% 0.00%
Heavy Flamer 0.00% 0.00%

Assault Cannon 82.07% 77.74%
Astartes Shotgun 0.00% 0.00%
Autogun 0.00% 0.00%
Autopistol 0.00% 0.00%

Lascannon 6.26% 1.25%
Lasgun 0.00% 0.00%
Laspistol 0.00% 0.00%

There are definitely flaws in the weapon stats, but personally I think the flaw is that weapons other than bolters (and assault cannons) don't do sufficient damage. Melta and Plasma weapons in particular have never been right. If I get a chance later I might have a think about how I'd pitch the damage.

ak-73 said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. According to the erratta, melta weapons double their Penetration at Short Range or closer, so the Multi-meltas Pen 12 becomes Pen 24 + 2d10+16 damage. So rolling maximum damage you would do 15 points of damage to it, and a regular meltagun would do 13 points. Or am I missing something?

Defenstrator said:

Yes. AV is still 50. His SI has been errata'd to 45. His wound points, so-to-speak.

And we talk about the max damage. Compare that to the best possible result in 40K TT.

Alex